# a marxist history of the world- counterfire



## barney_pig (Aug 14, 2012)

Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

I followed the series up to about The End of Rome in the west but got so frustrated at it that i had to leave it. Will check the latest one out.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 14, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


Oi barney-pig

why not republish it as a blog with annotations. You could call it something like the trotskyist school of falsification


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?



Ah the "fascism is no worse than other types of capitalism" school of thought ...


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Here is the piece.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Ok, first thing:



> Hitler’s Germany was attempting to restore its dominant position in Europe


 
Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

Wow there's actually no mention of the holocaust or anything like that at all.


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## barney_pig (Aug 14, 2012)

I was so pissed off I forgot to post the link. It reaaly is dire.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

There's nothing about what the Japanese were doing in Korea as well.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> Wow there's actually no mention of the holocaust or anything like that at all.


Mentions the Bengal famine though. Odd,


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## barney_pig (Aug 14, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> Wow there's actually no mention of the holocaust or anything like that at all.


It's the sort of piece that got that nice Mr Irving into so much trouble.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

Htf can you miss out the holocaust? Even if it was incidental to the aims of the Nazis during the war (i'd argue that it wasn't, at least in the latter stages of the war) it was still a pretty central part of what happened in WWII.


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## Fedayn (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Ok, first thing:
> 
> 
> 
> Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


 
I seem to remember reading the German economy being the most industrialised in Europe, perhaps that's what he was referring to?

Evwen if so it's still a bit of a stretch to saying it had a position of European dominance.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Fedayn said:


> I seem to remember reading the German economy being the most industrialised in Europe, perhaps that's what he was referring to?
> 
> Evwen if so it's still a bit of a stretch to saying it had a position of European dominance.


It wasn't though. It's a commonplace that has been trotted out in shoddy historiess like this for years . Adam Tooze destroys this myth in The Wages of Destruction that shows beyond a shadow of doubt that Germany was pretty much the modern day equivalent of a state like India.


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## Fedayn (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It wasn't though. It's a commonplace that has been trotted out in shoddy historiess like this for years . Adam Tooze destroys this myth in The Wages of Destruction that shows beyond a shadow of doubt that Germany was pretty much the modern day equivalent of a state like India.


 
How does that explain the position of the SPD then given it was based on a heavily industrialised working class?!


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

It wasn't - it was heavily based in the industrial areas and electorate. Which wasn't actually that widespread as the myth has it. The bulk of other production and support came from small scale manufacturies with a handful of people employed in them - and those people being paid peanuts and working on outdated machinery (i.e extensive exploitation rather than the true mark of capital, intensive exploitation). The idea of Germany as an industrial behemoth comes from the post-war years, not from the reality of germany in those years.


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## Fedayn (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It wasn't - it was heavily based in the industrial areas and electorate. Which wasn't actually that widespread as the myth has it. The bulk of other production and support came from small scale manufacturies with a handful of people employed in them - and those people being paid peanuts and working on outdated machinery (i.e extensive exploitation rather than the true mark of capital, intensive exploitation). The idea of Germany as an industrial behemoth comes from the post-war years, not from the reality of germany in those years.


 
I know it was 'centred' in the Ruhr/Westphalia areas but it was the largest party-votes wise-just before WW1... Might be worth having a better look at, i'll have a look I think.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Fedayn said:


> I know it was 'centred' in the Ruhr/Westphalia areas but it was the largest party-votes wise-just before WW1... Might be worth having a better look at, i'll have a look I think.


It sure was, but one of the way the myth got wheel was by equating an SPD vote/voter with industrial worker. They dominated that small section of the population but it remained a small section of the population. Traditional artisan stuff or classic peasantry was the order of the day.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 14, 2012)

Fedayn said:


> I seem to remember reading the German economy being the most industrialised in Europe, perhaps that's what he was referring to?


 
I suspect the author is mistaking the speed of economic effect of German industrialisation for the *volume* of it. Also, Germany only patchily industrialised, mostly on it's western flank and spottily on it's eastern flank.



> Evwen if so it's still a bit of a stretch to saying it had a position of European dominance.


 
Not even in any of the raw materials it produced.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It wasn't though. It's a commonplace that has been trotted out in shoddy historiess like this for years . Adam Tooze destroys this myth in The Wages of Destruction that shows beyond a shadow of doubt that Germany was pretty much the modern day equivalent of a state like India.


 
With almost as shoddy a system of land inheritance, too, which didn't help the economy or productivity.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It wasn't - it was heavily based in the industrial areas and electorate. Which wasn't actually that widespread as the myth has it. The bulk of other production and support came from small scale manufacturies with a handful of people employed in them - and those people being paid peanuts and working on outdated machinery (i.e extensive exploitation rather than the true mark of capital, intensive exploitation). The idea of Germany as an industrial behemoth comes from the post-war years, not from the reality of germany in those years.


 
Yep. Berlin, for example, was massively productive between the wars, but more than half of that came from "cottage production" of the watchmaker type.


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## Red Storm (Aug 14, 2012)

The entire article was only 1400 words long, so it was never going to be any good.

I don't really see what made it a "Marxist history", the only bit of it which was arguably Marxist was the final paragraph:



> The Second World War was an imperialist war to re-divide the world between competing blocs of capitalists. Dominant among the victors were the US and Soviet ruling classes. The imperialist world war had created a new bi-polar division of the globe.


 
And this rests on the 'state capitalist' thesis.


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## Nigel Irritable (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


 
Not to defend the article in general, but I'd say that it was fairly dominant in the years immediately following the Franco-Prussian war, at least in a military sense.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Nigel Irritable said:


> Not to defend the article in general, but I'd say that it was fairly dominant in the years immediately following the Franco-Prussian war, at least in a military sense.


It was among the leading powers but it wasn't ever really dominant apart from a short period following victory in the Franco-Prussian war - and even militarily this was only in a limited sense, bolstered by (or more accurately, circumscribed by) GB's reluctance to get involved on the continent following the Crimean war - militarily they were totally hemmed in by and at the mercy of the British Navy and Empire. Industrially they were a relative backwater - which makes the claim that Faulkner (who i have a lot of time for generally) rests his shoddy argument of European dominance on ("Germany was not backward at all: it was the greatest industrial power in Europe.") even more shaky. They were going to war precisely _because_ of their lack of dominance.


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## Nigel Irritable (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It was among the leading powers but it wasn't ever really dominant apart from a short period following victory in the Franco-Prussian war - and even militarily this was only in a limited sense, bolstered by (or more accurately, circumscribed by) GB's reluctance to get involved on the continent following the Crimean war


 
I'm certainly no expert on the economic history of Germany, and I haven't actually read the Wages of Destruction, so I'm reluctant to start pulling opinions about it out of my arse.


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## JimW (Aug 14, 2012)

Perhaps he meant the Holy Roman Empire? That was top dog for a few centuries IIRC.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


I haven't read the article, and I'm sure your rendition of it is somewhat cartoonesque, but it sounds like a pretty reasonable analysis to me.  Is there a better 1400 word analysis you have in mind?

PS I quite liked his stuff in the past on the fall of the Roman Empire.  So, I may be biased.. lol


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## Spanky Longhorn (Aug 14, 2012)

Nigel Irritable said:


> I'm reluctant to start pulling opinions about it out of my arse.


 
If only some of the other posters on here heeded that advice.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> Ah the "fascism is no worse than other types of capitalism" school of thought ...


Did he say that?  he must have changed his views a lot then.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Did he say that?  he must have changed his views a lot then.


 
nah he didn't say that at all, i said that before I'd read the article. but it's a kind of "marxism" i've come across before, mostly on revleft lol


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> I haven't read the article, and I'm sure your rendition of it is somewhat cartoonesque, but it sounds like a pretty reasonable analysis to me. Is there a better 1400 word analysis you have in mind?
> 
> PS I quite liked his stuff in the past on the fall of the Roman Empire. So, I may be biased.. lol


Why don't you read it? You think the summary offered by barney is a reasonable analysis of the conflict? You think this is a reasonable analysis?



> an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Ok, first thing:
> 
> 
> 
> Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


wasn't it the biggest economically?  I mean I don't know how you factor in the British Empire, but wasn't its production much bigger than most if not all other European countries?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Why don't you read it? You think the summary offered by barney is a reasonable analysis of the conflict? You think this is a reasonable analysis?


not got time at the moment, I'm on my way out, but I doubt he will say anything I have not heard before.  Yes a perfectly reasonable analysis.

But we've been over this kind of topic many times.  What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

a reasonable analysis that doesn't include the holocaust?


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## Brainaddict (Aug 14, 2012)

Haven't read it and don't want to waste my time on it - it sounds a bit suss that they don't mention the holocaust at all. However, I think if you ask many Brits why Britain fought Nazi Germany they would give you some answer involving the holocaust. Which is nonsense of course, and it's important to say that. And from Churchill's point of view it was almost entirely imperialist reasons. If you talk about the _motivations_ for going to war it's fair enough not to mention the holocaust. A bit funny not to mention it in a history of the whole war though.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> not got time at the moment, I'm on my way out, but I doubt he will say anything I have not heard before. Yes a perfectly reasonable analysis.
> 
> But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?


You're entitled to say that you would _expect_ NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he _has_ given a reasonable analysis without reading it.


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## treelover (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It wasn't - it was heavily based in the industrial areas and electorate. Which wasn't actually that widespread as the myth has it. The bulk of other production and support came from small scale manufacturies with a handful of people employed in them - and those people being paid peanuts and working on outdated machinery (i.e extensive exploitation rather than the true mark of capital, intensive exploitation). The idea of Germany as an industrial behemoth comes from the post-war years, not from the reality of germany in those years.


 
Eh, what about re-armament?, that was on a massive scale in the 1930's, must have increased industrial output..


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## treelover (Aug 14, 2012)

btw, wonder how long it will take to get to Harry's Place

Does it mention Palestine?


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## emanymton (Aug 14, 2012)

Just speculation but maybe part 89 will be the holocaust.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

treelover said:


> Eh, what about re-armament?, that was on a massive scale in the 1930's, must have increased industrial output..


It didn't take place until the mid-late 1930s - and that doesn't make germnay the most advanced industrial country nor the dominant european power at some period prior to then - which is what we were discussing. Here is a table from Toozes book that puts Germany in a proper sort of perspective and context in the 30s.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> nah he didn't say that at all, i said that before I'd read the article. but it's a kind of "marxism" i've come across before, mostly on revleft lol


okey dokey, no worries.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> The entire article was only 1400 words long, so it was never going to be any good.
> 
> I don't really see what made it a "Marxist history", the only bit of it which was arguably Marxist was the final paragraph:
> 
> ...


which he considers Marxist?


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## Idris2002 (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Ok, first thing:
> 
> 
> 
> Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


 
Kissinger once said that Germany was too big for Europe and too small to be a world power.

AJP Taylor used to say that there were too many Germans, and that Germany was in the wrong place.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You're entitled to say that you would _expect_ NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he _has_ given a reasonable analysis without reading it.


Piggy was shocked at "Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. ", I wasn't.  Seemed a pretty reasonable starting point, I view I will hold whether you give me permission or not. 

now; 
But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


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## Red Storm (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> which he considers Marxist?


 
Of course, but it just makes it rocky ground. And weakens the position that its a 'Marxist history'.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> Of course, but it just makes it rocky ground. And weakens the position that its a 'Marxist history'.


do you want to just expand on, makes it rocky ground, and weakens its position?  Please.


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## Red Storm (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Piggy was shocked at "Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. ", I wasn't. Seemed a pretty reasonable starting point, I view I will hold whether you give me permission or not.
> 
> now;
> But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


 
I'd recommend him not to bother with a poxy article on an enormous subject of WWII. 

Maybe a 1500 word article on an aspect of WWII.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Piggy was shocked at "Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. ", I wasn't. Seemed a pretty reasonable starting point, I view I will hold whether you give me permission or not.
> 
> now;
> But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


 
You're entitled to say that you would expect NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he has given a reasonable analysis without reading it.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Ok, first thing:
> 
> 
> 
> Germany had never had a position of european dominance to restore.


would be fair to say Hitler’s Germany was attempting to create a dominant position in Europe and to secure access to the raw materials, labour reserves, factories, and markets necessary for the continued expansion of German capitalism (see MHW 87).


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You're entitled to say that you would expect NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he has given a reasonable analysis without reading it.


ok dad.
But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


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## Red Storm (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> do you want to just expand on, makes it rocky ground, and weakens its position? Please.


 
Because of the differing thoughts on the Soviet Union regarding state capitalism and deformed blah blah. I personally don't have an opinion on it; I've not done any research or thought on it. 

His only Marxist position in the entire article is subject to debate (read as intellectual masturbation) I think it only weakens the article's promise of being a Marxist history further.


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## The39thStep (Aug 14, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of *ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict*, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


 
this was the Ferudi RCP line I think which they pushed in a pamphlet against the ANL in the 70s.


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## Red Storm (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> ok dad.
> But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


 



> I'd recommend him not to bother with a poxy article on an enormous subject of WWII.
> 
> Maybe a 1500 word article on an aspect of WWII.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You're entitled to say that you would _expect_ NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he _has_ given a reasonable analysis without reading it.


btw "_an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)."_
_Is piggy, not NF isn't it?_


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> would be fair to say Hitler’s Germany was attempting to create a dominant position in Europe and to secure access to the raw materials, labour reserves, factories, and markets necessary for the continued expansion of German capitalism (see MHW 87).


Of course it would. And it would be wrong to say that Germany was doing this to reattain _an old dominance_ - and that 'it was the greatest industrial power in Europe'.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> ok dad.
> But we've been over this kind of topic many times. What would you recommend as a better 1400 word analysis?​


I wouldn't.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> btw "_an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)."_
> _Is piggy, not NF isn't it?_


Why are you posting to tell me that the characterisation in the opening post was made by the poster who posted it?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Of course it would. And it would be wrong to say that Germany was doing this to reattain _an old dominance_ - and that 'it was the greatest industrial power in Europe'.


OK fair enough. perhaps it just isn't as clever as you, and has only read the books that say otherwise.  I don't know.

Just seems to me that any article that starts by describing the World War II is purely an imperialist war, is starting from a pretty sound footing.  I don't think, like many others, the Holocaust is central as to how and why the Second World War came about.  I will go andhave a read of the article now.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> OK fair enough. perhaps it just isn't as clever as you, and has only read the books that say otherwise. I don't know.


