We examine some interesting observations from the book by
Howe and Coser[1].
We all too frequently assume that any "new" movement is just that,
new and unseen before in any manner. I would suggest the contrary, most
movements are just repackaging of older ones. We have discussed Individualism
and the construct of Natural Rights. Now we consider the alternative, namely
the collective structure of Social Justice, the commitment of the many to the
few and the redistribution of individual gains to those more worthy.
Howe and Coser ( the "Author") wrote at a period
of major Communist threat and a post Stalinist era. Their observations on
Stalinism are compelling especially when we now try to examine movements such
as Social Justice movements as well as those in the Climate Change space.
Movements have been prolific over the course of mankind, from political to
religious to economic. As the authors have noted:
Participation in “the movement” gave many of them a
feeling of personal dignity as well as of communal strength, for they could
learn to accept and transcend the frequent misery of their existence by binding
themselves in a fraternal effort to remove it.
Now the authors commence by considering the early Socialist
movement in contrast to Stalinism. They note:
Nor need one idealize these early Socialists in order to
stress the contrast with Stalinism. A good many of them must obviously have
fallen short of the ideal type that has here been sketched What matters,
however, is that autonomy and freedom of personality was the ideal, and that
the early Socialist movement created conditions favorable to the growth of
human personality. No achievement of early Socialism is more impressive or
testifies more decisively to its affection for freedom than the way in which it
helped a small but significant minority of the working class to absorb portions
of serious culture and raise itself to a certain intellectual self-awareness.
Early Socialism was filled with great freedom and often
resulted in dramatic contrasts and intellectual battles. For example, the Princeton
Thesis of Justice Kagan purports to discuss Socialism in New York City in the
early 20th Century[2].
Her approach focuses primarily on the Eastern European Jewish elements and
fails to consider the German Jewish elements or the otherwise mixed non-Jewish
elements. Having discussed the latter two, the dominant ones in fact headed by
Debs, one sees that perhaps a reassessment is needed[3].
But it also should be noted that it was the group described by Kagan who became
the catalyst for the nascent Communist Party in the US.
Now the Communist Party in the US slowly morphed into the
Stalinist movement, the Communist Party as seen through the eyes and mind of
Stalin. As the Author notes:
By contrast, the Stalinist militant was usually
characterized by a fear of independence. So completely did he identify himself
with the Soviet Union and the Communist Party that the former, through a
corrupt fantasy, became the emblem of the good society and the latter, through
an abject surrender of the critical faculty, took on the aura of a chosen instrument
of history. If he were truly one of the faithful, this identification reduced
him to little more than a series of predictable and rigidly stereotyped
responses: his personality became a function of his “belonging.” Nothing is
more typical or tragic in our time than this surrender to an invisible yet
absolute “We,” this surrender which is a major source of the mystifications and
terrorism characteristic of totalitarian movements. Indeed, the politics of our
century could be called the politics of the Counterfeit Collective.
The Communist became a Stalinist and as a Stalinist lost any
semblance of personal identity and subsumed themselves in the
"Party". Any dissension was banned. The Author then continues:
A considerable proportion of the Stalinist militants
harbored feelings of powerlessness and personal inadequacy which they tried to
overcome by identifying with authorities who seemed potentially invincible and
immediately omniscient.’)’ Such persons could achieve a semblance of balance
only by submitting themselves to authority….Every threat to the self could be
compensated and overcompensated by passive reliance on the strength of the
leaders to whom they surrendered themselves.
The impoverished self-sought security in the mystical
body of the party, while the total belief in the authority of the party was
linked with a readiness to attack all those outside of it, who, unless they
were pliable “progressives" to be privately mocked for their naivete, were
by definition enemies The faithful Stalinist found enormous satisfaction in
contemplating the physical power of the Soviet Union, and soon it became
difficult, as indeed unnecessary, for him to distinguish between approval of
Russia because she was right and adoration because she was strong.
As he grew adept in Stalinist apologetics—which, it is
important to note, were almost always a form of self-persuasion—he learned to
convince himself that when the Soviet Union showed strength this was proof her
policies were correct; that when she betrayed weakness this was proof she still
stood on the side of the oppressed; that when she engaged in a cynical maneuver
this was proof she commanded the guile of those skilled in the struggle for
power; and that when she was tricked by an enemy's still more cynical maneuver
this was proof she possessed the innocence of those committed to an ideal.
Note the rationality of the above believer. If reality
presents one view he can find it affirmative of the belief set, if however
reality presents another view of the facts then he can twist the reality again
to meet his belief sets.
