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TORNA ALLA PAGINA PRECEDENTE

 

 

1)      Richard Pipes demolishes the communism  

2)      the failure of the communism

3)      Memory against utopia

4)      Why does the moral duty of the anticommunism exist?  

5)      The denied history: the silence in Italy on the communist crimes  

6)      The history of the communist idea in the '900: the interpretation of F. Furet  

7)      Left heroes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOP DELLA PAGINA

Max Bruschi 

Richard Pipes demolishes the communism 

drawn by The Newspaper March 10 th 2003. 

 

The idea of the possible constitution of a perfect society accompanies the western political thought since its formation. From her "Republic" of Plato, passing through some heresies medioevali, the "Utopia" of Thomas More and the elaborations of the enlightenment eighteenth-century, astute right-hand arrives in the hands of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Where it assumes, on the wake of the idealism hegeliano sprinkled of darwinism, even the scientific crisma of the inevitability. Staying, cammin doing, substantially unchanged in two essential lines. The first one, the abolition of the private ownership and the community property. The second, the installation of a totalitarian regime, appointed to the most narrow social control, price held acceptable for the construction of a new humanity. In thing the practical application of the two principles is translated, it is what it notices.  

 

Nevertheless, the ideal maintains today still its charm. The same resounding collapse of the regimes of over "iron curtain" you/he/she has not dragged completely with itself the communist theory that was the base of it. For the irreducible ones, the indisputable ones "human errors" I am note solo such, and don't invalidate the goodness of the principles. In front of such pretension, there is not list of crimes and corpses that holds.  

 

Richard Pipes, American historian specialized in Countries of the east, a "palmarès" enviable to the service of the American administration (from senior George Bush to Ronald Reagan), he/she takes paper, pen and calamaio and it shows that so it is not, that the actions of the men were somehow by-return to the principles. To do him/it, squaderna the word "communism" in his/her three aspects: an ideal, a program and a regime established for turning the ideal into reality. The all, in two hundred pages of bright prose that stings straight to the firm ground. "Communism. A history" (Rizzoli, pagg. 236, European 16) part note from the criticism to the ideal. If Karl Marx had employed 1400 pages of arduous technical prose to explain, in the "Capital", his/her theory, Pipes employs an about thirty of it to demolish her/it.  

 

First of all, the mythical age of the gold which good part of the utopians recalls him (beginning from Esiodo, chorister of an ancient society in which any man had moved "from the ashamed desire of profit"), you/he/she is neither more neither less that a legend, as you/he/she confirms the archaeology. You bubbola that the communism is a secular version and adjourned of the Christianity you/he/she is liquidated resorting to the Gospel (Jesus has never insisted on the poverty; it has him only recommended as mean to facilitate the street of the salvation) and to the fathers of the Church, unanimously pragmatici in to consider the ownership "moral if used with wisdom and for thin benevolent."  

 

As for the prophecy marxiana on the inevitable collapse of the capitalism, is to stretch well you above a veil. Not only: the communism, admitted and not granted that is a practicable street, it is by itself inhuman. Because the men, like or less, they naturally desire to possess. And because the installation of a communist society, foreseeing the dominion of the community on the single one, it cancels the inalienable natural rights of it, first among all that of the liberty of thought, of word, of action. As for the program and to his/her realization, in front of Pipes rubbles are introduced only. Devastated economies, proliferation of a privileged nomenclature (to the face of the equality), negation of the human rights.  

 

The attention of the professorial one in Harvard is not sharpened, however, exclusively on Josip Stalin. But it points out, for instance, the role of Lenin in the installation of the Soviet terror and the unconditional approval of Lev Trockij. The follies of Mao Tse-tung. The bath of Cambodian blood (as the holocaust was expression of the quintessence of the nazionalsocialismo, so the government of the red khmers represents the purest incarnation of the communism). The sottosviluppo of the third world. Even the Chilean democratic street to the communism of El Salvador Allende goes out from there with the broken bones (inflation to the 300 percent, halved food production...) and the cause of the following installation of the dictatorship becomes. When then the regime, as in China, palaces, him ago to the price of heavy concessions to the vituperated capitalism 

 

 

TOP DELLA PAGINA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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LOSURDO: I am Domenico Losurdo and I teach History of the philosophy to the university of Urbino. Today we discuss some end of the communism and we can begin with an introductory card that can stimulate the debate. 

The historical English Eric J. Hobsbawm attributes a paradoxical confirmation of the theses of Karl Marx to the exhaustion of the experience of the Soviet communism. "The productive forms - it said in fact Marx - they are turned into chains of the same production". Secondo this theory, when a productive system grows old, it traps the economy and it determines so the crisis of the social world, that was expression of that economic model. The crisis of the Soviet economy has produced the end of the communist world. "The communist attempt produced - he/she writes Hobsbawm - resulted notable, but to elevated and intolerable human costs and the price to build what at the end an economy is revealed without results and a political system on which some positive judgment cannot be expressed. The tragedy of the Revolution of October is in the fact that it could produce only that type of socialism: merciless, brutal, authoritarian. "In the failure of the communism you/he/she cannot be forgotten however - it still says Hobsbawm - that the Revolution of October produced the most formidable revolutionary movement organized of the modern history". You his/her world expansion doesn't have comparisons and, to find in the past a similar element, needs to go up again to the conquests realized by the Islam in the first century of its history. Hardly thirty or forty years after the arrival of Lenin to the station Finland of Pietrogrado, a bystander of the humanity was found to directly live under regimes parties from the ten days that upset the world. What has you/he/she been the communism for the Nine hundred then? Can the inheritance of a movement that has involved million of people to every latitude of the planet consist in the past of an illusion only? 

