I just started reading S&R and I keep coming across the concept of “philistine/philistinism.” I looked up what that meant bc I had a lackluster education and don’t know words good, and Google came up with something like a “lack of appreciation for the arts,” which didn’t really fit but I kept digging and ended up seeing that he could’ve meant something like “unacademic.”
So just to confirm (at risk of being reductive), to put it into Layman’s terms, is he talking about grillpillers? Or just common folk who don’t wanna “get political” about anything? Or instead, is he talking about the Tucker types, or the sector of the bourgeois who purposely peddle misinformation or anti-intellectualism and populism under the guise of “thinking for the common people” or whateverthefuck? Or is he talking about something entirely different that I’m missing?
If it’s the former, I propose we adopt the term “grillistine” :grillman:
Edit: apologies if this is a dumb question or it’s been asked before please don’t hurt me
He called Kautsky a philistine, also the Cadets (Constitutional monarch liberal party in pre-revolutionary Russia.) The Cadets were what we’d call professional managerial class now, a bunch of professors, number crunchers, and finance people who were tricked by the prospect of capitalism and so were liberal centrists. Lenin called them philistines because even if they have academic learning, they were still bozos who were in effect anti-intellectual.
We still have these types of people now, they’ve got a PhD and work at a think tank in DC, and yet they’re complete clowns who can’t even describe what socialism is. They think it’s when the government does stuff. And yet they get fancy book deals and do talks at conventions. They’re all high on their own supply and don’t know what they’re talking about beyond surface level platitudes. Philistines.
Okay, that’s understandable, thank you. I kinda had an idea of this but now I think I get it :)
To side step axont’s post. Philister as Lenin uses it was from the German phrase of Philister, which in the language room of the German-phone swiz, Austria and what is now Germany was in the general and not specific sense of the meaning the duality of the following things:
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a boomer, a petit borgeosie, surface-level analytic, conformists, reactionaries against change in German also: Spießer
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a person who is part of a Burschenschaft (think nationalist association with militancy and toxic masculinity, mostly academics, not interested in socialism) but finished studies and now does work. Big industrial companies in Germany in the 1930s would be controlled by those people. The reaction also was plentiful with them (even though the Nazis did take over some Burschenschaften).
Lenin was fluent in German and as such knew the cultural meaning and usage which enhances axont’s answer slightly.
Of course the meaning of the term shifted slightly and doesn’t shoot against conformist petit bourgeosie anymore as it once did.
Okay, hell yeah that’s really helpful, thank you. I had no idea about the origin of the term.
Good job asking please don’t be scared
I propose we adopt the term “grillistine”
:sicko-pog:
