The Self-Reflecting State E-Book

Timo Schmitz

• Herausgeber: Graf Berthold Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 154

Beschreibung

"The Self-Reflecting State" shows a post-modern concept which treats human interaction in a state-like quality: We choose our friends in certain ways, as we want to be treated well by them and at the same time love them for who they are. But when we go to politics, we forget the community spirit and become the most egoist individualist people not thinking beyond ourselves. Why dont we do politics in the same way than we interact in communication with acquaintances? In this book, Timo Schmitz analyses the society on different levels, such as morality, consciousness and culture, showing that our political views actually reveal a lot about us. Therefore, any change begins in us as individuals at first.

Leseprobe

Content

Foreword

Chapter 1: Plurality and Individuality on a standpoint of Classes

Individuality as a starting point

The birth of revolutions?

The matter of classes in the light of revolutions

Lenin’s reply: Democratic centralism

The birth of Left totalitarianism and resistance by Socialists from exile

“New Democracy” and “Mass Line” as a Chinese Way

Leftism all around the world

The dispute between Communism and Anarchism

Striving for Complete Freedom

Chapter 2: Reason

Enlightenment as liberation of the mind?

The problem of subjectiveness

There is not the one truth which is reasonable

Chapter 3: Morality

Morality as boundary to individualism

Christianity: The Ten Commandments

Islam: The five main duties

Judaism: 613 commandments – yet a quite dynamic understanding of values

Hinduism: Diversity in ethics

Buddhism: The five precepts

Sikhism: The ten prohibitions

Shamans also have responsibilities

Ethics as a universal concern

Chapter 4: Religion

Religion as mediator between ‘the Known’ and the ‘Unknown’

God is the cause of all existence

Organized religion and counter movements

Breaking up church dogmatism

God as a fact

Forms of religion

How to handle religion?

Chapter 5: Constructivism

Constructivism has many meanings

Philosophical Constructivism

Chapter 6: A political alternative

The concern of exploitation

Intransparency as a cause of mistrust in politics

Participation is easier in small states

The concern of elections

The basis of the society

Maintaining Complete Freedom

A traditional democracy in the Caucasus

Communist democracies are rare

The Panglong Spirit and Insurgent democracy

Chapter 7: The economy in communities

Chapter 8: Culture Critique

The traditional meaning of the term culture

Culture in a digital world

The actual meaning of culture today

Culture and prejudices

Chapter 9: Political or Societal?

Literature

Foreword

In 2015, I published a new philosophy called the New Constructivist Communism through the article series Individualism between Moral and Virtue, Government and Religion, which contained 27 articles and was finished in 2016. The basic view was presented in my Inner Chapters, which concluded the theme. This was then further embedded by giving several positions. I, personally, think that the work was well-received, though Chapter 16 and 21 soon turned out to be complete rubbish. In my youthful naivety, I thought I could include a statement on Platonism, without realizing the deep impact and complexity on the same. In my university study, I dedicated a lot of attention to Plato and I can only shake my head on what I produced on Platonism back then. However, I have to admit that through really grasping Plato, he even was more favored by me.

In 2017, I made a few modifications on my theory. This happened in two phases in which the question of universality and the political question was focused. After years of publishing my first draft on my basic ideas, I think that thanks to criticism but also through one’s own development, it is time to reflect the ideas again to adjust the New Constructivist Communism to its time. Most people probably are shaken off when they hear the term “Communism” since they see a strong political connotation. Indeed, it would be wrong to deny that the New Constructivist Communism is not political, but as a post-modern concept, it is not only dedicated to politics, but to self-realization. It questions the contemporary society and asks “what can I do myself to make this world better?”.For this reason, it was evident that the first draft did not include classical political theories, but rather focused on Plato, Sartre and Nietzsche, and thus essential questions such as the soul, the world order, and even God.

However, while I was an atheist when I started writing my first draft, I slowly but surely found the belief in God from time to time, so my views on religion also changed a lot and are worth to be critically discussed. Thus, it is not surprising that I take an Idealistic worldview as ground, especially as my love for Plato’s philosophy grew more and more. On the other hand, some viewpoints from my earlier drafts are still important: Constructivism. It is no coincidence that the term Constructivism can be found in the name of my philosophy. Anyways, this leads to the struggle on how absolute this world actually is, or in other terms: can we really be sure that the ideas, in the Platonical sense, are the essence of everything? Don’t we have to doubt it? This leads us to reflect the world and our standpoint on the world, and it is this self-reflection which dominates my philosophy. It seems that we live in a constructed world, and that we construct ourselves, our values, our images, shortly “ourselves” in the same way. Therefore, it is a politics to ourselves. It will turn out that we are the political object, as we will see in the end.

