Bashar has a dream…

I’m happy for the people of Egypt. They have another shot at democracy and maybe they can even pull it off themselves, without our help. Though $8 billion of Saudi money won’t hurt.

Syria, on the other hand, is in a mess that’s just getting worse. The pressure the regime has been able to put on the revolution with the help or Russian and Iranian arms and ordnance has begun to split it along the lines of its internal contradictions – contradictions I’ve been thinking about but didn’t blog about because, well, the situation has become too sad to contemplate.

What happened? The splits between the Islamist and secular parties in the Egyptian revolution do not appear to have hardened so much that they have no recourse other than physical confrontation. At least that’s true this week.

In Syria, the same set of contradictions is not between parties, but between seasoned combat units that do not really happen to effectively be under the same chain of command. On the one side, I imagine, the patriotic, liberal youth of Syria are pretty much all mobilized already, and, even though their general says there are sufficient of them to the task at hand, their numbers can only go down. The other side continues to recruit from jihadist fundamentalism across the whole Islamic world.

So not only is the Islamic side of the revolution in Syria more radical than the Brotherhood in Egypt, it is already fully armed and ready to fight whomever it is God’s will they should fight. Moreover they have an independent territorial basis and an ad hoc state apparatus in hand. To the extent they are non-Syrian jihadists, this resembles conquered territory. So if Bashar were to resign today, only force majeure could keep these splits from bursting wide open and could give the Syrian people something resembling a nation to dwell in.

In other words, the time for the self-determination of the Syrian revolution is over. That way lies oblivion. The alternative would be an army of occupation under the auspices of the U.N. maybe or even NATO. Something like this was, I believe, in planning under the previous Secretary of State. What’s still missing is some really compelling inducement for Bashar to step down. Sad that that’s not in the offing; the reverse is the case. But it’s just as hard to see what would induce the Russians to change their policy. Certainly the sufferings of the Syrian people have made no impression.

 

...Bashar’s dream? Oh, that he prevails against a “revolution” that really just consists of terrorists and the hirelings of foreigners.

Secretary Kerry Travels Abroad

He’s making it look like the period in which the revolutions in Syria and Egypt will still be self-determining is coming to an end.

In Egypt at any rate. There he sits down with Morsi and the big bourgeoisie, putting the revolution face to face with the counter-revolution. He tells them to patch things up with the International Monetary Fund. It’s good advice.

Then he sits down with some of the representatives of the opposition within the revolution (they are still too fractured all to agree to attend) and tells them, I imagine, that he had already told Morsi to safeguard the rights of women, religious minorities, etc. And maybe those who did attend will be satisfied with that.

Thus Secretary Kerry’s vision for Egyptian unity: sitting down with the parties and making suggestions backed by a relatively few American bucks…as if the revolution had never occurred and was not occurring and they were not, dialectically speaking, mortal enemies.

So it goes when a historically decisive entity decides it would like to impose its will on the self-determinations of a revolution taking place within an entity of the same order, but not the same magnitude. Moreover, as the representative of national capitals, the IMF is a dialectical entity of a different order, but also of great magnitude. It’s a powerful external combination for ending the revolutionary period in Egypt.

In Syria, a decisive act ending the bloody course of self-determination the parties are currently pursuing would be welcome. At least Secretary Kerry is avoiding the Cold War spectacle of two proxy armies, one wielding Russian weapons, the other American, at war with each other while their suppliers watch. I’ve already argued that not arming the Free Syrian Army was a fearful, self-absorbed mistake. At this point, Bashar’s fall would not come years or months from now, but weeks – even if the Russians and Iranians continue to resupply him with ordinance – were the FSA suitably armed. How many Syrians die in a week? in a month? Are their actual victims less precious than the merely putative victims of merely putative terrorism? How many Syrian lives would the Secretary like to throw into this balance?

Because frankly, Al Qaida has no intercontinental reach anymore that I can detect. Maybe the government can detect it. To me, it consists of warlords leading armed gangs, in deserts rather than streets, that hide their bullying and theft behind the mask of a stern religion that ignores several millennia of human progress. And the only people they have killed lately, contrary to their original principles, are mostly Muslims.

Anyway, to paraphrase Churchill, at least it’s a policy, even if it’s wrong. That’s better than the previous Secretary seems to have done. As a policy, it might even lead somewhere.

