I read this book when I was seventeen, in the late 1960's, after having read Animal Farm and 1984. I loved all of Orwell's and Koestler's books. When I was twenty, I visited the USSR, during the Brezhnev era. As a young person, I saw Communism in full swing with my own eyes.
@@axelv7169 Orwell filled me with horror for the Communist system, and then seeing it in practice confirmed everyrhing he taught me. I believe in being rewarded through hard work with the right to own private property and like the Swiss version of Direct Democracy.
@@axelv7169 I know that Orwell was a socialist, until he saw the leftists' true colours - not a love for the poor but an absolute hatred of the rich. Thats when he started writing books such as Animal Farm and 1984. No, I am absolutely not a socialist in any form. I believe in individual merit, free enterprise, small government, the protection of private property, maximum individual freedom, minimum red tape and democracy.
“Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of brilliant literature, it is probably most valuable as an interpretation of the Moscow "confessions" by someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods. What was frightening about these trials was not the fact that they happened-for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society *but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to justify them”* -George Orwell Book Recommendation: *Tortured For Christ*
Good quote. Blair, like other British socialists, was detested by the communists who tried to liquidate him while he was fighting for the POUM in Spain.
I read this book over 10 years ago, recommended by a friend. I thought that towards the end you can feel the character’s emotions towards the end (no spoilers here).
Thank you for this discussion. I just finished the book. It was a tough read for me. Not that it wasn’t well written, absorbing, and filled with interesting thoughts and references. But because it was to me so dark, depressing, and disturbing. I felt heaviness reading it and it was scarier to me than any horror book by Stephen King because it represents a real ideology and the actual thoughts, actions, and justifications for these actions. I think I must be a naive person as I grew up in a place and time that the concept of the rights of the individual, liberty and the protection of these rights seemed sacrosanct. I took this for granted. Marxism seemed pretty well repudiated. Today all around me I see left wing politics resurrecting it and these sorts of Marxist tendencies and thinking getting promoted. This is an important book and perspective for today’s readers. No system is perfect and unfairness and inequality exist, they will probably always exist to some degree no matter what brutal efforts are made to try to reshape societies creating more suffering and different inequalities as they go. I agree with your guest Marxism is not a good idea or philosophy, it’s evil. I missed some of the significances of some imagery in the book and this was really great to listen to and understand it more deeply. I hope you have these discussions on other books too. I will be searching for them. Thanks again for this content.
I'm glad you talk about the toothache. I had feeling of it as the closest a Robashav got to having a conscience. He is not heart broken over Arlova only disturbed and trying to resolve through mental calculations how to accept what he did to her. But the Arlova was neither in love with him. She told him you may do with me as you like. Until her family began to become liquidated. She too committed to the old logic and was condemned by the purer logic of the newer generation.
You might consider SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1962) written by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel, about an attempted military coup in the United States. Later made into an excellent film starring Burt Lancaster.
Off the top of my head I can think of four reasons: 1, They only have a 5 second attention span. 2, Books are boring. 3, They are dogmatic ideologues who are unable to think outside their tiny mental box. 4, Biden is God, Trump's the Devil.
I found this conversation interesting and depressing. Interesting because the professor really grasped and analyzed elements of the novel that are among the least obvious. He genuinely loves the book and it has been a pleasure to hear his passionate comments - I share a lot of what he said about it. But the political analysis is so depressing: yes, Stalinism has been awful, thanks. But is the underlying logic of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" so delirious? Ultimately it's a bet: my freedom is more protected if we don't leave large chunks of the population behind than in a jungle where the weaker is doomed to succumb. Also, be aware, the alternative to an ideological and murderous totalitarism that we are taking is not an Eden-like fredoom paradise, but the voluntary submission to the rules of capitalism, that tends to aggregate around less and less individuals, ultimately cutting out from the richness of the society more and more individuals. So, misquoting the professor, "no, America, the choice is not between Marxism and the Founding Fathers, but between smartly adapting the current system to the individuals' wellbeing vs accepting it in its totality, becoming ultimately capitalist totalitarians" - and when it comes to the risks of totalitarisms, let me suggest you a book...
