ideology is the the most impotrant factor in shaping ones character...perspective....and outlook..or so i thought in school days....
those were the days..yes i can never over the nostalgia..those were the best days of my life......
being a student of political science in plus 2, i was fortunate to be exposed to the theoretical background of ideologies galore.....ranging from socialism..to capitalism..to liberalism....to fascism....to the various facets of socialism....communism..and MARXISM.....
marxism was one ideology which facinated me immensely...its tenets made a great deal of sense to me....no other ideology was built on the foundations of exploitation...and the inherent schism...the principle of dialectical materialism was one aspect of marxism i was most facinated to...thesis...antithesis..synthesis...
so brimming with idealism..wanting to attain greater ideological maturity, i entered the portals of hindu college(derided by me in previous posts for entirely different set of reasons)...
college introduced me to AYN RAND.. to liberatarian philosophy...to leissez faire...(three years of training in neoclassical economics is bound to leave anyone questioning the judgement of indian policymakers..and their economic programmes)...
it sowed the seeds of confusion....thesis....antithesis....
confusion is good...it is indeed good.. for it forces you to look for answers...it forces you to hunt for it...
nonchalence to realism...i guess that was my problem...synthesis!!!
i started thinking....
ok! if marxism was all that practical then why did USSR fail????
maybe because dictatorship of proletariat did not mean dictatorship of ...stalin....of breznev....of khrushchev...et al....in the words of george orwell...equality did not really mean that some people are more equal than others.....
and if the principles of dialectics hold..then revolution would have been a natural progression...a historical climax...not a premeditated event....
revolt would have been against capitalists....in a capitalist state...not against monarchs.....in a state where capitalism has not grown much beyond the embryonic stage.........
why communism failed in east europe????for exactly the same reason..i suppose....
everyone seems to ignore the background against which revolution is stated to occur....
it seemed i had answers to some questions.....
so i wrote an article for college magazine discussing this antagonism..this confusion...and this dillema..
and what next..i am branded a communist!!!!
BRANDING is one thing i really hate about bigots and fanatics.....it creates scepticism...distrust...and is not healthy for intellectual growth of civil society....McCarthy and anti communist movt. in USA....the atrocities committes in USSR on those who did not agree""to walk on 2 legs"....have presented to us the extremes... the nadir....
so what i have learned is one simple lesson.....objectivity is the key to growth of intellect..and perspective....
ideology forces u to view everything from a lense.. the image is bound to be distorted in the absence of objectivity......
so the catch is i am not a marxist(for nw i believe that marxism or no marxism...only future has the answer ).....
i am not a liberatarian tooo....
cause if i am such a confused person and i have learned to look at everything with a greater degree of objectivity....then liberatarianism is my next TARGET....
more on it in the next blog.....
14 comments:
the "FOUNTAINHEAD"...it seems!!
dude i havent read fountainhead--a conscious decision on my part to not read anything too much ideological...
but u mentioned any rand.and i guess noting compares to fountainhead if its gotta be rand.
maybe true..but i was exposed to ayn rand's ideas via a society called Centre for civil society in delhi..which claims to champion the cause of libertarianism in india...their publications draw a great deal from rand's ideas..
hey quite a radical view...a bit on extremes i suppose!!
and i thought i was moving towards moderation..
nice repartee....ur moderation is as long as u get to the "catch" of ur gross views...the point of extremes comes wen the confusion part seeps in and u try to attack one ideology wen not getting the answers from the previous one...hey but ur basics are pretty clear: full applause for it...do rite bout libertarian ideology..waitin
hey sis nice blog! keep writing..
dont u think u blog infreequently!just in case u read blogs try this one purplecow.rediffblogs.com
ya u r right..i blog very infrequently...i am a very lazy person..
i have seen the blog mentioned by you... i found it very good..
hey u inspired me to take up ideologies.check out my last.
how bout a trip to delhi u might not be knowing.check out my last!u might not like it much though i guess!
I always felt marxism had the best solution to an overall happy world but thts a dream n so was a marxist world. Marx believed that a country must look towars communsim only if it has passed throgh a long phase of Capatilism. thr is a psychological justification to all this because the problem he anticipated with communism would have been tht ppl will become complacent which will nt hapen if they have of a history bougois capitalists buggin on thr back.
But leninism dint complied with tht.
Marx imagine a communist nation to have decentralised control but this never happen take any xample from cuba(fedel castro) to USSR(Bolschevicks) and tht excess of power in every case lead to a totalitarian rule be it Stalin or PolPot.
And bout Ayn Rand i guess i should read it liberatarian philosophy always sounded good
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