War Correspondents and Other Misnomers

Journalists who know as little about the science of war as those who have been reporting on the Syrian civil war today would likely never have been able to keep a job during World War II. Their ignorance would quickly have been exposed by their peers and their access to reliable sources would equally quickly have dried up. Such individuals apparently do not belong on this “beat.” Almost every report I read on the military events in Syria makes at least one more or less blatant error of this kind. I’ll give two examples in this post.

Just last week, for one example, in a report that the Taftanaz helicopter base had been taken by the opposition, a reporter expressed doubt whether it could be held because the regime continues to make air strikes on rebel positions. I suppose if the pilot of one such plane were to land and raise Bashar’s flag, he could retake the base for the regime. But no! only ground troops can take military possession of places on the ground. Possession of the air above any such space lasts only as long as aircraft are in flight there. It does not extend to the ground below. The notion of air superiority applies only to the conflict of air forces.

The Kosovo war might be considered a counterexample, but it is out of scope here for me fully to explain why it is not.

The other mistake is the repeated denomination of the war as a “stalemate.” It’s not blitzkrieg, but it’s not a stalemate ether. When all the successes are being recorded by one side, all the initiative is on one side, all the striking power is on one side, it’s not a stalemate.

Note that air strikes do not count as “striking power” for the reason explained in example #1. The fact is, the regime has so little striking power on the ground it cannot keep the roads to its garrisons open. That’s why they have had to be supplied by helicopter. But not anymore. Further, if Bashar still had an armored formation capable of taking the initiative, much less carrying out an offensive, even the journalists would have noticed by now. My guess is, whatever he’s got left is being reserved for the gotterdammerung in the capital – and not out of considerations of state, but rather personal ones.

That’s another story. Anyway, these are the two most frequent gaffes of reporters who have no real background or experience to cover a war. Maybe they suffer from not being “embedded.”

Another source of anxious handwringing, and not just among journalists, is the success in battle of the al Qaida-affiliated al Nusra Front. Two observations: one, they’re Muslims killing Muslims. Bin Laden would not approve. Two, they’re not afraid to die. That’s part of the jihadist mentality. The concentration of fire in this war is not, on either side, to all appearances very great. A little bravery goes a long way in Syria if you’re not afraid to expose yourself.

To be sure, they’re auxiliaries fighting for reasons of their own, the way auxiliaries do. But it’s hard to say whether their reasons are ideological or not, or if they are, what that ideology might be. Cyberspace is crowded with inconsistent assertions. We’ve already seen that their actions don’t align with Bin Laden’s vision for al Qaida. If they wanted to restore the Caliphate, wouldn’t they fight for Bashar? That’s his politics, but his economics are consumer, even luxury, oriented. Instead they’ve chosen the side of the freedom fighters, fighters for civil and political rights. Don’t they know that’s a tough atmosphere for al Qaida? That’s what it became in democratic Iraq. That’s the tendency in any country that has a real economy and a real petit bourgeoisie. The list of al Qaida’s temporary successes is limited to places where tribal, and not bourgeois, politics are predominant.

Maybe they just want to participate in violence. If so, that’s what they’ll do in Syria after the civil war, until they’re driven out of Syria too. The middle class is plenty strong there, and was once a bulwark of the regime, until Bashar drove them from his side by his excesses. If they stay and fight, there will be plenty of handwringing about the Muslims they kill during that process too.

For now, they’re an extremely tough, high-morale formation well able to confront and defeat Bashar’s Alawite units. Maybe it’s too bad is it considered risky for the West to arm them properly. But maybe they have been arming themselves.

Narrowing Visions

Speculative philosophy’s field of vision over Syria is narrowing.

From the one side, the actions of the great powers, not-so-great powers, and international and regional organizations of states, have limited Syria’s power of self-determination. Both sides in the struggle have asked for help, but with help necessarily comes interference. More precisely, bringing in outside entities subjects the struggling parties to the interests and determinations of those entities, and limits their freedom to act just to that extent.

From the other side, nothing seems to matter to the outcome of the revolution so much as how long Bashar can manage to continue to live. It could be months; it could be many months; it could be years; but it won’t be many years.

Here’s why….

·         Alawite disaffection. Such reports started coming some weeks past. Thus even his natural sources of strength are drying up.

·         Middle class/administrative class disaffection and agitation in Aleppo and Damascus. Formerly a source of strength, if only negative strength, now some of them are willing to express positive disagreements with the regime.