 

STUDENT:  How symbol of the transmission we have chosen the scythe and the hammer because mostly they represent and they describe what it was his/her ideal of a society without classes, without private ownership, in the hands of the proletariat. These are all theoretical principles because when the communism has taken the power you/he/she has known tools as the dictatorship, the weapons, the slaughter. According to You, is not you/he/she contradicted in the time? Or has not you/he/she been really this form of degeneration to bring its fall? 

 

LOSURDO: I believe that the communism has reached the power in Russia without choosing the conditions in which it was found to live, that is in reality the dictatorship there was already, there was a military dictatorship, there was the slaughter the slaughter of the First World war. And the communism has reached the power, in reality, during the struggle against this slaughter. Naturally it is clear then that the situation has been characterized by a state of permanent exception, and therefore I have to say - then the debate we can deepen him/it -, that a vision would be wrong manichea, for which there would be the communism from a side, synonymous of slaughter and, on the other side, a synonymous liberalism of liberty. The First World war, with the slaughters and the totalitarian system that it behaves, you/he/she was produced for the note by the liberal capitalistic system. 

 

STUDENT: In the Soviet union there proportionally was not the salary of the job to the quality and the quantity. This could not have brought the workers to undertake himself/herself/themselves less, to work few because they were sure to have a salary that was not able neither to increase neither to decrease, if not in least form? This could have brought to the paralysis of the whole system of the Soviet union and then to the economic undoing and then political is of the State that of the political party that governed him/it? 

 

LOSURDO: I fundamentally arrange with what says you, however meanwhile I have to say that I dissent from the formulation that we have seen to the beginnings of the great historian English. I don't believe that the economy has been the conclusive motive for the collapse of the Soviet union. You are enough to say that today in Russia he lives worse without doubt on the economic plan than it was the situation of the Soviet union. In certain countries, that were born from the dissolution of the Soviet union, for instance Georgia, the production is simply a small a least part of that that was to the time when there was the communism to the power. However, says this, it is sure that the communism has set too much the accent on the voluntary enthusiasm. And therefore from this point of view you/he/she has certainly neglected the necessity of the material incentives that you/they had to develop the production. You/he/she can be said that perhaps, making reference to this budget, in countries in which are today still to the power parties that are defined communist, for instance in China, in reality he extends to an organization of the economy type different. They speaks of socialism of market trying to combine government planning and economic and material incentives within the industry. 

 

STUDENT: Up to that point the aspects of the Soviet economy - and do I report me to the negative consequences that it brought the communism of war and the same NEP particularly (economic political New, sees note), that brought to a certain social differentiation, provoking the to resurface of the class of the richest farmers and the class of traffickers whose wealth opposed with the way of big part of the urban population - you/they have been able to contribute to the process of crumbling of the same Soviet communism? 

 

LOSURDO: I believe that the NEP has been instead a very positive element. And, to understand this positive element, we owe present tener that initially the revolution arouses always excessive enthusiasms. This is not worth only for the Revolution of October. From this point of view you/he/she could be said that every revolution, the French Revolution is thought to, curtains to present himself/herself/themselves as the end of the history as the end of all the contradictions. And so, initially has happened for the Soviet union. This has been the communism of war, partly imposed by the war, partly imposed in reality from a mechanical vision, Messianic rather, utopian. Here is the NEP instead under certain points of view it makes to think about the today's attempts of a sort of socialism of market. The tragedy if you/he/she has ever been that the system of the NEP has been abandoned soon enough. 

 

STUDENT: Also recalling myself one book of Yours, you have set the communism as the end of the racial, ethnic and social revolts. Do you believe that - using a paradox - is really because in a certain sense the communism is mostly the democratic expression that as political experience is had, till now that has caused its end, that is its too democracy? 

 

LOSURDO: I would say, always contrasting me to the great historian English, that is wrong to speak of failure of the communism. The category of the failure, according to me, it is always a misleading category, not only for the Revolution of October, but for all the revolutions. Because certainly, for instance, the Giacobinis in France wanted reintrodurre a sort of ancient polis, but you/they have produced something of radically different. Or we take the American Revolution. If we read Jefferson, one of the great protagonists of this Revolution, see that he/she thinks to a society without polarization of wealth and poverty, constituted by small agricultural producers, without permanent army, without strong central power. Today everything I am the United States, except that the society imagined by Jefferson. In reality the United States is characterized by a permanent army, professional, formidable, able to impose his/her wish in every angle of the world. Do we have to also speak of failure of the American Revolution? That's why I have chosen as symbolic object the Caravel of Christopher Columbus, because the story of Cristoforo Colombo, that goes to the search of Indies and it discovers America, is in reality a metaphor that the revolutionary trial can explain in how much such. There is always a discard among what you/they subjectively think about producing what it then springs of it. This same question we can set her/it for the communism. A first answer now I can give her/it, that is according to me nothing of the contemporary democracy cannot be included without the initiated story with the Revolution of October. you Think about the social democracy. But as the contribution you/he/she can be ignored that the communist movement has given to the realization of the social democracy? But we also think about the political democracy. I simply make a consideration: still in the years Fifty and Sixty of this century, in the South of the U.S.As. the blacks were deprived some political rights. If the race discrimination is fallen, or you/he/she has fundamentally fallen in the U.S.As. you/he/she has also been following this great challenge represented by the Revolution of October and by the movement of emancipation of the colonial people, that is initiated with the Revolution of October. 

 

STUDENT: Teacher, can that thing that is dead communism be defined? 

