Is pro-totalitarian rhetoric as evil as totalitarianism itself?

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

I don't think every irrational thought or evasion results in violence against innocent people. However, I think that violence against innocent people is always the result of irrationality.

Since I believe in the fundamental unity of mind and body -- of thought and action -- I've been puzzling over the ethics of those who advocate statism.

I believe that statist intellectuals like Karl Marx are what laid the foundation for statist mass murderers like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin to come along. If not for those like Marx, then the world's Lenins and Stalins wouldn't have had as easy a time coming to power. In that sense, I see statist intellectuals as complicit in the evils that are done when their statist doctrines are actually implemented in the real world.

However, I have extreme difficulty in saying that just because Marx helped make Stalin possible, that Marx is necessarily as evil as -- or more evil than -- Stalin. It was with conscious deliberation that Stalin implemented the policies that murdered 40 million people, and he knew he was killing people.

Marx's ideology contributed to the intellectual respectability of the political apparatus that empowered Stalin to do this -- and Marx even advocated the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie -- but seeing that Marx did not actually plan any specific murders or sign anyone's death warrant or pass any laws, I have trouble saying that Marx's evil is on par with Stalin's, or that the law should consider Marx an accessory to mass murder.

I have trouble with saying that pro-totalitarian rhetoric is just as evil as the state-implemented murder committed under statism, because it seems to me that if speech advocating physical force (in the abstract) is a physical jeopardy -- and of a degree of evil -- that is equal to the physical implementation of force, then such pro-force rhetoric can be justly answered with government force.

If the implementation of Karl Marx's exhortations lead to censorship, then is government censorship of Marx simply justifiable retaliatory force? Would it be on the grounds that Marx espousing his pro-violence ideology itself counts as an initiation of force? I think not.

I think Marx's rhetoric helped make Stalin's murderous policies possible, and I think Marx's rhetoric deserves some moral blame, but I still think that Stalin is significantly more evil than Marx. Further, violence can be justly used against Stalin's communist policies, but not against mere rhetoric in favor of communist policies.

But if, in the long term, all political actions proceed from irrational thoughts, and mind and body are one, then how can we make moral and political distinctions between government force and pro-government-force rhetoric?

I think I have an answer.

I would say that a deliberate action is a completed action and a completed thought. A thought is not fully implemented or complete unless and until it is carried out in the physical realm.

Therefore, if someone talks a lot and advocates many totalitarian policies -- but does not do anything to implement them in physical reality -- then that advocacy remains a set of uncompleted thoughts or uncompleted actions.

Thus, if Marx advocates totalitarianism and violence, but does not actually bring them about or plan their implementation, then his advocacy remains an uncompleted action and is not of the same ethical magnitude as the actual installation of totalitarianism.

By that same token, when Stalin carried out those mass murders, he completed Marx's thought by translating it into a complete action in the real world.

Even though pro-totalitarian rhetoric contributes to making totalitarianism possible in the real world, the mere rhetoric remains an uncompleted action, while the full implementation of totalitarianism is the completed thought and completed action.

I think that to phrase it this way shows how the advocacy of force is still morally wrong, and of how actions are ultimately determined by the extent to which people do or do not exercise their rationality, but that totalitarianism's reliance upon pro-totalitarian philosophy does not necessarily make the pro-totalitarian philosopher as evil as the actual totalitarian dictator.

What do you think?

Edited December 26, 2007 by Stuart K. Hayashi

[Selene]

I don't think every irrational thought or evasion results in violence against innocent people. However, I think that violence against innocent people is always the result of irrationality.

Since I believe in the fundamental unity of mind and body -- of thought and action -- I've been puzzling over the ethics of those who advocate statism.

I believe that statist intellectuals like Karl Marx are what laid the foundation for statist mass murderers like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin to come along. If not for those like Marx, then the world's Lenins and Stalins wouldn't have had as easy a time coming to power. In that sense, I see statist intellectuals as complicit in the evils that are done when their statist doctrines are actually implemented in the real world.

However, I have extreme difficulty in saying that just because Marx helped make Stalin possible, that Marx is necessarily as evil as -- or more evil than -- Stalin. It was with conscious deliberation that Stalin implemented the policies that murdered 40 million people, and he knew he was killing people.

