Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 23:47:14 +0200
From: Hinrich Kuhls <kls-AT-unidui.uni-duisburg.de>
Subject: M-I: Disgust


Few days ago we have been witness of the fact that the critique of
Goldhagen's argument - as offered by James Heartfield and others -
actually is based on another theoretical-political premiss: No matter which
country or which time - the masses are willing executioners - hence it does
not matter whether their leaders are fascists or social democrats.

James Heartfield has corrected what he calls a lapsus linguae.

Only few hours later Louis Godena condescended to post his review of the
Goldhagen controversy on this list.

>Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 21:46:31 -0400 (EDT)
>To: marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
>Subject: M-I: Whose Willing Executioners?

>I see nothing wrong in comparing our present crop of politiCIAns to Hitler,
>nor any necessary incongruence in comparing their misdeeds to those
>committed by the Nazis during 1933-45.  I think the reign of terror
>unleashed by Lyndon Johnson's CIA in Indonesia during the months following
>September 1965 is quite comparable to that put into place by the SS in, say,
>the Ukraine in 1941-42.  Hitler, in one way or another intended the deaths
>of many millions. The US, on the other hand, always accepted that the death
>of many millions is inevitable if its "national interests"  are to be
>protected -- in other words, if its power is to be maintained.  In 1954 in
>Guatemela, for example, the US embassy "fingered" those to be killed, and
>recorded those deaths as efficiently as the Nazis.  Where, I wonder, is the
>"moral" distinction between killing and "fingering" those to be killed.  
>
>I can't see that it exists myself.

Then he repeats and emphasizes his argument in his next post to this list:

>Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 22:40:21 -0400 (EDT)
>To: marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU,
>        marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
>Subject: Re: Putting People Outside of History (was Re: M-I: Whose Willing
Executioners?)

>Andy, whenever you start with God's Chosen People, Manifest Destiny, The
>Aryan Master Race, or some similar shoddy pretense, you're going to end up
>with people getting clipped.  It happened at Auschwitz in the 1940s, Wounded
>Knee in the 1890s, and it is happening today at the Negev Desert death camps
>in southern Israel.  Dachau was an echo of Camp Grant, Arizona when settlers
>killed hundreds of men, women, and children ("nits make lice" was a popular
>frontier aphorism in 1871).  The same purpose is essentially served at the
>Golem prison, albeit in a modern "democratic", "geopolitical" setting.
>
>To say "Jews were killed because they were Jews" is to ignore the social
>history and class divisions of three hundred years of central and eastern
>European history.  It is to posit the Jewish experience as unique, as an
>ideal that cannot be re-produced.  It is, finally, to alibi the genocide
>against the Palestinian people by the modern Israeli fascist state.

With the exception of Andrew Austin who pointed to the ahistorical view of
Godena's reflection ONCE AGAIN nobody else of the active members of this
list has been inclined to reject such crap.

The reactionary sense of this superficial view is condensed in the phrase
of "Auschwitz as an echo" of something else. "Auschwitz as an echo of the
Gulag" has been the battle-cry of both the far right and the neofascists
since decades in trying to dispose history. Yet they have failed. They made
- and are making - another attempt to rewrite history by using the
criticism of Goldhagen's book and of his method to pose the problem for
disposing this still unresolved research topic into the dustbin of history.

By putting the question *whose* willing executioners Godena eliminates the
masses as acting subjects, and the series Hitler, Blair, Johnson could be
expanded as long as you like: Indifference instead of analysis of a
concrete historical situation. By denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust
he ends up as an advocate of the theory of history made by great men -
Andrew has already pointed to this consequence of the theoretical views of
the critics of Goldhagen's argument.

The crisis of the Weimar republic and the fascist crisis solution was a
developmental phase of modern bourgeois society in which latent
anti-semitism was re-activated. Goldhagen's study focus on the final change
of quality within the fascist ruling system. This is the political
significance of his book: to point to a gap or weakness in the analysis of
this final change of quality by both bourgeois AND Marxist
historiographers. The persistence of his critics on this list is firstly
due to the fact that he forces them to rethink their understanding of
fascism and the acting of the masses within this personal form of class rule.

Rethinking the acting of the masses they are - secondly - forced to rethink
their understanding of the causes of the defeat of the working class which
lead to the ascent of the Nazi regime. The theses of social fascism and the
betrayal of the masses by its leaders do not last longer if you are forced
to look at the real causes of the defeat of the German working class at the
end of the Weimar republic. If you want to analyse the societal blockade of
those two decades, the crisis-laden transformation process of capitalism in
Germany [and other parts of Europe] into a Fordist developmental direction,
you have to throw overboard left-radical, sectarian views on the
development of class consciousness - and you have to analyse the real
causes of that blockade. Of course this causes resistance: the need to say
goodbye to much loved, but outmoded theories.

And there is a third reason why this current is outraged:

"Since my book's publication, I have come to realize that my book is not
just about the past. The enormous discussion that it has produced,
especially here in Germany, has led me to understand ever more that the
book is relevant to the future." (Goldhagen)

It is evident that most of the capitalist metropolitan countries are
approaching - or are already in the midst of it - a social situation that
is comparable to the crisis situation in the interwar years. Those who do
not see the political meaning of Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing
Executioners" - whichever weaknesses it might have - even do not have a
consistent explanation for the current blockade and for the crisis
situation of contemporary capitalism at the end of its Fordist stage. They
have to rethink their specific views of Marxian theory and socialist
politics. And as all sectarians this is the last thing what they are going
to do: to say goodbye to their shibboleth and to get involved in an
analysis of the real live of the masses and to participate in revolutionary
reformist politics.

The holocaust was an historically unique occurrence - but even this
uniqueness does not mean that it cannot be repeated.

Hinrich Kuhls



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