 

LOSURDO: Meanwhile I am not sure entirely that I/you/he/she am dead. It is a datum of fact what we have a country as China; whatever is the judgment that we want to formulate on this country, it represents a fifth of the humanity and you/he/she is directed by a party that still continuous to consider him communist. It certainly says to want to occur again himself/herself/themselves deeply. Here of this datum of done we owe tener account. As it regards the other aspect of Your question: what the political-social regime that is developed beginning from the Revolution of October was, we owe tener it foresees the indication of Marx, that the men make not the history in circumstances from them choices, but in circumstances that are objectively dates. And then, according to me, of an attempt is treated to build a post-capitalistic society. This attempt has happened in tragic circumstances, among errors and horrors, however we owe present tener that, in reality, every process of construction of a new society is also characterized by the phase of the learning. Perhaps, to this point, to clarify better this problem, can see a tape that can give us an idea of the problems that we are facing. 

"If I look behind the fifties - with the time and with the age the things are seen with greater clarity, I have to say that there was then a great enthusiasm. Young people that built roads in inaccessible places, intellectual that wanted to create things ever existed before. A new society, a new man. The building of the socialism meant the to come true some eternity dream of the humanity, that of Christ, of Spartaco, de You French Commune. And that enthusiasm, believes me, it was sincere." 

 

LOSURDO: You see therefore that the usual representations, according to which the communism would have been synonymous of oppression, of dictatorship and enough, they are simply ideological representations, they don't correspond to the reality. From this testimony we see a sincere enthusiasm, a choral enthusiasm in to produce a new society; certainly this enthusiasm was also born from the horror that the First World war had produced - the fascism, the Nazism and the Second World war -, then this enthusiasm has certainly gone as declining, up to disappear entirely. Why? Partly for the fact that in every revolution, as to say, to the poetic moment the prosaic phase happens, then in which needs to face concrete problems, profits to the daily life, partly because - we don't forget him/it - there has been a terrible cold war, that has done yes that the difficulties of that countries are increased - not simply for an inside dynamics, but also for a dynamics day-pupil. It is clear that the cold war also aimed to make more and more difficult, even impossible, the attempt of construction of a new society. 

 

STUDENT: the Revolution of October had brought to a preceding stadium to the dictatorship of the proletariat in how much anchor there was, in the government car of the Soviet union, a simulacro of State. This form of historical communism was well different from the thought that it had Marx I concern to the communism. I would like to know: how much in the opinion of the the end of the historical communism has dragged anymore also with itself the Marxist thought? 

 

LOSURDO: Today he sustains that, since in Marx there is the teorizzazione of a transitory phase of dictatorship of the proletariat, the collapse of the Soviet union would also mean the collapse of the theory of Marx. But You reflect on this fact: in reality a teorizzazione of a transitory dictatorship in a revolutionary phase, this is found in a whole series of other authors, for example Mazzini. Mazzini speaks of a transitory dictatorship up to the conclusion of the National Revolution. You replace with Revolution National Social Revolution and you will see that the formulation of Marx is not different. Then, in reality, the teorizzazione of a transitory dictatorship is not only found in Marx, it is found in Mazzini, but it is also found in the classical ones some liberal tradition. Well, says this, there is not what you/he/she has happened in Soviet Union, partly it has to do with Marx, in the sense that the revolution, initiated with October, it looked for of tener present certain ideal incorporated in the theses of Marx and Engels, partly naturally it doesn't have anything to whether to do. It doesn't have anything to whether to do for the fact that Marx could not foresee anything of that that has happened in the Nine hundred. But it would be wrong - I repeat - to assume a doctrinaire attitude towards any revolution. The giacobinis are called to Rousseau and us back we can ask there that relationship there is among the terror giacobino and Rousseau. And so we can set there the same question as it regards the Soviet union. But we never forget the objective circumstances, because, is forever once said, against the simplifications manichee - you reflect only on this fact - the concentration camp, during the Nine hundred you/he/she has not appeared only in the Soviet union or in Nazi Germany. For example, during the Second World war, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made to confine in concentration camps all the American citizens of Japanese origin, inclusive women and children. Then we certainly have to also have a merciless vision some initiated story with the Revolution of October, but the manicheismo simply serves to the winners, to the dominant ideology and it doesn't promise anything of good person. 

 

STUDENT: Well, to the light than he/she affirms Engels, that that is many movements and political heads have had in the history a well different objective function from that that I/you/they are prefigured to subjective level, then how much I weigh you/he/she could have had the fact that the bolscevichis have not been aware of the real nature of their real role, in the sense that while you/they have been trying to create a society of equal, in motion toward the self-government, they have instead then created a State, a society of strongly hierarchized, authoritarian and however centralized. 

 

LOSURDO: As I said before: we always owe tener it foresees the objective conditions. If we consider the historical period that has gone since 1917 - year of the Revolution of October - to 1953 - year of the death of Stalin -, we see that the life of the U.R.S.S. you/he/she is characterized by a state of permanent exception. There are four, five wars - if we consider together well her all -, two revolutions there are that of October and then the forced collectivization of the agriculture. These revolutions are followed then by civil wars. It is clear that there is a state of permanent exception. The question we can re-phrase her/it in this other way now: because, after 1953 or in the seventies the Soviet union has not succeeded in passing from a State of exception to the normalcy? Then certainly in this case the subjective aspect to which you made reference counts a lot. I believe that you have made very well to recall Engels, that exactly enunciates a rule of general character. It says: because a revolution - he/she thinks about the French Revolution or English - achieves the objectives that somehow historically you/he/she has called to achieve, in a certain sense for a certain time period it does him some illusions that go a lot beyond the objectives then achieved. Here has also happened this way for the initiated story with the Revolution of October, that is for a few times you/he/she is thought to a society, not only without classes, but without States, without national conflicts, without religions, without market. You/he/she is thought, in last analysis, to a sort of end of the history. This is a Messianic illusion but a Messianic illusion that it is born from the same development of the revolutionary dialectics. And the further development that we can see is note when the revolution overcomes this Messianic stadium, that is somehow inevitable, and he/she succeeds in calibrating in more realistic way the objectives to pursue. 