Marx's ideology contributed to the intellectual respectability of the political apparatus that empowered Stalin to do this -- and Marx even advocated the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie -- but seeing that Marx did not actually plan any specific murders or sign anyone's death warrant or pass any laws, I have trouble saying that Marx's evil is on par with Stalin's, or that the law should consider Marx an accessory to mass murder.

I have trouble with saying that pro-totalitarian rhetoric is just as evil as the state-implemented murder committed under statism, because it seems to me that if speech advocating physical force (in the abstract) is a physical jeopardy -- and of a degree of evil -- that is equal to the physical implementation of force, then such pro-force rhetoric can be justly answered with government force.

If the implementation of Karl Marx's exhortations lead to censorship, then is government censorship of Marx simply justifiable retaliatory force? Would it be on the grounds that Marx espousing his pro-violence ideology itself counts as an initiation of force? I think not.

I think Marx's rhetoric helped make Stalin's murderous policies possible, and I think Marx's rhetoric deserves some moral blame, but I still think that Stalin is significantly more evil than Marx. Further, violence can be justly used against Stalin's communist policies, but not against mere rhetoric in favor of communist policies.

But if, in the long term, all political actions proceed from irrational thoughts, and mind and body are one, then how can we make moral and political distinctions between government force and pro-government-force rhetoric?

I think I have an answer.

I would say that a deliberate action is a completed action and a completed thought. A thought is not fully implemented or complete unless and until it is carried out in the physical realm.

Therefore, if someone talks a lot and advocates many totalitarian policies -- but does not do anything to implement them in physical reality -- then that advocacy remains a set of uncompleted thoughts or uncompleted actions.

Thus, if Marx advocates totalitarianism and violence, but does not actually bring them about or plan their implementation, then his advocacy remains an uncompleted action and is not of the same ethical magnitude as the actual installation of totalitarianism.

By that same token, when Stalin carried out those mass murders, he completed Marx's thought by translating it into a complete action in the real world.

Even though pro-totalitarian rhetoric contributes to making totalitarianism possible in the real world, the mere rhetoric remains an uncompleted action, while the full implementation of totalitarianism is the completed thought and completed action.

I think that to phrase it this way shows how the advocacy of force is still morally wrong, and of how actions are ultimately determined by the extent to which people do or do not exercise their rationality, but that totalitarianism's reliance upon pro-totalitarian philosophy does not necessarily make the pro-totalitarian philosopher as evil as the actual totalitarian dictator.

What do you think?

I think you make a rational argument. I have the same trouble with NAMBLA

Adam.

[C. Jordan]

I agree with you. And Leonard Peikoff appears to disagree with us all. If you read his Fact-and-Value business, you'd get the impression that evil ideas always and necessarily lead to evil actions.

I wonder if Peikoff has considered that he is denying people their free will. If Immanuel Kant caused Hitler and Stalin to commit mass murder (which Peikoff argues) then how can either of them be guilty?

I take the position that Hitler and Stalin both had free will. So, P.I. Rakovsky (who wrote The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion) did give Hitler a rationale for his Final Solution against the Jews. But Rakovsky did not cause the Holocaust. Hitler did that, him and all those who helped him. Each one made a choice.

The same can be said of Ioseb Jugashvili (Stalin). My impression is that if Karl Marx had never written his theories, or at least if Lenin had never began preaching those theories, there could still have been a revolution against the Tsar. I say this because Lenin's brother was among others hanged for an attempt against Tsar Aleksandr II, showing that there was already discontent and rebellion against the system BEFORE ANYONE HAD PROPOSED A COMMUNIST REVOLUTION. I also say this because young Ioseb Jugashvili read, and approved of, a book by P'yotr Tchakev, who wrote a defence of using extreme violence to attain your revolution.

But I'm not saying that the boy who would be Stalin was brainwashed by Tchakev's book. I'm saying that young Jugashvili was already violent and cruel; therefore, he liked Tchakev's book; therefore, he sought out a revolution to join. The rest may be found in Stalin's biography by Edvard Radzinsky.

I don't agree that Kant, Marx, Lenin, Tchakev, and/or Rakovsky was responsible for what others did with their ideas. Unless we want to assert that the others are not responsible for their actions, that is. And we have seen where that argument would lead us.

