File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_1997/aut-op-sy.9707, message 83


From: johngray-AT-geocities.com
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 03:37:57 +0000
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: French Bordigists


I'm not clear to what extent  Max Angers critique is aimed at what I 
wrote or the chunk of Mr Nobody I quoted. Whatever.

Max Anger wrote :

> But that is because I'd like to point out some important points - and
> because it so happens that the world wide repression system of democracy
> still isn't stopping me from pointing this out.

Could this have something to do with the role of the internet in 
extending and developing the globally repressive functions of 
democracy, including the ideology of free speech ?

> 1) Whatever level you believe the Nazi concentration camps were at, these
> camps were nothing but the normal result of capitalist war and peace . Mass
> murder, startvation, barbarism etc. are the standard for modern war and
> modern peace (I personally have no reason to doubt the standard historical
> line but this is beside the point).

Isn't communist critique about attacking capitalist barbarism ? Or is 
this all too much trouble ?

Later on you appear to  undercut your own argument when you state : 

    > Certainly Nazi Germany had some unique aspects of modern 
    > capitalist barbarism

Doesn't communist critique claim some strength from its ability to 
throw light on the 'unique aspects' of particular instances of 
barbarism, as with the 'unique aspects' of every real instance of 
capitalist social relations ? 

> 2) The demand anyone take the Nazi an exceptional rather than a NORMAL evil
> is the demand that a revolutionary accept every part of capitalist
> ideology. 

I trust that you are not unconsciously  retailing bourgois
arguments from the post war  'banality of evil' school which are of
course as ideological as the bourgeois arguments about the 'unique
evil' represented by Naziism.

> (This is only slightly difficult to see. Consider that the state
> of Isreal has justified every one of it's attrocities using using the camps
> as the justification. Even more, the Nazis were carried to power on the
> banner of anti-fascism - Hindenburg as "bullwork against fascism".
> Essentially, Stalinism and it's "moderate" children have built their
> empires on saying "why we want revolution, yes, but first we have to unify
> with capitalist against the greater evil of fascism. And a good deal of the
> modern capitalist system functions on this justification)

Left social-democrats including the bolsheviks used a mythology about 
the Paris Commune. Leftists have used a mythology about the Russian 
Soviets. Should we be insisting that these were 'NORMAL' rather than 
'exceptional' events for fear of being contaminated by the left wing 
of capitalism ?

 I think there are two contrasting ways of presenting capitalist 
barbarism. As opposed to the one you appear to favour I prefer that 
which says that there is nothing 'normal' about barbarism and horror 
and that  ALL  instances of capitalist barbarism have their 
exceptional aspects.

Obviously the Nazi regime wasn't the first to try to bond a 
modern nation state together by using racial ideology, nor the 
first to practise  genocide, nor the first to employ concentration 
camps - its uniqueness at this level,  to my mind, lies  in the 
attempt to apply an industrial rationality to the process of 
genocide.

Whatever - without some understanding  of how the Nazi regime was  
both uniquely barbaric in some respects while overall being  just one 
more instance of capitalist order I don't think one is well placed to 
account for its continuing  role in capitalist ideology.

> 3) Certainly the rightest "revisionism" scum are part and parcel of the
> capitalist system. But they have far less effective power than the
> different capitalist administrator who quite easily admit the existence of
> the camps but have carried many other halocausts in our generation.  

So what ? You seem to have missed the point that this arose as a 
topic of debate because a number of french ultra-leftists swallowed 
revisionist ideology (in part in the name of opposing anti-fascism 
and of attacking leftism) and some of them have gone on to extensive 
careers marketing it. This has provided an excellent stick for 
capitalist ideologues to use to attack all critiques of anti-fascism.

And contrary to the impression one might derive from your posting 
this was not because they denied that Naziism was uniquely evil, but 
because they denied that the gas chambers existed, and denied that 
there had been any deliberate attempt at genocide. 

> And
> certainly the leftism who wish to squash all revisionism are playing
> the game marketing a new system of repression to the state.

Bordiga reportedly argued that the worst product of fascism was 
anti-fascism. It is equally true that the worst product of leftism is 
anti-leftism. 

> 4) The tenor of discussion about Bordigaists accepting revisism 
has the
> tenor of "Ultra-leftists falling prey to original sin."  If you fall for
> that, you fall for anything.

Do you mean that this was just 'NORMAL' rather than 'exceptional' 
ultra-left stupidity ?

> Certainly Nazi Germany had some unique aspects
> of modern capitalist barbarism. America's dropping of atomic bomb on a
> major city also some uniqueness. I'm sure you could argue quite a few other
> uniquenesses but this is naturally a false and capitalist argument.

Two major cities actually, however I appreciate that these petty 
historical details are neither here nor there in the Max Anger school 
of critique. But perhaps I'm missing the point - are you suggesting 
that the answer to historical revisionism is to abandon history ?

> 5) This argument shows well the dominance of the modern spectacle. 

I couldn't put it better myself.

> My
> impression is that Barrot himself was put so much in the limelight in
> France that he was forced to give in to line of Nazi-uniqueness. The point
> is that relations between so-called revolutionary comrades can be given the
> glare of media simplificiation/distortion.

Ah, another "God that Failed". Then again perhaps the fact that 
Barrot had been attempting to distance himself from the more 
ludicrous ultra-left headbangers at the same time that he also broke 
with the ultra-left revisionists in the early eighties has something 
to do with his views today.

 > But fortunately, me as anonymous E-mail can still put forward a 
bit of
> opposition to this baloney. 

> Death to Fascism, Death to Anti-Fascism
> ASAN

Personally I'd always hoped communism was about getting a life.


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