a marxist history of the world- counterfire

[TremulousTetra]

It is however what you have 'argued' - literally all you have said is that only economics counts (and you even get the economics wrong). It's scary just how crudely have reduced a very complex issue.

And I don't. I just don't accept that the Nazis were completely autonomous.

 

[butchersapron]

In a forum post!

Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Apart from giving you one myself and referencing others you mean? Or do you mean when I answered your demand for something equally shit yesterday?

got a hold my hands up, missd that one. I thought you said it was impossible. Having said that, there is a lot of the thread I haven't read yet. I will have a look for it.

The point is, that was my initial comment.

 

[butchersapron]

And I don't. I just don't accept that the Nazis were completely autonomous.

No one does. You are the one offering up simplistic analysis based on a homogeneous Germany, and a united ruling class. You are years behind.

 

[butchersapron]

got a hold my hands up, missd that one. I thought you said it was impossible. Having said that, there is a lot of the thread I haven't read yet. I will have a look for it.

The point is, that was my initial comment.

You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.

a reasonable analysis that doesn't include the holocaust?

No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments ONLY to "you HAVE TO talk about the holocaust". It is possible to shed some light upon the events of the Second World War, without talking about the Holocaust.

 

[TremulousTetra]

You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.

So why are you always stalking me?

 

[butchersapron]

You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.

So why are you always stalking me?

Can you make some sort of connection between my post and your reply here? Can anyone?

 

[butchersapron]

butchersapron said: ↑

Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.​

frogwoman said: ↑

a reasonable analysis that doesn't include the holocaust?​

ResistanceMP3 said: ↑

No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments ONLY to "you HAVE TO talk about the holocaust". It is possible to shed some light upon the events of the Second World War, without talking about the Holocaust.​

No, you didn't argue that it was possible - you said that this is what a reasonable overview should say, should look like - that the holocaust (and by extension all the directly related issues and processes that i went into in my long post and that you have ignored) was just something that 'germany' was 'lumbered with'.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Basically it's typical Socialist Worker paper crap, where complexities and grey areas are either papered over or simply ignored out of the patronising notion that the proles needn't know these details,just jump behind the party line instead.

precisely, a newspaper article.

By accounts on here, SW is a paper that has propelled many of you into being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today, as they were former SW members. so it must be pretty good at what it intended to do.

The Holocaust may be irrelevant for the allies motives for going to war but in an article that mentions a number of atrocities carried out during the war it's pretty mental to not mention the holocaust, it's almost like the author thinks that the holocaust serves to retrospectively null the allies actual reasons, or atleast that readers might think so.

what do you mean "the Holocaust serves to retrospectively null the Allies actual reasons"? Are you treating the Allies as homogenous? [Tongue firmly in cheek]

 

[butchersapron]

precisely, a newspaper article.

By accounts on here, SW is a paper that has propelled many of you into being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today, as they were former SW members. so it must be pretty good at what it intended to do.
what do you mean "the Holocaust serves to retrospectively null the Allies actual reasons"? Are you treating the Allies as homogenous? [Tongue firmly in cheek]

Can you point to anyone saying that the socialist worker paper has propelled them into "being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today"?

 

[Lock&Light]

Can you make some sort of connection between my post and your reply here? Can anyone?

I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.

 

[butchersapron]

I waste no time on you. You take not a second to swat away.

 

[Lock&Light]

I waste no time on you. You take not a second to swat away.

You would be shocked if you counted up how many minutes and hours those seconds have taken from your life.

 

[elbows]

frogwoman posting

this crude reductionist anti imperialist shit is what makes us look like cunts. i dont buy the fact that the main reason why the allies went to war was because of imperialism anyway - they did it to preserve their own power base in the wake of expansionism by germany. self interest? sure. but don't let your rush to condemn imperialist violence and the crimes of the allies mean that you end up portraying fascism as some kind of thing that's only seen as uniquely bad because the allies were the victors of the war.

I suppose emphasis is bound to vary depending on what story is attempting to be told - perhaps an analysis of the shifting empires, or of capitalism, industrialisation etc. There are loads of angles that can be taken, and the sheer scale of the fighting, the propaganda and the mechanised & flying aspects of the battles will draw the attention of some.

