All are Leninists now.
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| Pix credit here (movie "Fight Club") |
Leninism is now so deeply embedded in the premises of societal organization that it has simply disappeared from consciousness to become the basis for what now passes for collective consciousness itself. Everywhere.
This is neither bad nor good. It is, however, unavoidable in this stage of the historical development of liberal democracy it appears.
Leninism, both as a word and as a theory of governance, as well as the modalities of the governance it theorizes, cannot be named. The first rule of Leninism, in whatever form it takes, is never talk about Leninism. And the more it is acknowledged the harder one works at erasing that acknowledgement. It has become a function of some of its expression--as Marxism, as authoritarianism, as Fascism (a unity of opposites?), and as brain trust supervisory liberal democracy. All them then share the fundamental feature of Leninism as a tech-based cognitive cage from out which social relations may be rationalized: a vanguard (however defined) is a necessary predicate for a stable social order the guidance and leadership of which is effectuated through the establishment of a dictatorship of leading forces.
Perhaps it was inevitable. The inevitability was clear enough in 1918 with the collapse of the Russian Imperial then then sort of democratic machinery. But what was inevitable was not Marxist revolution. No. What was inevitable and initially feared was the overthrow of ancient forms of caste/hierarchies masquerading as everything from theocracy to monarchies, oligarchies, aristocratic regimes and liberal democracy (all of which as Aristotle never tied of trying to explain to those who would not listen, or if they were listening were doing so strategically for their own advantage). That overthrow was not meant to produce something better. Well, maybe not exactly nothing better--it produced a more suitable discursive environment in which what came next, what was feared, could be insinuated into the bones of virtually every system of power then strong enough to thrive. It produced new forms of caste power, of modalities of leadership and guidance--better suited to the age of large first stage industrialization, and the foundations of systems that would, ultimately, be ideal for the merger of technology and control.
What was feared in 1918 and thereafter was not Marxism, or the movement toward (eventually) the establishment of communist societies, the shock troops of which would be a motley collection of the poor and eventually collective identity collectives. Bismarck had shown the possibilities of suborning the poor and using them to buttress older systems; but then so did the Americans from a cleaner and more tech advanced perspective in the 19th century, especially after the destruction of the gentry plantation structures and their replacement by the technologies of factory style human robotization of the later initial period of industrialization). Still, the Bolsheviks had demonstrated, again, both the frailty of old power orders, and the power of ideas to manage and use the poor (workers)--and the ambitious (intellectuals, for example). These, as always, could (and do) serve as the canon fodder to be deployed for this effort; these are the willing offerings of the necessary blood sacrifice , the horrors of which plays so well (discursively, of course) within societies whose members had already be primed to absorb the sacrifice with the appropriate cultural and value ordering premises, and so primed, and so motivated, would become the vehicles for the triumph of the new caste reordering for societies now primed toward the acceptance of that instrumental inevitability for the birth of new power orders that now appeared to be the antithesis of themselves.
What was feared enough to produce a quite brilliant reaction and fundamental change of course, was what eventually (and with a head nod to Rousseau) elaborated as a variety of forms of caste vanguardsm, one built around the pioneering work of Soviet professional revolutionaries. Vanguardism was quite correctly perceived as both threat and opportunity at least outside of the Bolshevik realms by those holding onto the cognitive premises around which power was arranged and could be deployed in whatever horrible way suited those whose hands never really got dirty, societal herdmasters; what was feared with the rise of the professional revolutionary, and with them, the arrangement of power within the forms and technologies of Leninism. Vanguardisms, and especially vanguards enhanced by and through
technology, appears to offer the same threat--and the same
possibilities--as did bourgeois revolutionaries of the 17th and 18th
centuries to those who had profited from centuries of technologies of
power the decrepitude of which, enhanced by the blindness of arrogance
and the "Forbidden City effect" of increasingly retreating into their
fantasy pleasure spaces (discussed here; Forbidden Cities).
