Violence and LiberationPoli 110DA 08

Good intentions are not enough.

Midterms

• Yay!• HARD COPY due in class, Friday, Jan. 28• 5-7 pages• Prompts posted at course website:

adamgomez.wordpress.com/teaching/poli110dawi11/

Midterms

• Your paper must have:• A thesis statement

• One to three sentences, in the first paragraph• Clearer is better. Thesis should be argumentative:

– “In this paper I will discuss the causes of the Civil War.” -- NOT a thesis statement.

– “Slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War.” -- Acceptable.

– “The primary cause of the Civil War was slavery, which produced economic, political, and moral conflicts between North and South that ultimately could not be resolved by peaceful means.” -- Better.

Midterm• Page numbers• 5 page minimum, less will count against grade

• Paragraphs.– Seriously, you have to have paragraphs.

• Also, no swearing or text abbreviations.– For heaven’s sake, people.

• Citations– Ok to cite lecture. Refer to it by lecture number (for

example, lecture #8 for today)– MUST cite & quote the texts appropriate to your chosen

prompt..

Midterms• Standard margins, font size, line spacing, etc.– We were undergraduates once, we know about

Courier New.• While grammar is not a major element in your

grades, it does matter.– If your grader does not understand what you’re

saying, your grader does not understand what you’re saying.

• Papers MUST be submitted to turnitin.com– Class ID: 3767220– Enrollment password: 20thCentury

Midterms

• Your graders:– Justin Gottschalk• jgottschalk@ucsd.edu

Office hours this week TBA on website

• 1. Max Weber discusses the different ways in which one can live for or from politics. To what extent does the “professional revolutionary” described by Lenin do either of these? In what ways?

• 2. Each author discussed in the course so far views politics as a sphere of life that imposes its own unique demands. Is Lenin’s view of politics and the political more compatible with Weber’s arguments, or with Schmitt’s?

• 3. To what extent, if any, are Schmitt’s arguments regarding the enemy and the exception compatible with those made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in this February 17, 2006 interview with Charlie Rose?– Video

• http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/535

– Transcript• http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?

transcriptid=962

• “The role of the vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.” (13)

• “The ‘spontaneous element’, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form.”– “The workers were their faith in the age-long

permanence of the permanence of the system which oppressed them”

– “But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance tan of struggle.” (17)

• “We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness” (17)

• “The theory of socialism... grew out of the philosophical, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals.” (18)– The proletariat will not spontaneously recognize

the dialectic of history and the need for revolution– They must be informed, there is a need for

leadership

• “Socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge.” (22)

• Social Democracy represents the working class not only in relation to their employers, but to all classes in modern society and to the state.– Economic policy cannot be sole focus– Work “not only for better terms for the sale of

labour power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich” (34)

• The vanguard must “act in such a way that all other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard.” (51)– But those who would organize the working class for revolution

are amateurs, imitating earlier Social-Democrats who “marched to war like peasants from the plough” untrained and unarmed (63)• “Primitive” (66)

– There exists “a general lack of revolutionary forces fit for action” (64)

– Notice pervasive military language– Spontaneous workers’ resistance will not become genuine class

struggle until they are led by a strong organization of revolutionaries. (86)

• “The organization of revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession” (71)

• Organize & specialize– No revolutionary movement can endure w/o a stable

organization of leaders– This organization exists to draw the masses on the

theoretically correct path– Must be secret– Composed of Social-Democrats from all classes (79)

• If the vanguard is composed of the most theoretically advanced people, what does that mean for their actions?

• The Party “must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the ‘working masses’ as the Economists wish to do.” (83)– Theory, hierarchy and authority

• “A worker-agitator who is at all gifted and ‘promising’ must not be left to work eleven hours in a factory.” (84)– Revolution as a profession in every sense

• A professional revolutionary organization will be able to disseminate information in a coherently theoretical form on an all-Russia basis– Single professional, regularly published newspaper >

many amateurish, sporadic pamphlets & magazines• Presents abuse by employers, police, the state as being part

of a systematic organization of power. The police beating in Omsk is systematically related to the maltreatment of workers at a factory in St. Petersburg (93-94)

• “We must make it our concern to direct the thoughts of those who are dissatisfied only with conditions at the university, or in the Zemstvo, etc., to the idea that the entire political system is worthless.” (52)– Not local agitation, but all-Russia revolution (93-

94, 96)

• Centralization of power, information, and authority in the vanguard