Unfortunately, an indictment is not a Revolutionary Paradigm Shift

" Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favor of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all. Initially it is crisis alone that attenuates the role of political institutions as we have already seen it attenuate the role of paradigms. In increasing numbers individuals become increasingly estranged from political life and behave more and more eccentrically within it. Then, as the crisis deepens, many of these individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. At that point the society is divided into competing camps or parties, one seeking to defend the old institutional constellation, the others seeking to institute some new one. And, once that polarization has occurred, political recourse fails. Because they differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is to be achieved and evaluated, because they acknowledge no supra-institutional framework for the adjudication of revolutionary difference, the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force. Though revolutions have had a vital role in the evolution of political institutions, that role depends upon their being partially extra-political or extra-institutional events."

"Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense." The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

"The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual. The man who premises a paradigm when arguing in its defence can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compellingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle. The premises and values shared by the two parties to a debate over paradigms are not sufficiently extensive for that. As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists." The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Comments

[John S. Ransom]

Lenin has a comment on what produces 'revolutionary situations' that is also interesting here. I'm having trouble finding it though. He says something about how the ruling class loses faith in itself -- this is exactly what happened with the ruling class in Russia. That's a class that lost faith in its capacity to rule. Hard to blame them, with military decisions being taken by the mad monk, Rasputin.

[Alain]

John, thanks for the comment. If you find the quote I would love to see it. I know that the Kuhn is very tangential to the current situation but it interests me because it seems that the notion of scientific revolutions, and paradigm shifts in general, is relavent to the question of political and social change.

[John S. Ransom]

Hi Alain, I think I've found it. It is located here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/ii.htm

It is in the second chapter of the 1915 pamphlet, _The Collapse of the Second International_. Table of contents location:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/

And here's the relevant text:

The Collapse of the Second International - excerpt

II

[skip a few paragraphs]
To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis *and by the “upper classes” themselves* into independent historical action.

Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. Such a situation existed in 1905 in Russia, and in all revolutionary periods in the West; it also existed in Germany in the sixties of the last century, and in Russia in 1859-61 and 1879-80, although no revolution occurred in these instances. Why was that? It was because it is not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary *class* to take revolutionary mass action *strong* enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, “falls”, if it is not toppled over.
[end excerpt]

[Stuck]

"When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense"

Kuhn's paradigm model describes, at least to some degree, how conflicts between right and left-wing ideologies may operate, but it's questionable that the paradigm model is in itself sufficiently "robust" to account for all the specific political shortcomings or injustices that resulted in the conflicts. The conflicts are as historically or economically motivated as "political"; and will differ greatly depending on geographic area, or historical era: the French revolution quite different than the Russian. Kuhn also has this tendency, maybe common to those influenced by the school of Pragmatism, to emphasize a nearly Hegelian type of abstract process which overlooks the details of revolution or the situation leading up to revolution: one might term Kuhn's system of paradigm shifts and "incommensurability" ahistorical to some degree. However noble or rational the revolutionary secular Idea may have been--of either the French republicans or Bolsheviks--the actions done in the name of the Idea (and intention is another big issue usually neglected in this sort of political process rhetoric) are quite different--far more tangible and, yes, bloody. Giving the name "paradigm" to the Marxist Idea--and thus to the Stalinist Idea, which does follow from the Leninist programme-- of "liquidating the bourgeois" (and seizing their property, sending them to gulag, killing them ) seems a bit naive if not mistaken and manipulative. Fascism and Stalinism are only paradigms to philosophers: perhaps they are more accurately termed symptoms of widespread mass-psychosis, however unappealing that may be to the continentalist or analytical theoretician.

[Alain]

Stuck, you make several points I agree with: the blood is thick on the hands of those who have lead revolutions in the name of Marx, class conflict, and social justice. And philosophers of all persuassions often deal in abstractions that do not necessarily further their self professed goals.

But none of that means we cannot look to philosophy to help understand both the conditions for change and its implementation. Looking at politics this way is necessarily abstract but that doesn't mean there is nothing to be gained from it. And the quote that John provides us from Lenin is insightful, despite the blood on his hands. You would not suggest that we be prohibited from reading and learning, even from someone who was a mass murderer? Abe Lincoln is someone who is considered a thoughtful political leader, but he lead the country into a civil war that killed more Americans than any other. Should we not look to his writing for insight?

