Utopia: Marx’s Dream Come True?

Sir Thomas More’s classic work Utopia (I used the translation done by Robert M. Adams) has, at times, been thought to contain elements of communism. One might argue that what More calls Utopia is in fact, to a certain extent, a communist society in the truest sense of the term. While there is evidence within the book for such an assertion, there are also aspects of Utopia that make it implausible for it to be considered a communist society.

First, let us consider the evidence that might lead one to conclude that Utopia is a communist paradise. More had no problem openly admitting that he believed that “unless private property is entirely done away with, there can be no fair or just distribution of goods, nor can mankind be happily governed (Adams, p. 31).” In the same vein, he suggested that laws could be created to limit the accumulation of property. Of course, More was careful to temper his assertion by admitting that private property “cannot be entirely removed (Adams, p. 31).”

The governing structure of Utopia is also vaguely socialistic in nature, and in fact Adams refers to the former USSR’s “managerial class” (Adams, p. 43) as being roughly analogous to Utopia’s system. In Utopia, local groups of houses elected a group of governing officials, who in turn elected a prince. This is remarkably similar to the Soviet system of workers councils (although in the case of Utopia it was groups of households) that elected communist party members (in theory, if not always in practice), who then elected a premier.

Another interesting feature of Utopia is that the citizens practice more than one trade. They are not necessarily bound to pursue the occupations of their parents. Although the state has some control over a person’s trade, a Utopian has the ability to stop one trade and pursue another, provided that the government does not need his services in his original trade (Adams, p. 40). Karl Marx discussed the concept of alienation from labor in capitalist societies (especially in his 1844 Manuscripts) by which he meant that workers would lose control over their own lives if they could not have any control over their jobs or what they produced. However, in Utopia, this alienation does not exist, or at least not on the same scale as Marx envisioned capitalism as causing. Utopians have some degree of control over their own work, in that they can, if the government has no particular need, leave their occupations and learn new ones freely. Consider the following quote: “But no one has to exhaust himself with endless toil from early morning to late at night, as if he were a beast of burden. Such wretchedness, really worse than slavery, is the common lot of workmen in all countries, except Utopia (Adams, p. 40-41).” Marx would probably have characterized such “endless toil” and “slavery” as being part of a capitalist system, but Utopians are free from such burdens. In this sense, they are closer to Marx’s vision of a communist society where such alienation does not exist.

Perhaps the one characteristic of Utopia which could lead one to describe it as a communist society is the fact that the citizens not only work in accordance with their particular talents, but they all get everything that they need. The Marxist principle “from each according to ability to each according to his need” is particularly relevant here. In Utopian marketplaces, there is always an abundance of goods. There is no need to steal or be greedy because each Utopian will always have enough (Adams, p. 45-46). Everyone has what they need, and everyone can work (for the most part) in the trade that they can do their best in.

Despite the features of Utopia that are indeed communist to some extent, the society cannot be fully communist due to the definition of communism. Marx did not provide too many details about exactly what a communist society would actually look like, but he predicted that communism, in its final form, would be a classless society where the government would “wither away.” The political apparatus of the state would, in effect, no longer need to exist. Utopia, however, had a functioning government, and there were in fact classes. The classes may not have been completely economic in nature (i.e. the Utopian priesthood, which is probably something that Marx would not himself have envisioned in a communist society, considering his assertion about religion being the “opium of the masses”), but if there is a prince in Utopia, even if an elected one, then there is still a hierarchy and thus not all Utopians can be said to be truly equal. Perhaps communism, like Utopia itself, is something that can be conceived of like the horizon. One can move toward it, but never actually reach it.

Utopia shares some of the hallmark features of a communist society as envisioned by Karl Marx. Property is owned in common (although More admits that, in practice, this would be impossible to completely enforce), the government shares some characteristics in common with the former Soviet Union, alienation from labor is markedly reduced if not eliminated and “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” is the law of the land. However, the presence of a governing authority and ruling classes makes it impossible for Utopia, like any present-day society that claims to be communist, to be completely communist in the sense that Karl Marx envisioned it, since communism is a classless society with no need for a government. Ultimately, true communism is like Utopia: it does not really exist and never has existed.

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The Promises and Perils of Historical Theory

Historians have their work cut out for them. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to create history. Historians can interpret historical events using a variety of different theories, which act as a sort of lens that historians can use to explain why history unfolded the way it did. Examples of such theories include Marxist history, psychohistory and quantitative history. Marxist history, or at least aspects of it, was highly influential on a great deal of historians, yet contains a problem which limits its use for historians today. Psychohistory was once used by some historians, but it has been largely discarded as a means of historical analysis due largely to changes in our understanding of psychology and the inherent problems associated with it. Quantitative history has clear benefits associated with it, and thus continues to be used by historians, although it too has problems that cannot be overlooked.

Marxism’s impact in history cannot be underestimated. It had a remarkable impact on social sciences, and while few historians actually agreed with Marx in the early 20th-century, they were nonetheless influenced by him (Howell & Prevenier, p. 90). Marxism as a political philosophy shaped the course of history throughout the world in various countries, for better or worse. Marxism as historical theory, at least in its original form as put forth by Karl Marx, sees historical events through a lens known as “historical materialism.” In essence, it means that historical change occurs as a result of human needs, which leads to production of those needs, which leads to more needs and so on. Therefore, how these needs are met is really what shapes human history, and all other aspects of a society (political and legal systems, etc.) come from that (Green & Troup, p. 34-35). Economic classes come from different economic roles in fulfilling needs, and these classes eventually clash with one another as part of a process known as the dialectic and lead to change in a society (in Marx’s mind this would happen in several stages which would culminate in a classless society known as communism).

Marxism’s principal benefit is that it looks like a reasonable explanation for human events on the surface. There is no doubt that many human events were indeed shaped by economic conditions. Assuming that the appropriate source criticism is applied to whatever sources one is using, Marxism appears to be a winner. Despite this, the central problem with Marxist historical theory is that it reduces all historical events to a single root cause, namely economics and class struggle. Christopher Hill’s The English Revolution 1640: An Essay serves as a good example of the pitfalls associated with Marxist theory. His main point was that the English Civil War in 1640 was essentially a “class war” as he terms it (Hill, The English Revolution 1640: An Essay, p. 6 in Green & Troup, p. 37), an essential part of capitalist development in England. To back up his thesis, he used economic evidence. However, as Hill himself later pointed out, “we must widen our view so as to embrace the total activity of society. Any event so complex as a revolution must be seen as a whole. Large numbers of men and women were drawn into political activity by religious and political ideals as well as by economic necessities (Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, p. 31 in Green & Troup, p. 37).” Thus even Hill eventually recognized that historical change is not always about economics. Historians must be careful not to fall into the trap of reductionism. As one author says, “few historians have argued that there is a single lens through which the past can be interpreted…none in itself- no matter its particular relevance to one age or another…is operative in every circumstance (Howell & Prevenier, p. 131).”

While one might be inclined to think of psychohistory as being psychological interpretations of history using 21st-century understandings of psychology, psychohistory is in fact defined as “the use of psychoanalysis to aid our understanding of historical personalities, groups or trends (Green & Troup, p. 59).” For historians who have also studied psychology, psychohistory may look like a very tempting historical theory to use in explaining people and events. It can help make sense out of events that seem difficult to interpret. For example, William Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism postulated that the attraction to Nazism by Germans, and indeed every political movement, came from the psychological characteristics of German people. There are, however, multiple problems with psychohistory.

The first, and probably most important, flaw in psychohistory is the use of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud’s theories formed the basis for modern-day Western psychological knowledge and practice, but they have been significantly modified since his time, so that the use of psychoanalysis in its original form is now limited to a minority of psychologists. Psychoanalytic theory itself claims that our experiences in infancy and childhood shape our behavior, that we all go through stages of development, adult behavior is determined by the unconscious mind and that there is a psychic conflict reflected in adult behavior (Penelope Hetherington, Freud, Psychoanalysis and History in Green and Troup, p. 60). We can thus understand historical events and personalities in terms of developments in a person or society’s psychological stages of development. Yet a critical question remains: How many applications can a theory that most psychologists no longer use, at least in its original form, have for historical events and people? Psychoanalysis may have worked well in the first part of the 20th-century, but it does not correspond to our present-day understanding of Western psychology.

The second problem is the reliability of the information obtained via psychoanalysis. Erik Erikson’s “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” uses excerpts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to attempt to provide a psychoanalytic explanation for someone like Hitler and the German people who supported him. The most glaring problem here is that Erikson relies in part on Hitler’s own autobiography. In assessing any historical source, such as Mein Kampf, one must consider the trustworthiness of the observer. People can lie consciously or unconsciously, and political observers such as Hitler can “shade their reports, making them conform to the party line in one way or another (Howell & Prevenier, p. 68).” How can we trust anything that Hitler claimed in his work, considering, as Erikson puts it, the “fairy tale” quality (Green & Troup, p. 72) of the first chapter? Another related issue is that Erikson’s psychoanalysis must rely on analyzing something that Hitler wrote at a specific time in his life and in a specific context (when he was in prison). Hitler’s Mein Kampf does not cover his entire life, which is yet another reason to question the reliability of psychoanalysis, at least in this context.

The third problem, which also appears in Erikson’s work, is the actual application of psychoanalysis to groups of people at large. Erikson claims, for example, that “the Germans have always been inclined to manifest a comparable attitude of ambivalence toward mankind and the world at large (Green & Troup, p. 83).” This kind of statement makes it appear as though Germans have always been united in a particular attitude. The reality of human diversity is simply not acknowledged by such a statement, a statement which is itself the product of psychoanalytical comparisons between Hitler’s own psyche and the German peoples’ in general. Psychoanalysis can, as seen here, cause one to over-generalize or to project a supposition (in this case that Hitler had an Oedipus complex) onto an entire group of people.
Psychohistory thus has little, if any, practical use for historians in the 21st-century. Freud assumed that there were general principles that guided human behavior, or that “we have something in common, our humanity perhaps, with people in the past which allows us to understand them (Kren & Rappoport, Varieties of Psychohistory, p. 64 in Green & Troup, p. 59).” While it would perhaps be easier for historians to reconstruct history if this was true, the idea that we all have basic “common sense” or a shared nature is highly problematic (Green & Troup, p. 59). Thus historians would do well to be careful when dealing with anything regarding psychohistory, considering the intrinsic problems associated with it.

Quantitative history, unlike psychohistory, still has practical applications and is used by historians. The term “quantitative history” is actually an umbrella term for “a range of methodologies and theoretical bases, linked by their reliance on numerical data (Green & Troup, p. 141).” Specific examples of quantitative historical theory include econometrics (Green & Troup, p. 142) as well as serial history and its relative historical demography.

Quantitative history theory can be quite useful for some historians, especially when numerical data is abundant in a historian’s particular area of expertise. It can be especially promising for historians who wish to study large groups of people rather than just a few individuals in a particular time and place, as well as minorities for whom other sources are rare or nonexistent (Green & Troup, p. 141). Historical demography can be especially useful in “broadening our historical perspective” by showing us aspects of a particular society, such as birth and death rates, marriages and divorces, immigration records, price and wage records and various other pieces of information (Green & Troup, p. 145). Thus quantitative history can be valuable, but it too contains its own fair share of problems.

The issue of the data being reliable is of the utmost importance. One must consider source criticism and the associated questions that need to be asked by historians when dealing with any source, i.e. who, what, when, where, why and how. Is the source reliable? Why was the source created in the first place? Is there any textual evidence that the author left something out, or added something in, whether accidentally or intentionally? Is the source itself even authentic, or a fake? Could the author have made a simple, or perhaps not so simple, clerical error? Did the author have any known biases that could have colored his/her work? Simply because quantitative history may deal with absolute or relative quantities does not mean that records cannot be manipulated, fabricated or destroyed (Howell & Preveiner, p. 60-68). It is not enough to merely look at numbers and form a conclusion. The validity of the data must be established to the greatest possible extent.

One particular problem is with gaps in the records themselves. In the case of gaps in census records, a technique known as inverse projection was developed (Green & Troup, p. 146). LOESS regression models can help make sense of complex sets of data as well, and this particular method can be especially useful when dealing with large amounts of polling data. Another related issue is with the length of the data. It is inadvisable to draw conclusions from, say, birth records covering only a few years and then using that data to illustrate birth rates for a much longer period of time. This can, of course, pose understandable difficulties for historians studying regions or periods for which there is little quantitative data (or the existing data is from questionable sources). For example, consider the instance of a historian trying to study census material in a time and place when there is little of it. There is one possible but difficult way to deal with this problem, and that is by means of nominative analysis (Green & Troup, p. 146), whereby known historical figures are specifically located in the records and their names are then attached to various records (i.e. legal documents, censuses, etc.). The same technique can help historians reconstruct families and this learn more about a particular society, but the problems with that include not only the fact that such an endeavor takes a lot of time but also that the sources may be conflicted or the individuals in question difficult to locate (Green & Troup, p. 146). The objective benefit of quantitative history is contingent upon whether or not sufficient amounts of reliable data exist with which to form conclusions.

Another problem involves the interpretation of the data itself. What do changes in a particular data set actually imply? For example, if larger numbers of elderly people are going into nursing homes in American society, does that increase mean that Americans are no longer as willing to care for their elderly relatives as they once were? Or is it possible that it means that there are simply more nursing homes available now? Could it also mean that there are more elderly people to care for since people are living longer? The old saying “correlation does not necessarily equal causation” needs to be remembered by historians when viewing data sets. It can be particularly tempting to see the numbers and interpret them to fit one’s own preconceived assumptions or biases. Historians must be cognizant of their own biases when interpreting data. The numbers need to be allowed to speak for themselves.

There are cases of historians being mislead by data unintentionally. Mistakes can and do happen. Consider the example of Thomas Malthus. He obtained statistical information about Europe’s demography and its food supply, two different data sets, and extrapolated the data to the point where he found that Europe could eventually run out of food if its population continued expanding at a certain rate. There was a problem with his assumption though. He assumed that the relationships between the two data sets was a relatively simple one. In reality, the relationship between food supply and population growth is more complicated than he allowed for it to be. This was later demonstrated when an increase in good supply in the 18th-century was actually associated with a flattening of the population curve (Howell & Prevenier, p. 53). In this case, Malthus had relatively good data but assumed that his data sets would explain everything. Historians must consider not only the data that they have, but also the data that they lack. Had Malthus been able to see that the relationship between food supply and population was not as simple as he thought it was, he may have come to a different conclusion.

Marxism, psychohistory and quantitative history all have their benefits and their flaws. Marxism fails primarily because of its rather reductionist view of human history, which claims that historical change is solely due to economics. While psychohistory has been discredited for the most part by historians due to its own anachronisms and limitations, quantitative history has clear benefits and continues to be used by historians despite its limitations.

Bibliography

Green, Anna and Kathleen Troup, eds. The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. Manchester University Press, 1999.

Howell, Martha and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

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Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance: A Humanist and a Naturalist

Renaissance philosophers were not like their predecessors. The new brand of philosophers that emerged during this period in Europe’s history had pursuits that were scholarly and literary, rather than purely theological or scientific, which is what set them apart (p. 4-5). I would argue that of the eight philosophers examined in Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance by Paul Oskar Kristeller, two of the most important of these philosophers were Petrarch, a 14th-century humanist sometimes known as the “Father of Humanism,” and Telesio, a natural philosopher of the 16th-century. Petrarch showed that Christianity and humanism could go together, and Telesio’s natural philosophy anticipated later scientists like Newton and even Einstein.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) has been referred to as the initiator of Renaissance humanism and as its first representative (p. 5). Either way, he was a man ahead of his time. One thing to consider when attempting to reconstruct his philosophy is that he did not articulate it in a single coherent work, making it necessary for scholars like Kristeller to piece his philosophical beliefs together (p. 6). Like future fellow humanists, he was hostile to scholasticism (university learning of the later Middle Ages) and to things like astrology and to Aristotelian philosophy. One potential problem though was that his objections to his opponents had a tendency to be based more upon the opponents themselves, not the arguments or positions of his opponents (p. 6). For example, when he rejected Aristotle’s authority, he did so more out of distaste for Aristotle himself. In spite of this, he still made a great contribution to the study of the classics, a subject he loved (p. 7). What made Petrarch so important was the fact that he showed that it was possible for humanists to reject scholasticism, yet remain staunchly Christian (p. 12). Thus he was able to accomplish a sort of reconciliation between Christianity and classical learning that his predecessors had not been able to. Beyond this, Petrarch had some other specific characteristics which made him stand out when compared to his contemporaries. Unlike most medieval philosophers, Petrarch thought Plato was the best classical philosopher (p. 9). He also thought that philosophy should focus on humanity and the problems that humanity was facing, not the “useless questions” of Aristotelian philosophers (p. 16). Petrarch spoke of himself frequently, and of his passion for fame (p. 13). He certainly enjoyed prestige among his contemporaries and successors. Petrarch helped bring about later Renaissance developments in part because of this prestige (p. 18). In a very real way, he contributed to the secularization of not merely the content of learning, but also the personal attitude of the scholar and writer (p. 15), despite his own religious beliefs. Kristeller says it best: “…he was one of those who foresaw the future because [he] helped to make it” (p. 18).

Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588) came later, but was still very important. He lived in a different time than Petrarch. He witnessed the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent. What sets him apart from his fellow natural philosophers (he was certainly not the first) was that “his thought is distinguished by a certain measure of clarity and coherence, and because some of his ideas anticipate important aspects of later philosophy (p. 97).” One of Telesio’s main goals was to reject Aristotelianism, which he did in his work De Rerum Natura. He rejected it as being contradictory to “the senses, with itself, and with Scripture… (p.98).” He claimed to rely on pure sensory input and “nature,” but made sure to add that he would give his assent to Scripture and to the Catholic Church. This may have had more to do with the fear of the Inquisition rather than pure piety, but Kristeller himself sees no reason to assume that Telesio was anything other than a good Catholic (p. 106). Telesio’s natural theories regarding cosmology, especially the nature of matter, is particularly important because it represents one of the first serious attempts to actually supplant Aristotle’s natural philosophy. This is especially true considering his step toward Newtonian physics, as evidenced by his belief in an absolute time (as opposed to Aristotelian motion-dependent time) (p. 103). His beliefs regarding space and time also show his anticipation of not only Newton, but also Leibniz and Kant (p. 105). Although Kristeller correctly points out that Newtonian physics has been replaced by Einstein (p. 108), he would do well to consider that Einstein retained an important element of Telesio’s philosophy, notably the treatment of space and time as concepts that must be treated together (p. 104). In this way, Telesio did not merely anticipate Newton, but also Einstein to a certain extent. Like Petrarch, Telesio was a man who anticipated the future because he contributed to it.

Petrarch and Telesio were arguably the two most important Renaissance philosophers. Although both men lived two centuries apart, they shared a common dislike of Aristotelianism and both anticipated later movements in the Renaissance. Petrarch was the first well-known example of a humanist who combined his philosophy with his faith. Telesio was not only the most coherent natural philosopher (according to Kristeller), but he also helped form the basis for Newtonian and, indirectly, Einstein’s physics.

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Clerical Monasticism in the Middle Ages

C. H. Lawrence’s book Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages was a fascinating read. The essential point of his work, as I understood it, was that there was a clear evolution in monasticism stretching from the early days of Christianity to the late Middle Ages. Throughout his work, two particularly pertinent themes emerged. The most important one was that monasticism and the levels of recruitment and observance took place in recognizable cycles until monasticism gradually declined in the 14th century (p. 221). The other is that the dissonance between secular clergy and religious priests, especially the friars, had its roots in the very beginnings of the orders (Some Catholic sociologists, like the late Dr. Dean Hoge, have done intriguing studies confirming that religious priests continue to operate from a fundamentally different theological framework in the 21st century than their diocesan counterparts. Hoge showed that religious priests, especially in America, tend to be less rigid in dealing with dissenting or sinning Catholics than diocesan priests. Lawrence claimed that friars were often accused of being too lenient toward penitents (p. 209, 214). See Dean Hoge, Evolving Visions of the Priesthood: Changes from Vatican II to the Turn of the New Century (Liturgical Press), 2003: p. 27, 33).

