Recurrent
Modernization:
Industrial, Political
and Cultural
Revolutions
Christopher Read, ed. The Stalin
Years. (Palgrave, 2003) pp. 23-
101
Ernst Jünger: "Total
mobilization"
No sector of society can be
unintegrated when total mobilization
is announced.
Following the wars of knights, kings
and citizens, we now have a wars of
workers.
The basis of all technology: the
readiness for mobilization.
The force of faith
Devotion to the advance of men and
machines: a fearful battle against a
world.
A gigantic labor process
The human talent of organization
celebrates its triumph: the fusion of
military, political and economic
command
The increasing curtailment of
individual liberty: denial of
anythnig that is not a function of
the state.
The Russian five year plan as an
attempt to channell the collective
energies into a single current.
The Soviet form of
revolutionary modernization
The idea and reality of
backwardness
The interdependence of industrial,
political and cultural revolution
Productionism, autoritarianism
and scientific communism
Propaganda, education and the
resocialization strategy
Welfare and Justice
Popular utopia ­ the people
fear of the state, anxiety about
change
Administrative utopia ­ the state
to govern and defend
Socialist utopia ­ the
intelligentsia
a way of life without autocracy
and class oppression: equality
and justice
Dream and design
Fascination with politics and
technology: international
messianism and futuristic fantasy
Both social dream and social
design were instruments of a
victory over nature to insure
material abundance and a victory
over egoism and exploitation to
insure social justice.