[Rich Engle]

I remember something in a Nathaniel Branden lecture I attended where he was saying "Your thoughts are your thoughts." The idea being, one will have all kinds of thoughts, many of which are highly, highly in conflict with one's core value system. Very good people have very aberrant thoughts. I have had thoughts that I would never share with anyone, nor act upon. The difference, of course, is whether one acts on the thoughts or not. As far as the old "sin of thought" thing, well, I don't find it practical because it involves creating a state of guilt/shame for having said thoughts, and that isn't always so productive.

Now, if you are a professional writer/thinker, and you have an audience, you have to be careful what you make available. Marx and just about any other high profile thinker you pick provide lush examples where one thought, one phrase, got plucked, and executed, and horror ensued. I do believe that there is, for any writer with a decent moral code, a responsibility to not, well, "rehearse on stage." It's too volatile if taken and used out of context.

I don't know quite why, speaking of thoughts, but in writing this I remembered a scene in the Kubrick film "Clockwork Orange," where Alex is in prison, reading the Bible. In his mind, he sees only the dark side...wars, rape, slaughter...he loves it, all under the guise of becoming a better man. Writers and readers are a dynamic, they are interlaced, interdependent. Both reader and writer, if they have any kind of a decent moral base, understand the responsibilities involved.

When you write, and people read it, that's an action, and it can cause consequences. You always run the risk of opening Pandora's Box, I suppose.

But the real thing for me has been (at least after hearing NB talk about it) developing a comfort level with one's thoughts--knowing for sure that you will have ones that are not who you want to be, what you want to say. The mind always considers possibilities, it just works that way, thank heavens.

Anything where condemnation is recommended, self-beating is recommended, involving having a thought is repulsive to me. Of course, it is much worse to loose an aberrant thought via action. Do all thoughts lead to action? Well, yes, I guess, if that includes the action of evaluating and rejecting said thought. That's your job if need be.

Edited December 30, 2007 by Rich Engle

[Brant Gaede]

Marx=evil=an orange

Stalin=evil=an apple

Hitler=evil=a chicken

Each is evil. Assign what weight you will to them.

--Brant

[RTB]

I don't think every irrational thought or evasion results in violence against innocent people. However, I think that violence against innocent people is always the result of irrationality.

Really? What about mistaken violence in warfare against civilians? Is a policeman who fires a shot at a murderous maniac whose bullet goes astray, bounces off the sidewalk, hits a lamp post, and wounds a school child acting irrationally?

Your statement is just false. Let's stick to reality. Reality and reason coexist. This is the problem with the title of this thread. You've started off on the wrong foot. Your premise is faulty.

Since I believe in the fundamental unity of mind and body -- of thought and action -- I've been puzzling over the ethics of those who advocate statism.

What's the puzzle?

I believe that statist intellectuals like Karl Marx are what laid the foundation for statist mass murderers like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin to come along. If not for those like Marx, then the world's Lenins and Stalins wouldn't have had as easy a time coming to power. In that sense, I see statist intellectuals as complicit in the evils that are done when their statist doctrines are actually implemented in the real world.

Right.

If the implementation of Karl Marx's exhortations lead to censorship, then is government censorship of Marx simply justifiable retaliatory force? Would it be on the grounds that Marx espousing his pro-violence ideology itself counts as an initiation of force? I think not.

Who's advocating Marx be censored?

But if, in the long term, all political actions proceed from irrational thoughts, and mind and body are one, then how can we make moral and political distinctions between government force and pro-government-force rhetoric?

All political actions proceed from irrational thoughts??? Huh? I'm tempted to begin assuming what I think you mean but I'll just leave it to you to clarify.

'Mind and body are one'. You're working backwards here. You're attributing attributes that belong to individual entities (man) to abstract 'entities' (governments). You're the one here implying a validity to statism.

I think I have an answer.

I would say that a deliberate action is a completed action and a completed thought. A thought is not fully implemented or complete unless and until it is carried out in the physical realm.

This is plain silly. How would Copernicus go about 'carrying out his thoughts in the material realm' after making his abstract conclusions? Travel to the moon himself?

Therefore, if someone talks a lot and advocates many totalitarian policies -- but does not do anything to implement them in physical reality -- then that advocacy remains a set of uncompleted thoughts or uncompleted actions.

There's such a thing as completed thoughts and uncompleted actions. As a matter of fact I'm contemplating scratching my noggin' right now reading your comments but refuse to do so. :-P

Cheerily yours! :-)

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

Earlier I wrote, "I would say that a deliberate action is a completed action and a completed thought. A thought is not fully implemented or complete unless and until it is carried out in the physical realm."

