Babel Versus Pentecost, or, the Dialectic of Linguistic Diversity

Abstract

The third chapter develops a specific aspect arising from the delay of communism: the question of language. This topic requires a fresh analysis of the range of Stalin’s thoughts on the topic. I argue that he glimpses the possibility of a dialectical understanding of language: the greater the totalising unity, the greater the linguistic diversity produced; the more diversity arises, the more does a new form of unity arise. The first part of the chapter analyses the initial stage of the dialectic, where Stalin indicates the unexpected creation of more languages as a result of Soviet practices. The second part deals with the question of unity, specifically in terms of the widespread ideal of an eventual universal language under global socialism. These two aspects indicate an underlying pattern that may be described in terms of a tension between the languages of paradise (or pre-Babelian language) and Pentecost, between Genesis 11 and Acts 2. Whereas the socialist tradition was influenced in its own way by the search for a universal pre-Babelian language (characteristic of European linguistic study), Stalin takes a different path, stressing tensions between unity and diversity in a way that strongly echoes Pentecost. However, Stalin’s thoughts on this matter are not always consistent, so when faced with questions, he resorts to a conventional stages theory of linguistic development, in which initial diversity would eventually lead to unity. Even when he deploys such a theory, we may discern a desire to push the final age so far into the future that it may well never come. The interim provides ample time for a more dialectical approach. In light of this position, it becomes possible to see the essay on linguistics (1950) as an anomaly. It results in a closing down of the dialectic in terms of a stability-flux opposition.