{"id":4349,"date":"2020-09-13T13:24:34","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T13:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/?p=4349"},"modified":"2020-09-20T13:41:04","modified_gmt":"2020-09-20T13:41:04","slug":"inc-the-new-party-and-its-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/2020\/09\/13\/inc-the-new-party-and-its-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Inc: The New Party and Its Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOne can be right only with the Party and through the Party, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one\u2019s rightness.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leon Trotsky, Thirteenth Conference of the Communist Party (1924)*<\/p>\n

We are often reminded that antibiotics tend, over time, to select for pathogens that are invulnerable to those antibiotics.\u00a0Our present compulsive use of hand sanitizers has, for instance, created an antiseptic environment in which pathogens indurate to alcohol are fruitful and multiplying.\u00a0 Anticommunism works in much the same way, eliminating certain forms and aspects of communism, but also breeding new forms that the old anticommunism can neither combat nor detect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long before a species is hunted to extinction, the very fact of its being hunted causes the species to fade before the eyes of its hunters.\u00a0 Hunting a species changes that species because hunting selects for wariness and camouflage.\u00a0 Anticommunism causes communism to disappear in just the same way.<\/p>\n

As I wrote the other day, the anticommunism of the 1930s led to the evolution of communist \u201cfronts\u201d in which the connection to the Communist Party was camouflaged.\u00a0 The anticommunism of the 1950s led to the evolution of so-called \u201cTrotskyite\u201d communism, in which there is no formal Communist Party.\u00a0 As my epigram shows, Leon Trotsky was himself an extremely\u00a0 loyal party man, but so-called \u201cTrotskyite\u201d communism evolved when old-style anticommunism made a formal Communist Party into a liability.<\/p>\n

There is something exceedingly quaint in Joseph McCarthy\u2019s old-style anticommunist question, \u201care you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party\u00a0of the United States?\u201d\u00a0 It is a question from a bygone era when America was a nation of \u201cjoiners.\u201d\u00a0 Membership was in those days a formal relationship, and members of all sorts of organizations were, quite literally, \u201ccard carrying\u201d members.\u00a0 They paid dues, went to regular meetings, and sometimes even wore uniforms.\u00a0 As Robert Putnam has so strikingly demonstrated, this America of formal voluntary organizations has largely disappeared, and most of us nowadays are \u201cbowling alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The image of \u201cbowling alone\u201d is misleading, however, since it exaggerates our social atomization.\u00a0 Voluntary organizations still exist, but they have evolved into informal voluntary organizations.\u00a0 BLM has, for instance, a great many \u201csupporters,\u201d but no real \u201cmembers.\u201d\u00a0 A supporter might post a sign in his yard, or sport a slogan on his tee shirt, but he does not pay dues, attend meetings, or carry anything like a \u201ccard\u201d in his wallet.\u00a0 In the extremely unlikely event that a U.S. Senator asked him an updated version of Joseph McCarthy\u2019s question under oath, he could answer \u201cno\u201d without risk of perjury.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The competitive advantage of informal organization is clear if we compare contemporary communism to the lumbering dinosaur that is called the Catholic Church.\u00a0 The fact that it is called by that hoary old name is one thing that makes it a lumbering dinosaur.\u00a0 Communists dropped the name communist as soon as it became a liability, and they became, albeit in a purely nominal sense, something altogether different.\u00a0 They became \u201cneo-Marxists,\u201d for instance, or \u201cRadicals,\u201d or \u201cProgressives,\u201d or, best of all, an anonymous cohort of people who were interested in \u201csocial change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communists left their bloody past behind when they assumed these aliases or disappeared behind the veil of complete anonymity.\u00a0 Catholics on the other hand openly identify with everything the Church has done, or is said to have done, since the Nicene Creed was drafted. \u00a0Catholics thereby stain themselves with the blood, real and imaginary, of two thousand tempestuous years.<\/p>\n

We are told that one of the men killed in Kenosha had previously raped several boys. \u00a0This pederast was also, evidently, part of the anonymous cohort of people interested in \u201csocial change.\u201d \u00a0But it is very hard to tar that anonymous cohort with his pederastic sins, and quite impossible to sue them, because the anonymous cohort does not exist so far as American law is concerned.\u00a0 The Catholic Church meanwhile gives its officer class formal titles, decks them out in uniforms, and then posts an address where aggrieved and injured parties can file for reparations when one of those officers decides to act on a wild hair.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church is like a lumbering dinosaur at the very end of the Cretaceous, when the sly and secretive mammals began to take over.\u00a0 If it wishes to survive, it will have to ditch its infamous name and discard the fat target of its ineffectual and scandal-prone officer class.\u00a0 If it wishes to survive, it must evolve into something much more like a bird.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The anonymous cohort of people interested in \u201csocial change\u201d functions without the fatal liability of an official name, a central Party, or even a very definite creed.\u00a0 Because it has no official name, it appears much more disorganized and ragtag than it actually is.\u00a0 Antifa is, for instance, the militant wing of this informal voluntary organization that has no name.\u00a0 Like the old IRA\/Sinn Fein consortium, this large and anonymous organization also has political and educational wings, but these wings have no official connection, so they can\u00a0appear\u00a0<\/em>to disintegrate into small and unthreatening parts whenever this is advantageous.<\/p>\n

