anaxarchos
10-25-2009, 08:19 PM
Ibsen Martinez is of that type of the “right-wing-left-wing” journalist who has been almost unique to Latin America since the beginnings of the Latin press. Full of the most philistine pomposity, adopting pseudo-intellectual airs of superiority that amount to no more than run-of-the-mill cynicism, and writing with a pox-on-all-their-houses sneer that belies the fact that he is mainly reprinted by the worst of the ruling class press, Martinez brings to politics what Fernando Lamas brought to relations between the sexes: a singularly ignorant pigheadedness that transcends debate. For this alone, if not for his continuous sniping at his countryman, Hugo Chavez, it is no wonder that publications such as the Washington Post are eager to reprint his “commentaries”. Once protected mostly by the monopoly they held under fascist press laws, it is now this yanqui crossover appeal that gives Martinez and his predecessors teeth, and contrasts them so sharply with the raw power of the genuine Left Press in Latin America.
Why then do we care about what Martinez has to say about N.G. Chernishevsky, or anyone else for that matter? Two reasons…
First, Martinez, writes about Chernishevsky, not a century ago but in 2007, and not on account of having stumbled across him in some obscure library of ancient forgotten Russian literary figures, but in the all too contemporary context of Latin American, and specifically Venezuelan politics, today. In fact, Martinez’s criticism is miserably undistinguished. His “criticism” is anecdotal. He mentions, foremost, the opinions of the exceedingly weird and reactionary émigré White Russian writer, Vladimir Nabakov. In truth it is not even Nabakov himself but Nabakov biographer, Brian Boyd, talking about a 1938 Nabakov literary character, “Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev” who just happens to be a fictional biographer of Chernishevsky. And what is this “criticism”, four times removed? It is that Chernishevsky puttered around with perpetual motion machines and was imprisoned for most of his life.
Why bother then, to even bring up this forgotten name? Because, second, while Martinez may not know what to say about Chernishevsky, he does know why he matters. He quotes Franco Venturi, "Herzen created populism; Chernishevsky was its politician". In “populism”, Martinez recognizes, not just the indistinct yearnings for justice of every people, often finding its expression in confused “movements” such as the supremely anti-intellectual and blithely eclectic and opportunist musings of William Jennings Bryan, but instead, a very specific movement, born in the criticism of the ideas at hand, binding tightly to the “people”, though what that means may still remain indistinct, and itself a way-station on the road to a revolutionary consciousness which supercedes its origins. In fact, Martinez precisely recognizes why I started writing about Chernishevsky and then Pisarev, at the fortuitously named “Populist Independent”:
http://www.econlib.org/Library/Columns/y2005/Martinez.jpg
A Russian Word for a Latin American Disease
Ibsen Martinez
January 8, 2007
http://www.econlib.org/Library/Columns/y2007/Martinezpopulism.html
"Populism" once was a plain Russian word for a movable, complex Russian family of themes.
"Russian Populism is the name not of a single political party, nor of a coherent body of doctrine" notes Sir Isaiah Berlin, "but of a widespread radical movement in Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was born during the great social and intellectual ferment that followed the death of Tsar Nicholas I and the defeat and humiliation of the Crimean War, grew to fame and influence during the sixties and seventies, and reached its culmination with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, after which it swiftly declined."
The word "populism" had its share of good luck and it fared well as a hint of something certainly difficult to define but quite easy to sympathize with. Russian Populists not only yearned to destroy absolutism, abolish slavery and defeat their country's economic and cultural backwardness: they also wanted to replace the tsarist state—the embodiment of authoritarianism, injustice and inequality—with a new and liberating something called "revolution".
"All these thinkers share one vast apocalyptic assumption: that once the reign of evil—autocracy, exploitation, inequality—is consumed in the fire of the revolution, there will arise naturally and spontaneously out of its ashes a natural, harmonious, just order, needing only the gentle guidance of the enlightened revolutionaries to attain to its proper perfection. This great Utopian dream, based on simple faith in regenerated human nature, was a vision which the Populists shared with Godwin and Bakunin, Marx and Lenin. Its heart is the pattern of sin and fall and resurrection, of the road to the earthly paradise the gates of which will only open if men find the one true way and follow it".
According to the Italian historian supreme, Franco Venturi, "[Alexander] Herzen ( 1812-1870) created populism; [Nikolai] Chernishevsky was its politician".
A self-taught man who thought that literature was the best mean to publicize his political ideals, Chernishevsky infused Russian populism with its distinguishing qualities and, even as he kept changing his views on what the Russian revolution should involve and mean, his writings inspired generations of Populist activists during the sixties and the seventies.
