File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-02.144, message 8


From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: M-I: Nietzche
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 13:36:20 -0500 ()


To Justin Schwartz,
     Really, Justin, you are imitating some other 
people on this list by misreading my post on Nietzche. 
I was responding to Doug Henwood's nearly total 
negativism by pointing out that indeed Nietzche had 
opposed the racism and nationalism of Wagner, among 
other things.  I view Nietzche as a mixed bag.  He 
said a lot of brilliant and insightful things, but 
if someone is following him as their lodestar, I find 
it fundamentally creepy.
     There are very good reasons for why the Nazis 
could see him as a hero philosopher.  Doug has 
provided some suitable quotes on "blond beasts" and 
"predators," to show what they could and did go for.  
I agree that mostly Nietzche's ubermensch was 
supposed to be a philosopher/artist, kind of a Wagner, 
actually, who certainly thought that Nietzche had him 
in mind, which he apparently did, for awhile...
     As for the argument about Stalin and Marx, well, 
there are passages in Marx that were used to justify 
the worst excesses of Stalin, as the fans of Stalin on 
this list would be quick to point out. But that does 
not mean that everything Marx said was bad or wrong and
I don't think it was.  The same goes for Hitler and 
Nietzche.
Barkley Rosser 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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