That is your opinion. The point holds that, without knowing the original text from which the Spanish version was translated, we cannot make a final determination. I queried the Spanish translator about the term in Spanish and she pointed out that it was written in a form that did not necessarily imply a "formal organization," though it could.PatrickSMcNally said:No, that is not correct. Even here in the words you've posted above the misreading is clear.Laura said:... and you see that this is merely an additional explication of "the financial international", i.e. "world bank."
See above.PatrickSMcNally said:The terms "They," Them" refer the "Finance International," whereas when speaking of the "world bank" the text specifically says that not of "Them" belongs to the "world bank."
Faulty premise. As noted, the translator pointed out that, in the Spanish version (and we are at one remove from the original French already), the term did not necessarily imply a formal organization.PatrickSMcNally said:The context in which this arises is that, after mentioning the assassination of Walter Laqueur, he tells us that Laqueur was one of "Them" and this convinced "Them" to not hold any public positions hereafter. Therefore the lesson for the reader is that the "world bank" is a dummy institution which stands before the public while the "Finance International" sits in the background out of sight. Hence, we should be able to identify a public institution which existed in that time of 1938 and was known to the public as the "world bank."
I'm not the one overplaying it.PatrickSMcNally said:The error made with the reference to the "world bank" is an interesting kind of technical point, but we shouldn't overplay the degree to which the evidence that this document is a fallacy depends upon it.Laura said:It is your opinion that the book is a fraud and it hinges, mainly, on the use of this term.
Again, you are arguing points you cannot claim are well-founded since the book was allegedly written in French and the only version we know has been translated into Spanish and then into English. That is why I had a professional translator go over it carefully. This translator is, as it happens, a native Spanish speaker, and also a qualified French teacher in France which should suggest to you the level of command of French. English is her third language. So, her views on the Spanish can be relied upon and I questioned her closely. She noted that there were a few places where the translation into English was a bit awkward and even, considering the context, possibly erroneous. Otherwise, it is generally correct in conveying ideas, though it is difficult to translate idiom.PatrickSMcNally said:It reads textually like something written by a Right-winger using phrases and ideas that would never be used by any of the actual Russian revolutionaries of that era.
Upon what do you base your claim that "phrases and ideas" used in the text would never be used by any of the "actual Russian revolutionaries"? Are you a professional translator and can you read the text in Spanish and compare it to a deep, personal knowledge of what "actual Russian revolutionaries" would know and say?
If not, please cite your authority or method of reading and understanding the text. (I have pointed out that I sought the services of an expert translator.)
Not necessarily. If one studies the history of such "relations," one easily sees that there are two possibilities here: 1) Useful Idiot; 2) self-sacrifice for the objective.PatrickSMcNally said:The idea that Trotsky had any type of working arrangement with such wealthy families as the Rothschilds during the 1930s will appear immediately absurd to anyone familiar with the actual treatment of Trotsky as a political exile during this time. Most countries on the planet simply refused to give him refugee status and the few which did usually held him under tight constraints with the condition that he should find another country to seek refugee status in as rapidly as possible. White officers like Generals Denikin or Wrangel had no settling abroad in reasonable comfort after their defeat in the civil war. But now we're saying that the big Rothschild agent is refused refuge or held in custody wherever he gains refuge? That's preposterous.
This is difficult to understand when one is not fully aware of the problems of psychopaths as a distinct taxon. However, once one grasps this problem, a great deal of fog clears away.
Bottom line is this: there is NO possibility of comprehending ANYTHING that plays out on the global political stage without a deep and comprehensive understanding of pathological deviance.
All of the above is useless argumentation because you do not seem to understand the nature of pathological deviance.PatrickSMcNally said:To take another related example, we're told that the alleged "Rakovsky" says that:
"Capitalism subjective, but Communism objective. A personal synthesis, truth: the Financial International, the Capitalist-Communist one."
This typically follows the way that political conservatives used to assert that the Soviet Union was "Communist" even though it was quite specifically not called such. In the actual arguments which Trotsky spent time writing up he rejected Stalin's claim that the Soviet Union had become "Socialist" and maintained instead that it was a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state." But if we replace the word "Communist" in the above sentence with whatever our preferred term might be, we get an idea which may be partially compared with themes popular among German Social Democrats such Eduard Bernstein or Karl Kautsky, as well as other parties in the Second International such Norman Thomas' Socialist Party in the USA, but which has no similarity to anything which Trotsky would ever utter.