[roger]

Actually, it is a canard that Lenin was some type of mass murderer. On the contrary, he saved Russia from sacrificing probably a million more soldiers in the futile and bloody battles raging on the Eastern front, while Churchill, Lloyd George, various British generals, and the French General staff were losing soldiers at a clip of over two thousand a day on the fields of Northern France. In fact, Lenin was opposed by the allies not because he was massively instituting concentration camps -- nothing he did, in the penal line, was different from what France was doing in Guyana, or what the British did in South Africa -- but because he wasn't continuing the war.
The odd idea that men killed in a war don't count, and that the leaders who start and continue these wars, and the generals who fight them, are innocents, is one of the things Lenin revolted against. Lenin was right.

[Alain]

Roger, I apologize for making it sound like Lenin was a "mass murderer." Clearly he was not and I was trying (rather poorly) to reference the usual criticism that discussions of Marxism evoke: Marxism equals genocide, therefore all marxist thinking is evil. Of course Lenin was not Stalin. Again, sorry for the confusion.

[Stuck]

I didn't mean to suggest that. Kuhn's "Structure of..." rests nearby and I enjoy reading it, but I do find it rather antiseptic and academic, and in some sense a recapitulation of the few Popper and Quine texts I have absorbed; though the Quinean aspects are not so easily detected (Kuhn's sort of radical empiricism rejects analyticity, I believe, as Quine also rejected it). The paradigm model may work well when describing the shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics, but does the Kuhnian model have that sort of descriptive power when applied to Bolsheviks or fascists? I'm not sure it does. But an interesting post nonetheless. Perhaps Kuhn could function as a somewhat ideologically-neutral (and I think secular if not atheistic) guide to the process of ideology and politics, but any real analysis of how revolutions come about requires a lot more research.

If you will excuse a bit of speculation, I believe a very precise if not mathematical "Philosophy of History" might be necessary, a quasi-LaPlacian system which could conceivably demonstrate causation, or at least probable effects and results from various situations and events: such as how the Bolsheviks developed out of the Czarist empire, or how fascism arose--necessarily?---in Germany after WWI. Obviously many historians and I think philosophers have suggested this: that historical events can be charted if not determined in advance--but most would agree both Hegel and Marx failed to really construct any sort of model which could adequately explain historical causation. That's a monumental task, but it would seem that is what the materialist process thought of Kuhn--a sort of scientific Hegelian in a sense--suggests.

[Alain]

Stuck, where I diverge from you is over the issue of "historical causation:" I do not think that most historical events are inevitable, though they quite often appear that way after the fact. The reason Kuhn interests me is that he has shed light on certain displacements in the history of science that had largely been ignored. This is why he spends some effort in debunking the logical inclusiveness model of scientific development, that instead of incrementalism we find that paradigm shifts are often rooted in crises and unexplainable anamolies. But for a shift to occur, it is up to an insurgent group to fight on the behalf of the new paradigm. It is this conflict that seems parallel to social and political change. Of course it is not a direct fit, and the specificity of every situation is key in deciding on goals and strategy. But it still seems to me to add something to the conversation, especially in light of Lenin's more Kuhnian insights (of perhaps Kuhn's more Leninst ones.)

[John S. Ransom]

I agree with Roger about Lenin. I do not think it is fair to make the same kind of judgment about him that we quite rightly make about Stalin. The partial weakness, perhaps, in Roger's reasoning (and I'm just thinking out loud here in a blog-comment sort of way) is that we hope for something more from a socialist intent on the liberation of the human spirit from the anachronistic constraints of capitalism than we expect from, say, the godawful Belgians, who killed so many hundreds of thousands of people in the twentieth century in the 'Belgian' congo. -- John

[Jodi]

the thing is, Stalin was also working to liberate the human spirit from the constraints of capitalism; he wanted productivity without the capitalist form and thus a totally revolutionized society. Lenin, you could say, backtracked quite a bit in the early twenties. So, I agree that there are differences. I also agree that Stalin was more horrifying. But, I'm not sure we've addressed the way in which we was horrifying--or the genius of Lenin.

If Zizek's reading of Lenin is helpful, part of Lenin's greatness was his complete willingness to take a risk, to go against the laws of historical development, to jump right in and do what needed to be done with absolutely no security. That's pretty great, in my book. (Actually, literally, I'm trying to write about Zizek's approach to Stalin and Lenin right now, on another screen...)

[Matt]

Of course there is always the danger of reducing "History" to the cult of individual villains (or heroes), and a great deal of the scholarship on Stalinism succumbs to this temptation, perhaps with varying degrees of subtlety (Medvedev, Radzinsky, even Siegelbaum and Sokolov maybe, etc.) So our Popperian friend is in good company, in a sense.

There are some notable exceptions. Svetlana Boym has done a great deal of fascinating sociological work, Richard Stites and Angela Brintlinger are also worth reading (on "iconoclastic currents" and revolutionary dreams, and Russian literary culture, respectively).

