Books
Book Reviews
Contents:
Berlin – The Downfall 1945,
by Anthony Beevor, Penguin Viking.
For those able to recall the fall of Berlin in April/May 1945, Anthony
Beevor's
book is a powerful reminder of the horrific events that brought the war
in
Europe to a close. These final stages of suffering, death and
destruction were
only relieved by the hope that the war was near its end. At the time
our
knowledge was limited to what was made available through the press,
radio and
newsreel, all of which was heavily censored. Since then, the story has
been
re-told with more information becoming available. Anthony Beevor has
had the
advantage of access to archive material and, particularly since the
fall of the
Bolshevik regimes in Russia and East Europe, to the archives of the
KGB.
He is able to tell us for example how the Russian campaign to take
Berlin was
partly shaped by the desperate need of Stalin and his henchmen to get
their
hands on nuclear materials. From Klaus Fuchs and other spies, Stalin
was aware
of the Manhattan Project (the American programme to develop the atom
bomb).
They were also aware of similar though less advanced research in
Germany partly
at the Kaiser Wilhelm Insitute for Physics which was situated west of
Berlin at
Dahlem, designated as part of the post war carve up to be in the
American Zone
of occupation. The huge numbers of Russian casualties were caused
partly by the
determination to occupy this research facility. As a result, the NKVD
(later
the KGB) were able to take possession not just of scientists but “250
kgs
of metallic uranium; three tons of uranium oxide; twenty litres of
heavy
water”. This also reminds us that the death and destruction that marked
the fall of Berlin was to continue for three more months in the Pacific
culminating in the use of even more terrifying weapons, the atomic
bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What happened at Dahlem with the arrival of Russian troops who, with
their
bitter knowledge of the atrocities carried out by German forces in
Russia and
East Europe, were in a frenzy of hate and revenge, was an accepted part
of the
Russian advance. At its convent, which was also a maternity clinic and
orphanage, “Nuns, young girls, old women, pregnant women and mothers
who
had just given birth were all raped without pity”. Estimates from the
two
main Berlin hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000 rape victims. One
doctor
deduced that out of approximately l00,000 women raped in Berlin, some
10,000
died as a result, mostly from suicide. “Altogether at least two million
German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial
minority, if not
a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.”
According to Anthony Beevor, “Stalin and his marshals paid little
regard
to the lives of their soldiers. The casualties for the three fronts
involved in
the Berlin operation were extremely high, with 78,291 killed and
274,184
wounded.” The numbers for German forces would have been similar but
with
many more civilian deaths. For those who lived, conditions became
disease
ridden and primitive. With the shelling and constant bombing, “Over a
million people in the city were without any home at all. They continued
to
shelter in cellars and air raid shelters. Smoke from cooking fires
emerged from
what looked like piles of rubble, as women tried to re-create something
of a
home life amid the ruins.” The casualties amongst women were especially
high. With the water system damaged many were killed queuing with
buckets at
the street pumps. One lingering image is of desperate women, shuffling
up to
fill the gaps in the queues caused by exploding shells.
On the 30 April Hitler and his bride of the previous day, Eva Braun,
killed
themselves. Just north of Berlin, Ravensbruck, the women's
concentration camp
was liberated. On the 1 May Goebbels and his wife Magda killed
themselves
together with their six children, all aged under twelve.
Anthony Beevor makes no attempt to be seriously analytical. He takes
the war as
given. His book is then a monumental description of its brutal closing
events
and the interplay of leading personalities, particularly as they acted
out the
final drama in the mad, hysterical atmosphere of the Fuhrer's bunker.
It was in
that closely confined underground space that extreme authoritarianism,
blind
fear and obedience, and a deranged ideology combined to produce a
descent into
utter self-destruction. As the main actors lost all contact with
reality the
author describes this descent as the “Fuhrerdammerung,” but nothing
in Wagner's works could match the real life tragedy.
The absence of analysis in Anthony Beevor's book invites us to think
about the
causes of this death and destruction and to reflect upon the wider
social
context in which it happened. One response has been to simply say that
Hitler
was mad. It is very likely that this was true but it still leaves
unexplained
the reasons why millions gave him the political support from which
developed of
one of the most hideously cruel regimes of the 20th century.
