Re: Gore or Dubya? (fwd)
>the case. Essentially, the "lesser evil" strategy which helped to >facilitate Hitler's rise to power became central to the reformist left. >Of course, all of this is immaterial to non-Marxists. >Louis Proyect Very true. Actually, if one looks at the party politics of the pre-nazi germany, one can easily see that social democrats, the reformist left, were partially responsible for the rise of Hitler. Although social democrats were fully aware of the danger of Nazism, they preferred to go with the wind. Neumann, in _Behemoth_ goes into details of explaining the tension between social democrats and socialists before Hitler. When Hitler won perceivable number of seats in Reichtag, Rudolf Hilferding, a leading theoretician of social democracy and editor of the party gazette, wrote to the party saying that Hitler was not a big deal, and their major concern was to fight against communists and to prevent the spread of communism.Isn't this stupidly unstrategic when Hitler was on the horse? Almost few months after Hilferding's bold speech, Hitler took the power from the president. Neumann offers a counterfactual reading of history and epxlains why his counterfactual could not have worked under specific circumstances, looking at both the likelihood and limitations of a certain occurance (similar to Gramsci, but he was not a Marxist strictly speaking, of course, although leftish).What could have happened if social democrats had gone to a united front with communists (asuming that they would both constitute a majority in Reichtag, and oust Hitler)? N argues that this scenario although perceivable was still unlikely. Social democrats did not want to sacrifice the Weimar Constitution of which they were the architects, but they sacrificed the whole Germany and Jew people.It was a serious tactical mistakeMaybe, communists could have been more tactical too, and sacrificied a litle bit of Stalinism... Mine
Re: Re: Gore or Dubya? (fwd)
> >the case. Essentially, the "lesser evil" strategy which helped to >>facilitate Hitler's rise to power became central to the reformist left. > >>Of course, all of this is immaterial to non-Marxists. > >>Louis Proyect > >Very true. Actually, if one looks at the party politics of the pre-nazi >germany, one can easily see that social democrats, the reformist left, >were partially responsible for the rise of Hitler. Although social >democrats were fully aware of the danger of Nazism, they preferred to go with the wind... Didn't Thaelmann confidently welcome the fall of Weimar and the accession to power of Hitler, saying that in six months the masses will turn to us? Most others see the social democrats as playing a positive role in trying to preserve the constitutional Weimar government against both the Nazis and the Communists, each of which thought that *they* would pick up the pieces when Weimar fell. I didn't know there were any supporters of the policies of the Comintern's "Third Period" still around; I thought they had all been purged during the "Popular Front" period... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Gore or Dubya? (fwd)
My reading of Neumann is that both Thaelmann and Hilferding refused to go to a coalition. It was a strategic mistake on both parts, especially when Hitler lost some seats in *second* Reichtag elections, and was in a relatively weaker position to be ousted by a united majority. it did not happen that way due to domestic and international circumstanes (Neumann lists them one by one). From my own perspective, it seems that if Hilferding was not so concerned with proctecting the Weimar constitution and accepted a coalition with communists, the course of the events might have been different. Counterfactually speaking, if coalition had happened, Germany could have entered a socialist phase rather than retrogressing into fascism. So you have to choose between either sacrifiying the weimar const or accepting fascism. From a democratic point of view, I would have chosen the first rather than allowing the fascists to make use of the Weimar Constitution, as Hilferding did. In the mean time, of course, communists should have not simply expected the "masses" to turn to them, or seen fascism as the highest stage of capitalism--something to be mechanistically superseded. Brilliant Gramsci reminds this mistake to us when he says that socialism was passified in Italy due to idealistic beleif in the unilinear conception of history. Mine > >the case. Essentially, the "lesser evil" strategy which helped to >>facilitate Hitler's rise to power became central to the reformist left. > >>Of course, all of this is immaterial to non-Marxists. > >>Louis Proyect > >Very true. Actually, if one looks at the party politics of the pre-nazi >germany, one can easily see that social democrats, the reformist left, >were partially responsible for the rise of Hitler. Although social >democrats were fully aware of the danger of Nazism, they preferred to go with the wind... >Didn't Thaelmann confidently welcome the fall of Weimar and the accession to power of Hitler, saying that in six months the masses will turn to us? Most others see the social democrats as playing a positive role in trying to preserve the constitutional Weimar government against both the Nazis and the Communists, each of which thought that *they* would pick up the pieces when Weimar fell. >I didn't know there were any supporters of the policies of the Comintern's "Third Period" still around; I thought they had all been purged during the "Popular Front" period... >Brad DeLong
