Far different was the case of the (proto-)fascist ideologues who were disdainful of the perceived coddling of the working class by both social democracy and the pragmatic conservatism of the pre-WWI old order. Seeing in every direction the mediocre tyranny of the statist collective, they sought to create a ‘revolutionary’ politics of aristocratic energy. To do this, they aped the language of Marxists and syndicalists, seizing on the theme of class war as raw material for an irrationalist vision that glorified the struggle for existence as an end in of itself. Having rejected peace and general prosperity as harmful to the health of the species and the race, they posited in their stead a new social Darwinist ethic of aggression abroad and ‘Manchester’ liberalism for the laboring classes at home. The promise of protection previously offered by the national ideal was downgraded, while the refrain that, indeed, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was sounded ever louder.
One striking ideologeme that came out of this was the“Proletarian nation”, a term coined before WWI by the journalist Enrico Corradini and further promoted by fellow far right intellectuals like Giovanni Pascoli and Ettore Pais. Italy, declared Corradini, despite having achieved unification and formal independence, remained undeveloped and subordinate to the financial interests of foreign nations. This subordinate status, it was said, marked all areas of the national life, economic as well as cultural:
"We must start by recognizing the fact that there are proletarian nations as well as proletarian classes; that is to say, there are nations whose living conditions are subject...to the way of life of other nations, just as classes are. Once this is realized, nationalism must insist firmly on this truth: Italy is, materially and morally, a proletarian nation."
Without an empire of its own worth speaking of, Italy lacked, he argued, the resources and outlets for investment enjoyed by wealthier nations, and was drained through the emigration of the youth and talent that would otherwise could have glorified their own fatherland through colonization. In order to reverse its likely fate of perennial stagnation, Italy would have to conquer the land from lesser races and defy the decadent ‘bourgeois’ nations who would seek to deny it such prizes. At the same time, the division of states by class identity had a moral dimension as well. Those Italians seen as having capitulated to liberalism, democracy, socialism,and “pacifism” were labeled as cowards emasculated by alien shopkeeper values, in contrast to patriots who embodied the heroic virtues of the ‘authentic’ people. Both the domestic and foreign policy implications of such notions would later prove to be highly useful for Mussolini as the aftermath of WWI gave Italy an unprecedented opportunity to project force out of proportion to its economic weight. As he explained in one speech in 1919:
"If the League of Nations must be the solemn swindle of the rich against the poor nations to fix forever the actual conditions of world equilibrium, let’s look at each other well in the eyes. I understand perfectly well that arrived nations can establish these awards which ensure their opulence and their actual dominant position. But this is not idealism. This is profit and interest."
As it can be seen clearly from this passage, the fascists’ target was not the British led imperialist system itself, but the hypocrisy of those who had already reached the top. What they wanted was to imitate not only the success but the methods of British and American settler colonialism. But when they actually found an opening to apply the latter, they discovered that in a world where power imbalances had been evened out by the spread of industrialization and where peoples around the world where connected, via mass communications, by universalist political ideologies, recreating the conquest of the North American West, or even the British Raj, could only end with the traditional punishment due to outlaws. In seeking to reveal, in a merely egotistical manner, that international law was simply the institutionalized self interest of the stronger countries, they confirmed the reality of that social necessity, rooted in the unfolding possibilities of human nature, which those laws gave legal expression to.
Further, precisely because Fascists defined their aim as replacing the Anglo Saxon nations at the top with themselves as opposed to evening out the system as a whole, their attempts at mimicking socialist or liberal internationalism were, in comparison to their rivals, very awkward affairs. No one could be the master race if everyone was.
From this, one many conclude that the translation of the terms of class warfare to the domain of interstate struggle is in itself a symptom of fascism, a mendacious alibi for chauvinist ambition. But, moving away from the angst of belated nationhood among secondary Europeon states to the colonial periphary itself, we find the same formula-’proletarian nations vs. bourgeois nations’--taken up again with a different valency.
Li Ta-Chao, like other Chinese communists, felt the need for a revolution against foreign domination, but found this national aspiration difficult to theoretically reconcile with Marxist internationalism and the fact that China's working class only made up a tiny portion of the total population. In order to justify the synthesis of proletarian struggle with anti-colonial resistance, Li in 1919 echoing Corradini, turned the class war into a war between nations, and vise versa:
"The white people as the pioneers of culture in the world; they place themselves in a superior position, and look down on other races as inferior. Because of this, the race relation has become a class relation and the races on a world scale have come to confront each other as classes...The struggle between the white and colored races will occur simultaneously as the class struggle."
