In: Dialectical anthropology: an independent international journal in the critical tradition committed to the transformation of our society and the humane union of theory and practice, Band 5, Heft 3, S. 215-226
The Nigerian civil war is now history. The Republic of Biafra lives in the pages of books, pamphlets, and newspapers. In that form, it is no threat to the people of Nigeria who, in a solemn oath of allegiance in January 1970, pledged to consign Biafra into oblivion and face the task of reconstruction and reconciliation. Biafra is now an issue only for historians who are plagued with the search for an answer to "what might have happened if…" But the war itself has left deep scars not only upon the lives of the survivors, but also on their beliefs and attitudes towards life. Unless he visits the right places in Nigeria, the visitor today may hear nothing and possibly see nothing to remind him of the war.
Perhaps the most basic and enduring theme in political philosophy is that which concerns the inherent tension between individual values and social values. Indeed, the task of reconciling, in thought, the individual and social is virtually a definition of political philosophy. Of course, in much secondary work, and some primary work as well, this basic task often gets lost in a maze of more particular considerations, including the analysis of moral principles and the elaboration of special institutional arrangements or particular causal patterns. Nonetheless, major theorists, virtually without exception, have recognized that the basic individual values (e.g., freedom, privacy, personal morality) may well be politically undesirable and, similarly, that the requirements of political life (e.g., order, obedience, ethical behavior) may significantly compromise individual goals.
According to an ancient Chinese proverb, "if you give a hungry man a meal, you will fill his belly for only one day; but if you teach him how to fish , he will be able to feed himself for the rest of his life." The proverb reminds us of the wisdom of self-sufficiency and the necessity of long-term planning to solve or prevent problems.
Late in his life, Lenin suggested that, despite N. Bukharin's value as a theoretician, he did not fully understand dialectics & thus was not entirely Marxist. Lenin held both that nature as a whole was characterized by dialectical contradictions & that society had to be understood as a complex of heterogeneous relations, with attention to tensions other than those between capitalists & workers. The uneven rate of development implied that different parts of the capitalist & Wcs would come into conflict. Bukharin asserted that the capitalist state served to universalize the interests of the ruling class, ending contradictions within that class. Lenin argued against this view, asserting that the conflict between monopoly & competitive capital remained, & that no capitalist economy was ever fully placed under state control. The German war economy on which Bukharin's arguments were based was not very similar to the Russian Czarist state. Lenin saw Bukharin's call for a universal plan as a denial of the need for a transition period. Bukharin held that the structure of society was unilaterally determined by technology, whereas Marx's actual position had been that man & nature determine each other. The absolute uniformity of society appeared to Bukharin to be required by the need to deal with nature efficiently. Thus, when state control proved unworkable in the USSR, Bukharin turned to absolute reliance on the market, whereas Lenin saw such reliance as a temporary convenience. Bukharin's political influence led to conditions in which only Stalinism could be successful, while his theories failed to grasp the actual situation in the USSR. W. H. Stoddard.
In: Canadian journal of economics and political science: the journal of the Canadian Political Science Association = Revue canadienne d'économique et de science politique, Band 32, Heft 1, S. 112-114