RTB replied,

This is plain silly. How would Copernicus go about 'carrying out his thoughts in the material realm' after making his abstract conclusions? Travel to the moon himself?

Of course Copernicus didn't travel to the moon. Given the state of technology and accumulated scientific knowledge at the time, he couldn't if he wanted to. This is why I don't give credit to Copernicus for the moonlanding; that credit predominantly goes to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and the scientists and engineers who actually worked on the moonlanding project. I do give credit to Copernicus for using his mind to realize and explicate that the Earth revolves around the sun, which is work that has helped modern astronomers and astrophysicists.

Thomas Edison utilized the scientific work of Alessandro Volta and Michael Faraday when he invented the electric generator, but it does not follow that Volta and Faraday are co-inventors of the generator; the inventor is Edison himself. If a modern man uses the discoveries and inventions of long-dead past innovators to create a new invention for his own time, the modern man can give proper credit to how the past innovators have helped him without claiming that the past innovators were co-creators of his own invention.

In formulating Objectivism, Ayn Rand relied upon discoveries made by Aristotle. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that Aristotle is a co-author of Atlas Shrugged or Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Likewise, I do not blame Karl Marx for the 40 million murders that Stalin committed; I only blame Karl Marx for writing apologias for collectivism that made it easier for Stalin to create the sort of political environment that enabled him to kill so many people.

Edited December 31, 2007 by Stuart K. Hayashi

[Wolf DeVoon]

Hi Stuart,

Off to a good start IMO. Keep going.

However, it was Goddard and von Braun, not Armstrong. Which reminds me of a joke I heard at the Odd Fellows lodge in NYC. The punchline was first words spoken when Armstrong landed on the moon: "Congratulations, Mr. Sapperstein!"

Edison didn't invent the electric generator. Nor did he invent the light bulb. His staff tested thousands of materials, and they scaled up Faraday's gismo -- all of which remained impractical and highly dangerous until Westinghouse and Tesla put things right.

Nor do I agree with your thesis about 'thought' and 'action.' One of Miss Rand's strengths, certainly an achievement of the highest order, was the principle that evil requires the sanction of the victim. Stalin was just a garden variety Cuffy Meigs, unleashed by Harpo Marx, Charlie Chaplin, and Frank Capra. Which reminds me of something Jimmy Durante said when he saw Capra walking up Broadway one afternoon: "Capra-strophic!"

W.

Edited December 31, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[BaalChatzaf]

Thomas Edison utilized the scientific work of Alessandro Volta and Michael Faraday when he invented the electric generator, but it does not follow that Volta and Faraday are co-inventors of the generator; the inventor is Edison himself. If a modern man uses the discoveries and inventions of long-dead past innovators to create a new invention for his own time, the modern man can give proper credit to how the past innovators have helped him without claiming that the past innovators were co-creators of his own invention.

Nay nay!

Take a look:

In 1819 Hans Christian Oersted discovered that a magnetic field surrounds a current-carrying wire. Within two years André Marie Ampère had put several electromagnetic laws into mathematical form, D. F. Arago had invented the electromagnet, and Michael Faraday had devised a crude form of electric motor. Practical application of a motor had to wait 10 years, however, until Faraday (and earlier, independently, Joseph Henry) invented the electric generator with which to power the motor. A year after Faraday's laboratory approximation of the generator, Hippolyte Pixii constructed a hand-driven model. From then on engineers took over from the scientists, and a slow development followed; the first power stations were built 50 years later (see power, electric).

The entire article can be found at

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0857938.html

If you are going to quote history make sure you have the facts.

It was George Westinghouse and Nikol Tesla that lit up the world. Edison's D.C. system used to light a small neighborhood in lower Manhattan was not very good. Edison nearly lost his generator due to the parasitic impedance of his system.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited December 31, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Faraday presented his work to Prime Minister Gladstone, who asked: "Very nice, but what good is it?" -- to which Faraday replied: "I don't know, sir, but I'm certain you will find a way to tax it."

[Brant Gaede]

Tesla was a great genius, Edison was a great sweat-it-out.

--Brant

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

I see my historical remarks being addressed in a pedantic manner that sidetracks the conversation away from the actual issue.

I will briefly address the supposed corrections to what I said.