For me and Im sure plenty of others though, thats not really where the emphasis falls when it comes to 'learning the lessons' of that war. There are many other large wars and moves of empire which people can study for the same patterns, and its questionable as to what lessons can be learnt given that technology has moved on several generations since then, global balances have shifted, and economic interdependence and nuclear weapons have further reconfigued the board in a way that would make any potential world war 3 rather different to the last one. Likewise there is plenty else for marxist analysis to get its teeth into, stuff that isnt so emotive and so woven into the recent cultural landscape, not clouded by meaning so many different things to so many people, things often far abstracted from the realities of the war itself. It may be deemed worth the risk due to the potential to harness the powerful myths and truths fro your own cause, but it can easily end up a messy distraction rather than something illuminating.

The 'lessons which must never be forgotten' that are often referenced in sombre tones on certain days of the year throughout my lifetime, yet seldom expanded upon in mass media beyond gory details of the horror, are where the action is, and a lot of that is holocaust stuff. Lessons that may actually be useful in future, an understanding of the internal logic of the ideas behind the horror, what forces it was able to tap into, and what ends it served.

 

[elbows]

You would be shocked if you counted up how many minutes and hours those seconds have taken from your life.

The trick is to add value whilst engaging in the swatting.

It goes without saying that people are bringing their egos to the dance, but are they bringing anything informative and useful as well? Butchers can bring as much attitude as he likes as far as Im concerned, because when reading his post I dont just get to see him repeatedly tying people up in their own mistakes, or egos colliding, I actually learn something.

 

[Lock&Light]

The trick is to add value whilst engaging in the swatting.

It goes without saying that people are bringing their egos to the dance, but are they bringing anything informative and useful as well? Butchers can bring as much attitude as he likes as far as Im concerned, because when reading his post I dont just get to see him repeatedly tying people up in their own mistakes, or egos colliding, I actually learn something.

Good for you. I find it hard to see past the arrogance.

 

[elbows]

Good for you. I find it hard to see past the arrogance.

Perhaps you have seen well past it but you simply dont like what is on offer beyond it. If his analysis, worldview and line of questioning doesnt resonate with you at all then there is no added value for you there, especially if said analysis seems like a different, irrelevant universe, not stuff you would like to grapple with and pick apart in substantive detail.

 

[Lock&Light]

Perhaps you have seen well past it but you simply dont like what is on offer beyond it. If his analysis, worldview and line of questioning doesnt resonate with you at all then there is no added value for you there, especially if said analysis seems like a different, irrelevant universe, not stuff you would like to grapple with and pick apart in substantive detail.

Do you also teach your granny to suck eggs?

 

[elbows]

I tried but she said you stole all of the suck and hoarded it for yourself.

 

[Lock&Light]

I tried but she said you stole all of the suck and hoarded it for yourself.

Wierd grannys some people have.

 

[ayatollah]

Two points I've highlighted in your post, one and two.

1. From what you have said, I think you may have been at the Manchester SWP district educational where, I think it was Colin Barker, took up the issue of comrades incessantly using the phrase, the superstructure reflecting the economic base. He rubbished the idea of reflections. And he went on to make an analogy with the tug-of-war, where movement in one team effects the other team. Likewise the base and superstructure are in a dialectical relationship, not a reflective relationship. I have raised that point many times on here at much greater length, so I do agree with you about that.

Another example is the American Civil War. People spoke about the inevitability of the forces of production leading to a victory for the northern states. However, it wasn't the forces of production that ran into battle and won those victories, it was men and women with real dreams and aspirations in the heart.

2. I hadn't read this comment, when I made a similar comment in one of my posts.

my initial comments to this thread, were referring to the remarks made by piggy NOT NF.

I find the imperialist war and the suggestion that the Germans were interested in a division of the imperialist spoils, a reasonable analysis. Not the only analysis, but reasonable analysis. I don't think this analysis is worthy of ridicule or so gross to have elicited this kind of response.

I think it is a good power relations analysis of how and why the first and Second World War's happened. However, as I said, the German ruling class sought to ride the tiger, never knowing they'd end up inside her. If you are going to do a fuller analysis, a fuller history of the Second World War, you would have to go beyond the crudeness of the 1400 word article, you would go on to a lot of what you have started to point to.

