Revolutionary faith can be incompatible with clear awareness of reality
Evidence
The world in which the leaders of the proletariat grow up is not an academy but a series of struggles in factories and trade unions, disciplinary measures, sordid arguments both inside and outside of political parties, prison sentences and illegality … The career of the revolutionary does not advance through banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial salaries, but through misery, disgrace, ingratitude, and imprisonment towards an uncertainty which only an almost superhuman faith can penetrate … It is quite possible that revolutionary faith, at moments like the present, is virtually inconsistent with great awareness of the realities, it could even be the case that the qualities necessary to lead the proletarian party are found at the moment among men and women who are not exactly of the finest character. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 196
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely uncomfortable paradox: effective revolutionary practice may require a faith that blocks clear-eyed realism. The tension between acting knowledge and honest perception is dense and philosophically loaded.
- XREF: connects to: Revolutionary leadership requires faith incompatible with clear social analysis; Revolutionary regimes attract blind faith, not grounded trust; Faith that tries to transcend knowledge is destroyed by that very attempt (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Revolutionary regimes attract blind faith, not grounded trust
#expands(0.90) - Prophetic movements operate on an unworldly calculus detached from political reality
#exemplifies(0.85) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 555 - Faith that tries to transcend knowledge is destroyed by that very attempt
#expands(0.82)