That the Soviet Leninist vanguard was able to topple the older regimes with what appeared to be the effort of a 10 year old blowing out birthday candles, suggested that while the Soviet form of Leninist vanguardism was a threat--the use of Leninist vanguardism was also an opportunity. It was an opportunity that could be refashioned to suit the political-economic models that were emerging in recognizable form by 1919. The Soviets, heading a more developmentally backward state (their word, similar with early Chinese Marxist-Leninist before the Japanese War), focused on class struggle. The rest, in a far ore advanced state of development (in the Chinese Leninist sense of modernization), focused on the utilization of the "brain trust" as the principle means of advancing a new (now Leninist) vanguard ruling group.
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| Pix Credit Here (Movie, "Oh Brother Where Art Thou") |
On that basis liberal democracy was able to lay the foundations of its approach to Leninist vanguardism to suit its stage of historical development, around which it consigned old power caste categories ( race, sex, birth, etc,) to the dust bin of history, while retaining its forms and structures of authority (of course) and raised up new technologies of governing, one based on the deployment of knowledge production as an instrument suited to the needs of those who "make the rules"--and the technological of the rule system itself, producing, in some respects a factory floor model of "law" and its "rule" that also became a function of the new power-laboring classes--the expert, the intellectual, and the well training official, all now the new shock troops of caste power manged through the mechanics of liberal democracy and guided by those with the power to manage knowledge production through the control of the resources necessary for its elaboration and the realization of tech and knowledge fueled "goals." That, in turn required a governance apparatus different from that necessary to control peasants and workers along a Socialist Path; it required an apparatus of the oxen of knowledge producers (well rewarded at their higher levels) pulling the cart of development toward values infused wealth (welfare) maximization, the forms and objectives of which have also been an object of brain trust development, for which purposes the State retained a critical importance as the holder of the authority to "make things happen." In that respect as well the difference between Soviet/Chinese Leninist pathways and those of liberal democracy converged as to form, at least. But it also required new means of in-taking human capital (merit, loyalty, patriotism, solidarity, etc., whatever works in context), and a new means of expressing the democratic character of the enterprise of aligned knowledge-power systems. A nice post-Bolshevik variant might be understood within the structures of the International Labor Organization--consisting of representation of workers, enterprises, and the state. Knowledge based consultative democracy is another, as is supervisory regulation, and other knowledge based mechanisms for deploying knowledge, including the knowledge of managing behaviors, sentiments, and the politics of those not sufficiently embedded in the mechanisms of knowledge-power-management.
And, of course, brain trusts plus technology--whether it is of
intellectuals, of the leading forces of social development, or of
anything else--answer only to themselves and their own logic. In the
context of tech driven brain trust vanguardism of the liberal democratic
sort one does not encounter some sort of sad re-enactment of the
cruder forms of totalitarianism of the last century. Though that false
analogy appears to drive much of what passes for discussion and analysis
among the fearful, the lazy, and those effectively out of the loop and
not ready for tech based disciplinary "re-education." There is something
new; it is new because the technologies are new, and with it, the
approaches to understanding the "meaning" of core social collective
premises become new as well. One moves from total control to total
management; and one moves from a totalizing absence of personal liberty
to its mediation by reference to public policy goals, aspirations,
ideals and objectives. Many global societies have been engaging in
dress rehearsals for this new form of managed freedom and liberty for
some time; and the politics of identity in the liberal democratic
sphere, and that of patriotism and the avoidance of "chaos" have fueled
the same control trajectories in Marxist Leninist States, to different
effect in the ground. Brian trust vanguardism, like its post-Soviet Marxist cousin, manages and with technology, it may well manage so seamlessly that the difference between management and control will be a function of the determination of how much discretion left to humans marks the diffe4rence between social solidarity principles and totalitarian disciplinary structures. In both cases, though, deviation from the vision and desires of the vanguard become harder as the politics of social collectives shifts from the masses to its leaders who manifest "the best of us."
