Stalin and Yezhov: An Extra-Paradigmatic View - by Philip E. Panaggio
Chapter 21: Stalin on Trial
As a final extra-paradigmatic way of taking another view of the Stalin era, an attempt will now be made to assess it through the eyes of four superb, highly influential non-Marxist Western thinkers of the past: Plato, Machiavelli, Sir James Frazer, and Nietzsche - as if submitting Stalin to them for judgement by a four-man jury. Imagine that these four "jurors" have been selected by "counsel for Stalin" because they shared few or none of the elements of contemporary dominant paradigms. None of the four ever knew of Stalin or the Soviet Union. It is impossible to really see through their eyes, of course, especially through those of Plato and Machiavelli, who are temporally and culturally more remote than Frazer and Nietzsche. It may be supposed that it is easier to bridge the paradigm-gulf - what is commonly and simply referred to as the "culture clash" - with the modern Europeans Frazer and Nietzsche. The verdict by all four, it will be seen in what follows, is overwhelmingly in Stalin’s favor. Many readers will find the collateral conclusions reached in the course of this brief "trial" anomalous or even absurd due to their failure to fulfill expectations that even strange, outlandish, and counter-intuitive ideas should at least produce conclusions that in some way "make sense" in terms of contemporary paradigms, even if older models of reality and inference procedures seem alien. Contemporary "rogue paradigms" (e.g. Wilhelm Reich’s theory of the orgone) at least do that much. Those held to by these jurors may not. "Bucking a paradigm," as suggested earlier, is more threatening than cogent, reasoned counter-argument, and is likely to cause far more consternation, especially if the challenged paradigm has moral or emotional features.
The first "juror" selected by "counsel for Stalin" in the "voir dire" is the pre-Christian Athenian philosopher Plato (ca. 427 b. C. e.). Though there is much confusion in reading his dialogues as to whether he used Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own ideas, or whether he disagreed with him and was acting instead as Socrates’ biographer, Plato actually did both in his early dialogues. Plato scholars show a great deal of agreement as to exactly where Plato takes over completely. This occurs in the Meno at Section 81 A (75). Therefore, in his later dialogue in the First Book of The Laws, it is a fair certainty that Plato speaks for himself in suggesting a particular simple test for selecting and educating men who can be trusted as statesmen, a test that has subsequently come to be known as Plato’s "wine test." In that dialogue, Plato asserts that drunkenness loosens a man’s tongue, which can give educators an idea what he is really like. It is not enough that a statesman qualify by having been a "wise ex-soldier," which is the "correct answer" most university professors seek from their students in Platonism as to whom Plato believed is most qualified to govern. It may seem trivial and facetious to adherents of contemporary paradigms, but by this simple test one can quickly decide that Stalin, Churchill, and Khrushchev were eminently qualified as statesmen, since they were known to drink everyone else "under the table." Hitler rates as completely unqualified, having been a dedicated, lifelong teetotaler. F. D. Roosevelt barely passes with an "asterisk" because he seems to have enjoyed some social drinking in his youth, but then fell to ill health at about 39 years of age, having contracted polio, after which his drinking was on regimen or non-existent. One can as readily infer that of all five persons rated, Stalin scores highest not only due to his superior ability to imbibe, but by the facts that he took pride, as a Georgian, that his people were raised on a diet of mutton and wine, and that he was himself an amateur vintner. It is also known that Stalin did not find wine strong enough, preferring vodka. He belittled wine as "juice."
Stalin’s detractors have shown how much they eschew the entire point of view embodied in Plato’s test by hastening to point out that Stalin seems to have thought of it himself and actually applied it at social functions to unsuspecting aspirants for Communist Party leadership - using much stronger spirits. These traducers of Stalin’s methods do not present the test as an ancient, highly respectable idea, however, nor do they mention Plato. These omissions are in part due to ignorance, and in part to the fact that Stalin’s defamers themselves belong to a cult of sobriety, devotion to which they consider virtually essential in qualifying for statesman, general, or even just discussant. (The example of a very important early modern teetotaler Immanuel Kant, will be given in a moment). The cheapeners of what Stalin did, averring that he cheated in these drinking bouts, pouring vodka liberally for those he wished to observe and possibly later purge, while "riding the water wagon" himself, say he did this the better to keep his own wits. This claim that Stalin "cheated" is a self-serving way of upholding paradigms in which sobriety is "obviously" very important. The implication is that when Stalin was "rational" and working at his peak, he (of course!) remained secretly sober - as all "sensible" men do - even when others did not. As a rational but morally reprobate man, the paradigmists believe, Stalin made certain of this. For these reasons, any claims that Stalin really cozened others in this way should have their factual basis closely examined. These claims may be, once again, just worn and torn inferences from the dominant paradigm falsely taking on the repute of fact, like the previously discussed "fact" that "Generalissimo Stalin appointed himself" (which turns out to be a factually incorrect inference from the totalitarian paradigm).