What a really useful way to make some sort of point. What was it again?


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## love detective (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> OK fair enough. perhaps it just isn't as clever as you, *and has only read the books that say otherwise*. I don't know.


 
do you know of any books that say otherwise?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> I wouldn't.


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## The39thStep (Aug 14, 2012)

Dunno about that but here is the sort of conversation about Trostkyism and the second world war that should be made mandatory reading:

http://discussion.newyouth.com/index.php?topic=471.0;wap2


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened. none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust. It did not guide or motivate their actions in anyway. it is well documented that even when they knew they could save lives by bombing train lines servicing the death camps, they didnt. The history of hither to existing society, is the history of CLASS struggle.

And if you believe that the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class, then challenging the audience who may believe the "we were fighting fascism" analysis with an alternative analysis which places blame squarely with the world's ruling classes, and their imperialism seems reasonable to me. I don't think people like some of you would have been his target audience.

Of course there may be better analysis than the "imperialist war" analysis, but I haven't seen anybody point to one yet.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

'Germany' (your usage) wasn't interested in the holocaust? How then did it happen?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> 'Germany' (your usage) wasn't interested in the holocaust? How then did it happen?


cover the general point first.  You agree don't you?


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## The39thStep (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened. none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust. It did not guide or motivate their actions in anyway. it is well documented that even when they knew they could save lives by bombing train lines servicing the death camps,* they did.* The history of hither to existing society, is the history of CLASS struggle.
> 
> And if you believe that the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class, then challenging the audience who may believe the "we were fighting fascism" analysis with an alternative analysis which places blame squarely with the world's ruling classes, and their imperialism seems reasonable to me. I don't think people like some of you would have been his target audience.
> 
> Of course there may be better analysis than the "imperialist war" analysis, but I haven't seen anybody point to one yet.


 
They didn't though did they?


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened. none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust. It did not guide or motivate their actions in anyway. it is well documented that even when they knew they could save lives by bombing train lines servicing the death camps, they did. The history of hither to existing society, is the history of CLASS struggle.


 
yes they were. you think that killing off large swathes of the working class and diverting people's anger towards a scapegoat, and one of the central themes of fascism which is to "unite" all classes "for the good of the nation" wasn't anything to do with class struggle?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

The39thStep said:


> They didn't though did they?


sorry, I've already corrected the typing.  Well speech recognition error.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

the holocaust had everything to do with class struggle.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> cover the general point first. You agree don't you?


That _is_ your general point. That the holocaust was almost incidental. That 'Germany' (your usage - you've not specified what you mean by this term) had no interest in the holocaust.If so, why were so many resources spent on putting it into motion over such a long period and not into military initiatives? You should be able to say why. 

And no, of course i don't agree with it.


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## frogwoman (Aug 14, 2012)

> in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened.


 
you think it's reasonable to ignore how and why a fascist dictatorship managed to industrialise genocide on a scale the world had never known? what in fascism and what in the conditions that regime existed in enabled it to do this? and vast resources were spent on the genocide which could have been channelled into military operations but weren't.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> That _is_ your general point. That the holocaust was almost incidental. That 'Germany' (your usage - you've not specified what you mean by this term) had no interest in the holocaust.If so, why were so many resources spent on putting it into motion over such a long period and not into military initiatives? You should be able to say why.
> 
> And no, of course i don't agree with it.


OH,okay.  So would you mind just pointing to the kind of analysis of the Second World War you would subscribe to.

no my general point was " _none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust."_

_I emphasised the point none of the worlds ruling classes._

_But going back to Germany.  Perhaps I should have added the words, as a motivation for going to war, but I thought that was covered in a guide to their actions._

_I'm not taking the piss, you and panda seem to be the expert on this, what percentage of the German rulingclass, excluding Hitler and the other idiots, were really motivated by the Final Solution would you estimate?_

_is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective?  Do he and his group control the means of production?  How autonomous was Nazism?  Will the real Nazism please stand up?_


_Churchill once said in Parliament, "if I had to choose between socialism and fascism, I cannot say I would choose the former".  In my opinion this is what motivated the German ruling class, not a desire for the Final Solution.  The Final Solution is something they got lumbered with.  The German ruling class tried to ride a tiger, little did they know they'd end up inside her._


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 14, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> you think it's reasonable to ignore how and why a fascist dictatorship managed to industrialise genocide on a scale the world had never known? what in fascism and what in the conditions that regime existed in enabled it to do this? and vast resources were spent on the genocide which could have been channelled into military operations but weren't.


you liked this post.





Brainaddict said:


> Haven't read it and don't want to waste my time on it - it sounds a bit suss that they don't mention the holocaust at all. However, I think if you ask many Brits why Britain fought Nazi Germany they would give you some answer involving the holocaust. Which is nonsense of course, and it's important to say that. And from Churchill's point of view it was almost entirely imperialist reasons. *If you talk about the motivations for going to war it's fair enough not to mention the holocaust.* A bit funny not to mention it in a history of the whole war though.


if you are asking why Neal Falkner left it out, I would say because he rightly considered the Holocaust was not the motivation or guide to the actions of the vast vast majority of the world's ruling classes.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> OH,okay. So would you mind just pointing to the kind of analysis of the Second World War you would subscribe to.
> 
> no my general point was " _none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust."_
> 
> ...


Your point - general or not - was that the holocaust was not a central or determining component of the war or the motivations for it - so therefore it's fine to leave it out of any account of the war. If that was the case then why did the German state, the nazi regime, the German military and the various competing component parts of the polyocracy expend so much effort time and resources on it, directing them away from military or other productive operations? You should be able to say why - it should fit easily and seamlessly into your analysis. If you cannot answer it then this analysis has a pretty fatal problem. And 'Germany' getting 'lumbered with it' is not any sort of answer.


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## JimW (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Your point - general or not - was that the holocaust was not a central or determining component of the war or the motivations for it - so therefore it's fine to leave it out of any account of the war. If that was the case then why did the German state, the nazi regime, the German military and the various competing component parts of the polyocracy expend so much effort time and resources on it, directing them away from military or other productive operations? You should be able to say why - it should fit easily and seamlessly into your analysis. If you cannot answer it then this analysis has a pretty fatal problem. And 'Germany' getting 'lumbered with it' is not any sort of answer.


There's that good Postone article on it that points out how much resources the german state was diverting to the murder programmes even as they were losing the war: http://libcom.org/library/anti-semitism-national-socialism-moishe-postone


> Auschwitz, not the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, was the real “German Revolution,” the attempted “overthrow,” not merely of a political order, but of the existing social formation. By this one deed the world was to be made safe from the tyranny of the abstract. In the process, the Nazis “liberated” themselves from humanity. The Nazis lost the war against the Soviet Union, America, and Britain. They won their war, their “revolution,” against the European Jews.


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## The39thStep (Aug 14, 2012)

There was also an interesting talk about Marxism and the holaucast at Marxism a few years ago by a bloke called Maitland whose main argument was that the capitalists on Germany didn't like the effect of forced emigration of Jewish labour but embraced the logistical issues around the extermination camps with some ease.

In fact what could be argued was that it was precisely the unwillingness by the to be allies to accept Jewish immigrants per war that led to the conditions for the final solution.


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## butchersapron (Aug 14, 2012)

Frank Maitland?


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## The39thStep (Aug 14, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Frank Maitland?


 
nope but I have found him ,Henry Maitless :  http://swpradiocast.bandcamp.com/track/marxism-the-holocaust-marxism-2011


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## Spanky Longhorn (Aug 14, 2012)

"are you a fascist?"

"Yes mate, NF (Neil Faulkener)."


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## barney_pig (Aug 15, 2012)

Rmp3s dishonest postings are sick, and show us how far his politics have taken him, the holocaust being a detail of history. But is worth asking, if the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews is not to be mentioned as it was not central to the German war aims then why were Stalin's mass purged and the Bengal famine included? 
When Rmp3 ever gets around to bothering to read the article he is knowledgeable about, he migjt also answer why in part 83 NF can only mention the holocaust in opaque terms and even then only after talking about the suffering of the German people during the soviet advance into Germany.


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## Red Storm (Aug 15, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Rmp3s dishonest postings are sick, and show us how far his politics have taken him, the holocaust being a detail of history. But is worth asking,* if the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews* is not to be mentioned as it was not central to the German war aims then why were Stalin's mass purged and the Bengal famine included?
> When Rmp3 ever gets around to bothering to read the article he is knowledgeable about, he migjt also answer why in part 83 NF can only mention the holocaust in opaque terms and even then only after talking about the suffering of the German people during the soviet advance into Germany.


 
Always annoys me when the other millions of leftists, trade unionists, homosexuals, disabled, Poles, Gypsies and Slavs are forgotten.


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## Fedayn (Aug 15, 2012)

The39thStep said:


> nope but I have found him ,Henry Maitless : http://swpradiocast.bandcamp.com/track/marxism-the-holocaust-marxism-2011


 
He's from Glasgow, decent fella as it goes.


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## butchersapron (Aug 15, 2012)

The39thStep said:


> nope but I have found him ,Henry Maitless : http://swpradiocast.bandcamp.com/track/marxism-the-holocaust-marxism-2011


Halfway through that - rmp3 could do with a listen to that, or even with reading Callinicos on marxism and the holocaust.

Glad to say that he doesn't go anywhere near the unbelievably crude sort of analysis that simply divides the period into 1) motivations (and of a homogenous bloc called germany) and 2) how these claimed motivations panned out. That sort of thing misses firstly, the competing motivations of different parts of the regime and secondly how the failure or success of meeting those ends can itself lead to a process of 'cumulative radicalisation' (to use Hans Mommsen's phrase). In this case the failure to ideologically and militarily destroy the USSR in 1941 led to a radicalisation of the work of the einsatzgruppen and the decision to embark on industrial genocide, not as some mere side-detail but as one of the central aims of the most powerful section of the competing power blocs and with the agreement of the lesser power groups. That's why to ignore the holocause is to ignore a key part of ww2 _and_ pretty much all the really important surrounding context. Even in two 3000 words pieces there is no need to be that simplistic.

edit: There's another good example of that interconnection between the wider capitalist motivations and anti-semitism as functional to them that Maitless nearly touches on but goes around in the end. The orignal plan was to expel the jews - but to do it on a sort of basis of domestic primitive accumulation, that is, first special taxes on jews as hard as possible, expropriation of businesses, investments and bank accounts - then to make the issue of exit-visas directly tied to giving up all your property and money to the state - and all this extra potential capital flowed back to expanding German capital at a rate subsidised firstly by theft and then financial double-tricks by the German state. This expansion of industry led to wider conflicts between German capital and German workers in 1937-39 period, which put Hitler's longer term plans for eventual war under threat and forced him/them into fighting an earlier war in order not to allow their enemies time to open up a wider military gap.

edit: and a third point, Maitless points out that at the moment of utmost military danger to the German state their one of their central objective - to the disregard of other more urgent measures (to a mind concerned with military victory anyway) - was how to get the Thessalonian jews to the death camps.


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## butchersapron (Aug 15, 2012)

Does anyone recognise the person who does the first comment after Maitless - about 35 minutes in.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 15, 2012)

treelover said:


> Eh, what about re-armament?, that was on a massive scale in the 1930's, must have increased industrial output..


 
Increased industrial output, especially amid other economies on a similar footing, doesn't equate to economic or industrial dominance.


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## ayatollah (Aug 15, 2012)

To take up a point made at the end of post #72 MP3:


is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?

_This does raise the rather thorny issue of quite what a "Marxist perspective" actually is. A crude reductionist "Marxism" sees "all history as the history of class struggle" for instance (Ok the Communist Manifesto was a crude propagandist pamphlet for the International Workingmens Association, not Marx's considered view necessarily, but it does colour a lot of subsequent "Marxist analysis").. which is quite obviously bullshit, (eg, explain the rise of the Mongol Empire simply though Class Struggle ) but not as catchy as "Throughout history there's been quite a lot of class struggle, which has sometimes been an important driver of events and change" Also, the crude reductionist view that the "ideological superstructure" is completely dependant on , and a direct reflection of , the "economic base" and ruling class interests, rather than often it itself being a semi-independent driver of events, reflecting back on the structure and operations of the economic base, stands in the way of understanding events quite often. _

_By 1941 and the move to mass industrialised extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, etc, etc, it is quite clear that, whatever their initial cynical, tactical, accomodation with the racial madness of Nazism had originally been, the German Capitalist class was a completely cowed, subordinate player, to the ideology driven dynamic of the Nazi hierarchy and their racist global vision, and they and much of German society generally, had become entranced by the poisonous anti-Semitic ideological world view of Nazism, so that this, rather than the conventional imperialist objectives which drove Germany on the road to WWI, had become one of the PRIME war objectives of the mass of the German population and state - so indoctrinated had they become by relentless Nazi propaganda -- ie, the German state and people were "living the dream", not operating in relation to rational, economics-based, objectives at all. _

_By 1941, there is an argument that Germany under the by then total control of society by NAZIS had moved significantly away from conventional capitalism - to a peculiar new hybrid "NAZI SS State form" in which conventional market forces temporarily subsumed under wartime planned allocation systems would become permanent (a Planned permanent genocidal expansionist war economy) , combined with the gigantic and ever increasing usage of slave labour at all levels, substituting for wage labourers, industrial and domestic. So that, had for instance, the Nazis made less military tactical mistakes, and got the A bomb first (quite possible - without some mistakes by key German scientists) and won the war in Europe and the Soviet Union, the genocidal, expansionist SS militarist state that would have emerged would have been some quite new sort of industrial slave state, with closer connections to the economic model of Stalinist state capitalism (also using hordes of slave labourers for major projects - but not on the scale of 1940's Germany), than anything that had gone before -- consuming its captive populations in a frenzy of extermination and slave labour whilst ever greater numbers of military age Germans and their collaborators engaged in permanent warfare with the world power blocs led by , on the one hand, the USA, and on the other Japan.. Far fetched possibly, but the operational and ideological dynamics of Nazism in full flood should serve to discourage over-reductionist "Marxist" assumptions about the historical process. In particular a crude Marxism reductionism fails to alert us to the bizarre "circus of reaction" social forms capitalism can resort to rather than give up its power . Remember for much of the 30's the Left just assumed that "the unstoppable force of history" guaranteed the victory of socialism.. "After Hitler.. us" they said, as the round up squads came for the Left. No such automatic dynamic for proletarian victory exists in history I'm afraid._


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 15, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> in my opinion, If you believe Marxism is about understanding the dynamic of society, it seems reasonable to ignore the Holocaust as it wasn't central to the how and why the Second World War happened.


 
Nobody has claimed that it was central, although any serious analysis of Germany's reasons w/r/t WW2 should include the final solution to the Jewish problem as an important secondary concern, in terms of productive labour and expropriated _materiel_.



> none, absolutely none of the world's ruling classes, including Germany, were interested in the Holocaust. It did not guide or motivate their actions in anyway.


 
"Including Germany", eh? Of course the ruling classes in Germany were interested in the Holocaust, you muppet. The Holocaust was a mechanism that allowed the German ruling classes to line their pockets, expand their holdings and embed their influence.



> it is well documented that even when they knew they could save lives by bombing train lines servicing the death camps, they didnt. The history of hither to existing society, is the history of CLASS struggle.


 
Because, of course, there was no other set of reasons why the lines weren't bombed.

Oh wait...



> And if you believe that the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class, then challenging the audience who may believe the "we were fighting fascism" analysis with an alternative analysis which places blame squarely with the world's ruling classes, and their imperialism seems reasonable to me. I don't think people like some of you would have been his target audience.
> 
> Of course there may be better analysis than the "imperialist war" analysis, but I haven't seen anybody point to one yet.


 
You miss the point. While the "imperialist war" thesis works, it only works in terms of analysing the work of the ruling class. It's not a case of offering "better", but a case of finding different, perhaps complementary, analyses that explain the war not just from the perspective of power.


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## barney_pig (Aug 15, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> To take up a point made at the end of post #72 MP3:
> 
> 
> is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?
> ...


Thankyou ayatollah, proof that swp influenced people can make decent and thoughtful comments


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You're entitled to say that you would expect NF to offer a reasonable analysis without reading it - you're not entitled to say that he has given a reasonable analysis without reading it.





butchersapron said:


> Why are you posting to tell me that the characterisation in the opening post was made by the poster who posted it?


look at your original question http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...world-counterfire.297781/page-2#post-11436349


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> look at your original question http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...world-counterfire.297781/page-2#post-11436349


Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

I tried to read the Postone article but I'm afraid I didn't understand all of it. Would somebody mind giving me a summary of the argument?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

Any comeback on the posts above btw rmp3?


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> Always annoys me when the other millions of leftists, trade unionists, homosexuals, disabled, Poles, Gypsies and Slavs are forgotten.


 
I agree totally, but the anti-semitism was one of the main planks of nazi ideology. the jews were seen as the foremost enemy and the large majority of Nazi propaganda revolved around jews as the enemy of Germany in a way that the others weren't. I agree there should be more emphasis placed but I think a good reason for that is the nature of Nazi propaganda and priorities itself.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Nobody has claimed that it was central, although any serious analysis of Germany's reasons w/r/t WW2 should include the final solution to the Jewish problem as an important secondary concern, in terms of productive labour and expropriated _materiel_.


this isn't a serious analyses you dickhead, its a 1440 word article. I never said anybody claimed it was central, I'm explaining to frog woman my opinion as to a possible reason why he left it out, as you agree it isn't central to understanding the dynamics of the conflict.



> "Including Germany", eh? Of course the ruling classes in Germany were interested in the Holocaust, you muppet. The Holocaust was a mechanism that allowed the German ruling classes to line their pockets, expand their holdings and embed their influence.


even in your own statements you outline how it was a means to an end, the German ruling classes wish to line their pockets, expand their holdings, and embed their influence, there aim wasn't the final solution. The final solution was the aim of a tiny minority. A minority with enough power to cow into submission those who opposed it, and those who acquiesced to achieve other aims, fair enough. in my opinion to say the final solution was central to the aims of the German ruling class, is to put the cart before the horse. The aims of the ruling class in the Second World War, remained the same as they were in the First World War.


> Because, of course, there was no other set of reasons why the lines weren't bombed.


I'd be interested in you expanding on this.




> You miss the point. While the "imperialist war" thesis works, it only works in terms of analysing the work of the ruling class. It's not a case of offering "better", but a case of finding different, perhaps complementary, analyses that explain the war not just from the perspective of power.


again, it was a 1400 word article, I doubt Neil would deny his work could be complemented with further investigation. feel free to point to some complimentary analysis.

anyway thanks for your input, you have agreed with the two central points I wanted to make.
1. The imperialist war analysis works.
2. The Holocaust is not central to understanding the above kind of analysis.

To be fair to Neil, I think in 1400 words he has found A most expeditious way of challenging the dominant ideas about the Second World War. A challenging way that may cause people not as knowledgeable as yourself, to investigate further. now whilst I wouldn't condemn anybody for criticising it, and offering complimentary analysis, I think "having a bit of fun with it" is just sectarian bullshit.





barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


but what can you expect from a bunch of sectarian wankers.


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

i'd say an understanding of the holocaust is pretty essential to understanding world war II. The fash seemed to think it was when they were carrying it out. The fact that they diverted essential resources towards killing Jews rather than fighting the war seems to suggest it's rather more important than the article is saying.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

The SWP moved beyond such crude _marxism_ decades ago rmp3. Suggest you do the same.


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## Random (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> this isn't a serious analyses you dickhead, its a 1440 word article.


 Rather nasty to swear at someone who's trying to politely argue with you. I thought you were supposed to be the acceptable face of trotsky-leninism?


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

innit what an utterly depressing thread


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> i'd say an understanding of the holocaust is pretty essential to understanding world war II. The fash seemed to think it was when they were carrying it out. The fact that they diverted essential resources towards killing Jews rather than fighting the war seems to suggest it's rather more important than the article is saying.


Neil has tried to give *A* 1440 word explanation of the Second World War.  Because of that brevity, he has had to cut cut cut. in my opinion he has concentrated on the key points, which are most likely to challenge the dominant ideas about the Second World War.

According to Panda, "Nobody has claimed that it was central, although any serious analysis of Germany's reasons w/r/t WW2 should include the final solution to the Jewish problem as an important secondary concern, in terms of productive labour and expropriated _materiel_."
perhaps Panda can explain better than me why nobody has claimed that it is central.


PS. "The fash seemed to think it was when they were carrying it out. The fact that they diverted essential resources towards killing Jews rather than fighting the war seems to suggest it's rather more important than the article is saying." BTW in my opinion you make two important points there as to why the Holocaust was not instrumental in achieving the aims of those who owned and controlled the means of production, and in fact were counter-productive in achieving their aims.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

Random said:


> Rather nasty to swear at someone who's trying to politely argue with you. I thought you were supposed to be the acceptable face of trotsky-leninism?


LOL, nice one.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Neil has tried to give *A* 1440 word explanation of the Second World War. Because of that brevity, he has had to cut cut cut. in my opinion he has concentrated on the key points, which are most likely to challenge the dominant ideas about the Second World War.


wouldn't it have been a better idea to concentrate on providing a marxist explanation of the war rather than challenging dominant ideas of the war, which isn't quite the same thing?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Neil has tried to give *A* 1440 word explanation of the Second World War. Because of that brevity, he has had to cut cut cut. in my opinion he has concentrated on the key points, which are most likely to challenge the dominant ideas about the Second World War.
> 
> According to Panda, "Nobody has claimed that it was central, although any serious analysis of Germany's reasons w/r/t WW2 should include the final solution to the Jewish problem as an important secondary concern, in terms of productive labour and expropriated _materiel_."
> perhaps Panda can explain better than me why nobody has claimed that it is central.
> ...


He gave a 3000 words explanation/overview containing many secondary events - but he didn't include a primary factor in the military conduct/aims of the war in europe. This is shit.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> this isn't a serious analyses you dickhead, its a 1440 word article.


so a 1,440 word article can't offer a serious analysis.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> so a 1,440 word article can't offer a serious analysis.


well, I've never seen you make a serious post..


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> well, I've never seen you make a serious post..


that's a sad indictment of how few of my posts you've read. you shouldn't parade your ignorance, rmp3.


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

> PS. "The fash seemed to think it was when they were carrying it out. The fact that they diverted essential resources towards killing Jews rather than fighting the war seems to suggest it's rather more important than the article is saying." BTW in my opinion you make two important points there as to why the Holocaust was not instrumental in achieving the aims of those who owned and controlled the means of production, and in fact were counter-productive in achieving their aims.


 
of course it was counterproductive, the diversion of resources etc, as well as the destruction of a source of labourers and the fact that Nazi racial policy turned many of the occupied populations against them was one of the things that ended up losing the fash the war. That doesn't explain why they did it in the first place, the fact that it was counterproductive didn't mean that it wasn't a key factor in how the German ruling class conducted the war.

As for whether Hitler was in the German ruling class - of course he fucking was.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.


Calm down n read your NF comments to me. God your such a drama queen.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Calm down n read your NF comments to me. God your such a drama queen.


 
Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> that's a sad indictment of how few of my posts you've read. you shouldn't parade your ignorance, rmp3.


ignorance of you is bliss.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.


no.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

Why can't you just write a normal response to posts - one filled by a position that is supported by evidence, facts and a logical chain of thought and argumentation connecting and leading up to your conclusion?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> no.


I'm afraid that you did - at some tedious length - argue that this overview 'sounds reasonable' (note, not barney's characterisation of it, but an overview that said this - that had these gaps).


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> ignorance of you is bliss.


yeh? but i make a serious point and you fuck about like a cunt. which is the experience i've had of you over the past however many years, that you are unable to defend your claims without pissing about like a fucking douchebag - as our american cousins say.

i'd ask you to prove me wrong, but your pisspoor antics on this thread lead me to believe you're fucking incapable of it.


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## JHE (Aug 16, 2012)

emanymton said:


> Just speculation but maybe part 89 will be the holocaust.


 
I can think of only two explanations for Faulkner not mentioning the Holocaust: (1) that the Anti-Zionists and Islamophiles of Counterfire don't want to upset the Holocaust-deniers among their chums or (2) that Emanymton's guess is more or less correct.

I notice that yesterday Neil Faulkner said, "*There are two more entries on the Second World War to come*, one of them dealing explicitly with the resistance." So my guess is explanation 2.

http://www.counterfire.org/index.ph...e-world-part-88-the-second-world-war#comments


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## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> I tried to read the Postone article but I'm afraid I didn't understand all of it. Would somebody mind giving me a summary of the argument?


Any specific bits?
My crude take is Postone is setting out why he thinks modern anti-Semitism of the Nazi type was not just any old bigotry nor did it have a functional goal, it was instead a projection onto a long-standing prejudice of all the faults of the "modern", making Jews responsible for the discontents of capitalism, with Nazism a kind of warped anti-capitalism (via an excursion into Marx's notion of the fetish):


> The “anticapitalist” attack, however, did not remain limited to the attack against abstraction. On the level of the capital fetish, it is not only the concrete side of the antinomy which can be naturalized and biologized. The manifest abstract dimension was also biologized—as the Jews. The fetishized opposition of the concrete material and the abstract, of the “natural” and the “artificial,” became translated as the world-historically significant racial opposition of the Aryans and the Jews. Modern anti-Semitism involves a biologization of capitalism—which itself is only understood in terms of its manifest abstract dimension—as International Jewry...
> ...The Jews were not seen merely as representatives of capital (in which case anti-Semitic attacks would have been much more class-specific). They became the personifications of the intangible, destructive, immensely powerful, and international domination of capital as an alienated social form.


Also looks at why specifically anti-Semitism is the prejudice this gets grafted on to.
I thought it was relevant to the discussion because sets out how central anti-Semitism was to what made Nazism the particular social-political movement it was, and that specific nature in turn plays a part in how they move to war.

ETA: Agree his jargon can be a bit dense - I thought antimony was a mineral before I read that, I think


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

JHE said:


> I can think of only two explanations for Faulkner not mentioning the Holocaust: (1) that the Anti-Zionists and Islamophiles of Counterfire don't want to upset the Holocaust-deniers among their chums or (2) that Emanymton's guess is more or less correct.
> 
> I notice that yesterday Neil Faulkner said, "*There are two more entries on the Second World War to come*, one of them dealing explicitly with the resistance." So my guess is explanation 2.


Maybe - would be interesting to see why it is shunted off to an annexe if that's the case.


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

JimW said:


> Any specific bits?
> My crude take is Postone is setting out why he thinks modern anti-Semitism of the Nazi type was not just any old bigotry nor did it have a functional goal, it was instead a projection onto a long-standing prejudice of all the faults of the "modern", making Jews responsible for the discontents of capitalism, with Nazism a kind of warped anti-capitalism (via an excursion into Marx's notion of the fetish):
> 
> Also looks at why specifically anti-Semitism is the prejudice this gets grafted on to.
> ...


 
where he talks about the "thingly nature" of something, etc


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> yeh? but i make a serious point and you fuck about like a cunt. which is the experience i've had of you over the past however many years, that you are unable to defend your claims without pissing about like a fucking douchebag - as our american cousins say.
> 
> i'd ask you to prove me wrong, but your pisspoor antics on this thread lead me to believe you're fucking incapable of it.


what serious point?


----------



## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> where he talks about the "thingly nature" of something, etc


I'll have to read it again to find that bit (then probably explain it to you wrong).


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

use value - exchange value
concrete - abstract
good - bad
thing  - air
community - parasite
industry - finance
worker - jew


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## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

_The dialectical tension between value and use-value in the commodity form requires that this “double character” be materially externalized. It appears “doubled” as money (the manifest form of value) and as the commodity (the manifest form of use-value). Although the commodity is a social form expressing both value and use-value, the effect of this externalization is that the commodity appears only as its use-value dimension, as purely material and “thingly.” Money, on the other hand, then appears as the sole repository of value, as the manifestation of the purely abstract, rather than as the externalized manifest form of the value dimension of the commodity itself._


I might be being really thick but I don't really understand this paragraph, and there are loads of others I don't understand either


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## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> where he talks about the "thingly nature" of something, etc


Right, found it. That's the bit where Postone offers his "brief analysis of the way in which capitalist social relations present themselves" and does what it says on the tin really - he's highlighting that peculiarity of the commodity form in that it appears as things but hides a social relationship. On the other hand, money appears as an abstract but is an "externalised manifest form of the value dimension of the commodity" - it's hiding something concrete. Then goes on to say that capitalist social relations don't appear as what they are but as an apparent opposition between the thing and the abstract which seems natural but in fact hides social and historical realities. An "anti-capitalism" that just opposes the 'abstract' misses out on the capitalist social relations inherent in 'concrete' labour (in the example he gives of Proudhon).