Michael Faraday invented the dynamo -- that is, an electromagnet. He didn't have any practical application for it. He did not invent a machine for the purpose of harnessing electricity to power other machines, particularly machines that lit up one's surroundings.

Thomas Edison, not Faraday, invented a commercially viable electric generator that powered electric lights. And he did this before George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Edison's electric generator was an electromagnet and it operated according to scientific principles discovered by Faraday.

The problem with Edison's electric generator was that it relied on a direct current, so a single generator couldn't power many households. Westinghouse and Tesla created a much more commercially functional electric generation system by employing alternating currents.

More significantly, the supposed corrections do not address the philosophic issue actually being discussed, which is whether a philosopher, who merely wrote down his philosophy, is more evil than the dictator who implements that philosopher's written words and takes them to their logical conclusion.

[Selene]

I see my historical remarks being addressed in a pedantic manner that sidetracks the conversation away from the actual issue.

I will briefly address the supposed corrections to what I said.

Michael Faraday invented the dynamo -- that is, an electromagnet. He didn't have any practical application for it. He did not invent a machine for the purpose of harnessing electricity to power other machines, particularly machines that lit up one's surroundings.

Thomas Edison, not Faraday, invented a commercially viable electric generator that powered electric lights. And he did this before George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. Edison's electric generator was an electromagnet and it operated according to scientific principles discovered by Faraday.

The problem with Edison's electric generator was that it relied on a direct current, so a single generator couldn't power many households. Westinghouse and Tesla created a much more commercially functional electric generation system by employing alternating currents.

More significantly, the supposed corrections do not address the philosophic issue actually being discussed, which is whether a philosopher, who merely wrote down his philosophy, is more evil than the dictator who implements that philosopher's written words and takes them to their logical conclusion.

Again, you make a cogent argument. I would like to read more. Disregard all the peripheral chatter.

[BaalChatzaf]

More significantly, the supposed corrections do not address the philosophic issue actually being discussed, which is whether a philosopher, who merely wrote down his philosophy, is more evil than the dictator who implements that philosopher's written words and takes them to their logical conclusion.

No one is compelled to transform abstract philosophy into action. He who does the deed is responsible for the deed's evil.

If I wrote a book on how to commit the perfect murder, in an abstract or fictional form, I am in no way responsible if someone picks up on the idea or plot and makes it real and concrete. That is -their- choice.

If it were otherwise, every one who wrote a police procedural or a detective story might find themselves being accused of being accessory to a felony.

Only deeds might be evil (when committed with evil intent)*. Ideas might or might not lead to evil deeds. It depends on circumstance and choice.

I believe this addresses the main issue.

Ba'al Chatzaf

*added in edit

Edited December 31, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

If I wrote a book on how to commit the perfect murder, in an abstract or fictional form, I am in no way responsible if someone picks up on the idea or plot and makes it real and concrete.

No fault leadership.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Ideas have consequences.

Question: So how rich can you get on real estate?

Answer: From 1890 through 1990, the return on residential real estate was just about zero after inflation.

Question: Excuse me? That's all? Hasn't it been higher lately?

Answer: Since 1987 it's been 6 percent [or about 3 percent a year after inflation].

Question: So real estate doesn't go up roughly 10 percent a year?

Answer: It can't be true that homes rise 10 percent a year. If they did, in the long run no one would be able to afford a house.

Question: Let me grab a calculator. If real estate really rose 10 percent a year, a $25,000 home in 1957 should be worth roughly $3 million now.

Answer: And that flies in the face of common sense. In fact, I'm inclined to think there's a good chance that the return on real estate will be negative, substantially negative, over the next 10 years because all booms reverse in the end.

(courtesy Toro's Running of the Bulls Blog)

An intellectual is similar to a fiduciary. The advice we give to others is actionable, and plain folks follow because they can't do the heavy lifting for themselves. In the current context, Ron Paul is a follower or at best a middleman, incapable of defining a new idea. The greatest problem we face is a paucity of new ideas, a surplus of disasterous and discredited crap we inherited from Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra.

W.

see San Diego Union Tribune

Edited December 31, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[BaalChatzaf]

If I wrote a book on how to commit the perfect murder, in an abstract or fictional form, I am in no way responsible if someone picks up on the idea or plot and makes it real and concrete.

No fault leadership.