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| Pix credit here (Éminence Grise, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1873)) |
The brain trust concept has become ubiquitous in liberal democracy, and so deeply embedded that it is now virtually impossible to avoid the concept and its value as an inevitable solution to everything without rejecting the contemporary premises on which liberal democracy has been reordered since 1918. Consider this opening snippet from the Magazine of Columbia University: "Columbia’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative is assembling the best
thinkers in the world to study the most complex object in the known
universe." (The Brian Trust). One cannot imagine a world in which the brain trust is not a central element of power--aligning knowledge production with power, and the desires of power with knowledge production in a closed loop self-referencing structure within which one provides both tests who "for knows better" and then assumes that knowledge in the service of power effectively trumps traditional politics either from the top, or more interesting, from the bottom. At the same time it aligns knowledge production with the production of law. Rule of law, in this sense, begins to assume the closed loop characteristics of productivity measures on the factory of floor of politics, directed now to the maximization of the realization of what expert knowledge--the brain trust, always eager to please those who make their new found status-power possible--makes possible. And the productivity of expert knowledge makes possible what power can conceive and desire.
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| Pix Credit here (Cenerentola, Jean Pierre Ponnelle production, finale Act 1) |
Tutti [All]
(meno Dandini) [except Dandini]
Andiamo, andiamo a tavola. [Come on; let's go to the table]
Si voli a giubilar. [Let's fly to rejoice in the feast]
Dandini
Oggi che fo da Principe [Today while I can still act the part of the Prince]
Per quattro io vuo' mangiar. [I will eat for four] (Cenerentola Finale Act 1)
The marriage is particular effective and visible in the context of tech and law making--as development and deployment according to rule grounded in the efforts of éminence grise yoked to that task. See, e.g., (1) U.N. Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Offers Platform to Build Safe Systems and Open Call for Candidates: (2) Reflections
on Brainstorming Roundtable Hosted by Surya Deva, UN Special Rapporteur
for Development (29 Nov 2023): "business models for inclusive
sustainable development". The United States has been no stranger to these trends, and in a sense has led them since before Lenin managed to articulate his version of revolutionary vanguardim in "What is to be Done?" (1901-02). This has emerged from out of the shadow win the new era of historical development of the Republic especially in the relationship between tech based innovation of productive forces and the role of the state in directing, managing, and guiding that development (Liberal
Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech
Driven Social Progress: Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless
Frontiers Retreat and "The Golden Age of American Innovation").
In that consideration of the emerging US AI and tech policy there was an element of Chinese style modernization, and with it, the techniques and sensibilities of a revolutionary vanguard:
6. The Structures of American Modernization. If, as Mr.
Kratsios suggests, the American ideological operating system requires
direction (its coders and quality control functionaries) , and that this
direction is both collective and political, then analysis can narrow
down to the precise expression of that guidance in any stage of national
historical development. Here Mr. Kratsios gets down to some directional
detail:
"Our first assignment is to secure
America’s preeminence in critical and emerging technologies. This
administration will ensure that our nation remains the leader in the
industries of the future with a strategy of both promotion and protection—protecting our greatest assets and promoting our greatest innovators. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
Market
driven innovation has political consequences, those consequences are
the responsibility of the political hierarchy, the apex hierarchs have a
responsibility for developing policy (mandatory and nudging) as a
current expression and application of core principles bent toward the
realization of ultimate goals. Here the political goal is to shape the
market, and the direction of individual or private, activities within
it, toward a metrics accessible (assuming agreement on the principles on
which the metrics are based and the forms of measurement) goal--(1)
preeminence, in (2) critical and emerging, (3) tech, (4) built around,
(5)industries of the future, (6) through a national political strategy ,
(7) of promotion and protection, of (8) the critical factors of its
production. It is in this objective that the failures of "left error"
become most apparent to Mr. Kratsios:
To the degree it
even tried to accomplish this, the Biden administration failed on its
own terms, led by a spirit of fear rather than promise. The old regime
sought to protect its managerial power from the disruptions of
technology, while promoting social division and redistribution in the
name of equity. They secured American technology poorly, and failed to
strengthen our leadership at all. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
To overcome this left error, Mr. Kratsios suggests, the state apparatus must be burdened with three responsibilities:
First,
we have to make the smart choices of creatively allocating our public
research and development dollars. Second, we have to make the right
choices in constructing a common-sense, pro-innovation regulatory
regime. And third, we have to make the easy choice to adopt the
incredible products and tools made by American builders and to enable
their export abroad. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
Strategic
use of research funds by the state, high quality innovation in
regulatory regimes bent toward the fulfillment of policy goals, and then
the aggressive export f the products of this model elsewhere (both the
model of innovation and its products). These then suggest a large range
of recent actions undertaken by the Trump administration against
officials, institutions, and intergovernmental relations that are viewed
as either remnants of left error or that are in the way of the state
undertaking these strategies as they understand them. Mr. Kratsios
summarizes with respect to these three State objectives what has already
been widely reported in the press: taking back and re-arranging State
research funding to align with State objectives; regulatory reform also
tied to State objectives and the rectification of the
techno-bureaucratic establishment so that its working style will align
with State objectives; and the re-invigoration of a re-imaged 19th
century form of American merchant diplomacy and integrated economic
order. (Liberal
Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech
Driven Social Progress)
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| Pix Credit here (Columbia "Brain Trust") |
The project now continues. On 24 November, President Trump issued a Press Release: President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for Scientific Discovery. The Genesis Mission Press Relase described an earlier issued Executive Order: Launching the Genesis Mission.
