File spoon-archives/modernism.archive/modernism_2000/modernism.0006, message 17


From: Everdell-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 23:24:28 EDT
Subject: Re: Nazi Modernism and Yeats



In a message dated 6/7/00 7:33:05 AM, tmorpheme-AT-hotmail.com writes:

<<My explanation for the continuing power of all of these ideologies 
(anarchism,  marxism, social democracy, liberalism, conservatism and fascism) 
is ultimately a functional one: they express the interests of major social 
groups, classes and class fractions in contemporary society. In this sense, I 
would argue that at the most general level the major classes of the early 
nineteenth century are not very different from those of the early 
twenty-first century.>>

I like that approach very much.  The ideologies, I would add, get thought out 
long before the average person in any major class can see their application 
to his or her own life and interests.  They "hang over" when a social group 
takes them up, which is often a pity; but it's almost more of a pity to see 
century-old ideas taken seriously as philosophy so long after good thinking 
has superceded them.

-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn

   

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