Sorry, you are wrong. If A follows B it does not follow(sic!) the B has led A. If it were otherwise we could blame all our mistakes on other people.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Sorry, you are wrong. If A follows B it does not follow(sic!) the B has led A. If it were otherwise we could blame all our mistakes on other people.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Do I have to haul out the HPO quote where you said Might Makes Right is how the world works?

Stuart,

Ba'al wants a get out of jail free card, like an irresponsible sovereign (U.S. Congress, Pol Pot, Hitler, etc.) -- completely blameless no matter what he says or does. His followers, footsoldiers and conscripts are guilty by reason of their ineptitude and gullibility. Children are guilty for following their parents and rabbis. Widows and orphans are guilty because they trusted bankers and deposit insurance guarantors. Voters should be punished because they were led by liars and sharks. Hell for everybody except the prime mover(s), who exhorted the innocent to sin, crime, infamy and idiocy.

W.

Edited December 31, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[BaalChatzaf]

Do I have to haul out the HPO quote where you said Might Makes Right is how the world works?

If B follows A with no action on the part of A to bring that about, then B is causally off the hook. What does that have to do with Might and Right? A did not -cause- B to follow. B -choose- to use A's ideas or actions as a model.

Your argument simply does not follow a logical line. State your assumptions. Then show how the assumptions lead to the conclusion step by step.

That is way blaming all the evil in the world on Kant, Hegel or Marx makes no sense. Likewise Aristotle is not to blame for what the Church Fathers did to Galileo. Aristotle is to blame for not checking his own conclusions empirically. Shame on him for that. It is unfortunate the so many chose to follow Aristotle uncritically, but that is not Aristotle's fault. Likewise Plato. No one was forced to buy his philosophy of Ideas.

I would also suggest to you that Chaplin and Capra are not responsible for the evils of the world either.

There are very few instances where one can blame another for being misled.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited December 31, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Selene]

If I wrote a book on how to commit the perfect murder, in an abstract or fictional form, I am in no way responsible if someone picks up on the idea or plot and makes it real and concrete.

No fault leadership.

Sorry, you are wrong. If A follows B it does not follow(sic!) the B has led A. If it were otherwise we could blame all our mistakes on other people.

Ba'al Chatzaf

When I was 20 and teaching at the City University, I carefully warned my students about the fallacy "after this, therefore, because of this."

Can we attempt to engage in inductive reasoning to understand whether the argument has validity?

[RTB]

RTB replied,

This is plain silly. How would Copernicus go about 'carrying out his thoughts in the material realm' after making his abstract conclusions? Travel to the moon himself?

Of course Copernicus didn't travel to the moon. Given the state of technology and accumulated scientific knowledge at the time, he couldn't if he wanted to. This is why I don't give credit to Copernicus for the moonlanding;

You've conceded the point now whether you realize it or not. Thoughts are thoughts. Actions are actions. A completed thought does not have to translate into 'external reality' to attain its completion status. This is why mankind needs ethics, especially political ethics, in order to get the completed thoughts translated into material reality.

[C. Jordan]

RTB:

The point is not whether a thought should be judged. It is whether a thought should be judged as worse than an action.

The point is also whether a thought leads to an action. In Stuart's example, while Copernicus' work made the moon-landing POSSIBLE, it did not make the moon-landing INEVITABLE.

By the same logic, while Marx gave Lenin, Stalin, and those who followed a JUSTIFICATION for their actions, he did not make those actions INEVITABLE.

In addition, EVERY state with a Communist government, or that once had a Communist governmet, also has a tradition of autocracy, social stratification, and collective responsibility among the peasant classes. This was China BEFORE Mao Ze Dong. This was Korea BEFORE Kim Il-sung. This was Ethiopia BEFORE the Derg, it was the peoples of Tanganyika (Tanzania) BEFORE Nyerere, and it was Russia BEFORE the Communist revolution.

These facts alone give me grounds to say that Marx did not make Lenin and Stalin inevitable. But he gave them justification.

And as for the first point, how a thought should be judged, I would agree that an evil idea should be denounced as an evil idea. That is still different from denouncing it as WORSE THAN an evil action.

I hold that the opposite is true. To say "We should kill the Jews" is wrong. It does not merit the death penalty. To open fire with an Uzi into a synagogue is far worse, and that DOES merit the death penalty.

I hold that truth to be self-evident.