The announcement builds on President Trump’s Executive Order Removing Barriers to American Leadership In Artificial Intelligence and advances his America’s AI Action Plan released earlier this year—a directive to remove barriers to innovation, reduce dependence on foreign adversaries, and unleash the full strength of America’s scientific enterprise. Secretary Wright has designated Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil to lead the initiative. The Genesis Mission will mobilize the Department of Energy’s 17 National Laboratories, industry, and academia to build an integrated discovery platform. The platform will connect the world’s best supercomputers, AI systems, and next-generation quantum systems with the most advanced scientific instruments in the nation. Once complete, the platform will be the world’s most complex and powerful scientific instrument ever built. It will draw on the expertise of roughly 40,000 DOE scientists, engineers, and technical staff, alongside private sector innovators, to ensure that the United States leads and builds the technologies that will define the future. (Energy Department Launches ‘Genesis Mission’ to Transform American Science and Innovation Through the AI Computing Revolution)
The Executive Order describes the project as "a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges." (Launching the Genesis Mission, §2(a)).
[It] recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. (Ibid., §1)
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| Pix credit here (the adversary) |
It is meant to harness the best minds toward objectives that strengthen the Republic as that is understood by those in power in a State directed project that harnesses national productive forces toward those ends: "The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership." (Ibid., § 1). All of this is to be overseen by the core of leadership in (or of) the Republic, Michael Kratsios the "Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) [who] shall provide general leadership of the Mission." (Ibid., § 2(c)) and operationalized under the leadership of the Secretary of Energy (Ibid., §2(b). And it object--not merely to ensure the accelerated movement of the Republic's tech innovation forward, but to do so in a way that protects the Republic against these forces of internal chaos and external threat. This ties back to the Trump Administration objectives of moving toward a new golden age--the Republic's analogue to the Chinese Marxist-Leninist objectives of socialist modernization as an instrument essential to the project of national rejuvenation.
No fault here. But also a very nice sign both of the deep penetration of Leninist vanguardism as an essential element of techno-liberal democracy and with it the way in which the State, even in markets driven cultures, may deploy national productive forces, including human productive elements to suit its purposes, purposes that are manifested and realized through an interaction between knowledge producers and power holders. Perhaps left in its wake, and perhaps necessarily so, are the discursive ropes that once served to animate the Republic's sense of itself, even as it was changing from 1919.
And what is the measure of success? Victory!
But
there is no substitute for victory. ** * In a world so shaped by
politics as well as technology, we must take action in both of these
domains. We need all Americans to continue to rise to the occasion, to
make full use of their talents, and to build. (Ibid.)
