Stalinism
from Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System
(Pantheon Books, 1985) p. 16
from Moshe Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate (The New Press, 1995)
from S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008)
Boris N. Mironov, "Peasant Popular Culture and the Origins of Soviet Authoritarianism," in Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg, eds. (Princeton University Press, 1994)
The direct and
indirect impact of
rural religiousity (or for that matter, religious beliefs in society at
large) on Soviet politics and culture is not easy to show convincingly,
although some broad phenomena are well know and their religious origins
obvious. A culture so deeply imbued with different creeds,
inherited from ages of cultural experiences and preserved in different
stages of integrity or decomposition (sometimes even recomposition[new
right]) until the most recent times, must have colored the feelings and
thoughts of people reacting to the tremendous changes that occurred
around and to them. . . A mentality still strongly addicted
to
the trappings of magic, a Manichaean view of the real and the imaginary
worlds--Christ and the saints versus the Devil and his countless hosts
of lesser spirits--coupled with remnants of older cults, must also have
an impact in many still unexplored ways on the polity itself, however
secular and committed to rationalism. At times of crisis and
tremendous tensions, the rational is under strain, too, and neither
modernizing states nor modern individuals are that immune to the less
rational springs of power and of political strategems, if they are
available. Even if the problem, as conceived by the state, is
simply to counter backward influences and superstitions, the idea of
combatting a cult by some countercult is already an example of a real
impact of the very object to be exorcised.
from Moshe Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate (The New Press, 1995)
.
. . Stalinism recreated
in Russia, although just provisionally, the last model of a sui generis
"agrarian kingdom. (p. 13)
"Because of the destruction of so many previous cultural, political, and historical advances, the country and the new state became more open and vulnerable to some of the more archaic features of the Russian historico-political tradition and less open to the deployment of its forward-looking and progressive features." (p. 69)
"Because of the destruction of so many previous cultural, political, and historical advances, the country and the new state became more open and vulnerable to some of the more archaic features of the Russian historico-political tradition and less open to the deployment of its forward-looking and progressive features." (p. 69)
from S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008)
if one does not give
due weight
to the resilience of 'tradition', it bcomes difficult to explain the
apparent resurgence of 'traditional' values and orientations during
what Crane Brinton called the 'thermidorean' phaes of revolution, i.e.
high Stalinism in the Soviet Union and high Maoism in the People's
Republic of China . . . " (p. 21)
Boris N. Mironov, "Peasant Popular Culture and the Origins of Soviet Authoritarianism," in Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg, eds. (Princeton University Press, 1994)
Josef Stalin, Icon of
Bureaucratic Barbarism
Only big capital
possessed the
qualities that were useful to progress: its ability to organize on a
large scale, its tendency to plan and its sense of discipline.
This was why the Workers' State should conclude an alliance
with
it in order to combat the pernicious influence of the already tottering
petite bourgeoisie.
Lenin said: "The proletarian state must form a bloc or an
alliance with 'state capitalism' against the petit bourgeois
element."
Also see John B. Hatch, "Labor Conflict in Moscow, 1921-1925," in
Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch, and Stites, Russia in the Era of NEP
(Indiana University Press, 1991)from Moshe Lewin, Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate (The New Press, 1995)
The
socialist idea (and ideology) was obviously about more than
just
overcoming the effects of a form of property; it was also about
eliminating the effects of deeply embedded and oppressive structures,
including punitive and militaristic states, as well as a constraining
class system--the proletariat, even if called "working class," being
one of them. The latter is often forgotten: The proletariat
is,
in itself, not anything ideal; it is a sever impediment to overcome.
And in Marx's conception, socialism would lead to the
disappearance of the proletariat and its transformation into an
educated middle class of the future, though the term middle class
was not used in this way by socialists. After all,
not just a
ruling class but economic classes in general, as they were historically
known, were constraining--if not directly oppressive--structures. (p.
150)
S.A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-1918 (Cambridge Univesity Press, 1983), pp. 253-266
Validmir Lenin and the Bourgeois
Ideal
from V. I. Lenin, Better Fewer, But Better ( Written: March 2, 1923)
In
the matter of improving our state apparatus, the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection should not, in my opinion,
either
strive after quantity or hurry. We have so far been able to
devote so little thought and attention to the efficiency of
our
state apparatus that it would now be quite legitimate if we
took
special care to secure its thorough organisation, and
concentrated in the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection
a staff of
workers really abreast of the times, i.e., not
inferior to the best West-European standards.
For a socialist
republic this condition is, of course, too modest. But our
experience of the first five years has fairly crammed our
heads
with mistrust and scepticism. These qualities assert
themselves
involuntarily when, for example,
we hear people dilating at too
great length and too flippantly on "proletarian" culture. For
a
start, we should be satisfied with real bourgeois
culture; for a start
we should be glad to dispense with the crude types of
pre-bourgeois culture, i.e., bureaucratic culture or serf culture, etc.