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 16, 2012)

So if I've understood this correctly his arguement is that Nazi justification for the holocaust was based on a very crude "anti-capitalism" without much sophistication or logic to the argument (he mentions platitudes like "money is the cause of all evil" etc?)


----------



## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> So if I've understood this correctly his arguement is that Nazi justification for the holocaust was based on a very crude "anti-capitalism" without much sophistication or logic to the argument (he mentions platitudes like "money is the cause of all evil" etc?)


More like Nazism as a social movement was possible because it had this "anti-capitalist" gloss, which was clearly the tenor of the times (anti-capitalist responses of all sorts in those post WWI decades) but was based on a horrible error that involved seeing only the abstract part of capitalist social relations and then pinning all that on the Jews.


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## ayatollah (Aug 16, 2012)

JimW said:


> More like Nazism as a social movement was possible because it had this "anti-capitalist" gloss, which was clearly the tenor of the times (anti-capitalist responses of all sorts in those post WWI decades) but was based on a horrible error that involved seeing only the abstract part of capitalist social relations and then pinning all that on the Jews.


 
I think you've nicely summed up his position in broad outline , in just a few lines , JimW. Pity Postone couldn't have been a lot more clear with his argument. If it twists ones brain to try and understand a point being made, the likelihood is that the argument is being made  badly in my experience, or simply to add unwarrented "academic gravitas" to a perfectly easily explained point.


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## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> I think you've nicely summed up his position in broad outline , in just a few lines , JimW. Pity Postone couldn't have been a lot more clear with his argument. If it twists ones brain to try and understand a point being made, the likelihood is that the argument is being made badly in my experience, or simply to add unwarrented "academic gravitas" to a perfectly easily explained point.


I definitely don't find his sort of writing easy either, but he does by and large seem to use the jargon with precision and to say something, as of course he has a few more complicated points to add too -why specifically anti-Semitism versus other available bigotries etc. But surely must be a better middle ground between bullet points and brain-twisters.
Not read much else by him but IIRC his longer books on Marxism get flak for being very academese, but also praised for having some genuine insights. Better informed posters here can say which, but was the one on Work and Time I think (not read it)


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## elbows (Aug 16, 2012)

There is a jargon problem with this sort of work, which I moaned about just the other day. But having just read that piece I am at least thankful that he repeats his point in enough ways that it does not seem necessary to fully understand some of the more brain-bending paragraphs. Or at least I am left with some clues as to which concepts to explore further. The abstract and the concrete in particular, especially as mistakes along these lines have not gone away and have been apparent in the response to the financial crisis.


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## JimW (Aug 16, 2012)

elbows said:


> There is a jargon problem with this sort of work, which I moaned about just the other day. But having just read that piece I am at least thankful that he repeats his point in enough ways that it does not seem necessary to fully understand some of the more brain-bending paragraphs. Or at least I am left with some clues as to which concepts to explore further. The abstract and the concrete in particular, *especially as mistakes along these lines have not gone away and have been apparent in the response to the financial crisis*.


That's the bit that stood out for me on a re-read as well, put his finger on why all this talk of bankers was missing the point, something I've struggled to explain when arguing with people who say it.


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## barney_pig (Aug 16, 2012)

I have enjoyed the small amount of Postone that I have read.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> this isn't a serious analyses you dickhead, its a 1440 word article.


 
It's an article that *presents itself* as serious analysis.



> I never said anybody claimed it was central, I'm explaining to frog woman my opinion as to a possible reason why he left it out, as you agree it isn't central to understanding the dynamics of the conflict.


 
You're (as usual) missing the point: It doesn't need to be central to the socio-political and socio-economic causes of WW2 to be a central determinant of how the war was what it was. Any "history of the world" that ignores such a massive secondary factor isn't worth writing, let alone wiping one's arse on.



> even in your own statements you outline how it was a means to an end, the German ruling classes wish to line their pockets, expand their holdings, and embed their influence, there aim wasn't the final solution.


 
Cause and effect.



> The final solution was the aim of a tiny minority. A minority with enough power to cow into submission those who opposed it, and those who acquiesced to achieve other aims, fair enough. in my opinion to say the final solution was central to the aims of the German ruling class, is to put the cart before the horse. The aims of the ruling class in the Second World War, remained the same as they were in the First World War.


 
Not true. WW1 wasn't about eastward expansion or the effects of eastward expansion. WW2 was.



> I'd be interested in you expanding on this.


 
It's quite simple. Aerial confirmation of the location of various camps and their supply lines didn't occur until early '44, by which time most air-power was diverted to the "carpet bombing" of German cities with a large manufacturing base, and the rail termini and interchanges therein.
It's also sadly the case that any mission to bomb the lines to the deathcamps (i.e. into Poland) in any meaningful way would have put most of the allied bomber groups at the very edge of performance viability in terms of fuel consumption, as well as exposing them to far greater hazard in terms of traversing defended enemy territory. Bomber Command weren't willing to risk losing a significant percentage of craft over and above their usual losses.



> again, it was a 1400 word article, I doubt Neil would deny his work could be complemented with further investigation. feel free to point to some complimentary analysis.
> 
> anyway thanks for your input, you have agreed with the two central points I wanted to make.
> 1. The imperialist war analysis works.
> ...


 
You're an idiot.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Neil has tried to give *A* 1440 word explanation of the Second World War. Because of that brevity, he has had to cut cut cut. in my opinion he has concentrated on the key points, which are most likely to challenge the dominant ideas about the Second World War.


 
You're confusing centrality with importance. Was the Holocaust central? No, because until '41 some of the Nazi hierachy still saw Jews as an exploitable asset. Is the Holocaust important to explaining how the war played out? Massively.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> what serious point?


that you don't think an article of but 1440 words can contain a serious analysis


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> To take up a point made at the end of post #72 MP3:
> 
> 
> is Hitler part of the ruling class, from a Marxist perspective? Do he and his group control the means of production? How autonomous was Nazism? Will the real Nazism please stand up?
> ...


Two points I've highlighted in your post, one and two.

1. From what you have said, I think you may have been at the Manchester SWP district educational where, I think it was Colin Barker, took up the issue of comrades incessantly using the phrase, the superstructure reflecting the economic base. He rubbished the idea of reflections. And he went on to make an analogy with the tug-of-war, where movement in one team effects the other team. Likewise the base and superstructure are in a dialectical relationship, not a reflective relationship. I have raised that point many times on here at much greater length, so I do agree with you about that.

Another example is the American Civil War.  People spoke about the inevitability of the forces of production leading to a victory for the northern states.  However, it wasn't the forces of production that ran into battle and won those victories, it was men and women with real dreams and aspirations in the heart.

2. I hadn't read this comment, when I made a similar comment in one of my posts.

my initial comments to this thread, were referring to the remarks made by piggy NOT NF.



> barney_pig said:
> 
> 
> > Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> ...


 I find the imperialist war and the suggestion that the Germans were interested in a division of the imperialist spoils, a reasonable analysis. Not the only analysis, but reasonable analysis. I don't think this analysis is worthy of ridicule or so gross to have elicited this kind of response.

I think it is a good power relations analysis of how and why the first and Second World War's happened. However, as I said, the German ruling class sought to ride the tiger, never knowing they'd end up inside her.  If you are going to do a fuller analysis, a fuller history of the Second World War, you would have to go beyond the crudeness of the 1400 word article, you would go on to a lot of what you have started to point to.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> It's an article that *presents itself* as serious analysis.


no it doesn't. it's a 1400 word newspaper piece.



> You're (as usual) missing the point: It doesn't need to be central to the socio-political and socio-economic causes of WW2 to be a central determinant of how the war was what it was. Any "history of the world" that ignores such a massive secondary factor isn't worth writing, let alone wiping one's arse on.


I think you're missing the point.he is looking at it from the global, international perspective, not the perspective of  Germany like you are.  Was the Holocaust central to the actions Britain, or as he said Churchill motivated by maintaining empire?  Were the Americans interested in the Holocaust, or extending their interests abroad?  And even the German ruling class, INITIALLY!  Did they want a war to create the final solution?  Or did they want a war to overcome the problems Hitler's 'solutions' had created? wasn't Germany reduced to a barter economy, as internationally the currency was worthless?  They certainly didn't have access to raw materials, markets, etc necessary to an industrial economy.  And even Churchill himself acknowledged, the British road to victory on a wave of oil, expansion for germany was vital.

I cant do justice to the arguments involved in short posts, but the thing that plays on my mind throughout this discussion is the question, how autonomous were the Nazis?  The price of power, was that swathes of Nazi ideology was jettisoned.  Anticapitalism etc. The German economy was not immune from international pressures.  Which meant Hitler wasn't immune from international pressures.  By the end of the war yes, the insanity gripped the nation, to the point where even though those who might see this would cost everything, could do nothing.  Once again, the German ruling class start to ride a tiger.........


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

This - and your earlier posts - are the perfect examples of crude economic base determines superstructure as it it's possible to get. Stalin would be embarrassed.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> that you don't think an article of but 1440 words can contain a serious analysis


 My 1st post.





ResistanceMP3 said:


> I haven't read the article, and I'm sure your rendition of it is somewhat cartoonesque, but it sounds like a pretty reasonable analysis to me. Is there a better 1400 word analysis you have in mind?
> 
> PS I quite liked his stuff in the past on the fall of the Roman Empire. So, I may be biased.. lol


A link will do Pick.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

Btw, its not a 1400 article, it's 3000 words and two key chapters of a 100 000 word plus book.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> This - and your earlier posts - are the perfect examples of crude economic base determines superstructure as it it's possible to get. Stalin would be embarrassed.


No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments ONLY to "you HAVE TO talk about the holocaust".  It is possible to shed some light upon the events of the Second World War, without talking about the Holocaust.


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## revol68 (Aug 16, 2012)

The Holocaust may be irrelevant for the allies motives for going to war but in an article that mentions a number of atrocities carried out during the war it's pretty mental to not mention the holocaust, it's almost like the author thinks that the holocaust serves to retrospectively null the allies actual reasons, or atleast that readers might think so. Basically it's typical Socialist Worker paper crap, where complexities and grey areas are either papered over or simply ignored out of the patronising notion that the proles needn't know these details,just jump behind the party line instead.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments to "you HAVE


No. You are makings hilariously crude base determines superstructure case. The only thing that matters was the economy. It's laughable. Your party did in fact laugh it away years ago.


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## JHE (Aug 16, 2012)

revol68 said:


> The Holocaust may be irrelevant for the allies motives for going to war but in an article that mentions a number of atrocities carried out during the war it's pretty mental to not mention the holocaust, it's almost like the author thinks that the holocaust serves to retrospectively null the allies actual reasons, or atleast that readers might think so. Basically it's typical Socialist Worker paper crap, where complexities and grey areas are either papered over or simply ignored out of the patronising notion that the proles needn't know these details,just jump behind the party line instead.


 
Social Worker can certainly be patronising.  It can also be badly written and very inaccurate.  I've seen nothing to suggest Counterfire is an improvement.  In this particular case, though, it seems unlikely that Faulkner wants to treat the Holocaust as a mere detail (as M Le Pen once said it was).  It is much more likely that it will get a whole chapter in the Marxoid History of the Universe or whatever the series is called.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Btw, its not a 1400 article, it's 3000 words and two key chapters of a 100 000 word plus book.


Fucking hell butch, I think the imperialist analysis of the first and second world war, is a pretty reasonable analysis, is there a better analysis you have in mind?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Fucking hell butch, I think the imperialist analysis of the first and second world war, is a pretty reasonable analysis, is there a better analysis you have in mind?


So what if it is? As presented by you here it's a shambling crude disgrace.


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## DotCommunist (Aug 16, 2012)

frogwoman posting

this crude reductionist anti imperialist shit is what makes us look like cunts. i dont buy the fact that the main reason why the allies went to war was because of imperialism anyway - they did it to preserve their own power base in the wake of expansionism by germany. self interest? sure. but don't let your rush to condemn imperialist violence and the crimes of the allies mean that you end up portraying fascism as some kind of thing that's only seen as uniquely bad because the allies were the victors of the war.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> No. You are makings hilariously crude base determines superstructure case. The only thing that matters was the economy. It's laughable. Your party did in fact laugh it away years ago.


Well if I believed the base determined the superstructure, or vice versa as some seem to be arguing in this thread, I would be wrong.  But I don't, so I ain't. Have a nice day.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> So what if it is? As presented by you here it's a shambling crude disgrace.


is there a better analysis you have in mind?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> frogwoman posting
> 
> this crude reductionist anti imperialist shit is what makes us look like cunts. i dont buy the fact that the main reason why the allies went to war was because of imperialism anyway - they did it to preserve their own power base in the wake of expansionism by germany. self interest? sure. but don't let your rush to condemn imperialist violence and the crimes of the allies mean that you end up portraying fascism as some kind of thing that's only seen as uniquely bad because the allies were the victors of the war.


What?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> Well if I believed the base determined the superstructure, or vice versa as some seem to be arguing in this thread, I would be wrong.  But I don't, so I ain't. Have a nice day.


It is however what you have 'argued' - literally all you have said is that only economics counts (and you even get the economics wrong). It's scary just how crudely have reduced a very complex issue.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It is however what you have 'argued' - literally all you have said is that only economics counts (and you even get the economics wrong). It's scary just how crudely have reduced a very complex issue.


In a forum post!


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> is there a better analysis you have in mind?


Apart from giving you one myself and referencing others you mean? Or do you mean when I answered your demand for something equally shit yesterday?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It is however what you have 'argued' - literally all you have said is that only economics counts (and you even get the economics wrong). It's scary just how crudely have reduced a very complex issue.


And I don't. I just don't accept that the Nazis were completely autonomous.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> In a forum post!


Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Apart from giving you one myself and referencing others you mean? Or do you mean when I answered your demand for something equally shit yesterday?


got a hold my hands up, missd that one.  I thought you said it was impossible.  Having said that, there is a lot of the thread I haven't read yet.  I will have a look for it.

The point is, that was my initial comment.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> And I don't. I just don't accept that the Nazis were completely autonomous.


