From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
Subject: Re: works on FS/Neumann/Nuremberg
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:34:13 -0500


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Michael,
    Your article clearly indicates the "religious persecution" area was a red-herring; his brief (as well as the "world conquest conspiracy" brief), a forced business, violently contorting the usual practice of ruling class ideological discipline (as cornwell points out, where concordats were possible institutional integrity could be guaranteed) for optimal propaganda value; that he himself considered it so (the "real work" was economic); and that OSS had every intention of precluding "real work" prosecution.  They were putting on a show, a morality play for the canaille; not validating the rule of higher level law...advancing the spirit of western civ.
     The question of the OSS motive in chosing Neumann is also apparent within this framework: on account of his stature and real knowledge of the enemy, as part in a great battle of bureaucratic and ideological de/reconstruction, he was an enormous asset,...the technique of the oblique brief, simply a control mechanism.  Perhaps more interesting is the question put the other war round: why did Neumann enlist and contribute mightily to the military destruction and vassallage of his homeland? ...simply need a job?...on orders from kremlin (as you suggest he was dbl'd)? ...or was he perhaps possessed of a naive faith in the dialectic of enlightenment institutionalised in the constructing of law?

Isn't this much in your article, Michael?...I agree with yer pts re the scientific integrity of his R&A, but his, as well as US,  motives and goals, and linked with actual consequences and responsibility, are still an issue, no?... and surely not trivial or vulgar at all?

respectfully,
bob
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: MSalter1-AT-aol.com
  To: frankfurt-school-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 2:19 AM
  Subject: Re: works on FS/Neumann/Nuremberg


  Bob

  Much of the Nuremberg project was increasingly out of synch with emerging US cold war imperatives and the American authorities even wanted to suppress the trial record once the trials were over, so I would not see it in these stark terms. Neumann was it appears also working for the KBG at the time too (See Haunted Book). The crunch issue was over the economic case against Industrialists which would have led to embrassment given US links and the anti-capitalist implications. Neumann, who lost family members in the Nazi holocaust has been attacked for the influence of Behemoth over Nuremberg prosecutors as overly functionalist. I have tried to reply to this in my contribution to Bob Fine's Social Theory After the Holocaust. Marcuse's introduction to Neumann's posthumous book Democratic and Authoritarian state gives some clues here.

  Neumann's analysis is far more empirical and attuned to the contingencies and complexities and contradictions that can be summed up in the bald terms you suggest, which is why I prefer it (and that of Kirchheimer) to some of the more a prior social analysis of many of the other members of the FS, even those these are more philosophically sophisticated.

  best wishes

  Michael

HTML VERSION:

----- Original Message -----

From: MSalter1-AT-aol.com

To: frankfurt-school-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 2:19 AM

Subject: Re: works on FS/Neumann/Nuremberg

Bob

Much of the Nuremberg project was increasingly out of synch with emerging US cold war imperatives and the American authorities even wanted to suppress the trial record once the trials were over, so I would not see it in these stark terms. Neumann was it appears also working for the KBG at the time too (See Haunted Book). The crunch issue was over the economic case against Industrialists which would have led to embrassment given US links and the anti-capitalist implications. Neumann, who lost family members in the Nazi holocaust has been attacked for the influence of Behemoth over Nuremberg prosecutors as overly functionalist. I have tried to reply to this in my contribution to Bob Fine's Social Theory After the Holocaust. Marcuse's introduction to Neumann's posthumous book Democratic and Authoritarian state gives some clues here.

Neumann's analysis is far more empirical and attuned to the contingencies and complexities and contradictions that can be summed up in the bald terms you suggest, which is why I prefer it (and that of Kirchheimer) to some of the more a prior social analysis of many of the other members of the FS, even those these are more philosophically sophisticated.

best wishes

Michael