·         The continuous defection of men and officers of every rank, including the very highest, from the military. Somebody said on TV the other day he’d counted 13 general officers among the defectors.

·         The traditional, and now renewed, enmity of the Turks.

And that’s just lately. I didn’t think Bashar could make himself any stronger by pursuing his course of violence, but he certainly made himself more alone. Is it at all possible be could leave anything resembling a regime behind him? No: what’s left of his apparatus will evaporate in a cloud of disassociation.

Thus the determinations of individual subjectivity place another limit on speculative philosophy. How does Bashar manage to deal with it all? What sort of man is he really? …but who cares?

The revolution cannot rely on a purely military solution via either the occupation of territory or the annihilation of Bashar’s forces in the field. Similarly, one of the points of shooting down the Turkish jet was to warn the West about intervention with air power. But the revolution can force, maybe are near to forcing, a stalemate. And that gives time, though it may be a very bloody time, for the indicated result.

News from Syria

A number of items from Syria have been in the news lately, some but not all of which impinge more or less on the class analysis and speculative philosophy of the Arab Spring.

Mr. Shadid. I read the local paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, not the New York Times. I’m not studying the journalism of the Arab Spring the way Marx studied that of the 1848 revolution, a study that helped him write his book on Louis Bonaparte and his missives to that self-same New York Times. I’m just mining some of it.

But I did find insight in a few of the articles the Journal Sentinel published, insights crucial to the operations of speculative philosophy. Seems these were mostly authored by Shadid, and reproduced locally by permission of the Times. Such insights are hard to come by, even as subtext, and usually have to be read into the journalism – a process that is prone to the errors I am well aware I have not avoided. So I will miss him personally.

Seems also there are a lot of ways to die that would look like an asthma attack….

If you wanted to assassinate the judges and officials of a despotic regime with which you were at war, you would do well to have inside information on their whereabouts. The elementary inference that this may already have happened has certainly been made by the juvenile Bashar. What is the upshot?

Well, now perhaps Bashar cannot trust, and therefore has to fear, even those close associates who have been deeply involved in his crimes. Whether they or their subordinates might be informants only affects the degree, not the subjective possibility, of suspicion and fear. Now, with that kind of help, even he could become the target of the Free Syrian Army. Worse still, anyone who would help your enemies assassinate your minions, might nearly as likely, in their own proper persons, try to assassinate you.

When I say “nearly” as likely, I am speaking of the merely subjective calculations of an individual, in this case an individual who is already under a lot of stress. Fear is coming back around. Maybe the despot will begin to purge his inner circle. Maybe some of them will purge him first, particularly if they fear to become a target in a purge. They can calculate too.

Concerns were expressed at as high a level as the Cabinet about how Al Qaida might profit by the “destabilization” of the Assad regime. But they’re not concerns about the revolutionary progress of the Syrian people, are they? Neither could Al Qaida hope to destabilize this distracted nation measurably more than it already is, and to profit thereby. Just fishing in troubled waters, without any real chance, as in, say, Yemen or Somalia, of obtaining a legal or quasi-legal status as an arm of or party to the (legitimate?) government.

No, just stealing weapons they’d try to use against the West in general and the U.S. in particular. Acts of terror of the kind Al Qaida is capable of are as flea bites on the Syrian revolution. They can hold no terror for people who no longer fear the physical power of a despot stronger by several orders of magnitude.

The fears expressed by U.S. officials are petty and pusillanimous by comparison.

Speaking of fear, how about Damascus? Is it really possible the middle classes are no longer afraid to demonstrate in the streets against the excesses of the regime?

Of all the bad news Bashar has had this month, this might be the worst – no, it’s a lot worse to know you have to fear even your partners in crime.

The last item is, where’d Bashar get the ordnance for the redoubled violence of this new assault? Were the journalists watching the ports? Did the ship come in from Russia? from Iran? Maybe all the buzz in the Straights of Hormuz was a cover for a shipment of death to the Syrian people. Yet, it’d be easier to get through the Bosporus than the Suez unnoticed, wouldn’t it? Don’t know how long it would take to go around by the Cape of Good Hope. Or sail from, say, Shanghai. How long has it been since Bashar has been able to loose so many shells per day, per hour, per household?