No one does. You are the one offering up simplistic analysis based on a homogeneous Germany, and a united ruling class. You are years behind.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:
			
		

> got a hold my hands up, missd that one.  I thought you said it was impossible.  Having said that, there is a lot of the thread I haven't read yet.  I will have a look for it.
> 
> The point is, that was my initial comment.


You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.





frogwoman said:


> a reasonable analysis that doesn't include the holocaust?





ResistanceMP3 said:


> No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments ONLY to "you HAVE TO talk about the holocaust". It is possible to shed some light upon the events of the Second World War, without talking about the Holocaust.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.


So why are you always stalking me?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersparon said:
			
		

> You haven't read the thread? You utter time waster.





ResistanceMP3 said:


> So why are you always stalking me?


Can you make some sort of connection between my post and your reply here? Can _anyone_?


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

> butchersapron said: ↑
> Yes, in a forum post. I see no necessity to adopt the crude approach that you have. I don't see a single other poster doing it.​frogwoman said: ↑
> a reasonable analysis that doesn't include the holocaust?​ResistanceMP3 said: ↑
> No, your missing the point, I'm putting the counter arguments ONLY to "you HAVE TO talk about the holocaust". It is possible to shed some light upon the events of the Second World War, without talking about the Holocaust.​


 
No, you didn't argue that it was _possible_ - you said that this is what a reasonable overview _should_ say, should look like - that the holocaust (and by extension all the directly related issues and processes that i went into in my long post and that you have ignored) was just something that 'germany' was 'lumbered with'.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 16, 2012)

revol68 said:


> Basically it's typical Socialist Worker paper crap, where complexities and grey areas are either papered over or simply ignored out of the patronising notion that the proles needn't know these details,just jump behind the party line instead.


precisely, a newspaper article.

By accounts on here, SW is a paper that has propelled many of you into being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today, as they were former SW members. so it must be pretty good at what it intended to do. 


> The Holocaust may be irrelevant for the allies motives for going to war but in an article that mentions a number of atrocities carried out during the war it's pretty mental to not mention the holocaust, it's almost like the author thinks that the holocaust serves to retrospectively null the allies actual reasons, or atleast that readers might think so.


what do you mean "the Holocaust serves to retrospectively null the Allies actual reasons"?  Are you treating the Allies as homogenous? [Tongue firmly in cheek]


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> precisely, a newspaper article.
> 
> By accounts on here, SW is a paper that has propelled many of you into being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today, as they were former SW members. so it must be pretty good at what it intended to do.
> what do you mean "the Holocaust serves to retrospectively null the Allies actual reasons"? Are you treating the Allies as homogenous? [Tongue firmly in cheek]


Can you point to _anyone_ saying that the socialist worker paper has propelled them into "being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today"?


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## Lock&Light (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Can you make some sort of connection between my post and your reply here? Can _anyone_?


 
I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.


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## butchersapron (Aug 16, 2012)

I waste no time on you. You take not a second to swat away.


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## Lock&Light (Aug 16, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> I waste no time on you. You take not a second to swat away.


 
You would be shocked if you counted up how many minutes and hours those seconds have taken from your life.


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## elbows (Aug 16, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> frogwoman posting
> 
> this crude reductionist anti imperialist shit is what makes us look like cunts. i dont buy the fact that the main reason why the allies went to war was because of imperialism anyway - they did it to preserve their own power base in the wake of expansionism by germany. self interest? sure. but don't let your rush to condemn imperialist violence and the crimes of the allies mean that you end up portraying fascism as some kind of thing that's only seen as uniquely bad because the allies were the victors of the war.


 
I suppose emphasis is bound to vary depending on what story is attempting to be told - perhaps an analysis of the shifting empires, or of capitalism, industrialisation etc. There are loads of angles that can be taken, and the sheer scale of the fighting, the propaganda and the mechanised & flying aspects of the battles will draw the attention of some.

For me and Im sure plenty of others though, thats not really where the emphasis falls when it comes to 'learning the lessons' of that war. There are many other large wars and moves of empire which people can study for the same patterns, and its questionable as to what lessons can be learnt given that technology has moved on several generations since then, global balances have shifted, and economic interdependence and nuclear weapons have further reconfigued the board in a way that would make any potential world war 3 rather different to the last one. Likewise there is plenty else for marxist analysis to get its teeth into, stuff that isnt so emotive and so woven into the recent cultural landscape, not clouded by meaning so many different things to so many people, things often far abstracted from the realities of the war itself. It may be deemed worth the risk due to the potential to harness the powerful myths and truths fro your own cause, but it can easily end up a messy distraction rather than something illuminating.

The 'lessons which must never be forgotten' that are often referenced in sombre tones on certain days of the year throughout my lifetime, yet seldom expanded upon in mass media beyond gory details of the horror, are where the action is, and a lot of that is holocaust stuff. Lessons that may actually be useful in future, an understanding of the internal logic of the ideas behind the horror, what forces it was able to tap into, and what ends it served.


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## elbows (Aug 16, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> You would be shocked if you counted up how many minutes and hours those seconds have taken from your life.


 
The trick is to add value whilst engaging in the swatting.

It goes without saying that people are bringing their egos to the dance, but are they bringing anything informative and useful as well? Butchers can bring as much attitude as he likes as far as Im concerned, because when reading his post I dont just get to see him repeatedly tying people up in their own mistakes, or egos colliding, I actually learn something.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 16, 2012)

elbows said:


> The trick is to add value whilst engaging in the swatting.
> 
> It goes without saying that people are bringing their egos to the dance, but are they bringing anything informative and useful as well? Butchers can bring as much attitude as he likes as far as Im concerned, because when reading his post I dont just get to see him repeatedly tying people up in their own mistakes, or egos colliding, I actually learn something.


 
Good for you. I find it hard to see past the arrogance.


----------



## elbows (Aug 16, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Good for you. I find it hard to see past the arrogance.


 
Perhaps you have seen well past it but you simply dont like what is on offer beyond it. If his analysis, worldview and line of questioning doesnt resonate with you at all then there is no added value for you there, especially if said analysis seems like a different, irrelevant universe, not stuff you would like to grapple with and pick apart in substantive detail.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 16, 2012)

elbows said:


> Perhaps you have seen well past it but you simply dont like what is on offer beyond it. If his analysis, worldview and line of questioning doesnt resonate with you at all then there is no added value for you there, especially if said analysis seems like a different, irrelevant universe, not stuff you would like to grapple with and pick apart in substantive detail.


 
Do you also teach your granny to suck eggs?


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## elbows (Aug 16, 2012)

I tried but she said you stole all of the suck and hoarded it for yourself.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 16, 2012)

elbows said:


> I tried but she said you stole all of the suck and hoarded it for yourself.


 
Wierd grannys some people have.


----------



## ayatollah (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Two points I've highlighted in your post, one and two.
> 
> 1. From what you have said, I think you may have been at the Manchester SWP district educational where, I think it was Colin Barker, took up the issue of comrades incessantly using the phrase, the superstructure reflecting the economic base. He rubbished the idea of reflections. And he went on to make an analogy with the tug-of-war, where movement in one team effects the other team. Likewise the base and superstructure are in a dialectical relationship, not a reflective relationship. I have raised that point many times on here at much greater length, so I do agree with you about that.
> 
> ...


 
Yup some fair points MP3. Surely you weren't at the SAME SWP educational with Colin Barker as I was, as that would be about 1977 !!! Colin Barker was a bit "reductionist" on the Nazis and anti Semitism..ie, "the German Capitalist Class needed the Nazis.. the Nazis wanted to kill the Jews.. so the German Capitalist class cynically went along with that.. full stop"

As you say the interpretation of "Base and ideological Superstructure" as being in an interactive (dialectical if you will) relationship with each other is important - and particularly , I think , in relation to the "imperialist War" issue here. My view is that from the German capitalist class perspective WWI and WWII are the same ,Classic Imperialist, war, with a longish break after losing round one..to reorganise and get the German nation fully geared up ideologically and physically to win the second round, The German capitalist class viewed the fascists as "hired help", like the orthodox Trot crude view of Fascism.. sees it as a simple con trick - mixing up some pseudo radical ideology with racism and nationalism - fix the blame for all the bad aspects of capitalism on the "other", the Jews.. and VOILA, the capitalist class get a street army of fascist boneheads to smash the Left, and a ready made battle-hardened force for the German Army to later recruit and conquer Europe..... Job Done. Unfortunately I in some ways actually agree with the Nazi Ideologists, Their ideology ISN'T simply a tool for the capitalist class to use to con and smash the workers. The Nazis do genuinely believe that they have a "Third Way" to run society - neither Capitalist or Communist -- so they are "fair weather friends" of the capitalist class.. very much with their own crazed, ideology-driven, agendas.

I don't think developed , in power, Nazism, is simply a pseudo radical front for ruling class traditional imperialist ambitions that the Left often claims. In the rise to power, certainly it is a tool of the capitalist ruling class to smash the Left , and confuse workers with racist and nationalist leanings about who their enemy is. In Spain the Falange never came out from under the Francoist military shadow to pursue its own agendas. In Italy, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons , including its lack of ideological clarity compared to Nazism (especially on anti-Semitism - relatively few Jews in Italy to build the ideology around) , Fascism never totally destroyed and replaced the traditional capitalist core state.

But in Germany, by the 1940's I would argue that in the ideologically driven totalitarian SS dominated Nazi State the traditional German ruling class had indeed "ended up in the belly of the tiger". The Nazi state reordered the German state's war aims - with the "rational" 19th and 20th century Imperialist aims of opening up markets for goods and capital being replaced in priority with essentially "irrational" aims to enslave and exterminate entire populations to both destroy the Jewish "bogyman" and to create "living space" for a competely backward looking Aryan agricultural peasant idyll -- with more in common with pre industrial concepts of conquest than modern Imperialism.

This is what I mean by saying that by 1941 the German Nation was both terrorised and ideologically brainwashed into "living the Nazi fantasy" . The Traditional Capitalist class was simply no longer in charge, and the rational demands of Imperialist capitalism were being subsumed constantly by the ideological imperetives of Nazism -- the "ideological Superstructure" was seriously running amok and shaping the base in crazier and crazier ways -- the ever increasing dependance on slave labour , and "destruction via labour", both resulting from the labour shortages produced by ever greater conscription -- but also feeding off the crazed "master/slave" dynamic of the SS state. Extermination of "subhumans/the "other" had taken on its own momentum, with ever larger groupings of people being identified for destruction - to be "processed" into commodities ...Soap , Hair, bonefertilizer in an industrialised murder process... 20th century Fascism meets the crazed dynamic of Aztec and Mayan mass ceremonial murder cults.

The all European landmass Reich State that I think was emerging , had the Nazis won the war.. was en-route to an entirely new sort of bizarre social formation - something akin to a centrally planned permanent war Industrial slave state - far, far more terrible than either a fascist capitalist state like Italy, or a stalinist state like the Soviet Union - but closer to Stalinism ( as "a society totally controlled by a political elite or caste in its own interests") than to the bourgeois capitalist state that the Nazis were handed power to by the "backs against the wall", capitalist ruling class in 1933. The German Capitalist class were RESCUED by the Allies in 1945 from a crazed Nazi tiger that was well on the way to dispensing with them altogether .


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## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> no it doesn't. it's a 1400 word newspaper piece.


fucking here you go again.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 16, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> A link will do Pick.


Do you bother reading my posts or do you reply to what you think they should say?


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 17, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> What?


 
at the time when World War II happened Britain was completely overstretched in terms of its empire. I don't think that Britain went to war in order to capture more territory. The reason IMO why the british gov't went into war was because of the threat of a strong (or strong appearing) Germany capturing more and more territory in Europe and threatening countries where they had treaties, the possibility of disrupting trade etc. Hitler's activities were having a very destabilising effect. It wasn't much to do with empire building imo.

while it is true that the allies committed war crimes, they weren't on the systematic scale that the holocaust was on, neither was the aim to wipe out millions of people made an integral part of why the war was being fought. while horrific, they were incidental to the war effort, rather than becoming one of the main aims as it was for hitler.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 17, 2012)

Excellent review summary of the Adam Tooze book i mentioned earlier in the thread, from the trots at WSWS.

Hitler’s “intelligible response” to the contradictions of global capitalism



> “The originality of National Socialism was that rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilise the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order. Repeating what Europeans had done across the globe over the previous three centuries, Germany would carve out its own imperial hinterland; by one last great land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States.... The aggression of Hitler’s regime can thus be rationalised as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today.”
> 
> It is only on the basis of grasping this “intelligible response” by the Hitler regime, which was shared by broad layers of the German ruling and military elite, that one can explain the ultimately crazed nature of Hitler’s military campaign whereby Germany and its fascist allies conducted a series of simultaneous wars against all of the major imperialist powers.
> 
> As Tooze explains later in his book, other aspects of the National Socialist strategy which are also often dismissed as simply incomprehensible—such as its campaign against European Jewry and the eventual mass destruction of the Jews—can only be fully understood in connection with the imperial aims laid down by the leading National Socialists in their program and policy statements. As Tooze notes in his introduction: “I emphasise the connections between the wars against the Jews and the regime’s wider projects of imperialism, forced labour and deliberate starvation.”


 


> While Hitler had made anti-Semitism a stock in trade of his politics from the beginning of the 1920s [1] the annihilation of European Jewry in the course of the Second World War can only be properly understood in connection with the increasing crisis of the NS leadership and its plans for the colonisation of Eastern Europe in the wake of a series of military setbacks on the Eastern Front. Tooze writes: “If one accepts that the Judaeocide was an ideological end in itself, indeed an obsessive fixation of the Nazi leadership, then it is even possible to see the forced labour programme and the genocide less as contradictions than as complementary. Gauleiter (Fritz) Saukel’s success in recruiting millions of workers from across Eastern and Western Europe made the Jews appear dispensable.”
> 
> As the level of casualties within the German army rose to huge proportions, Hitler was increasingly forced to intensify the mobilisation of forced labour. From the start of 1942 to the summer of 1943, a total of 2.8 million foreign workers were forcibly transported to work in the German factories. The fittest of those incarcerated in the labour and concentration camps spread across Eastern Europe were selected for work. In a chilling passage, Tooze cites the criteria laid down by the Wehrmacht, outlining the relation between the availability of food and labour power.
> 
> ...


