File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 151


Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 08:43:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Dissent in Nazi Germany


On Mon, 8 Sep 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> The same it true with race relations in the South. Whites were not openly
> terrorized into mistreating blacks and maintaining segregation. The
> structure of apartheid and the culture of racism was rather smoothly
> reproduced by white (and black) Southerners.
> 

This is a reply to James and Andrew both. The problem with Goldhagen's
citation of dissent in Nazi Germany is that it falls into the same
category as "protest" in Stalin's USSR, which also existed. There were
strikes in the USSR, there were open criticisms of his policies which were
sometimes punished and sometimes not. Even the most totalitarian society
exhibits signs of dissent in the cracks. Some scholars have even tried to
revise the record of Stalin's rule by putting a spotlight on this sort of
countervailing evidence. And we can always rely on Chris Burford to be the
first person to report on their efforts. Right, Chris?

The problem is that totalitarian societies have their own logic, which
defy the conventional expectations of social behavior. There are many of
Stalin's decisions that don't "make sense" as well from an economic
standpoint. Why would he have fired all of the most promising engineers
and statisticians during the period of the first 5 year plan? Obviously,
there were factors that only he as supreme dictator could make.

In parliamentary democracies, there are qualitative differences in the way
societies are governed. Since policies are publicly debated, there will
always be challenges to controversial policies. For example, while there
is vicious racism in the United States, there are clear limits to the
temptation to victimize black Americans to the degree sought by people
like Jesse Helms. This is why the alarmist rhetoric of black radicals in
the 1960s about impending genocide was so misguided. The real danger black
people face in the United States is being condemned to a permanent reserve
army of the unemployed rather than extermination.

The fundamental problem that Goldhagen has is that he lacks a class
analysis of fascism. Trotsky provided this analysis and other Marxists
such as Daniel Guerin have continued with this valuable research. I
recommend particularly "Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in
Germany, 1919-1945", edited by Dobkowski and Wallimann, from MR press. 

Goldhagen's understanding of fascism is not Marxist. Therefore, his
understanding of the genocide is bound to be flawed. Goldhagen places
psychology above class. For Marxists, class comes first.

The overwhelming evidence is that the most class-conscious elements of the
German working class were *not* antisemitic. If people had been paying
attention to my posts on the German Communist Party, you would have
noticed that names like Luxemburg and Levi kept cropping up. These were
Jews who the most class-conscious German workers regarded as leaders--
nonobservant Jews, but Jews nonetheless. The German CP did make some
concessions to German nationalism in the confused early 1920s before
Nazism had been fully understood, but the prevailing evidence was of a
party that opposed all forms of chauvinism.

This hatred for chauvinism also existed in the ranks of the Social
Democracy as well. WWI displayed the problems of bourgeois accomodation in
the leadership but the rank and file remained committed to tolerance.

Perhaps the best place to check all this out, surprisingly, is the
Korsch-Horkheimer statistical study of class attitudes in the Weimar
republic. The workers who belonged to left parties WERE NOT ANTISEMITIC.
Period. The German working class was the most heroic and self-sacrificing
section of the class we can study in history. This was the class that
created the First and Second International. This was the class that tried
3 times in the early 1920s to rid Germany of capitalism, the main cause of
exploitation and race hatred. This was the same class that tried once
again in the late 20s, saddled with the suicidal "Third Period" policy.

The history of Germany in the 1920s is one of a class-divided society
where one class, the majority, keeps trying time after time after time to
change Germany to conform to the values expressed in the words of the song
"The Internationale."  The fact that this class ultimately failed has a
lot more to do with the sectarian and reformist mistakes of the CP and the
SP than its own fighting resolve. It's failure also goes a long way to
explain the fury of German fascism. To consolidate the rule of the
bourgeoisie, it needed to erase these class divisions politically. Hence,
the reconstruction of the state along totalitarian, class-transcendent
values. All this is elementary, but it will not be found in Goldhagen.


Louis Proyect



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