Mythic Violence v. Divine Violence*

Officially Stalinism was based on atheist Marxist theory, but if we look closely at the subjective experience of a Stalinist political agent, leader, we see that it's not a position of an arrogant master, who can do whatever he wants. It's on the contrary the position of a perfect servant. In a Stalinist universe there definitely is what in psychoanalytic theory we call the 'Big Other'. This 'Big Other' in the Stalinist universe has many names. The best known of them are the necessity of historical progress towards communism - simply history. History itself is the 'Big Other'. History as the necessary succession of historical stages. A communist experiences himself as simply an instrument whose function is to actualise a historical necessity. The people, the mythic people whose instrument the totalitarian leader is are never simply the actually existing individuals, groups of people and so on. It's some kind of imagined idealised point of reference which works even when, for example in rebellions against the communist rule, like in Hungary 56, when the large majority of actually resisting people raises up, is opposed to the regime. They can still say: "no, these are just individuals," "they are not the true people." When you are accused of: "My God, how could you have been doing all of these horrible things?" You could have said, and this is the standard Stalinist excuse: "Of course my heart bleeds for all the poor victims, "I am not fully responsible for it, I was only acting on behalf of the 'Big Other'" "As for myself, I like cats, small children, whatever - this is always part of the iconography of a Stalinist leader. Lenin in Stalinism is always presented as someone who likes small children and cats. The implication being Lenin had to order many killings and so on, but his heart was not there -this was his duty as instrument of historical progress and so on and so on.

The way to undermine Stalinism is not simply to make fun of the leader, which can be up to a point even tolerated. It is to undermine this very reference, mythic reference which legitimises the Stalinist leader: the people.

* Note

“If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood. …Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.”

(Benjamin,1921/1986, p.297)