Short thread:

In this interview Liam Bright favoringly cites the work of Otto Neurath as the beneficial fruit bore by the Vienna Circle.

I think that this is an interesting window onto the worldview of Liam Bright & Co. Here is what Neurath believed and what Neurath did.

1/16 https://twitter.com/AaronRHanlon/status/1357360810515914753

In his own words in the screenshots below, Neurath expresses his economic goals, which were similar to “the economic organization that may have existed in ancient Egypt, where everyone’s life was directly or indirectly micromanaged by the King” as Lujo Brentano once noted.

2/16

If a cashless society with a central bank that controls mining, agriculture, and industry simultaneously doesn't strike you immediately as ludicrous, I'd recommend Weber's and Hayek's critique of central planning. But Neurath's legacy wasn't limited to silly economic ideas.

3/16

After being granted with the power of publication and dissemination of newspapers in the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Neurath put out a public statement about the newspaper's new mission, “The bourgeois newspapers are allowed to provide only a small part of political news....

4/16

They have no right to express a political opinion. They may offer instructional or entertaining articles to the public. But only free men, i.e. socialists from the majority party up to communists, have the right to freedom of the press” (p. 136: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Von_Kiel_bis_Kapp/wHAVAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Von+Kiel+bis+Kapp:+Zur+Geschichte+der+deutschen+Revolution&printsec=frontcover)

5/16

Neurath backed up this authoritarian talk by socializing all publications and putting its output under his ideological control. (p. 139, source: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_German_Revolution_of_1918/qQg4AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+german+revolution+lutz&printsec=frontcover)

But Neurath's most influential work was neither this nor his grand economic aspirations, but a....

6/16

Soviet institute known as IZOSTAT. Short for ""All-union Institute of Pictorial Statistics of Soviet Construction and Economy," IZOSTAT was the pictorial propaganda wing of the USSR. This institute did enormous damage, providing propaganda which helped to kill millions.

7/16

“Our method met with exceptional success in the Soviet Union. In 1931 the Council of People’s Commissars decreed that ‘all public and co-operative organizations, unions and schools are directed to use picture statistics according to the method of Dr. Neurath’” Neurath said.

8/16

During the Holodomor IZOSTAT put out mendacious graphs such as the one below. The 1932 crop yield is absent and the 1934 yield was never actual, only planned. This sleight of hand tried to show steady and praiseworthy improvement and hide the dead bodies behind these lies.

9/16

The graph above was an Isotype, a pictorial language created by Neurath. He worked for the Soviet government and created these graphs showing the amazing success of crop spraying when millions of people were starving—at least 6 million people perished during the Holodomor.

10/16

Celebrating this treatment of ethnic minorities, IZOSTAT put out Isotypes such as the one below, which features a quote by Stalin saying that “The building of socialism in the USSR is a period of flowering of national cultures, socialist in content and national in form.”

11/16

So why does any of this matter? Firstly, it's important to know history. Unfortunately, your average academic or philosopher—especially on Twitter—is less aware of the ugly intellectual history of communism as they are of the ugly intellectual history behind fascism.

12/16

Secondly, it's important to know what people believe, especially academics who hold beliefs which are widespread in the academy like Liam. Liam, as well as some of his friends, love to reveal what they believe only opaquely or through jokes. So when he does hint at who....

13/16

he admires, or occasionally what he actually believes, it's important to take note. When a logical positivist that Liam & Co. admires was an explicit authoritarian and chief propagandist for the Soviet Union, he should be pressed to explain what he admires and what he....

14/16

disavows, just as a right-wing admirer of Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger would and should be asked to do the same. I'm sure—or at least I hope—that Liam is aware of the ignominious facts that I've talked about in this thread.

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The extent to which he disagrees with Neurath, Carnap or anyone else is up to him to express. Till then, his lack of comment about these things is noteworthy, and should make one imagine what beliefs of his he's hiding.

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