One of the ironies of the monastic life is that, in most cases, coenobitic monastics originally tried to escape worldly involvement, only to find themselves brought right back into it with the development of an organized monastic hierarchy, the acquisition of property and interactions with Rome or the secular authorities (or both). When monastics realized that they had gone astray, they tried again to return to the roots of Christianity, which spawned even more religious orders. Some of these, like the Cistercians, did a more radical turnabout and tried to adhere even more strictly to the Rule of St. Benedict (p. 146-147), which was one of the original models for monastic life. But the Cistercians were also victims of their own success, and gained wealth and privilege to the point where they too began to compromise their austerity and went into decline (p. 161-162), thus continuing the cycle.

Monastic life was thus, in its own way, a self-reinforcing phenomenon. But the philosophy at the heart of monasticism was summed up nicely on p. 156: “we are the restorers of lost religion.” It was a way to get back to the roots of Christianity in the face of a corrupt world (p. 131). Despite this, Lawrence did not neglect to illustrate the concrete realities of why many people entered monastic life. He showed that monastic life was not necessarily about piety or devotion. It served as a socioeconomic refuge in times of war or political upheaval. It also served as a repository for excess or unwanted children in the form of child oblates, although this declined and was eventually banned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (p. 33). For women, it could serve as a refuge for those who could not find a husband or were widowed (p. 176). Of course, it could also serve as an escape from problems of a more personal nature, like when John Gualberto of Florence fled to an abbey to escape a family feud (p. 129). This was one of the helpful examples that Lawrence provided of how one’s external circumstances could be just as powerful, if not more, than personal faith in influencing one’s decision to enter monastic life.

As for the conflict between the friars and the secular clergymen, this was not immediately obvious. In fact, the friars and secular clergymen got along relatively well at first. However, as they began to expand and preach, they became quite popular. This siphoned off parishioners from diocesan parishes, something that may not have bothered the secular clergy that much until they realized that their parishioners had also taken their monetary contributions with them. A papal order allowing people to be buried in the friars’ cemeteries, something that the secular clergy had originally controlled, really sealed the breach (p. 212). Although a compromise by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300 was supposed to heal the divisions between the friars and secular clergyman, the resentment clearly lingered. Lawrence claimed that the friars were also known for giving relatively easy penances, since they focused more on the intentions and circumstances of the penitent rather than actions alone (p. 209). Secular clergyman continued to doubt whether doing penance with a friar was efficacious (p. 214), but the question that needs to be asked is whether secular clergymen questioned penance with friars because they had real concerns over the souls of their flocks, or whether it was simply an excuse to attack their competitors. Perhaps it was a mix of both. It is definitely a question worth exploring in any future work on medieval monasticism.

Lawrence ended his work with the decline of the monastic orders, which started in the 14th century (p. 221). Contrary to the present-day shortage of priests in America, the decline of the monastic orders in the 14th century was not due to a decline in vocations, but due to restrictions imposed by the orders themselves. They would put limits on how many individuals that could be admitted so that they could preserve their own standards of living, but Lawrence correctly noted that this was not the only problem. War, political upheaval and especially the Black Death in the 1340s and 1350s seriously harmed the monastic orders, not only by directly killing monks, but also by drastically reducing the pool of eligible applicants (The Black Death is thought to have killed anywhere between 25-50 % of Europe, although some scholars put the number as high as 60%. For the latter figure, see Ole Benedictow, The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History (Rochester: The Boydell Press), 2004). While one might be inclined to think that the Black Death would have been the greatest contributor to the decline of monasticism, one cannot help but wonder if the cumulative effects of the self-imposed restrictions on the orders as well as war and other disasters may have done equal, if not greater, damage to monasticism and pushed it further into decline than it might have otherwise went during the Middle Ages.

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A Critique of Secular Humanism

It’s time for another paper that I wrote when I was a freshman in college. This is about secularism and its pros and cons. In skimming over”A Secular Humanist Declaration” I wasn’t surprised by what I saw since I know the basic tenants of secularism anyway. I will first discuss what I agree with and why, and then what I disagree with and why.

I think that the secular humanists are definitely on to something when they describe the deleterious effects of pathological religion on our world. Fundamentalism is usually a bad thing, regardless of what religion one is dealing with, and I would certainly join in with secular humanists in condemning such destructive ideologies.

I also strongly support the secular humanist position that advocates for democracy as the only acceptable human ideal. Totalitarian governments are inherently detrimental to their own people, and are hotbeds for terrorists who thrive on the climate of fear and hatred that these governments encourage. Secular humanists are right to claim that it is up to ordinary people, and not an elite group, to determine their own destiny. I would diverge here by adding that, for my own life decisions at least, God’s guidance should be added in, but then I know that each of us will come to different conclusions as to what God wants! I can only speak for myself. Although they do not explicitly state it, I think part of the secular humanist agenda is to avoid extremes in life. I try to do the same, realizing that humans are always better off spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced.

My disagreements with secular humanism, however, cannot be underemphasized. This worldview places so much stress on individual rights and liberties, but does agree with certain restrictions as appropriate. The problem is that it is not specified as to how much we should restrict certain rights. What would secular humanists say to that? I can find no answer. It says that we can express our beliefs freely even if they are unpopular. Perhaps secular humanists should ask the Jews who were imprisoned in Hitler’s concentration camps what they thought of Hitler’s right to “free speech.” Or perhaps they could ask Rwandan Tutsis if their killers had the “freedom of speech” to broadcast their names and locations via radio so that they could be located and killed more easily. Such speech may be unpopular, but we have to tolerate it, according to secular humanism. I reject this. As far as I’m concerned, if the speech calls for unjustified violence, then it’s out. I think the US Supreme Court’s “clear and present danger” doctrine of free speech is the best expression of my personal thoughts on the limits of free expression.

There is also a discussion of the “separation of church and state.” According to the US Constitution, there is actually no such thing in a broad sense. The Constitution simply states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” I don’t see anything in there that says that public schools can’t allow public prayers, or that city halls can’t display Christmas trees or mangers. All I can see in this is that the legislative branch of our government cannot make a law regarding the establishment a particular religion, and that the American people cannot be denied the right to practice any religion, or none at all. Let’s not stretch it past the simple meaning.

Next, I don’t like the lack of limits on technology. I think that there is a real danger in eventually getting to a point where humanity will be playing God, if we aren’t doing so already. One might make the argument that we are playing God with cloning and unrestricted abortion. All I can say is that we had better tread lightly. If we knock on the Devil’s door, eventually someone will answer.

Finally, I cannot agree with the rejection of the divine. The suggestion that there is nothing divine or that it has no relevance is something that I disagree with. Certainly, we are all free to believe what we want. If one does not believe in a supreme being, then so be it. I cannot force anyone to believe in my God. I don’t worship a deity that forces people to believe and to worship. Those of other religions, atheists, agnostics and the non-religious have a right to exist and are entitled to the same respect and care that we are all entitled to, and I cannot judge their consciences. I have no right to. I can only assert my own belief in a loving, benevolent, God who has revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. I believe in what Jesus taught and what He did for the short time that He was with us, and one of the central things that He taught was that all of God’s commandments for us can be summed up in love, pure and simple. It is that love that I think will best serve a world desperately in need of it.

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Late Imperial Russia and the Economic Origins of Revolution

