From those alive and famous today, Larijani is some sort of failed philosopher king. Khamenei is a man of great intellect who drops hints on Proust and Dostoyevsky in his speeches.
Khatami is obviously famous for believing everyone in the US is into de Tocqueville.
Chamran, Taleghani, Motahari, Bazargan etc were also highly intellectual. Etc.
"Are we better off with less erudite leaders, leaders of acknowledged mediocrity?"
How about someone with a second class intellect but a first class temperament? (I had thought this was Keynes on FDR, but apparently it was Oliver Wendell Holmes's line)
It may be that times were so chaotic in Russia post WWI that anyone would have made a mess of it.
The best government Sweden had in the 20th century, the one led by Per Albin Hansson in the 30s, was said to be so efficient because its members came out of noting else but the labour movement, with plenty of experience of bitter struggle. They knew what they wanted and how.
Perhaps they were less prominent as intellectuals than Lenin or Trotsky, but the minister of finance Ernst Wigforss wrote a popular book of Keynesianism before Keynes wrote a less popular one, in 1931: "Can we afford working?" (which was said to have won the election for the social democrats). And all of them wrote plenty of articles in the labour press, which late 20th century writer Jan Myrdal said were such high-level that they couldn't have served non-graduated university students of today. But full-time labour movement activists apparently appreciated them.
And even if the ministers didn't write, they had good sense of appointing knowledgeable people to important posts. Perhaps they weren't more intelligent than the leaders of our time – but their environment was certainly so. Present politicians seem to surround themselves mainly by PR people.
A wonderful promotion for reading the works of Russian murderers who killed millions of people across the USSR. Even the polemic with the marginalists is mentioned, but somehow they forgot to write about this killer’s other “achievements.”
For instance, in May 1918, Bukharin released a widely known brochure, The Program of the Communists, in which he theoretically justified the necessity of forced labor for the non-working classes.
Overall, Bukharin’s works from 1918–1921 were written under the strong influence of the “War communism” practice, which involved widespread use of non-economic coercion in the country’s economy (executions, deprivation of property rights, deportation to death camps, etc.).
A characteristic quote from this “remarkable” murderer comes from The Economics of the Transitional Period (Part X):
“From the perspective of a historically significant scale, proletarian coercion in all its forms—from executions to compulsory labor—is, paradoxical as it may sound, a method of shaping communist humanity out of the human material of the capitalist era.”
Bukharin’s death was just another gangster showdown among the bloodthirsty murderers who came to power with Lenin. I wouldn’t call this criminal a “great thinker.” An educated man who, for the sake of his flawed ideas and with his accomplices, destroyed millions of lives.
I read Thorstein Veblen's "The theory of the leissure class", originally published in 1912. It might have been part of the academic discussion in that time, but I did not know about Boukharin's text on this subject
Perhaps the ‘top down’ inflections of Soviet Marxism can be traced to 19th C ‘Naturphilosophie’ underpinning Engels’ post-Marx formulations of ‘dialectical materialism’ ( a concept not found in the latter’s work) through Kautsky’s assertion of the primacy of importing ‘revolutionary consciousness’ to the working class from the outside as it were. This genealogy lent itself to a ‘positivism’ which essentialised ‘forces of production’ conceived as technology as the motor of class struggle and hence so-called ‘historical laws’. Bukharin represented this scientistic interpretation of Marxism and was regarded by Lenin as a great theoretician. Trotsky’s work shows glimpses of a more ‘bottom up’ dialectic when he invokes Marx’s notion of “self-emancipation of the working class” and hence a different notion of consciousness is formed. I will now go and rummage around to find Lunacharsky’s ‘Revolutionary Silhouettes ’ for old times’ sake !
If you cut the last paragraph, which is drawing the usual propaganda conclusions of the liberal western bourgeoisie, who fought the Soviet experiment tooth and nail right from the start and finally succeeded in finding a willing capitalist executioner in Gorbachev, you might call this another nice piece of dabbling in intellectually meaningless liberal journalism oozing reactionary western superiority
"But Stalin’s excellent knowledge of literature, history and military affairs is without doubt, a fact recognized by no less an antagonist than Churchill."
Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke, himself a lifelong military pro, briefed Stalin several times and credited him with having 'a first-class military mind,' as Montgomery said of Mao, too.
I haven't read Bukharin since grad school eons ago. I remember not being at all impressed at the time. Regarding Lenin, a useful comparison is his attack on Pannekoek (Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder) and then Pannekoek's rejoinder (Lenin as Philosopher). It puts the putative intelligence of the Bolsheviks in perspective....
You have referred to the current US administration as revolutionary, but I don't see the cream of the inteligencia rising to the top of this revolution. Mostly dregs.
Id rather have average leaders bringing stability and order while relying on experts in different fields than smart revolutionaries. How many people did “smart” Mao or Stalin or Lenin kill?
Regarding Iranian revolution:
Banisadr was the translator of Fanon.
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41564
From those alive and famous today, Larijani is some sort of failed philosopher king. Khamenei is a man of great intellect who drops hints on Proust and Dostoyevsky in his speeches.
