Quote of the Day: Red Terror VS Stalinist Totalitarianism

A quote from Slavoj Zizek about the difference between the terror of Leninism to Stalinism.

Quoth Slavoj Zizek:

Even in the most violent phases of the Leninist dictatorship, when those who opposed the revolution were brutally deprived of their right to (public free) speech, they were not deprived of their right to silence: they were allowed to withdraw into inner exile. […]For Stalinism, however, even such silence resonated too much. Not only were masses of people required to show their support by attending big public rallies, artists and scientists also had to compromise themselves by participating in active measures such as signing official proclamations, or paying lip-service to Stalin and the official Marxism. If, in the Leninist dictatorship, one could be shot for what one said, in Stalinism one could be shot for what one did not say. This was followed through to the very end: suicide itself, the ultimate desperate withdrawal into silence, was condemned by Stalin as the last and highest act of treason against the Party. This distinction between Leninism and Stalinism reflects their general attitude towards society: for the former, society is a field of merciless struggle for power, a struggle which is openly admitted; for the latter, the conflict is, sometimes almost imperceptibly, redefined as that of a healthy society against what is excluded from it—vermin, insects, traitors who are less than human.

Amirably shows the brutal increase of mind control required to maintain control of the system. It admirably shows that Lenin was no saint either.

(h/t Plagal)

What do corporations resemble?

I am not the most experienced person but I have a bit of it in working in small & big national or multinational companies. In any company I’ve worked for, I’ve noticed a very distinct authoritarian way of doing things but I never got around to thinking exactly what is is. Fortunately, my recent post regarding proprietary software companies led me to an insight on this.

A corporation works in a very distinct way…

WASHINGTON - SEPTEMBER 12:  (L-R) John Krenick...
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I am not the most experienced person but I have a bit of it in working in small & big national or multinational companies. In any company I’ve worked for, I’ve noticed a very distinct authoritarian way of doing things but I never got around to thinking exactly what is is. Fortunately, my recent post regarding proprietary software companies led me to an insight on this.

A corporation works in a very distinct way.

  • Non-Management workers in it, have no political rights, as in, they have no say in the direction the company takes and in the choice of the people who rule them. Indeed, the people who rule them, are selected by each other with small or no oversight.
  • The workers of a company are always assumed to be working for the best of the company. Those who are not or who do not fully align themselves with the wishes of management, are ejected.
  • The workers of a company do not receive the full result of their work. There must always be some profit which is the difference from what the company makes and what it has to pay on workers, maintenance and raw materials. Thus, one can consider that the profit, divided equally among the workers, is the “tax” they have to pay in order for the whole company to prosper.
  • Workers can be discarded or moved around at any point. Without them having any say in it.
  • Barring external factors (as in, a larger state), workers have no rights. One cannot demand a bigger pay or less hours, or a pension. They will only receive what bonuses the company deems right in regards to what is best for the company. In short, they will only grudgingly give a bonus if they are cornered.
  • The Management has all the power in their hands in hierarchical order. The owner answers to no-one. The owner alone has the last word on “what is best” for the company.

There is one political system that very closely resembles this type of setup. “Socialist” Dictatorships, of which the purest form is Stalinism (But Fascism, Nazism, Maoism etc are all very similar)

In Stalinism, which unfortunately is what most people think of when they think of “Socialism”, the state is simply the ultimate Capitalist. All the conditions I described above apply to Stalinism but in the place of Company, we simply put “Country” or “The Party”.

We can easily agree that such political systems are bankrypt. I know very few people who would wish to live in a Socialist Dictatorship and there are quite a few people, especially US Americans who love to call their opponents “Socialists”, who find the perceived antonym to be the best possibility: Capitalist Democracy.

But my question is this: Do you really have a Democracy when your society’s basic group for production is organised like a Dictatorship? Doesn’t this fact undermine your whole concept of democracy?

Indeed, this is true. Democracy has become a farce of hypocricy under this setup. Because people are living a significant part of their daily lives within a mini-dictatorship, they are conditioned to think in a similar vein. The workers, if they care to at all, only exercise a political action twice per decade and maintain an illusion of democracy. The management live in a constant state of power and thus find it only natural to extend this state to the rest of their lives.

It should come thus as no surprise that Corporations were best buddies with Fascist regimes ((Not with Socialist Dictatorships though, as those actually took their power away and gave it to the state officials instead, making them equal to the workers)) who’s rampart cronyism gives corporations eventually absolute power over the whole country.

Like seeks like.

It is the biggest irony that for all the U.S. American’s foaming at the mouth against “the evils of socialism”, they are more than happy to work their whole lives in exactly the same state they would be, were their fears to materialize.

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