Plato’s test is simple and easily elaborated, enabling one to extend it to rank "qualified imbibers" by their graded capacities. Immanual Kant (b. 1724) was the greatest and most influential modern European philosopher, the foremost thinker of the Enlightenment, credited (with Laplace) with being the founder of the nebular theory of the origin of the solar system (which only lately is suspected of being incorrect: the solar system - or at least some of its planets - is now suspected of having originated in a catastrophic stellar collision). Kant believed that the aim of Plato’s most famous dialogue on statecraft, The Republic, was Kant’s own "general law of liberty," as he called it in his Theory of Right. This was Kant’s very modern idea that a just constitution is one that achieves the greatest possible freedom for human individuals by framing laws in such a way that the freedom of each can co-exist as much as possible with the freedom of all others. This is the doctrine Kant espouses in his Critique of Pure Reason. It sounds inimical to the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" such as Lenin and Stalin espoused, because such a dictatorship involves stripping away many liberties enjoyed by capitalist exploiters. If Kant were right about Plato, this would mean the latter would not approve of Stalin very much, despite Stalin scoring highest on the wine test. This shows how much Plato is capable of varied interpretations. However, the matter can be settled in favor of the wine test and Platonic approval of Stalin because, according to Karl Popper, one of this century’s best philosophical interpreters, Kant and many others were deceived into attributing their own ardent liberal and humanitarian ideas to a philosopher (Plato) the entire Western world idealized so much. Kant forced and deformed Plato to fit into his own paradigms, rather than reach conclusions about him inconsistent with his own reasoning, which would have found the wine test anomalous or frivolous if he ever even considered it seriously for one moment. Kant himself would have failed the test miserably, having been an undersized Pietist Christian born and bent his life long with a chest deformity, suffering a frail nature and chronic ill health. His abstemious habits and severe regimen were performed so regularly without break that townspeople use to set their clocks by his daily walk down a street that was named for him "The Philosopher’s Walk." Today he might be diagnosed as suffering from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), for which he may have received Prozac.
A serious challenge for Plato’s wine test is to estimate how many savants of statecraft it would erroneously bar who are otherwise known to be qualified. In other words, does the test unfairly discriminate against qualified men and women just because they have Kant’s undersized and sickly physique, or were born with smaller or gracile bodies, such as many women, and therefore hold liquor less well? It would not surprise anyone that a test from Plato would discriminate against women. It is difficult, however, to envision Stalin using it in this invidious way since the government established by the Bolsheviks was about seventy-five years ahead of the U.S. in women’s participation in high level government. (In the U.S. throughout this entire period, women "participated" at these levels only as wives.) Raising these questions is "testing the test," requiring some outside way (other than the wine test itself) to determine who is qualified. Rejection of the wine test is based on such outside criteria originating from other paradigms. There is no intrinsic problem with the wine test itself: a scaled test could be conceived rating candidates according to Plato’s test based on applying wine as a percentage of body weight. The object of the test is not the same as that of the traditional "drinking bout," with which its antagonists blindly and stupidly lump it together. The purpose is not to see how much liquor can be consumed before the partaker is "under the table." The purpose is to "loosen the tongue." A scaled test is therefore feasible and fair.
