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But this is just bankrupt 1950s Intellectual History of Great Men without any considering of social history, cultural history, or the way that thinking and ideas really interact with the world.
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"Great Man Theory": Truly Great or Merely Mediocre?
- Thread starter The Laurent
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But this is just bankrupt 1950s Intellectual History of Great Men without any considering of social history, cultural history, or the way that thinking and ideas really interact with the world.
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A mass of angry, clueless people don't bring about social change. They need organization and ideas.
History has always been shaped by Great Men and Women. We know Alexander, but name one of Alexander's soldiers. Napoleon was a military genius but name one of the faceless men he had to expend to be a military genius.
You can't do things without the masses but the masses need to be honed and directed by visionaries.
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What does this have to do with reality? What you're actually saying is, "Our techniques for recording information and keeping it recorded for thousands of years is bad" not, "Only Great Men matter." Look at any honest history of large scale social and cultural change, and what you see from honest, intelligent scholars is quite a different story from what your nonsense perspective is. Like, even the phrase "the masses" is just completely absurd and dehumanizing.
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You're arguing that the great people we remember are the ones who shaped history, and then for evidence ask if we remember the names of the other people? It seems a bit circular, as well as very hard to test.I'm sure if I started taking about Ptolemy you would say that he was one of the people you were talking about, but thankfully I can name you any number of minor officers under Napoleon, like Victor de Fay.
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History books record the famous. This is not the same as the famous neccesarily mattering more than any one of the unknowns, let alone all of them at the same time.
You can easily see this in microcosm when, for example, looking at the microcosm of a developing metagame in a video game- the person who invented a strategy may well go completely unknown, with people being able to name who popularized it but not who created it.
Or we can look at various more recent history patterns. I'm familiar with a lot of game stuff broadly, so for example I can point out that far more people knew about Doom than Castle Wolfenstein, even though the latter came first and the former merely refined it. Or look at Warcraft 3, which was hailed as a visionary combination of RTS and RPG mechanics, and as the Wikipedia page tells me, came out in July of 2002.
Warlords Battlecry, on the other hand, came out in July of 2000. And thus did it before Warcraft 3, and frankly better.
Lords of Magic is more of a greyzone, and came out another 3 years sooner.
Sacrifice is also a far better RPG/RTS hybrid than Warcraft 3. It came out in November of 2000.
Dungeon Keeper is also a blending of RTS and RPG mechanics. It came out in 1997, like Lords of Magic.
Warcraft 3, of course, 'invented' the RTS/RPG hybrid genre, according to most people.
I can name off the top of my head, as I just did, four games that did it first. I'm not counting either Dungeon Keeper 2 nor Warlords Battlecry 2 which both came out before Warcraft 3, incidentally.
More debatably, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms came out in 1999 and also is an RTS wherein you have a powerful central hero unit. Not even counting the original Total Annihilation which is even older.
Of course, with the wonders of the internet I can provide easy evidence of the timeline, but that only furthers my point- people think of Warcraft 3 as some brilliant, revolutionary Great Man Video Game that invented a novel concept, but while it certainly drew imitators, even limiting myself to real time strategy games with such RPG elements, it was beaten to the punch multiple times. Sacrifice and Warlords Battlecry in particular are indisputable, having levelable hero units and otherwise being relatively traditional RTSes.
But in spite of Warcraft 3 not actually inventing the concept, that's what people falsely think of it as doing. And if we didn't have as good of records as we do on the releases of these games, that's what the history books would say. Falsely. With no connection to reality.
While there's certainly things Warcraft 3 did that were unique, it's not actually that notable a game in terms of inventing ideas, nor in quality design or execution. But it was popular, and well known, so a lot of people thought it did, even though in reality it may well have been outright aping some of these prior games, and was certainly not actually first to the idea.