While imprisoned in Petrograd's Peter and Paul Fortress—from 1862 to 1864—he wrote "What is to be done?", a novel deemed by many of his contemporaries as a handbook of Russian radicalism. So influential was this book that it led to the creation of a strong and widespread—if ultimately failed—, populist Land and Liberty political society. V.I. Lenin named one of his pamphlets after Chernishevsky's novel and it was the hero of Chernishevsky's novel who coined the phrase 'the worse the better': the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more willing they would be to support a revolution.
However committed to the cause of the downtrodden, the lifelong fickleness of Chernishevsky's cogitations makes it very difficult to ascertain the core of his politics. The naiveness with which he used to address social and political matters as well as his insistence in writing dull novels to convey the maze of his enthusiasm, disappointments, fierce denunciations and political programs can make the reading of his work an exacting experience.
V.I. Lenin, however, considered that Chernishevsky was "the one true great writer who managed to remain on a level of unbroken philosophical materialism from the fifties right up to 1888"…
The basic approach of Russian Populists towards economics was, generally speaking, moral and even religious. Russian Populists "shrank from the prospect of industrialism in Russia because its brutal cost, and they disliked the West because it had paid this price too heartlessly".5 They believed in socialism not because it was feasible but because, to their eyes, it was just. But the most pervasive belief among Russian Populists was that the salvation could not lie in Western-styled liberal politics.
The defeat of the European revolutions in 1848-49 confirmed them in their mistrust of Western liberal democratic ideals. "As for political rights, votes, parliaments, republican forms, these were meaningless and useless to ignorant and barbarous, half-naked and starving men; such programs merely mocked their misery."…
Meeting this kind of argumentation against liberal democracy, republican forms and capitalism, as well as the advocacy of indigenous culture and "alternative roads" towards development and social justice can be an unsettling experience in 21 century Latin America. They all ring as too familiar for intellectual comfort…
To be sure, Latin American populism is not indebted to Chernishevsky's musings on "illustrated despotism" and perpetual motion machines. But it certainly shares the same disdain for individual liberties and capitalism held by those late 19th century Russian narodniki militants. Latin American populism has, of course, a history of its own, heroes of its own, intellectual superstitions and popular myths of its own.
Having said so, one question still lingers on. How a word—"populist"—that once meant heroism, disinterestedness and personal nobility in Russia has come to name corruption, lawlessness, contempt for individual liberties and poverty in our continent? I think it is a story worth telling.
In forthcoming articles I will try to delve, intently and to the best of my wits, into that history.
The ghost of the titan, N. G. Chernishevsky, walks upright in Venezuela today, and it is the midget with the titanic cigar, Ibsen Martinez’s, sole redeeming feature that he knows enough to call the apparition by name…
Why then do we care about what Martinez has to say about N.G. Chernishevsky, or anyone else for that matter? Two reasons…
First, Martinez, writes about Chernishevsky, not a century ago but in 2007, and not on account of having stumbled across him in some obscure library of ancient forgotten Russian literary figures, but in the all too contemporary context of Latin American, and specifically Venezuelan politics, today. In fact, Martinez’s criticism is miserably undistinguished. His “criticism” is anecdotal. He mentions, foremost, the opinions of the exceedingly weird and reactionary émigré White Russian writer, Vladimir Nabakov. In truth it is not even Nabakov himself but Nabakov biographer, Brian Boyd, talking about a 1938 Nabakov literary character, “Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev” who just happens to be a fictional biographer of Chernishevsky. And what is this “criticism”, four times removed? It is that Chernishevsky puttered around with perpetual motion machines and was imprisoned for most of his life.
Why bother then, to even bring up this forgotten name? Because, second, while Martinez may not know what to say about Chernishevsky, he does know why he matters. He quotes Franco Venturi, "Herzen created populism; Chernishevsky was its politician". In “populism”, Martinez recognizes, not just the indistinct yearnings for justice of every people, often finding its expression in confused “movements” such as the supremely anti-intellectual and blithely eclectic and opportunist musings of William Jennings Bryan, but instead, a very specific movement, born in the criticism of the ideas at hand, binding tightly to the “people”, though what that means may still remain indistinct, and itself a way-station on the road to a revolutionary consciousness which supercedes its origins. In fact, Martinez precisely recognizes why I started writing about Chernishevsky and then Pisarev, at the fortuitously named “Populist Independent”:
http://www.econlib.org/Library/Columns/y2005/Martinez.jpg
A Russian Word for a Latin American Disease
Ibsen Martinez
January 8, 2007
http://www.econlib.org/Library/Columns/y2007/Martinezpopulism.html
"Populism" once was a plain Russian word for a movable, complex Russian family of themes.
