fool and Corbyn

Part 1. The graveyard draws the living still.

Before us stands an ethereal hedge maze, metaphor not for a difficult path but one with places for meditation and reflection. Rig for the gig is The Magic Roundabout, so follow me into this puzzle like the rambling Ermatrude you are. Be aware, as I mumble on about revisionist history.

According to Wikipedia, historical revisionism identifies the re-interpretation of the historical record, challenging accepted views held by professional scholars about historical event, reinterpreting motivations and decisions of the people involved. Why would a revisionist approach towards Marxism and Capitalism be needed? From Bolshevik revolution in Russia till the end of the civil war our nation supported the Whites. Throughout the life of the Soviet Union, much of it was west v east Cold War, and we would agree, in any war, truth is the first casualty?

Crunch. Frost has glistened old snow under your feet. A gentle fall rustles the evergreens as a brambling ascends. Stop. To your left to you right, you stand amidst gravestones. In the shadows here the breeze blows cold, but their voices passionate on the wind still, their thoughts echo through time ...no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which far greater part of the members are poor and miserable... philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it... once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes - they come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions....
what experience and history teaches us, people and governments have never learned from history, or acted on principles deduced from it...

To your left Karl Marx, to your right Adam Smith and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Sometimes Hegel reads like something alive in both the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia. I have hired Oswald Moseley from Peaky Blinders to deliver this quote.

“The State subsumes family and civil society and fulfills them, an individual's supreme duty is to be a member of the state, and when required lay down their life for the state".

Will it come as surprise leftist followers of Hegel such as Marx and Engels started out known as Young Hegelians? 

There should be a tailors dummy here, very much part of this history, but someone has moved it, they think it belongs elsewhere. So I ask you, when you think of economic liberalism, Adam Smith, the Manchester school, do you think of liassez faire capitalism, it’s opposition to economic orders like socialism and the old USSR? If so, to appreciate economic liberalisms radical youth, its comrades in arms in 1848, its foes of that nineteenth century period, I ask you to think again. 

Let’s go to 1848. Economic liberalism as a revolutionary movement promoting pacifism, anti-slavery, freedom of the press and separation of church and state whilst chief of those original adversary’s economic liberalism born to battle were mercantilism and feudalism.

Marx and Engels published their communist manifesto in German in London in February 1848.  But what we call the revolutions of 1848 was consequence of rising tide of liberalism, not communism as we would know it. Communism to many in 1848, such as the French Mother of Anarchy Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and German revolutionary (and composer) Richard Wagner, sits under Hegelian term Aufhebung “negation of egoism”. Communist may mean something different to Marx and Lenin, certainly Karl Marx and Richard Wagner wont agree on everything, Marx later called out the falsification of primitive times which dominates Wagner’s Nibelungen text, whereas Proudhon rejected Marx's views on revolution: "I believe we have no need of it in order to succeed; consequently we should not put forward revolutionary action as a means of social reform because that pretended means would simply be an appeal to force, in brief, a contradiction".

The internet is poor if you want to know where communism really came from, because internet ignores the Guardians in Plato's Republic, ignores that it is communism in the line of fire of Thomas Moore's Utopia (1516), even the voluntary communism Christ imposed on his disciples, you'll find the internet skips straight to a modern definition developed by young Hegelians (even though French writers were using the word pre Hegel and just perhaps it means something else to them) internet search repeats itself everywhere as it frustratingly does when you feel its missing something.     
 
To avoid getting lost in this maze we must start with open mind what the communist label meant on crest of this revolutionary wave 1848, especially to revolutionary Hegelian’s of right and left standing shoulder to shoulder with each other for more liberal democracy. I suggest in the liberal revolution 1848 the term communist meant something more liberal to them than to us here in 21st century post our cold war.  Melding proletariat and the bourgeoisie circles, capitalists and communists could stand together as brothers in arms in 1848 against old monarchical structures and nobility, for the abolition of serfdom and creation of independent nation-states under representative democracy.
 
