To paraphrase Voltaire, no mean anti-Semite (avant la lettre) himself, if the Jews did not exist, the Tsars would have had to invent us. I mean, we were perfect bogeymen for them—I would like to avoid the notion that Official Nationality was tailored to us, though I think it unlikely that its development wasn't to a small extent conditioned by our presence as A Problem.
Sadly, Dostoyevsky also became a mouthpiece for Russian “official nationality”, after being psychologically broken by a mock execution and Siberian exile for political activity.
Putin’s version of it is actually a pretty good instance of the Marxist concept of ideology - i.e. a set of ideas for making sense of the world whose function is to mask and obscure social and economic realities. Given the cosmopolitan, kleptocratic and gangster-capitalist governance of modern Russia, an inward-looking, ethno-nationalistic appeal to tradition and Christianity could not be a more fitting illustration of how ideology works.
Indeed, and also, like Dostoyevsky, very much a cosmopolitan who spent a lot of time in western Europe. Almost calls to mind guys like Sayyid Qutb, the founder of Salafi jihadism (and many others of his ilk) who were radicalized back into tradition by exposure to the "decadent" west (apologies for the overreach).
A question: by that definition is Marxism then not, in Marxist terms, an ideology, as it's attempting to do the opposite of that mystification?
If that's the case, it would resonate beautifully with the many American Christians who insist that True Christianity—which, strangely, they think is _not_ practised exclusively in Scotland—is 'not a religion'.
Not really, because the concept of ideology is always intended to describe not just an intellectual process but rather the relation between “official” ideas and the concrete expression of political and economic power, with the former systematically functioning to obfuscate the latter. I suppose in that sense Marxist economic theory functioned as an ideology during much of Soviet history.
…but not to belabour the point: If a Marxist thought a Marxist description of reality, official or no, were completely accurate and complete, so it didn't obfuscate, would that still be to them an 'ideology'?
No, I was thinking that the Marxist would believe their description to be absolutely true and non-obfuscating. Since you described Marxists as holding that ideology is there to obscure reality, to (my words now) mystify actual property relations, to them it's not an ideology but instead Science.
Can you explain what you mean by "mystifying property relations"? Do you mean something like the (highly contested) labour theory of value? If so, I would just say that it's an simply an economic theory (again, highly contested and subject to falsification) that attempts to describe the fundamentally exploitative nature of labour/capital relations, whereas the theory of ideology is distinctly and separately just a methodology for thinking about the relation between how power describes itself vs. how it objectively operates. The first might be what Marxists used to think of as "science", the second is more properly considered political philosophy or even a type of epistemology.
"Decadence" is a concept with a history; and it's good to see this part of that history laid out so well. The Russian imperialists seem unaware that there's more decadence in their own leadership than there is in the West's--so far. My own concept of decadence goes back to the Western European and American popular take on the history of the late Roman Republic and early Empire. The nutshell comparison occurs to me as I juxtapose the New York Times "Style" section (formerly the "Living" section that my father dubbed the "Having" section) with the front pages since February 24 on the war in Ukraine. (Who cares if others lack food, water and shelter, so long as you can have a Rolex?) As my New England ancestors might have characterized the pre-decadent ethic: "Use up. Wear Out. Make Do. Do Without." An epitome for our current ethic of waste, trivial ambitions, and moral indifference has not occurred to me yet, but I'm working on it. One possibility is the line Tom Lehrer sang about the American South, "Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home."
I'll note that Imperial Japan's official justification for conquering China was that it was (as I recall one writer of the time saying) 'decadent, like an elder brother who has fallen into drunkenness and frequenting brothels'.
There, extirpating decadence had to be invoked against the feeling of cultural inferiority felt by many Japanese men in the upper classes only one generation removed from writing exclusively in their version of Classical Chinese; when Russians and American Rightists invoke it, it must be against the material superiority of the West, cultural trends they hate and all. (As I write this, Republican senators are grasping for excuses to vote against a black woman that don't include 'black' or 'woman' in their wording….)