In 1917, Russia had fallen into chaos. The imperial government of Czar Nicholas II was catapulted from power by a groundswell of popular anger. While World War I undoubtedly played a huge role in causing bitter feelings toward the imperial government, there is one other factor that is sometimes overlooked by historians. Economic development, especially industrialization and agricultural growth, had already begun under the reign of Czar Nicholas II and his imperial predecessors, and was not merely the product of Bolshevik economic reforms (as Lenin would probably have wanted everyone to believe). But what Nicholas apparently did not realize at the time was that Russia’s industrialization and agricultural growth would actually contribute to the discontent that ultimately cost him his throne, and his life.
Obviously Lenin and the Bolsheviks in general would never have wanted to give any kind of credit to their former czar, but like it or not, they probably would not have been able to get a lot of their economic reforms underway to begin with if economic development had not already begun in the late 1800s. Around that time, Russia was attempting to industrialize. It was still very agrarian, with uneducated peasants who had only recently been freed from serfdom in 1861. Even the noble class had it tough. Luckily, things began to improve somewhat under the czar in the early 1900s. By 1914, coal output was 10 times greater than it was 30 years prior. Manufacturing and mining output jumped 6% between 1907 and 1914. Russia was the 4th largest producer of textiles, with Moscow being a critical center for textile factories, and they were making enough cotton to cut back on importing American cotton. Oil, paper, copper and mineral production was increasing, thanks in part to one of the czar’s advisors, Sergei Witte, who built up the Donets Basin into a mining center. Witte had the support of Nicholas II with industrial projects (Service, p. 4). He encouraged foreign investment in the Russian economy, and stabilized the ruble by making it into a convertible currency based on the gold standard in 1897. For a time, foreign investment in Russia was greater than domestic investment (Rogger, p. 103)! Perhaps the most important economic achievement of the czars was the Trans Siberian Railroad, approved by Czar Alexander II and overseen by Sergei Witte. It had cost 1.5 billion rubles, an expense second only to Russia’s involvement in World War I. This was a huge breakthrough in Russian history, because it enabled more rapid transfer of goods, not to mention people, from one part of the empire to another. Railway growth was especially rapid during the 1890s, thanks in part to government encouragement of private railway enterprise, and railway mileage doubled between 1889 and 1902 (Seton-Watson, p. 116). It also helped develop Siberia to a certain extent. Despite all of this progress, there was a problem. Industrial development was, in general, centralized in certain areas to the extent that it became lopsided. This was actually an unintended side effect of the emancipation of the serfs. While it is tempting to think of the serfs as being mostly agrarian farmers, plenty of serfs also worked in mines. The conditions in these mines were usually so poor that once the serfs had the option to finally go elsewhere, they did just that. The metal industry in the Urals suffered greatly in the 1860s, with one district in the area losing almost 30% of its workers as they left for other places (Seton-Watson, p. 115). Of course, this emigration helped build up other industrial centers, where the peasants now flocked to, but this was probably not a good thing from a social perspective. With the new industrial workers gathered in certain areas, it became easier for them to communicate their growing grievances with one another, rather than if they had been spread far apart and isolated.
While Nicholas II focused a lot on industrialization, agricultural progress was somewhat slow and uneven. Despite periodic famines (which would continue to plague Russia even after the revolution), Russians began to diversify their crops and expand the amount of cultivated land. By 1913, Russia’s grain production per capita jumped a stunning 35% compared to 1890 (Service, p. 5). Agricultural concerns would become a focus later on, but until the early 1900s, most emphasis was placed on industry.
Unfortunately, working conditions in imperial Russia were abysmal, and heavy state spending on industrial projects (and war) did not translate into an allocation of a lot of money to actually improve labor conditions. The workers labored for 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, lived in unsanitary barracks and usually had to sleep in the same beds. Not surprisingly, diseases such as syphilis were widespread. Workers could not form trade unions, collectively bargain or legally strike. Managers could be extremely harsh, and severe injuries due to factory equipment (and the managers themselves!) were not unheard of. Corporal punishment could be used against peasants until 1904. Wages were still poor, especially in the wake of increased government spending under Witte’s reforms. In 1882 the imperial government had originally tried to help out a little bit by prohibiting children under the age of 12 from working, as well as women during the night. The imperial government set up inspectors to try to enforce these directives with a factory inspectorate, but this agency was woefully ineffective. The men in this agency were known to be quite dedicated to exposing foul conditions, but the imperial government refused to let them publish the results of their findings (Rogger, p. 110). Eventually, the imperial government decided that these inspectors were too sympathetic to the industrial workers and replaced them with hard-line inspectors in 1897. These new ones warned factory workers to inform them if and when a strike was planned, and that any kind of strike would not be tolerated. Local authorities were told by the Ministry of the Interior to use whatever means necessary, including extrajudicial methods, to stop strikes. A special police apparatus was set up near many industrial centers to go after strikers at the first sign of trouble (Rogger, p. 111). This step backward infuriated many of the industrial workers. As far as the imperial government was concerned, the fact that there were even inspectors to begin with showed how much the imperial regime cared about its people, so there was even less reason to tolerate strikes. Large-scale industries had almost 2.4 million workers (Davies, p. 40 ), and smaller-scale industries had almost 11 million workers, so the workers were by no means an insignificant minority even though 90% of the country was still agrarian. The industrial classes were growing in numbers.
While it is important to understand that Russians had plenty of non-labor related grievances against the czar (i.e. lack of democracy, lack of press freedom, etc.), the plight of the industrial working classes fueled a crucial strain of the opposition that eventually emerged, namely the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party, which Vladimir Lenin joined. Originally, this party did poorly in Russia. It had its origins in independent workers groups, including the Moscow-based Union of Workers in 1894 and the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class in St. Petersburg in 1895. It was officially formed in 1898 by nine delegates from these and other workers organizations (Rogger, p. 114), although none of the organizers of these delegates were actually workers, including Lenin! Although he and other members of the party could not ignore the fact that most of Russia was still agrarian, they still maintained that the industrial classes would promote a revolution against the imperial government. Personally, Lenin doubted that any such revolt would happen during his lifetime, an understandable sentiment given the fact that the industrial classes were still a minority in the early 1900s and the fact that the party itself had been infiltrated and driven further underground or into exile by the imperial government within less than a year of its founding. Still, if Russia had never tried to industrialize to begin with, then the party would not have had that leg to stand on in the first place! The party itself was internally divided, and split into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, the former being more moderate and the latter being more radical. Despite being dealt serious blows by the imperial government, the Social Democratic Party was not dead, and Lenin would not be silent. While a divided and weakened opposition party might have appeared to be the czar’s dream come true, as long as the working classes were left without any kind of voice, they would be much more inclined to see Lenin’s voice as their own.
One of the czarist government’s top okhrana (the czar’s intelligence organization) officials, Sergei V. Zubatov, had an interesting idea. He shrewdly decided to allow the creation of okhrana-controlled labor unions for workers starting in 1901, which allowed them to decry their working conditions while not letting the desire for labor changes morph into a desire for political change. Some revolutionaries and dissidents referred to this practice as police socialism (Clowes, p. 144), or perhaps more derisively as zubatovshchina after Zubatov himself. This strategy failed to split up or to contain workers’ anger, and industrial entrepreneurs in particular felt that their own needs were not being addressed. The unions began to be seen as shams. Zubatov saw the handwriting on the wall and tried to persuade the imperial government to actually make some labor reforms, but to no avail. Strikes erupted in 1903, and Zubatov was demoted. His unions were disbanded, but the government made a critical mistake at this time. It failed to ensure that the okhrana’s former collaborators within these unions would actually remain loyal afterward. This problem would emerge later on. In the meantime, there were industrial groups prior to Zubatov’s experimental unions, so his idea was not totally unprecedented. Groups of mine owners began convening in annual meetings as early as 1874, and a Permanent Consultative Office of Iron Industrialists was formed in 1887 to represent factories all over Russia. An equivalent group for oil producers emerged around the same time (Clowes, p. 118). There were a few reasons why these groups did not work. First and most important was the fact that the representatives at these groups were all industrial owners, not workers, and were thus not very well inclined to take workers’ concerns into great consideration. Also, there were not a large number of these groups, especially when compared to the soviets that would later form. Another problem was that these groups tended to be dominated by large companies and firms, which could direct proceedings as they saw fit. Finally, the imperial Ministry of Finance was given the authority to send its own representatives to attend the meetings. There was no incentive for dissent from the perspective of the industrial owners, who were doing pretty well for themselves, nor did anyone dare criticize the czar in front of his representatives at these congresses!
The effects of a lack of any substantive channel of dissent would dramatically appear in 1905. Foreign policy blunders and a bad harvest led to a strike in January of 1905 in St. Petersburg. This touched off more unrest, and in September one of the okhrana’s collaborators in the unions, Fr. Georgiy Gapon, organized a peaceful march in St. Petersburg in September, but it was not an anti-czar march. The okhrana apparently did not have as much loyalty among its informants as it had thought! Many Russians still tended to still see the czar as benevolent and thought that he would help them if only he knew how tough things were. Unfortunately, police opened fire on the crowd, enraging the country and turning them against Nicholas II. “Bloody Sunday” became infamous, along with the now “Bloody Nicholas.” Nicholas himself was not happy with what his security forces did, but it was too late. Chaos broke out. By October there was a general strike (even ballerinas joined in!) throughout the empire. Soviets, or councils to oversee the strikes, began to form. Without a voice anywhere else, the people took to the streets. This forced the czar to cave in at last and issue the October Manifesto, allowing the creation of the State Duma of the Russian Empire. This succeeded in calming things down temporarily and splitting the opposition. It also had the added benefit of bringing opposition parties out into the open, where they could be watched more easily. If Nicholas had done this before the October revolt, he might have been able to coax more of the opposition to the surface where he could either strangle it or water it down before it snowballed into the revolt.
Nicholas appointed Pyotor Stolypin as his prime minister to calm Russia down in the wake of the 1905 unrest, and Stolypin decided to concentrate reforms on agriculture rather than industry. He believed that if he focused on making the farmers happy, that he could eliminate most of the dissent. Remember that the strong focus on industrialization of the late 1800s did not leave as much room for focusing on improving the agricultural sector. The former serfs on the farms were often laboring under difficult conditions. The emancipation edict in 1861 did not discharge the serfs from their debts, and many serfs felt that they should not have to pay for land that belonged to them to begin with (Lincoln, p. 88). The government required the peasant communities to hand over “redemption payments” over the next 49 years. Stolypin’s reforms included reorganizing the farming system to allow farmers more mobility, as well as the development of farmers’ cooperatives and private ownership for individual peasants of their land. He worked to get rid of the mir system of collective ownership of land by village elders, and transferred ownership to single families in the countryside. He also worked to communicate new methods of land augmentation to the peasants, and wanted to provide more agricultural education to the farmers. He provided credit lines to the peasants to give them more purchasing power. Stolypin’s reforms from 1906 to 1914 succeeded in pacifying the countryside.
While the countryside was doing marginally well as a result of the reforms (although many farmers were still suffering), the cities, where most of the industrial workers were centered, remained restless. Little had been done to help the industrial classes, and in 1912 police shot at a group of striking gold miners in Siberia. Sympathetic demonstrations burst forth, and another wave of anger from the industrial sector crested in St. Petersburg in 1914. Yet, in a strange twist of fate, the opposition was suddenly albeit briefly neutralized when World War I broke out. Pro-czar fervor swept throughout the country. Unfortunately for Nicholas, this sudden spike in support was followed by a much sharper drop. The war went badly, the loyalty of his German czarina was in question (although in reality she didn’t care much for her German cousin Wilhelm) and the economy began to spiral out of control. Russia was already in serious debt in the early 1900s thanks to all of the state’s spending on industrial projects. The country had a huge national debt, and once World War I erupted, the country was forced to print more money, causing inflation. Transportation failures led to food shortages in the cities. A 1905-style revolt erupted in 1917, but because most of the czar’s troops (plus the czar himself) were fighting the Germans, there was not a lot that could be done to stop it. By the time Nicholas tried to head back to St Petersburg, it was too late. The rest is, as they say, history.
At one point after the 1905 revolution, Stolypin made a shrewd and surprisingly progressive insight. He warned that if Russia did not get serious about rectifying its economic and political problems that the imperial government could crumble due to an “endless cycle of contradictions that characterize our times.” (Wcislo, p. 242) Despite being a defender of the monarchy, he was right. One of imperial Russia’s greatest internal contradictions was the way in which its economy developed. In the late 1800s industrial growth skyrocketed but without as much emphasis on agriculture. This compelled Stolypin to focus on farmers once he was appointed as prime minister, and although he succeeded in ameliorating the agrarian peasants, the imperial government did not do enough to provide the industrial workers with an effective voice at the same time. They either had the police control the unions or the unions consisted of no more than corporate bosses and imperial representatives. Marxist parties like the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks provided a voice that no one else would, and unfortunately for the czar, it was a radical voice. The other emerging parties from the 1905 revolt, such as the Kadets, tended to focus more on political reforms and the needs of landowners, and not the economic concerns of the workers (Clowes, p. 34). Stolypin warned that he needed peace in order to make more reforms. If his reforms were to have concentrated more on giving the industrial sector a greater say, then he might have succeeded in saving the monarchy, or at least delaying its collapse.
A fundamental problem was thus that imperial Russia put too much emphasis on one part of its economy (industry) without giving it an effective voice and then had to hurry to help the other part (agriculture) catch up without solving all of the industrial workers’ problems! And in the meantime, the workers turned to the radical ideas of people like Lenin who gave them the only strong voice available. Perhaps Russia wanted too much too quickly. Maybe the czar should have tried to focus equal amounts of money and attention on both the industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy, and allow a slow but steady development. Getting involved in World War I was the straw the broke the camel’s back, but Russia’s uneven economic development without any real political voice for the people that needed one ultimately contributed a great deal to the fall of the Romanov dynasty.

