Why does Hegel's philosophy lead so many (both right and left) to become outright Neocons and western chauvinists?
I have never encountered a Hegelian-inspired "Marxist" who wasn't either a 1. liberal/socdem, 2. neoliberal ("muh progress"), 3. Zionist apologist, or 4. crypto-neocon. In fact I'd say all four go together perfectly. The Platypus Society fits the bill like a glove. Zizek is slowly but surely going this way. Why is this? I'm quite ignorant on Hegel so someone commie pill me.
What?
He's said a lot of racist shit recently.
Let me explain:
Hegel thought western Christianity was the world spirit by which everything will be sublated into.
Hegel thought all non-whites were inferior.
Belief that "everything that happens is all part of the rational end goal" is philosophical gas lighting. Rebelling against the status quo is seen as irrational according to this view.
With all that you're bound to get plenty of covert apologia for colonialism, imperialism, etc.
I can smell the american liberal from the other end of the atlantic
Care to give examples? Preferably sourced.
And he was right, Communism is just the rational end-goal of the Graeco-Christian impulse, Platonic Aristotelianism brought to its dialectical conclusion. Christian philosophy is indispensable to the Enlightenment.
Bullshit. Rebellion is the dialectic in motion. It is an indispensable part of Hegelianism.
If this is the case, how come most socialist revolutions occurred outside of Christisn-hegemonic lands? How come the "enlightened" west has so little revolutionary potential compared to Asian countries (including the Arab World)?
Zizek's philosophy is much closer to liberalism than contemporary Marxism.
I never made such a claim, retard.
Zizek isn't all that based.
His application of lacanian thought on society is interesting and has some profound insights in them.
However he isn't Marxist, he is more of a neo-nihilist lacanian and vulgar hegalian.
Which is funny as fuck, don't misunderstand me, but it isn't very helpful. His statements are often to the masses what rammstein is to the girl with braids in my class that I badly want to fuck.
Dialectical analysis allows for pluralism in pursuit of one end goal. As such it is an excellent way to bind disparate factions into an activist bloc. To what action you might ask. That's up to the oligarchs who run the bloc.
etc etc.
It is precisely this, yes!, no?
For those of us yet to read Hegel, could we have some sources for these claims?
Marx was left-hegelian.
His position was more subtle than this. In a certain sense, this is correct, but it misunderstands his notion of the development of spirit not so much being toward Christianity as toward true freedom. While (Protestant) Christianity was, he thought, closest to that ideal of freedom, he regarded Christianity much like Plato did true belief, in contrast to knowledge.
This is a slander from Karl Popper, who was also opposed to Marx and "historicism." It also seems like you calculated your phrasing to make him seem worse than he is, as Hegel wasn't any sort of virulent racist.
At worst, he could be called a Western chauvinist of sorts, by modern standards, as he thought Western Europe the pinnacle of the development of human civilization, building on those more inferior in the past (and the cultures that still remained in those inferior modes). He did not believe this was due to any inherent inferiority in the people who lived in those cultures, however.
This is rather silly. Hegel didn't develop his philosophy to make you feel bad.
While he does see the state, as epitomized by Prussia, as being the highest development of human freedom (at least thus far), he was not necessarily opposed to rebelling against the status quo. Hegel's view on the French Revolution were complex, but he overall supported it. He didn't support "rebellion" that was simply youthful opposition that presaged a return to the status quo once the object of its desire was achieved.
In the beginning.
Yeah he left the left-hegelian "club" but he's though was still largely influenced by Hegel but in a critical way, for example his dialectical materialism comes from Hegel's master–slave dialectic.
So I would say Marx he's at least "post-hegelian".
he was a feuerbachian, not a hegelian
Id like to know why some people say troskyists led to neocons.
How are the two even remotely related.
They think permanent revolution is military interventionism, they are trolls or retards, don't even bother with them.
Zizek is an Althusserian hack aka anti-Hegelian.
How are those socialist revolutions doing? Oh? They've all reverted to capitalism or are in the process of doing so? Only the Christian Communist revolution will succeed.
t. Anglo
Rebellion is part of the dialectic.