_

More at the link._


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 17, 2012)

That book sounds fascinating Butchers, I'll have to get it.


----------



## eoin_k (Aug 17, 2012)

Has RMP3 got around to reading an article yet?

I only ask because his contributions to this thread seem to be catching up with the word count of the article he hasn't the time to read.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> Yup some fair points MP3. Surely you weren't at the SAME SWP educational with Colin Barker as I was, as that would be about 1977 !!! Colin Barker was a bit "reductionist" on the Nazis and anti Semitism..ie, "the German Capitalist Class needed the Nazis.. the Nazis wanted to kill the Jews.. so the German Capitalist class cynically went along with that.. full stop"





ayatollah said:


> As you say the interpretation of "Base and ideological Superstructure" as being in an interactive (dialectical if you will) relationship with each other is important - and particularly , I think , in relation to the "imperialist War" issue here. My view is that from the German capitalist class perspective WWI and WWII are the same ,Classic Imperialist, war, with a longish break after losing round one..to reorganise and get the German nation fully geared up ideologically and physically to win the second round, The German capitalist class viewed the fascists as "hired help", like the orthodox Trot crude view of Fascism.. sees it as a simple con trick - mixing up some pseudo radical ideology with racism and nationalism - fix the blame for all the bad aspects of capitalism on the "other", the Jews.. and VOILA, the capitalist class get a street army of fascist boneheads to smash the Left, and a ready made battle-hardened force for the German Army to later recruit and conquer Europe..... Job Done. Unfortunately I in some ways actually agree with the Nazi Ideologists, Their ideology ISN'T simply a tool for the capitalist class to use to con and smash the workers. The Nazis do genuinely believe that they have a "Third Way" to run society - neither Capitalist or Communist -- so they are "fair weather friends" of the capitalist class.. very much with their own crazed, ideology-driven, agendas.
> 
> I don't think developed , in power, Nazism, is simply a pseudo radical front for ruling class traditional imperialist ambitions that the Left often claims. In the rise to power, certainly it is a tool of the capitalist ruling class to smash the Left , and confuse workers with racist and nationalist leanings about who their enemy is. In Spain the Falange never came out from under the Francoist military shadow to pursue its own agendas. In Italy, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons , including its lack of ideological clarity compared to Nazism (especially on anti-Semitism - relatively few Jews in Italy to build the ideology around) , Fascism never totally destroyed and replaced the traditional capitalist core state.
> 
> ...


that's a really really good reply. Some points;

No I was definitely much later, I'm probably talking about a district meeting about late 90s, when Sean Verrnell was the district organiser.

I do not disagree with any of that. In fact you make a point to a discussion that has run on here for many years "Give up Anti-Fascism", that Fascism deserves special attention, because it poses such a despicable alternative to what we even have now.

There is no point in me picking upon any point you have made, because I am just going to agree with you.

The only point I would make is this. Not every article on the Second World War, HAS TO look at it from inside Germany outwards. You don't have to understand the internal dynamics of Germany, to have A look at the international affairs, the global perspectives, actions, dynamics, and consequences.

More generally, are Stalinism and Hitler's fascism central to, or aberrations to the general flow of the story of capitalism (1642-2012)? 

There has been an awful lot of stuff written about the Second World War. And in my opinion the short article by Neil comes far closer to the best stuff I've read, than it does the worst stuff.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.


precisely.  Sometimes I'm not sure whether butchers is trolling, feigning stupidity, or just blinded by his own perfection to what lesser mortals are saying.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> at the time when World War II happened Britain was completely overstretched in terms of its empire. I don't think that Britain went to war in order to capture more territory. The reason IMO why the british gov't went into war was because of the threat of a strong (or strong appearing) Germany capturing more and more territory in Europe and threatening countries where they had treaties, the possibility of disrupting trade etc. Hitler's activities were having a very destabilising effect. It wasn't much to do with empire building imo.


couldn't agree with you more.  But defending an empire is just as much an imperialist aim, as extending one.  Britain defending, America extending, both imperialist aims.  Add to that Japan.

I mean this another element to this.  The topic of the Holocaust has been done to death.  How me times do we get to discuss the imperialist aims of the players in the Second World War?  I'm not saying for 1 min it is the whole story, but I can understand somebody bending the stick to make the point.

not only that, I actually think Emanymton's right.


> while it is true that the allies committed war crimes, they weren't on the systematic scale that the holocaust was on, neither was the aim to wipe out millions of people made an integral part of why the war was being fought. while horrific, they were incidental to the war effort, rather than becoming one of the main aims as it was for hitler.


couldn't agree with you more.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

eoin_k said:


> Has RMP3 got around to reading an article yet?
> 
> I only ask because his contributions to this thread seem to be catching up with the word count of the article he hasn't the time to read.


I have been to waylaid by reading cuntish nonentities like Pickman at times, but yes.  Some time ago.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> couldn't agree with you more. But defending an empire is just as much an imperialist aim, as extending one. Britain defending, America extending, both imperialist aims. Add to that Japan.
> 
> I mean this another element to this. The topic of the Holocaust has been done to death. How me times do we get to discuss the imperialist aims of the players in the Second World War? I'm not saying for 1 min it is the whole story, but I can understand somebody bending the stick to make the point.
> 
> ...


You think that she's right when she says the exact opposite of what you've said? When she argues that the holocaust became an integral part of the 'germanys' war aims and so should be discussed, whilst those that were discussed were in actual fact non-essential and conjunctural.

I note also that you fully agree with ayatollah when he takes apart your sort of crude economism.

Astonishing really.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You think that she's right when she says the exact opposite of what you've said? When she argues that the holocaust became an integral part of the 'germanys' war aims and so should be discussed, whilst those that were discussed were in actual fact non-essential and conjunctural.
> 
> I note also that you fully agree with ayatollah when he takes apart your sort of crude economism.
> 
> Astonishing really.


 all my posts say what you want, except the ones that don't.

while it is true that the allies committed war crimes, they weren't on the systematic scale that the holocaust was on, neither was the aim to wipe out millions of people made an integral part of why the war was being fought. while horrific, they were incidental to the war effort, rather than becoming one of the main aims as it was for hitler.​


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> couldn't agree with you more. But defending an empire is just as much an imperialist aim, as extending one. Britain defending, America extending, both imperialist aims. Add to that Japan.
> 
> I mean this another element to this. The topic of the Holocaust has been done to death. How me times do we get to discuss the imperialist aims of the players in the Second World War? I'm not saying for 1 min it is the whole story, but I can understand somebody bending the stick to make the point.
> 
> ...


 
Britain did not have an empire in europe at the time. And I reckon that at the start of the war the colonial possessions weren't really much of a motivating factor, they became so later on in the war, but you have to remember that following the first world war the decolonisation process had already started and the colonies were starting to be seen as increasingly more of a burden on the economy. The British government were already making deals with the Jews and the Arabs for an independent Israel/Palestine. 

I think it was the fact that a government of the extreme right was annexing territory from various states and making threatening noises towards France etc, and the fact that Germany was rearming so significantly. I don't think these are imperialist aims mate.


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## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> all my posts say what you want, except the ones that don't.


It's quite simple, you argued that the Holocaust was a non-essential part of the re-telling of the war as it wasn't a motivation for 'germany' (leaving aside the simplistic nature of this approach for now as you've failed entirely to come back on the earlier criticisms made of it) and so it was not only justifiable that the holocaust should left out of this re-telling, but is actually probably required. This provoked FG into the reply in which she said the opposite to you and pointed out that under your approach other non-essential events were included (foregrounded even) in your 'reasonable article'. To this you bizarrely respond by saying that you agree. That you couldn't agree more.

Which surely means that you now need to tell us why you've changed your argument 100%, what points of FG's posts changed your mind so utterly, and what problems you've since identified with your original posts. Right?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> Britain did not have an empire in europe at the time. And I reckon that at the start of the war the colonial possessions weren't really much of a motivating factor, they became so later on in the war, but you have to remember that following the first world war the decolonisation process had already started and the colonies were starting to be seen as increasingly more of a burden on the economy. The British government were already making deals with the Jews and the Arabs for an independent Israel/Palestine.
> 
> I think it was the fact that a government of the extreme right was annexing territory from various states and making threatening noises towards France etc, and the fact that Germany was rearming so significantly. I don't think these are imperialist aims mate.


I'm sorry frog, no disrespect, but you are wrong, in my opinion.

I can't remember the exact quote, or find it easily on Google, but there was some kind of Commissioner, British representative in the Middle East at the time who clearly articulated what the aim of Israel was, when he said Israel will be our own little Ulster.

Ulster was the guard dog for Britain's imperialist interests in Ireland, Britain's first colony. Israel then, and today, plays exactly the same role for Western imperialist interests. That is why the Americans fund it to such an insane level.

no disrespect, but in my opinion you need to read Neils article again, and deal with the aspect he talked about about the way Britain's military strategy was more about defending control of oil in the Middle East, than it was breaking Germany's European domination.

ETA


> Churchill’s main war aim was to *defend* the British Empire. He favoured war as soon as it became clear that Germany might become hegemonic in Europe. Britain’s rulers always feared a threat to their maritime supremacy and trade from a hostile power in control of north-west Europe.





> That is why, until late in the war, Churchill prioritised operations in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East over the opening of a ‘Second Front’ in north-west Europe. He wanted to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal, and India. ‘I have not become the King’s first minister,’ he declared, ‘to oversee the dismemberment of the British Empire.’


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It's quite simple, you argued that the Holocaust was a non-essential part of the re-telling of the war as it wasn't a motivation for 'germany' (leaving aside the simplistic nature of this approach for now as you've failed entirely to come back on the earlier criticisms made of it) and so it was not only justifiable that the holocaust should left out of this re-telling, but is actually probably required. This provoked FG into the reply in which she said the opposite to you and pointed out that under your approach other non-essential events were included (foregrounded even) in your 'reasonable article'. To this you bizarrely respond by saying that you agree. That you couldn't agree more.
> 
> Which surely means that you now need to tell us why you've changed your argument 100%, what points of FG's posts changed your mind so utterly, and what problems you've since identified with your original posts. Right?


what?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

love detective said:


> do you know of any books that say otherwise?


I'm taking butchers word for it





butchersapron said:


> Fedayn said:
> 
> 
> > I seem to remember reading the German economy being the most industrialised in Europe, perhaps that's what he was referring to?
> ...


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> What a really useful way to make some sort of point. What was it again?


I was just saying okay, I bow to your superior knowledge on the topic.  And take your word for it.


butchersapron said:


> Fedayn said:
> 
> 
> > I seem to remember reading the German economy being the most industrialised in Europe, perhaps that's what he was referring to?
> ...


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

Red Storm said:


> I'd recommend him not to bother with a poxy article on an enormous subject of WWII.
> 
> Maybe a 1500 word article on an aspect of WWII.


I don't know whether you're saying that tongue in cheek, but that is the basis on which I am defending the article.  It is a 1400 word article on A aspect of the Second World War.that's how it reads to me.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Can you point to _anyone_ saying that the socialist worker paper has propelled them into "being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today"?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> That _is_ your general point. That the holocaust was almost incidental. That 'Germany' (your usage - you've not specified what you mean by this term) had no interest in the holocaust.If so, why were so many resources spent on putting it into motion over such a long period and not into military initiatives? You should be able to say why.
> 
> And no, of course i don't agree with it.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

The39thStep said:


> There was also an interesting talk about Marxism and the holaucast at Marxism a few years ago by a bloke called Maitland whose main argument was that the capitalists on Germany didn't like the effect of forced emigration of Jewish labour but embraced the logistical issues around the extermination camps with some ease.
> 
> In fact what could be argued was that it was precisely the unwillingness by the to be allies to accept Jewish immigrants per war that led to the conditions for the final solution.


is there a typing error in that?  Could you make it a little clearer please?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

If you've nothing to say how about just leaving the thread alone?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> If you've nothing to say how about just leaving the thread alone?


no winning with you.  You have a go for me not having every single post in this thread, and now I have time to go back through it you're still complaining.  And what I have to say is, I find some of your posts hilarious.


----------



## elbows (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> I mean this another element to this. The topic of the Holocaust has been done to death. How me times do we get to discuss the imperialist aims of the players in the Second World War? I'm not saying for 1 min it is the whole story, but I can understand somebody bending the stick to make the point.


 
I think its the other way around. Most of the typical holocaust stuff has tended to focus on the horror, the evil that men do, and the asking of the question 'why?' without actually wanting a proper answer at all. Not very different to how murderers of children or mass shooting incidents are treated by the press. Stuff in this thread has managed to go well beyond that.

In contrast articles like the one that started this thread dont appear to offer all that much more than I was taught at school. The use of 'world' in the wars label, and the resulting global power reconfiguration that was obvious to just about everyone well before the war ended speak volumes, and makes it hard for me to see tales of empire as a fresh revelation with fascinating new detail.

That a very narrow focus on the horrific aspects of the holocaust has been used in the past to distract from the economic & imperial aspects of the conflict is no reason to dismiss the holocaust as incidental to that stuff. Rather it is reason to explore the holocaust deeper in an attempt to build a complete and cohesive picture where one aspect of the story is not allowed to crudely trump another.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> frogwoman said:
> 
> 
> > while it is true that the allies committed war crimes, they weren't on the systematic scale that the holocaust was on, neither was the aim to wipe out millions of people made an integral part of why the war was being fought. while horrific, they were incidental to the war effort, rather than becoming one of the main aims as it was for hitler.
> ...


Right. Had time to go back and read this article. Neil makes the point that for Britain the war was about defending Empire, and its economic interest of the Empire,





> Churchill’s main war aim was to defend the British Empire. He favoured war as soon as it became clear that Germany might become hegemonic in Europe. Britain’s rulers always feared a threat to their maritime supremacy and trade from a hostile power in control of north-west Europe.
> 
> This threat materialised when new German blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’) tactics based on armoured spearheads brought about the collapse of France in six weeks in May-June 1940. Britain itself was not invaded, but communications with the overseas empire were immediately imperilled.
> 
> ...


 and underlined the point by pointing out that Britain had more troops subjugating India, than fighting the Japanese, and you don't think this is relevant to his point? 

just from first reading it is blatantly obvious to me that this is an article written from the SINGULAR perspective of  "International Affairs".  And in that respect it is *A* perfectly reasonable analysis.