In matters of culture, haste and sweeping
measures are most
harmful. Many of our young writers and Communists should get
this
well into their heads.
Thus, in the matter of our state apparatus we should now draw the conclusion from our past experience that it would be better to proceed more slowly.
Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, has not yet reached the stage of a culture, that has receded into the distant past. I say culture deliberately, because in these matters we can only regard as achieved what has become part and parcel of our culture, of our social life, our habits. We might say that the good in our social system has not been properly studied, understood, and taken to heart; it has been hastily grasped at; it has not been verified or tested, corroborated by experience, and not made durable, etc. Of course, it could not be otherwise in a revolutionary epoch, when development proceeded at such break-neck speed that in a matter of five years we passed from tsarism to the Soviet system.
culture; for a start
we should be glad to dispense with the crude types of
pre-bourgeois culture, i.e., bureaucratic culture or serf culture, etc.
In matters of culture, haste and sweeping
measures are most
harmful. Many of our young writers and Communists should get
this
well into their heads.Thus, in the matter of our state apparatus we should now draw the conclusion from our past experience that it would be better to proceed more slowly.
Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, has not yet reached the stage of a culture, that has receded into the distant past. I say culture deliberately, because in these matters we can only regard as achieved what has become part and parcel of our culture, of our social life, our habits. We might say that the good in our social system has not been properly studied, understood, and taken to heart; it has been hastily grasped at; it has not been verified or tested, corroborated by experience, and not made durable, etc. Of course, it could not be otherwise in a revolutionary epoch, when development proceeded at such break-neck speed that in a matter of five years we passed from tsarism to the Soviet system.
Lenin’s
Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow,
1965, Volume 33, pages 487 - 502
First Published: Pravda (No. 49), March 4, 1923
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1999
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
(emphasis added)
First Published: Pravda (No. 49), March 4, 1923
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1999
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
(emphasis added)
The
Impression given by Soviet and many Western presentations of an
ummuttable "essence" called "the Communist Party" has to be dispelled.
First . . . the party consisted of a network of clandestine
committees, not more than 24,000 strong, at the beginning of 1917.
Was the party before 1917 really the disciplined and centralized squad of "professional revolutionaries" who did as told by the top leader? Would this "classical" Leninist model withstand the scrutiny of a good monograph? The party represented more than just professional revolutionaries. There were elections, conferences, congresses, debates. . . . It is clear, though, that the Bolshevik Party was an unusual organization. It was not bracing itself to take power directly, because its leaders did not expect the coming revolution to be immediately socialist; at least, they were not at all sure what its character would be.
Dramatic changes occurred in this party in 1917. It became at the very least a different genus of the same species, if not an entirely different species. It was now a legal organization operating in a mulitparty system; it grew in size to perhaps more than 250,000 members, and it operated as a democratic political party, under a strong authoritative leadership. Lenin was at the helm, but he was flanked at the apex by a group of leaders, below whom were influential networks of lower cadres who participated actively in policy making. If his colleagues accepted Lenin's line, it ws mostly after lively debtes and having sounded out the moods and opinions of the rank and file. Factions existed and were fully acknowledged as the party's normal way of doing business. At this stage, under Lenin's proddings, the party was aiming at power, but, again, not without serious diffrences of opinion about the modalities of taking and exercising it.
Was the party before 1917 really the disciplined and centralized squad of "professional revolutionaries" who did as told by the top leader? Would this "classical" Leninist model withstand the scrutiny of a good monograph? The party represented more than just professional revolutionaries. There were elections, conferences, congresses, debates. . . . It is clear, though, that the Bolshevik Party was an unusual organization. It was not bracing itself to take power directly, because its leaders did not expect the coming revolution to be immediately socialist; at least, they were not at all sure what its character would be.
Dramatic changes occurred in this party in 1917. It became at the very least a different genus of the same species, if not an entirely different species. It was now a legal organization operating in a mulitparty system; it grew in size to perhaps more than 250,000 members, and it operated as a democratic political party, under a strong authoritative leadership. Lenin was at the helm, but he was flanked at the apex by a group of leaders, below whom were influential networks of lower cadres who participated actively in policy making. If his colleagues accepted Lenin's line, it ws mostly after lively debtes and having sounded out the moods and opinions of the rank and file. Factions existed and were fully acknowledged as the party's normal way of doing business. At this stage, under Lenin's proddings, the party was aiming at power, but, again, not without serious diffrences of opinion about the modalities of taking and exercising it.
cont.