Despite the similarity between this and the rhetoric of Italian fascists, the likeness in form belied a profound difference in substance. First, Li believed the solution for China’s underdevelopment was not the pursuit of a settler colonialist project of its own, but anti-capitalism and solidarity with other economically backward countries, above all a now Bolshevik run Russia. Secondly, while Corradani sought to neutralize class conflict entirely in the unity of the nation on the march. Li wished to make the innovation of the proletarian identity of the Chinese nation as a way to strategically push forward the class struggle. On the one hand, it served as an alibi to target China’s comprador capitalists and landlords not merely as exploiters but as traitors; on the other, it justified the mobilizing of the peasantry as a revolutionary class, because they too were members of a country that had been collectively proletarianized by white and Japanese colonialism. The potential base for Chinese Communist Party was widened, while an avenue for tactical co-operation with the Kuomintang was created. As the historian Maurice Meiner expressed it:
" Li-Ta-chao’s nationalistic impulses...did not lead to the ‘quenching of the ardor of the struggle’ but rather to the intensification of revolutionary struggle. Nationalism not only widened the popular appeal of Communism in China, it also provided the Communist movement with a vitality, and it leaders with a heightened sense of mission, that they otherwise could not have possessed (From pg. 194 of Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism)"
Finally, while both the Italian fascists and the Chinese Communists thought of their respective countries as having a special destiny, each rested this future glory on different foundations. While the former hoped for a reborn Caesarian Rome, the latter had faith that China would distinguish itself as the first among the least, a light to the toiling other non-white races of the world. Their’s was an ambition that take pleasure in raising up, rather than tearing down, potential emulators.
It is unclear whether or not Li Ta-Chao was familiar with Enrico Corradini, who first used the term in 1911. If so, this would certainly be the case of a fascinating ideological transmutation. If not, it would highlight all the more both the real analogies, and profound differences, between the predicaments of the countries that would become the hosts of fascist reaction and those which would become the vanguard of socialism in the twentieth century. All alike found themselves blocked by the self-interested arrangements of more powerful countries. Italy and Germany felt themselves to be unfairly slighted members of the tribe of Western master races. By contrast, the in many ways poorer nations of Russia and China found themselves stuck by the more or less overt racism of an international system that did not acknowledge Slavic or Asiatic peoples as having equal rights. At the same time, because of their vulnerability to racially charged aggression and relative poverty,both countries were more interested in survival and in development than in taking the risks of military adventurism. Poaching weak states as the fascists did in the 1930s was an unaffordable luxury. Lacking any other options, they, on the international scene, could hardly help but kick up instead of down.
Further, because of the gap in culture and wealth between themselves and the Western powers was so dramatic, Russia and China could not realistically hope to simply invert the hierarchy of nations. Instead, they had to insist on the commonality of interests. and therefore of rights, shared between the masses on both sides of the global divide, the better to justify their struggle to others and to themselves. Instead of tearing apart the fabric of international law as a mere tissue of lies, they renewed it by expanding its content. Communist revolution, directly and indirectly cleared the way for the greater realization of democracy worldwide, even among those who rejected, precisely because it was seeking to fulfill the premises of liberalism rather than destroy them. This in turn rebounded to the advantage of the states that bore its banner. Hence, while Nazi Germany could only pursue its goals to the end through collective self-immolation, the Soviet Union arrived at the pinnacle of its power and prestige in a co-operative, if tension filled, relationship with the bourgeois countries. Mussolini, disdainful of the scam of ‘cosmopolitanism’, ended his career executed by his own citizens in a homeland occupied by foreign armies. Mao, by contrast, having been both the embodiment of Third World revolt and the architect of rapprochement with Washington, ensured the continued independence and advancement of the Chinese people.
If talk of “proletarian” countries has fallen into disuse, it is, in part, a testament to such successes
***
Ideologemes are always more fluid than the economic interests that they articulate, and in turn economic interests are more varied in their expression than they are sometimes given credit for. The more generic in character an ideologeme is, the more adaptable it may become, while the more that it takes on the character of special pleading for merely selfish ends, no matter how radical or noisy its assertion, it will eventually be cornered. But its not the free standing notion itself that decides whether it will advance towards the general interest not, but its relation to the totality of language games, whose rules are not themselves reducible to words because their causes stretch downward into the infinite logic of needs. Whenever alienated reason is lost in the blind anarchy of its own devices, it is there, in the persistence, and universality, of want that it is brought back to order and clarity.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Gibbonstrength posted:What's the substantial thesis being put forward here? What implications for local Marxist groups does this have? is it cloud gazing or applicable
It was just something quick about the inter-relationship between class, nation, race, and internationalism through a comparison of Li Ta-Chao and Enrico Corradini, showing how the same language takes on differing meanings depending upon context.
