a marxist history of the world- counterfire
- Thread starter barney_pig
- Start date
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Dunno about that but here is the sort of conversation about Trostkyism and the second world war that should be made mandatory reading:
http://discussion.newyouth.com/index.php?topic=471.0;wap2
http://discussion.newyouth.com/index.php?topic=471.0;wap2
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened. none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust. It did not guide or motivate their actions in anyway. it is well documented that even when they knew they could save lives by bombing train lines servicing the death camps, they didnt. The history of hither to existing society, is the history of CLASS struggle.
And if you believe that the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class, then challenging the audience who may believe the "we were fighting fascism" analysis with an alternative analysis which places blame squarely with the world's ruling classes, and their imperialism seems reasonable to me. I don't think people like some of you would have been his target audience.
Of course there may be better analysis than the "imperialist war" analysis, but I haven't seen anybody point to one yet.
And if you believe that the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class, then challenging the audience who may believe the "we were fighting fascism" analysis with an alternative analysis which places blame squarely with the world's ruling classes, and their imperialism seems reasonable to me. I don't think people like some of you would have been his target audience.
Of course there may be better analysis than the "imperialist war" analysis, but I haven't seen anybody point to one yet.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
'Germany' (your usage) wasn't interested in the holocaust? How then did it happen?
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
cover the general point first. You agree don't you?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
They didn't though did they?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
yes they were. you think that killing off large swathes of the working class and diverting people's anger towards a scapegoat, and one of the central themes of fascism which is to "unite" all classes "for the good of the nation" wasn't anything to do with class struggle?
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
sorry, I've already corrected the typing. Well speech recognition error.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That is your general point. That the holocaust was almost incidental. That 'Germany' (your usage - you've not specified what you mean by this term) had no interest in the holocaust.If so, why were so many resources spent on putting it into motion over such a long period and not into military initiatives? You should be able to say why.
And no, of course i don't agree with it.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
you think it's reasonable to ignore how and why a fascist dictatorship managed to industrialise genocide on a scale the world had never known? what in fascism and what in the conditions that regime existed in enabled it to do this? and vast resources were spent on the genocide which could have been channelled into military operations but weren't.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
OH,okay. So would you mind just pointing to the kind of analysis of the Second World War you would subscribe to.
no my general point was " none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust."
I emphasised the point none of the worlds ruling classes.
But going back to Germany. Perhaps I should have added the words, as a motivation for going to war, but I thought that was covered in a guide to their actions.
I'm not taking the piss, you and panda seem to be the expert on this, what percentage of the German rulingclass, excluding Hitler and the other idiots, were really motivated by the Final Solution would you estimate?
is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?
Churchill once said in Parliament, "if I had to choose between socialism and fascism, I cannot say I would choose the former". In my opinion this is what motivated the German ruling class, not a desire for the Final Solution. The Final Solution is something they got lumbered with. The German ruling class tried to ride a tiger, little did they know they'd end up inside her.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
you liked this post.
if you are asking why Neal Falkner left it out, I would say because he rightly considered the Holocaust was not the motivation or guide to the actions of the vast vast majority of the world's ruling classes.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Your point - general or not - was that the holocaust was not a central or determining component of the war or the motivations for it - so therefore it's fine to leave it out of any account of the war. If that was the case then why did the German state, the nazi regime, the German military and the various competing component parts of the polyocracy expend so much effort time and resources on it, directing them away from military or other productive operations? You should be able to say why - it should fit easily and seamlessly into your analysis. If you cannot answer it then this analysis has a pretty fatal problem. And 'Germany' getting 'lumbered with it' is not any sort of answer.
JimW
支那暗杀团
There's that good Postone article on it that points out how much resources the german state was diverting to the murder programmes even as they were losing the war: http://libcom.org/library/anti-semitism-national-socialism-moishe-postone
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
There was also an interesting talk about Marxism and the holaucast at Marxism a few years ago by a bloke called Maitland whose main argument was that the capitalists on Germany didn't like the effect of forced emigration of Jewish labour but embraced the logistical issues around the extermination camps with some ease.
In fact what could be argued was that it was precisely the unwillingness by the to be allies to accept Jewish immigrants per war that led to the conditions for the final solution.
In fact what could be argued was that it was precisely the unwillingness by the to be allies to accept Jewish immigrants per war that led to the conditions for the final solution.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Frank Maitland?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
nope but I have found him ,Henry Maitless : http://swpradiocast.bandcamp.com/track/marxism-the-holocaust-marxism-2011
"are you a fascist?"
"Yes mate, NF (Neil Faulkener)."
"Yes mate, NF (Neil Faulkener)."
barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
Rmp3s dishonest postings are sick, and show us how far his politics have taken him, the holocaust being a detail of history. But is worth asking, if the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews is not to be mentioned as it was not central to the German war aims then why were Stalin's mass purged and the Bengal famine included?