Judgment was not related to fact; fact was adapted to
judgment. And in the end the Stalinist felt that he commanded the most
important fact of all: the Soviet Union exists, the Soviet Union is powerful,
and he, puny little party member, “shares" in its power.
Facts no longer mattered. The believer had the conclusion
and the facts were twisted to satisfy the conclusions. Does this sound
familiar?
It is this mind set that empowers the Party members. They
belong, they no longer need think, they believe. Unlike even the early
Christian Church, with its Councils and debates, opinions for the Stalinist
were handed down from above and questioning of any type was abjured. Heretics
were scorned and ejected. Identity of self was eliminated and any identity was
identity in the Party and in what the Party stood for.
The Stalinist has sometimes been described as the man who
knows, but while this description holds for a sophisticated minority it seems
more accurate to say that generally the Stalinist was the man who knows Who
knows. His faith rested not so much in the total world-picture of Stalinism
(for he was only too sensitive to the possibility that he might be in error or
prove inadequate to the demands of world history) as in the certainty that the
movement would sooner or later proclaim the correct line, which was all he knew
or needed to know. And it was not so much this or the other leader in whom he
placed his faith, for he had learned that those on high were as fallible as he
and frequently even more vulnerable, but in the institution and the idea of
leadership—which is one reason that the anonymous grayness of the party
leadership, so disconcerting and bewildering to outsiders, could be so
comforting to the faithful. It told them that they did not have to depend on
mere human error: one leader has gone, another may go, a third may return, but
the leadership remains.
The Author then presents a telling footnote as below. It
talks of totalitarian societies, a term and phrase we see tossed about so
freely today that it may have lost its understanding. Yet as noted below it is
of great significance:
But doesn’t the description of the past few pages hold
for all totalitarian movements? Where are the critical points of difference
between the Stalinist and Nazi movements? Adequate answers would require
another hook; here a few words will have to do. Stalinism and Nazism are
“symmetrical” phenomena, two kinds of totalitarianism; but it would be a
serious mistake to ignore the distance between them. The Stalinist tends to
identify with the workings of an impersonal apparatus, the Nazi with the person
of an exalted leader. The Stalinist movement claims to be the rightful heir of
the Western Enlightenment, while the Nazis openly proclaim their contempt for
Western thought.
The Stalinist movement declares its commitment to
rationality, while the Nazis celebrate the “depths” of irrationality. The
Stalinists claim science, the Nazis surrender themselves to myth. The
Stalinists have gone much further in the elaboration of a consistent ideology,
while the Nazis have been able to develop little more than strands of ideology,
each of which is often at odds with the other and most of which decline into
demonology. Finally, if one were to continue the comparison between the two
movements, the difference in the societies they establish when in power would
have to be specified in detail.
Ideology and adherence, blind adherence, is the hallmark of
both forms of totalitarian regimes. There is a belief set and one must adhere
in toto. The would be no Conciliar movement as in the Church where sides are
debated, there would only be an ex Cathedra movement wherein debate of any type
is abhorred. Ideology formation, propagation, and adherence is critical.
Participation means abandoning any chance at individual belief.
In a recent talk by Fraser she notes[4]:
In today’s world, claims for social justice seem
increasingly to divide into two types.
First, and most familiar, are redistributive claims,
which seek a more just distribution of resources and goods. Examples include
claims for redistribution from the North to the South, from the rich to the
poor, and from owners to workers. To be sure, the recent resurgence of
free-market thinking has put proponents of redistribution on the defensive.
Nevertheless, egalitarian redistributive claims have supplied the paradigm case
for most theorizing about social justice for the past 150 years.
Today, however, we increasingly encounter a second type
of social-justice claim in the “politics of recognition.” Here the goal, in its
most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to
majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect.
Examples include claims for the recognition of the distinctive perspectives of
ethnic, “racial,” and sexual minorities, as well as of gender difference. This
type of claim has recently attracted the interest of political philosophers,
moreover, some of whom are seeking to develop a new paradigm of justice that
puts recognition at its center.
In general, then, we are confronted with a new
constellation. The discourse of social justice, once centered on distribution,
is now increasingly divided between claims for redistribution, on the one hand,
and claims for recognition, on the other. Increasingly, too, recognition claims
tend to predominate. The demise of communism, the surge of free-market
ideology, the rise of “identity politics” in both its fundamentalist and
progressive forms - all these developments have conspired to decenter, if not
to extinguish, claims for egalitarian redistribution.
