Virtual Revolutions

The world post-WWII looked radically different than the world before the war was waged. The era of European domination had been violently ended by Hitler’s devastation of Western Europe. As a result, the United States emerged as an economic titan in the West while Russia inherited an impressive sphere of influence throughout Eastern Europe due to its military might. As the world recovered new conflicts arose, both in the East and the West, concerning roles of equality and freedom inside of the new systematic and culturally permeating superpowers. The issues that became evident were enforced by structures of government that were too integral to society to successfully topple, thus, called for quiet, cultural, and intellectual revolutions.

Morals and Ideology were both in a serious state of flux in the decades after the war. As fingers were pointed, a new kind of virtual revolution was brewing. French writer Amié Césaire expresses paradoxes of oppression in civilization. Césaire argues that civil abuses such as slavery or even mere taxation are the result of colonization and Western surrealism.[1] While colonialism was much more of an issue during the First World War, Césaire’s philosophy is still relevant to those once under European abuse and still under its influence; those nations and peoples that were crying for assistance. The Europeanization of “lesser” nations, in Césaire’s opinion, was no less of a struggle for equality than a civil-revolution of a race or the fight for women’s suffrage etcetera.[2]

Equality of powers was a new idea, and can be seen as a continuation of individual equality, that to this day has yet to be accomplished. Césaire raises questions about the fate of man-kind and its duality of nature. Césaire seems to suggest that oppressors and the oppressed are inevitable beings as a result of human nature. The forces that brought about European “progress” are the same natural obstructions to the real possibility and potential of progress that ought to be manifested in equality.[3] Society has been “thingified.” [4] Some things are simply just the way that they are and the capitalistic system needs these sometimes ugly things to thrive; and that the system of capitalism, that is now perhaps to big to fail, is an unstoppable machine.

The rational for the equality of man and its nations is sound enough for most but post-war thinking pushed questions of equality into an existential realm. Césaire’s problem with human nature is also seen in the works of another French writer Simone de Beauvoir. In The Second Sex Beauvoir makes comments on many aspects of society from gender roles to religion and makes the case that the advancement of society as well as the hindrances of equality are based on the primordial concept of “Others.” Beauvoir’s existential attitude attempts to explain the stratification of society is the result of the ego, and that this ego is what gives man-kind the ability to strive for progress and reaction.[5] Both of these writers remark on the progress of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and then turn to the hypocrisy of man in general, but more specifically to the unavoidable human disposition that defines man.

Both Beauvoir and Césaire argue that moral and just freedom must be based on equality. Furthermore, equality will require more than the courage of leaders as in the revolutions of previous generations.[6][7] It will take a conscious awareness of the duality of mans every action. To these authors this was a hope that’s audacity could only be spread intellectually since, although conceptualism of the past has fallen to scientific truth and revolutions have been commonplace since history immemorial, these revolutions have failed to produce anything more than new systems of repression. Instead new media and focus on human conditions could reshape thinking.[8] Beauvoir uses the proletariat experience as an example.

These behemoth systems of repression, so to speak, gained momentum both in the East and West after the war. The fate of these societies however, differed drastically. The clean-conscious of western thinking in regards to repression of thinking are biased. This can be seen in such examples as McCarthyism.[9] In the post-war Era attempts were made to control expression in defense of both Western democracy and communism in the East. However, it is not unfair or biased to note the brutishness and violence of the Russian political sphere that had sucked up satellite states as a barrier to the West.

In the more free-thinking west, civil-disobedience could gain significant ground unlike in the more oppressive Russia and often equally oppressive puppet regimes of the Soviet states. It is important to remark that Western liberty both granted dissent a voice and paradoxically also allowed for such abuses as, at least some degree of, racism and censorship. These movements, virtual revolutions, such as the Black Civil rights movement during the 1950s or anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s in America were influenced by the humane rhetoric of Beauvoir and particularly Césaire.[10] These pseudo-revolutions could be observed from afar in the East, including Western material freedom and movie culture, and were admired by writers, artist, and intellectuals in the Russian territories.[11]

These writers were plagued by the inability to voice dissent especially in the Soviet-bloc. Revolts after the death of Stalin in Poland and Czechoslovakia were quelled with violent force.[12] This instilled fear even after Khrushchev’s “thaw.” This fear of dissidence and free-speaking was considered a civic duty in regard to the reputation and proud upholding of communism; just as democracy in the West was held close to the hearts of its people. While this sentiment did not last forever, this respect for communist ideology can be attributed to the atmosphere of tension created by a nuclear-armed world and animosity inspired by the Cold-War. The necessity to defend communism and the complication to the urges of mans liberty that this defense created can be rationalized in the Muslim philosophy of Ketman as explained in a work by Polish poet Czesław Miłosz.