He’s honestly far more radical in thought than most people here could hope to be
Read / watch Cockshott on a new materialism and also read anti-dialectics.com
Althusser is good though
Lenin didn't think Hegel was irrelevant to communism as a real movement, nor a host of other thinkers. If he has become irrelevant to communism as a movement today, then so much the worse for this "communism." It stands damned by its own tradition, which it merely apes.
I'm Muslim and I find this notion absolutely ridiculous. Paul, whom you uphold, is seen as a fraud and liar in Islam, and yet Gaddafi was just as successful as Castro and even more successful than the Liberation Theology-inspired Sandanistas.
What is there to "get" about Zizek aside from the fact he's a pseudo-intellectual hack who makes white guys feel good?
What makes a culture "inferior?" Is Islamic civilization "inferior" to the West?
Did you mean Plato? If so, I could see that, wasn't the Islamic Golden Age more Aristotlean in a partisan way?
For Hegel, it was the development of freedom that defined superiority and inferiority culturally, at least mainly (although this is occasionally coupled with artistic, philosophical and technological flourishing). History, for him, passed somewhat schematically from East to West. This aspect of Hegel even exists, in an altered form, in Marx.
Islamic civilization was barely considered in Hegel's philosophy of history, and his brief comments were mostly derisory. He wasn't claiming it was inferior based on race, however; he very much doubted the "scientific"/"physiological" explanations at the time for why European powers had become dominant. He was more inclined toward environmental explanations, e.g. the heat was too extreme for this culture to develop as much as those in Europe, which had a more temperate climate.
He likely means Saul/Paul, the St. Paul of the New Testament.
It makes sense in a way because the Ottoman empire, the premier representative of Islamic Civilization at the time, was the sick man of Europe.
Because Zionism is based on 19th century European racial theories which are in turn rooted in Hegel.
They also see Israel as being more "advanced" than its neighbors so they're inclined to support it over the "primitive" Arab states.
How would he have explained the Islamic Golden Age, or how Muslim civ flourished whereas Christian civ floundered for centuries.
How do Hegel's racial theories compare to Jung's archetypes? Or Dugin's theories of nation (Eurasianism vs. Atlanticism, etc.)?
What the fuck are you talking about
Marx obviously referenced Hegel several times in his works. It's impossible to be a non-Hegelian inspired "Marxist" regardless of what chucklefucks like Althusser might try to tell you.
A relatively small minority of Trots disagreed with Trotsky that they USSR was a degenerated workers' state. Some of those Trots became social democrats later on, but a handful became neocons and it started this meme that this is a typical path for a Trot.
Neocons believe the US is "world spirit" or some shit, and thus American imperialism is justified. I've seen Neocon "Marxists" support Zionism and American occupation of Afghanistan on the basis western imperialism "civilizes" them.
And, judging by your flag, I'm going to go ahead and say you think "Liberal/socdem, neoliberal, Zionist apologist, and crypto-neocon" are all synonyms for someone who thinks NATO being enemies with someone does not necessarily make that someone a progressive force for the global proletariat.
Just a reminder that Ba'athists killed and imprisoned communists and that you are a traitor to the revolution.
I have literally never met a Marxist who supports Zionism or the Afghan occupation, who on Earth have you been talking to
what are you on about
He argued that Marx had abandoned the Hegelian method by the time he wrote Capital, which is completely fucking bogus.
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He argued that Marx' Hegelianism was non-deterministic, that it was aleatory - not that he abandoned the system, entirely. This is what he said constituted the epistemological break between Marx' dialectical materialism and the foundational dialectical idealism of Hegel
…Are you sure?
That doesn’t seem like a controversial position at all. After all, Marx himself said he ‘turned Hegel on his head’.
Hegel thought the world was on a dialectical trajectory that would cause people would become more enlightened, moral, and protestant.
culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.com
en.wikipedia.org
The context of the phrase would suggest an inversion of the dialectical process, but what Marx saw in the emancipatory universalism was not the dereliction of idealism for materialism - for the two are intimately related, through how we assign value and relations of things - but that the dialectical materialism of communism was the means to reconcile and supersede the fundamental contradictions of capitalist and idealist while abolishing their extant conditions. In the same way that there is no Marx without Hegel, there is no Althusser without Hegel - as their systems of thought are indelibly linked.
Platypus Society does.
Zizek is a massive colonialism apologist.
