Recently I submitted an article to CNS on "Harvey, Leibniz and Marx". As background research I delved into the 30 years war that took place on German soil in the mid-17th century and which traumatized an entire generation of Germans, including Leibniz himself. This war was the most devastating on European soil until the 20th century. It provided the backdrop for Brecht's "Mother Courage", a play that was as much about the horrors of 20th century imperialist war as the 30 years war of the 1600s. Nominally, the war was over religious differences between Protestant armies from the north arrayed against Catholic armies from the south. They used German soil for a battlefield while coming from territories beyond its borderlines. Over 25 percent of the rural German population was killed. While vulgar Marxists tend to explain every war as a simple fight over resources and markets, there is convincing documentation that this war was simply an expression of religious bigotry run wild. One of the aims of the Enlightenment was to move Europe beyond these crazy internecine struggles that drained national treasuries while sending young men to an early grave. Philosophers like Leibniz and Spinoza preached religious tolerance. Leibniz went so far as to study Chinese culture and philosophy since he believed that its sophistication was proof that all of humanity was capable of enlightened thought. Eventually the mode of production caught up with the thinking of these philosophers, and parliamentary democracy and religious tolerance became the rule of the land. Socialists of the 21st century are the heirs of this previous generation. We are confronted by insane wars everywhere we turn. While the planet can provide everybody the necessities of life and ample leisure time to enjoy them, we face a tiny, cruel and barbaric ruling class whose existence is based on private ownership of the means of production and the profit system. And they create war after war after war. The difference between our and Leibniz's generation is that we can not wait for the mode of production to mature to the point where the objective conditions for true--namely socialist--democracy are met. The urgent imperative of Marxism is to revolutionize the mode of production so that true enlightenment can take place in its tracks. For the past ten years--coinciding with the collapse of the Berlin Wall--we have been lulled into thinking that socialism would be meaningful only as a way to smooth the rough edges of the system. Groups like DSA and the German Greens seemed to fill this niche perfectly. Now that they have become proponents of war and barbarism, it is clear that a new political direction is required. Out of the wreckage of the Marxist left, a new revolutionary left will be built. In years past, this goal might have seemed utopian or pointless. Today it seems like the only reasonable choice before us. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
