NP: Solzhenitsyn

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: NP: Solzhenitsyn


>I am pretty sure it is this guy, one Plekhanov, the first RUSSIAN marxist.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Plekhanov
>
> Solzhenitsyn saw everything in Russian first (or most), and Marx and 
> Engels were not.........................
>
> Solzhenitsyn, if I remember rightly, hated Plekhanov for his totalizing, 
> for that book on 'monism'...on believing that 'revolution' NEEDS a 
> theory........Aalexander Solzhenitsyn hated
> intellectuals with theories in general....peasants did not have the luxury 
> of "theories", they just had to try to get by.......
>
> he had that belief in life's particulars that other writers in less 
> problematic countries have.

Very redolent of Edmund Burke, often considered to be the founder of modern 
conservative throught:

"One sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is the propensity of the people 
to theories.
. . . No rational man ever did govern himself  by abstractions and 
universals."

>
>
>
>
> But, yes, of course he would find the stream Plekhanov drank from to be 
> polluted.
>


>
> --- On Sat, 8/9/08, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: NP: Solzhenitsyn
>> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008, 1:42 AM
>> Mark Kohut
>> >  But not what happened. (He literally put the blame on
>> one real man and his
>> >  supporters but I can not remember who. I used to
>> know, but....Clue: Before Lenin.)
>> >
>>
>> Gee,, that's tantalizing...
>> Wikipedia sez:
>> Instead of blaming Russian conditions, he blamed the
>> teachings of Karl
>> Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing Marxism itself is
>> violent. His
>> conclusion is Communism will always be totalitarian and
>> violent,
>> wherever it is practiced. There was nothing special in the
>> Russian
>> conditions which affected the outcome.
>>
>> I kinda cleave to that outlook with him.  The general case,
>> I think,
>> is when you build permission for violence into your
>> poli-sci (or
>> religion) suckage is inevitable...
>
>
>
>