 

STUDENT: We said that there is always difference between the projects of a revolution and that that then he succeeds to effect. I believe - and this I think that don't concern only the communism, but you concern all the types of revolutions, above all all the political parties and the political ideologies - there is always a clean difference, not among what you/they then succeed in effecting, but among to think about a common society as the case of the communism, and then to have the power. That is in the sense that power wears out the minds. This is well-known. Doesn't he/she think that I/you/he/she am really this the point, that is that it is difficult, not to effect a communist society, but is it difficult to govern a communist society? 

 

LOSURDO: You do well to lift the matter of the power. Power contaminates and, from this point of view, the theory sprung by Marx for which there would have been the extinction of the State with the end of the capitalism, has played an ill-omened role, because if the State is destined to extinguish him there is not the worry to build a democratic State anymore, there is not the worry to produce a limitation of the power anymore. Then, from this point of view, the weakness of the theory of Marx have certainly played a negative role in the historical story. However not assolutizzerei this element. I said that we cannot understand the contemporary democracy without the contribution sprung by the Revolution of October. you Think qual'era the situation about the eve of the Revolution of October: we had the planet simply dominated by a fist of great powers, that, within the colonies, they didn't realize certain democracy, imposed rather native local forms of job to the population compulsory, servile or semiservili. And the story of the decolonization is initiated in 1917. The story of the end of the racism is initiated in 1917, because he/she anchors at that time, racism had even sometimes a positive connotation, that is the term "racism" you/he/she was used even with a positive connotation. We can ask even there if the democracy, as you/he/she is realized in the Nine hundred, can withstand the venir less than the challenge constituted by the Revolution of October and by the countries that they recalled him to the Revolution of October. That is I believe that it is assisted indeed to a sort of ricolonizzazione of the Third World, of the Balkans. Today we am perhaps assisting to the Second great Colonial War, that is developed after 1991, after the triumph of the United States during the Cold War. And the First Colonial War has been the War of the Gulf. According to me the Second great Colonial War is that in action in the Balkans. And from this point of view I wonder me if indeed we don't assist to a crisis of the democracy, if for democracy we also intend the equality among the nations that constitute the world. 

 

STUDENT: If the communism is what you say, as we can explain therefore the Stalinism and the fact that on the plan of the foreign politics Russia continued a politics type imperialist however, do we say as that some czarist period, with the invasion of near territories? 

 

LOSURDO: Meanwhile we owe present tener that the communists have gone to the power in a country note as Russia, that any democratic and liberal tradition to the shoulders didn't have. The Communist Party in Russia has gone to the power in a tragic situation, as I has already said. Then the objective circumstances must not be forgotten. However I don't believe in the utility to apply the category of imperialism to the foreign politics of the Soviet union. Does he/she know why? Because, if You reflect, for example, on that that today the American executives say speaking of Cuba, they say that Cuba is fallen in crisis because you/he/she has come the help of the Soviet union to miss. The help of the Soviet union is not a politics type imperialistic, while instead the Soviet union has certainly conducted with Stalin, but also after Stalin, up to the end of its days, you/he/she has conducted a chauvinistic politics and of great power. And there for a toward in effects, it is true, you/he/she has inherited the czarist tradition in Oriental Europe, there is no doubt. For another verse you/he/she has played once more a negative role the Messianic illusion that with the communism all the national conflicts would have disappeared. Instead the national conflicts ripresentatis are him. Before Yugoslavia in 1948 has broken with the Soviet union, there has been then the invasion of Hungary the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The national conflicts existed and the illusion that you/they had disappeared, has not certainly contributed to treat these national conflicts in suitable way. 

 

STUDENT: The communism has been considered from many one ideal. And as such you/he/she has been brought ahead by many young people. According to You how come there is not anymore today this appointment and this passion? 

 

LOSURDO: For the fact that those people who are opposed to the communism, have achieved a strategic victory. There is no doubt, you/they have achieved a strategic victory. However we owe us us to question if indeed this strategic victory has a meaning positive univocamente, if it doesn't also have instead a negative meaning. We assist to the attempts of dismantlement of the social state. An author as Friedrich August von Hayek, Nobel Prize of the economy, has been also the economic expert of the American President Regan, it expressly declares that the economic and social rights enacted by the O.N.U. I am the result of the ruinous existence - so it considers her/it - of the Russian Marxist Revolution. And therefore, from this point of view, we find us in a radically new situation. We have to attend the developments of the history and not to consider the history already ended. 

 

STUDENT: The relationship between Marx and the revolution owes to be taken with the dropper however, in how much Marx from his/her song didn't admit that way of doing revolution, as note has happened in Russia, considering that a democrat-liberal phase and a development of the capitalism in Russia there had not been thin after all. In fact the society Russian Marx if as Asian society considered her/it not a capitalistic society. For Marx the same revolution owed note to unwind himself/herself/themselves in operation of a mass in crisis of the capitalistic system. Then for many aspects Marx and the revolution are not very compatible among them; I think that it needs to see up to that point this relationship can coexist. 