And games are not somehow unique in this. Often, when you go digging, people who are experts on a time period, region, and topic of technology, politics, or so forth will firmly and consistently disagree with the mainstream layman's history takes on these things. People that are 'literally who?' to you or I will be agreed as far more important to the way things went down than Famous General MCFamous Generalton everyone has heard of, and so forth.
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Don't worry, one day when all civilization collapses, somehow gossip magazines alone will survive, and future historians will know that Kim Kardashian was the central driver not only of our culture, but our politics, theology, and intellectual history.
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I was just trying to make a general point. Alexander and Napoleon were names I picked out of a hat.
Even in Leftist or Progressive circles, big movements are always symbolized by leaders. Lenin, Gandhi, Mao, King - these are the faces of these movements that people, including Leftists nd Progressives, rally around. Nobody can do anything in isolation and it doesn't matte rhow smart they were if they were all alone, but simultaneously it doesn't matter how many angry people there are if they can't accomplish anything.
Two things:
1. Even if this was true, that should just be the fad of the times. We live in times that actively revolt against Great Men theory. Plutarch was studied for thousands of years before he wasn't because certain figures argued that his Lives was promoting the Great Men Theory and they actively wanted to stop that.
2. Historians literally argue about who the most important figures in Western history are. Was it Jesus? Paul? Alexander? Alexander and Hellenism changed everything. Christianity obviously changed everything. We literally cannot imagine a world without Christ or Alexander but I think we could probab ly imagine aworld without Macedonian Foot Soldier #4 and Christian Guy #112. This isn't to say these people don't have value as all lives have value, but instrumentally, speaking of culture and history, they have little worth.
If I want to shape the future, I'll sure as fuck need a bold, charismatic figure and not a bunch of bland nobodies. Those bland nobodies can be there but they need a figurehead at least because people love symbols. People need symbols.
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Night
Widow Null
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Name the leader of the revolt, then. You said all ideas and organizations must descend from great leaders, here's your chance.
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This is a pretty foolish judgement considering how much better our historiography is once we'd ditched the Great Men and actually looked at the archives or studied anything in a systemic way. Also, lol at the "People no longer read Plutarch."
They do, they just understand that he's in fact a biased writer presenting his point of view (like most writers), which is still cited to this day, but more carefully and provisionally with awareness of the cultural and social context behind his text, and how all of that influences it as not only a history, but as a Part Of History, and not the holy writ of a God delivering Truth from On High.
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Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
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But Laurent! You can't criticize the Great Man! After all, history is nothing without the actions of the Great Men, which I know to be true because the Great Man said so!
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I mean, critical analysis of primary sources is indeed something that historiography had to slowly and gradually learn. All historical works of the early modern and medieval time look funny to us because they took ancient sources at their bare word, even when in cases where that is obviously outright absurd. So I agree with you we should never go back to there.
However, one also has to recognize certain biases within academic endeavours themselves, and historiography is certainly no stranger to that. I would say, historiographic works lean towards constant revisionism, because historiography suffers from the problem as all academia: Nobody wants to publish confirmatory works. Everyone wants to publish "new" ideas and concepts. And since academicians and scientists are pretty much doomed to publish or die as the system is set up, that means they will do their best to find "new" ideas. It's basically the clickbait phenomenon, just in academia. So this is a bias historiography itself has.
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Actually we can't, or rather inasmuch as we can you only admit that humans are not omniscient.
It's actually easier to produce a credible alternate history around a particularly famous figure not existing, because we know what they did.
We have no earthly idea what your Macedonian Soldier Number 4 did. If it's not stuff that was recorded, we have no way of guessing what events unfolded as they did entirely because of his deeds. He may well have given Alexander some amazing idea, or killed someone who otherwise would have assassinated Alexander, or...
Your presumption that Us The Modern Day People not knowing what someone did means they did nothing of significance is actively farcical. According to this standard, not only does a tree falling in the forest not make a sound if no one is around to hear it, but in fact the forest itself does not exist if not observed, and ceases to exist once more once it fades from human memory, even if in fact it has grown larger and more lively since.