PS. just got your response and the Maitland link butchers.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

elbows said:


> I think its the other way around. Most of the typical holocaust stuff has tended to focus on the horror, the evil that men do, and the asking of the question 'why?' without actually wanting a proper answer at all. Not very different to how murderers of children or mass shooting incidents are treated by the press. Stuff in this thread has managed to go well beyond that.
> 
> In contrast articles like the one that started this thread dont appear to offer all that much more than I was taught at school. The use of 'world' in the wars label, and the resulting global power reconfiguration that was obvious to just about everyone well before the war ended speak volumes, and makes it hard for me to see tales of empire as a fresh revelation with fascinating new detail.
> 
> That a very narrow focus on the horrific aspects of the holocaust has been used in the past to distract from the economic & imperial aspects of the conflict is no reason to dismiss the holocaust as incidental to that stuff. Rather it is reason to explore the holocaust deeper in an attempt to build a complete and cohesive picture where one aspect of the story is not allowed to crudely trump another.


it's not about dismissing the Holocaust.

many people have contributed some great stuff in this thread that shows the relevance of the Holocaust and Nazi ideology to the internal dynamics and direction the Germans war aims, and how they travelled over time. Some of that leans to a mostly super structural analysis, this superstructure dictating a kind of madness, and some even finding a logic, the necessity of slave labour, in the madness. The madness of invading Russia, was probably ideological driven [even though it is debatable as Russia with its massive natural resources was a prise Germany wasn't too far from winning (The Devils Virtuoso(]. But I am stressing this is about the internal dynamics of Germany. Sure the by 43/4 the Holocaust has influence over Germany where and how places are invaded/subjugated etc. But does the Holocaust dictate Britain and America's response?

again, I am not saying and international affairs perspective is the only perspective, but how could the Holocaust add to an international affairs perspective of the Second World War?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Halfway through that - rmp3 could do with a listen to that, or even with reading Callinicos on marxism and the holocaust.
> 
> Glad to say that he doesn't go anywhere near the unbelievably crude sort of analysis that simply divides the period into 1) motivations (and of a homogenous bloc called germany) and 2) how these claimed motivations panned out. That sort of thing misses firstly, the competing motivations of different parts of the regime and secondly how the failure or success of meeting those ends can itself lead to a process of 'cumulative radicalisation' (to use Hans Mommsen's phrase). In this case the failure to ideologically and militarily destroy the USSR in 1941 led to a radicalisation of the work of the einsatzgruppen and the decision to embark on industrial genocide, not as some mere side-detail but as one of the central aims of the most powerful section of the competing power blocs and with the agreement of the lesser power groups. That's why to ignore the holocause is to ignore a key part of ww2 _and_ pretty much all the really important surrounding context. Even in two 3000 words pieces there is no need to be that simplistic.
> 
> ...


phew!  I eventually got to this.

All this is about the internal dynamics of the German regime/power blocks etc.  from an international affairs perspective what is the difference?

There is a holocaust going on, America seeks to advance its interests in the Middle East, and use its advantage to weaken the imperialist French and British blocks.  Britain seeks to defend its empire. the Japanese start to carve out an empire. Beyond militarily tactical questions, what effect does the Holocaust of on British and American and Japanese aims?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Yes, the one in which i ask you to think about if you agree with barneys characterisation of the article - and which you responded to by saying that yes you did, you thought it gave a reasonable overview. You thought that an overview that has "No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies)." was reasonable.


I don't know where you have got that quote, but it's not me..

I said I was in a rush, as I was going out.  That the original comment was probably rather a cartoonesque representation, however I referred to some essential elements in it, which were A reasonable analysis.  Why would I fully endorse "cartoonesque" representation?  To memory, at one time I even selected the elements which I felt were A reasonable analysis.

the rest you read into it because you are so blinkered.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> phew! I eventually got to this.
> 
> All this is about the internal dynamics of the German regime/power blocks etc. from an international affairs perspective what is the difference?
> 
> There is a holocaust going on, America seeks to advance its interests in the Middle East, and use its advantage to weaken the imperialist French and British blocks. Britain seeks to defend its empire. the Japanese start to carve out an empire. Beyond militarily tactical questions, what effect does the Holocaust of on British and American and Japanese aims?


 
You finally got to the post that i made on page 3 of a 7 page thread that you've been posting pointless replies to posts from after my one? How did you manage that then?

And even better, i outline a brief idea of how *international* events impacted on the nazi-regimes economic plans and opened the door to the holocaust (something your economistic posts said was impossible, didn't happen, couldn't happen - of course, you ignore my substantive point about it happening, don't challenge it, don't address it - i expected nothing more) and your response is to just dismiss it because it solely concerns _*domestic*_ events. Now, apart from this crude separation into non-impacting _domestic_ and _international_ issues that you reduce this issue down to (one that mirrors your equally crude non-interacting _economic_ and _all others factors_) it's the opposite of what i actually said. Time-waster.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> He gave a 3000 words explanation/overview containing many secondary events - but he didn't include a primary factor in the military conduct/aims of the war in europe. This is shit.


was the Holocaust a primary factor in the military conduct/aims of the war for Russia Britain America and Japan? [


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> I don't know where you have got that quote, but it's not me..
> 
> I said I was in a rush, as I was going out. That the original comment was probably rather a cartoonesque representation, however I referred to some essential elements in it, which were A reasonable analysis. Why would I fully endorse "cartoonesque" representation? To memory, at one time I even selected the elements which I felt were A reasonable analysis.
> 
> the rest you read into it because you are so blinkered.


I got it precisely from you you clown. I asked you to clarify exactly what it was that you had said was a _reasonable_ account (which, of course, you had said without reading it). The quote (No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).) is from the characterisation i asked you if you agree with and to which you answered "Yes a perfectly reasonable analysis.". Now i asked you this because you said it once already on the first page and i wanted to give you the opportunity to think about what you were actually describing as a reasonable overview. You weren't expected to agree with but to come back with something along the lines of no, i didn't mean that. But you didn't - you said that yes, it was reasonable and then went on to try and defend (in the most crude terms) leaving out the holocaust in an article on the second world war. Stop wasting my time.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> was the Holocaust a primary factor in the military conduct/aims of the war for Russia Britain America and Japan? [


You know what state the first three named of that quartet were fighting against right? Please tell me that you do.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> of course it was counterproductive, the diversion of resources etc, as well as the destruction of a source of labourers and the fact that Nazi racial policy turned many of the occupied populations against them was one of the things that ended up losing the fash the war. That doesn't explain why they did it in the first place, the fact that it was counterproductive didn't mean that it wasn't a key factor in how the German ruling class conducted the war.
> 
> As for whether Hitler was in the German ruling class - of course he fucking was.


okay.  I shouldn't really have made this point about the German ruling class, which only muddied the waters.  I was trying to make a subtle point about the distinction between, the ruling class that formerly owned the means of production, and continued to profit greatly from the war, and the bureaucracy, so to speak, of the Nazi regime, of whom there were several blocks.to put it simply, the Holocaust was essential for some of these groups, and not so for others.  

What's more, the Holocaust seems to be more essential in 1944/45 to some, than it is in say 41/42, in other words its influence varies over time.  Not only that, the Holocaust is not the only reason for some counter-productive decisions.  Why not invade Britain?  Why invade Russia?  Both questions were ideological, possibly, but not really to do with Jews are the Holocaust.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

Other posters were the ones who pointed out the subtleties and nuances - not to mention the open competition between the components of the german polyocracy - in order to highlight the crudity of your 'germany' had no interest in the holocaust and it was just 'lumbered' with it.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

revol68 said:


> The Holocaust may be irrelevant for the allies motives for going to war but in an article that mentions a number of atrocities carried out during the war it's pretty mental to not mention the holocaust, it's almost like the author thinks that the holocaust serves to retrospectively null the allies actual reasons, or atleast that readers might think so. Basically it's typical Socialist Worker paper crap, where complexities and grey areas are either papered over or simply ignored out of the patronising notion that the proles needn't know these details,just jump behind the party line instead.


you have to see my comments to froggy and butchers above.  I am somewhat amazed you cannot see the relevance.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Other posters were the ones who pointed out the subtleties and nuances - not to mention the open competition between the components of the german polyocracy - in order to highlight the crudity of your 'germany' had no interest in the holocaust and it was just 'lumbered' with it.


looks like I said it first though


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Can you point to _anyone_ saying that the socialist worker paper has propelled them into "being the great anarchist/socialist/etc revolutionaries you are today"?


how many times has Panda mentioned he used to be an SWP member to me?  How many times has Panda pointed out that people on here used to be members of the SWP, and so understand the SWP just as much, if not better than I do? how many times of people spoke about the SWP being a conveyor belt?

And by the way, it was a bit of a joke, you humourless "insert your own expletive".





Lock&Light said:


> I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> looks like I said it first though


No, i had pointed this out to you on three occasions prior to you even suggesting that you understood this, let alone the importance of it. All to no response.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> I waste no time on you. You take not a second to swat away.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

Given i was talking to and about L&L what are you laughing at? And if you really think it takes much longer than that to deal with _your_ loonery, then i think you have a higher opinion of your tripe than anyone else here.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Given i was talking to and about L&L what are you laughing at? And if you really think it takes much longer than that to deal with _your_ loonery, then i think you have a higher opinion of your tripe than anyone else here.


what?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> If you've nothing to say how about just leaving the thread alone?


you're a fucking Moderator now?
your control freakery, knows no bounds.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> No, i had pointed this out to you on three occasions prior to you even suggesting that you understood this, let alone the importance of it. All to no response.


the amazing mind reading butchers.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> I got it precisely from you you clown. I asked you to clarify exactly what it was that you had said was a _reasonable_ account (which, of course, you had said without reading it). The quote (No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).) is from the characterisation i asked you if you agree with and to which you answered "Yes a perfectly reasonable analysis.". Now i asked you this because you said it once already on the first page and i wanted to give you the opportunity to think about what you were actually describing as a reasonable overview. You weren't expected to agree with but to come back with something along the lines of no, i didn't mean that. But you didn't - you said that yes, it was reasonable and then went on to try and defend (in the most crude terms) leaving out the holocaust in an article on the second world war. Stop wasting my time.


what?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> No, i had pointed this out to you on three occasions prior to you even suggesting that you understood this, let alone the importance of it. All to no response.


you had pointed this out on three occasions before post 63?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> you had pointed this out on three occasions before post 63


A post in which it doesn't appear. Well done. Did you just pick a number at random?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> A post in which it doesn't appear. Well done. Did you just pick a number at random?


answer the question butchers, stop time wasting!


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> You finally got to the post that i made on page 3 of a 7 page thread that you've been posting pointless replies to posts from after my one? How did you manage that then?
> 
> And even better, i outline a brief idea of how _international_ events impacted on the nazi-regimes economic plans and opened the door to the holocaust (something your economistic posts said was impossible, didn't happen, couldn't happen - of course, you ignore my substantive point about it happening, don't challenge it, don't address it - i expected nothing more) and your response is to just dismiss it because it solely concerns *domestic* events. Now, apart from this crude separation into non-impacting _domestic_ and _international_ issues that you reduce this issue down to (one that mirrors your equally crude non-interacting _economic_ and _all others factors_) it's the opposite of what i actually said. Time-waster.


you cannot be feigning this stupidity. We are discussing why Neil did A specific, singular, 1500 word analysis, and whether it is mandatory to shoehorn into this imperialist analysis of the Second World War, the Holocaust.

You know, you can go on and on and on round the houses, but at the end of the day I do not think the article Neil wrote is invalid. I think it is A reasonable analysis, for some reason concentrating on one specific perspective. Perhaps his next article will cover the Holocaust.

now I doubt you will deal with the points I've made above, that absolutely decimate your argument, so I will end by saying, I know you know what everybody in the world is thinking, better than they do, so there is no reason for me to say out loud what I am thinking, except it is amazing piece of wit n repartee that starts in F and ends in F.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> That book sounds fascinating Butchers, I'll have to get it.


 
It's well worth it. Quite in-depth, too, but a fascinating read.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> I'm sorry frog, no disrespect, but you are wrong, in my opinion.
> 
> I can't remember the exact quote, or find it easily on Google, but there was some kind of Commissioner, British representative in the Middle East at the time who clearly articulated what the aim of Israel was, when he said Israel will be our own little Ulster.


 
Sir Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel).
What you fail to mention is that Samuel was a militant Zionist whose appointment as Commissioner to the Mandate was hotly disputed, and that what he said was a statement of *his* aims and those of his party, not of "the empire" or even of the majority of the British establishment.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Right. Had time to go back and read this article. Neil makes the point that for Britain the war was about defending Empire, and its economic interest of the Empire, and underlined the point by pointing out that Britain had more troops subjugating India, than fighting the Japanese, and you don't think this is relevant to his point?
> 
> just from first reading it is blatantly obvious to me that this is an article written from the SINGULAR perspective of "International Affairs". And in that respect it is *A* perfectly reasonable analysis.
> 
> PS. just got your response and the Maitland link butchers.


 

"Nationalist protest, India, 1942 - where the British had more troops deployed than were fighting the Japanese

This made the war harder, longer, and bloodier than was necessary. In 1942, the British had more troops policing India than fighting the Japanese. Nationalist demonstrations were brutally suppressed with shootings, floggings, and gang-rapes of protestors, and 30,000 oppositionists were incarcerated."

The reason there were more troops garrisoned in India in 1942 and 1943 is obvious to anyone who's studied that theatre of battle: The garrisons did not consist of troops sent to quell the nationalists, but of those troops who had been forced to retreat from (in very small numbers) Singapore and (in much larger numbers) Burma, plus troops massing for the coming campaign against the Japanese - a campaign the smaller number of troops still fighting the Japanese were "softening up" the Japanese for.

And yes, nationalist protest *were* brutally suppressed, in much the same way and in similar quantities as nationalist protests had been suppressed for the previous half-century.

Mr. Faulkener needs to brush up his history if he doesn't want to look entirely stupid and entirely partisan.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Sir Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel).
> What you fail to mention is that Samuel was a militant Zionist whose appointment as Commissioner to the Mandate was hotly disputed, and that what he said was a statement of *his* aims and those of his party, not of "the empire" or even of the majority of the British establishment.


honestly, are you being serious Panda. 1. IS IT your opinion Israel is of no purpose to the interests of American imperialism? 2. That the British establishments, particularly Churchill, main aim in the second world war was NOT to defend their interests/empire?