 

LOSURDO: There is no doubt that Marx has not thought to a revolution as that that is developed in Russia, because he thought, in particular way, to the advanced capitalistic countries and he didn't even think to a revolution that would be developed during a total war, of a terrible war, of a slaughter, as you/he/she has been the First World war. However I would also be careful to not assolutizzare this aspect. In reality in Marx they are also there oscillations. We could say that there are two theories of the revolution Marx. One is that delivered of it The capital, where it says that all of a sudden in the advanced capitalistic countries, with the process of capitalistic concentration, everything assembles him in the hands of few great monopolists and "it plays - so it is expressed - the time of the expropriation of the espropriatoris". Here, therefore, from this point of view, the revolution is as a mechanical trial, that mechanically comes down from the same process of monopolistic, capitalistic and monopolistic concentration. However, if You have it foresees The manifesto of the Communist Party, there Marx develops a different theory of the revolution. Just at the end de The manifesto Marx says: "The communists assemble their look especially in Germany". And because? Not because Germany is particularly developed. No, contrarily - they say Marx and Engels - for the fact that Germany is here still to the of of the democrat-bourgeois revolution, and under conditions of developed proletariat - I am always reciting The manifesto - this democrat-bourgeois revolution can qualitatively turn into something of different, because proletariat can proceed then to a further development of the revolution. Here, according to me, something of the kind in reality is occurred, not in Europe, but in the great colonial countries, you think, for example, to China. The Communist Party has directed an anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolution, however in the wave of this anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolution you/he/she has thought of reality to achieve objective further, that go also beyond some capitalistic system. 

 

STUDENT: Up to that point thinks that the principles on which the First Russian Constitution founded him, were principles that belonged to the communist ideology, correct, and up to that point and because these principles have not been realized then, true tant'è that the same constitution was modified? 

 

LOSURDO: As I mentioned before, I don't like the category of failure of the revolution, and not only for the Revolution of October. Another category that I don't like is the category of betrayal. While, according to me, to understand the great revolutions, all of us owe tener it foresees a different category, that is that of the learning. That is for a verse he/she is known what he/she is wanted to demolish; he/she is wanted to demolish the ancient regime, an arrangement that is considered intolerable. For another verse he proceeds gropingly, in the attempt to build a new society. And then, from this point of view, there is no doubt that the first constitutional texts of Soviet Russia are permeated by a whole series of illusions. There is this Messianic vision of the revolution, which I have made reference, that up to the end the Soviet union has not succeeded in overcoming. And from this point of view - I repeat - this has clearly weighed in the defeat of the Soviet union. However I still want to recall the attention that to understand the great revolutions, we owe tener present colons: the difference between subjective project and objective results, difference that also explains him with the concrete historical situation. And the category of the learning. This is also worth for the French Revolution. For example: when it is that the French Revolution is expressed indeed with a parliamentary democracy? Only after the end de You Common of Paris, after 1871, with the so-called Third Republic. The French Revolution, to produce his/her political regime, in a certain sense you/he/she has almost put us one century, that has gone since 1879 to 1871. 

 

STUDENT: We am here for asking us how come the communism is bankrupt, an ideology that has tried to transform the economy, the ancient czarist formulation, perhaps asking to the people for something that goes against the same nature of the man. Perhaps it is unthinkable to think that of the farmers, of the workers, can work for other people's good, drawing few of it, without not even being able to have the aspiration, a tomorrow, to be able to manage a proper firm to grow. I for example know, that the farmers had a piece of ground of earth on which you/they worked for the country for the Russian people and another piece of ground on which you/they worked for them. What happened? What to the farmer it was worthwhile to work on the really small piece of ground where it drew the nourishment, more than to work and to get tired himself/herself/themselves on the great piece of ground destined to the public, from which would have been able then to draw little of it. I become me account that a new method was looked for, but it perhaps went against the same human nature, that is some selfish of the type,: "Now first I eat me and then I make to eat the others". I Think that also for this is fallen the communism. 

 

LOSURDO: On this I arrange with you. I said that indeed initially the revolutionary trial - in this case the communist revolutionary trial - introduces him as a Messianic position. And the Messianic position qual'è? we Make to disappear every form of private ownership, so much more than had the regime founded upon the private ownership produced the horror of the First World war. There is no doubt, the capitalism had developed a decisive role in the scatenamento of the war. And here, in this tragic situation, that indeed the same theses of Marx are subsequently radicalized. It has to disappear the private ownership every form of private ownership. The thesis of Marx of the extinction of the State is radicalized also. Because? The First World war had shown in concrete way that the State worked as a moloch, he/she forced million and million of citizens to die and to kill. Here then that, indeed, the Messianic position is subsequently strengthened, end also of the State. Naturally this whole Messianic position, if initially you/he/she has also produced the enthusiasm, you/he/she has worked then as a drug. Ended the effect of this drug, in reality there is a sort of relaxation a sort of weariness. This has happened. From this point of view I arrange with you. He certainly treated in reality to combine different forms of ownership. As I said it is an attempt, that has been brought ahead then with the NEP the combination of different forms of ownership. Today countries that it sticks recall him to the socialism - I made the example of China - they look for, also them, to combine different types of ownership. But there is not doubt that this Messianic position, that it made every material incentive to miss, you/he/she has clearly played a negative role. 

 

STUDENT: His/her fathers' project founders it was what you/he/she is ended with the collapse of the Soviet union? 

 

LOSURDO: "Fathers founders" it is an expression that you/they use above all the Americans to speak, note, of the protagonists of their revolution. Here, as I said before, among his/her/their fathers founders of the American Revolution there is Jefferson, but today's United States doesn't certainly resemble not at all to America to which he/she thought Jefferson. That is "Fathers founders" it is an expression that clearly recalls the religion. That is the text of Marx and Engels is not a Gospel. The text of Marx and Engels is born in one determined historical constellation, it intends to answer to determined problems. In the meantime, the world is clear you/he/she is developed. I believe that those people who are recalled to Marx and Engels would make a blame proper to Marx and Engels if assolutizzasero their doctrine. Certainly, for example, - Marx and Engels have declared more times to have learned a lot from her Common of Paris. I believe that those people who are recalled to Marx and Engels - I believe to be among these - they have the assignment to also think of depth the whole history that is initiated with 1917, without assuming neither an uncritical attitude, but not even the attitude of demonizzazione, that is really of the dominant ideology. 