When Rmp3 ever gets around to bothering to read the article he is knowledgeable about, he migjt also answer why in part 83 NF can only mention the holocaust in opaque terms and even then only after talking about the suffering of the German people during the soviet advance into Germany.
When Rmp3 ever gets around to bothering to read the article he is knowledgeable about, he migjt also answer why in part 83 NF can only mention the holocaust in opaque terms and even then only after talking about the suffering of the German people during the soviet advance into Germany.
Red Storm
M14
Always annoys me when the other millions of leftists, trade unionists, homosexuals, disabled, Poles, Gypsies and Slavs are forgotten.
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
He's from Glasgow, decent fella as it goes.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Halfway through that - rmp3 could do with a listen to that, or even with reading Callinicos on marxism and the holocaust.
Glad to say that he doesn't go anywhere near the unbelievably crude sort of analysis that simply divides the period into 1) motivations (and of a homogenous bloc called germany) and 2) how these claimed motivations panned out. That sort of thing misses firstly, the competing motivations of different parts of the regime and secondly how the failure or success of meeting those ends can itself lead to a process of 'cumulative radicalisation' (to use Hans Mommsen's phrase). In this case the failure to ideologically and militarily destroy the USSR in 1941 led to a radicalisation of the work of the einsatzgruppen and the decision to embark on industrial genocide, not as some mere side-detail but as one of the central aims of the most powerful section of the competing power blocs and with the agreement of the lesser power groups. That's why to ignore the holocause is to ignore a key part of ww2 and pretty much all the really important surrounding context. Even in two 3000 words pieces there is no need to be that simplistic.
edit: There's another good example of that interconnection between the wider capitalist motivations and anti-semitism as functional to them that Maitless nearly touches on but goes around in the end. The orignal plan was to expel the jews - but to do it on a sort of basis of domestic primitive accumulation, that is, first special taxes on jews as hard as possible, expropriation of businesses, investments and bank accounts - then to make the issue of exit-visas directly tied to giving up all your property and money to the state - and all this extra potential capital flowed back to expanding German capital at a rate subsidised firstly by theft and then financial double-tricks by the German state. This expansion of industry led to wider conflicts between German capital and German workers in 1937-39 period, which put Hitler's longer term plans for eventual war under threat and forced him/them into fighting an earlier war in order not to allow their enemies time to open up a wider military gap.
edit: and a third point, Maitless points out that at the moment of utmost military danger to the German state their one of their central objective - to the disregard of other more urgent measures (to a mind concerned with military victory anyway) - was how to get the Thessalonian jews to the death camps.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Does anyone recognise the person who does the first comment after Maitless - about 35 minutes in.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Increased industrial output, especially amid other economies on a similar footing, doesn't equate to economic or industrial dominance.
To take up a point made at the end of post #72 MP3:
is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?
This does raise the rather thorny issue of quite what a "Marxist perspective" actually is. A crude reductionist "Marxism" sees "all history as the history of class struggle" for instance (Ok the Communist Manifesto was a crude propagandist pamphlet for the International Workingmens Association, not Marx's considered view necessarily, but it does colour a lot of subsequent "Marxist analysis").. which is quite obviously bullshit, (eg, explain the rise of the Mongol Empire simply though Class Struggle ) but not as catchy as "Throughout history there's been quite a lot of class struggle, which has sometimes been an important driver of events and change" Also, the crude reductionist view that the "ideological superstructure" is completely dependant on , and a direct reflection of , the "economic base" and ruling class interests, rather than often it itself being a semi-independent driver of events, reflecting back on the structure and operations of the economic base, stands in the way of understanding events quite often.
By 1941 and the move to mass industrialised extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, etc, etc, it is quite clear that, whatever their initial cynical, tactical, accomodation with the racial madness of Nazism had originally been, the German Capitalist class was a completely cowed, subordinate player, to the ideology driven dynamic of the Nazi hierarchy and their racist global vision, and they and much of German society generally, had become entranced by the poisonous anti-Semitic ideological world view of Nazism, so that this, rather than the conventional imperialist objectives which drove Germany on the road to WWI, had become one of the PRIME war objectives of the mass of the German population and state - so indoctrinated had they become by relentless Nazi propaganda -- ie, the German state and people were "living the dream", not operating in relation to rational, economics-based, objectives at all.