Yup some fair points MP3. Surely you weren't at the SAME SWP educational with Colin Barker as I was, as that would be about 1977 !!! Colin Barker was a bit "reductionist" on the Nazis and anti Semitism..ie, "the German Capitalist Class needed the Nazis.. the Nazis wanted to kill the Jews.. so the German Capitalist class cynically went along with that.. full stop"

As you say the interpretation of "Base and ideological Superstructure" as being in an interactive (dialectical if you will) relationship with each other is important - and particularly , I think , in relation to the "imperialist War" issue here. My view is that from the German capitalist class perspective WWI and WWII are the same ,Classic Imperialist, war, with a longish break after losing round one..to reorganise and get the German nation fully geared up ideologically and physically to win the second round, The German capitalist class viewed the fascists as "hired help", like the orthodox Trot crude view of Fascism.. sees it as a simple con trick - mixing up some pseudo radical ideology with racism and nationalism - fix the blame for all the bad aspects of capitalism on the "other", the Jews.. and VOILA, the capitalist class get a street army of fascist boneheads to smash the Left, and a ready made battle-hardened force for the German Army to later recruit and conquer Europe..... Job Done. Unfortunately I in some ways actually agree with the Nazi Ideologists, Their ideology ISN'T simply a tool for the capitalist class to use to con and smash the workers. The Nazis do genuinely believe that they have a "Third Way" to run society - neither Capitalist or Communist -- so they are "fair weather friends" of the capitalist class.. very much with their own crazed, ideology-driven, agendas.

I don't think developed , in power, Nazism, is simply a pseudo radical front for ruling class traditional imperialist ambitions that the Left often claims. In the rise to power, certainly it is a tool of the capitalist ruling class to smash the Left , and confuse workers with racist and nationalist leanings about who their enemy is. In Spain the Falange never came out from under the Francoist military shadow to pursue its own agendas. In Italy, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons , including its lack of ideological clarity compared to Nazism (especially on anti-Semitism - relatively few Jews in Italy to build the ideology around) , Fascism never totally destroyed and replaced the traditional capitalist core state.

But in Germany, by the 1940's I would argue that in the ideologically driven totalitarian SS dominated Nazi State the traditional German ruling class had indeed "ended up in the belly of the tiger". The Nazi state reordered the German state's war aims - with the "rational" 19th and 20th century Imperialist aims of opening up markets for goods and capital being replaced in priority with essentially "irrational" aims to enslave and exterminate entire populations to both destroy the Jewish "bogyman" and to create "living space" for a competely backward looking Aryan agricultural peasant idyll -- with more in common with pre industrial concepts of conquest than modern Imperialism.

This is what I mean by saying that by 1941 the German Nation was both terrorised and ideologically brainwashed into "living the Nazi fantasy" . The Traditional Capitalist class was simply no longer in charge, and the rational demands of Imperialist capitalism were being subsumed constantly by the ideological imperetives of Nazism -- the "ideological Superstructure" was seriously running amok and shaping the base in crazier and crazier ways -- the ever increasing dependance on slave labour , and "destruction via labour", both resulting from the labour shortages produced by ever greater conscription -- but also feeding off the crazed "master/slave" dynamic of the SS state. Extermination of "subhumans/the "other" had taken on its own momentum, with ever larger groupings of people being identified for destruction - to be "processed" into commodities ...Soap , Hair, bonefertilizer in an industrialised murder process... 20th century Fascism meets the crazed dynamic of Aztec and Mayan mass ceremonial murder cults.

The all European landmass Reich State that I think was emerging , had the Nazis won the war.. was en-route to an entirely new sort of bizarre social formation - something akin to a centrally planned permanent war Industrial slave state - far, far more terrible than either a fascist capitalist state like Italy, or a stalinist state like the Soviet Union - but closer to Stalinism ( as "a society totally controlled by a political elite or caste in its own interests") than to the bourgeois capitalist state that the Nazis were handed power to by the "backs against the wall", capitalist ruling class in 1933. The German Capitalist class were RESCUED by the Allies in 1945 from a crazed Nazi tiger that was well on the way to dispensing with them altogether .

 

[Pickman's model]

no it doesn't. it's a 1400 word newspaper piece.

fucking here you go again.

 

[Pickman's model]

A link will do Pick.

Do you bother reading my posts or do you reply to what you think they should say?

 

[frogwoman]

What?

at the time when World War II happened Britain was completely overstretched in terms of its empire. I don't think that Britain went to war in order to capture more territory. The reason IMO why the british gov't went into war was because of the threat of a strong (or strong appearing) Germany capturing more and more territory in Europe and threatening countries where they had treaties, the possibility of disrupting trade etc. Hitler's activities were having a very destabilising effect. It wasn't much to do with empire building imo.

while it is true that the allies committed war crimes, they weren't on the systematic scale that the holocaust was on, neither was the aim to wipe out millions of people made an integral part of why the war was being fought. while horrific, they were incidental to the war effort, rather than becoming one of the main aims as it was for hitler.

