Book Notes: "Teach Yourself Stoicism and the Art of Happiness" by Donald J. Robertson

Guillaume Guillon-Lethière's "The Death of Cato of Utica" (1795). Source: Wikimedia.

Teach Yourself Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald J. Robertson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was recommended by Ryan Holiday at the Daily Stoic. At first, I was dismayed that it read just like a first-year textbook, with little activities in boxes throughout each chapter. But this is hardly fair. As my reading of the book progressed, and the activities became a little more complex (or at least, reflective, and some of these I will no doubt take up), I was learning. In terms of an overview of Stoicism and Stoic literature, this book provides an easy introduction, though it does tend to over-rely on Pierre Hadot. Yet there are many references and ideas that are useful, and in this the book is sound. The author also mentions an ebook that includes an additional chapter on "death", and this annoyed me no end - I hate ebooks - it should have been in the hard copy!  And in the present work, the textbook tone cheapens what could have been a more substantial work. That said, I will be returning to this book time and again to mine some of the gems hidden amongst the rough.

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Book Notes: "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky in Petrograd, winter 1918\1919. Scan by "Der Speigel" (2008), via Wikimedia.

The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I lecture I will often, in the heat of the moment, say things based on my understanding of the topic, and oftentimes it is hard to pin-point where this knowledge came from - a case of: how do I know what I know? The experience usually sends me back to the books to reconfirm my knowledge. Whenever I read the classic political science texts from J.S. Mill, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Burke, et al., I feel as though I am reading what I know. This is clearly a result of my education, but after having read these works, a series of gaps in my knowledge is simultaneously filled, and then, like a muscle at the gym, ripped asunder. To be sure, this is how we learn and improve, but the experience to this day leaves me feeling desperate for more time on this earth to learn the things I do not know - a list that grows daily. And Trotsky's work read like a familiar text. I may have read parts of it before, but in my class readers during my political science degree. But to rediscover these words and thoughts and ideas and ideals is mind-blowing. Trotsky was clearly a genius. This cannot be denied. But he was a politician in the same vein as Dr John Hewson: Fightback! was brilliant, and it has been for the most part implemented, but Dr Hewson was not a popular politician, Fightback! was a (in a "presentist" sense) a policy failure, yet Dr Hewson was right all along. I am probably drawing a long bow by putting Dr Hewson in the same category as Trotsky, but the same high intellectual-low political capability divide is evident. Parts of this work remind me of an old Soviet joke:

Comrade 1: What is the difference between capitalism and communism?

Comrade 2: In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it is the other way around.

Trotsky points out all the theoretical problems with Stalinism, and brings in a useful comparison with the French Revolution, a common thread throughout the work, with the Thermidorian reaction to Robespierre explaining what was happening in Russia in the mid-1930s. Trotsky has no issue with deviations from the communist plot. He is well-aware that Russia was not meant to be where the great international revolution would begin. But now that it had, then some things had to be taken into account. Trotsky's issue was that these deviations from the plot, albeit necessary, were being hidden in bureaucratic nonsense, enabling the exploitation of man by man pretending to be a system that was meant to be overthrowing this very system. Trotsky's arguments are so solid that Stalin had to "liquidate" his ideas. The habit of purging, of course, was the antithesis of the Marxian ideal, and showed Stalin's "socialism within one country" as little more than a nouveau-bourgeois power-grab. Ultimately, Trotsky's predictions proved correct, and the rest is history. Trotsky's attack on the international "friends of socialism", in particular the Webbs (Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb), demonstrates his commitment to theoretical communism. I suspect that Lenin had the political nous that Trotsky lacked. Little wonder the back cover blurb states, accurately, that this work is "one of Marxism's most important texts". That communist theory has been so routinely dismissed because of Stalinism and the Russian experience is premature. In the long course of history, especially as technological developments mean there is less for more of us to do, if life continues as it does now, forevermore, then the extinction of the species will demonstrate natural justice in a way that our theorising never could.

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Book Notes: "Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism" by Karl Radek

Karl Radek (c. 1920) via Wikimedia.

Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism by Karl Radek

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Radek raises the proverbial "one man's nourishment is another man's poison" by comparing Stalin's purging to the treatment of Irish revolutionaries by the British in the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921. This brochure was written by Radek in about 1920 (the English translations came later) and was endorsed by Leon Trotsky as a suitable response to Karl Kautsky, a German social-democrat, and his critique of Trotsky's Dictatorship vs. Democracy, among other works. It is interesting that the title of which Trotsky was most fond was "Terrorism or Communism", but this was toned down for an American audience. And here I discover a whole can of historical worms. Communists in America, communists in the UK, critiques and critics of Bolshevism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and so on. And then much later Trotsky in exile and a major critic of Stalin and the self-serving bureaucracy that was to become the antithesis of socialism, as the lowest level of communism. The great communist experiment was of global interest, despite the Western Allies' support of the anti-Bolshevik White Russians in the Russian Civil War of 1919-1923. Even a small contingent of Australian soldiers fought against the Bolsheviks. Yet there remained support from socialists in the West through various trade union and communist movements. This "support" seemed an ideal rather than a plausible solution to humanity's problems. I recall reading that Lionel Murphy's parents (according to Jenny Hocking in Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography) visited Russia after the Second World War but never spoke of the great socialist experiment ever again after lifting the veil on the propaganda. Reading this has provided me with several historical insights, aside from the Soviet Union, into the Irish War of Independence and the French Revolution, and for these alone it was worth the discovery, if not for the intellectual debating that went on between the Soviet intelligentsia and their detractors in the 1920s.

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