There is an interesting, probative question about the wine test that is made light of by those in the cult of sobriety: what is going on when someone is (otherwise) considered ideally suited for statesman (when sober), but fails the wine test by saying many stupid and invidious things while inebriated, speaking and acting contrary to the espoused principles and "better judgement" for which he is esteemed? The superficial, exculpatory answer frequently heard is, "Oh, it doesn’t mean anything. That’s the liquor ‘talking.’ As long as drinking doesn’t affect his job performance. He can be held to abstinence only while on the job. What he does or says on his vacation is his business." Those inclined to accept Plato’s wine test, however, say the test has exposed such an individual as a kind of liar, that the liquor has dissolved his inhibitions, allowing his true feelings to come to expression, and that he is a "phony." This is the sharp point at which the two paradigms diverge and thereafter cannot be bridged, the point beyond which the wine test vs. other tests, and the paradigms of which they are a part, are saying profoundly different things about the mind, behavior, human nature, how a society should be run, and who should run it. The idea that the wine test is irrelevant because "teetotalers only need apply" is no answer for a believer in the wine test because there is a deeper supposition behind what at first seems like a trivial or irrelevant criterion for statesman. This is the supposition that a "qualified when sober, flunk when drunk" type possesses less than obvious unsatisfactory psychological and character traits that will affect his behavior and judgement even when sober, such as being less than fully trustworthy, unreliable in a crisis, etc. The wine test is only a short cut to finding this out. The issue of avoidance of strong spirits while in office is irrelevant to the purpose of the wine test. It is not unreasonable to assume that Stalin thought that failing the test could mean someone was an unconscious wrecker - or just less than aggressive enough in executing Party plans and reforms. This would be a much clearer concept to people (like Stalin) who had an idea of wrecking in the first place, an idea sharp enough to make wrecking a legitimately triable criminal offense having its own requisite mens rea (mental state, like the requirement of "intent to kill" for a first degree murder conviction in Western jurisprudence).
The second extra-paradigmatic thinker placed in judgement over Stalin is one who never loses his ability to shock and outrage readers in the West: the Renaissance Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli (b. 1469). Much of the rage he provokes, however, is the indignation of hypocrites. It was mentioned earlier that the view arose in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English-speaking worlds that practicing certain cruelties and treacheries automatically disqualified a ruler from holding power "legitimately." His domains and rule were thought to be subject to "forfeiture." Machiavelli’s outlook is completely free of this idea.
Admiration of skill was very high in the Renaissance. Machiavelli and his contemporaries in Florence were infused with a connoisseur-like aesthetic appreciation of dexterity, including that in government. For Machiavelli, political theorizing was a scientific endeavor in that it should be based only on an empirical study of history, not abstract ideas. Political writers before him and well after him, especially those of Northern and Western Europe, including many "moderns" like John Locke, made a common practice of beginning their political discourses - or discussing in them - with some aspect of the Biblical "Garden of Eden" story, as if they could derive proofs or convincing arguments as to what powers of government are or are not "legitimate" from the behavior and fate of Adam and Eve. This kind of thinking and writing is also completely absent in Machiavelli.
One of his most famous observations is that "all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed." Even modern Twentieth Century readers are so accustomed to political and historical writing being infused with high-flown moral talk, doctrines of human rights, and so forth, that they automatically read this observation by Machiavelli as a perverse or cynical advocacy of war and preparedness for war. He was making no such thing: he was simply being observational and empirical. As an unarmed prophet whose own downfall he witnessed himself, he mentioned Savanarola, the terrifyingly severe Dominican of Ferrara who trained his followers to spy out the vices of the clergy, sent Florence into riots, was excommunicated, tortured, and hanged. On the other side, as armed prophets who prevailed, Machiavelli mentions Moses, Theseus, Cyrus, and Romulus. Twentieth Century students often find it curious that in this account he does not evaluate so prominent a case as Jesus Christ. The omission of Christ, as if his historical existence was doubtful or his example of no real consequence, was not only typical of Machiavelli, but of all Renaissance thinkers. Rare is the Twentieth Century historian or political theorist - even the purely "secular" one - who does not bring up the Galilean in some context or discussion. This exhibits the greater extent to which Machiavelli was free of religious cant and humbug compared to even this century’s political, social, and moral thinkers and writers.
If the Stalin presented by today’s shared paradigm really did exist and did all the things it claims he did, Machiavelli would have applauded him and said of him what he said of Caesar Borgia, his contemporary and son of Alexander VI: "Reviewing thus all the actions... I find nothing to blame [but] hold him as an example to be imitated." Borgia manipulated the College of Cardinals (Politburo?), conquered by force of arms territories claimed by the Papal States (the Axis and Western powers?), and became the sole beneficiary of his father’s ambition (Stalin purges Trotsky and succeeds Lenin?).