 

[butchersapron]

Excellent review summary of the Adam Tooze book i mentioned earlier in the thread, from the trots at WSWS.

Hitler’s “intelligible response” to the contradictions of global capitalism

“The originality of National Socialism was that rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilise the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order. Repeating what Europeans had done across the globe over the previous three centuries, Germany would carve out its own imperial hinterland; by one last great land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States.... The aggression of Hitler’s regime can thus be rationalised as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today.”

It is only on the basis of grasping this “intelligible response” by the Hitler regime, which was shared by broad layers of the German ruling and military elite, that one can explain the ultimately crazed nature of Hitler’s military campaign whereby Germany and its fascist allies conducted a series of simultaneous wars against all of the major imperialist powers.

As Tooze explains later in his book, other aspects of the National Socialist strategy which are also often dismissed as simply incomprehensible—such as its campaign against European Jewry and the eventual mass destruction of the Jews—can only be fully understood in connection with the imperial aims laid down by the leading National Socialists in their program and policy statements. As Tooze notes in his introduction: “I emphasise the connections between the wars against the Jews and the regime’s wider projects of imperialism, forced labour and deliberate starvation.”

While Hitler had made anti-Semitism a stock in trade of his politics from the beginning of the 1920s [1] the annihilation of European Jewry in the course of the Second World War can only be properly understood in connection with the increasing crisis of the NS leadership and its plans for the colonisation of Eastern Europe in the wake of a series of military setbacks on the Eastern Front. Tooze writes: “If one accepts that the Judaeocide was an ideological end in itself, indeed an obsessive fixation of the Nazi leadership, then it is even possible to see the forced labour programme and the genocide less as contradictions than as complementary. Gauleiter (Fritz) Saukel’s success in recruiting millions of workers from across Eastern and Western Europe made the Jews appear dispensable.”

As the level of casualties within the German army rose to huge proportions, Hitler was increasingly forced to intensify the mobilisation of forced labour. From the start of 1942 to the summer of 1943, a total of 2.8 million foreign workers were forcibly transported to work in the German factories. The fittest of those incarcerated in the labour and concentration camps spread across Eastern Europe were selected for work. In a chilling passage, Tooze cites the criteria laid down by the Wehrmacht, outlining the relation between the availability of food and labour power.

“The concepts of normal labour, heavy labour and extra heavy labour have to be regarded in objective terms, independent of racial consideration, as a through-put of calories and muscular effort. It is illusory to believe that one can achieve the same performance from 200 inadequately fed people as with 100 properly fed workers. On the contrary: the 100 well-fed workers produce far more and their employment is far more rational. By contrast, the minimum rations distributed to simply keep people alive, since they are not matched by any equivalent performance, must be regarded from the point of view of the national war economy as a pure loss, which is further increased by the transport costs and administration.”

The bloodcurdling logic of this argument was clear. Under conditions where food was in short supply, it was preferable to dispense with a part of the forced workforce rather than keep alive malnourished workers unable to maintain production targets. The shortage of food in the middle of the war therefore became a powerful impetus for the systematic decimation of a part of the workforce, which according to Nazi ideology was of inferior stock—the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Tooze writes: “n the summer of 1942 it was the concerted extermination of Polish Jewry that provided the most immediate and fail-safe means of freeing up food for delivery to Germany.”

More at the link.

 

[frogwoman]

That book sounds fascinating Butchers, I'll have to get it.

 

[eoin_k]

Has RMP3 got around to reading an article yet?

I only ask because his contributions to this thread seem to be catching up with the word count of the article he hasn't the time to read.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Yup some fair points MP3. Surely you weren't at the SAME SWP educational with Colin Barker as I was, as that would be about 1977 !!! Colin Barker was a bit "reductionist" on the Nazis and anti Semitism..ie, "the German Capitalist Class needed the Nazis.. the Nazis wanted to kill the Jews.. so the German Capitalist class cynically went along with that.. full stop"