Calls for the above types of Social Justice are
redistribution, also ironically a claim made by Paine in his Agrarian Justice
wrote:
To Pay to every Person, when arrived at the Age of Twenty-One
Years, the Sum of Fifteen Pounds Sterling, to enable HIM or HER to begin the
World! and also, Ten Pounds Sterling per Annum during life to every Person now
living of the Age of Fifty Years, and to all others when they shall arrive at
that Age, to enable them to live in Old Age without Wretchedness, and go
decently out of the World.
This was a distributive form of justice he advocated before
returning to the United States. This is a form of redistributive claims. It is based
upon the belief that those who had possession did so in some inappropriate
manner and those without deserve to share in the largesse of those who have.
This is a classic case of income inequality. But it is a form whereby some
person or persons of authority deem it appropriate to settle who owns what and
when and then all fall in line with the principle. Any dissent is met with
global approbation. In many ways it becomes a Stalinistic approach to
governance, no less justice.
Justice is in a manner as has been discussed is the use of
civil law, civil control, to delimit Natural Rights. Paine notes in his Rights
of Man[5]:
The natural rights which he retains, are all those in
which the power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself.
Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the
intellectual rights, or rights of the mind: consequently, religion is one of
those rights.
The natural rights which are not retained, are all those
in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute
them is defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a
right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is
concerned, he never surrenders it: But what availeth it him to judge, if he has
not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of
society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is a part, in preference and
in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor
in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right. From these premises,
two or three certain conclusions will follow.
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural
right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.
One would agree here. We have a Natural Right to self-preservation.
But we may surrender that to a civil right of having a police force. However
the police force may take away other Natural Rights to execute its duty. For
example, if self-preservation mandates self defense and if that mandates owning
a gun, then if the civil right controls gun possession than we may have seen a diminution
in our rights.
Secondly, That civil power, properly considered as such,
is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which
becomes defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his
purpose; but when collected to a focus, becomes competent to the purpose of
every one.
Defective is the operative phrase. and further it is an
aggregate, and as we know, aggregates mean centralized control, and loss of
individual autonomy.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of
natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to
invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which
the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
This is Paine and "on the one hand, then on the other
hand" We would ask if we lose all rights when we have civil rights or is
it only when those civil rights become social justice.
Here one wonders how Paine can surrender a Natural Right to
a civil authority. For are not Natural Rights superior to Civil Rights. Civil
Rights then give the civil authority a right to interpret, a right to attach, a
right to transfer, a right to negate, as is found in any civil authority.
Furthermore in extremis the civil authority may readily become Stalinistic, and
the citizen becomes less a citizen than a subject.
Justice, in any form, is abrogating to the state the right
to litigate prior Natural Rights under the guise of a civil right. Social
Justice is the process whereby the select under the guise of representing the
many decide on allocations, allocations of earnings, property, and even prior
Natural Rights. Social Justice in the form as described demands a consistency
of mindset and belief, it demands followers, followers doing so in the belief
that they are a part of a movement, followers whose very identity is in the
organized entity they are following.
Thus the Stalinistic interpretation has merit. Individualism
is left behind along with any Natural Rights and conformity under the rubric of
Social Justice rules. Common adherence to a belief set, one not to be
questioned, make the individual believe that there is merit in such
participation.
There is a continuing struggle to define social justice, and
its dimensions keep changing as well. Hayek had difficulty, and that was half a
century ago, the current Bishop of Rome seems also to have some difficulties
but that does not prevent him from espousing his views. But what is clear is
that as social justice evolves and expands two things occur. Natural Rights are
diluted if not eliminated and the nature of open dialectic regarding the
constructs of social justice become delimited. In fact, the belief sets become
such that even a mention of social justice in other than a fully supportive
manner meets with societal approbation. Thus a nexus to Stalinistic belief
sets.
[1]
Howe and Coser, The American Communist P)arty, Praeger (New York) 1962, pp
518-525
[2]
Kagan, E., TO THE FINAL CONFLICT: SOCIALISM IN NEW YORK CITY, 1900-1933, April
15, 1981
A senior thesis submitted to the History Department of
Princeton University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of
Arts
[3]
McGarty, The Public Intellectual: Individualism vs Progressivism, 2012. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270647761_The_Public_Intellectual_Individualism_vs_Progressivism
[4]
Fraser, Nancy, Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution,
Recognition, and Participation, THE TANNER LECTURES ON HUMAN VALUES, Delivered
at Stanford University, April 30–May 2, 1996
[5] Paine,
Thomas; Mark Philp. Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings
(Oxford World's Classics) (Kindle Locations 2171-2172). OUP Oxford. Kindle
Edition.
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