“The Strong Man is Strongest…”

It’s a good thing speculative philosophy is never of the person. It would quickly become lost in the infinite dialectics of the individual subject, and begin to resemble nothing more than the punditry of international politics.

The juvenile Bashar is a case in point. The process that began by strengthening his enemies could be understood dialectically. As the process nears its end, the strategy of the counter-revolution has become impenetrable, lacking under class analysis even the appearance of an objective basis. All that is left is empty words, and emptier, if increasingly reckless and violent, actions.

How can one understand his denunciation of the sanctions of the Arab League as the action of foreign agitators? He got one part right: they’re foreigners, Arab, Muslim foreigners. If that were not enough to alienate him from the League, his subsequent acts of violence before their very (so delegated) eyes ought to suffice.

It was also intriguing to learn through Ms. Walters some weeks ago that those who committed the political murders to that date acted without his authority. And what of the murders since? The lonely child is truly alone when even his police and army defy him.

So he’s alienated himself from the last supports of his regime, especially if they were just obeying orders – which leaves the excessively timid middle classes in the capital considerably less to fear. At the same time, the generals might reasonably consider they are best served by getting rid of their accuser.

It’s all very hard to understand. It’s bizarre.

“…when alone” completes the saying at the top, attributed to Adolf Hitler. Of course, Hitler ended up putting a bullet in his own head. Maybe Bashar will too. That would save his generals the trouble.

Bashar's Latest Tantrum

Bashar’s latest tantrum – calling out lumpenproletarians to vandalize the United States and French embassies in Damascus – is doubtless his most juvenile action yet. A bully is only as big as the schoolyard he terrorizes. He forgot our embassy is not in his schoolyard – either metaphorically or legally.

What was he thinking? Are his mobs a substitute for diplomacy? Whom did he think he would be able to frighten? Did he think he could induce the Administration to change its policy in favor of revolutionary values?

He must have forgotten that they are American values: civil and political liberty. French values too.

About the best result he could expect is what he got: that the Ambassador, and his superiors in the State Department, did not call for his immediate resignation unconditionally…

…I guess there are still a few more diplomatic steps between here and there. But what’s the point? This child needs to have his ears boxed.

And today this tantrum is not the latest news from Syria. Seems Bashar is growing…devious. A juvenile bully often matures to find more subtle ways to turn his brutality to his advantage. There is more to be learned about the mutilated Alawites whose corpses set off the latest round of killings.

“Chaos in his wake”

…at least that’s what some people would like to believe or make others believe the juvenile Bashar would leave behind if he felt compelled to give up his despotism. Certainly, at any rate, chaos runs before him.

How does this sound to the Syrian middle class? To whomsoever of the big bourgeoisie as are not connected to the regime by blood or marriage?

In his speech last week, the juvenile Bashar bragged that 64,000 “saboteurs” were known by name to the government, and that a third of them had already been apprehended. Not only did this give the lie to the journalists who thought only 10,000 perhaps were imprisoned, it ought to make anyone who isn’t yet nervous, oughtn’t it? – including those who might think they hadn’t even performed any acts of “sabotage.”

Of course the terms are at best undefined and at worst cruelly distorted. Strictly speaking, there aren’t 64,000 professionally trained “saboteurs” in the whole world. But if they are just people who would like to reform the government –and revolution entails dialectical negation – why then, yes, revolutionaries are saboteurs.

Really, Bashar, you make it sound like it’s a bad thing.

Then what of the “concessions” up to now? They render the current round of promises meaningless.

Item: One of the juvenile Bashar’s concessions is to change a preposition in the constitution, so that, instead of his party being given “leadership of state and society,” it would be given merely “leadership in state and society.”

But who would take the trouble to organize a political party – assuming that is what the new preposition authorizes – if one were assured in advance that the party could never come to power?

Meantime…

…the revolution is stronger numerically – by all observations it gains adherents faster than Bashar can kill or frighten them – but is it becoming broader-based?

Specifically, what would make the petit bourgeoisie flip to the opposition?

Or again, when does the momentum of the revolutionary opposition begin to look like a winning bet to those who have been sitting on the sidelines and probably feel like they have a lot to lose?

What they have to lose

I’ve been impressed by the consistent inability of this revolution, unlike others in the Arab Spring, to reach the streets of the capital. It’s always and only – but now more frequently – no further in than the suburbs.

