Dear ultra moderates, radical traditionalists and post-postmodernists:
I can imagine someone getting the wrong idea about Pirsig's apparent
fondness for eggheads and commies. "Oh my god!" they'd say, "Pirsig is a
Stalinist! He's a Maoist! He loves tyranny and mass murder, exploitation and
genocide!". I can imagine that, but it wouldn't be true and they'd be wrong.
In Pirsigian terms, the former Soviet Union failed to achieve their
revolution. It didn't latch. They slipped back to the social level so that
Stalin was never running the society based on any intellectual principled,
flawed by SOM or otherwise, and so Stalin was never a real socialist or
communist. He was Russia's most powerful Czar. The case in "communist" China
is more exotic and spicey, but is essentially the same.
You want an example of a socialist country? Canada. Best human rights record
in the world. Its a little dull, sure, but half of that is due to climate.
The point is that these ism that Pirsig puts on the side of evolution and
the intellect sometimes has little relation to people or movements that
adopt the label. Otherwise the people's REPUBLIC of China, the Irish
REPUBLICAN army, the Union of Soviet Socialist REPUBLICS and the REPUBLICAN
PARTY of America should all get together to discuss how much they have in
common.
"The advent of of both democratic and communistic socialism and the fascist
reaction to them has been the consequence of this earthquake" P266
"The hurricane of social forces ...was most strongly felt in Europe,
..where Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over
society, were confronted by the reactionary forces of fascism, a program
for the social control of intellect." P274
"The New Deal was many things, but at the center of it all was the belief
that intellectual planning by the government was necessary for society to
regain its health. ...it was also a new deal for the intelllectuals of
America." P274
"That's what neither the socialists nor the capitalists ever got figured
out. From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism.
Its a higher form of evolution. It is an intellecually guided society, not
just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what gives
socialism its drive." P220
DMB
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