Ba'athism is what the Arab People have chosen as their way to socialism. YOU are the chauvinist for denying us our sovereignty.
I'm a communist, not a cultural relativist. If you advocate for a "way to socialism" that kills and imprisons communists, I will criticize you and call you a traitor to the revolution (which you are).
Ah, I see, which book did you read that in?
no
Not attempting to devalue all of the advancement the Islamic world made during that time, but the Golden Age is somewhat overstated and doesn't exactly correlate with Islam as so much a rediscovery of older Greek texts and a liberalization of what was deemed permissible by scholars. It ended when a strict return to fundamentalism began and several of those scholars who made those advancements in the first place were banned from doing so. Christian civilization wasn't exactly floundering either, the perception of the medieval Europe being a completely backward, dreary, grey expanse with little in the form intellectual pursuits is mostly a Hollywood one and even outside of the purely literary huge strides in metallurgy were being established. The main difference was while intellectual research was centralized in the middle east in a few major Islamic cities, the "job" of reading and translating texts as well as pursuing the intellectual was mostly restricted to both the monasteries and royalty divided among the different Kingdoms and states. Given that most of Europe was either embroiled in conflict or full out war, this of course made any hope of intellectual consolidation difficult. It also however provided a then unseen boon for the survival of risky or unpopular intellectual pursuits in general. While in areas like the middle east where laws and decrees regarding what was permissible could easily be enforced by small dispatched bands and such as well as in the cities themselves, the antagonisms and divisions within Europe made it so if one thing could not be pursued in one Kingdom, it could very well be pursued in another, sometimes even supported by those in power there in order to either benefit themselves or satisfy a desire to know/acquire something.
tl;dr It was very easy to centralize/collectivize information in the middle east but also very easy to stop/censure it, compared to Europe where it was very hard to centralize/collectivize information on a large scale but also very hard for any one kingdom to prevent research or intellectual pursuits in another.
Sorry if that sounded like a text wall/info dump
He might be talking about Zizek’s call to uphold the ideals of the enlightenment and defend the accomplishments of continental philosophy, which the spread of said ideas being one of the very few upside to colonialism. He never intended it as any sort of defense of the process of colonialism tho, so it’s just a misreading of him.
Your orientalism is not only showing, it's beaming through your body. Fuck off cracker.
How is Ba'athism not socialism? Gaddafi's eonomy was literally no different than Castro's.
Zizek has been heavily chauvinist and frequently repeats Zionist talking points about Arabs and Muslims. Doesn't matter if he isn't Zionist himself, he's still dog whistling.
Absolutely shit. Zizek has never shown support for Israel, and him acknowledging that fucking Islamic fundamentalism is incompatible with the ideals of the left isn’t a ‘Zionist talking point’, it’s the reality. But Zizek also says that instead of acting like it isn’t an issue, or exaggerating and using it as justification for racism and reaction, we should work to deal with it, in a leftist manner.
t. Edward Said
fucking this. Ba'ath flag doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about - From Hegel to Zizek
More Nizam al-Mulk and much of the later of ruling bodies tbh whose main focus shifted towards cultivating both strict military and religious thought rather than general intellectual pursuits.
The idea of "superior"/"inferior" culture is still a deeply colonial notion.
Stop
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Anti stalin=anti communist
People will say different things, but the record isn't exactly positive due to this in which multiple ex-trotskyists were involved
en.wikipedia.org
and this man
en.wikipedia.org
Oh god, you're so fucking wrong
Hegel was proto-NAZBOL.
Literally what the fuck are you talking about? Pls. post lecture or article if you think so because I'be never seen him say anything like that.
What would Hegel think about Antifa or BLM?
I just spent 3 months in an islamic country and I have to say that without a doubt: yes. What confirms this is how fucking envious were the people there of the western world.
Most of the islamic world has been heavily exploited by the west. They aren't envious they just want what was stolen from them to be returned.
confirmed for never having read Althusser. He wrote entire books on Hegel, ya brainlet.
And Hegel would say that exploitation is a-okay because it's "civiizing" them.
