Thursday 23 August 2018

Quotes of the Day: "If Marxists and Nazis were fighting over any principle at all, it was only about which particular noose to throw around humanity's neck. Where the Marxists collectivised on the basis of class, the Nazis collectivised on the basis of race."





"They were not so very different at all: If they [Marxists and Nazis] were fighting over any principle at all, it was only about which particular noose to throw around humanity's neck. Where the Marxists collectivised on the basis of class, the Nazis collectivised on the basis of race. That was perhaps their unique contribution -- and so very much simpler for the masses to understand and embrace... "
~ Unknown

"The failure of Marxism to develop according to the logic of its traditional theory was reaching a crisis [in the 1950s]... The symptoms were many. One was manifest in the splintering of the monolithic Marxist movement into many sub-movements emphasising the socialism of sex, race, and ethnic identity. Such movements abandoned the universalistic conceptions of human interests ...     "The international proletariat is a highly abstract concept. The universality of all human interests is a very sweeping generalisation... It is hard enough for a trained intellectual to conceive, as classical Marxism requires, of all of humankind as ultimately members of a universal class sharing the same universal interests. But—the more epistemologically-modest theorists of the 1950s begin to ask—can we really expect the masses to abstract to the view that we are all brothers and sisters under the skin? Can the masses conceive of themselves as a harmonious international class? The intellectual capacity of the masses is much more limited, so appealing to and mobilising the masses requires speaking to them about what matters to them and on a level that they can grasp. What the masses can understand and what they do get fired up about are their sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Both epistemological modesty and effective communication strategy, then, dictated a move from universalism to multiculturalism. In effect, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, significant portions of the Left came to agree with the collectivist Right on yet another issue: Forget internationalism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism; focus on smaller groups formed on the basis of ethnic, racial, or other identities."
~ Stephen Hicks, from his book Explaining Postmodernism

"There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred—brute, blind, virulent hatred—than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes. If a man believes that his own character is determined at birth in some unknown, ineffable way, and that the characters of all strangers are determined in the same way—then no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion, and hatred. Tribal or ethnic rule has existed, at some time, in every part of the world, and, in some country, in every period of mankind’s history. The record of hatred is always the same. The worst kinds of atrocities were perpetrated during ethnic (including religious) wars. A recent grand-scale example of it was Nazi Germany..."
~ Ayn Rand, from her 1977 talk on “Global Balkanisation


“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavouring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
~ Thomas Paine, on "The American Crisis"
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14 comments:

Judge Holden said...

I guess doing a cut and past job from a Randist quote a day calendar is easier than thinking. Do you ever wonder what went wrong, Peter?

Dinwar said...

Is there some specific error you've identified, or is this nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to seeing Rand's name?

Mike Hunt said...

The whole upward trajectory of human history is a history of collectivism. Some forms much more benign than others of course. That hydra picture is a joke

Peter Cresswell said...

I guess choosing for a nom-de-plume the name of a blood-soaked killer, i.e., "Judge Holden," is easier than you having to formulate actual arguments in favour of nihilism -- and allows us to very easily estimate your worth.

Peter Cresswell said...

In your first sentence, I think you misspelled 'individualism.'

Mike Hunt said...

Tribes, kingdoms, empires through to modern governments that gave us roads, sewage systems and NASA, are all examples of collectivism.

Even your Objectivist cult is a collective.

Granted - a collective made up of individualists, where members will be told they're not a proper individualist if they have an opinion the others disagree with, doesn't make a lot of sense. But there you go.

Judge Holden said...

I know right? What’s hilarious is the ongoing internecine warfare within the cult. Perigo’s thinking has actually evolved to the extent where his personal philosophy can be accurately described as misanthropic fascism. He also seems to be making up his own language as he goes, right Obleftivist filth? At least he’s grown though.

Dinwar said...

"Even your Objectivist cult is a collective."

Well, this explains your error. You see no difference between a group of people who agree on something, and a collective. If you twist yourself into linguistic pretzels like this, you can prove nearly anything.

Judge Holden said...

A group you say? A group that has set tenets and excludes anyone who strays from those. No pretzels, just facts, collectivist. However, to be fair to you, you guys don’t really agree on much these days, outside of the Holy Rand’s divinity of course.

Dinwar said...

Uh...huh. I will leave you to your delusions.

Mike Hunt said...

Delusions? Linguistic pretzels? Dinwar your cult has an official lexicon which is at odds with the dictionary, encyclopaedias etc.

MarkT said...

Hi Pete,

Have you considered setting up a system on your blog requiring all commenters to register with an email address and username? I get that you don't want to spend time moderating, nor stop those in honest disagreement from commenting - but this alone should be undemanding of your time, and discourage some of the dishonest ones from commenting multiple times under different pseudonyms. They're adding nothing to the discussion except puerile and clumsy attempts to obfuscate, and their style makes me suspect they are often the same person or people.

Peter Cresswell said...

Done.

Dinwar said...

Are you aware of how dictionaries work? Or the fact that one of the most common tropes in Objectivist lectures is to read the dictionary definitions (no, not all are the same) before continuing on with the talk?

Yes, some of the use is at odds with dictionary definitions. That's because it's philosophical jargon--and Objectivists are very careful to allow those who coin the term to define it. This is standard practice in many fields. I doubt you'll find the paleontological definition of "character" in anything but a dictionary focused on paleontology, for example.

Also, "official lexicon"? There's the Ayn Rand Lexicon, which is really a commonplace book. There certainly are generally agreed-upon uses (see the above, however), but that's universal in human interactions. The term "horsy" has a specific meaning in my family that would make no sense to anyone who wasn't there for that particular joke, to give one example. Does that make my family a cult?

No, you are still distorting the truth and twisting your arguments to the breaking point. There are things to dislike about Objectivism as a movement, but you've not hit upon any of them.