Men like the Stalin portrayed by the dominant paradigm were the common run in Renaissance Italy. Even popes secured election by corrupt means. Machiavelli believed that by an empirical review of history, it is possible to formulate a kind of "science of success" in that area, drawing conclusions not from abstract ideas about what ought to succeed, but from what one observes actually works, treating the question of suitable means (toward an end) in a purely scientific manner without regard to the "goodness" or "badness" of the ends. In other words, if there is such a science, it can be studied just as well in the successes of the wicked as in those of the good. It is even better to devote oneself to the study of successful sinners than saints, Machiavelli said, because there are so much more of the former. Interesting to note is that on the question as to whether or not such a science exists or can exist, the otherwise forthright and candid Twentieth Century philosopher of science Karl Popper rather faint-heartedly stated he remained an "agnostic." Most teachers, writers, and leaders in the West today, as well as most Christians in general, who are or wish to remain "respectable" among peers, will not agree with Machiavelli, but remain hidebound Kantians. They believe - or pretend to believe - the dictum espoused by Kant in his Practical Reason that says, "never regard humanity as a means to something else, but always as a final end." Kant believed the rules set forth in the Decalogue ("Ten Commandments") were specific rules for carrying this out. This is the opposite of what Machiavelli thought, because Kant’s dictum says (to quote him once again), "a life lived according to principle is good, regardless of material success or failure."
Machiavelli’s historical study arrived at qualifications for rulers measured against which the conventional image of Stalin receives very high marks. A ruler, Machiavelli said, must be cunning as a fox and fierce as a lion. He must not be bound by truth or virtue, but only when it pays to do so. However, it is supremely important for him to appear to be virtuous at all times (Show Trials?). Being an accomplished feigner, dissembler, and actor is a great asset, Machiavelli said. He thought it is best of all to appear religious. Here the totalitarian paradigm’s Stalin may get a "minus," since not everyone agrees that Marxism is a religion (as Bertrand Russell thought). A prince ("ruler"), according to Machiavelli, must be on guard against literary men, who are subverters of republics and kingdoms (cf. Stalin saying that writers are "engineers of the human soul").
Contra Dante, Machiavelli considered Julius Caesar wicked and Brutus good because Machiavelli did not consider tyranny a good way to run a government, and Caesar was a tyrant. Machiavelli observed that belief in infallible prophecies, auguries (uttered by Marx and Lenin?) and doctrines (Marxism-Leninism?) are a strong social cement. The French and the Spanish (powerful Western Europeans with colonial and imperialistic aims) he considered backward (not "progressive"?), saying they "stink" (capitalist "pigs"?). He maintained that a ruler should at all times use a system of checks and balances by means of a constitution (the Stalin Constitution of 1936?), to keep other powers (in Machiavelli’s time other princes, the nobles, the clergy, and the people) in check. The finest princes, he held, maintain domestic tranquillity by maximizing liberty for their citizens. Machiavelli argued that most classical writers are wrong, such as the Roman Livy. Contra Livy, he said that the people are wiser than princes are. Popular government is the most preferred, he held, having the backing of the masses, not because these governments are most likely to fulfill some religious or abstract political doctrine of "human rights" that is "correct," but because popular governments are the least cruel, least unscrupulous, and the most stable. Tyrannies are the opposite in each of these regards. Therefore, Machiavelli thought it wisest for a ruler, in his apportionment and balancing of power, to give the most power to the people. He knew that a strong constitution also keeps successful revolutions at bay. (This appears prophetic to many American readers in 1999 due to the length of time the U. S., a nation with a strong constitution, has had the same "duly established government" without a revolutionary overthrow.)
Power, Machiavelli observed, does not depend on armies, but on opinion, and opinion depends on propaganda. It is easier to establish a republic among peasants or mountaineers, he noticed, than among denizens of large cities because the latter are already corrupted. (This sounds Rousseauian.) He recommended that politicians depend for support and power upon the virtuous non-urbanite. (In the U.S. today, this would typically be the mid-Western rural Christian. It is this constituency that accounts for the strong showing in presidential elections of many philosophically shallow and politically inane figureheads, such as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.) Politicians will behave better in any community, the Florentine said, in which their crimes can be made widely known, rather than in a community in which there is censorship, especially if the censorship is under their control. (Machiavelli wrote this before there was a "Fifth Estate," as the press has come to be known).
It is interesting that it has taken Europeans almost 500 years to understand what Machiavelli understood in Fifteenth Century Florence: all statecraft boils down to questions of power, no matter how concealed by fine, edifying slogans like "right will out" or "the triumph of evil is not long lived." Mottoes like these are still heard today from supposedly educated and historically enlightened men when they heap calumnies upon the former Soviet Union. So not everyone wishes to learn Machiavelli’s truth.