 

STUDENT: On Internet we have found a site on Marx, really to recall us his/her work, The capital, in which the author didn't delineate the new face of the society, however you/he/she pointed out some ideas you/he/she drives that however they understood the abolition of the private ownership, the abolition of the division of the society in classes. Only that the centralizing totalitarian State, that had to represent a phase of passage, became the last goal of the revolution. There was not anymore then accordingly the abolition of the State, that Marx prefigured in his/her work. 

 

LOSURDO: Of the illusion of the extinction of the State of Marx, I have already said that you/he/she has dealt with an illusion that has developed a role without negative doubt. However we are careful once more to the histories manichee, as if the history of the communism were identifiable with that of the totalitarianism. I have already said, in reality, that the totalitarian universe is also manifested in the United States during the Second World war and I could conclude - and I conclude - with a question: but are we sure, for instance, that the embargo is not an it forms post-modern of concentration camp? What in reality there is no more need to close a whole people in a concentration camp, but that you are enough to cut the influx of provisions, of medicines, above all if then a war has destroyed the civil infrastructures of this country? Then I repeat, tener is correct it foresees the turn that is verified in 1991, but also on the historical plan we have to beware us of to applaud, in uncritical way, the ideology of the winners. 

 

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Pierluigi Battista 

Memory against utopia (You end of the innocence. Utopia, totalitarianism and communism; interview of Pine cone Baglioni) 

drawn by Traces, year XXVII, May 2000 

 

A book that incessantly sets, in almost obsessive way, questions. Pierluigi Battista has written him, editorialista de You Press and author of many wise man. What they try to splinter some "dogmas" granite of the cultural mentality of our Country. A loyal use of the reason.  

 

 

 

In this last book, You end of the innocence. Utopia, totalitarianism and communism (Marsilio, p. 154, L. 22.000) Baptist ripercorre the theoretical bases of the conception utopian and perfettistiche of the XX century, dissezionando above all You city of the sun of Thomas Campanella. Paradigm, according to the author, of all that totalitarian regimes that have pretended to build the heaven in earth, spying, massacring whoever tried to oppose himself/herself/themselves to that project purificazionista. What it doesn't foresee, they would say the Christians, sinned original. Because then who is directly stained or indirectly of that crimes it is considered still innocent? The history has condemned that regimes, but nobody allows him to condemn the protagonists.  

 

A practically lost cause in departure, his. How does it do him to totally eradicate from the heart of the men the nostalgia of another? And' comprehensible, then, that look him to those people that directly or indirectly they have been the protagonists of it, with attitude of respect and not of sentence.  

Yes, culturally mine is a lost cause. Perhaps the chronicle of a lost occasion. However I would like to clarify that I totally am not immune to the charm of a world other. Esiodo, Humerus, Virgilio, Ovidio, Rabelais, Voltaire has magnificently dreamt and described not so much one perfect world, how much a fantastically happy world. What I find repugnant is a certain thought that has given birth to real states of police, dominated by jails, concentration camps, exterminations of mass, decimation of whole people and social groups. Society obsessed by the myth of the cleaning up. It needs to separate the desire of a world other, that certain it is not lost forever from the conceitedness to build the perfect society.  

 

Where is the problem? The Urss is dead and Fidel Castro is not so much good.  

The problem is represented by the fact that what has gone lost forever it is a feeling of shame and reproach of whom, in name of the Good, you/he/she has allowed that they were finished incalculable iniquities. Rather, despite the historical criticism has recorded the failure of the real socialism, the persons responsible keep on declaring himself/herself/themselves innocent. Innocent because the idea, the utopian thought they were good and correct. The great mystification is to keep on dissociating the goodness of an idea from the wickedness of a realization. To whom would come never to mind to distinguish the ideal nazionalsocialista from the real nazionalsocialismo? In this case there is a total identification between native project and historical realization. The Nazism is justly considered the historical inveramento of an Evil Absolute present is in the theory that in the routine. The communism no: how ironizza Alain De Benoist, the communism is "a beautiful idea gone to badly". Here, to think that today the matter is still resolved in this way, it makes indignant me deeply.  

 

Thanks to which done, which meetings, which readings, also her one day is discovered not more "innocent" in comparison to that utopian thought?  

I have been a young boy of the '68. But there has been a moment in which I have felt that the libertarian position was so sharp, antiautoritaria, of revolt towards the authority constituted that it animated me, young boy of the time, in comparison to that ideology of reference, so mournful, mortuary, incarnate in dreadful states of police, that denied whatever liberty not some liberties,: the liberty to go out of their Countries, to say, to express him. In short I have warned this awful contradiction. And year after year, you/he/she has been more and more gradually clear me, the demand to abandon that parrocchietta to put me for my account. I had consumed a very strong symbolic patricide towards my father, a man expressly of right. I also have to say that later, however, I have never spit, as you/he/she has happened to many on the Sessantotto. I hold her one it covers important: thanks to that extraordinary moment I have put in discussion a series of values that then I have learned to reconsider. Together with few friends. But what I intend to affirm is that I am not innocent in comparison to that experience. Nobody is him/it.  

 

Because it feels so strongly for itself and for the others this demand to declare himself/herself/themselves guilty towards a world that is liquefied?  

Because it was enough little to realize that he was consuming a tragedy unprecedented. And not to have done it is him/it guilty. Some curiosity, to read some book. Because paradoxically those that monopolists of the culture are held, that are held still such, they are ignorant. Who has been communist after the Sessantotto it is ignorant, it doesn't have any curiosity, it doesn't have any liking for descriptions that its prejudice doesn't confirm. They read only what the cultural fashions impose. This people have not even grazed Archipelago Gulag of Alexander Solzenicyn. Who has not read this book you/he/she has not understood anything of the twentieth century. From boy, all of a sudden I have thought, that to make up for to the Soviet disasters the communism antiautoritario of China would have arrived. For then to discover that in China there had been no hundreds of thousand of corpses. But million and million of corpses: in the fields of re-education, or thanks to gangs of teen-agers that went to torture the elderly ones in their houses.  