To paraphrase Voltaire, no mean anti-Semite (avant la lettre) himself, if the Jews did not exist, the Tsars would have had to invent us. I mean, we were perfect bogeymen for them—I would like to avoid the notion that Official Nationality was tailored to us, though I think it unlikely that its development wasn't to a small extent conditioned by our presence as A Problem.
Sadly, Dostoyevsky also became a mouthpiece for Russian “official nationality”, after being psychologically broken by a mock execution and Siberian exile for political activity.
Putin’s version of it is actually a pretty good instance of the Marxist concept of ideology - i.e. a set of ideas for making sense of the world whose function is to mask and obscure social and economic realities. Given the cosmopolitan, kleptocratic and gangster-capitalist governance of modern Russia, an inward-looking, ethno-nationalistic appeal to tradition and Christianity could not be a more fitting illustration of how ideology works.
and gogol
Indeed, and also, like Dostoyevsky, very much a cosmopolitan who spent a lot of time in western Europe. Almost calls to mind guys like Sayyid Qutb, the founder of Salafi jihadism (and many others of his ilk) who were radicalized back into tradition by exposure to the "decadent" west (apologies for the overreach).
A question: by that definition is Marxism then not, in Marxist terms, an ideology, as it's attempting to do the opposite of that mystification?
If that's the case, it would resonate beautifully with the many American Christians who insist that True Christianity—which, strangely, they think is _not_ practised exclusively in Scotland—is 'not a religion'.
Not really, because the concept of ideology is always intended to describe not just an intellectual process but rather the relation between “official” ideas and the concrete expression of political and economic power, with the former systematically functioning to obfuscate the latter. I suppose in that sense Marxist economic theory functioned as an ideology during much of Soviet history.
Thank-you.
…but not to belabour the point: If a Marxist thought a Marxist description of reality, official or no, were completely accurate and complete, so it didn't obfuscate, would that still be to them an 'ideology'?
So that Marxist would be believing X to be both true and false at the same time?
No, I was thinking that the Marxist would believe their description to be absolutely true and non-obfuscating. Since you described Marxists as holding that ideology is there to obscure reality, to (my words now) mystify actual property relations, to them it's not an ideology but instead Science.
Can you explain what you mean by "mystifying property relations"? Do you mean something like the (highly contested) labour theory of value? If so, I would just say that it's an simply an economic theory (again, highly contested and subject to falsification) that attempts to describe the fundamentally exploitative nature of labour/capital relations, whereas the theory of ideology is distinctly and separately just a methodology for thinking about the relation between how power describes itself vs. how it objectively operates. The first might be what Marxists used to think of as "science", the second is more properly considered political philosophy or even a type of epistemology.
"Decadence" is a concept with a history; and it's good to see this part of that history laid out so well. The Russian imperialists seem unaware that there's more decadence in their own leadership than there is in the West's--so far. My own concept of decadence goes back to the Western European and American popular take on the history of the late Roman Republic and early Empire. The nutshell comparison occurs to me as I juxtapose the New York Times "Style" section (formerly the "Living" section that my father dubbed the "Having" section) with the front pages since February 24 on the war in Ukraine. (Who cares if others lack food, water and shelter, so long as you can have a Rolex?) As my New England ancestors might have characterized the pre-decadent ethic: "Use up. Wear Out. Make Do. Do Without." An epitome for our current ethic of waste, trivial ambitions, and moral indifference has not occurred to me yet, but I'm working on it. One possibility is the line Tom Lehrer sang about the American South, "Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home."
I'll note that Imperial Japan's official justification for conquering China was that it was (as I recall one writer of the time saying) 'decadent, like an elder brother who has fallen into drunkenness and frequenting brothels'.
There, extirpating decadence had to be invoked against the feeling of cultural inferiority felt by many Japanese men in the upper classes only one generation removed from writing exclusively in their version of Classical Chinese; when Russians and American Rightists invoke it, it must be against the material superiority of the West, cultural trends they hate and all. (As I write this, Republican senators are grasping for excuses to vote against a black woman that don't include 'black' or 'woman' in their wording….)
I love the classics, perhaps we could even describe the west as Decadent.