Guerilla warfare is the model for this ability to assemble out of nothing, and then, just as quickly, disassemble into nothing.\u00a0 At the moment, the anonymous cohort of people interested in \u201csocial change\u201d is assembled because it needs to turn Trump out of office.\u00a0 The militant wing is throwing Molotov cocktails in the streets, the political wing is promoting Biden and infiltrating Biden\u2019s shadow cabinet, and the educational wing (in the schools and media) is \u201cinterpreting\u201d this to the masses in the way most advantageous to the program of \u201csocial change.\u201d\u00a0 If they fail to turn Trump out of office, I predict that the organization will appear to disassemble, and that the educational arm will be tasked with covering its tracks and telling us it never was.<\/p>\n

A George Washington University professor was recently disgraced by the revelation that she had been living as a racial impostor, but the disgrace of her hoax is a personal disgrace because she is not a \u201ccard carrying\u201d member of something called the American CultMarx Party, or an ordained priestess in something called the Hatewhitey Church. \u00a0There are thus no newspaper headlines saying \u201cHatewhitey Church Rocked by Scandal,\u201d or \u201cCultMarx Party Scrambles to Limit Fallout.\u201d\u00a0 When a Catholic priest tickles a choirboy, on the other hand, it becomes an expensive scandal for the lumbering and deep-pocketed organization of which that priest is officially part.\u00a0 When a Hatewhitey priestess gets sticky fingers and pinches some AA bennies, she\u2019s just a crazy dame who needs to find a new job.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The most famous manifesto of all time is, no doubt, the\u00a0Communist Manifesto<\/em>, a work remarkable for its candor, clarity and brevity.\u00a0 A reader may well cavil over many of its factual claims, but he cannot complain that it is dissembling, obscurant or prolix.\u00a0 Closing the pamphlet after a mercifully short read, he knows pretty clearly what Marx and Engles are all about.<\/p>\n

All of these qualities are absent from the prose that is nowadays written to advance \u201csocial change,\u201d since this is dissembling, obscurant and extremely prolix.\u00a0 Closing the last fat book in a long course of study, a reader is not at all sure what these enraged scribblers are all about.\u00a0 That they are enraged is clear enough, as is the fact that they scribble; but beyond that very little is definite or clear.\u00a0 And if the reader ventures to offer an unfavorable opinion of all the fat books he has read, the people interested in \u201csocial change\u201d will laugh and tell him he has read the\u00a0wrong books<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If a man wishes to examine the basic doctrines of Christianity, he can read the New Testament.\u00a0 If he wishes to accost a Christian, he can then demand that the Christian defend what is stated in those books.\u00a0 The Christian cannot laugh and tell his accoster that he read the wrong books.<\/p>\n

Communism stopped writing manifestos when it became clear that manifestos had become a liability, and that dissembling, obscurantism and prolixity had become tactical assets.\u00a0 Very few outsiders will venture into a vast thicket of tangled and thorny \u201cliterature,\u201d and those who emerge (scratched and bug-bitten) can always be told that they missed the good parts.\u00a0 I have not read the\u00a0Talmud<\/em>, but understand that it repels critics in this way.\u00a0 It is hard to find the vital passages in the\u00a0Talmud<\/em>, hard to say just what these vital passages mean, and easy to deny that these are, indeed, vital passages.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

An informal voluntary organization obviously faces a \u201ccoordination problem.\u201d\u00a0 The parts must know when they should assemble and disassemble, and the people in those parts must have a reasonably clear understanding of the party line.\u00a0 Even when there is no formal Party, Trotsky\u2019s line remains true.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne can be right only with the Party and through the Party, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one\u2019s rightness.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have come to believe that this line is correctly updated as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne can be right only with NPR and through NPR, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one\u2019s rightness.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, I would advise any young person who wishes to get ahead in the postmodern United States to make NPR their\u00a0credo<\/em>, and to make their perfect adherence to this\u00a0credo\u00a0<\/em>evident at every opportunity.\u00a0 NPR is not the cutting edge of progressive thought, but it stands to the cutting edge of progressive thought very much as the clothing sold by Land\u2019s End or L. L. Bean stands to\u00a0haute couture<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You will not turn heads with those Land\u2019s End khakis, but they are sufficiently respectable for you to be seated in a restaurant, and even to keep your job.<\/p>\n

The NPR\u00a0credo<\/em>\u00a0is the same.\u00a0 No one will think that you are brilliant or daring if you adhere to it like a center stripe adheres to a highway; but neither will anyone think that you are buffoonish or dangerous. \u00a0It\u2019s the party line of the party that has no name, no officers, no members, and no manifesto.\u00a0 In other word, it is the party line of the evolved party that has taken a form that allows it to control just about everything.<\/p>\n

*) quoted in Thornton Anderson,\u00a0Masters of Russian Marxism<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), p. 134.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOne can be right only with the Party and through the Party, since history has not created any other paths for the realization of one\u2019s rightness.\u201d\u00a0 Leon Trotsky, Thirteenth Conference of the Communist Party (1924)* We are often reminded that antibiotics tend, over time, to select for pathogens that are invulnerable to those antibiotics.\u00a0Our present … Sigue leyendo Inc: The New Party and Its Line<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4349"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4370,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions\/4370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}