But it seems to me, as far as I can remember (and it's been awhile since reading Zizek), that Z's gesture is something of a deliberate provocation in the specific context of this climate (with its metanarratives about 'the just end of Communism, which was always only on the way to Stalinism,' etc.)

As with all more or less calculated provocations, I suppose, it runs the risk of back-firing. Maybe it would help if Z. were also willing to prove himself capable of careful qualification...instead of merely combatting one prejudice with the vague outline of its opposite? What say you, Jodi, am I being too harsh? Probably.

The concept of a 'paradigm shift' does seem a bit outdated somehow, with neo-Marxists (or a certain sort) in the White House these last six years (at least) and actively trying to *change* things, as a nihilistic sort of end in itself/distraction from numerous mounting crisis, etc.

[roger]

Jodi, I have to disagree with this: "the thing is, Stalin was also working to liberate the human spirit from the constraints of capitalism; he wanted productivity without the capitalist form and thus a totally revolutionized society." Far from taking the human spirit position, Stalin undermined Bolshevik internationalism and instituted a policy of socialism in one country. And far from removing the constraints of the production system capitalism had spawned -- a system that massively offset costs onto third parties -- Stalin simply reproduced it, offsetting costs to the state on the people (for instance, as we now know, horrendous environmental costs -- the Stalinist economic system enabled perhaps the greatest poisoning of the earth ever seen -- these are, properly, third party costs). Lenin, properly, pursued a much more pragmatic course, and that course led to a pretty astonishing uptick in living standards (especially given the civil war that raged across Russia). Of course, the madness of recapitulating the industrial system in Russia might have led to third party costs in any case, but the best buffer against those costs is certainly to have a political structure porous enough to allow negative feedback about those costs.

[John S. Ransom]

Lenin -- isn't he an archtype of the Machiavellian prince? A lot of virtu! He also very much reminds me of Weber's discussion of the features of leadership in "politics as a vocation."

[Alain]

I really love Long Sunday. I started with a post on Thomas Kuhn (pretty mundane stuff, paradigm shifts) and we end up with an interesting discussion of Stalin and Lenin. Good times, Good times....Thank you.

[John S. Ransom]

I feel the same way, Alain. I benefit a lot from 'long sunday,' and I have to say that this is even true of some of the more hostile comments. Who is the jerk who said 'friendship is true opposition'? I hate that saying! But maybe it's right.

[s.]

One reason so many putative leftists admire someone like Lenin, and dislike Locke, is that he, like a great Ivy League Professor, or J. Edgar Hoover for that matter, simply dismisses the idea of rights, or votes, or consensus--of dissent really. Neither communists nor fascists can stomach dissent--it is a glitch in their efficiency model. Lenin's acts are "Good" (of course that good is never quite defined--more efficient economy? better standard of living for all? more just distribution of resources?) and yet all the historical details are left out: the suppression of the Mensheviks, the denial of voting to the peasants, the bloody battles against the "White" soldiers and sailors, the silencing and imprisoning of the anarchists, and who knows what other nefarious acts. And while Lenin did make some criticism of Stalin, he also let this monster rise in the ranks, and Lenin and the Bolshevik's autocratic policies created a political situation where a Dictator could completely dismiss any notion of personal right (the great marxist bureaucratic dream) and kill millions in the name of efficiency. And regardless if Marx or even Lenin's initial motiviations or programs were ethical or just, they resulted in Stalin's Five Year plans and millons of deaths, which the cafe-left still hasn't quite dealt with. They have too much invested in their leftist hedonism to ever really gaze at stacks of dead slavic and ukrainian peasant farmers.

[Matt]

s./Jason,

As a proud card-carrying member of the "cafe-left" I must ask, how dare you assume what I have and have not gazed at. You don't know shit about that. Although it does sound as if you almost get off on the very idea. What good that does I have no idea. It certainly doesn't help your cause any.

Zizek has written about 'Lenin,' specifically as a signifier and in a deliberately abstract manner, yes. My guess is you don't really understand what he's getting at, other than that it offends your fragile sensibilities, and so must be made to fit within this convenient, disingenuous and cynical worldview you have fabricated for yourself, complete with an all-purpose category for everything that you do not understand.

Perhaps you would care to compare notes on Sovietology? As for sticking to the topic in a manner that carries any weight, if you were to ever write something precise and original, and genuinely engaging about the Five Year Plan(s) say, then maybe we could even post it here for you, with your own comments thread and everything. You say we haven't "dealt with" it. It's about time you proved you have. Whaddaya say?