Communism, Revolution and State

The Communists say that there are the only two means of establishing communism. The first is violence. Nothing short of it will suffice to break up the existing system. The other is dictatorship of the proletariat. I quote here an old premise of political theory: for a state to be functional and effective, it must retain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. I am in love with opinions of Emma Goldman on the goals, ends, means and values attached with the revolution. I am reproducing her views with the help of wikiquote.

What is Cause of revolution?

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming.

Do the end justifies all means ?

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.

This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society.

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and wellbeing. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary, signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution.

The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.

Nothing would prove more disastrous to our ideas, we contended, than to neglect the effect of the internal upon the external, of the psychological motives and needs upon existing institutions. 

Please also read through B R Ambedkar's essay on Karl Marx and Mahatma Buddha.

Love, Reality and Satire

I love cinema and books. What genre in them ? Rather than looking for entertainment element, I love calm, almost hypnotic and intense films or books. I like them as they give me insight of human nature. With experiences of interactions with different minds in the society, cinema and books have helped me to understand human behaviour. Love, reality and satire are three words that has captured me from a long time. I will state about them further here in mine blabbering.

Satire is only tool through which taboo topics and events can be investigated and offer the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort, sometimes simultaneously. It the best of all mass entertainment that has grown of our natural ability to laugh on our tears. Wit and humor combined with knowledge form the basis of satire. Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality. They reflect bankruptcy of ours belief system that we hold very dear despite of its negative impact. The inherent strength of the content matched with cheeky presentation can only awake humans from a state of apathy.

I have started to drop all sort of beliefs that make person behave like irrational. When one inquire about some issue to others, one raise a question about others opinions and deep down disturb his/her belief system. Doubt is the best way to gather knowledge. Unless not doubted to full satisfation of curiosity and extent of pre-existing knowledge, no one embed the information into his/her knowledge bank. That is why search for good teacher is necessary because information provided about reality first may be wrong.

Family and Society constraint the thinking of humans and tend to make one believe that first answers were only correct one. This static state of knowledge prevents expansion of person's consciousness and mind both. Reality is dynamic in the nature and can't be understand by the person stuck in the traditions and deeds of past generations.

This led to the labeling of the person under an identity. An individual trapped in an limited identity will be exploited by authoritative state or religion. It also constraint a person's open interaction with another individual belonging to different belief system. The dilemma of choosing between integration and emigration from mainstream & picking either freedom or security are most tough of all decisions for an individual.

Labels such as society, culture and religion are superficial in nature and they take away the basic freedom to redefine ourselves with each passing moment. Only an individual exist deep down in all of us. An individual that always love and is ready for rational debate in the matters of traditions. Love is a small margin that somehow separates magic and rational method. It is beyond rationality yet best of all human emotions. Reasons are weapons to uncover mask of hypocrisy but only love can raise moral awareness level of an individual towards everything.

Familiarity is not necessarily the same thing as understanding or empathy. Reality is taken in very limited perception by innocent people who only seek for basic needs of life, hopes for better future and a little entertainment. The innocent people became victims in the fights of identity and ideologies that forced them to take sides in this warfare. When such long abuse of power is corrected, same victims become oppressors and confrontation of belief system is generally replaced by an opposite violence. This violence is generated by the lack of understanding of both sides and a strict affiliation to their own set of values.

Louis D. Brandeis remarked correctly that the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Tyranny of one belief system over other has been born out of ignorance, superstition, bigotry. The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. That is the only evolution for becoming more humane can be attained by us.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. ~Thomas Macaulay

Revolution and State

I was reading Emma Goldman's view on revolution that are based on her observation on Russian revolution. They are indeed astute and written with intense understanding of the failure of the communist revolution to turn into just state.

The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail.

Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worth while. It is surely not worth all the struggle and sacrifice, the stupendous loss in human life and cultural values that result from every revolution. If such a revolution were even to bring greater social well being (which has not been the case in Russia) then it would also not be worth the terrific price paid: mere improvement can be brought about without bloody revolution.

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values. The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood — these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society — the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

My idea of the revolution is to have individuals as free as possible and responsible. Neither need of law nor of any law establishing agencies. It will be academically wrong to quote Osho here but he pointed very correctly about authoritative nature of state and rebellious nature of revolutionary in the case of Russia.

