At 07:14 PM 10/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>John, this didn't get to the list. Why don't you post it there and I might
>reply.
>
>Lou
>
>
>On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, john gulick wrote:
>
>> You sez:
>>
>> >Could you possibly be referring to Michael Mann?
>>
>>
>> I sez:
>>
>> Most of what little I know about popular support for the Nazis in inter-war
>> Germany is based on churning through a couple of sources this summer --
>> Hobsbawm's Twentieth Century book, and F.L. Karsten's _The German Workers
>> and the Nazis_. Given that you also cite Hobsbawm, it may well be that you
>> have either done your homework better than I, or just recall him better
>> than I. Karsten seemed like a lefty, but of what exact stripe I do not know.
>> I do recollect that he was sifting through and interpreting the evidence
>> with a clear eye toward understanding the reactionary implications of
>> affirming the "working class authoritarian personality" thesis.
>>
>>
>> You sez:
>>
>> >If he is correct, then there is something basically wrong with the Marxist
>> >approach, isn't there? If the Nazis attracted the working-class, then
>> >wouldn't we have to reevaluate the revolutionary role of the
>> >working-class? Perhaps it would be necessary to find some other class to
>> >lead the struggle for socialism, if this struggle has any basis in reality
>> >to begin with.
>>
>> To claim that the Nazis drawing some significant measure of working class
>> support poses a threat to the Marxist approach holds true if and only if
>> one subscribes to a stilted, deterministic variety of Marxism. One would have
>> to believe that there is a necessary relationship between social class
location
>> and collective understanding of interest, but certainly there are all sorts
>> of mediating influences that get in the way of this -- and why not ?!
Certainly
>> one shouldn't expect people's beliefs and actions to revolve merely around
>> their relation to the means of production. You yourself have argued for
>> a nuanced historical materialism. In my mind a nuanced historical
>> materialism of capitalism proposes that capital accumulation and crisis,
>> uneven development
>> spatially and temporally, the ever-changing social division of labor, and so
>> on,
>> structure the limits and possibilities of collective and individual
>> identities but does not dictate them.
>>
>> Without meaning to sound trite, obviously the truth of the remark that the
>> working class must play the leading role in building socialism depends on
>> what one means by "socialism," and the time and context in which the struggle
>> is taking place. To the extent that any genuine revolution must be waged by
>> and on behalf of the direct laborers, then yes, the working class must play
>> a principal role, but I would also argue that capital exploits and degrades
>> not just labor but other "conditions of production," and the commodification
>> and despoliation of these "conditions of production" affects class fragments
>> other than the working class formally defined and compels them to define
>> themselves and organize along lines other than those related specifically
>> to wage labor.
>>
>> >More specifically, Mann acknowledges
>> >that "Most fascist workers...came not from the main manufacturing
>> >industries but from agriculture, the service and public sectors and from
>> >handicrafts and small workshops."
>>
>> Yes, this pretty much accords with what I gathered from the Karsten book,
>> although I do believe he showed proof of significant Nazi support in a couple
>> of important mining/manufacturing sectors. Which is not to say that all
>> things considered the German working class formally defined did not
>> constitute the (unsuccessful) main target of and main line of defense
>> against rising fascism, only that stentorian proclamations about
>> good working class/bad petty bourgeois/bad big bourgeois are a bit
>> simplistic.
>>
>> And while I find your sectoral/class analysis informative and compelling,
>> it seems to me that while these political economic circumstances strongly
>> condition how it is that classes/class fragments conceive their material
>> interest, one can't presume from the start that defending/enhancing one's
>> livelihood is the only basis on which a political actor forges his/her
>> concept of material interest, or that the notion of material interest is
>> even meaningful to certain political actors.
>>
>> Anyway, I babble on.
>>
>> John Gulick
>> Ph. D. Candidate
>> Sociology Graduate Program
>> University of California-Santa Cruz
>> (415) 643-8568
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
