Wez
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TM – ‘The proto-communists you associate with the Puritans, like the Diggers and Ranters,..’
Yet another straw man, when did I say anything like that in this debate?
‘I never said all or most of the German proletariat were antisemitic, but a majority were, and responded as expected to the scapegoating of the Jews.’
I don’t think that’s correct. I know Goebbels launched a massive questionnaire asking people about this subject and had to repress the results because they did not confirm his hope of mass support for the state’s antisemitic policies.CDM – As fascinating as your history of materialism is, and I mean that sincerely, I’m at a loss to know what it’s got to do with this thread? Also the Reformation only came up because I had to refute one of TM’s many straw-men to the effect that I thought Luther was ‘bourgeois’. As far as I can see nobody has said that the reformation was the work of one man – quite the reverse in fact. As I said there were several Like Hus and Wycliffe who started the criticism of catholicism a lot earlier but because they were relatively unprotected they were suppressed violently. Protestantism was born when rulers found the ideology convenient for political purposes. Getting back to Fascism do you see no historical parallels with the beginnings of the ideology in the 1930s?
TM – The English protestants used a hybrid of many of the sects available. I think it was Cranmer who tried to get them to unite only to find that it was like trying to herd cats. However getting back to the main point it was the Puritans (another loose coalition) that provided the ideology for the English merchants and emerging capitalists to launch the first bourgeois revolution and that would not have been available to them without Luther and his protector. I can’t remember what this has got to do with Fascism? It was only one of your many straw men that I had to burn when you said I thought Luther was bourgeois. Of course other capitalist revolutions used other ideologies, the Enlightenment in France and, ironically, something called ‘Marxism’ in Russia. So I don’t think the ideology chosen is that important. As for the rise of the nation state you make a good case but you must know this subject is highly debated among historians. After all this do you still believe that most Germans in the 1930’s were anti-Semitic?
TM – The German feudal princes adopted Luther and put a spanner in the development of state centralisation,…’
Well it had the opposite effect in England as the Tudors centralized the state using Protestantism as an ideology to confront the Pope and Catholic hegemony. Wasn’t it the same in Germany in the long run? Didn’t the princes independence have a role to play in the formation of nation states once Bismark reluctantly helped to unite them as Germany?TM – You contend that Calvin was a revolutionary and that Luther was a reactionary but without Luther kick-starting the Reformation Calvin would not have existed. His work was based originally on Luther’s and, of course, once the Reformation kicked in he wasn’t burned as a heretic immediately as there were places to hide.
TM – Both the proto-protestants Hus and Wycliffe were persecuted and failed whereas Luther had the protection of Frederick III because he found Luther’s heresy politically helpful in his struggle with the Holy Roman Empire. Thus Protestantism and a myriad of other reformist sects were born and among them, of course, were the English Puritans who provided the ideology for Cromwell’s revolution. Therefore although Luther himself was a reactionary his break with Rome had a decisive impact on the English Reformation and the subsequent rise of the Puritans. It is nonsense that you think I considered Luther as bourgeois. It is also nonsense that I think of Marx as a ‘god’ since I believe he was a greater entity than any deity. In debates like this one Marx almost always has something interesting to say. It is also nonsense to suggest that all Germans of the 1930s were antisemitic.
TM – ‘is Marx a god?’, ‘I seem to remember you had the notion Lutheranism was bourgeois?’, ‘So how was the working class not full of anti-semites?’
There you go again – where do you get all of this nonsense? As the Buddha could have told you: man is greater than any of the gods he has created, Luther was a monk and unemployment, national ‘shame’ and inflation were far more important to the German working class (including the so called middle class petit bourgeois) than antisemitism.TM – Your ideas defy Marx somewhat when he said that: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. As I said, the second world war was inevitable as the resolution of the unresolved issues of the first world war. But for most Germans at the time antisemitism was not a major issue – it was Hitler that made it so. I do wish you’d modify your didactic approach to debates – I suggest that my knowledge of the Reformation and the second world war is at least as good as your own. You have complained in the past about your inability to communicate with the working class – perhaps this is why? Sometimes I think your love of ‘isms’ gets in the way of your historical understanding.
CDM says: ‘The left-wingers are comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Both individuals represent capitalism under different contexts and under different circumstances…’
So you see no parallels with the past at all? Didn’t Marx say ‘that history repeats itself first as a tragedy and second as a farce.’.Robbo203 – I don’t know if this is a form of ‘great men of history’ but it seems to me that without the dark charisma of Hitler the holocaust would not have reached the horrific level that it did although the second world war was inevitable as a resolution to what was left unresolved by the first world war.
CDM – Of course Fascism is a form of capitalism but like state capitalism it differs in some respects. The Party has never demurred from an in depth analysis of state capitalism (hard left capitalism) so why do you object to a similar analysis of Fascism (hard right capitalism) as an ideology? We don’t seek to confine Bolshevism to its historical context (early 20th century) to critique its contemporary incarnations.
TM – Certainly Marx used it in a derogatory way but the definition of ideology does differ depending on the source. To be a little provocative I sometimes think that you and CDM use the tracts of the SPGB in a rather ‘ideological’ way. Anyways socialism is obviously a system of values and beliefs that qualify it, for me, as an ideology. Interestingly your definition of philosophy clashes with many in the party who believe it has been entirely eclipsed by economics and science. Unusually I like your definition as an aspiration but it has to be said that most philosophers have been ideologically motivated in their work and conclusions.
Of course socialism is an ideology. It might claim to be much more, and with some justification, but it is still, at heart, an ideology. Think of the word ‘reality’. It is, obviously, a word but it claims to be more and something other than just a word. But whatever ontology you come up with it starts and ends as a word – same with ‘socialism’. I’ve studied, in some depth, the second world war and its origins so I don’t really need you to tell me what ‘I probably think’. Since Mussolini’s Fascism the word has, for obvious reasons, gone rather out of fashion but the ideology doesn’t depend on what it’s leader calls it but rather the policies it enacts when in power.
TM – What ‘blind alley’ is that? Critiquing contemporary Fascism like we do every other ideology based on capitalism?
I despair if you guys consider the holocaust as capitalism’s business as usual. Auschwitz was an immense city of death- I think you guys should pay it a visit sometime. So you believe no progress has been made since the days of slavery? You don’t think that the treatment of women and children has improved immeasurably over the last hundred years in many parts of the world? Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater! No wonder TM longs for the end of the world. CDM – we don’t confine Marxian socialism to the late 19th century so as to understand its historical context. Socialism is a living ideology as is, unfortunately, Fascism and Bolshevism. The fact that capitalism’s failure is responsible for the survival of these ideologies (including, of course, Socialism) does not mean that they cease to exist.