Bibliography

Clowes, Edith W., et. al. Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia. Princeton University Press, 1991.

Davies, R. W., ed. From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR. Cornell University Press, 1991.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia. Northern Illinois University Press, 1990.

Rogger, Hans. Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution 1881-1917. New York: Longman Group Limited, 1983.

Service, Robert. A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. Harvard University Press, 2005.

Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Decline of Imperial Russia 1855-1914. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1952.

Wcislo, Francis William. Reforming Rural Russia: State, Local Society, and National Politics, 1855-1914. Princeton University Press, 1990.

Copyright © 2009 neverwalkaway.wordpress.com. All Rights Reserved.

Hesiod

Hesiod’s Works and Days and The Theogony are two very interesting examples of ancient sources dealing with women in antiquity. Both of them provide a glimpse into ancient mythology dealing with the creation of women, an important indicator of how women were viewed in ancient Greece. Hesiod’s makes his views of women known in various parts of his works.
It is abundantly clear from the start that Hesiod did not view women very positively, to say the least. He has Zeus refer to women in a very negative tone (Works and Days, “an evil thing, which all shall cherish in their hearts, embracing their own scourge.”). Interestingly, Hesiod may have injected some chthonic beliefs into the creation of women, as he has Hephaestus create women from the earth. This could be intertwined with the role of ancient chthonic goddesses as “earth mothers,” although such a connection is speculative at best. In addition, he has the gods and goddesses assign women their customary roles, stamping a divine mandate on the restrictions regarding women’s activities (Works and Days, “Athena was to teach the crafts and weaving…Aphrodite was to bathe her head with grace and difficult desire…to add a dog-like, shameless mind and thieving ways he charged to Hermes…”) and personal attributes (The Theogony, “sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.” Not only did Hesiod have the deities give the first woman, whom we find is named Pandora, her traditional roles, but he also had the male god Hermes assign her a “dog-like” mind. In today’s world, this would be a very derogatory comment, at least in America and other western countries. A woman’s mind is compared to that of an animal. In a way, one gets the impression that he views women as being almost less than human by making such a callous statement. Hesiod takes the additional step of assigning blame to women over everything that is wrong with the world, when he has Hermes deliver Pandora to men. Now we see an interesting parallel between this myth and the Judeo-Christian creation myth. Hesiod related how there were once only men on earth and that they had a blissful existence, free of any pain or hardship. Once Pandora entered the picture, she supposedly became responsible for all of humanity’s suffering by opening a jar containing all of the evils that plague mankind (just as in Christianity Eve, the first woman, came after Adam, the first man, and ate the fruit that condemned all of mankind to sin). Women are, because of a choice made by the first woman, universally tainted and responsible for every wrong in human existence. Hesiod also shows his own strong bias against women because he will not dare blame Zeus for all of mankind’s troubles, which would really make more sense in the grand scheme of the myth because Zeus was the one who ordered the creation of Pandora and sent the jar of misery to mankind for her to open. If anyone is to blame, it is Zeus, who felt the need to punish humanity for the mistakes of Prometheus. Hesiod portrays women as being unhelpful during difficult economic times when their help is needed (The Theogony, “[women are] no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.”) and as taking advantage of the labors of men for their own comfort (The Theogony, “the drones stay at home in the covered skeps and reap the toil of others into their own bellies.”). This is noteworthy because at first Hesiod, in Works and Days, has the gods assign women their roles, such as at the loom, and therefore in the home, and yet he gets angry when they remain in the home instead of helping. Women simply cannot win with Hesiod! They are irredeemable (The Theogony, “this evil cannot be healed.”), even though they were created to be very beautiful and appealing to men and gods alike (The Theogony, “and great beauty shone out from it…he brought her out, delighting in the finery which [Athena] had given her.”). Worse yet, women cannot be escaped without the penalty of being alone in old age and having one’s relatives divide up one’s land upon death (virtually all men in ancient Greece married). What is most notable is Hesiod’s total failure to consider any of the suffering that women often endured in ancient Greece (and still endure) for the sake of their husbands and families. Hesiod does not even mention the pain and difficulties that women went through during pregnancy and childbirth in the ancient world, which could easily prove to be fatal. In fact, he refers to women’s roles with producing children when he refers to the added evil of potentially “mischievous children,” implying that women are at the root of such a curse, while simultaneously neglecting to mention any possibility that the father could have a bad influence on his children.
Hesiod’s overall tone is one of deep resentment and anger toward women, and one has to wonder if he molded the myths about the creation of women to fit his own preconceived notions, rather than the other way around. Either way, he truly fits the definition of a misogynist, which literally means “hater of women.” What is so striking is that he sees nothing good about women at all. Hesiod’s motives are difficult to discern given the fact that he is not here for us to interview him, assuming that he would even tell the truth. From the tone of his writings, one has to wonder if Hesiod had bad experiences with women in his own life. Perhaps he had a failed marriage or had problems with his mother or another female relative. When he speaks of women as being of no help in poverty, maybe it is his own perception of women’s alleged laziness in the context of the agrarian society that he was writing in. Women probably could not do a lot of the labor intensive tasks (i.e. digging, lifting heavy items, plowing, etc.), especially while watching the children, which may have compelled him to see women as weaker and thus lazier. There may also possibly be an element of fear, since his myths refer to women as being very cunning and conniving. He may fear the influence that women have over men due to their physical beauty and their necessity for procreation, and he might also dislike that dependence that men have on women to provide children. Also, he may have loathed the possibility of becoming dependent on a woman for care during old age or illness. Even today, some find it humiliating to be dependent on anyone for personal care, and in Hesiod’s time, being forced to rely on a woman for care during such timesmight have been his worst nightmare.
Hesiod obviously had a deep loathing of women, based on his descriptions of the creation of women in Works and Days and The Theogony. There are numerous examples throughout his works of this, but the rationale behind this misogyny will unfortunately never be as clear as the misogyny itself.

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The International Response to the Rwandan Genocide