It turns out that the word “need” in the phrase “to each according to his need” is an extremely difficult thing to try to define. This is partly why the body counts can rack up so quickly under that ideology, if you start deciding that the collective ‘needs’ x, y, or z.
Yes, the tyrany of capitalism is not a Marxist exagiration. It operates subcutaneous and also overtly if the gains are huge and the liability and culpability can be avided.
I do think Koestler questions the communist ideal. Look at the section where he discusses the liquidation of B, the agronomist, for recommending potash when No1 likes nitrate. Rubashov concedes that only historical teleology can justify the brutality of the communists---"our crimes" are different from "their crimes" because "History" will absolve us. But what if No1 proves to be wrong about the fertilizer...? Rubashov can't finish that sentence in his diary. The appeal to "History" is a pure act of faith. The novel is about Rubashov--and Koestler--losing that faith. Check out Kirsch's article "The Desperate Plight of Arthur Koestler."
0:13 to 0:20 , is nice to see David Muir from ABC news to be a guest in Prager U. Wait a minute is not David Muir, it is Michael Knowles from Daily Wire.
You keep mentioning pieta but as I recall, Robashov never sees the Pieta in its entirety. He even says as he left the museum that he forgot to look back at it and has only during the whole meeting there only saw the arms.
I read this book in 1968 while at UVM. I then served in Army Military Intelligence 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin for 2 years. My 2 years of Russian in college helped me. 1968-70 were the years of the radicals back in America with all the anti-war protestors questioning America's policies on Communism. I saw first hand Communism with people being shot trying to cross-over to freedom then their bodies were left hanging on the barbed wire. Dogs would rip people to shreds and then eat their intestines and mines would blow people up as they tried to cross the mine fields to freedom. Communism is the MONSTER Steppenwolf speaks of in his most famous song "The Monster." All should listen to this song. Pilgrim - Communism is ANTI-GOD ... AND THUS WILL BE DESTROYED BY GOD HIMSELF. Respectfully submitted as my personal understanding and feelings. Peter
I was shocked how brilliant this book is, it's so insightful but really entertaining too. If you ever wondered why the old commies all 'confessed' to obviously far-fetched crimes. The interrogations are amazing philosophical debates. Conservatives especially should read this to understand the ideas.
Please do One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, or Crime and Punishment. All of them. Get Jordan Peterson. I would Listen for 2 Hours!!
1991 communism was dead , 2021 communism is alive and well ! The dead man resuscitated and will wage war against the saints and will overcome them , communism was and still is the Beast
I think you miss the point that this is a powerful meditation on the humanity and what we can endure for hope and belief, so completely that we would see our own existence scoured from history.
Also I didn't really get the religious references as very religious. I got this odd feeling of shadows of symbols and language empty of the core of the religious origins which is love. Kinda like a horror movie taking place in empty city and fallen churches where life has abandoned the buildings. I keep thinking of the father at end in bed listening to daughter read of the trial. He keeps instinctively searching for the Bible pages hidden in a hole in his bed that has been emptied by the daughter a while ago because it was an offense to the party.
I'm sorry but this gentlemen completely hijacked a discussion about a classic book to get on his soapbox. Koestler wrote about guilt, regret, and doubt through the lense of Stalinist Totalitarianism. Yes it shows how bad communism went and the thought process that led it there but it does not touch Marx or the morality/ immorality of his ideas. This video, on the other hand, spends quite a bit of time on that.
“but it doesn’t touch Marx or morally/immorality of his ideas”- I disagree, minutes before his death Rubashov comes to the conclusion that Marxism is wrong theory: “The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced-and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.”
Yes, the so called power of the proletariat is invariably concentrated in the hands of No 1s in almost all countries and the heady unquestionable authority spews its cruel arbitrariness in capricious glee. The circumstances and obedient comrades only become more virulent.