Chapter 1: Plurality and Individuality on a standpoint of Classes

Individuality as a starting point

Everybody is actually oneself, this is an undoubted fact and needs no proof, as no one can be someone else. It is the nativity and uniqueness of human-beings that Hannah Arendt used to call ‘persona’. And as an acting person, as ‘persona agens’, we want to be ourselves as we can only act through ourselves, in being our own agent. Identity is very important for human-beings: one identifies as oneself, acts as oneself, so one realizes to be one’s ‘own’. As such, one wants to decide over one’s own. At the same time, human-beings face conventions and moral images which emphasize on a collective base. So my 2015 version of the New Constructivist Communism focusses on the struggle between individualism and collectivism.

Starting with the 1968 revolutions, individuality finally became unstoppable. This is the birth of nowadays individualism as we grasp it. For Ancient Greek people, this model would be a pure horror. For Aristotle, the smallest unit is the house – the oikos – which is a whole entity and as such several houses make up a village (komé), or better said: a community [Aristotle, 1252b – 1253a]. The house as such is ‘force’. It is ruled by the patriarch, the oikodespot, who is the owner of the women and slaves and oversees that reproduction works well [Habermas, 2018: 56]. As such, the house is the private space and everything which is happening inside, stays inside. One cannot get any merit in the house. The marketplace (agora) on the contrary is the public space where every citizen (and in Ancient Greek it only included adult males) is equal [Ibid.]. Being free for an ancient Greek meant being not ruled by people from the outside – by foreigners, such as the Persians. Benjamin Constant defined it as the Liberty of Ancients [Constant, 1819]. In contrast, in Modern times, a new kind of liberty, a Liberty of Moderns started to grow, which focused on the individual. Defining freedom collectively was phased out by defining freedom on individuality [Ibid.].

The problem however that I pointed out in 2015 was the fact that there is no actual consensus. People on different places on the earth are taught different moral values and they changed from time to time. This makes it difficult to connect morality to any kind of truth. However, we need a certain starting point. I decided to first take a look at the individual and the individual’s space. Consequently, as the very first basis, I introduced the principle of individualism as ground for my philosophy. A free society is defined through individuality and pluralism. Therefore, everyone shall have the right to believe in what one wants and also has the right to believe it the way one wants. [Schmitz, 2018: Chapter 1] This is especially important in a digital era, where radical truths are taught: for instance, if a man criticises feminism, he might be attacked in social media for allegedly being a misogynist. Such a radicalism gives space for the even more radical views, while moderate views get into an individual underground, i.e. one only thinks for oneself and does not dare to speak out, in fear of being labelled as well.

This makes it possible that minority views are perceived as majority views, and the radicalism in which contrary views are tried to be silenced through labels and stigmatization is a form of authoritarianism. Even further, in a digital era, nothing is forgotten. This means that people have to be perfect, as every single mistake might appear somewhere one day again. Therefore, I emphasize that everyone has the right to make a mistake and an individual has the right to correct one’s mistake whenever one wants and one also has the right that one’s corrected view is accepted. [Ibid.] So we can see that people are governed. In my 2015 version, I only focused on governments, which was far too idiotic from my point. Thinking that only the government governs us is naïve. After I read Habermas, I realized that there is another important factor that I already talked about in several chapters in my 2015 version, but I failed to realize its importance: it is the public itself. People are judged by the public.

But even further, I understand Habermas’ fear of the colonisation of what he calls Lebenswelt. Everything has its own Logic. Markets follow their own logic, so do laws, so do government systems, everything systemizes us and these systems start taking over us. [Schmitz, 2018/ 2021c] Even in digital times, elections are manipulated by intriguing people via social media, the cyberwar has already begun. And people seemingly just are regarded as puppets on the playground. In such an environment, individualism and thus pluralism is endangered.

The keyword here is equality, and this also means that no one is less worth even if his or her opinion seems stupid to us. If people are told what is good and what is bad they cannot govern themselves anymore. [Schmitz, 2018: Chapter 1] As such, everybody has to define what is good and what is bad for oneself, but as we can learn from every religion, there are some conventions that are universally accepted, such as the prohibition to kill people. I think, it is no coincidence that the first chapter of my 2015 draft was translated into Burmese very early and was shared in the underground among young intellectuals within Myanmar. It is a young society, in which people were torn down in a dictatorship for decades. Their daily reality was a self-less system in the sense that the self had no value and one only had to work for the system – thus “no self” or “self-less” in a certain sense. In the last decade, a transformation took place which made many seek for an identity. While the first chapter was too evident for readers from Europe stating “learnt nothing new” in social media, for Burmese people, this chapter was astonishing. They are asking themselves, what is “society” and what “am I” and this country is searching for answers – actually, it is literally struggling. However, there hunger for freedom was defeated through the 2021 coup d’état, reinstalling an authoritarian system. The days thereafter, many went on the streets to protest for their rights – not because a few people read my article on individualism the years before, but because the seed of liberty was already implanted in this nation which fought for so long. In the same way, a short introduction of my New Constructivist Communism attracted a few readers in Georgia, after the key ideas were translated into Georgian. The young post-Soviet nation also struggled with dictatorship, the last one ending with the defeat of Saakashvili in 2012, but in recent years, the state returns back to its authoritarian roots instead of processing with democratic reforms. Nonetheless, the fact that the word “Communism” appeared in my philosophy’s name turned out to be rather a disadvantage, since their contemporary history still shows the wounds of Soviet Communism and thus, the word “Communism” is still attached to what they experienced under a rule which officially served what was called “Communism” to them on the menu.