In 1994, the world witnessed the fastest genocide (about a million Rwandans died in a 3-month period, whereas Hitler only managed to kill an average of 250,000 people in the same amount of time. All of the newspaper sources that I’ve read as well as the books I’ve used have stated, without exception, that it was the fastest genocide in history) on record in the tiny African republic of Rwanda. Witnessing the genocide was really all the world did though, as the international community did essentially little to nothing to stop the genocide or help its victims. In order to fully understand the genocide and why no one bothered to help, it is necessary to understand why the genocide took place and what happened during and after it.
In Rwanda and a few of the surrounding countries, there are two main groups of people, the Hutu and Tutsi. Exactly what they are is highly debatable. Some classify them as different ethnic groups, while some classify them as originally being different social classes. It could very well be a mixture of both. Whatever the case, most Rwandans are classified as one or the other. Some Tutsis tend to be taller and thinner, and they can easily reach 7 ft in height! This suggests that there may be slight ethnic differences. What is known is that the Tutsi migrated into what is now Rwanda from northern Africa where the Hutu dwelled. Relations between the two were generally cordial throughout the centuries, but the Tutsi eventually established their own monarchy and subjugated the Hutu. Even then, relations were still calm for the most part, that is, until the Belgians came. The Belgians eventually colonized Rwanda and maintained the system of Tutsi dominance over the Hutus. It is important to note that the Hutu comprise about 85% of Rwanda and the Tutsi only 14-15%, and although this difference wasn’t always numerically the same, the Hutu were still the majority throughout Belgian rule. Despite this, the Belgians kept the Tutsi in power (with Belgian supervision) partly to avoid disturbing the population by changing the status quo, but also due to racial reasons. The Belgians claimed that the Tutsi were lighter-skinned, taller, with pointed noses, and had more elegant features and therefore more “Causasian-like.” They claimed the Hutus were of average height with squat features. Even though there may have been some truth to this, the Belgians decided to codify these differences even further. They then decided that the empowered Tutsi (who were naturally wealthier since they had the power) would be characterized as being richer cattle herders, whereas Hutus would be not-so-rich farmers. A Hutu could become a Tutsi simply by buying lots of cattle! Although all of these differences existed in one degree or another throughout Rwandan history, for the first time the Belgian colonizers codified this to their own advantage. What better way is there to keep a population docile then to keep them divided? The Belgians issued identity cards labeling all Rwandans Hutu or Tutsi and strengthened Tutsi dominance. Naturally, the majority Hutus began to feel that this arrangement was unfair. The Belgians, seeing the handwriting on the wall, decided to allow the Hutus to gain more power and eventually replaced the Tutsi with the Hutus.
After World War II, most African colonies began to become gradually independent. Belgium eventually let Rwanda become independent in 1962, but right before that there was a revolution in Rwanda that toppled the Tutsis and put a Hutu-led regime in. The Belgians decided to let this happen since the original plan was to get the majority Hutus into power anyway, as noted before. Once left to their own devices, the newly empowered Hutus wanted revenge on their puppet oppressors the Tutsis. Throughout the next 30 years, periodic massacres resulted in the exile of thousands of Tutsis and sympathetic Hutus, who eventually formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front with the goal of creating a more tolerant Rwanda. They would become important later on. Without the Belgians to keep the lid on the pot, it was only a matter of time before the simmering resentment of the Hutus against the Tutsis would explode into a major conflict. All it would take was a trigger, and that trigger did indeed come in 1994. It is important to note though that the foundations for the genocide were being laid even before 1994, so when it started, many Rwandans weren’t that shocked.
For at least a few years prior to 1994, groups of Hutu extremists known as the Interahamwe (literally means “those who stand together for a goal” in the Rwandan language) and radical Rwandan generals began to plot a way to get rid of the “Tutsi cockroaches” once and for all. The exact scope and time span of the planning for the genocide is still unknown, possibly spanning from a few months to a few years, but it was known that coordination of the killings would take place via radio broadcasts (many Rwandans didn’t own televisions), and that the killings would begin in the highest levels of the Hutu-led government. And so they waited, and finally it happened.
Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated in April of 1994 when his airplane was shot down. Although exactly who was responsible is still unknown, the assassination was the final trigger for radical Hutus to deal with the Tutsis once and for all. The exterminators moved immediately. Within a few hours of the assassination, the Interahamwe and elements of the Hutu military began killing any and all Tutsis they could find, beginning with government officials in Kigali as planned. Via radio broadcasts, the Interahamwe coordinated what would become the quickest genocide in human history. They broadcasted the locations and names of prominent Tutsis, as well as moderate or liberal Hutus who helped hide them. They also broadcasted the names of places with high concentrations of Tutsis. The radio broadcasters also incited uncertain Hutus to take up arms, deceiving them into thinking that the Tutsis would try to kill them if they did not. When guns and bombs were in short supply, the killers simply picked up knives, machetes and clubs and started hacking and beating away. The bodies were left on the front lawns of Rwandan homes, dumped into lakes or fed to animals. Many Rwandans tried to deny the obvious carnage around them, like the world community, pretending not to see the true scope of the horrific reality that they were living in.
It is important to understand however that not all Hutus participated in this genocide. The Interahamwe and certain elements of the Rwandan military were only a minority compared to the Hutu population in general. In fact, many Hutus banded together to try to help their Tutsi family members, friends and neighbors. One such Hutu, Paul Rusesabagina, saved over 1,260 Tutsi and moderate Hutus by sheltering them in his hotel, the Milles Collines, in Kigali. His story was made into the popular film Hotel Rwanda in 2004 (which we all watched at the beginning of my freshman year). He managed to use a combination of delaying tactics, threats, bribery, etc. to keep the Interahamwe from entering the hotel and killing his refugees. He now travels throughout the world to speak about his experiences, and his recently published autobiography is one of my sources.
During this time, many countries evacuated their citizens from Rwanda, seeing the carnage. American President Bill Clinton took no action, citing that what was going on was not genocide but “acts of genocide.” Avoiding using the term genocide also meant avoiding involvement, which was a priority for the Clinton administration after his prior failure in Somalia. The UN also withdrew most of its troops from Rwanda after 10 of its troops were tortured to death by the Interahamwe, and refused to pass a resolution condemning the situation. Michael Barnett explains in his book “Eyewitness to a Genocide” that the UN felt that it was best “not to get involved” and that “nonintervention was best.” The brutal deaths of the ten UN troops didn’t help. The Interahamwe brutally murdered these troops for exactly that reason, to deter further UN interference in their genocide. The tragedy is that it worked, and the UN eventually pulled most of its troops out. The US under Clinton also refused to send any troops to Rwanda, and Clinton maintains that he didn’t know the full extent of what was going on or else he would’ve intervened. Note that President Clinton was updated by the US Embassy daily and warned by his advisors about the massacres and by the press, which showed gruesome footage.
Other countries had similar attitudes, with the French actually supplying the Hutu army and therefore contributing directly to the genocide. France also used its considerably influence in the UN to block a resolution, not wanting other countries, especially the US, to gain influence in what was traditionally a French-oriented part of Africa (France had a close relationship with the Hutu government and generals as well). China also blocked intervention, fearing that allowing foreign powers to intervene in Rwanda would set a precedent that would allow foreign powers to interfere in China whenever it massacred its own people (a not-so-infrequent occurrence). Belgium asked for a strong UN force to go into Rwanda, but was drowned out by the larger powers in the Security Council. Throughout all of this, racism was apparently not a factor. All of the aforementioned countries seemed to have their own strategic reasons, but racism was not one of them. Of course, many diplomats and officials tried to justify their non-action. “It’s not our job to interfere in a country’s internal problems.” “We have to let people fight their own battles.” “We can’t police the world.” “They’re always killing each other, so why bother to intervene now?” “If it doesn’t pose a threat to my country, why should I care?” There was a torrent of such platitudes throughout the world, all of which sought to justify letting the genocide run its course.
One important thing to remember is that Rwanda had no strategic and economic value to anyone really. There was no oil, no substantial diamond or gold reserves, nothing of any economic value (its main sources of revenue are coffee and tea, and tourism is also increasing). Why bother to intervene in a country with no value for the interveners? There was no conceivable security threat either, since Rwanda had no weapons of mass destruction or anything that could be used by terrorists to attack major powers. What was Rwanda to the world? As the slaughter continued, some countries started to find their voices, however weak. Around July of 1994, when the genocide was winding down anyway, several countries pushed through an arms embargo on Rwanda in the UN, but it was too late. The genocide ended that month. Several countries demanded that the Rwandan army halt the genocide, but demands were all that they made, and even then it was too late. Besides, an arms embargo wouldn’t have done any good since the killers would simply pick up anything they could find to kill the Tutsis. These terrorists were dead set on killing off the entire Tutsi population, and nothing short of brute force would stop them.
Given how quickly the violence was taking place, one has to wonder if it was even feasible to intervene. From New York City, one can fly to Rwanda within a few days , so it wouldn’t have taken an intervention force long to get there. It didn’t take long for the media to pick up what was going on and broadcasts of the carnage could be seen on the evening news, so no one can use the excuse “I didn’t know.” The Interahamwe was very poorly armed and disorganized (although very motivated and efficient) so it would’ve been extremely easy for our forces to stop them, and it might also have given demoralized Tutsis the will to fight back. Rwanda is a very small country (about the size of Maryland), so it wouldn’t have taken too many of our troops to stabilize the country. If there was time to debate the issue endlessly for weeks on end, then there was certainly time to send a peacekeeping force.
Since Rwanda was about 60% Catholic, Pope John Paul II called for a halt to violence especially in the face of credible reports that elements of the Catholic Church had aided the Interahamwe in the genocide. Overall, the world community showed depraved indifference toward Rwanda. The “never again” that was chanted after Hitler’s Holocaust turned out to be an empty lie.
We will never know the exact numbers of the people killed since many were never found. The Rwandan government officially cites that at the very least 937,000 were killed, whereas the UN and other sources cite 800,000, but if we factor in those who were never found and those who died later from injuries the number may easily reach a million.
The genocide ended in July 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front mentioned earlier saw what was happening and finally overran the country and expelled the Interahamwe and the radical elements of the Rwandan army. Rwanda, which was in the process of development and a popular destination for foreigners, was in shambles. HIV began to rear its ugly head en masse since the Interahamwe often raped women that they chose not to kill for whatever reason. The scariest thing to think about is that the killers actually came pretty close to successfully exterminating all of the Tutsis in Rwanda. Had the Rwandan Patriotic Front not intervened in July, by the end of August all of Rwanda’s Tutsis would have been killed (Rwanda had a pre-genocide population of about 8 million, with 15 % being Tutsi. Since 900,000-1,000,000 were killed in a span of 100 days, all of the Tutsis would’ve been exterminated by the end of August if the genocide hadn’t been halted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front). The killers were only 30-40 days away from completing the genocide. The country still suffers from the hellish effects of the genocide even twelve years after the fact. I have seen pictures and read travelogues of people who have traveled to Rwanda, and they have reported some of the highest numbers of orphaned children and widowed women ever seen in modern countries.
What happened in Rwanda was a human tragedy, but what makes it worse is that it could have been stopped if the UN or other major powers had the decency to put their own interests aside and to have the courage to do the right thing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adelman, Howard and Astri Suhrke, ed. The Path of a Genocide. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999.

Barnett, Michael. Eyewitness to a Genocide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2002.

Des Forges, Alison. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999.

Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1995.

Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families. New York: Picador, 1999.

Jones, Bruce. Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2001

Keane, Fergal. Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey. New York: Penguin Books, 1995

McCullum, Hugh. The Angels Have Left Us: The Rwanda Tragedy and the Churches. Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 1995.

Melvern, Linda. Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. New York: Verso, 2004

Rittner, Carol, John Roth and Wendy Whitworth, ed. Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2004.