This opinion needs to fuck off, Christian civilization is superior for very material reasons, the third world doesn't need fake pity from people like this
The country I was in wasn't any more exploited (read: bombed, etc.) than your regular Eastern-EU country. I'm not talking about war, imperialism, economics. I'm talking about the fact that people there hated their own authoritarian, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-enlightenment, supertitious culture while having to participate in it and openly envied the West.
have you heard all of the nationalist shit he's said about muslims "invading" europe?
he's a wackjob and revionist.
I mean… honestly… the fact that christian "civilization" (I hate that word) developed while having its internal struggle with atheism, the enlightenment, and the latter basically won, in turn transforming the former really hints at that the very least "something" is fundamentally different about christianity compared to islam…
he didn't say "islamic fundamentalists" he said prole refugees.
The west isn't Christian. Christianity was revealed to the oppressed and is for them. If the west were ever christian they most certainly aren't now. Fuck off.
Sounds like you were hanging out with elite educated people who are mad about not being able to exploit people like westerners. These types always play the liberal when dealing with foreigners.
Stop being idealist.
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cont.
If I had to be very blunt about it my impression was that after the Islamic golden age (of which most easterners are super proud – not fully grasping its message to their contemporary situation) they regressed back to scholastism, out of which to this day they couldn't escape. Even 'functionally atheist' people acted and thought in relation to le hory book, le q'uran. I had a 2 hour long debate with a guy while drinking beer and vodka, who never even prayed to Allah in his fucking life, about how Allah (pbuh) did or didn't predict modern scientific advancements, and all that shit. It was fucking crazy.
ok, boi
Most muslim countries missed that crucial stepping stone in their cultural development (pluralism, modern conception of civilian freedom). I'm not even trying to play the 'superior westerner' card, ffs. I hate my own country for very different reasons, but for crying out loud, I don't get stoned if I say in a public interview that God doesn't exist.
It's still like this for pretty material reasons. Socialist Afghanistan for example didn't really have any of these problems.
I'm totally unconvinced that just because we slap the socialist sticker onto a country all of its social and cultural backwardness magically disappear. Even fucking Mao knew that. You could clearly see this as well in socialist 'balkan' or post-nazi, liberated countries like Hungary or Poland. Yes, obviously, socialism was heaven for them, but cultural trends don't disappear magically in 50 years, cultural atavisms happen, and so on.
Compare, for example, the culture of sexuality of GDR (the most liberal in the bloc) with that of socialist Hungary (ridiculously conservative).
hint: no
And the idea that we must show solidarity with the third world by covering up its ugliness in pity is the modern, neo-colonialist, liberal, whitewashed trend of fake socialists. Read Marx, you idpol shit.
underrated
Pluralism and everything else associated with modern liberalism is bad for profits when you are an exploited nation. Guess whose profits?
Platypus 'Jew' Society is not my comrade and the holocaust didn't even happen :DddD
Christian civilization is a shared intellectual tradition based around Greek philosophy, Hellenic mysticism and (to a lesser extent) semitic ethics - you're an idiot if you think it's only a religious classification.
There have been pretty serious historical studies tht show why the Catholic-Aristotelian worldview in particular lead to the scientific revolution, for example. The Islamic world had all the necessary material conditions to achieve it a well (the 13th century reneissance in Europe was largely a commentary on translations from Islamic scholars). But the fact remains that they didn't. The ideology and superstructure exerted a large influence in this case, which is why the old mechanistic his-mat schema falls apart on deeper analysis.
and so on and so on.
This.
Take the dialectics seriously and this will be your end result, Marx knew this. The new society is born out of the womb of the old society. This is why the but ur just sayin it wasn't real gommunism argument is bs.
It wasn't real gommunism my guise, gommunism is late stage shit. It may have had socialist elements and that should be starting point for these kinds of shitty debates wether those were good or not.
easy, the anti-refugee articles
My problem with Slavoj is that he is intentionally vague about his opinion on 20th century socialism.
On the one hand, he constantly bashes "Stalinism" and promotes the liberal narrative that the USSR and even Yugoslavia was a horrible oppressive society that should never be repeated again. But he's also been saying that localist movements and decentralised systems don't work, and that we need strong state power to achieve anything. So what is his position, why can't he admit it? It just makes his argument look weak and cowardly. Does he not realise that forming any kind of socialist state requires defensive measures to defend against constant imperialist reaction? How would we avoid this in the 21st century exactly?
Antifa and BLM are not rebels.