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The French Revolution bore the twin headed hydra into our world. The red Phrygian caps of the People, and the tricolor they would die for. The Revolution, freedom, equality, fraternity, and the nationalistic fervor of Frenchness. Revolution and nationalism, fused together into an unstoppable force, at least for a while. A trick that cannot be repeated, rippling outwards into eternity. All history hence is farcical repetition of this singular genesis. The left, the right, the Revolution and reaction. We cannot move on, though many have tried. The same fight, ad infinitum. The essence of modernity lies in this eternal battle.
2 years ago
@marginalia I think we're on the same page here. Things like The People or The Nation are amorphous concepts that don't "govern" anything because they aren't anything other than constructs and systems made by humans, sure. Things like race are the same thing. All that said, it doesn't mean those concepts and ideas don't influence how real people operate in the world, and get trapped in the web of ideology that ends up directing their actions. · 2 years ago
Let's not pretend that ideology, now or ever, is anything more than a set of political mores with an optional system of rationalization to try to discretely sumersault over Hume's law and make said mores seem like some holy mandate. Pointing at shadows and calling them gods with names like The People or The Market or The Nation and pretending that their will governs the fate of man is really a regression to ways so old even those backwards Romans quietly had doubts about them. And of course Marx is going to sound like his ideas are the pinnacle of human thought. He's a German 19th century philosopher, they all sound like ther ideas are the inevitable pinnacle of human thought. · 2 years ago
@marginalia All that said, I don't think it's a coincidence that the French Revolution modeled a lot of its institutions and justifications after those of the Roman Republic. As Marx writes, "[200~Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases." · 2 years ago
@marginalia Likewise, the optimates and the populares were operating with a very narrow band of political thought, and weren't really cohesive political ideologies or parties in any modern sense. There wasn't any concept of nationalism (a decidedly modern concept), and the People as an actor and a source of legitimacy was not really established in the Roman Republic. · 2 years ago
@marginalia I would be very hesitant to label Sparta as anything resembling "fascism." Really, we're just talking about a slave state with absolute rule for a small elite, which incidentally is actually very similar to Athenian "democracy" that also relied heavily on a slave economy for large parts of the service sector, while having "free" yeoman farmers for agricultural unlike the Spartan helots. Regardless the war between the two had very little to do with their political systems and almost everything to do with Athens' attempt to construct and hold an empire in the Aegean. · 2 years ago
Isn't that just the same old dynamic as that between proto-fascist Sparta and democratic Athens, between Optimates and the Populares? Both ideals are as compelling to the human hearts as they are incompatible. · 2 years ago