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willow
Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, pg 32 If one takes this extended Leninist model as the matrix for political philosophy, certain consequences would seem to follow. The first is that it would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the more motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action. This, in turn, requires an understanding of the existing social and political institutions. In politics "It would be good if ... (e.g., the tsar were overthrown)" means someone has decided that it would be desirable or advisable if this were to take place, or at any rate has entertained the possibility that this might be done. "Who is that?" is always a pertinent question. It also means that someone is in principle willing to try to implement "the good" that has been determined, even if the form that attempt at implementation takes is a series of weak and ineffectual actions that amount to no more than some seditious conversations, or committing to memory a subversive poem.13 See Nadezhda Mandelstamm’s Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (Atheneum, 1970).

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