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In the heavily censored realm of the Chinese internet, where no group is allowed to be very organized, one set of intellectuals has made themselves heard. They are loosely affiliated writers who refer to themselves as the Industrial Party. Their views are simple to summarize: that nation-states ruthlessly compete with each other; that science and technology are the decisive forces in this Darwinian competition; and that therefore the state must be organized around the pursuit of science and technology. They patriotically view the Communist Party as the world’s most capable political organization for this pursuit.

The Industrial Party tends not to cite a broad range of thinkers, only forceful leaders like Mao or Stalin who repelled invaders and established an industrial base. It is a worship of strength through technology.

--- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”
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Читаю уже второй том биографии Сталина, написанной проф. Коткиным. Заодно, посмотрел его "дуэт" с Славоем Жижеком.

Запишу несколько впечатлений:
1. Из двух книг Коткина я узнал об истории России/СССР больше, чем за годы учебы в советской школe.
2. Сталин построил диктатуру в диктатуре, т.е. диктаторский режим внутри партии, которая была инструментом диктатуры в СССР.
3. В окружении Сталина не было людей, которые бы устроили коллективизацию ценой смерти миллионов крестьян и голода среди десятков миллионов.
4. Личность диктатора играет огромную роль, и его убийство может быть вариантом ее серьезного смягчения, т.е. спасением миллионов жизней.

Here, Zizek gives his recommendations on best fictional depictions of the Soviet System (Shalamov & Platonov). Funny, how he calls Akhmatova "an endlessly pretentious bitch."



upd. at the 1:26:27 mark Zizek makes a deep point that is quite relevant in today's America. First, he notes that modern communists/authoritarians, e.g. in China and Vietnam, are much more efficient capitalist managers than democracies. Then, he adds, "the problem is that for me global capitalism is approaching a stage where it less and less needs democracy."
Few years ago, Peter Thiel remarked that freedom wss incompatible with democracy; for him freedom meant its libertarian version for billionaires. He felt that democratic institutions were constraining his freedom and he set out to destroy them, using Vance, Trump, Musk, etc.
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It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty. It is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am_free (or 'truly' free) even while my poor earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek however benevolently to impose it, with the greatest desperation.

...
unlimited authority in anybody's grasp was bound, he [Benjamin Constant] believed, sooner or later, to destroy somebody. He maintained that usually men protested against this or that set of governors as oppressive when the real cause of oppression lay in the mere fact of the accumulation of power itself, wherever it might happen to be, since liberty was endangered by the mere existence of absolute authority as such.

Isaiah Berlin. Two concepts of liberty.

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