Also it’s pretty funny that this book went to the top of the charts when the British government bought multiple copies. To make it seem amazing. From the wiki page. Edit The novel is of special interest to historians of British propaganda, due to the heavy financial support that the novel secretly received from the Information Research Department (IRD), a covert branch of the UK Foreign Office dedicated to disinformation, pro colonial, and anti-communist propaganda.[43][44] The IRD bought 1,000s of copies to inflate sales statistics, and also used British embassies to translate and distribute the novel to be used as Cold War propaganda.[45][46][47] Kind of like how trump bought his son’s book multiple times to bring it to the top of the charts. I wonder if Prager and his friends books had the same thing happen to them.
I read this book when I was seventeen, in the late 1960's, after having read Animal Farm and 1984. I loved all of Orwell's and Koestler's books. When I was twenty, I visited the USSR, during the Brezhnev era. As a young person, I saw Communism in full swing with my own eyes.
Since you are inspired by Orwell surely you must be a democratic socialist like him
@@axelv7169 Orwell filled me with horror for the Communist system, and then seeing it in practice confirmed everyrhing he taught me. I believe in being rewarded through hard work with the right to own private property and like the Swiss version of Direct Democracy.
@@KathiWildo that was not my question. You claim, again, to be inspired by Orwell. Orwell was a socialist. Are you?
@@axelv7169 I know that Orwell was a socialist, until he saw the leftists' true colours - not a love for the poor but an absolute hatred of the rich. Thats when he started writing books such as Animal Farm and 1984. No, I am absolutely not a socialist in any form. I believe in individual merit, free enterprise, small government, the protection of private property, maximum individual freedom, minimum red tape and democracy.
@@axelv7169 you’re a troll. It’s obvious what @Kathi meant.
I'm learning about new authors and books thanks to this bookclub. Gratitude.
“Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of brilliant literature, it is probably most valuable as an interpretation of the Moscow "confessions" by someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods. What was frightening about these trials was not the fact that they happened-for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society *but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to justify them”* -George Orwell
Book Recommendation: *Tortured For Christ*
Good quote. Blair, like other British socialists, was detested by the communists who tried to liquidate him while he was fighting for the POUM in Spain.
I’m reading a lot of good books through The Book Club! Thank you so much😝🙌🏻🙇🏻♀️
Yet you won't understand them. Sad!
I couldn't agree with you more.
Read this in college. Still have the book. Still disturbs me.
Based
I have been rereading That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis. It is uncanny how it matches the times.
I am about to read that
I read this book over 10 years ago, recommended by a friend. I thought that towards the end you can feel the character’s emotions towards the end (no spoilers here).
Han shot first!
What a great conversation. I seriously need to read this book.
Thank you for this discussion. I just finished the book. It was a tough read for me. Not that it wasn’t well written, absorbing, and filled with interesting thoughts and references. But because it was to me so dark, depressing, and disturbing. I felt heaviness reading it and it was scarier to me than any horror book by Stephen King because it represents a real ideology and the actual thoughts, actions, and justifications for these actions. I think I must be a naive person as I grew up in a place and time that the concept of the rights of the individual, liberty and the protection of these rights seemed sacrosanct. I took this for granted. Marxism seemed pretty well repudiated. Today all around me I see left wing politics resurrecting it and these sorts of Marxist tendencies and thinking getting promoted. This is an important book and perspective for today’s readers. No system is perfect and unfairness and inequality exist, they will probably always exist to some degree no matter what brutal efforts are made to try to reshape societies creating more suffering and different inequalities as they go. I agree with your guest Marxism is not a good idea or philosophy, it’s evil. I missed some of the significances of some imagery in the book and this was really great to listen to and understand it more deeply. I hope you have these discussions on other books too. I will be searching for them. Thanks again for this content.
Koestler’s works we’re supposed to be a warning, not how-to manuals. Deus omnium nostrum auxilium Maii.
This book is a masterpiece. Thank you for this interesting discussion.
I'm glad you talk about the toothache. I had feeling of it as the closest a Robashav got to having a conscience. He is not heart broken over Arlova only disturbed and trying to resolve through mental calculations how to accept what he did to her. But the Arlova was neither in love with him. She told him you may do with me as you like. Until her family began to become liquidated. She too committed to the old logic and was condemned by the purer logic of the newer generation.
Excellent episode.
You might consider SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1962) written by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel, about an attempted military coup in the United States. Later made into an excellent film starring Burt Lancaster.