Eduard Bernstein had founded the concept of "evolutionary socialism" which hypothesized that, without a proletarian revolution occurring as theorized by Karl Marx, working just through the apparatus of the capitalist form of republican state, it would be possible for socialists to enact enough legal measures so as to cause the state to metamorphosize into a socialist society without any need for an actual revolution by the proletariat to occur. A prime reason why Trotsky was rejected as a political refugee by so many nations on earth was that it was known that he firmly held to the orthodox Marxist view that only a proletarian revolution would achieve the goal. Stalin allowed this idea to be played down quite a bit during the 1930s as a way of inviting liberals hostile to Hitler to be friendly towards the Soviet Union. In his memoirs Andrei Gromyko describes some friendly exchanges with Bernard Baruch, but that was possible because Baruch knew that as Stalin's representative Gromyko would not be stirring up any revolution. Trotsky in his search for political refugee status was rejected by the Roosevelt administration because they regarded him as a potential trouble-maker. The Socialist Workers Party was prosecuted under the Smith Act before the United States had even entered World War II, because the Roosevelt administration knew that Trotsky's followers treated the war as an inter-imperialist war. Now we're being asked to believe that Rakovsky claims that there is some type of "Capitalist-Communist" synthesis. That type of talk (without the word "Communist," but making a more direct reference to the Soviet Union's claim to building socialism) was normal among people who advocated the view that capitalism could simply evolve into socialism without any actual revolution occurring. This does not fit with Leon Trotsky, or anyone connected with him such as Christian Rakovsky, but it does fit with disinformation popularized among the Right-wing in the 1950s and '60s. There was back then a chain of faked quotes attributed variously to either Lenin or other Soviet leaders which ascribed something like Bernstein's evolutionary concept to them. Many of these were intended to target would-be social reformers with the charge that they were secretly working for "Communism." That line of conservative argument is consistent with the introduction of such terms as "Capitalist-Communist synethesis." But neither the real Rakovsky or the real Trotsky ever talked like that.
Let us consider "ideologies" for a moment, in terms of deviance.
First of all, the complete remarks from which you extracted the end point are as follows:
Now, a quick lesson:Rakovsky in Red Symphony said:R. - If it is necessary to end, then I can only express myself in this way. Let us see if I shall not be able yet to help to understand. It is known that Marxism was called Hegelian. So this question was vulgarised.Hegelian idealism is a widespread adjustment to an uninformed understanding in the West of the natural mysticism of Baruch Spinosa. "They" are Spinosists: perhaps the matter is the other way round, i.e. that Spinosism is "Them," insofar as he is only a version adequate to the epoch of "Their" own philosophy, which is a much earlier one, standing on a much higher level. After all, a Hegelian and for that reason also the follower of Spinosa, was devoted to his faith, but only temporarily, tactically. The matter does not stand as is claimed by Marxism, that as the result of the elimination of contradictions there arises the synthesis. It is as the result of the opposing mutual fusion, from the thesis and anti-thesis that there arises, as a synthesis, the reality, truth, as a final harmony between the subjective and objective. Do you not see that already? In Moscow there is Communism: in New York Capitalism. It is all the same as a thesis and anti-thesis. Analyze both. Moscow is subjective Communism, but Capitalism objective - State Capitalism. New York: Capitalism subjective, but Communism objective. A personal synthesis, truth: the Financial International, the Capitalist-Communist one. "They."
There is a statistically small number of pathological deviants in any given population. Some populations have statistically higher numbers of deviants due to specific pressures that I won't go into right now. These deviants, as a function of their deviance, generally seek power and control over others. They also, as a function of their deviance, generally have the skills to achieve this desired power and control.
The WAY they do this is where we find the issues with so-called ideologies. Such deviants tend to group together (also a natural function of their deviance and feeling "different" from birth. They "seek out their own kind." They also tend to marry within their "taxon.")
Such groups, as mentioned, seek power and control and this is generally done via political activities.
In order to achieve their goals, they understand that a suitably prepared ideology is necessary.
Ideologies, however, must appeal to large numbers of people so that the deviants can obtain the support they need to achieve their goals. Since they cannot create those ideologies, (being deviants, they lack the perceptions necessary to create a convincing ideology, generally), they must co-opt already existing ideologies to their own uses.