For those of you dressed as Brian: on, mollusc. On to Part Two: A Tale of Two Cheeses.  

Part 3.    Lenin’s Low Hanging Fruits     

In this part of our maze Spring is in the air (I don’t just mean you Zeberdee).  It is April 1917.  We are on a train travelling from Zurich to Russia, via Berlin, Sweden, Finland.  Okay not just one train, a ferry at some point too, it’s not all first class I assure you, this hard bench I’ve been allocated in third class is playing havoc with my rhoids.  A train laid on for diplomatic reasons is known as a sealed train, someone chalked something on the doors in German to indicate as such. The reason: the cargo of this train is one of the leaders of the Russian Social Democrats; following abdication of the Tsar the interim Social Democratic government in Russia declared amnesty for political exiles to return, Vlad the Social Democrat (who adopted an alias in 1901 from the river Lena) is itching to get back.

But this train only possible for mischief against foe they are at war with, Germany keen to deposit Vlad in Russia at this time. What could possibly go wrong?  
Oooouch.  When it stops in Berlin, think I’ll nip off for a comforting kissen.
 
On his sealed train Vlad writes of Russia as an agricultural country, one of the most backward of Europe, he plans to take Russia away from feudalism with a revolution.  Where orthodox and rather romantic history would have us believe Lenin’s target is the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia, the plight of peasants in their move to cities, Lenin’s thinking is still in earlier ideas and influences: look at what Lenin has written, on this train. hewrote of his Capitalist Revolution. 

Surely he meant to write Communist revolution?    
 
Has your view been of a man seeking to usurp capitalism in Russia with communism?  I contend the feudalism still alive in Russia is Lenin’s actual target, his weapon an understanding economic liberalism of capitalism frees the individual from Feudalism just like the aim was back in 1848, allows worker to aspire to ownership not accept slavery; and don’t forget through Lenin’s love of Marx comes Hegel, the concept of Nation State travels here.  In Lenin’s mind, in this rickety carriage, long outstanding revolution travels to Russia, an aged barrel of Heineken off to reach those parts 1848 never reached. 
 
When he gets off the last train in Petrograd, Lenin is going to lay into his comrades from the bolshinstvo (a word meaning majority, though this use is spin they barely are the majority grouping) for working with the provisional Government and bringing calm instead of revolution to Russian politics, because in doing so they sustain status quo of backward feudalism: something capitalists of the Manchester School, Hegel, rightist & leftist Hegelians, and Lenin all despise as slavery. Lenin will be so shouty about this so many in his own Social Democratic party will view him not as a socialist or Marxist anymore, merely a power mad anarchist.  But with full grist of a capitalist century now blowing wind into his revolution and fight against feudalism, how could Lenin fail to sweep away feudalism and make St Petersburg the latest Manchester School by the sea?     
 
So our maze leads us to the tailors dummy.  We are in Manchester, its early June, of course we feel underdressed and wished we brought a coat.  Viewed from our Capitalist paradise today, if broad church of views in Russia in April 1917 simply known to us as communist revolution, are we losing touch with important nuance of political history, seeing only fruit not buds and blossom of the plants organic journey?  

I claim For us to know 1917 we need to understand its budding before 1848, the blossom of revolution of capitalism to parts unfashionably feudal, before the fruit was supposed to come along. And to some degree, due to Marx and Lenin’s philosophy’s failure to adapt to localism, so instead it’s over reliance and Nationalism and Hegels Nation State, as they had been warned by Proudhon at the very start, what they were calling for and engaged in was a contradiction that could never reach the fruit stage.
 
To learn lesson for our future, is ours a history where the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics was never socialist or even communist?  Do you think China communist today, with the amount of millionaires and billionaires it has? Or nationalist? China is an example of lost on its journey between the blossom and the fruit.
 
