Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:51:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Perfidious Albion


On Sat, 7 Jun 1997, Mark Jones wrote:

> In any case, the policy floundered from the start. The problem of making
> deals with criminals is that it encourages them. Thus, commenting  on
> the Munich Agreement,  where Britain and France allowed Hitler to
> dismember Czechoslovakia, the  nazi  Hamburger Fremdenblatt 
> ominously remarked that 'England, with her feelings of honour, will be 
> the first to realise that a proud and mighty nation of 80,000,000 people 
> cannot tolerate  the thought that it has been deprived of its colonial 
> mission through a verdict imposed by violence'. So much for Versailles,
> and so much for the hope that Hitler could be assuaged by turning a
> blind eye to his eastern ambitions.
> 

This stuff is a big joke. It sounds like the voice over for a BBC
documentary. "So much for Versailles, and so much for the hope that Hitler
could be assuaged...." Blah-blah-blah. I could just hear the strains of
the Eroica Symphony in the background. Next week, episode 3, how Churchill
betrayed the hopes of a peace-loving planet. Brought to you in part by
Virgin Airlines.

So much psychologizing, so much moralizing, so much baloney.

World War Two was avoidable. The death camps, the A-bombs, Dresden, the
siege of Leningrad--all of it avoidable. When the German Communist Party,
under the direction of Stalin, urged the workers of Saxony to vote for a
Nazi referendum to unseat the Socialist government there, the seeds of
Hitler's victory were planted. After Hitler came to power, Stalin lurched
to the right and backed coalition governments with the capitalist class. 
The Popular Front should be studied for interesting initiatives taken to
foster the grass roots movement. As a formula for achieving socialism, it
was worthless. Since the only alternative to Nazi barbarism was socialism,
the half-assed measure of the Popular Front gave fascism just the leeway
it needed for victory. Out of the victories of Hitler and Franco, World
War II ensued as night follows day. 

All this is not a particularly "Trotskyist" analysis. The New Left
revisionist historians of the United States, most of whom emerged out of
the University of Wisconsin, cover this ground in rich detail. I recommend
Gabriel Kolko's "The Politics of War" especially.

Some people wonder whether the left has made any progress. I can assure
you that it has. In the 1950s, Mark Jones's analysis was accepted by a
left still dominated by the Communist Party. Today it seems like an
oddity, like some old issue of Soviet Life sitting in your uncle Mort's
attic next to the Paul Robeson 78's. My recommendation: burn the Soviet
Lifes and bring the Robesons downstairs for listening enjoyment.

Louis Proyect



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