Trotsky and Stalin were enemies, enemies in the sense that Joseph Stalin was never a revolutionary. All he wanted deep down was to replace the czar and become a czar himself -- and he became it. He became the worst czar that has ever existed.

In Russian history the worst czar was Ivan the Terrible, but he was nothing compared to Stalin. He poisoned Lenin, he killed Trotsky, and he went on killing other great revolutionaries. He was satisfied only when all the great revolutionaries who were responsible for the revolution were finished. He replaced them with people who wanted law and order, and society and organization. He created the greatest establishment ever created, and with such strength that the whole country became a concentration camp.

It is very difficult for rebels and seekers to remain rebels and seekers. They will be rebellious even if the revolution has happened. Any revolution is bound to create another kind of establishment, and the authentic rebellious man will again revolt, revolt against the revolution he himself has created but had never thought would become an establishment. The authentic rebel never becomes part of any establishment.

The problem is that the rebels are very few, and the retarded masses are so many that unless every individual is a rebel, an establishment is bound to follow. The rebel is bound to fight against his own revolution, which is turning into a new establishment. Up to now no revolution has been able to succeed because the moment it succeeds it starts becoming another establishment. The people who had power change, but the people who come in their place are more powerful. And it is more difficult to change them, because they know all the strategies that they have used in changing powerful people. So they will not allow any of those strategies.

For seventy years in Russia there has not been a single rebel, because you cannot just become a rebel in a single moment. To be rebellious needs a certain understanding, a certain alertness, a certain unprejudiced mind. Russia is the only country in the world where revolution is impossible, and this is a very strange situation. It is the country where revolution succeeded on a great scale. But the moment it became a success, suddenly the water turned into ice; it became the establishment. And the rebels who are authentic cannot be tolerated anymore by the same group who changed the whole society.

I now understand meaning of the popular slogan 'Be a Rebel'. Rebel spirit can't be enslaved by false prizes, consolations and medals. Rebel seeds for future generation and always is crucified by society for freedom, for individuality, for expression, for creativity and for not becoming part of the establishment.

Governing India

Atanu Dey holds nerve of this country and analyze correctly about hurdles in the path of development of this country. In his article : The Perverse “Right to Information” , he pointed that information should be routinely available rather than being exceptionally provided.

All information of public interest should be available to the public as the default. No special effort should be necessary for a citizen to know what the government is doing with his or her money.

It is time we stopped congratulating ourselves about how wonderful the RTI is and started realizing that we have degraded ourselves to the point where we are actually grateful for the few scraps of information that is thrown our way in response to considerable groveling in front of those whose salaries we pay.

Atanu Dey continue further his roar in the article: "What Holds India Back " , that the Indian government is the greatest barrier to India’s development.

To summarize: Control of the economy does two things. First, it reduces economic activity and consequently growth. Second, it gives rise to rent, which then attracts the most criminally corrupt to gain control of the government. Rent-seeking rather than good governance becomes the sole aim of those in government. The criminally corrupt are not competent to make good policy given that it was not their public policy brilliance that brought them to power. Besides, good policy generally entails a reduction in government power and control of the economy. So why would they do it even if they were advised by others who know better.

I agreed with him. There is a huge rhetoric implementation gap while following grow first build later model that is widely followed in India.  Looking back at the history , we observe that there were labour reforms with industrial revolution; 16 hour workdays, unsafe food, little education for the poor, and working conditions has brought communism today in the world. Also, capitalism came to Europe before democracy and in India its reverse.

As the economist Pranab Bardhab pointed out, the left in India while taking aim at the dictatorship of proletariat has given us the dictatorship of salariat. Protections and job safeguards of the worst sort - the kind without accountability are looting government offices. Take example of our schools only. Government policies have funded schools, not schooling. The child issues are neglected as they can't vote or raise their problem. The biggest barrier in decentralizing the power over to local bodies has been teachers union.

I am not opposed to the free economy in India. We have a first wave of pro business reforms in 1991 rather than pro market ones. Indian citizens has not got economic rights only few rare opportunities. Still, the micro and macro economics of a nation converge via its culture; this cultural convergence within nations causes economic divergence among them.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong but not quite agreeable methods are adapted in confronting bad habits by government. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia. We have to develop mentality that pitches reason and debate rather than organized hooliganism to challenge those ideas with minimum violence.

OSHO on WISDOM and PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy, the very word, means love for wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all.Wisdom happens only through meditation; it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor.Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching to the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.