I was not aware that providing prescriptions of immediate political relevance was a requirement for rhizzone posting.
RedMaistre posted:Gibbonstrength posted:What's the substantial thesis being put forward here? What implications for local Marxist groups does this have? is it cloud gazing or applicable
It was just something quick about the inter-relationship between class, nation, race, and internationalism through a comparison of Li Ta-Chao and Enrico Corradini, showing how the same language takes on differing meanings depending upon context.
I was not aware that providing prescriptions of immediate political relevance was a requirement for rhizzone posting.
I didn't mean to come across as just being critical, sorry if it did. I was asking what the objective was for the development of the idea of a proletarian nation was. Also to be a rhiz poster you have to be dumb and not read about Marxism so yes you are disqualified.
Gibbonstrength posted:RedMaistre posted:Gibbonstrength posted:What's the substantial thesis being put forward here? What implications for local Marxist groups does this have? is it cloud gazing or applicable
It was just something quick about the inter-relationship between class, nation, race, and internationalism through a comparison of Li Ta-Chao and Enrico Corradini, showing how the same language takes on differing meanings depending upon context.
I was not aware that providing prescriptions of immediate political relevance was a requirement for rhizzone posting.I didn't mean to come across as just being critical, sorry if it did. I was asking what the objective was for the development of the idea of a proletarian nation was. Also to be a rhiz poster you have to be dumb and not read about Marxism so yes you are disqualified.
No offence taken!
RedMaistre posted:America needs a (r)epublican nationalism to serve as an alternative to both imperial exceptionalism and isolationist white reaction. Such an ideology would organically build upon deeply rooted strands of radicalism and counter-culture in the US, play upon populist tropes already in play on parts of the political spectrum, and avoid the conflation of any such challenge to the status quo with the bland liberalism of establishment prog discourse.]
This is basically the program of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement which more or less wants to put law enforcement under local community control.
We demand an immediate demilitarization of police and the elimination of military surplus, drones and various surveillance operations being used on our people. The funds used for these weapons can be redirected to social programs to house, educate and provide healthcare and programs to prevent domestic and intra-community violence for our people.
We demand that police who patrol our communities must be hired from and must live in the community, which they serve as an absolute condition of employment . . .
We demand the establishment of independent, community based boards of review with the power to fire, subpoena, and indict police and other vigilantes who murder our people without just cause . . .
Not that any media outlets would probably even consider looking at these realizable demands, or that me being a white guy on the internet without an org actually helps further these sorts of demands.
walkinginonit posted:Guy who popularized "Black Power" slogan debates the leader of the American Nazi Party
Its painfully obvious that the moderator organized the debate with the sole aim of trying to publicly trip Carmichael up.
RedMaistre posted:The promise of protection previously offered by the national ideal was downgraded, while the refrain that, indeed, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was sounded ever louder.
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There is no richer store of human experience than the folk tales, folk poems and songs of a people. In many, the heroes are always fully recognizable humans - only larger and more embracing in dimension. So it is with the Russian, Chinese. and the African folk-lore.
In 1937, a highly expectant audience of Moscow citizens - workers, artists, youth, farmers from surrounding towns - crowded the Bolshoy Theater. They awaited a performance by the Uzbek National Theater, headed by the highly gifted Tamara Khanum. The orchestra was a large one with instruments ancient and modern. How exciting would be the blending of the music of the rich culture of Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khrennikov, Gliere - with that of the beautiful music of the Uzbeks, stemming from an old and proud civilization.
Suddenly everyone stood - began to applaud - to cheer - and to smile. The children waved.
In a box to the right - smiling and applauding the audience - as well as the artists on the stage - stood the great
I remember the tears began to quietly flow. and I too smiled and waved Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly - I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good - the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance. I lifted high my son Pauli to wave to this world leader, and his leader. For Paul, Jr. had entered school in Moscow, in the land of the Soviets.
The wonderful performance began, unfolding new delights at every turn - ensemble and individual, vocal and orchestral, classic and folk-dancing of amazing originality. Could it be possible that a few years before in 1900 - in 1915 - these people had been semi-serfs - their cultural expression forbidden, their rich heritage almost lost under tsarist oppression's heel?
