From: zatavu-AT-excite.com
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 16:01:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: VS: PLC: Marxist Propaganda



On Tue, 11 Jul 2000 12:12:04 +0100, phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
wrote:

>  Troy: Certainly Plato's philosophy is a good example. The Nazi's were
known
>  to have used his Republic as an outline for their own Nazi state, as well
as
>  some of the ideas of both Marx and Nietzsche, though I would argue that
>  these were mostly tkaen out of context. Rousseau is another example. His
>  ideas were used as the foundation for the Terror in France, and his ideas
>  can undoubtedly be shown to give rise to both Marx's ideas and to various
>  "Marxist" countries.
>  
>  George Pennefather: An interesting letter Troy. I would like to know for
purposes of
>  reference what the evidence is that they the Nazi's used Plato's Republic
as an
>  outline for their own Nazi state. I would also like to know how
Rousseau's ideas were
>  used as the foundation of the Terror in France.

It can be found in the writings of Nazi philosophers of the time.

>From Eward O. WIlson's latest book, "Consilience":

"Jean-Jacques Roussea, in the Social Contract... had introduced the idea
that was later to inspire the rallying sloagan "Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity." BUt he had also invented the deadly abstractions of the
"general will" to achieve these goals. The general will, he said, is the
rule of justice agreed upon by assemplies of free people whose interest is
only to serve the welfare of the society and of each person in it. WHen
achieved, it forms a sovereign contract that is "always constant,
unalterable, and pure... Each of us puts his person and all his pwer in
common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our corporate
capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." THose
who do not conform to the general will, Rousseau continued, are deviants
subject to necessary force by the assembly. There is not other way to
achieve a truly egalitarian democracy and thusto break humanity out of the
chains that everywhere bind it.

"Robespierre, leader of the Reign of Terror that overtook the Revolution in
1793, grasped that logic all too well. He and his fellos Jacobins across
France implemented Rousseau's necessary force to include summary
condemnations and executions for all those who opposed the new order. Some
300,000 nobles, priests, political dissidents, and other troublemakers were
imprisoned, and 17,000 died within the year. In Robespierre's universe, the
goals of the Jacobins were noble and pure. They were, as he serenely wrote
in February 1794 (shortly before he himself was guillotined), "the peaceful
enjoyment of liberty and equality, the rule of that eternal justice whose
laws have been engraved... upon the hearts of men, even upon the heart of
the slave who knows then not and of the tyrant who denies them."

"Thus took form the easy cohabitation of egalitarian ideology and savage
coercion that was to plague the next two centuries. Better to exile from the
tribe, the reasoning follows, those unwilling to make the commitment to the
perfect society than to risk the infection of dissent. The demagogue asks
only for unity of purpose on behalf of vurtue: "My fellow citizens
(comrades, brothers and sisters, Volk), eggs must be broken to make an
omelette. Th achieve the noble end, it may be necessary to wage war." After
the Revolution subsided, the  principle was administered by Napoleon and the
soldiers of the Revolution, who, having metamorphosed into the grande
arme'e, were determined to spread the Enlightenment by conquest."

Is that sufficient at least for what I said about Rousseau? 

Troy Camplin





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