And so, if there is some organization already in existence, with social or political goals and an ideology with some creative value that is accepted by a large number of normal people, the deviants will infiltrate - again, as a natural function of their genetic deviance - and submit the organization to a gradual process of subversion.
The primary traditional or ideological values will then protect the pathological deviants that have infiltrated it for a very long time because most people are simply unaware of the true nature of the pathology in question, and that it can wear so convincing a "mask of sanity."
Nevertheless, once this process of subversion has begun, it proceeds in a characteristic manner that is similar to a disease process that can be observed and analyzed. The original ideological values will succumb to characteristic degeneration, the practical function becoming completely different from the primary one, but few people will realize it because the names and symbols of the original ideology will be retained.
The process whereby the original content of an ideology is transformed into a pathological counter-part operates according to observable principles no matter what the social and/or historical scale of the group or the phenomenon. What is important is the fact that any deviant group needs an ideology which justifies its activities and furnishes certain propagandized motives for action.
"Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others."
When such a group is stripped of its ideology, as Rakovsky did above, nothing remains except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. This is repellent and I see that you recoil from this truth. The stripping has provoked your sense of “moral outrage” even though, things being equal, you strike me as an individual who would normally condemn an "immoral ideology".
As noted, when an ideology has been taken over by pathological deviants, a process of gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to functions and goals other than the original formative ones takes place over time. As this process continues, "circles within circles" begin to form in a more or less "natural" way; at any event, a pathodynamically similar process can be observed again and again.
The outer circle of "believers" only knows the ideology in the terms closest to the original content. This circle is utilized for the inner group’s propaganda purposes; it is the interface with the outside world.
The next circle within the organization is one where the ideology is replaced by slipping a different meaning into the same names. Since identical names signify different contents depending on the layer in question, we observe that a kind of "doubletalk" develops, and this can have multiple layers. If you are a pathological deviant, you understand words differently than a normal person does, so this is a given.
Average people believe in the "ordinary" interpretation of the doubletalk - perceiving no hidden meanings - for a very long time before experience teaches them that all is not as it seems. Pathological types, of course, immediately perceive the "hidden meanings" and make a bee-line for the "inner circle." This very duality of language, however, is a pathognomonic symptom indicating that the group in question has been subverted.
The ideology of groups affected by such degeneration has certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group, radical righting of the wrong, and the higher value of the individuals who have joined the organization. These motivations facilitate sublimation of the feeling of being wronged and different, caused by one’s own psychological failings, and appear to liberate the individual from the need to abide by uncomfortable moral principles. This works on several levels.
In the world full of real injustice, the arising of such ideologies is common. It is also common that in such a world, ideologies will be subjected to, and succumb to, the described co-opting and degradation.
At any given time, those people with a tendency to accept the better version of the ideology will also be strongly motivated to justify the ideology no matter how apparent it is that it has degraded.
"The ideology of the proletariat, which aimed at revolutionary restructuring of the world, was already contaminated by a schizoid deficit; small wonder, then, that it easily succumbed to a process of typical degeneration in order to nourish and disguise a macro-social phenomenon whose basic essence is completely different."
The bottom line is: ideologies do not need pathological deviants; deviants need ideologies in order to subject them to their own deviant goals.
At the same time, the fact that some ideology or other was co-opted and degenerated along with its related social movement, later serving goals which the originators of the ideology would have abhorred, does not prove that the ideology was worthless, false, and fallacious from the start.
Any human created ideology will likely include errors of human thought and emotion.
In short, it is really not a good idea to even try to talk about these matters without a thorough knowledge of Ponerology and pathological deviance.Lobaczewski said:The greater and truer the original ideology, the longer it may be capable of nourishing and disguising from human criticism that phenomenon which is the product of the already known specific degenerative process. In a great valuable ideology, the danger for small minds is hidden; they can become the factors of such preliminary degeneration, which opens the door to invasion by pathological factors.
Thus, if we intend to understand the process [of infiltration] and [how] human associations [degenerate], our consciousness should separate that original ideology from its counterpart, or even caricature, created by the [degenerating] process. Abstracting from any ideology, we must, by analogy, understand the essence of the process itself, which has its own etiological causes which are potentially present in every society, as well as characteristic developmental patho-dynamics.