 

Does this book of his, represent also therefore an action of justice, an attempt not to make to forget that corpses, considered dead of serious B in comparison to the victims of the Nazism?  

This book tries to get off a conceitedness of innocence. Is not there then any Spielberg that a Soviet Schindler does? Yet it would be material of it of disposition. Have we ever asked there, are we ever imagined as that eighty million of men there they are dead? With that revolvers planted on the head that shoots, and does it shoot, and does it shoot? The gas chamber of the Nazi, the crematory ovens give us the idea of the to melt himself/herself/themselves of that bodies. But have we ever asked as these others there they are dead? Because they must not be cry, done remember, because for them there is not any day of the memory? Because who that corpses you/he/she has provoked them or justified it doesn't make action of repentance? All this also produces consequences of political nature, today.  

 

For example?  

For example the Heider case in Austria. Only the suspicious one, attention, not that Heider can refer the same things that you/he/she has made Hitler but the suspicion of an attitude of indulgence in comparison to those things there, by itself it justifies the general ostracism towards Heider, ostracism decreed by the direct contribution of ex communist. Nobody would dream him to treat to the same way Cossutta and Bertinotti. They makes tenderness, they arouse respect. Would it make tenderness an old nazistone, that has not committed any crime in his/her life? No, it would make horror. The others two, are considered instead innocent.  

 

An innocence derived by an idea that he is not able not to hold correct. That of the equality. it is Perhaps right Norberto Bobbio: it damages equal equality, right liberty and cult of the wealth. She is not worthier and respectable before?  

No. I rebel me to this hierarchy of values. That idea has given birth to death and it is fallen in the dishonor. It is not fallen in the dishonor who or you/he/she has materially completed certain crimes or you/he/she has ideologically approved them because judged necessary to the construction of a perfect world. And' what I call the utopian matter: in short I strive him/it of this book, it is that to try to explain as it was all contained in the good intention the criminal potentiality, that is historically occurred then in Soviet Union, to Cuba, in Cambogia, in China. Everywhere, in short. What makes fear it is the common line that finds again him both in the Nazism and in the communism: the sterminazionismo as ideology. And' the idea that on the base of a project of racial or social purification whole groups had to be eliminated: type biological in a case, type social in the other. And that this thing included the necessity to strike not the single. Because there is no more individual guilt. The guilt is that you are, that exist. And that you must be eliminates for the solo fact to exist. You are a bourgeois, worths the death. You are a Hebrew, worths the death. And they come you to look for anywhere, to rouse. In this obsession of theirs of purification. As the exterminators go to look for the bugs. Well, when it comes me to say: don't forget. Very well: rather when it is that he starts to remember? To remember all however. To remember, for example, that the gulags in Bulgaria have existed up to the sixties. Well, very well. Has the holocaust been an incomparable tragedy? Of accord: I ask to Furio Colombo that, at least once, in the Day of the Memory three minutes and a half are devoted to the million of corpses of the good communist idea. 

 

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Why does the moral duty of the anticommunism exist? 

 

of Gianni Baget Bozzo - June 1 st 2000 

 

Because the communism is not dead with the end of the Soviet empire.  

How totalitarian violence is ended in Europe, while it is still existing in fullness in China, in Vietnam in Laos, Cuba Korea of the North. How lie, fully exists in Italy. And its lie consists of saying that the communists there are not anymore. As always the lie is evident.  

The managing whole Ds come from the Pci. And they has never said: the Pci has been wrong, the anticommunist ones have always been right. They say: the Pci has always been antisovietico. And everybody knows that this is not true.  

Yet as much it is the demoniac power of seduction of the communism, that all believe in this evident lie. This is the true diabolic ability of the communism: it makes to lie against the known truth. Not by chance in the encyclical Dominum et Vificantem (1985), Giovanni Paolo according to you/he/she has pointed out in the communism the sin against the Spirit Saint of which Jesus has said "you/he/she won't be put again neither in this century neither in the future." 

 

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Paul CAROTENUTO 

The denied history: the silence in Italy on the communist crimes 

drawn by Crooked Wood 

 

The communists will exist until it won't be made full light on their hidden crimes  

 

 

You/he/she has received a great share of I publish the conference that is held in Naples on the crimes denied of the communism in Italy organized by the Foundation Campi Flegrei. Thanks also to chairmen of absolute level, present journalists of the caliber of Dario Fertilio and Giancarlo Lehner, besides appreciates him De Simone and Nardiello of the daily paper The Rome, volumes of great value I/you/they have been introduced you turn to remove that non casual silence that is lowered today still on pages unexplored of our history. In substance it doesn't deal with rewriting the history through an action revisionist, but it deals with discovering events how thin to today they have been hidden volutamente, manipulated and counterfeit. But who is that you/he/she has undertaken this scientific and methodological action of removal of the past? And' the question to which is tried to give an answer is. First of all with Dario Fertilio, journalist of the Corriere della Sera and author de You red death (I edit from the Marsilio), for which pseudo-truth is said for hiding the reality and the essence of the facts. If to the word lager corresponds the definition of military field for military training, if to the word foiba corresponds the meaning of hollow deeper carsica produced by the current waters, to that of gulag the corresponding translation is attributed of "field of re-education."  

Two are the objectives pursued in this way. To forget, to relegate "among parenthesis" experiences that even a tomorrow you/they can allow to take back a discourse left dormant; to deny, because in front of the negation of the crimes of the communism, it is simpler to raise symbols and flags of Lenin or of What Guevara or symbols of death and humiliation of the fundamental rights of the man and his/her dignity.  

