Ralph Dumain:

>>

Having an objective understanding of history is important, regardless of our
feelings about it. Hegel can be seen as (one of) the greatest of his time
in establishing a method for objective understanding of history, albeit in
an inverted, idealist form. There is a difference, however, between
understanding history and sanctifying it. The latter stance serves to crush
the individual and regiment the intellectual into passive acceptance or
active complicity with crimes being committed. To say no one has the right
to judge eliminates the element of individual responsibility for what
happens next, which must never be occluded.
<<

The problem with all this is that you are addressing a strawman, not Hegel's
(or my) position.

***
1. First question: what do you mean by "inverted, idealist form"?

This criticism of Hegel's philosophy is not accurate, because Hegel's
philosophy is the tentative of dialectically reconciling being with thought.
This does not mean (as Bob Fanelli's fantasies seem to imply) that "whatever
I think" is also "real". This mean that the apparently irreductible
contradiction between being and thought can actually be "thought" and
"understood" by using Hegel's philosophy. That means that what is rational,
if it is rational, must also have the stength to actualise itself in
history. Otherwise this rationality is a mere chimera.

Whatever philosophical tradition has called it, Hegel's philosophy is so
much more "materialist" than you can actually imagine. Each philosophy with
an immanent point of view is also somehow materialist.

***
2. Second question: is there really a difference between understanding
history and sanctifying it?

I admit it, this is a provocative issue.
According to most Hegel's contemporaries, there was no real distinction
between "materialism", "divinisation" of reality and "hybris". Declaring
that the rational is the actual and that the actual is the rational meant
declaring that what had happened since 1789 had a logic within itself. Most
Hegel's contemporaries thought of the Revolution as a divine punishment for
a bad humanity (among them, intellectuals of the calibre of Joseph De
Maistre).

But neither Hegel, nor myself, are "sanctifying" anything.

All I wrote is that Hegel's philosophy does not leave space for any kind of
eschatology. There is no "Heaven", there is no "perfect Republic" waiting
for us at the end of the tunnel. These ideas are just chimerical
abstractions with a very low degree of rationality within them. The
dialectical nature of our world is an objective feature of it. Dialectics
will never cease to caracterise our relations.

The leaders of communist societies have learned this hard lesson on their
own skin. They believed they were building a classless society, the Heaven
on this Earth. But this project was just the ideological expression of a
chimera coming out of the enthusiasm of a few revolutionaries. But
organising a communist society is something very different than organising a
"permanent revolution" (in Trotsky's sense). Enthusiasm can only play an
enticing role in it, then you need competence and a strong dose of realism.

***
3. Third question: do we have the right to judge?

You wrote:

>>

To say no one has the right to judge eliminates the element of individual
responsibility for what happens next, which must never be occluded.
<<

Well, I agree. Nobody has ever denied the possibility of judgment. History
(the progress in the consciousness of freedom) is actually a continuous, not
very consistent expression of judgments on his own past (Weltgeschichte ist
Weltgericht). According to Hegel, the "Spirit" is first of all "Subject",
therefore history is value-oriented, is not a Spinoza-kind-of world "sub
specie aeternitatis", where everything can be accepted because it is just
another piece of God's puzzle.

The only problem is that we cannot identify this possibility of judgment
with the individual's moral viewpoint (the very viewpoint that makes someone
outrageously affirm that "Stalin was just a butcher").

To judge, one must understand - objectively - what its past History means.
To really judge Stalin's role in history, one must understand the world
Stalin was acting in (and on), and not "abstract" Stalin's objectively awful
crimes from the context, in order to proclaim (implicitly or by stealth) the
"superiority" of the West (whose contemporary awful crimes in the colonies
are never remembered).

To grow out of Stalin, moral indignation is not enough. We need to
understand the objective historical conditions of the existence of Stalin
and judge whether all of Stalin must be thrown in the trashbin of history or
not.

It is my opinion that we would have never had 70 years of communist
societies without Stalin's work. I suspect that this is the underlying
reason why there is such a strong attack (and such a strong grudge) against
Stalin (sometimes using "stalinist" methods against its own creator) in the
field of capitalist ideologues.


****

Finally, you wrote:

>>

On another list, we might have a discussion of the identical psychodynamics
of Catholicism and Stalinism, which might well apply to the mentality of the
Italian left.
<<

This would deserve a long reply, but -- as you say -- it is material for
another list. I cannot abstain to notice, however, that my ideas are not the
ideas of what you could call the "Italian left" (let's admit for a moment
that there is such a thing under these particular historical conditions).
Please don't confuse my position with an "Italian" position. Nationality has
nothing to do with it.

But frankly, if we must continue to speak in terms of nationalities, it is
well known that the "Italian Left" (the real one) was indeed kept out of
power for more than 40 years because of American "oppression". American
sponsored and equipped "Stay Behind" structures were demanteled in Italy
(actually in the very region where I come from) only in 1991.

Voters in 1976 had given the Italian Communist Party more than 35% of the
votes, actually more than the votes received by the Christian Democrats. And
we were never in power, because the US did not want a communist party to
rule Italy. They were ready to stage a military coup. This is now a well
documented history.

A history we should objectively understand, and not sanctify (as you said).


All the best,
Maurizio Canfora