Anyways, while a society without castes and ranks is too evident for us, there are still many people in the world facing the exact opposite: people in India still fight for freedom. Though castes were officially abolished, the situation in which people are born inside still determines their fates. It is the best example for social inequality, as in India – according to my assessment – one can find extremely rich and extremely poor people next to each other. At the same time, this shows why the Communist cause is more demanded than ever before.

The birth of revolutions?

The matter of classes became very important in the era of Enlightenment. Enlightenment also is often seen equally with education. But maybe it is just better to say that during that time, it became easier for information to spread. People built their spheres in which they could discuss and these spheres tended to alienate: as Tocqueville showed that in the Early Middle Ages, a small circle oppressed the majority. But every fifty years, the people became closer as the highest lost a bit of power and the smallest gained a bit. [Tocqueville, 1985: 15-19] Thus, the society always becomes closer and closer. As I pointed once out in an essay: “In many [countries], revolutions took place […] that could be called cultural revolution[s] by its lexical term (not by its historical term!) […]  Cultural revolutions took place in the whole human history. When people were dissatisfied with their situation in Middle Ages a political revolution took place. But this was not limited to politics. The Renaissance dissolve[d] the Middle Ages. The mentality of the people changed abruptly. During the Middle Ages, no one cared about the past or history in general. The Renaissance was a revival of historical understanding and return to arts from antiquity – in a modern sense, however.” [Schmitz, 2014/ 2020]

Hannah Arendt in contrary showed in “On the Revolution” that revolutions are a quite new phenomena and that the American and French revolutions were the first revolutions in our modern understanding, while revolutions before were rather seen as restaurations. Indeed, I think that even the Reformation was not a revolution but the try for a restauration. But at the same time, a restauration might be a revolution as well: a good idea went out of order and has to be set back to its starting point. This cycle was even revealed by Machiavelli. [Schmitz, 2018/ 2021a] However, the French Revolution showed a gruesome example on how the three common ranks were formally abolished but new ranks were quickly constructed. Even the freedom promised by that very revolution turned out to be just another restauration.

The matter of classes in the light of revolutions

The fundamental issue on classes was given by Marx and Engels stating: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations” [Marx & Engels, 1848]. This fundamental phrase became an aphorism for generations of revolutionaries. Indeed, Marx and Engels realised that revolutions always appeared. But even the new type of a revolution changed nothing and ended just in a restauration. Therefore, another new type of revolution ought to be created. Concerning the question above, I think the French Revolution was not the first revolution, but it was a revolution of a very new type. For Arendt, every human-being has an animal part which serves our instincts to survive (animal laborans). [Arendt, 1983: 92-126] The second-base of human-beings addresses the characteristics which make humans be human (homo faber). [Arendt, 1983: 127-139] However, I think that the third base, the uniqueness, did not exist before the French Revolution. People were not aware of their person as such. This is why Constant had to distinguish the “Ancients” from the “Moderns”. Something new developed which people were not aware of before: people suddenly got aware of their force.

Anyways, hundred years after the French Revolution, nothing seemed to have changed for Octave Mirbeau. Mirbeau states that the elector thinks “Je suis électeur! Rien ne se fait que par moi. Je suis la base de la société moderne” [Mirbeau, 2002: 4], but in fact the elector just chooses his master – he chooses the authority and gives avowal to be reigned by another person. The proletariat fought for elections, it is their merit [Decker, 2013], but it did not bring them into power. Therefore, Mirbeau gives advice to the voter: “Je te l’ai dit, bonhomme, rentre chez toi et fais la grève” [Mirbeau, 2002 : 7]. Mirbeau saw that the French Revolution’s final outcome did not change anything: Mirbeau took the people’s concern of being governed by a monarch and now has the concern whether being governed by an elected monarch, so to say, is that so much better? To him, it was only a power transfer from one group to another, but for the common people little changed. The only innovation is that the state gets the approval that the people transfer all their power to the state, but they still have only limited ways to participate.

Lenin’s reply: Democratic centralism

Around the same time when Mirbeau published the final version of “La grève des électeurs” in France in 1902, a young Russian named Lenin started publishing critical works in a country that had no revolution at all and thus was still swallowed by absolutism. Vladimir Lenin preferred a council democracy: People shall vote councils that vote other councils and therefore a society where everyone can participate should be established [Schmitz, 2015/ 2017]. Lenin himself never understood his person as “Leninist”. He was a Russian Marxist who was fascinated by the ideas of Karl Marx, though he reshaped many of his views. The basis of Marxism lies in economic activities and the relations within society. [Schmitz, 2018: Chapter 7] Marx does not regard the society as a group of individuals but rather grasps them as one entity that in itself is always in interaction, thus people are not independent. Unfortunately, the means of production are accumulated in the hands of a few and therefore a few are exploiting the masses. [Ibid.]