According to you, any soldiers who have been forgotten about did nothing of significance, even if actually they defeated the greatest army of an age and forever altered the course of a war, and changed the fates of thousands. It's not in a book so they did nothing significant.
This inanely presumes the symbols were in fact bold, charismatic, and inspiring, rather than being one of many bland interchangable everymen who merely happened to be picked out of a hat to 'rise to greatness'.
This in fact ties neatly into my point about it being whoever popularized something who we know about. The actual brilliant creator, inasmuch as invention is such a process at all, is completely forgotten about, and it's the dude all the books and papers and what have you crow from the heavens as inventing the technique or whatever is remembered. Even if he's just Some Dude of no skill, no talent, who could have been replaced by Literally Anyone else who saw the technique and spread it around.
The very idea those famous are more intrinsically capable of being famous here is just wrong. You don't have a fame stat assigned at birth, destiny is not a quantifiable force.
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The issue, and obviously maybe it's different in Germany, is that there is so much of history that's not really explored, so many archives that haven't even been half-plundered, that you can honestly go a long way in studying without necessarily having to contradict others in every point? Or rather, what often happens is that the disagreements are more nuanced, or rely not just on new ideas, but new sources dug up from the archives that seem to offer a different perspective on the same facts, or tell a story nobody knew existed.
You are right that some of that bias exists, but at least in America it's also complicated to some degree by the process that historians go through.
Also, RE: The Enlightenment, there have actually been a lot of interesting works in revealing the breadth of it, rather than just focusing on, say, a few obvious Great Thinkers.
E: Actually, the biggest bias of historians with regards to ideas is their magpie like tendency to rob every other field of its good ideas (and also some of its bad, at least until they get spotted as bad) to feather their nest. This is sorta like what you're getting at, but not quite the same.
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Leaving aside the earlier vulgarity, what proof do you have that Marx's ideas came from him and not your 'Bob the Worker'?
This is a point you seem to be stubbornly ignoring, persistently refusing to engage with at all.
Under what basis do you declare a Great Person the sole font of their Greatness? Why do you dismiss, to name some examples...
- The work of all those 'little people' that are why we are capable of knowing of their greatness. We would not have Marx's theories if his words had not been duplicated countless times over, in fresh printings and so forth of his book(s).
- The people that produced such items as food and clothing Marx depended on to not die so as to create his theories.
- Any random unknowns who were formative to his life or ideas, people he saw doing things that sparked inspiration and so forth.
That's not even remotely comprehensive. What, beyond fame, makes Marx more relevant to the availability of his theories than any others involved in the distribution, development, duplication, etc of the same?
What exactly causes you to be so sure that Famous Great Persons Of Arbitrary Importance are in fact more important and indenspensable than those others around them?
There is, after all, no need to recreate something 99% identical to an existing theory, and slap your name on it once the prior theory is out there. You do not need to, nor benefit from trying to, supercede Marx's theories unless you have something materially different to put forth.
Certainly, this creates conditions that can be taken as certain people being uniquely brilliant... But it requires a shallow read of history, that ignores amusing anecdotes such as the story of Dennis the Menace, where two different people near simultaneously came up with a comic of the same name and broadly similar concepts...
And such coincidences happen all the time. People miles apart have the same idea, and one becomes famous for it and has their name associated with it, and the other doesn't because... You already have the reference point. You don't require a second clone reference point.
You propose that Marx was uniquely qualified to generate his Great Work. I contend it is more likely that Marx was one of dozens, if not hundred of people in his day and region who could have generated the same or similar enough and become famous for it, and he is simply the case that happens to have had the opportunity and inclination earliest thus superceding any others who would find his theories to resonate and thus become 'mere' supporters because why invent the wheel when The Wheel Inventor just rolled up in front of you with more than enough wheels for everyone.