The reading of page after page of destruction, rape and killing gives
the
impression that entire populations had gone collectively mad. This was
despite
the undoubted ability of all to co-operate in ways that could have
enhanced the
lives of everyone. Instead of a rational understanding of how we could
best
serve each other's needs through unity there prevailed the divisive and
hateful
ideologies of nationalism, leadership and racism. And it was the
background of
national economic rivalries that allowed these attitudes to fester and
grow
with such disastrous results.
But what have we learned since then? There is not much to be hopeful
about. The
huge gap between our mutual interests and the ideas we need to realise
them
seems to be as wide as ever. As a result, the destruction and the
killing
continues. One lesson of Anthony Beevor's book is that whilst our ideas
remain
out of harmony with our need for unity and co-operation we will always
remain
liable to be manipulated into elevating the miseries of death and
destruction
over peace, security and the pursuit of happiness.
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Marketing the Revolution
by Michael Mosbacher, Social Affairs Unit, 2002.
Before we can have socialism a majority of the world's population will
have to
stop supporting capitalism and become pro-socialism. But what if the
“anti-capitalist” movement proves to be a precursor, not of a
fundamentally different form of society (socialism) but simply of
another form
of capitalism? If the “revolution” is de-fused, emasculated,
diverted, usurped, hi-jacked, betrayed – if it is marketed by people
who
want, not socialism, but a reformed capitalism, then things will change
a
little but not much. Capitalism will have eaten “anti-capitalism” for
breakfast.
According to Mosbacher, something like that is actually happening. Of
course,
he doesn't put it quite like that. He writes for the Social Affairs
Unit, a
body that has good capitalism-supporting credentials. His main theme is
that
those who support the anti-capitalist movement (and in particular those
who
attack corporate brands) talk the language of capitalism because “it is
the only game in town”. But arguably the most useful function his
little
book serves is to quote some dreadful statistics from
The United Nations Human Development Report 2001
:
“. . . much of the world still lives in horrific poverty: in the
developing world 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day . . .
2.8
billion live on less than $2 a day; 325 million children do not go to
school;
more than 8.5 million are illiterate; 11 million children under five
die each
year from preventable causes; nearly a billion people do not have
access to
improved water sources; and 2.4 billion lack access to basic
sanitation”
(p.71).
Mosbacher seeks to take the sting out of these awful figures by arguing
that
“the only countries in which we have seen large-scale poverty reduction
in
the 1990s are the ones that have become more open to foreign trade and
investment”. He quotes some figures of poverty reduction which “may
seem trivial to some in comparison with the overall scale of the
problem . .
.” Yes, they do.
Returning to the theme of marketing the revolution, the author lays
into Naomi
Klein's
No Logo.
We, too, were under no illusions when we reviewed this best-selling
book in our
December 2000 issue: “Klein appears to believe that something
worthwhile
can be done within the system of capitalism.”
Mosbacher is scathing about the “success” that the anti-branding
movement has achieved. He notes that Klein has been a star turn at
international anti-corporate gatherings. Anti-capitalism and
anti-branding are
fashionable and popular but they aren't daring, subversive, edgy. They
take on
board the culture, ethos, language and techniques of branding, and they
use
these to attack the brands themselves.
Mosbacher says the anti-capitalists have “no clear end-vision of where
they want to be, except away from where we are.” But he
likes
being where we are, and doesn't like or want revolution. For him,
branding is a
good thing: it “is an extremely useful invention in that it transmits a
vast amount of information to the consumer in an instant.” So that's
all
right, then.
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Question Everything
by Melvin Chapman. Third Millennium
Press.
You may now download this book here
Nowhere in this book, or in his previous Third Millennium Press
publications,
does Melvin Chapman claim to be a socialist – he is indeed dubious of
word
“socialist” – but throughout
Question Everything
, as in his previous publications, we find the author clearly
propagating the
case for a world without money and articulating many of the arguments
we in the
Socialist Party have been using against our political opponents for
decades
Chapman, for instance, tears into the concept of leadership on a number
of
occasions, arguing that we have been conditioned to accept that we are
“intellectually deficient” and in need of betters who are
“capable of organising and directing us”. And they of course cannot
control events because it is the system that controls them; they too
are
“conditioned by the economic and political structures in which they
were
born”.