There are reports of opposition action in Aleppo, by some measures the largest city in Syria. This wouldn’t threaten the operation of the government directly, but if continued would threaten the ability of the regime to run the economy – wouldn’t it?

The former U.S. ambassador too Morocco told the BBC that the Syrian economy was about as big as Pittsburgh’s. Though I’m not in a position to contradict him, I’m not sure what lesson he would like to draw from that fact. Also not sure whether that means the Syrian middle class is too small to make a middle class revolution.

His more interesting observation was that Damascus is to Aleppo as London is to Birmingham, or Washington to New York: the one the seat of government, the other a center of industry and commerce. It takes petit bourgeoisie to run both types of places; that is where they live. So it’s my impression that the relative size of the economy will not be decisive, but the final decision of the middle classes will. They perhaps have more to fear personally from arrest without charges or trial than from the actions of saboteurs, and Bashar’s concessions are as meaningless to them as they are to everyone else. Yet, if the revolution keeps going, the so far unmoved or perhaps just paralyzed petit bourgeoisie will begin wishing it would end. All they want is the comfort and convenience of making and enjoying their own money in peace. Even though the revolution is a threat to that, the bigger threat is having it go on indefinitely.

And so, the failure to offer concessions worth bargaining over may be perceived as a failure to do what the regime is supposed to be doing for its middle class allies: ensure stability and a chance to make money. Worse still for Bashar, the concessions it would take to restore calm to the situation are precisely those that would benefit, of all the classes, the petit bourgeoisie most.

What they have to gain

Surely the petit bourgeoisie have the most to gain from ordinary political freedoms like parties, votes, and elected officials. They have the education, leisure, and cash to make the most of these opportunities. It’s always been so. I suppose in Syria there are as many people like this – petit bourgeoisie properly speaking: professionals, middle managers, officials, small businessmen, small farmers, teachers, merchants, small investors – as there are anywhere else in the Arab world. That’s one of the reasons it’s considered the lynchpin of stability there, and not just because of the Assad family and the juvenile currently at its head.

And now it appears that the failure to make credible and substantial concessions – and really only fundamental ones would now be perceived to be substantial – is dialectically speaking a double-edged sword the juvenile Bashar is holding over his own head. Clinging to power is a nasty position to be in – not a position of strength. But that is the tendency of the despot’s current tactics. There’s no evidence he has a strategy.

Postscript: Why Bashar is a juvenile

…because he doesn’t know, as Prime Minister Putin observes, “In the modern world it is impossible to use political instruments of 40 years ago,” a sentence in which the term “political instruments” is a euphemism, and the validity of which Putin himself probably learned the hard way himself, rather less than 40 years ago.

“We are not afraid anymore”

Though speculative philosophy would not normally or properly concern itself with anecdotal evidence, much less take it as a starting point, I can say this statement of a Syrian who finds himself aligned with the revolution ought to be alarming to the despot. For it strikes at the foundation of a regime based on fear.

The negative moment during which using force makes one’s opponent initially stronger is dialectically linked to the corresponding positive moment of the movement in two ways.

·         The use of force is inevitably, if only in isolated instances, carried to excess, usually by people of low understanding – that is, those who are charged with carrying out the policy physically. Thus a 13-year-old boy is beaten to death and mutilated, and the revolution gains adherents through his martyrdom.

·         Any form of resistance, however futile or even brutal in itself, is automatically reflected in the light of courage when it overcomes fear to rise against superior, oppressive force. As courage is admirable, it too draws adherents.

These two corollaries may be summed up by saying, a revolution gains both by its opponents’ excess, and by its adherents’ success.

Numerous other facts – that townsmen are willing to snipe with rifles at armored vehicles, that soldiers and police are in mutiny, that the only “reliable” soldiers must be Alawite and commanded by the despot’s close relations – demonstrate that the regime has wielded strength too strongly. Soon it may appear, and later may actually be, relatively weak.

It’s clear at any rate that the juvenile Bashar still figures to make the revolution suffer for whatever it gains.

A Law of Dialectics Applied

The fact that there are laws of dialectics means it’s possible for historical actors to make mistakes, not just from, say, a political or military standpoint, but from a dialectical standpoint. Just so, the counter-revolution in Syria has seized upon a position that appears to be one of strength, its control of the army, and employed it as its principal weapon in the fight. Even if one’s only objective were to maintain oneself in power, it’s by no means clear that grasping this possibility is the surest path to success.