So here one witnessed in the field of the arts - a culture national in form, socialist in content. Here was a people quite comparable to some of the tribal folk of Asia - quite comparable to the proud Yoruba or Basuto of West and East Africa, but now their lives flowering anew within the socialist way of life twenty years matured under the guidance of Lenin and
I was later to travel - to see with my own eyes what could happen to so-called backward peoples. In the West (in England, in Belgium, France, Portugal, Holland) - the Africans, the Indians (East and West), many of the Asian peoples were considered so backward that centuries, perhaps, would have to pass before these so-called "colonials" could become a part of modern society.
But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks - had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in the United States, but deeds. For example, the transforming of the desert in Uzbekistan into blooming acres of cotton. And an old friend of mine, Mr. Golden, trained under Carver at Tuskegee, played a prominent role in cotton production. In 1949, I saw his daughter, now grown and in the university - a proud Soviet citizen.. . .
Today in Korea - in Southeast Asia - in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East - in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage - what sacrifice - what determination never to rest until victory!
And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an "American Century" blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by - that we now live in a people's century - that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People's Democracies, based upon the people's power with the people shaping their own destinies . . ..
Yes, through his deep humanity, by
But, as he well knew, the struggle continues. So, inspired by his noble example, let us lift our heads slowly but proudly high and march forward in the fight for peace - for a rich and rewarding life for all.
In the inspired words of Lewis Allan, our progressive lyricist -
To you Beloved Comrade, we make this solemn vow
The fight will go on - the fight will still go on.
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.
The fight will go on - till we win - until we win.
"The German people are supposed to become a proletarian nation of the world which will pay tribute to the imperialistic capitalism of England and France. For the German working class, these peace terms represent an intolerable enslavement which must permanently hinder its resurgence...
We do not shake off the domination of our own reaction to bow to that of French and English imperialists. We are by no means inclined to replace a German with a French military caste...It follows we must not allow our strength to be crippled but rather we must concentrate everything to ward off the defeat which the imperialistically enforced peace of the Entente has planned for us."
This in notable contrast to both Corradini and Li Ta-Chao, who around the same time both invoked proletarian identity as a badge of honor, albeit in different ways.
Panopticon posted:isn't that meant in the sense of wallerstein's periphery
Yes--China as a part of the world system's periphery, contrasted with 1920-40s Italy, a member of the semi-periphary.
"What distinguishes imperialism as the last struggle for capitalist world domination is not simply the remarkable energy and universality of expansion but – and this is the specific sign that the circle of development is beginning to close – the return of the decisive struggle for expansion from those areas which are being fought over back to its home countries. In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure. The expansion of capital, which for four centuries had given the existence and civilization of all non-capitalist peoples in Asia, Africa, America and Australia over to ceaseless convulsions and general and complete decline, is now plunging the civilized peoples of Europe itself into a series of catastrophes whose final result can only be the decline of civilization or the transition to the socialist mode of production. Seen in this light, the position of the proletariat with regard to imperialism leads to a general confrontation with the rule of capital."
-From Anti-Critique by Rosa Luxembourg
Or to take an example from a contemporary of Wallerstein:
"Along this line, as I see it, Prebisch’s analysis became increasingly linked to
geopolitics and the field of international relations, through the identification of hierarchies in the system. At the top he found the ‘dynamic center’, that due to its magnitude and technological progress had “a greater influence on the rate of growth (as well as on the short-run fluctuations) of the other centers and of the periphery of world economy”. It is around this ‘dynamic center’ that relations of dependency are established with the periphery.In this system, one of the main interests of the core, led by the ‘dynamic center’ (also referred to as ‘principal center’), was to maintain the control over the diffusion of technology. But Prebisch also found differences within the core and identified what he called, ‘secondary centers’. Indeed, in his view, the ‘center’ was not a monolithic unit since the ‘secondary centers’ could have similar problems “to those of the peripheral countries, when in order to fully employ their surplus manpower they have to engage in activities where costs are higher than import prices”.Even if the definitions of each of these categories are not clearly outlined, it represents an interesting outlining of hierarchical structures in the world economic system; a system that could not be analyzed in separate parts since all were related."