He is also critical of the reformist mentality, informing us how, “No
reform, nor attempt to improve the system . . . can do more than
ameliorate
its inconsistencies.”
He is derisive of what passes for democracy in capitalist society,
observing
that there “can be no democracy in a complex system designed to justify
inequality, a system in which the power of money carries the right to
govern,
in which the governed accept their own inferiority, lack of
self-respect and
sense of worth, a system in which crime, conflict, nationalism, racism,
ethnic
cleansing . . . is inevitable.”
“Only in self government can there be freedom with order.” And
“freedom”? Chapman insists that “Freedom lies in a society in
which we can work together free of the social structures that inhibit
consensus
and in a social, political and economic environment that does not
actively
promote differences and confrontations.” The rub is that “Freedom
depends upon knowledge . . . knowledge upon information . . . [but]
information
is not knowledge . . . [because it is] limited and controlled . . . The
individual has to have the facilities to understand and interpret, to
know what
there is to know and what questions to ask”
Chapman is at his best in attacking the logic of
the profit system, for
instance noting how “the money system has enabled the human species to
develop the technology with which it dominates the earth, but it has
become an
excuse for ignoring the factors that impede its own social advance”.
Highlighting the alienation the money system gives rise to, he
comments:
”This creature Man . . . has allowed itself to be treated – and to
treat itself – as of less consequence than a few copper coins, a few
electronic pulses, no more than a dollar a day.”
He challenges the assumption that without money no one would work,
pointing out
how “the money system has given work a bad name, with connotations of
long
hours, stress, tiredness, monotony . . . even in this acquisitive
society of
ours, most of us do some sort of voluntary work . . . working for
others is
enjoyable provided that we do not feel that it is augmenting other
people's
interests at our expense”. In a moneyless world, he maintains, “the
man/woman power available would be virtually limitless. There would be
plenty
for them to do . . . our fellow man, our environment, our towns and
cities, our
talents and potentialities . . . there would be enough to keep us
occupied for
generations”.
He continues: “We assume that without money there would be anarchy, but
it
is the chaotic complexity of the money system and the governments
required to
maintain it that is anarchic.” There then follows a lengthy section in
which Chapman envisages the benefits of a moneyless world before
concluding
that “the greatest benefit of all would be in the reduction or
elimination
of the anti-social emotions of greed, hatred, selfishness and
aggression, which
the money system makes inevitable and we would be able to treat
ourselves and
each other as the sort of human beings that we claim to be”.
A lot of this book is given over to how capitalist society conditions
our
consciousness; how it determines the way we think and act. Chapman is
adamant
we can overcome this conditioning and achieve the maturity needed to
help forge
a better world. And this “maturity” he contests, lies “in the
ability to question our inherited assumptions and to replace our
primitive
responses, our need to compete with and eliminate each other, by
recognition of
our responsibility to ourselves and to the wider universe. To free
ourselves we
have to “run the gauntlet of inherited impediments”.
The book's great weakness lies, undoubtedly, in the suggestion of how
we can
get from capitalism to the moneyless world of free access to the
benefits of
civilisation. For Chapman, “the actual process of getting rid of money
would require no more than the creation of a single International
currency,
followed by the gradual reduction in interest rates and an expansion of
the
quantity of money in circulation until it ceased to have any value”.
Here,
a closer scrutiny of the workings of capitalism and the implications of
such a
process, might have prompted the author to rethink this statement.
Moreover, emphasis on the democratic road to a moneyless world, how it
must be
the free and class-conscious decision of the majority, would have
enhanced this
short book.
Accepting that Chapman does not claim to be a socialist and criticism
aside,
this work does have its merits in revealing, quite succinctly in
places, the
insanity of capitalism and in advancing the benefits of establishing
moneyless
system of society.
This self-published, short print-run book is available from the author
at:
Third Millennium Press, 51 Newton Road, Bath, BA2 1RW. No price is
given.
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