on today's crude materialism
from Leonid Heretz, Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture Under the Last Tsars (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
The development of modernity into materialism in the ninetenth century has intensified our difficulties in understanding religion-based traditional cultures. For the various materialist schools of thought, religious ideas have no existence in themselves, but are merely reflections of socio-economic realities, and they represent an inferior mode of comprehension or a "false consciousness." Although interpretations based on this assumption have reached new heights of subtlety and insight, in the Russian case the results have usually been more meager and crude. Present-day Western scholars might be tempted to lay all the blame for "vulgar materialism" on now-discredited Soviet Marxism and to minimize the extent to which we are all living "in an age in which the understanding of anything that surpasses the material level has practically ceased to exist." [P. Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West, p. 50] If anything, Marxism, with its fundamental humanism, does not even approach the utter materialism of present-day Western trends such as neoliberal economic theory, "rational choice" political science, neurochemical psychology, and reductionist Darwinist/geneticist sociology. Given the pervasive materialism of our contemporary worldview, we must make a great effort of empathy to understand the culture of people vitally concerned with things which mean nothing to us. (p. 9)
"The introduction of new ideas that might have undermined traditional Tsarism was greatly hindered by the linguisitic-conceptual chasm that separated educated society from the mass of the population." p.170 (also see Mironov)
cont.
Once the party was in power, iin conditions of a civil war, another deep transformation took place: the party became miitarized and highly centralized, in a state of almost permanent mobilization and disciplined action. . . .
Another important factor for change in the party was the fluctuating membership and shifting socal composition characteristic of those years. . . . the party entered a period of hectic growth when mass support for the regime was at its lowest--in 1920 and 1921. . . .
Towrd the spring of 1921, party statistics showed that 90 percent of the membership was now of Civil War vintage. [note 22: Istoriia KPSS, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 70 states that 90 percent of the membership at the beginning of 1921 joined in 1918-20. Thus it is plausible to hypothesize that the party ws built anew in those years from a different human material.] Prerevolutionary cadres, even those who joined in 1917, were drowned in a mass of new entrants . . .
After the 1921 purge that discarded, probably, one-third of the membership, a new, powerful influx occurred, and during the next five years the membership reached the one million mark. The majority would now be made up of entrants who joined during the NEP, bringing to the party their own political culture and culture tout court. In the wake of these massive changes in social composition, the "old guard" was still at the top and running the show,but their numbers, stamina, even their health, were slackening. Could they assimilate, reeducate in their own image, the enormous mass of "crude" newcomers? If not, what would stop this mass from having a pervasive impact on the party and from transforming it in its own image?
There is evidence that many of the "old guard" despaired, overwhelmed and besieged as they were by huge numbers of people whose culture and mentality differed from their own. The Civil War entrants
It is common nowadays within the world of popular punditry to talk about how Stalinism was the logical outcome of Marxism and Socialism. This is not only a profound error. It is a reflection, ironically enough, of the same forces of primitive reaction in the West (and esp in usa) that made Stalinism possible. One has only to consider the political geneology of anti-Communism in the United States, its character as a mode of politically motivated demonization, and its social roots in the most provincial, reactionary, and violent parts of American society. A consequence of this was the adaptation by liberal society to the terror symbolized by McCarthyism, an adaptation that took the form of a desperate embrace of anti-comunism, as if that would shield them from the fundamentally anti-cosmopolitan crusade of the Right. (See Ressentiment and the Mechanisms of Defense.)
from
the New York Times, March 17, 2011, "Citing
Near Misses, Report Faults Both Nuclear Regulators and Operators,"
by TOM ZELLER JR.
Progress
Energy, a utility operating five nuclear facilities in the
Carolinas and Florida, was singled out as being particularly
problematic, with four of its plants being among the 14 that required
special inspections.
In one instance described by David Lochbaum, the author of the report and the director of the nuclear safety program for the organization, a high-voltage power cable at Progress Energy’s Robinson nuclear power plant near Florence, S.C., failed, causing a fire.
“Ensuing equipment failures and operator mistakes — quite a large number of mistakes,” Mr. Lochbaum said in a prepared statement, “transformed a relatively routine event into a very serious near-miss.”
“Illustrative of the unbelievably poor worker performance contributing to this near miss is this fact,” he added. “Hours after the fire had been put out, workers re-energized the cable that had started it all. It was still failed, and ignited a second fire.” (emphasis added)
In one instance described by David Lochbaum, the author of the report and the director of the nuclear safety program for the organization, a high-voltage power cable at Progress Energy’s Robinson nuclear power plant near Florence, S.C., failed, causing a fire.
“Ensuing equipment failures and operator mistakes — quite a large number of mistakes,” Mr. Lochbaum said in a prepared statement, “transformed a relatively routine event into a very serious near-miss.”