Rusesabagina, Paul. An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography. Viking Adult, 2006

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Trujillo and “In the Time of the Butterflies”

In. Julia Alvarez’s novel “In the Time of the Butterflies” the major antagonist is seen in the person of the former president of the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo as depicted in the book is an accurate reflection of the real-life Trujillo and his regime, on the social, political and religious levels.
The real Trujillo was born Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina on October 24th, 1891 in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. In the midst of the American occupation of the Dominican Republic during and briefly after World War I, he joined the Dominican army and received training from American troops. He would eventually attain the rank of general, and overthrow the Dominican Republic’s popular president Horacio Vasquez in 1930 to seize power. This seizure of power is the earliest part of Trujillo’s life that is mentioned in the book (Alvarez 18), but accurately reflects the illegitimate reality of Trujillo’s government. Trujillo did not wait long to consolidate his power. He renamed Santo Domingo (the capital) Ciudad Trujillo (Derby 1112). Statues and pictures of himself appeared everywhere throughout the country. As a fictional character in the book sadly points out, “people who opened their big mouths didn’t live very long” (Alvarez 18). Trujillo created a secret police force known as the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM) , to ruthlessly suppress any opposition to his rule (Alvarez 156). The SIM kept a close watch on the population, making use of paid spies and electronic bugging (Alvarez 214). He did not care what methods needed to be used to silence critics. He personally and generally authorized the use of any form of intimidation, torture and/or execution of opponents and their families. Electrocution was one particularly heinous form of torture used by Trujillo in real life and in the book (Alvarez 255-256). Trujillo concentrated power into his own hands but also allocated some power to a select group of his trusted military friends and other comrades, although not nearly as much as he had himself. This would become important later on.
Trujillo was smart enough to realize that he could not rely on repression alone to keep the population docile. He created an extensive personality cult around himself, and made use of the country’s means of communication, especially via newspapers, to enforce it (Alvarez 226, 263). Specifically, he referred to himself as the Dominican Republic’s “Benefactor.” To periodically ease discontent, Trujillo would release people in mass amnesties or individual pardons, such as when he pardoned minors in the book (Alvarez 216). Trujillo knew that he needed to create an effective combination of carrots and sticks to remain in power, and his effectiveness at doing so is part of what enabled him to stay in power for a long time.
One of the most controversial policies of Trujillo was “blanquisimo,” or his attempt to whiten the Dominican Republic’s population. This manifested itself in a number of ways. Immediately after the Holocaust, Trujillo offered to take in thousands of displaced Jews from Europe, and he did. There are those who attribute this to purely humanitarian motives on the part of Trujillo, while some regard it as just another part of Trujillo’s blanquisimo policy, or perhaps a little of both. Still some regard the gesture as one designed to impress the US. One of the Mirabal sisters’ neighbors was a Jewish refugee. Perhaps it was a combination of all, some or none of the above reasons. We will never know the real motive, but the next aspect of blanquisimo casts serious doubt on whether Trujillo ever had any humanitarian motives. Trujillo orchestrated the infamous Haitian massacre in 1937 to exterminate thousands of unarmed Haitians living in the western part of the Dominican Republic and clear the land out for Dominicans. The survivors were driven back over the border into Haiti. Trujillo claimed it was to firmly establish the Haitian-Dominican border, although if this was the case he could have simply forced the Haitians to leave instead of killing them without even giving them to chance to go. Apparently Trujillo’s “humanitarianism” did not extend to Haitians (remember most Haitians are black). Trujillo was not only a dictator, but a racist as well.
Trujillo was not much better when it came to his treatment of women. He gave women the right to vote in the Dominican Republic (Alvarez 98). However, soon after he gained power there was little doubt among Dominicans that their leader was a rampant womanizer. In her article “The Dictator’s Seduction: Gender and State Spectacle during the Trujillo Regime” Lauren Derby describes Trujillo’s actions with the women he encountered. Typically Trujillo would select upper class Dominican women that he met at parties, etc. and coerce, intimidate, threaten or seduce them into having sex with him (Derby 1113). Alvarez mentions such actions on Trujillo’s part in a scene in the book where Trujillo tries to seduce Minerva Mirabal, but she resists (Alvarez 100-101). From the Dominican male’s viewpoint though, none of this would have been too shocking or unexpected. Oddly enough, as Derby points out, a lot of Dominican men actually respected Trujillo more for his sexual conquests. This was undoubtedly due to the “macho man” attitude that is prevalent in Latin America, an attitude that emphasizes male dominance and conquest. Thus while Americans would consider forcing a woman into sex to be an extremely cruel act, Trujillo’s behavior was not only tolerated but even tacitly approved of by many Dominican men. Even some Dominican women were not always repulsed by Trujillo’s advances, because on the off chance that he picked a lower-class woman, the gifts that he might give out could be worth the trouble (however unfortunate that may be). Trujillo was also known to have somewhat effeminate characteristics, wearing makeup, going on shopping sprees, etc. This was highly unusual for a Dominican male. It is not possible to know exactly what was going on inside Trujillo’s mind, but based on my general knowledge of psychology, it sounds like he had a very narcissistic personality especially when it came to women and femininity in general. Trujillo was, without a doubt, a very interesting person to say the least!
Trujillo’s government always had internal and external problems, as most dictatorships have inherent flaws that do not allow them to last forever. Trujillo concentrated massive amounts of wealth unto himself and his family, often seizing land from dissidents or perceived opponents (Alvarez 165). This created instant resentment among those who lost their homes, so Trujillo was not making too many friends with his people by doing that, much less among those who he had terrorized. Trujillo also made the mistake of concentrating far too much power in his own hands, not distributing enough power throughout the hands of his cronies. Those who did have some power in the Trujillo regime had so little compared to the wealth and power that Trujillo had that they could usually be easily bought, although repeat offenders and dissidents could not usually buy their way out that easily, as seen when Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were arrested (Alvarez 195). Most of the time, when Trujillo’s cronies could be bought, it created a group of government sycophants that were essentially corrupt and less likely to follow Trujillo as long as they got paid. This corruption weakened his regime. Internal repression often breeds resistance, which was part of the reason Patria Mirabal joined when she saw the carnage caused by Trujillo (Alvarez 162, 176). When Dominicans like her witnessed such atrocities, it was hard to find a reason not to want Trujillo gone. The internal structure and repression of the Trujillo regime was not the only problem.
The Catholic Church, a powerful force in the country, was silent in the face of Trujillo’s repression for many years (Alvarez 153). Like the United States, the church saw Trujillo as protecting the Dominican Republic from godless communism. As time went on though, Catholic priests and the religious started to wake up little by little and see the cruel reality. As members of their parishes started to disappear into Trujillo’s torture chambers or the execution rooms faster and in larger numbers, especially after he began to crack down more in 1959-1960, local Catholic authorities did as much as they could to withdraw their support from Trujillo. When they issued statements against him, Trujillo responded by violently reacting against the churches (Alvarez 217-218). He imprisoned priests, or tried and in some cases succeeded in having them killed. The SIM would harass faithful churchgoers and desecrate the churches (Alvarez 206-207). This only strengthened Catholic opposition to Trujillo.
Changes were taking place outside the Dominican Republic that also weakened Trujillo, and especially in nearby Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara toppled the Batista dictatorship and created a communist dictatorship in its place. Although not much better than Trujillo in terms of human rights, Fidel and Che provided a model for other Latin American countries, motivating them to topple their corrupt right-wing dictators and establish new governments. Despite Trujillo’s efforts to keep news of the Cuban Revolution from entering the Dominican Republic, news did indeed leak in via various ways like radio broadcasts (Alvarez 150, 157, 181). The Mirabal sisters in the book were partially inspired by the success of Cuba’s revolution to continue their work. Fidel and Che gave life and strength to their 14th of July movement (Alvarez 167) and others. Many claim that Trujillo was a US-backed puppet, but his relationship with the United States was much more complex. Although trained and supported by the US for most of his reign since he was a fervent anti-communist in the midst of the Cold War and an ally in World War II, Eric Roorda points out in “The Dictator Next Door” that many diplomats in the US State Department fervently opposed him (Roorda 235), sickened by his grotesque human rights record. Still, the fear of a communist gaining power in the Dominican Republic was enough for the US to “befriend the devil” so to speak. Toward the end of his reign the US actually turned against him since he was beginning to buy out all of America’s sugar investments in the country. The US also feared that his continued repression would foster another Cuba-style revolution and bring communism to another Latin American country.
The Organization of American States (OAS) was also instrumental in destabilizing Trujillo especially after it became known that he was involved in a plot to murder Venezuela’s president Romulo Betancourt (Alvarez 246-247 and Roorda 232) in June 1960. This was a huge strategic blunder on Trujillo’s part. Luckily, President Betancourt just barely survived but the attempt permanently damaged Trujillo reputation. By denouncing Trujillo and removing their diplomatic offices, and later imposing economic sanctions, the OAS was instrumental in putting Trujillo in a bind (Alvarez 199, 225, 266). Since Trujillo could not lash out against the world since he would have been further alienated, he turned on his own people and began to crack down even more on dissent and the Catholic Church (Alvarez 267 and Roorda 233). He became increasingly short-tempered, stepping up torture and extrajudicial killings. Unfortunately, the Mirabal sisters would be among Trujillo’s next victims.
On November 25th, 1960, three of the four Mirabal sisters were murdered by Trujillo’s agents as they were returning from visits to their incarcerated husbands (Alvarez 301-309). The fourth sister Dede was not there at the time and was not active in the movement against Trujillo. These sisters had long been a thorn in Trujillo’s side, and were very popular with the Dominican people. They were certainly not your typical revolutionaries. They were not out in the jungle carrying assault rifles. They were mothers going about their lives but taking a principled stand against what they felt was wrong. Even while pregnant they would be involved in anti-Trujillo activities! They were a rallying point for anti-Trujillo forces, and therefore Trujillo probably felt, metaphorically speaking, that if he chopped off the head the body would die. In other words, if he got rid of the Mirabals he might be able to quash the forces that were against him. This was one of Trujillo’s final errors. The worst thing to do is to make martyrs out of your enemies, especially if those enemies are unarmed mothers. Although he tried to make it look like a car accident, the Dominican people saw through the ruse (there was an eyewitness anyway) and anti-Trujillo resentment soared. People remembered the Mirabals and speak more openly against Trujillo. From there, everything went downhill for Trujillo. As larger segments of the population turned against him, he found it harder to assert his control over them. People finally realized that if Trujillo was going to kill them that they could not go down without a fight. About six months after Trujillo had the Mirabals killed, a group of his officers shot him dead in 1961. It took a few more revolutions to finally bring true democracy to the Dominican Republic. The hellish reign of Trujillo had finally ended after 31 years, but his brutal legacy would continue to live on in the hearts and minds of Dominicans. As Julia Alvarez says, “The dictator manages to plant a little piece of himself in every one of us” (Alvarez 311).
The long reign of Rafael Trujillo was probably the darkest chapter in the Dominican Republic’s history. “In the Time of the Butterflies” is not 100% accurate in everything it portrayed about life under Trujillo, but overall it is a very accurate portrayal of Trujillo and his regime.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

Derby, Lauren. “The Dictator’s Seduction: Gender and State Spectacle during the Trujillo Regime.” Callaloo Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer 2000): pp. 1112-1146.

