(Oct 28, 2017 11:53 AM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: [ -> ] (Oct 23, 2017 12:07 AM)Syne Wrote: [ -> ]“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
ofcoarse once you make laws that are forced on to free people and those free people are not paid for being forced to comply with those laws where they have neither choice nor compensation...
then its a completely different reality.
No, it isn't. Complying with law changes neither the variety in capacity nor what it would take to enforce equality. It would actually take a much more tyrannical enforcement of law to even attempt to make such equality a reality...which ultimately results in people being lined up against the wall and shot, much like the 60 million Russians Solzhenitsyn lamented.
Quote:taking a minute to look at the relative meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
stalinism which he was referring to was just Facism wearing a new dress.
He offered just as much, if not more, criticism of Marxist-Leninist communism as he did Stalinism. So unless you can cite a reference specifically showing this referred solely to Stalin, or you believe communism to be inherently fascist, you're fascism supposition is out of luck.
Quote:one can easily argue that freedom from being ruled over by law & thus free to take anything you like from others IS freedom and as he meant it.
Not so:
“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative
Quote:The irony of the concept is that individuals are not just randomly created by random colliding atoms.
they are created by a social group which is attached and has only existed as being part of a community.
attempting to remove the concept of socialism as a community looking after its self and replacing that with some type of illusion of the self reliant baby is .... rediculous.
He was an outspoken critic of all things communistic.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Communism’s deadliest foe
"Alexander Solzhenitsyn did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not."
Marxism-Leninism basically accepts that socialism is a stage of communism:
"Originally and for a long time the concept of a socialist society was regarded as equal to that of a communist society. However, it was Lenin who defined the difference between "socialism" and "communism", explaining that they are similar to what Marx described with the lower and upper stages of communist society. Marx explained that in a society immediately after the revolution, distribution must be based on the contribution of the individual, whereas in the upper stage of communism the from each according to his ability, to each according to his need concept would be applied." -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2...cteristics
“Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and
Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain 'equality'--the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance--the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Quote:considering he was supposedly a poet, thus the notion of the concept of conflicting iedological political and social paradigms thrown against each other to expres a metaphor of personal critique.
IOW, you'll read into it whatever you like, regardless of what words actually mean.
(Oct 28, 2017 05:42 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]Difficult to say that just because Solzhenitsyn and Putin had visionary fellowship with each other, and the latter is even following some of his proposals, that he and Trump would fare similarly in fireside chats. Nationalism transpiring in another country shouldn't even be contingently up for grabs as a good thing if that state also has a history of rivalry and hostility with one's own. Putin's own souring toward Trump surely indicates that the past template of operation is more important than placing initially hopeful expectations on a new leader who seems to be going against the grain. So probably with Solzhenitsyn by now, if he was still alive, if he'd have ever bothered like Putin to project any optimism on Trump giving Russia a better deal to begin with.
[...] At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his [Solzhenitsyn's] reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion. [...] Unhappy with the economic and social malaise of the Yeltsin era, Solzhenitsyn expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin's attempts to restore a sense of national pride. Putin signed a decree conferring on Solzhenitsyn the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his humanitarian work and personally visited the writer at his home on 12 June 2007 to present him with the award. (Wikipedia)
As a matter of principle, every culture should be proud enough to be nationalistic, just as every family proud of its family name, community of its sports team, etc.. Any tendency toward hostility is independent of this, and cannot reflect poorly on nationalism itself. That is a conflation of motives.
According to Solzhenitsyn, Russians were not the ruling nation in the Soviet Union. He believed that all the traditional culture of all ethnic groups were equally oppressed in favor of an atheism and Marxist-Leninism. Russian culture was even more repressed than any other culture in the Soviet Union, since the regime was more afraid of ethnic uprisings among Russian Christians than among any other ethnicity. Therefore, Solzhenitsyn argued, Russian nationalism and the Orthodox Church should not be regarded as a threat by the West but rather as allies.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_...ationalism