By 1941, there is an argument that Germany under the by then total control of society by NAZIS had moved significantly away from conventional capitalism - to a peculiar new hybrid "NAZI SS State form" in which conventional market forces temporarily subsumed under wartime planned allocation systems would become permanent (a Planned permanent genocidal expansionist war economy) , combined with the gigantic and ever increasing usage of slave labour at all levels, substituting for wage labourers, industrial and domestic. So that, had for instance, the Nazis made less military tactical mistakes, and got the A bomb first (quite possible - without some mistakes by key German scientists) and won the war in Europe and the Soviet Union, the genocidal, expansionist SS militarist state that would have emerged would have been some quite new sort of industrial slave state, with closer connections to the economic model of Stalinist state capitalism (also using hordes of slave labourers for major projects - but not on the scale of 1940's Germany), than anything that had gone before -- consuming its captive populations in a frenzy of extermination and slave labour whilst ever greater numbers of military age Germans and their collaborators engaged in permanent warfare with the world power blocs led by , on the one hand, the USA, and on the other Japan.. Far fetched possibly, but the operational and ideological dynamics of Nazism in full flood should serve to discourage over-reductionist "Marxist" assumptions about the historical process. In particular a crude Marxism reductionism fails to alert us to the bizarre "circus of reaction" social forms capitalism can resort to rather than give up its power . Remember for much of the 30's the Left just assumed that "the unstoppable force of history" guaranteed the victory of socialism.. "After Hitler.. us" they said, as the round up squads came for the Left. No such automatic dynamic for proletarian victory exists in history I'm afraid.
is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?
This does raise the rather thorny issue of quite what a "Marxist perspective" actually is. A crude reductionist "Marxism" sees "all history as the history of class struggle" for instance (Ok the Communist Manifesto was a crude propagandist pamphlet for the International Workingmens Association, not Marx's considered view necessarily, but it does colour a lot of subsequent "Marxist analysis").. which is quite obviously bullshit, (eg, explain the rise of the Mongol Empire simply though Class Struggle ) but not as catchy as "Throughout history there's been quite a lot of class struggle, which has sometimes been an important driver of events and change" Also, the crude reductionist view that the "ideological superstructure" is completely dependant on , and a direct reflection of , the "economic base" and ruling class interests, rather than often it itself being a semi-independent driver of events, reflecting back on the structure and operations of the economic base, stands in the way of understanding events quite often.
By 1941 and the move to mass industrialised extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, etc, etc, it is quite clear that, whatever their initial cynical, tactical, accomodation with the racial madness of Nazism had originally been, the German Capitalist class was a completely cowed, subordinate player, to the ideology driven dynamic of the Nazi hierarchy and their racist global vision, and they and much of German society generally, had become entranced by the poisonous anti-Semitic ideological world view of Nazism, so that this, rather than the conventional imperialist objectives which drove Germany on the road to WWI, had become one of the PRIME war objectives of the mass of the German population and state - so indoctrinated had they become by relentless Nazi propaganda -- ie, the German state and people were "living the dream", not operating in relation to rational, economics-based, objectives at all.
By 1941, there is an argument that Germany under the by then total control of society by NAZIS had moved significantly away from conventional capitalism - to a peculiar new hybrid "NAZI SS State form" in which conventional market forces temporarily subsumed under wartime planned allocation systems would become permanent (a Planned permanent genocidal expansionist war economy) , combined with the gigantic and ever increasing usage of slave labour at all levels, substituting for wage labourers, industrial and domestic. So that, had for instance, the Nazis made less military tactical mistakes, and got the A bomb first (quite possible - without some mistakes by key German scientists) and won the war in Europe and the Soviet Union, the genocidal, expansionist SS militarist state that would have emerged would have been some quite new sort of industrial slave state, with closer connections to the economic model of Stalinist state capitalism (also using hordes of slave labourers for major projects - but not on the scale of 1940's Germany), than anything that had gone before -- consuming its captive populations in a frenzy of extermination and slave labour whilst ever greater numbers of military age Germans and their collaborators engaged in permanent warfare with the world power blocs led by , on the one hand, the USA, and on the other Japan.. Far fetched possibly, but the operational and ideological dynamics of Nazism in full flood should serve to discourage over-reductionist "Marxist" assumptions about the historical process. In particular a crude Marxism reductionism fails to alert us to the bizarre "circus of reaction" social forms capitalism can resort to rather than give up its power . Remember for much of the 30's the Left just assumed that "the unstoppable force of history" guaranteed the victory of socialism.. "After Hitler.. us" they said, as the round up squads came for the Left. No such automatic dynamic for proletarian victory exists in history I'm afraid.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Nobody has claimed that it was central, although any serious analysis of Germany's reasons w/r/t WW2 should include the final solution to the Jewish problem as an important secondary concern, in terms of productive labour and expropriated materiel.
"Including Germany", eh? Of course the ruling classes in Germany were interested in the Holocaust, you muppet. The Holocaust was a mechanism that allowed the German ruling classes to line their pockets, expand their holdings and embed their influence.
Because, of course, there was no other set of reasons why the lines weren't bombed.
Oh wait...
You miss the point. While the "imperialist war" thesis works, it only works in terms of analysing the work of the ruling class. It's not a case of offering "better", but a case of finding different, perhaps complementary, analyses that explain the war not just from the perspective of power.
barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
Thankyou ayatollah, proof that swp influenced people can make decent and thoughtful comments
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
look at your original question http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...world-counterfire.297781/page-2#post-11436349
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.
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