Thank you soooooo much for this.
I honestly can’t think of why even 8 people would downvote this video
Off the top of my head I can think of four reasons: 1, They only have a 5 second attention span. 2, Books are boring. 3, They are dogmatic ideologues who are unable to think outside their tiny mental box. 4, Biden is God, Trump's the Devil.
@@tipple58 The left don't want you to read anything they can't control.
Book Reviews is a great idea!
Communism LOOKS GREAT on Toilet Paper......
I found this conversation interesting and depressing. Interesting because the professor really grasped and analyzed elements of the novel that are among the least obvious. He genuinely loves the book and it has been a pleasure to hear his passionate comments - I share a lot of what he said about it. But the political analysis is so depressing: yes, Stalinism has been awful, thanks. But is the underlying logic of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" so delirious? Ultimately it's a bet: my freedom is more protected if we don't leave large chunks of the population behind than in a jungle where the weaker is doomed to succumb. Also, be aware, the alternative to an ideological and murderous totalitarism that we are taking is not an Eden-like fredoom paradise, but the voluntary submission to the rules of capitalism, that tends to aggregate around less and less individuals, ultimately cutting out from the richness of the society more and more individuals. So, misquoting the professor, "no, America, the choice is not between Marxism and the Founding Fathers, but between smartly adapting the current system to the individuals' wellbeing vs accepting it in its totality, becoming ultimately capitalist totalitarians" - and when it comes to the risks of totalitarisms, let me suggest you a book...
It turns out that the word “need” in the phrase “to each according to his need” is an extremely difficult thing to try to define. This is partly why the body counts can rack up so quickly under that ideology, if you start deciding that the collective ‘needs’ x, y, or z.
I absolutely agree with you on this@@BobbyMack , it should be a struggle and research, for sure not a matter of ideology
Yes, the tyrany of capitalism is not a Marxist exagiration. It operates subcutaneous and also overtly if the gains are huge and the liability and culpability can be avided.
Still waiting for a Count of Monte Cristo book club.
Astoundingly good book
I do think Koestler questions the communist ideal. Look at the section where he discusses the liquidation of B, the agronomist, for recommending potash when No1 likes nitrate. Rubashov concedes that only historical teleology can justify the brutality of the communists---"our crimes" are different from "their crimes" because "History" will absolve us. But what if No1 proves to be wrong about the fertilizer...? Rubashov can't finish that sentence in his diary. The appeal to "History" is a pure act of faith. The novel is about Rubashov--and Koestler--losing that faith. Check out Kirsch's article "The Desperate Plight of Arthur Koestler."
Great episode.
True life lessons: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster
The 13 tribes by Koestler was a good one!
0:13 to 0:20 , is nice to see David Muir from ABC news to be a guest in Prager U.
Wait a minute is not David Muir, it is Michael Knowles from Daily Wire.
You keep mentioning pieta but as I recall, Robashov never sees the Pieta in its entirety. He even says as he left the museum that he forgot to look back at it and has only during the whole meeting there only saw the arms.
Such an illustration of PhD... piled higher & deeper! Ideology having no connection to reality, but in the minds of "intellectuals".
*Dennis Prager* 🇺🇸🇮🇱🇧🇷
חג סוכות שמח
ממעריץ ברזילאי יהודי⚠️
אני משתף את כל הסרטונים שלך מאוניברסיטת פראגר מזל טוב
Tu tambem from USA. You have your Marxists to fight too.
How do I find out which book is next so I can read it??
Do a book club on the Bible
I read this book in 1968 while at UVM. I then served in Army Military Intelligence 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin for 2 years. My 2 years of Russian in college helped me. 1968-70 were the years of the radicals back in America with all the anti-war protestors questioning America's policies on Communism. I saw first hand Communism with people being shot trying to cross-over to freedom then their bodies were left hanging on the barbed wire. Dogs would rip people to shreds and then eat their intestines and mines would blow people up as they tried to cross the mine fields to freedom. Communism is the MONSTER Steppenwolf speaks of in his most famous song "The Monster." All should listen to this song. Pilgrim - Communism is ANTI-GOD ... AND THUS WILL BE DESTROYED BY GOD HIMSELF. Respectfully submitted as my personal understanding and feelings. Peter
I was shocked how brilliant this book is, it's so insightful but really entertaining too. If you ever wondered why the old commies all 'confessed' to obviously far-fetched crimes. The interrogations are amazing philosophical debates. Conservatives especially should read this to understand the ideas.