On the one hand, there is no civil war in Syria – that is, the army is entirely in the hands of the regime. It’s a sure weapon, for political as well as, seemingly, ethnic and sectarian reasons.

But on the other hand, what are armies for? Finally, the destruction of things. The law of dialectics, that if you would destroy something, you will first make it stronger, at this point comes into play.

People who don’t understand dialectics may tend to think the quickest way to end a threat is to destroy it openly and physically. I am thinking, not just of the juvenile Assad, but also of the U.S. administration that wanted to make war on al-Qaida, but ended as an occupier of foreign nations. Al-Qaida got stronger for a time, just because we declared a war, and in a war there are two sides, and people can be induced to take one side or another, and therefore both sides get incrementally stronger.

This is just an instance, but as I say it is a law of dialectics.

Just as a human entity has, an historical entity slated for destruction has awareness of the danger and freedom to resist it; it also has objective possibilities – no matter how few or weak – for resolving favorably to itself the contradiction with the forces seeking its destruction. These it immediately grasps and wields by every available means, as its very existence is at stake. Inevitably, before it can be destroyed, it becomes stronger in this way.

Sensible people do not push too hard when they want to destroy something that, however dangerous, is still relatively weak. And here, for another instance, I could point out the successes of the current administration against al-Qaida, and how they were achieved, in contrast to the failures of the previous, which only led to occupations of nations we would really prefer to give back to their true owners.

Now, the juvenile Assad, even if he can assure the revolution will not arm itself, is nevertheless assuring it the maximum possible number of adherents. On this path, there is only one remaining question: how much blood does he want on his hands?

The other day, after a particularly bloody one, he was reported to be sending emissaries to the revolution – but then it was already too late, and anyhow, there’s been no news since even of the emissaries’ existence, much less of their success. But the revolution always was against the despot – Daraa might have been bought off by a promise of jobs, but it wasn’t, and things shortly became personal. Even if it weren’t always against him, the despot acted so as to ensure it would be. So: not only more adherents, but more adherents firmly against him personally, his family, and his whole crowd of dependants.

If they were sent, would his emissaries met with…

…cries for mercy? No, the revolution is not nearly destroyed yet.

…moderate offers of compromise? No, he’s started the movement the other way.

…further resistance? intransigence? And then he will have to rely on the army again, until the army is the only thing left to him. But only then could he really and actually destroy the revolution.

It’s better for counter-revolutionaries if they wait their time…and then peacefully and easily break up the bloc of revolutionary parties by separating the one from the other – along cleavages that pre-exist their temporary alliances – just as Saleh is doing in Yemen.

As for Syria, while journalists can report that the revolution is or may be getting stronger, dialectics can say it is and will be getting stronger – and necessarily so.

A Law of Dialectics Explained

There’s a law of historical dialectics that says, if you try to destroy something, the first thing that happens is you make it stronger.

It’s a little like the law of motion that says, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but it applies to historical and not merely physical entities.

The law can be derived from certain characteristics of subjectivity: it is aware when its destruction is threatened, and it is free to avoid or overcome the threat. Just as this is true of individual subjective beings, it is also true of the larger historical entities – classes, parties, nations – made up in part of these beings.

The law also has objective grounds, but they are a bit harder to express.

Dialectical movement begins with the working out of a contradiction within the entity thereby put in motion. It ends in the negation of the entity in favor of a new unity. The new unity is realized as one among the possibilities for the old – specifically the possibilities for resolving the contradictions of the old.

All of this, the old contradiction, the possibilities for resolving it, and what, having been negated, is now absent, belongs to objectivity as real moments of historical existence.

We’d like to see the necessity of this; and if we could, that would confirm what we would like to believe about the tendency of human history as a whole.

But really, at the time the contradiction is felt strongly enough to begin the dialectical movement, there is no guarantee which of the equally objectively existing possibilities the movement will begin with, or subjectivity will seize upon.

That’s why it’s possible to make mistakes, not just from, say, a political or military standpoint, but from a dialectical standpoint. Because we do know that the tendency of human history is progressive, and in favor of the many rather than, or finally at the expense, morally, politically and economically, of the few.

Thus, when there is an open threat, subjectivity puts things in motion, and when the threat is destruction, seizes upon every possibility.

Just so…

…and here follows the application of the law, in my next post.