This is not to say that there was nothing interesting about Marx, but your ongoing division of people into The Interesting And Significant Ones and The Literally Faceless Masses is entirely uncompelling. You assert that those who didn't rise to greatness uniformly lacked any potential for greatness, and that those who rose to greatness had an innate potential that would inevitably be realized with your aggressively consistent framing that the soldiers under Alexander were literally nameless, that they were only significant and only could be significant as Bodies Under Alexander, rather than that any of them could likely have been significant, great and remembered figures of tale if conditions had simply gone somewhat differently.
Legends are made, not born. Marx did not step into this world from a higher plane of existence, tome of sacred wisdom in hand. Alexander was born the son of a king and tutored by learned philosophers and so on, and while this gave him a position from which to be more able to change the world around him, it's likely that there are countless Greek people from his time who could have done similar had history gone a little differently.
We don't have the records to know exactly the names and positions of likely candidates, and we have no time machines to explore it, but Alexander was not born The Great. He was not a foreordained hero who was always going to exist, and always make the innovations and conquests he did.
What happened is what happened, not an immutable truth of the universe that could not help but to happen no matter what.
Vindictus
XENO
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I mean, that's not just likely, it's a fact. Socialism predates Marx, and Marx was one of many socialists who came up with theories.
Marx, as it happens, ended up being more influential than his contemporaries- but his work was, without a doubt, part of a discourse between Marx and countless other thinkers, some friendly and some hostile.
If Marx had never existed, then things would be different. But Marx did not create his analysis out of nothing- he observed the economic machinery of the capitalist system and formed a critique, as countless people did, based on the material conditions of the world around him.
If not him, it would have been someone else. Perhaps one of his known rivals, perhaps one of his known allies, perhaps even some other person none of us have heard of due to their obscurity.
But there would have been someone.
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I'm not really familiar with theory, but I was under the impression Marx was most famous because he wrote an intentionally light book and pamphlet intended to popularize socialism and they caught on, rather than because of the theory he wrote in other works?
Vindictus
XENO
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The Manifesto was for the First Internationale, a collection of various socialists from all over Europe who came together to create a single movement for solidarity etc. IIRC anyway. I'm pretty sure Marx and Engels got the job of writing it due to luck and internal politics?
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Sure, in a nonexistent, irrelevant reality, we could be talking about how communism was invented in Africa.
But in the real world, it was Marx who made these ideas you all so adore. You owe everything to Marx, Engels and his disciples. Yes, disciples, like those of Christ, people who believe and fight and die for Marx's ideals just like Christians fought and died for Christ.
Although Leftists are more scared of idols and false prophets than Christians ever were see: the neverending struggle to ruin ContraPoints' l ife in spite of her being the best Leftist representative online Nobody can just say "thank you" anymore it seems.
I am getting sick of you all putting words in my mouth. I never said a single thing you just claimed I said.
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
The potentially smartest people on Earth are dead in a hole somewhere due to war, famine, disease.
But that's that. Their potential is gone, snuffed out. They don't matter anymore to the human race.
Marx benefited from the climate he was born into. I never denied that once. But that doesn't mater because he took the benefits he was given and made a legacy out of it that continues to this day. I never once claimed an immutable history or some essence to Marx and others that made them special. I simply pointed to the effect of their existence on the world we know and live in.
So please stop misrepresenting what I said.
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Except you're full of it? To bring things around, one of the most notable facts of our age is an overabundance. An overabundance of sources, an overabundance of things to distract us... every historian who has honestly gone digging in history where there were enough sources for it, in the past half-century, has increasingly found the Great Man Theory an ill-fitting suit. To the extent it still exists, it exists as a Story told in the absence of evidence, and even then, strides have been made in using archaeology and other sources to study ancient history in ways that can't be done if you just assume that Plutarch was transmitting absolute truth to a later generation. But where we have the evidence, the 'uniqueness' of single Great individuals and their ability to define the world is... called into question by the evidence.
******
On a side note, in an attempt to change the subject.