And why did they get lost? To learn lessons from history we must recognise Nation State as ideology.  We question 19th & 20thC ideology such as capitalism, Marxism, yet we believe in ‘sovereignty pooling’ institutions such as United Nations, NATO, the EU, international laws set by Nation States, do we give this ideology enough scrutiny and criticism?  Can you be part of a nation and not share the same language?  In 1789 barely half the French people spoke some French, so arguably the state made the French nation, not French nationalism, at Italian unification the number of people speaking the Italian language was even lower. Can you have members of a Nation-state outside its borders, or put another way does the state actually have a border or are you a member through culture?  To what degree must minorities assimilate to culture to have state membership and rights?   What of people with culture without common territory or economic life, without objective material prerequisites to form a separate nation-state?
 
Now at centre of the maze we rise toward a maligned old flag.  We appreciate this flag appears battle weary, it’s witnessed a lot of fighting down the years.   Reaching our hilltop we survey this maze, out there older feudalism and mercantilism yielding to younger capitalism, Marxism and Socialisms who grew up together and forever bicker. Looking from where we are with an open mind, is it really such a puzzle?
 
Marx and Lenin didn't invent communism, what they forged was in fire of the Capitalist and Industrial revolutions, dating back no further; and merely dress Economic Liberalism as in a parlour game you would easily guess a Young Hegelian would.  Much like China is dressed today. There philosophy stuck there in time. The very thing fought against back in the ‘nineteenth century.

Yet there is socialism with no need for class revolution; older ideas and meanings of communism before ideology of both capitalism and nation state came to influence Young Hegelians. Go to Hegel quoted earlier by our Oswald Mosely and benchmark with Owens socialism, and others who never sought revolution or incorporate such nationalist ideology into their ideas.  Owen was socialist but acting with owner and workers everywhere in cooperatives, throughout the world, something you can get on with whatever time or place, and without a class revolution, across all borders without confronting or wrestling laws of society, or trial limits of states nationalism, simply by embracing localism.                
 
Economic Liberalism may have been much more radical in Nineteenth Century than appreciated today, Marxism less revolutionary than history books suggest.

Do we challenge enough the history we are told?  For reasons of innate political bias, will history books and explosion of history on the web give us true history?  Or is our shared history we can learn from, build upon, lying forsaken from us beneath abandoned memes and on monuments of graveyards.     

Any chance of telling us what the point is please?

I started trying to read that garbage you've copied and posted, but life's too short.

If it's that Communism is bad, we know, we counted the bodies.

I’ll have a quick go at answering every question quickly.

What’s it about?

It’s explaining a handful of points, in simplest number of words as possible. Firstly, we lose history very quickly because we know the fruit and so forget about the bud and blossom, but to see clearly how things evolved is seeing and learningfrom the history. Secondly, I criticise Marx and Lenin and their supporters, i do this by trying to shed light on not the fruits of their work, but the where it began and developed, to illustrate the reasons why I think they were/are wrong.

Pseudo Corner.

That is a very good question. We don’t live in a black and white world that is pseudo thisand not pseudo that, where or what defines the line? I’ll have a go at answering.

I wrote this essay so it’s very clear in my head when I criticise lefty politics. For someone to post “where did you copy that from” I take as a compliment. As the essay boils down to just handful key points, So the measurement of success would be not necessarily agreeing with the points, but recognising come the end each point it is making, whilst enjoying the read enough to make the time invested worthwhile.
So I am not sure that meets a definition of pseudo?

Another definition of a pseudo is that used by Darlo - once called out I would lose my rag. I think inside my skin I am happy being the person am, not bothered at all what others would like me to be or what I need to be to impress them - I offer this essay honestly trying to contribute something to the debate and try and help shed light on things.
I don’t think that meets definition of pseudo either?

EDIT.  and i stick it out there to be criticised and torn to shreds, otherwise I won’t learn and grow myself.

You seem to have an inordinate amount of time on your hands.