To
those ends the masses must unite under the leadership and guidance of
the center to ensure that individual effort can be aggregated, in the
fundamental working style of American markets driven organization, to
"preserve the inheritance of the American Century to share with
posterity, and to ensure that the technologies that give shape to our
world help the American people secure the blessings of liberty we
received from our forebearers * * * and drive us further into the
endless frontier." (Remarks by Director Kratsios). (Liberal
Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech
Driven Social Progress)
To those ends, the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) will be developed. It will serve as "the
infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing, in an
integrated manner and to the maximum extent practicable and consistent
with law" (Ibid., § 3(a)) with the following capabilities:
(i) high-performance computing resources, including DOE national laboratory supercomputers and secure cloud-based AI computing environments, capable of supporting large-scale model training, simulation, and inference;
(ii) AI modeling and analysis frameworks, including AI agents to explore design spaces, evaluate experimental outcomes, and automate workflows;
(iii) computational tools, including AI-enabled predictive models, simulation models, and design optimization tools;
(iv) domain-specific foundation models across the range of scientific domains covered;
(v) secure access to appropriate datasets, including proprietary, federally curated, and open scientific datasets, in addition to synthetic data generated through DOE computing resources, consistent with applicable law; applicable classification, privacy, and intellectual property protections; and Federal data-access and data-management standards; and
(vi) experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
To what ends? Within 60 days of the date of the order, the Energy Secretary and their staff is to "identify and submit to" Mr. Kratsios, the APST, "a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance" what might be fodder for the Platform created under § 3. These are to "span priority domains consistent with National Science and Technology Memorandum 2 of September 23, 2025." (Launching the Genesis Mission, §4(a)). These are to include: "(i) advanced manufacturing; (ii) biotechnology; (iii) critical materials; (iv) nuclear fission and fusion energy; (v) quantum information science; and (vi) semiconductors and microelectronics.
In this project, the State is also to serve a coordinating and amplification role.
The Secretary, in coordination with the APST and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, shall establish mechanisms for agency collaboration with external partners possessing advanced AI, data, or computing capabilities or scientific domain expertise, including through cooperative research and development agreements, user facility partnerships, or other appropriate arrangements with external entities to support and enhance the activities of the Mission, and shall ensure that such partnerships are structured to preserve the security of Federal research assets and maximize public benefit.(Launching the Genesis Mission, §5(c)).
This, then, is how liberal democratic techno-brain trust-vanguardism works at the start of the second quarter of this century, and in the process re-shapes the Republic. Make no mistake, this is not a partisan project but rather one that the Republic's leadership has been working towards for more than a century. It aligns with the times and with the Republic's political economic model n a form relevant to the contradictions that threaten its forward movement along the American progressive pathway. In this form, the Republic's Leninism, long in gestation and dedicated to countering and overcoming the threat of Soviet Marxist class struggle Leninist vanguardism, now appears to assume a more prominent and coordinating role, a role of leadership and guidance over non-state productive forces, and in the name of national security and the safeguarding of the State from instability and chaos to assume a larger role in the management of non-state assets and the autonomous decision making of individuals that are its subjects. In the process both the nature and practice of brain trust liberal democracy and the relationship between individuals, the state and its law changes to suit the times.
And one of its great markers--the abandonment of the risk avoidance foundational premises underlying both the United Nations and European approaches to Artificial Intelligence. In that one sees that second dialectic, between law and technology, in which knowledge production and the needs of one drives and tends to shape the approach of the other. In the case of the United Nations and European éminences grise, knowledge production is grounded in risk avoidance which is then tied to and informed against a reading of constitutional traditions that serve to shape the nature and limits of that production (and use) of knowledge. In the case of the United States, the Leninist brain trust shapes law to facilitate a production of knowledge in the service of other identified fundamental challenges, one which reshapes and devalues risk as a constitutional (and therefore legal) value in shaping the law of high quality production in the service of the State, and from the State to the private sector.
Both President Trump's Executive Order, Launching the Genesis Mission, and his Press Release on the Genesis Mission, President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for Scientific Discovery, follows below. Make of it what you will from and through whatever cognitive lens suits.
All of this, as interesting as it might be, leaves unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, the critical question: how does the vanguard govern itself? The Chinese as children of the Soviet experiment offer us democratic centralism, normative objectivity, dictatorship of proletariat, and the mass line. It is not clear how liberal democratic vanguard forces mean to govern themselves and remain true to the foundational premises of the Republic (whether undertaken by either of the two currently principal political establishments).