As you say the interpretation of "Base and ideological Superstructure" as being in an interactive (dialectical if you will) relationship with each other is important - and particularly , I think , in relation to the "imperialist War" issue here. My view is that from the German capitalist class perspective WWI and WWII are the same ,Classic Imperialist, war, with a longish break after losing round one..to reorganise and get the German nation fully geared up ideologically and physically to win the second round, The German capitalist class viewed the fascists as "hired help", like the orthodox Trot crude view of Fascism.. sees it as a simple con trick - mixing up some pseudo radical ideology with racism and nationalism - fix the blame for all the bad aspects of capitalism on the "other", the Jews.. and VOILA, the capitalist class get a street army of fascist boneheads to smash the Left, and a ready made battle-hardened force for the German Army to later recruit and conquer Europe..... Job Done. Unfortunately I in some ways actually agree with the Nazi Ideologists, Their ideology ISN'T simply a tool for the capitalist class to use to con and smash the workers. The Nazis do genuinely believe that they have a "Third Way" to run society - neither Capitalist or Communist -- so they are "fair weather friends" of the capitalist class.. very much with their own crazed, ideology-driven, agendas.

I don't think developed , in power, Nazism, is simply a pseudo radical front for ruling class traditional imperialist ambitions that the Left often claims. In the rise to power, certainly it is a tool of the capitalist ruling class to smash the Left , and confuse workers with racist and nationalist leanings about who their enemy is. In Spain the Falange never came out from under the Francoist military shadow to pursue its own agendas. In Italy, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons , including its lack of ideological clarity compared to Nazism (especially on anti-Semitism - relatively few Jews in Italy to build the ideology around) , Fascism never totally destroyed and replaced the traditional capitalist core state.

But in Germany, by the 1940's I would argue that in the ideologically driven totalitarian SS dominated Nazi State the traditional German ruling class had indeed "ended up in the belly of the tiger". The Nazi state reordered the German state's war aims - with the "rational" 19th and 20th century Imperialist aims of opening up markets for goods and capital being replaced in priority with essentially "irrational" aims to enslave and exterminate entire populations to both destroy the Jewish "bogyman" and to create "living space" for a competely backward looking Aryan agricultural peasant idyll -- with more in common with pre industrial concepts of conquest than modern Imperialism.

This is what I mean by saying that by 1941 the German Nation was both terrorised and ideologically brainwashed into "living the Nazi fantasy" . The Traditional Capitalist class was simply no longer in charge, and the rational demands of Imperialist capitalism were being subsumed constantly by the ideological imperetives of Nazism -- the "ideological Superstructure" was seriously running amok and shaping the base in crazier and crazier ways -- the ever increasing dependance on slave labour , and "destruction via labour", both resulting from the labour shortages produced by ever greater conscription -- but also feeding off the crazed "master/slave" dynamic of the SS state. Extermination of "subhumans/the "other" had taken on its own momentum, with ever larger groupings of people being identified for destruction - to be "processed" into commodities ...Soap , Hair, bonefertilizer in an industrialised murder process... 20th century Fascism meets the crazed dynamic of Aztec and Mayan mass ceremonial murder cults.

The all European landmass Reich State that I think was emerging , had the Nazis won the war.. was en-route to an entirely new sort of bizarre social formation - something akin to a centrally planned permanent war Industrial slave state - far, far more terrible than either a fascist capitalist state like Italy, or a stalinist state like the Soviet Union - but closer to Stalinism ( as "a society totally controlled by a political elite or caste in its own interests") than to the bourgeois capitalist state that the Nazis were handed power to by the "backs against the wall", capitalist ruling class in 1933. The German Capitalist class were RESCUED by the Allies in 1945 from a crazed Nazi tiger that was well on the way to dispensing with them altogether .

that's a really really good reply. Some points;

No I was definitely much later, I'm probably talking about a district meeting about late 90s, when Sean Verrnell was the district organiser.

I do not disagree with any of that. In fact you make a point to a discussion that has run on here for many years "Give up Anti-Fascism", that Fascism deserves special attention, because it poses such a despicable alternative to what we even have now.

There is no point in me picking upon any point you have made, because I am just going to agree with you.

The only point I would make is this. Not every article on the Second World War, HAS TO look at it from inside Germany outwards. You don't have to understand the internal dynamics of Germany, to have A look at the international affairs, the global perspectives, actions, dynamics, and consequences.

More generally, are Stalinism and Hitler's fascism central to, or aberrations to the general flow of the story of capitalism (1642-2012)?

There has been an awful lot of stuff written about the Second World War. And in my opinion the short article by Neil comes far closer to the best stuff I've read, than it does the worst stuff.

 

[TremulousTetra]

I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.

precisely. Sometimes I'm not sure whether butchers is trolling, feigning stupidity, or just blinded by his own perfection to what lesser mortals are saying.