I think people should check out Jon Bois. Not all of his work is relevant for this thread, but he's very much at least a progressive, and has some interesting videos. Most of them aren't about politics, though even those have himself in them, but some are. IE:
(Or this series he made with Felix Biederman)
(Or this amusing parody.)
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To the extent that I am 'misrepresenting' what you said, it is that I assumed you were making a logical if false framework that would actually give reason to care about any particular figure as A Great Man as you insist on doing. I was trying to parse your points as a coherent model.
Let me take this from the top.
So far as I can tell, you believe that Marx or Alexander's names being in history books and widely known implies they actually provided more than other people of the age.
My contention is that it is the limits of communication if anything that cause the names of these 'great people' to be widely known. You cannot feasibly name every single soldier in Napoleon's army every time you want to discuss a battle that army was involved in. Thus, at some point you simplify, you use a group identity- Napoleon And The Other Guys On His Team- and you simplify in a consistent way to communicate clearly. You don't pick a different soldier from his army to name every time, because that confuses people. You use recognizable brand names, because even if you happen to know all the soldiers by name from a side in a war, incredibly, it just causes communication problems to do otherwise.
Invariably, that means some names get repeated a lot more, usually ones in central, administrative or public speaking type positions as there is no reason to associate an army with French Soldier Pierre, From Third Squad. This doesn't mean those central positions were any less interchangable cogs than the 'lower' positions, just that there were fewer of them and hence more reason to associate those central figures as the identifiable representatives of the group.
When you claim we cannot imagine a world without Marx, this presupposes that the most likely alternate world without Marx is not, in fact, at a glance 'this world, but god find and replaced Marx with Engel or whoever when we talk about socialist theory'. It makes no sense to claim we owe Marx specifically our lives and that he did great things if he is merely a cog in a larger machine and him having a heart attack and dropping dead wouldn't have likely had him replaced by a different, largely Marx shaped cog that went and did similar things.
Talking about Great People Shaping history... I can really only see one of two ways to take that. Either you are strictly talking about them being remembered, the history books and so on widely repeating their deeds, in which case you are asserting I should feel grateful to Plato or whoever strictly and solely for being well known, that I owe things to people just for managing to get their name trumpeted to the heavens even if that is all they did, or you are asserting that these people were more indenspensable than others.
Given that in the same post you are crying out about being misrepresented you say things like this;
And that you have been constantly saying things like this;
I don't think I have been in any way uncharitable or distortive to read you constantly harping These Great People Did Great Things as meaning that you believe they wouldn't have been unnoticably replaced by broadly similar figures who, in our world, are Literally Who?
And while you so fervently object to being 'misrepresented', you haven't actually engaged with things I and others have said like;
And;
I can't feel terribly sorry for you when, when offered repeated openings to clarify what you mean as far as These People Are Great and Those People Are Cogs as you keep saying, where others are saying These People Are Remembered Cogs and Those People Are Forgotten But Equally Important Cogs, you just repeat 'but you should feel grateful to the great man tho' and 'gods you jerks stop misrepresenting me'.
Explain yourself if you don't want to be 'misrepresented'. Don't just ignore the early cases of people trying to make sense of your position and putting forth what they think the actual case is in contrast to how they read your words, actually clarify your points and explain what you meant and how it makes sense to you.
Stop just jumping to bad faith when people have different axioms from you and attempt to make the best sense they can of your words as you put forth thousands of words over several posts that appear to entirely line up with how you're being interpreted. Try new framings, clarify your actual point without shouting about injustice.
Because there is only so much people can do when they can't figure out what you could mean other than X and thus try and figure out what you are thinking off you persistently saying X.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
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I find it mildly hilarious that you're the one claiming to be misrepresented when just last page you were just accusing leftists of getting off to burning down churches.