"Russian Populism is the name not of a single political party, nor of a coherent body of doctrine" notes Sir Isaiah Berlin, "but of a widespread radical movement in Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was born during the great social and intellectual ferment that followed the death of Tsar Nicholas I and the defeat and humiliation of the Crimean War, grew to fame and influence during the sixties and seventies, and reached its culmination with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, after which it swiftly declined."
The word "populism" had its share of good luck and it fared well as a hint of something certainly difficult to define but quite easy to sympathize with. Russian Populists not only yearned to destroy absolutism, abolish slavery and defeat their country's economic and cultural backwardness: they also wanted to replace the tsarist state—the embodiment of authoritarianism, injustice and inequality—with a new and liberating something called "revolution".
"All these thinkers share one vast apocalyptic assumption: that once the reign of evil—autocracy, exploitation, inequality—is consumed in the fire of the revolution, there will arise naturally and spontaneously out of its ashes a natural, harmonious, just order, needing only the gentle guidance of the enlightened revolutionaries to attain to its proper perfection. This great Utopian dream, based on simple faith in regenerated human nature, was a vision which the Populists shared with Godwin and Bakunin, Marx and Lenin. Its heart is the pattern of sin and fall and resurrection, of the road to the earthly paradise the gates of which will only open if men find the one true way and follow it".
According to the Italian historian supreme, Franco Venturi, "[Alexander] Herzen ( 1812-1870) created populism; [Nikolai] Chernishevsky was its politician".
A self-taught man who thought that literature was the best mean to publicize his political ideals, Chernishevsky infused Russian populism with its distinguishing qualities and, even as he kept changing his views on what the Russian revolution should involve and mean, his writings inspired generations of Populist activists during the sixties and the seventies.
While imprisoned in Petrograd's Peter and Paul Fortress—from 1862 to 1864—he wrote "What is to be done?", a novel deemed by many of his contemporaries as a handbook of Russian radicalism. So influential was this book that it led to the creation of a strong and widespread—if ultimately failed—, populist Land and Liberty political society. V.I. Lenin named one of his pamphlets after Chernishevsky's novel and it was the hero of Chernishevsky's novel who coined the phrase 'the worse the better': the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more willing they would be to support a revolution.
However committed to the cause of the downtrodden, the lifelong fickleness of Chernishevsky's cogitations makes it very difficult to ascertain the core of his politics. The naiveness with which he used to address social and political matters as well as his insistence in writing dull novels to convey the maze of his enthusiasm, disappointments, fierce denunciations and political programs can make the reading of his work an exacting experience.
V.I. Lenin, however, considered that Chernishevsky was "the one true great writer who managed to remain on a level of unbroken philosophical materialism from the fifties right up to 1888"…
The basic approach of Russian Populists towards economics was, generally speaking, moral and even religious. Russian Populists "shrank from the prospect of industrialism in Russia because its brutal cost, and they disliked the West because it had paid this price too heartlessly".5 They believed in socialism not because it was feasible but because, to their eyes, it was just. But the most pervasive belief among Russian Populists was that the salvation could not lie in Western-styled liberal politics.
The defeat of the European revolutions in 1848-49 confirmed them in their mistrust of Western liberal democratic ideals. "As for political rights, votes, parliaments, republican forms, these were meaningless and useless to ignorant and barbarous, half-naked and starving men; such programs merely mocked their misery."…
Meeting this kind of argumentation against liberal democracy, republican forms and capitalism, as well as the advocacy of indigenous culture and "alternative roads" towards development and social justice can be an unsettling experience in 21 century Latin America. They all ring as too familiar for intellectual comfort…
To be sure, Latin American populism is not indebted to Chernishevsky's musings on "illustrated despotism" and perpetual motion machines. But it certainly shares the same disdain for individual liberties and capitalism held by those late 19th century Russian narodniki militants. Latin American populism has, of course, a history of its own, heroes of its own, intellectual superstitions and popular myths of its own.
Having said so, one question still lingers on. How a word—"populist"—that once meant heroism, disinterestedness and personal nobility in Russia has come to name corruption, lawlessness, contempt for individual liberties and poverty in our continent? I think it is a story worth telling.
In forthcoming articles I will try to delve, intently and to the best of my wits, into that history.
The ghost of the titan, N. G. Chernishevsky, walks upright in Venezuela today, and it is the midget with the titanic cigar, Ibsen Martinez’s, sole redeeming feature that he knows enough to call the apparition by name…