Machiavelli sometimes appears archaic to Twentieth Century history sophisticates because he seems to be writing about creating whole communities in one piece, as the semi-mythological "lawgivers" of the ancient world - Moses, Lycurgus, Solon, et. al. - are credited with having done. There is little in Machiavelli on the modern concept of a community or republic and its laws having an organic birth, development, and evolution from antecedents, or of the supposed superiority and practicality of "fixing" social problems piecemeal - claims ceaselessly thrown at Communist and Socialist bureaucrats as well as at many other "social planners." However, it must be admitted that Lenin, in the dominant paradigm, is a more like the semi-mythological lawgiver Lycurgus, who is supposed to have created by fiat the Spartan polity, than like George Washington, who, as "the father of our country," a "founding father," was not a lawgiver but rather a land surveyor from an affluent family who gradually rose through triumphant military leadership to become the most important White man in America, then reluctantly and rather wearily found himself in the office of chief executive of the new United Sates of America. Lenin and Stalin were not ancient myths, but terrifying modern realities for those in the West who lived off accumulated wealth or by exploiting the labor of others, or for those who claim to put Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible at the spiritual center of their lives. Scholars in the early part of the Twentieth Century who had regarded Solon, Moses, and Lycurgus and their feats as pure myth had to do a lot of rethinking when Lenin appeared, even while they criticized the party of Lenin (the Bolsheviks) for doing whatever it needed to gain, add, or consolidate power in its time.
The jurors "sworn in" thus far have been Stalin’s "philosophical peers," since both Plato and Machiavelli considered political subjects the most important for men to pursue. Their remoteness in time from Stalin does not make them "temporal peers," however. The next juror was almost Stalin’s contemporary: Sir James George Frazer (b. 1854), a Scottish (usually vaguely and incorrectly said to be "British") anthropologist, folklorist, and classical scholar, author of a very influential book among men of letters, The Golden Bough; a study in Magic and Religion. He was a fellow at Trinity college in Cambridge, where he later became full professor. The Golden Bough is still avidly read by many occultists and practitioners of magic. Frazer held to ideas many maintain were also the real opinions of Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder in the 1960’s of the Church of Satan. Frazer believed that a sorcerer is most often a knave and impostor, and that supreme worldly power most often falls into the hands of those possessing the keenest intelligence and most unscrupulous character. In earlier stages of social development, men of this type claimed to be sorcerers. It was Frazer’s educated, reasoned inclination to say that such men, especially in these early stages, did far, far more good than harm. As he put it in The Golden Bough, "If we could balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly outweighed the evil." For ruler, Frazer preferred types like the wily intriguer and ruthless prince Machiavelli esteemed, Caesar Borgia, rather than someone most modern liberal democrats would prefer over Borgia, such as the dullard George III of England, for example, whose intellectual deficiencies cost him control of the American colonies.
Stalin and Lenin both accomplished the very things Frazer enumerated in The Golden Bough as salutary for humanity. The Tsarist society that preceded the Bolsheviks conformed exactly to the kind of stagnant, leveled, lifeless society that Frazer said existed in many places before the rise of magic and the keen wits who practiced it to gain power. Frazer said that this dead and stagnant kind of life has been falsely idealized as a "Golden Age" of humanity, but was actually more gray and leaden in color. He believed that the rise to power of the crafty characters he described opened up careers to talent previously closed by feudal social systems, like the one in which the Tsars and their European allies held Russians, Ukrainians, and others in Eastern Europe in a kind of human bondage. (These forlorn, hopeless, entombed peoples and cultures are hyper-realistically portrayed in Anton Chekhov’s superb short stories.) Frazer believed that all people who have the real good of their fellows at heart would welcome such wily characters, who use their intellect, energy, and ruthlessness to drive their formerly stagnant societies to comparatively rapid progress. As Frazer put it, "The rise of one man to supreme power enables him to carry through changes in a single lifetime which previously many generations might not have sufficed to effect... . Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant may be of service in breaking the chain of custom which ties so heavy... . And as soon as [the society] ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the elders [elsewhere referred to by Frazer as an "oligarchy of old men"], and yields to the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it becomes formidable to its neighbors and enters on a career of aggrandizement, which at an early stage of history is often highly favorable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress [The Soviet Union?]. ...[This, by] relieving some classes [members of the proletariat?] from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford[s] them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of men."