I also hold to the position that to say an evil idea makes putting the idea into practice INEVITABLE means we are denying that the doers of evil have free will. We are saying that someone's idea REQUIRES them to behave in an evil way. And if we accept that argument, we have said that Lenin and Stalin have no responsibility for their actions.

The only exception is a situation where the idea is clearly ABOUT TO BECOME AN ACTION. The only example that comes to mind are the planning sessions of the Interahamwe in Rwanda, right BEFORE the génocide. In that case, General Dallaire with the peace-keepers had the right to act. But only in such a case can we equate an idea with an action. And in Rwanda that can be said because the Interahamwe weren't just talking about killing their neighbours with machetes; they were openly carrying those very machetes. These words are clearly connected with actions.

In no other case can we justifiably say that someone's evil idea leads to, or is worse than, someone else's evil action.

I challenge you to respond.

[Selene]

RTB:

The point is not whether a thought should be judged. It is whether a thought should be judged as worse than an action.

The point is also whether a thought leads to an action. In Stuart's example, while Copernicus' work made the moon-landing POSSIBLE, it did not make the moon-landing INEVITABLE.

By the same logic, while Marx gave Lenin, Stalin, and those who followed a JUSTIFICATION for their actions, he did not make those actions INEVITABLE.

In addition, EVERY state with a Communist government, or that once had a Communist governmet, also has a tradition of autocracy, social stratification, and collective responsibility among the peasant classes. This was China BEFORE Mao Ze Dong. This was Korea BEFORE Kim Il-sung. This was Ethiopia BEFORE the Derg, it was the peoples of Tanganyika (Tanzania) BEFORE Nyerere, and it was Russia BEFORE the Communist revolution.

These facts alone give me grounds to say that Marx did not make Lenin and Stalin inevitable. But he gave them justification.

And as for the first point, how a thought should be judged, I would agree that an evil idea should be denounced as an evil idea. That is still different from denouncing it as WORSE THAN an evil action.

I hold that the opposite is true. To say "We should kill the Jews" is wrong. It does not merit the death penalty. To open fire with an Uzi into a synagogue is far worse, and that DOES merit the death penalty.

I hold that truth to be self-evident.

I also hold to the position that to say an evil idea makes putting the idea into practice INEVITABLE means we are denying that the doers of evil have free will. We are saying that someone's idea REQUIRES them to behave in an evil way. And if we accept that argument, we have said that Lenin and Stalin have no responsibility for their actions.

The only exception is a situation where the idea is clearly ABOUT TO BECOME AN ACTION. The only example that comes to mind are the planning sessions of the Interahamwe in Rwanda, right BEFORE the génocide. In that case, General Dallaire with the peace-keepers had the right to act. But only in such a case can we equate an idea with an action. And in Rwanda that can be said because the Interahamwe weren't just talking about killing their neighbours with machetes; they were openly carrying those very machetes. These words are clearly connected with actions.

In no other case can we justifiably say that someone's evil idea leads to, or is worse than, someone else's evil action.

I challenge you to respond.

Excellent point. "Evil" ideas require the "good germans/soviets/chinese" to turn the levers on the state's machinery. Switch the death train to the right track to the right camp, take all the grain from the Ukrainians and kill 10 million people and drive the peasants into the edges of the realm and let them starve.

As rational beings, we have to chose to follow or obey a state that implements, by choice, the idea.

In the 60's there was a button that said "Fuck the State", which I always argued was a much too nice an act to bestow on the state.

[Brant Gaede]

It is not the presence of an evil philosophy--call it what-you-will (Marxism, Kantianism)--but the absence of a true and right philosophy, that makes evil possible. It is so ironic that Rand, champion of "The Sanction of the Victim" or "The Impotence of Evil", put so much weight on Kant. Phooey!

--Brant

[John Dailey]

SKH:

~ Interesting question you raise. I'm sure many wish Rand had been explicit about her reasons for considering Kant so. I'm not sure I agree with the reasons surmised about her (Peikoff's arguments nwst.)

~ Without getting lost in a tangent of the accuracy of analogies brought up for a while I also thought of Kant's 'evilness' being as others have spelled out, but especially including the idea of helping create intellectual Comprachicos via his justifications being re-interpreted through them (Marx, Hegel, etc) whereas they gave justifications for the 'action'-figures in history to latch onto.

~ Then I thought of something else...

LLAP

J:D