Roorda, Eric. The Dictator Next Door. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.

Works Consulted

Betances, Emelio, and Hobard Spalding, Jr. “The Dominican Republic: Social Change and Political Stagnation.” Latin American Perspective Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 3-19.

Crassweller, Robert. Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. New York: Macmillian Company, 1966.

Derby, Lauren. “In the Shadow of the State: The Politics of Denunciation and Panegyric during the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic.” The Hispanic American Historical Review Vol. 83, No. 2 (May 2003): pp. 295-344.

Dix, Robert. “The Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes.” The Western Political Quarterly Vol. 35, No.4 (Dec. 1982): pp. 554-573

Vega y Pagan, Ernesto. Military Biography of Generalissimo Rafael L. Trujillo Molina. Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic: Editorial Atenas, 1956.

Wiarda, Howard, and Michael Kryzanek. The Dominican Republic: A Carribean Crucible. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982.

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The Dalai Lama and Mohandas Gandhi: A Critical Comparison

The Dalai Lama and Mohandas K. Gandhi are two very different people. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, while Gandhi was a spiritual leader of the Hindu practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence. Both lived in different places at different times. Both men worked for different goals. Both men had many differences, but they also both placed emphasis on some common human values, beliefs and goals.
A fundamental value that both hold, in some way or another, is the concept of non-violence. Mohandas Gandhi refers to it as “ahimsa.” The Dalai Lama doesn’t seem to put a special word to it, but instead lends his support to nonviolent tactics. In fact, both men used nonviolent means to try to change the places that they lived in. The Dalai Lama has attempted nonviolent tactics in freeing Tibet from Chinese control. He has offered and tried to speak numerous times to the Chinese dictators in Beijing, but without success. Admittedly, this has been a dismal failure, but Gandhi had more luck in his native India. India, long a colony of Britain, was finally given independence in the 1940s due to Gandhi’s relentless efforts to nonviolently challenge British control. While both principally advocated the use of non-violence, both the Dalai Lama and Gandhi agreed that under limited circumstances controlled violence could be used if there was absolutely no alternative. According to our assigned text, “Gandhi’s Readings,” Gandhi used the analogy of a man-eating tiger terrorizing a village. Killing the tiger becomes, as Gandhi put it, “inevitable” although not the ideal. Ideally, one could find alternative methods to remove the danger, like capturing the tiger and releasing it in an isolated area where it won’t hurt anyone. Thus Gandhi did admit that in difficult circumstances “imperfect conduct may, perhaps, be permitted.” The Dalai Lama’s stance is essentially the same as Gandhi’s. Thus the two men have the same overall ideology regarding nonviolence as a means of change and as a mode of conduct.
Gandhi appeared to stick to the traditional Hindu beliefs about the concept of different castes only in the sense that he never advocated throwing it away. He still acknowledged it as a part of Indian society. Gandhi does depart from the traditional Hindu beliefs about the caste system being the sole determining factor for one’s life, as it traditionally determined one’s job and social status. The caste one is reborn into depends on one’s karma, and the caste system is not necessarily inherently bad since it can provide economic structure. But Gandhi recognized that it caused a lot of social problems especially with the Untouchables, who cleaned human waste. Someone of a higher caste literally could not touch such a servant. In our assigned text, Gandhi stated that he “recognized untouchability as a sin.” Gandhi showed compassion toward Untouchables by making his followers do the same tasks as they had to do (Gandhi describes his followers having to clean the “night soil” just like the Untouchables) and even just by embracing them. He also had no objection to intermarriage between castes. Unfortunately, some institutions die hard. Gandhi’s own wife only submitted to rejecting untouchability out of loyalty to Gandhi, and caste discrimination continues in India today despite legislation to the contrary. Gandhi’s rejection of this institutionalized discrimination formed the basis for India’s official prohibition on caste discrimination. Despite Gandhi’s benevolent attitude about it, he did not want to completely abolish the caste system since he recognized some possible benefits. One economic benefit of the caste system is that it provides for specialization of production. This means that if each person focuses on one distinct economic activity for which he is most suited, then economic efficiency grows. Each caste is of vital importance because without one type of service, such as the waste disposal that the untouchables provide, others are hampered or cannot exist. What would happen if our garbage collectors stopped coming? In terms of equality, Gandhi says in the text that even though we are “equal like brothers and sisters with different dispositions and abilities” some talents (and thus caste groups) are more important than others. We have different and sometimes unequal abilities, and caste can reflect this, but we are still are human and are to be treated with equal dignity. Overall, Gandhi feels that India has not understood the caste system correctly and wished to see changes.
The historical Buddha, who was himself a former Hindu, completely broke away from the caste system. In that sense he was more radical than Gandhi. The Dalai Lama has, to my knowledge, never addressed the issue of caste directly since he is Tibetan and thus that would not have been an issue for him personally or for Tibetans. However, I assume he follows the Buddha’s rejection of the caste system as being of any importance. For Buddha, one’s economic circumstances were not relevant to attaining enlightenment. Being in a higher caste did not guarantee success in attaining enlightenment. Only by adhering to the dharma, or teachings of the Buddha, could one have a decent chance of liberation.
Gandhi and the Dalai Lama seem to differ somewhat on their views on the concept of a personal and/or creator deity. The Dalai Lama follows a fairly consistent Buddhist line regarding personal and/or creator deities. Based on the doctrine of dependent origination, which states that everything is the effect of a previous cause, there is no creator god in the sense that Christians tend to think of it. If there was, then that god would’ve had to have come from somewhere else, and so on and so on into infinity. We got to where we are through natural laws, not by being independently created. There really is no “creator god.” The Dalai Lama’s aim is not to point to a particular deity, but rather to help humanity with their practical issues and ultimately, lead all sentient beings to nirvana.
Gandhi on the other hand did believe in a supreme being, although he sometimes had different ideas about just how personal such a god was or the nature of his god. Gandhi sometimes would equate abstract concepts such as “truth” or “constant action” to his god. Because of this, Gandhi has been variously described as pantheistic, deistic, theistic, etc. Ultimately, the concept of a god was more important to Gandhi than it is to the Dalai Lama or to most Buddhists in general.
When it comes to the concept of human existence and its components, the two men in fact held very different beliefs. The Dalai Lama comments about the nature of existence in one of our readings, “Emptiness and Existence.” According to the Dalai Lama, all humans have the feeling that they are an “I” but in fact that is an illusion. We lack “inherent existence.” This essentially means that nothing has any vital “essence.” According to the Dalai Lama, humans are like everything else in a constant state of flux, and thus not inherently existing. We are made up of components, which are also made up of even simpler components, and on and on. There is thus no permanent, unchanging soul or life force to humans. There is no “basis” or “groud” for existence. In that sense existence is thus “empty.” That doesn’t mean that nothing exists or can function. In fact the Dalai Lama explicitly rejects such nihilistic beliefs as unhealthy. It just means that nothing exists without being the result of something else. So does this mean we can’t say “I?” No. The Dalai Lama simply encourages us to remember that the “I” is not a permanent, substantial self.
Gandhi on the other hand had a very different point of view. Not only do we exist and have personal souls, but we are actually are really “one.” Remember that in Hinduism liberation is realizing that we are all one with reality. In our text, Gandhi refers to souls that transmigrate from one caste or level of being to another. This soul was a spiritual essence that was the “heart” or “core” of every human being. Gandhi in general tried to see unity in everything. He tried to unite humanity under the concept of ahimsa and to unite the world’s religions. He saw all of humanity and existence as being united as one common essence, a belief that stands in sharp contrast to the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist notions of a lack of inherent existence.
In terms of personal practices, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama both practiced the virtue of chastity. Before going any further, it must be emphasized that chastity means more than not engaging in sexual activity. Gandhi was married to a woman for many years, and had children with her, but yet he said that married couples should practice chastity, which he referred to in the assigned text as “Brahmacharya.” In the same text, he stated that both men and women should place special emphasis on Brahmacharya when they are doing their studies. What I think he also meant by the term chastity was that we should not place emphasis on sexual activity or immoderately indulge in it. It is only one aspect of our human natures. He did acknowledge that sexual activity is necessary to complement the male and female roles in producing life, and thus fulfilling their natural purposes. Sexual activity should not be an obstacle or a prerequisite to our experiences of relationships with other people. In the assigned text, Gandhi includes the concept of chastity under the general topic of restraint, saying that “restraint is the law of life.” Chastity is certainly one form of restraint!
The Dalai Lama is not married to anyone, devoting his time as a living bodhisattva to helping his fellow Buddhists obtain enlightenment, and to promote Buddhist principles. He would also promote the practice of chastity among his followers, since it enables one to put more concentration on attaining enlightenment as a final goal. In the meantime, it also enables one to “cultivate” better, clearer states of mind that will in turn better dispose one toward nirvana. One of the other reasons that the Dalai Lama would probably not place much intrinsic value on sex is because it is, like everything, a source of suffering. It is like everything else just a link in an unending chain of processes. Even though it may provide great bodily pleasure for several minutes, when it ends, there is suffering whether we acknowledge it or not, the suffering of no longer having that pleasure. Because of this, the Dalai Lama would find chastity to be a great virtue since it aids one in avoiding suffering.
As we can see, the Dalai Lama and Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi had their share of similarities and differences. One could compare and contrast their thoughts about nonviolence, the nature of the self (or lack thereof), concepts of a creator god (or lack thereof) and the spiritual practices and benefits of chastity. Despite their differences, the two men have had a profound impact on a world which was in desperate need of such role models.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

All information in this paper came from our assigned class readings and our discussions in class. The assigned readings include:

Gandhi’s Readings by R. Mukherjee, ed. (a.k.a. the “assigned text”)

“Emptiness and Existence” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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