This (imputed) justification of Stalin (the totalitarian paradigm’s "despot") to Frazer exceeds that of Machiavelli, who disapproved of tyrants and despots. Even if Stalin had been a despot, and Machiavelli therefore gave him a "minus" in this department, Stalin would still receive an "A+" from Frazer on this score, given the primitive, medieval conditions that prevailed prior to the rise of Bolshevism in an expanse of Asian territory covering what is now eleven time zones that came under Soviet influence. Russian society - the most modern of its time in this entire great region of the Earth - was itself hidebound by tradition, a slave both to the visible masters of church and state, and to its past, to long dead forefathers and saints. Frazer’s evaluation flies in the face of Karl Popper’s elaborate critique of what Roscoe Pound named "social engineering," which is the attempt to execute a single blueprint for an entire society rather than correct its social problems on a spot or piecemeal basis, which Popper considered better and more practical. The rapid progress of Soviet society exceeded anything history has ever known, considering it advanced in only a half-century from a society in which a bicycle was a futuristic piece of technology to the only society in recorded history to put an inhabited artificial satellite in orbit around the Earth: Mir, perhaps the greatest engineering marvel in history.
Frazer, then, regarded what might be called "early epoch despotism" as the best friend humanity ever had, before which the stern injunctions of the Ten Commandments, such as "Thou shalt not kill, steal, etc." are of little consequence. He said, "For after all there is more liberty in the best sense - liberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our own destinies - under the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent freedom [my emphasis] of savage life, where the individual’s lot is cast from cradle to grave in the iron mould [mold] of hereditary custom." Frazer wrote, "if we are forced to admit that the black art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and truth." It should be noted that the Marxists of Lenin’s generation consciously espoused a similar view, unappreciated in the then already advanced industrial nations of the West. These Marxists, a la Frazer, openly adhered to and taught their youth the positivistic social ideas of Auguste Comte, maintaining that the future of man lies in complete emancipation from metaphysical and religious thought. This runs contrary to a view becoming increasingly popular among intellectuals today that science, philosophy, and religion satisfy "different fundamental human needs," and are therefore equally valid. Karl Popper stated, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, that "Marxism is only an episode - one of many mistakes we have made in the perennial and dangerous struggle for building a better and freer world." Popper insinuates here that the West has profited nothing from the Bolsheviks’ "mistake." It is not possible to support this assertion if one is specific and argues concrete cases, as if the project of the emancipation, happiness, technological advance, and general improvement of human life learned and received nothing of value from the Soviet Union’s experience, as if the Soviet Union did nothing for its subject citizens. The judgement of Frazer is that Stalin "did no small service for humanity." Even if Stalin had been a "child of error," as Popper would have it, Frazer would have said that he "has yet been the mother of freedom and truth."
So far, all three jurors find for Stalin. The final juror is one that is most often associated with National Socialist and other reactionary and right wing movements, Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844). This association has been shown by Princeton’s Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann to be incorrect. (See Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ, Vintage Books, New York, 1968.) Nietzsche’s judgement on Stalin might seem to hinge on whether or not Stalin qualifies as an Uebermensch or "superman." The problem with this approach is that it calls for a concise definition or way to identify who is or is not a superman, regardless of political persuasion or other attributes that would be considered unimportant once one has such a definition or criteria. Nietzsche never gave such a definition. What is more, this line of approach presupposes that even if Nietzsche would have considered Stalin an Uebermensch, he would necessarily rule (as juror here) for Stalin. In other words, Stalin’s possibly being a "superman" may be necessary for Nietzsche to rule for Stalin, but not sufficient.