Where do I find out what the next book that will be read is?
Is Olivia supposed to represent "O" in WE by Zamyatin? he wrote WE around 1920. thanks
Please do One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, or Crime and Punishment. All of them. Get Jordan Peterson. I would Listen for 2 Hours!!
1991 communism was dead , 2021 communism is alive and well ! The dead man resuscitated and will wage war against the saints and will overcome them , communism was and still is the Beast
best political book ever written
This is a great choice, but when are you going to cover the Satyricon by Petroius Arbiter? Please, Oh, Please review this book!
I think you miss the point that this is a powerful meditation on the humanity and what we can endure for hope and belief, so completely that we would see our own existence scoured from history.
See you with Jesus Christ family! New Video: Rapture Awareness - Mercury Caught Up & Comet 342 Cast Down
Animal Farm, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Brothers Karamazov, No Country For Old Men, and The Great Divorce
Or The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Stern
Also read School of Darkness by Bella V Dodd, she confessed to installing 1100 gay, atheist men into the Catholic church clergy back in the 40's.
No sound
Your book club would be more credible if the studio was properly appointed with panels of rich mahogany and many leather bound books.
Also I didn't really get the religious references as very religious. I got this odd feeling of shadows of symbols and language empty of the core of the religious origins which is love. Kinda like a horror movie taking place in empty city and fallen churches where life has abandoned the buildings. I keep thinking of the father at end in bed listening to daughter read of the trial. He keeps instinctively searching for the Bible pages hidden in a hole in his bed that has been emptied by the daughter a while ago because it was an offense to the party.
Doubt and second questioning, sounds like me and C..19 shots. Question and become pariah.
I see Nazism and communism as two collectivist systems, one organised around race enmity, the other class.
Lord of the rings next
WHAT HE SAID ABOUT CANADA ...........DITTO
I'm sorry but this gentlemen completely hijacked a discussion about a classic book to get on his soapbox. Koestler wrote about guilt, regret, and doubt through the lense of Stalinist Totalitarianism. Yes it shows how bad communism went and the thought process that led it there but it does not touch Marx or the morality/ immorality of his ideas. This video, on the other hand, spends quite a bit of time on that.
“but it doesn’t touch Marx or morally/immorality of his ideas”- I disagree, minutes before his death Rubashov comes to the conclusion that Marxism is wrong theory:
“The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or influenced-and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.”
PU !!!
A page turner
Machiavelli Marx meet the Muslims
As a moderate democrat I am okay with socialism and capitalism. But I hate communism because of how easily corruptible it is.
The goal of socialism is communism
Yes, the so called power of the proletariat is invariably concentrated in the hands of No 1s in almost all countries and the heady unquestionable authority spews its cruel arbitrariness in capricious glee. The circumstances and obedient comrades only become more virulent.
You guys need to stop pretending as if you lot have almost anything in common with George Orwell...
As opposed to you?
@@b.alexanderjohnstone9774 Me being a left winger means I have a lot more in common with Orwell than PU and those who they platform.
This is gonna be terrible. Can’t wait!
Also it’s pretty funny that this book went to the top of the charts when the British government bought multiple copies. To make it seem amazing. From the wiki page.
Edit
The novel is of special interest to historians of British propaganda, due to the heavy financial support that the novel secretly received from the Information Research Department (IRD), a covert branch of the UK Foreign Office dedicated to disinformation, pro colonial, and anti-communist propaganda.[43][44] The IRD bought 1,000s of copies to inflate sales statistics, and also used British embassies to translate and distribute the novel to be used as Cold War propaganda.[45][46][47]
Kind of like how trump bought his son’s book multiple times to bring it to the top of the charts. I wonder if Prager and his friends books had the same thing happen to them.
Still an amazing book
You think lefties and the new york times dont also do this?