Ketman fills the follower with pride while participating in a system that one would normally not show support. Miłosz, in an almost satirical essay on Ketman, explains that the air of non-dissent was stifling to spontaneity and relaxation.[13] Ketman is a coping mechanism to appease the powerless. The machine that has been alluded to in this essay is the Soviet state. A revolution could not mobilize in these oppressive conditions. Contrary to the powerlessness just stated, Miłosz also suggest that Ketman changes an individual and that oppression, or rather intellectual repression, only fuels the flame that desires artistic and ethical freedom. Miłosz comments that repression in the form of Ketman is contrary to common sense.[14] In the day-to-day experience of Russian citizens and the states subjects in the bloc, this common-sense or intellectual pride must be swallowed. This self-deception can only be tolerated by the individual in a collective society where his silence is responsible for a greater-good. This is what was expected of inquiring minds during the Cold-War.

While conditions were less harsh East of the Iron Curtain post-Stalin, a free thinking socio-political voice was not exercisable due to non-violent repercussions. The system of self-repression that Czesław must participate in for survival was more lenient in the following two decades. Václav Havel, a Czech dissident, was able to find a voice by the late 1970s but explains that one could loose respect, work, or property for dissidence. Havel identifies mass ideology as a façade and the illusion that a system is in harmony with mans nature.[15] Drawing on existential thinking similar to the aforementioned writers, Havel explains that humans are capable of living in a lie and participating in a world without logic if certain guarantees are met.[16] Also, in comparison to Césaire, Havel’s thoughts on society’s moral crisis are brought about by society’s moral standards themselves. By living in a lie one can ignore the uncomfortable state of affairs. Havel also calls for an existential and moral restructuring of society as a kind of virtual revolution so that a better human order may be instilled.[17]

In the generation after the war existential philosophy articulated an exposé of society. Intellectuals of the period observed powerful systems of government that were based on the conflicts of human duality; finely tuned machines that used ideology through mass culture and media to maintain order and influence. One system, while flawed and often in tension with its citizens, tended to embrace mans natural desire to be free; while the other repressed the thinking of its individuals for the so called “new faith.” [18] In either case the system, so to speak, had permeated every facet of society and a radical revolution that could have been possible just a few decades before was now either unachievable or because of mass rhetoric irresponsible. Writers like Césaire, Beauvoir, Miłosz, and Havel were aware both of this tension and of the human conditioning that had made it possible. Furthermore, these minds drew upon mans instinctive nature as the cause for both freedom and oppression in the most modern society. Finally, these thinkers proclaim that in order for change, if it is even a possibility or even a responsible desire; there must be an existential revolution and a dismantling of ideology.

---

[1] Césaire, Aimé, and Robin Kelley. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Pg. 42.

[2] Césaire, Pg. 46.

[3] Césaire, Pg. 54.

[4] Césaire, Pg. 42.

[5] Beauvoir, Simone, and H. Parshley. The Second Sex (1949). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Pg. 5.

[6] Beauvoir, Pg. 16.

[7] Beauvoir, Pg. 6.

[8] Hunt, Lynn, et al., Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Vol. II: since 1500, 3^rd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009). Pg 904.

[9] Hunt, Pg. 890.

[10] Entry on Césaire found in: Lawall, Sarah, and Maynard Mack. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: Norton, 2001. Pg. 2539.

[11] Hunt, 906.

[12] Hunt, 896.

[13] Miłosz, Czesław. “Ketman.” From The Captive Mind, pp. 51-56. (1951-52). Pg. 56.

[14] Miłosz, 53.

[15] Havel, Václav. “The Power of the Powerless.” Essay from Open Letters, pp. 168-174. (1979). Pg. 169.

[16] Havel, Pg. 170.

[17] Havel, Pg. 173.

[18] Miłosz, 51.