 

The communism has acted in very similar way in all the Countries in which you/he/she has reached the power, from the Soviet union to Yugoslavia, from the countries of Europe of the east in Albania, from those of Soviet Asia to those of Latin America, and you/he/she has almost always reproduced the same fools that within few years they have ended for hand of the regimes nazionalsocialisti. But the difference that has countersigned the communism from the nazionalsocialismo is in the background lie of which the communism is painted, that also maintaining its identical destructive strength, it disguised him from redeemer. For this the communist genocides must have remembered and not forgotten or hidden as you/he/she is done thin to today. To the dates of January 27 and now of on February 10, that you/they leave often space to the rhetoric that accompanies the memory, it is rightful to raise to the same rank that of November 7, anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and that you/he/she has been proposed as Day of the memory of the communist victims (Reminder Gulag) thanks to the stubborn appointment of the Committees for the Liberties (www.libertates.org), of which the same Fertilio is president and founder.  

 

To who holds the anticommunism as a broken disk, you/he/she has replied Armando De Simone, author with Vincent Nardiello of the appreciated volume of search Clipboard for a black book of the Italian communism (and. Countercurrent), that has remembered what the scandal is that you/he/she is perpetrated thin to today. The true betrayal of the intellectuals is testified really from a conference as that of Naples, where to speak of a similar matter they have been four "journalists" and not historical or studious. Any teacher has told us of 200 million dead people, anybody you/he/she has documented this that is a denied history. And it is permissible to investigate on the reasons for which who knew you/he/she has preferred to keep silent.  

 

Thin to today some trial you/he/she has not been finished to the Italian communist Party and this theme yet it is not set today even it, one period in which rhetorically he does often call to the duty of the memory. But to which memory he appeals and because this must be pilots, circumscribed? For this we don't need liars professionals, but of true communists, those as Massimo Di Alema that in Soviet Union there has been 47 times; we have need of the Fassinos, that has been secretary of the greatest Italian communist federation, that of Turin, and that today riformista is simply defined because to the congress of the Ds you/he/she has remembered the figure of Bettino Craxi as one of the greatest of the European socialism. And we want to know where the contained plans of insurrection are ended in 5 suitcases in green skin, whereas even Sweet you/he/she has admitted that these plans were organized up to the end of the years '80. we are talking of attacks to the constitution, imprescriptible crimes, on which any judge has wanted to investigate. As everything this you/he/she has been possible?  

 

This time it is Vincent Nardiello that the enterprise tries to give an explanation, underlining as the history has been put to service of a political project, considering that here it doesn't speak of done interpreted badly, not known or correctly sets, but of pages that was been expelled completely from the historical debate. Pages that any historian is picked up he intrigues her/it to tell, as that that he saw Palmiro Togliatti invite to welcome the titinis as liberators and to realize an exchange between Gorizia and Trieste.  

Because all this? A first answer is rinvenibile in the fact that a part of the historians was of fact executives or communist exponents. But alone these were not enough to bring this impressive work to conclusion mistificatoria. And here it comes us in help Ernesto Galli of the Loggia that has recently admitted how much the historians and the moderate intellectuals are folded up to the will of the communists that you/they didn't ask him to be communist, but simply not to be anticommunist.  

You imagine what you/he/she would be happened, for instance, if an agent of the CIA had followed Aldo Moro, the secretary of the biggest Italian party, up to the day before its sequestration. And' happened, instead, that has been tagged after by an agent of the Kgb as they show the official documents coming from the files of the Soviet union. Not medals but written tests, official actions, dramatically puzzling on which continuous to flutter a silence that does more and more him deafening.  

 

Do sense has reread the history in the attempt to purify her/it from these unacceptable conditionings that have done therefore today yes that some truths didn't come to the light? And do sense has declare he/she anchors him anticommunist, today that the Wall in Berlin has collapsed and the Soviet regime is dissolved?  

Well yes, a similar behavior is everything a duty, because, as he/she remembers us Giancarlo Lehner, author de You Tragedy of the Italian communists, the victims of the Pci in Soviet Union (I edit for the necklace the Wakes of the Mondadori), to be against the communism is not a political contingency, but it is a principle and a moral duty. And he/she also remembers that the communism is not fought him/it with the howled anticommunism but simply telling the facts and seeking the truth.  

After all all it takes is bringing some present sweet in the book of the journalist and historian, manager de The Fair trial, to become himself/herself/themselves account than the job of dissimulation has been enormous produced thin to today: in a letter sent to his/her command signed by George Bocca, to the epoch partisan activist, is possible to read his/her disconcertment for some excesses of communist partisan as those of a commander partisan named Fortress "specialized to personally kill the fascist prisoners quartering them to hits of shovel". A Mouth astounded she asked him up to that point was permissible to arrive. This brave partisan, has not obviously had some problem for his/her actions, if not a gold medal.  

 

But if once were paid for disinformare, today teachers are signalled to the left for their embarrassing ignorance. And' of few days ago an article published on the daily paper her Republic of Tabucchi, as author in fashion and pumped by the intelligentsia of left, that quietly the luxury is taken to declare that Gramsci was dead in the jail.  

And' evident that in front of similar mystifications he/she is also understood because is cleverly kept silent by these "professionals of the lie" the true essence of the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop that in 1939 you/he/she has enacted the birth of the nazi-communist axle and that it started Hitler for the elimination of the Hebrews. It was that breaker that Stalin, in sign of harmony, it allowed him to offer in "gift" to Hitler all the interned Hebrews in the gulags. This is a historical datum, tried, incontestable: the persecution of the Hebrews departed with the approval of Stalin some communists. Undeniable to the point that in the books of history there is no mention some. To the epoch, besides, Hitler didn't owe of certain to appear as a monster from the "red conformists", considering that an ashamed wise man of Palmiro