Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00214)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Frank Reitemeyer" <dhyana@w...> 
wrote:
> My old lexicon says that the Paris Communards were social democrats.

Some historical background that may be of use. I do not think one 
can understand comments about socialism by Blavatsky or the matter of 
social democrats v. communists, etc., without some historical 
background.

People with no background in economics keep going on about "why 
socialism does not work," but this is an unnecessary tactic to 
misdirect attention from the real issue. The problem is not that it 
does not "work" but that communism was a transnational movement the 
purpose of which was to bring the entire western world under the rule 
of a single individual who happened to be based in Moscow. Many 
people did not want to be ruled by the General Secretary of the 
Communist Party whether his economic theories worked or not. When 
Stalin conquered Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania he caused to be 
murdered or exiled 50% of the population, so their position was not 
unjustified. As he gathered more and more states under his rule, his 
aggrandizing power started to concern some folks who feared he might 
be able to impose his rule on the rest of us by force. There were in 
addition several states in Asia which were sympathetic to his 
philosophy while maintaining their national independence from him and 
from each other. There is reason to believe that when he was 
murdered Stalin was quietly planning the invasion of Western Europe 
and the commencement of World War III. Because our leaders labored 
under the preposterous delusion that it would not be OK to eliminate 
him personally (but that it would be OK to fight a war that would 
surely end civilization) it is ironic that he was eliminated by men 
who surrounded him and whom he intended to purge. In other words, 
the west was saved from destruction by the very men who were pledged 
to its destruction. Of course the official Soviet history denied 
that he was murdered but admitted he was planning the murder of his 
elite. Most historians are too cynical to believe Stalin just 
conveniently keeled over at the right moment, sparing the lives of 
his next round of victims.

The difference between communism and socialism was defined at the 
third international congress of the Third International in Moscow in 
1925. Lenin sent a delegation to the congress with instructions that 
communism was now administratively similar to the Catholic Church 
with Lenin as its pope, Moscow its Rome. The delegates demanded that 
all the others swear fealty to Lenin. Those who decided Lenin could 
go to hell broke away and started the Socialist International, which 
existed in parallel with the Third International thereafter and was 
not inimical to the independence of the west. Most European 
socialist parties were affiliated with the Socialist International. 
The Third International then became a transnational governing body, 
led by the General Sertetary, who was the ruler not only of the 
Soviet Union, with its sixteen republics, but the conquered states of 
eastern Europe. In other words, he was not the president of Russia 
but more like an emperor.

The distinction between communist and socialist was blurred by the 
fact that the British Labor Party, for example, was calling for the 
total and unilateral disarmament of the west, which if course was 
intended to make likely a Soviet invasion without really a war. Jean 
Paul Sartre made it clear in his book Le Communistes et la paix that 
he wanted to see France overrun, but after the Soviet invasion of 
Hungary in 1956 it turned out most of his fellow French communists 
did not feel that way. The French CP was decimated despite their 
nonsense about how the Soviets were "saving them for socialism." So 
the situation was difficult to assess. Europe's "intellectuals" 
during that time were mostly a lot of pretentious lowbrows who would 
have been horrified if they had got what they professed to want.

So if German socialists are social democrats, there is a critical 
distinction to be made between them and folks who wanted to end the 
independence of the German state and bring it into an empire whose 
capital was Moscow. That empire is now at an end and there is no 
obvious reason anyone should fear socialism the way they did fifty 
years ago, whether it "works" or not. All the stuff on this list 
about a "Frankfurt School" strikes me as less than it appears. Even 
if there are soms people in Germany who fancy themselves 
intellectuals and socialists there is no empire for them to dream of 
Germany being subsumed into. The EU is an empire in reverse. 
Instead of the federal government managing external affairs and 
member states managing their internal affairs, which is the normal 
evolution of a federation, with the EU it is the opposite. The EU 
has no foreign policy but seeks to infronge on the internal 
sovereignty of member states. It's bizarre, like wearing your 
underwear on the outside of your street clothes.

As for Blavatsky, when she was young, nihilists were an important 
force in Russia and there is some reason to believe that she flirted 
with the nihilist cause if she was not an active member in it. This 
is before she claimed to have been initiated in Tibet and to have 
given up materialism for a sort of spiritualized atheism. (That this 
conversion took place and that she was initially a materialist is 
plainly stated in the intro to ISIS UNVEILED. She claimed in that 
book to be a theist, but admitted later she was a Buddhist,) There 
are indications in various places that she was a believer in, if not 
practitioner of, free love during this pre Tibet period, which was a 
manifestation of Russian feminism. It was after she redefined 
herself as an "occultist" that she became a fanatic about celibacy. 
I suspect her ideas about socialism and antiSemitism (it has been 
pointed out on this list that she was at least a mild antiSemite) 
have to be understood in the context of the conspiracies which 
existed to overthrow the Romanov dynasty. It appears later in her 
life she was a confirmed monarchist but not so earlier. So she would 
appear to be a case of enansydromia, in which one reverses all his or 
her philosophical positions sometime in middle age.

And now a ghost story for lovers of the marvellous. After 
Blavatsky's death the czar took an interest in spiritualism and 
invited the French magician Papus to Moscow. Papus was originally a 
member of the Paris TS, but broke with HPB over some quarrel the 
details of which I do not remember. The turmoil was becoming more 
intense, so Papus cast a spell on Russia which he said would 
guarantee the czar's crown, but which would be broken when Papus 
died. The story was published while Papus was still alive so I kow 
it was not made up after the fact. Papus died during the first world 
war in October, 1916. The sequence of events which ended the dynasty 
started immediately after his death. It has been many years since I 
found this in a university library, and I am sure the book is still 
there, but I do not remember the title.