There is another way to approach the question of Nietzsche’s judgement on Stalin using notes from Nietzsche’s Will to Power translated by Kaufmann. With brilliant originality, Nietzsche therein outlined a new kind of martyr. Martyrs are they who give up their own lives, loves, freedom, or material possessions for the sake of promoting some good only others may enjoy. Nietzsche invented a new kind of martyrdom possible only for an Uebermensch: a martyr who gives up his own virtue to make others virtuous. It was mentioned earlier that Plato believed men could be made virtuous, and that materialist science, with its increasing control over heredity, environment, and organic growth and development, increasingly delivers into humanity’s hands the real means to make men into anything it wants to make them. Nietzsche implicitly believed men could be made virtuous. In his notes, he broached the original idea that men who take upon themselves the power to do so may have to give up or sacrifice their own virtue. This would be a kind of self-denial and hence martyrdom. To an Untermensch (the "inferior man"), who has endured lifelong, painful restraint by moral shackles, this would not seem like a sacrifice at all, but a great catharsis or release. For example: the Untermensch may feel "now at last I can kill those I despise, the enemies of mankind." In contrast, Nietzsche implied that it would pain an Uebermensch to kill (to continue the example) to stop others from killing. According to Nietzsche, the Uebermensch does not lie about what he has done by imagining there is a kind of moral hierarchy in which, by killing to stop killing or exploiting to stop exploitation, he "graduates" and rises to a higher moral level than someone who merely scrupulously obeys the commandment, "Thou Shalt not Kill." Instead, the Uebermensch realizes he has given up his own ethics to make others good. Nietzsche said this kind of man seeks to realize virtue in others in order to dominate them, and this is his own peculiar "will to power." He renounces virtue for himself to bring this about.
According to Nietzsche, a person preoccupied with morals in this way is a complete immoralist in practice. He does not even seek to justify the means he uses by holding up for admiration his espoused, highly moral ends. Nietzsche criticized those who do so as "Machiavellians." Nietzsche solved the old conundrum of "means vs. ends" simply by saying that if the means are immoral, so is their practitioner. There is no "higher level" of morality he has advanced to by showing that his means had only the best ends in view, or had brought about only good. Echoing Machiavelli, Nietzsche said that in politics it is imperative that this kind of immoralist does not appear to be immoral. He must not only be free of morals, but free of "truth" also, for the sake of success in achieving his goals. He needs only gestures of virtue and truth. Like Machiavelli’s prince, he must be a great actor. If he proceeds along this path, and ever once thinks he is still virtuous or "more virtuous," as many Westerners imagine Lenin and Stalin thought themselves, Nietzsche said they have fallen into error and will fail. If they waver for one moment, and once again aspire for virtue for themselves, Nietzsche said they have grown old and weary, and paid their tribute to human weakness and frailty. The idea of Machiavelli’s prince, the consummate artiste of political success, is an ideal too "superhuman, ...never achieved by man, at most approximated. ...Plato barely touched it," according to Nietzsche. With a standard as high as this, it is clear that though Nietzsche would have found in favor of Stalin, he would probably not have given him an "A+."
According to Nietzsche’s original and bold analysis, the kind of "immoralist for the sake of morals" described here has domination or power over virtue - he is not dominated by it, as are those who will condemn him. Taking his idea to its logical limit - a characteristic of Nietzsche - he stated that this dissimulating martyr for virtue is imitating "no less a model than God himself: God, the greatest of all immoralists in practice, who nonetheless knows how to remain what he is... ." According to Nietzsche, someone who knows precisely what actions must be performed to prevent others from performing them first, depriving others of the chance to perform them on him first, holds the Principe (Machiavelli’s work The Prince) in his hands. Getting one’s "shot" in first internationally, however, was not one of Stalin’s own practices (as was exampled above vis-a-vis Hitler). This was a legacy left to the Soviet Union by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Kosygin. Here Nietzsche may give Stalin a demerit. It is clear, however, that Yezhov and J. Edgar Hoover would have both received better grades than Stalin in this category. Yezhov’s thesis was precisely to get in the first shot (literally) against the opposition. Hoover’s approach was to do so by framing the opposition and lying in wait for it after deliberate provocations. Hoover’s approach receives a higher grade than Yezhov’s from both Machiavelli and Nietzsche because it makes the police authorities come out looking a lot "cleaner" than if they had just adopted the means of arresting and executing opposition threats.
Stalin’s "prosecutors" in this "trial" can easily select four jurors that will rule against Stalin. But they will not compare to the acknowledged greatest philosopher of all time: Plato. According to the Twentieth Century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, all Western philosophy after Plato has consisted merely of footnotes to Plato. Machiavelli too is of such supreme eminence that educated Englishmen, who admired the Renaissance and hoped to live up to it, once reckoned the year of Machiavelli’s death as the year ending the Renaissance. (This was the same year in which Charles V’s troops sacked Rome.) Frazer can be bettered, but Allan Bloom, a Plato scholar and author of the popular The Closing of the American Mind, stated therein that Nietzsche is possibly one of the three most influential thinkers in the Twentieth Century.
The verdict has come in.
© Copyright by Philip E. Panaggio P. O. Box 85, Lehigh Acres, FL 33970-0085, USA
