From our friends at Finding Ponies;
A long time ago I wrote “Last exit to Utopia” – a book by the same title is by the author Jean-Francois Revel
I am going to be lazy & attach a bit here:
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Jean-Francois Revel writes..”socialism incarnate was always vulnerable to criticism. Utopia, on the other hand, lies by definition beyond reproach”
A detour via Utopia allows an ideology (and the power system that it purports to legitimize) to proclaim one success after another without interruption, while in reality its results are diametrically opposed to the vaunted agenda…. it promises liberty and imposes servitude; it promises equality and ends up with the most inegalitarian of all societies, with a nomenklatura class that is priviledged to a degree unknown even in feudal societies…
Many believers persist in accepting the contradictions because utopia is always located in the future. ….
France had already experienced, and even invented, this politico-ideological configuration with Robespierre and the Jacobin dictatorship
Yippee for France. Can’t say they ever quit trying, or let a little reality get in the way.
Revel writes a great deal about how the fall of the Soviet Union actually HELPED the utopian communists in intellectual circles move forward the “benefits” of communism.
What progressives have successfully dodged, he argues, is the reality check that the end of communism should have brought about. …… Revel contends that the end of communism actually galvanised the radicals: “Now they were free,” he writes, “to idolize unreservedly a socialism restored to its pristine condition – utopia.”
Ah, the good old times. The Jacobins, the guillotine, the reign of terror – when “Liberte, fraternite, egalite” meant no one could avoid a bloodbath
If you can’t succeed in 1793 (the monarchy was re-established in France post-Napoleon), try try again – eh Hollande?
You know, I can never understand how so many people have or can be duped by the scheme of a Utopian fantasy. Don’t they realize that in their imagined Utopia, there will still be the “Haves” and the “Have-Nots” and that they, like most of the rest of us will be on the short end.
Utopia doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly become miraculously wealthy, but that everyone but a favored few will become equally miserable.
Reblogged this on Boudica BPI Weblog and commented:
And however Obama and his tribe tries to spin they are Communists!
Good post.
I believe some people don’t see what you and I see because they never stop to really think things through, while others – sadly, the majority – are too caught up in their own desire to have someone give them another person’s property so they don’t have to work to even care.
Black3actual – I think there is an additional self-deception at work. For brevity I will just say I observe in people who mindlessly prescribe to progressive/liberal opinions the desire to be part of a smart, important “intellectual” group. My aunt/uncle believe they are intellectual if they hold up as truth any well accepted progressive position. They don’t actually spend the intellectual muscle on their own to a ) develop the opinions in their own minds (in math we call this recreating the proof) or to b ) question whether or not the opinions are truly intelligent in terms of the outcomes. My relatives want to be “in the club” who are viewed as smart. It’s a losing proposition – look at the history/progression of any of the totalitarian Marx-based regimes & you can see that at first all the peasants are welcomed and put up with – but over time, only the elite leadership reap the benefits (and in most cases, a number of them end up in the gulag as well). Their self deception is that because they were supporting the revelution, they will benefit just like the leaders do – in reality the minute the leaders get complete power, they dispose of the riff raff from outside and inside their ranks.
Lynn,
Totally agree. In fact, as I read more about the origins of the Progressive movement, I find it is directly decedent from the Fabian Socialists. I have also learned that the Communists were spawned by the Fabians, as well. And though they may have been intelligent people, the founding Fabians lacked any measure of understanding, wisdom or moral fiber. They were purely self-interested egotists who peddled platitudes to the masses so as to dupe them into selling themselves into slavery. In the end, these people you mention – the ones who want to be in that elite group – are precisely the same people the Communists called useful idiot. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, their self-appointed, elitist leaders are little better than they when it comes to true intellect. But what they lack in wisdom and love for their fellow man, they more than make up for in their zeal to actually implement their evil ideas – and so we all die with them, together.