Night
Widow Null
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Honestly the insistence it's all about Marx on the left is even stranger, an assumption that Nikkolas seems to make on his own and everyone just agrees with, despite the fact that I doubt everyone here is a Marxist and communism does not embody the left anyways.
He's framing his argument with a ridiculous premise here as in so many others when he talks about leftist thought.
He's framing his argument with a ridiculous premise here as in so many others when he talks about leftist thought.
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- Texas, US
This is an unacceptable pattern of behavior
If you get rid of Jesus and Paul, what exactly does the next two thousand years of history look like? Is it the same? Or did their thought cause immeasurable influence across the world?
I mean, it doesn't mater? I picked Marx but I also spoke of Lenin and Mao. It doesn't really matter as the Left is as represented by Great Men to which it is indebted as any other movement.
Okay? So you have now offered a theory about why great men have existed and will always exist. The limits of human knowledge and communication mandates we will always gravitate to single individuals.
That's a fine explanation by me.
I'm saying nothing more or less than our entire world owes its current existence to these people. For whatever reason, they are the figures that made everything we know or care about. Generally they made great contributions that should be respected but even if you think, say, Alexander was a drunken megalomaniac who owes everything to his father, the name Alexander is still indelibly stamped on Western history and you can't just ignore that
Fair enough but I said nothing complicated. The only people who object to it are the Lefties on this forum. No one else in the world would say "Karl Marx? Eh, no big deal." There are entire schools of historical learning dedicated to ideas and how ideas shape history. They would not appreciate you saying "well you see, in an Alternate Reality, Karl Marx died and Engels took over and so it doesn't make sense to study Marxism as owing a lot to Marx because in a fantasy land, people died for Engelsism."
I study philosophy and you know what philosophy is? Layman or no, I understand how philosophy is taught in classes and have had professors suggest how to approach it. You know how they do it? You read the Great Books. You read Plato. Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to him. His ideas shaped the world we live in. Aristotle probably had an even greater influence on us given how much his ideas on science ruled Europe until the modern period.
They would not appreciate "well you see, Plato was just some rich asshole and anybody could have thought up the Forms." That's a fucking insult to all of our history and profoundly anti-intellectual. So I'm not some crazy radical, you all just want to reject how our entire approach to education and history is done.
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Night
Widow Null
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- Hoff
You are literally unable to read.
To top that obvious failure of your comprehension, your argument that Great Men matter cannot skip over Marx to reach Lenin and Mao and remain even remotely coherent. So yes, it matters very much unless you believe that progress, or at least progression, is a lie. It's possible this is something you truly believe, I suppose. It fits in with the idea that Great Men are de novo and thus the only things that matter, arising from a formless void. But that's obviously ridiculous because they themselves will acknowledge their debts to previous others.
Mao as we know him is not possible without Lenin as we know him, who is not possible without Marx as we know him. From this acknowledgement, the flow of ideas and the preparing of the ground by those who came before, the entire idea of Great Men begins to fall apart as chains form backwards through time, spreading as they go, showing the acts and thoughts that were necessary for someone to step up at the moment of decision and for the person who stepped up to be who they were.
I am sympathetic to the idea that history can depend on the individual, because I'm sympathetic to the idea that choices matter. But the way in which you propose it must is an incoherent mess.
(This is leaving aside the fact that I'm not even a communist despite being leftist in general, so your entire posting is yet again a non-answer to the objection. Remember that the Left predates Communism? No? READ A BOOK.)
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You're asking a question that is literally impossible to answer because we don't have a Universe Y where Jesus or Paul didn't exist (or, say, Paul didn't convert to Christianity and Jesus was another apocalyptic Jewish preacher that only, say, Josephus paid any attention to), so we can't know whether or not somebody else would have come in to fill that void in a similar way, in a slightly different way with similar results, or it would have been fundamentally different. In essence, this rhetorical flourish is a way of begging the question, you're assuming the Great Man narrative and then asking "Well if these Great Men vanished then surely the world would have been infinitely different!" When you can't actually know that.