“Illustrative of the unbelievably poor worker performance contributing to this near miss is this fact,” he added. “Hours after the fire had been put out, workers re-energized the cable that had started it all. It was still failed, and ignited a second fire.” (emphasis added)
adapting sociotechnical systems to cognitive decay
U.S.
executives
ranked the
difficulty of finding high-quality talent among their top
“pain
points,” citing a lack of skilled workers at both the
engineering
and the basic-skills level. One problem is that U.S. students are not
being encouraged to pursue science and technology-related fields. An
executive described the challenge: “We offer scholarship
programs
to the children All of these problems weaken the work
force—and
the ability of the United States to innovate. The executives
we
spoke to believe that many of them stem from a decline in the
country’s education system, and many had strong opinions in
this
area. One respondent observed, “We’ve
been building
workarounds because employees can’t do basic math.
We’d
rather have smart people thinking on their feet, but we’ve
had to
automate.” Another said, “I even need
floor
employees.
You would be shocked at how many I see who can’t
read and
write.” One executive summed up the problem: “The
quality
of our schools is slipping because they are not accountable to any real
quality standards.”The education deficit creates a talent
deficit
in the United States. (emphasis added)
The impact of this new focus on innovation and R&D not only led to the development of new partnerships between tertiary education and industry in Finland, but also had a profound effect on the primary and secondary education sector. Finnish employers sent very strong signals to the schools about the kinds of knowledge, skills and dispositions young people needed in order to be successful in the new economy. Finnish industry leaders not only promoted the importance of mathematics, science and technology in the formal curriculum, but they also advocated for more attention to creativity, problem-solving, teamwork and cross-curricular projects in schools. In spite of some criticism in the 1990s, one example of the kind of message that corporate leaders were delivering to the schools is this statement from a senior Nokia manager whom Sahlberg interviewed during this period in his role as chair of a task force on the national science curriculum:
if I hire a
youngster who
doesn’t know all the mathematics or physics that is needed to
work here, I have colleagues here who can easily teach those things.
But if I get somebody who doesn’t know how to work with other
people, how to think differently or how to create original ideas and
somebody who is afraid of making a mistake, there is nothing we can do
here. Do what you have to do to keep our education system
up-to-date
but don’t take away [the] creativity and open-mindedness that
we
now have in our fine peruskoulu.
(Sahlberg, forthcoming)
implicit in this last sentence is the Nokia manager’s belief that the comprehensive schools were already paying attention to developing at least some of the traits that employers in the new Finnish economy were seeking. in fact, it is hard to imagine how an information and knowledge-based economy could have grown up so quickly in the 1990s if the Finnish schools hadn’t already been producing graduates with the kind of flexibility and openness to innovation that industry was demanding. The development of these kinds of qualities is at least as much a function of the culture and climate of schools as of the formal curriculum.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.
"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.
So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.
Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said.
Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.
"We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas," he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have "outsourced" technical and customer support workers.
"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as AT&T's repatriation of service positions and education grants, he added.
40% More Manufacturing Jobs, But Skills Shortage Getting Worse
Oct 13, 2011 7:35 AM
Recent reports from Reuters note that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs out there in the US, but companies can’t find the right skilled workers to fill them – and the situation looks to be getting worse.
Although there are around 14 million Americans unemployed, a survey by Manpower Group found that a record 52 percent of U.S. employers are have difficulty filling critical positions within their organizations -- up from 14 percent in 2010.
The reason? They can’t find the people with the right levels of skills, especially advanced STEM skills.
Unemployment in manufacturing is at 8.4 percent, below the overall rate of 9.1 percent. According to the Labor Department's latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, there were 240,000 open jobs in manufacturing in August, up by 38.7 percent from a year ago.
The strongest job growth is concentrated in healthcare and the scientific, technical and computer fields, which usually require at least a post-secondary education.
"The old jobs are not coming back. We need to invest in education and training to get people prepared to fill these high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the future," said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corp., which has 3,000 vacancies nationwide that it’s finding hard to fill.
Is the worsening skills shortage hurting your company’s hiring plans and hindering growth?
see full report: Boiling point? The skills gap in U.S. manufacturing
Take pisa and Stewart-Time as poles defining a force-field shaping a phenomenological space. Then the question is not only to what extent, but in what way these two semiotic bundles are related.
PISA is the kind of standardized
test the proponents of educational reform are so fond of. Yet
it
is designed, conducted and
analyzed by an international group strongly
infuenced by Cultural Historical Activity Theory---a red-tainted
intellectual and pedagogical orientation ivoloved with the highest
degree of educational achievement.Unfortunately for the average America, in the spirit of American anti-Communism American elites were sucked into a politics of hysterical exlusion of modern thought. An unanticipated effect of this has been a deerailing and suppression of Progressive America, especially insofar as cognitive development is concerned. This was the other other "America" whose chief characteristics were its cosmopolitanism and its level of cogntive performativity (Ceci: context)
To accept anything resembling CHAT-aligned folk is anathama in the semiosphere of the United States. One of the effects of this is pisa chart.