Prebisch and the World System: thinking globally from the periphery
By Andres Rivarola Puntigliano
http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/FLACSO-ISA%20BuenosAires%202014/Archive/777fc616-3512-471d-a509-04e7b03c8063.pdf
Edited by RedMaistre ()
policies favored by many socialists synthesized with elements of patriotism, protectionism, and paternalism; among which were Bismark’s Staatssozialismus, Disraeli’s One Nation Toryism, the Giolittian System, and Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party
So is "pragmatic conservatism" an accurate description for this political configuration, as you label it in the article?
vampirarchist posted:policies favored by many socialists synthesized with elements of patriotism, protectionism, and paternalism; among which were Bismark’s Staatssozialismus, Disraeli’s One Nation Toryism, the Giolittian System, and Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party
So is "pragmatic conservatism" an accurate description for this political configuration, as you label it in the article?
I would say that it applies in a general sense to all those listed political phenomena, because they all had the aim of strengthening the existing public order, not hastening what late 19th century Social Democracts, or their more left wing counterparts, would have called the Revolution, and none of them, on the other hand, were preaching a mere dead-ender Legitimism in retreat from contemporary realities.
However, it is important to make distinctions:
1. Strictly speaking, Disraeli's Tory populism was the most 'conservative' of the lot, since its aim was to consolidate Britain's long-established monarchy, global imperial hegemony,and oligarchic-aristocratic parliamentary establishment. Also Disraeli was probably the most attracted of all the politicians under consideration here to the theatrics, if not the substance, of throne and alter romanticism, perhaps as a way of compensating for his status as a Jewish outsider seeking entry to the traditional British ruling class (it is instructive to compare his lush Victorian medievalism to the acerbic cynicism and the quasi-Pietistic religiosity of Bismark, who was born into his title).
2. Giovanni Giolitti is almost a sui generis case: a gloomy anti-clerical liberal of democratic sympathies who always remained loyal to the Italian monarchy which had called him to the position of prime minster in the first place, and who sought to keep a newly unified nation together through a shifting kaleidoscopic of parliamentary alliances that made use of factions from across the political spectrum.
2. The Christian Socials are different than the others mentioned here because they were an independent populist movement and electoral party, not the product of a policy-line taken by existing elites. Further, despite their loyalty tot the Hapsburg throne, they added two additional destabilizing elements that were particularly threatening to the old order. One was their appeal to the the Church as a moral authority over and above that of the temporal powers, the other was their virulent anti-Judaism*. The "Imperial and Royal Apostolic" Austrian throne, though viewing itself as a defender of the Church, had long been suspicious of the 'ultramontane' claims of the Holy See.This debate between 'Jospehnism' on the one side and the advocates of greater ecclesiastical autonomy on the other would continue, with varying degrees of intensity, till the dynasty's fall from power. At the same time, the Hapsburgs, despite not being necessarily the most 'enlightened' in their views themselves, were leery of demagoguery directed against the Jews, both out of a sense of being charged by their office to keep the peace among the empires different peoples and faiths, and because of the prominence of Jews within the bureaucracy and among the trusted insiders of the Viennese court. For these reason, Emperor Franz Joseph refused for two years to ratify Karl Lueger's election to the post of Mayor of Vienna, before he was pressured to back down in order to avoid a constitutional crisis.
*which re-enforced, as well as competed with, the racial anti-Semitism of their political rivals, the Pan Germans, for whom even Christian baptism was not sufficient to make Jews members of the Teutonic Volk.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Edited by RedMaistre ()
From a Letter written in 1836 by Bismark to his friend Schonhausen
vampirarchist posted:Two world wars later, was Christian Democracy and ordoliberalism the eventual descendant of what you term pragmatic conservatism? What about Gaullism?
The Christian Socials were definitely a predecessor to Christian Democracy, yes.
Ordoliberalism was a creation of the liberals who had been sidelined by the late 19th century inter-imperialist rivalry and the ideological conflicts of the two world wars. They viewed the 'totalitarianism of the latter to be intimately connected to the policies of the former era (The Second Reich was one of their preferred whipping boys). So I would put them in a different category all together.
The post-WWII phenomena of Gaullism arose from that distinct matrix of republicanism and Bonapartism that is both uniquely French and which earlier served as a model for the pre-WWI 'pragmatic conservativism' of other countries. Before there was Bismark, there was Napoleon III.
The reason why I didn't mention a French equivalent to Giolitti or Disraeli is partly because the Third Republic largely just picked up where the Second Empire had left off, and partly because France's relationship to the Revolution was unique among 19th century Europeon powers. Only in Paris would you find an established government which sought to heavily base its legitimacy on the legacy of 1789, not on this or traditional dynastic claim or national unification struggle.