Read This You Heathen

 

Do you remember Berdyaev, the Russian philosopher who was influential between the wars? If not, perhaps you should. Here's an excerpt from The Religion of Communism:

The proletariat is the only class that is innocent of the original sin of exploitation. It is the class that produces all the material treasures and goods on which human society lives. It is exploited and crushed: the most disinherited class, deprived of the means of production, living in servile dependence on Capital. But in it there grows up a force, a collective power, that will be revealed when capitalist society has crashed to its doom. The proletariat is a messianic class; its vocation is to be the liberator of all mankind, it is even identified with true humanity, it is already not merely a class, for it is outgrowing the society which includes it as a class. Truth is being revealed to it and it is already introducing justice in virtue of its social position. The messianic concept of the proletariat includes the freeing of the oppressed, that is, the achievement of social justice, and the attainment of might and power by a socially organised humanity. With the proletariat's victory social rationalism will utterly triumph and master the irrational forces of the world. Its victory will bring with it the final rationalisation of life, a final regulation and ordering; everything irrational, obscure and mysterious will be banished from life. The anarchy which Marx perceived in capitalist society will come to an end. The proletariat is clothed in all the virtues.

Now, it is perfectly clear that Marx's "proletariat" is not the empirical working class which we observe in actual life.

Now, it is perfectly clear that Marx's "proletariat" is not the empirical working class which we observe in actual life. Ain't that the truth, and you'll note how today's Left scorns and derides working people in favor of racial and sexual identity politics.

Democrats, for example, no longer platform on workers' wages and employment but on transgender bathrooms, open borders and protected status for ethnic groups. Black, Muslim? Above the law. White, Christian? Not so much.

Given the failure of the working class to supply necessary revolutionary fervor, other classes had to be picked. And so, Cultural Marxism, which we're seeing in full Maoist tilt across several Democrat run cities in America.

But these classes too, such as transsexuals and ghetto thugs, prove just as illusory and unreliable as the original proletariat. No, you're not oppressed because you can't use the womans' bathroom, because you're a man, you shameless mountebank, whatever your chemical surgery. And no, you're not a martyr for resisting arrest after passing fake twenties and being ripped on fentanyl, meth and all the rest.

That's not colonialist, imperialist oppression, it's weird, and the country sees this. By the same token, people get that "defund the police" isn't going to make their lives safer. Unless you're a Democrat in Minneapolis who's just seen their city burn.

Remember, everything the Left effects produces the opposite of its intended result.

Internationale,

LSP

Where Is That Great Leviathan?

The Compound's training schedule isn't complex, no, far from it. In between group readings from Maritain, Gilson, Aquinas, Mascall, Berdyaev, the awesome Ratzinger, Farrer and so many more, we go fishing.

X in search of, sort of thing, and that's what we did today, headed out to Lake Whitney dam and tried our luck against the ferocious prehistoric ambush predators, Gar. Well it wasn't easy. Sure there were plenty of fish but they were shell shocked by the current.

You see, thanks to climate change it's been raining, turning Texas into a cross between an Amazonian rain forest and a floodplain. We caught the floodplain today and that meant no catching, the fish were all rolling on the current and not biting.

Still, good to get out in the sun by the water and enjoy the mighty Brazos. It was better once, before the dam and the lake, but that's a different story. 

In the meanwhile, Blue Nugget looks on. Hope, all two of you readers, springs eternal.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Berdyaev

Wjatscheslaw Iwanow, Lev Kobilinskij-Ellis, N. Berdyaev (standing) and Andrej Belyi

I've been struck Berdyaev's book "End of Our Time"; he was writing in 1935. Here's a quote:

"Faith in the ultimate political and social salvation of mankind is quenched. We have reached settlement-day after a series of centuries during which movement was from the centre, the spiritual core of life, to the periphery, its surface and social exterior. And the more empty of real significance social life has become, the more it has tyrannized over the general life of man. Politics have twined about us like a strangling parasite, and the greater part of contemporary political and social life has no reality, no being, at all: it is just bogus. The strife of parties, parliaments, conferences, newspapers, programmes and platforms, propaganda and demonstrations, the grab and scheming for power - these are not life... they are a hopeless hindrance."

He doesn't have much time for the Bolshevists either. These, he feels, are in the grip of a diabolic, supernatural power, the "kingdom of Satan".

Perhaps they were - or are. Regardless, I like "strangling parasite". Seems to sum our situation up neatly, and his thoughts on secularism aren't bad either, but that's another post.

Have a blessed Sunday,

LSP