Khatami is obviously famous for believing everyone in the US is into de Tocqueville.
Chamran, Taleghani, Motahari, Bazargan etc were also highly intellectual. Etc.
So yes, just to prove your point.
Thank you. Much appreciated. (I knew only of Bani Sadr's intellectual involvement).
Ali Shariati as well
"Are we better off with less erudite leaders, leaders of acknowledged mediocrity?"
How about someone with a second class intellect but a first class temperament? (I had thought this was Keynes on FDR, but apparently it was Oliver Wendell Holmes's line)
It may be that times were so chaotic in Russia post WWI that anyone would have made a mess of it.
The best government Sweden had in the 20th century, the one led by Per Albin Hansson in the 30s, was said to be so efficient because its members came out of noting else but the labour movement, with plenty of experience of bitter struggle. They knew what they wanted and how.
Perhaps they were less prominent as intellectuals than Lenin or Trotsky, but the minister of finance Ernst Wigforss wrote a popular book of Keynesianism before Keynes wrote a less popular one, in 1931: "Can we afford working?" (which was said to have won the election for the social democrats). And all of them wrote plenty of articles in the labour press, which late 20th century writer Jan Myrdal said were such high-level that they couldn't have served non-graduated university students of today. But full-time labour movement activists apparently appreciated them.
And even if the ministers didn't write, they had good sense of appointing knowledgeable people to important posts. Perhaps they weren't more intelligent than the leaders of our time – but their environment was certainly so. Present politicians seem to surround themselves mainly by PR people.
A wonderful promotion for reading the works of Russian murderers who killed millions of people across the USSR. Even the polemic with the marginalists is mentioned, but somehow they forgot to write about this killer’s other “achievements.”
For instance, in May 1918, Bukharin released a widely known brochure, The Program of the Communists, in which he theoretically justified the necessity of forced labor for the non-working classes.
Overall, Bukharin’s works from 1918–1921 were written under the strong influence of the “War communism” practice, which involved widespread use of non-economic coercion in the country’s economy (executions, deprivation of property rights, deportation to death camps, etc.).
A characteristic quote from this “remarkable” murderer comes from The Economics of the Transitional Period (Part X):
“From the perspective of a historically significant scale, proletarian coercion in all its forms—from executions to compulsory labor—is, paradoxical as it may sound, a method of shaping communist humanity out of the human material of the capitalist era.”
Bukharin’s death was just another gangster showdown among the bloodthirsty murderers who came to power with Lenin. I wouldn’t call this criminal a “great thinker.” An educated man who, for the sake of his flawed ideas and with his accomplices, destroyed millions of lives.
I read Thorstein Veblen's "The theory of the leissure class", originally published in 1912. It might have been part of the academic discussion in that time, but I did not know about Boukharin's text on this subject
Perhaps the ‘top down’ inflections of Soviet Marxism can be traced to 19th C ‘Naturphilosophie’ underpinning Engels’ post-Marx formulations of ‘dialectical materialism’ ( a concept not found in the latter’s work) through Kautsky’s assertion of the primacy of importing ‘revolutionary consciousness’ to the working class from the outside as it were. This genealogy lent itself to a ‘positivism’ which essentialised ‘forces of production’ conceived as technology as the motor of class struggle and hence so-called ‘historical laws’. Bukharin represented this scientistic interpretation of Marxism and was regarded by Lenin as a great theoretician. Trotsky’s work shows glimpses of a more ‘bottom up’ dialectic when he invokes Marx’s notion of “self-emancipation of the working class” and hence a different notion of consciousness is formed. I will now go and rummage around to find Lunacharsky’s ‘Revolutionary Silhouettes ’ for old times’ sake !
If you cut the last paragraph, which is drawing the usual propaganda conclusions of the liberal western bourgeoisie, who fought the Soviet experiment tooth and nail right from the start and finally succeeded in finding a willing capitalist executioner in Gorbachev, you might call this another nice piece of dabbling in intellectually meaningless liberal journalism oozing reactionary western superiority
"But Stalin’s excellent knowledge of literature, history and military affairs is without doubt, a fact recognized by no less an antagonist than Churchill."
Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke, himself a lifelong military pro, briefed Stalin several times and credited him with having 'a first-class military mind,' as Montgomery said of Mao, too.
I haven't read Bukharin since grad school eons ago. I remember not being at all impressed at the time. Regarding Lenin, a useful comparison is his attack on Pannekoek (Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder) and then Pannekoek's rejoinder (Lenin as Philosopher). It puts the putative intelligence of the Bolsheviks in perspective....
https://open.substack.com/pub/newamp/p/the-new-american-perspective?r=1fplc5&utm_medium=ios
You have referred to the current US administration as revolutionary, but I don't see the cream of the inteligencia rising to the top of this revolution. Mostly dregs.
Id rather have average leaders bringing stability and order while relying on experts in different fields than smart revolutionaries. How many people did “smart” Mao or Stalin or Lenin kill?
And we may include Winston Churchill here. But then, how many people did arrant idiots like ..., ..., ... etc. kill?
Dear Branko, it was all organized by Okhrana. The revolution was organized by Okhrana. It's time to read Joseph Fouche.