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> phew! I eventually got to this.
> 
> *All this is about the internal dynamics of the German regime/power blocks etc. from an international affairs perspective what is the difference?*




Quite simple. Different dynamics allow different approaches to diplomacy.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> "Nationalist protest, India, 1942 - where the British had more troops deployed than were fighting the Japanese
> 
> This made the war harder, longer, and bloodier than was necessary. In 1942, the British had more troops policing India than fighting the Japanese. Nationalist demonstrations were brutally suppressed with shootings, floggings, and gang-rapes of protestors, and 30,000 oppositionists were incarcerated."
> 
> ...


He is, amongst other things, a proper military historian. Which can only leave the above sleight of hand that you have highlighted here, to be deliberate.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> honestly, are you being serious Panda. 1. IS IT your opinion Israel is of no purpose to the interests of American imperialism? 2. That the British establishments, particularly Churchill, main aim in the second world war was NOT to defend their interests/empire?


 
What does that have to do with what I've posted?
Nothing at all.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> What does that have to do with what I've posted?
> Nothing at all.


because that is the context you quoted me from. It is the general flow of the discussion, and so I just wanted your viewpoint on those questions. [I added a like to your previous comeback on NF, so I obviously value your nonpartisan import.]
ETA
also it is the central element of the article being discussed, and so were very valid question.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> how many times has Panda mentioned he used to be an SWP member to me? How many times has Panda pointed out that people on here used to be members of the SWP, and so understand the SWP just as much, if not better than I do? how many times of people spoke about the SWP being a conveyor belt?


 

Nice one, bending the truth again. I've commented about your *perspective* of what the SWP say, compared to the perspective other former members have formed, your perspective generally being that you're right about anything Swappie-related, and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> because that is the context you quoted me from. It is the general flow of the discussion, and so I just wanted your viewpoint on those questions. [I added a like to your previous comeback on NF, so I obviously value your nonpartisan import.]


 
No, my point was purely naming the anonymous "commissioner" and putting his comment about Palestine being Britain's Ulster in the east into context, the context being that he was an aggressively-Zionist cock-drip who pushed his personal agenda and that of his party rather than the agenda of the government of the day.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> you cannot be feigning this stupidity. We are discussing why Neil did A specific, singular, 1500 word analysis, and whether it is mandatory to shoehorn into this imperialist analysis of the Second World War, the Holocaust.


I am surprised what was first described as being an ostensibly marxist analysis has become an imperialist analysis


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Nice one, bending the truth again. I've commented about your *perspective* of what the SWP say, compared to the perspective other former members have formed, your perspective generally being that you're right about anything Swappie-related, and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.


Right back at you, FMPOV.

"conveyor belt"?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> No, my point was purely naming the anonymous "commissioner" and putting his comment about Palestine being Britain's Ulster in the east into context, the context being that he was an aggressively-Zionist cock-drip who pushed his personal agenda and that of his party rather than the agenda of the government of the day.


okay, totally unrelated to your previous point.

 Panda. 1. IS IT your opinion Israel is of no purpose to the interests of American imperialism? 2. That the British establishments, particularly Churchill, main aim in the second world war was NOT to defend their interests/empire?
http://www.urban75.net/forums/members/resistancemp3.5449/​


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 18, 2012)

Where did 'the british establishment' as opposed to british government outline their war aims?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

Panda, was the preventing Holocaust a primary factor in the military conduct/aims of the war for Russia Britain America and Japan?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

It's almost like he really doesn't know about 'Germany', the state that claimed didn't care about the holocaust, and it was simply 'lumbered' with it. No one could really think that though, could they?


----------



## ayatollah (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> precisely. Sometimes I'm not sure whether butchers is trolling, feigning stupidity, or just blinded by his own perfection to what lesser mortals are saying.


 
I've pondered this issue too  (with genuine growing sadness ) for some time MP3, especially as some of the people who post in the same general terms as Butchers are old ex-comrades with a very creditable political past. (Butchers probably does himself - but because of our assumed names apart from "Joe" I don't know who anyone really is).

 Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective, Joe Elliot , and a few others in their loose self-supporting claque) -, are in my opinion nothing more nowadays than disruptive  "pseudo radical Trolls".. having some sort of general " anti capitalist" personal ideology/ies , and often a good grasp of marxist theory, but essentially really simply  deriving great satisfaction from picking constant fault with other, particularly Radical Socialist, posters, bullying them if possible (as he has just done outrageously to you on this thread MP3 - you were far too patient, you should have told him to fuck off a long time ago), and always trying to prove that they alone have the "real insight" as to what is "going on" ,as opposed to to all us clumsy schmuks, with our outdated 19th century socialist ideology.

 However I have noticed that Butchers and his ilk will NEVER go into any detail as to what his/their "immensely superior" global analysis  and offered "political solution" actually is... NEVER. Because he/they simply haven't got a coherent one -- or not one which they are prepared to spell out on Urban anyway. . Despite Butchers outraged claiming of no connection with the IWCA there is a very nasty sub theme running through the periodic postings of this little , perhaps loosely connected, mutual support group when issues around "multiculturalism",  Muslims and supposed " grooming" predilictions, and the impact of immigration on "indigenous job opportunities, the "unstoppable rise of the Far Right, the "uselessness of the Left"... surface....because here they all tail behind the Lumpen white working class support base of the Far Right, by making very slippery, unspelled out, concessions to these Lumpen obsessions and misrepresentations.

 My harsh advice  to fellow radical socialists is to treat this loosely connected little coterie of obsessive posters with considerable suspicion, and not to allow them to rubbish the socialist cause with the endless  posturing of being  genuine anti capitalist radicals that they have chosen to present for years on  Urban and other Boards. Beware them all  .  They are not nowadays actually allies of the radical Left in my opinion..


----------



## Joe Reilly (Aug 18, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> I've pondered this issue too (with genuine growing sadness ) for some time MP3, especially as some of the people who post in the same general terms as Butchers are old ex-comrades with a very creditable political past. (Butchers probably does himself - but because of our assumed names apart from "Joe" I don't know who anyone really is).
> 
> Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective, Joe Elliot , and a few others in their loose self-supporting claque) -, are in my opinion nothing more nowadays than disruptive "pseudo radical Trolls".. having some sort of general " anti capitalist" personal ideology/ies , and often a good grasp of marxist theory, but essentially really simply deriving great satisfaction from picking constant fault with other, particularly Radical Socialist, posters, bullying them if possible (as he has just done outrageously to you on this thread MP3 - you were far too patient, you should have told him to fuck off a long time ago), and always trying to prove that they alone have the "real insight" as to what is "going on" ,as opposed to to all us clumsy schmuks, with our outdated 19th century socialist ideology.
> 
> ...


 
You might want to edit that last sentence before 'we' sue.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It's almost like he really doesn't know about 'Germany', the state that claimed didn't care about the holocaust, and it was simply 'lumbered' with it. No one could really think that though, could they?


Awww it's lovely the way want to make a thread about Neils claim that ww2 was an "imperialist war", all about me :*, but is he right? Did some of the players, the various ruling classes, at least in part want to extend or defend their interests abroad?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Awww it's lovely the way want to make a thread about Neils claim that ww2 was an "imperialist war", all about me :*, but is he right? Did some of the players, the various ruling classes, at least in part want to extend or defend their interests abroad?


You might want to explain how one of the war aims of the leading group of one the imperialist belligerents - an aim radicalised by its failure due to the actions of another of the imperialist belligerents - has no logical, empirical, economic or political relationship with imperialism. You will also want to show how it had no effect whatsoever on all the above as regards all the other imperialist belligerents. And i say _want_, because you will want to but you will be unable to. You'll be unable to even attempt it.


----------



## elbows (Aug 18, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> My harsh advice to fellow radical socialists is to treat this loosely connected little coterie of obsessive posters with considerable suspicion, and not to allow them to rubbish the socialist cause with the endless posturing of being genuine anti capitalist radicals that they have chosen to present for years on Urban and other Boards. Beware them all . They are not nowadays actually allies of the radical Left in my opinion..



I'll give you my take on it since I do not have a credible political past. Indeed when I first briefly set foot on u75, some years before I started posting often, I seem to recall taking the piss out of an upcoming marxist conference. This was for several reasons including ignorance, but also because of something your post has brought back to the front of my mind.

Fuck off with the radical credentials, the dogma, the easy posturing and the well-worn and grotesquely simplified positions that can be applied to situations as they emerge without the need to think afresh about the detail. I will take complex analysis over stuff that only offers 'the dummies guide to who the bad guys are' any day of the week. 

Factionalism and ego are problems thats easy to spot on the left, but so are those who wish to avoid scrutiny of their ideas by resorting to accusations that the cause is being undermined. The 20th century demonstrated on multiple occasions the consequences of all of these problems, with adherence to dogma and utter disdain of scrutiny blighting much that otherwise had potential.

My version of your advice to everyone is to treat everything, including our own ideas and stances, with a sensible degree of suspicion. Resist the temptation to use your present worldview, analysis and cause to construct a new prison or a new religion. Embrace scrutiny, welcome challenges as an opportunity to learn. If you dont, then that does not bode well for what would be unleashed if those in your gang ever got some power.


----------



## Random (Aug 18, 2012)

great stuff guys


----------



## love detective (Aug 18, 2012)

elbows said:


> My version of your advice to everyone is to treat everything, including our own ideas and stances, with a sensible degree of suspicion. Resist the temptation to use your present worldview, analysis and cause to construct a new prison or a new religion. Embrace scrutiny, welcome challenges as an opportunity to learn. If you dont, then that does not bode well for what would be unleashed if those in your gang ever got some power.


 



			
				Marx said:
			
		

> It is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to _ruthless criticism of all that exists_, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.


----------



## elbows (Aug 18, 2012)

Thanks for the quote, I found the letter it came from to be interesting. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm


----------



## JimW (Aug 18, 2012)

Here is the truth, kneel down before it! This could be my new tag-line.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> I am surprised what was first described as being an ostensibly marxist analysis has become an imperialist analysis


as you are stalking me on the issue over threads, no such thing has happened;





barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


right from the very first post, of which I said;





ResistanceMP3 said:


> I haven't read the article, and I'm sure your rendition of it is somewhat cartoonesque, but it sounds like a pretty reasonable analysis to me. Is there a better 1400 word analysis you have in mind?
> 
> PS I quite liked his stuff in the past on the fall of the Roman Empire. So, I may be biased.. lol


it was the "imperialist war" analysis, which I referred to.

and I still say, out of all the stuff that has been written about the second world war, the article is much nearer to the best stuff, than the worst stuff.

do you have a better 1500 word analysis of the Second World War?


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 18, 2012)

I've got no time for the IWCAs politics but I really don't think that pointing out that the holocaust isn't mentioned in an article about the war is an example of "dodgy political obsessions". di you read the thread ayatollah?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Excellent review summary of the Adam Tooze book i mentioned earlier in the thread, from the trots at WSWS.
> 
> Hitler’s “intelligible response” to the contradictions of global capitalism
> 
> ...


But is this book an analysis of the Second World War, or an analysis of Hitler's attempt to carve out an *IMPERIAL* hinterland? You do realise they are not the same thing?


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 18, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> I've got no time for the IWCAs politics but I really don't think that pointing out that the holocaust isn't mentioned in an article about the war is an example of "dodgy political obsessions". di you read the thread ayatollah?


that isn't what the original post did though is it?

the original post specifically made "fun" of the "imperialist war" and Germany seeking its own "Imperial" interests" in the NF article.  No one I can remember, has argued why the imperialist analysis of the war isn't *A* reasonable analysis.  

In fact, the link that butchers provides, agrees that Germany's aims were Imperial [though it 'fails' to mention the aims of the other players  ].

in my opinion, butchers posting er’s “intelligible response” to the contradictions of global capitalism as an alternative analysis to NF is dishonest, because it is like comparing apples and oranges.


----------



## frogwoman (Aug 18, 2012)

I wasn't talking to you mp3 sorry!


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 18, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> But is this book an analysis of the Second World War, or an analysis of Hitler's attempt to carve out an *IMPERIAL* hinterland? You do realise they are not the same thing?


How come you insist (post 99) that the 1440 words challenge the dominant notions of the second world war, but now you're arguing for the "imperialist analysis" which is in.fact a commonplace argument about ww2 and has found expression in a number of recent texts on the subject?


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 19, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> It's almost like he really doesn't know about 'Germany', the state that claimed didn't care about the holocaust, and it was simply 'lumbered' with it. No one could really think that though, could they?


 
It's a bit like a monkey on a typewriter. Eventually some sense will come out of it.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 19, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> .......Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective, Joe Elliot , and a few others in their loose self-supporting claque)......


 
That made me chuckle.


----------



## Favelado (Aug 19, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> It's a bit like a monkey on a typewriter. Eventually some sense will come out of it.


 
"It was the best of times. It was the _blurst_ of times? Bah. Stupid monkey!"


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 19, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> okay, totally unrelated to your previous point.
> 
> Panda. 1. IS IT your opinion Israel is of no purpose to the interests of American imperialism? 2. That the British establishments, particularly Churchill, main aim in the second world war was NOT to defend their interests/empire?
> 
> ​​


 
The main aim, as is very clear, was to defend the homeland. The fact that outposts of empire needed to be defended had roots in two main issues:

1) Those outposts were often where they were due to strategic considerations. If you held Singapore you could deny access to a very large area from there.

2) Access to resources and denying those resources to the enemy.

So, some nebulous mouth-farting about defending the empire and ruling class interests misses both of those points, and entirely misses the fact that without such strategic thinking, both the outposts and the centre of empire would have fallen, and tens of millions would have been trapped under rule that made British racism look like the paternalism of a smiling old man.
Do you know that some Burmese still use the savagery of the Japanese troops as a kind of morality tale to stop people getting above themselves - as an example that if you think too much of yourself, you invariably think less of others, and treat them accordingly, and that the Japanese were the apotheosis of such thinking?


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 19, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> I've pondered this issue too (with genuine growing sadness ) for some time MP3, especially as some of the people who post in the same general terms as Butchers are old ex-comrades with a very creditable political past. (Butchers probably does himself - but because of our assumed names apart from "Joe" I don't know who anyone really is).
> 
> Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective, Joe Elliot , and a few others in their loose self-supporting claque) -, are in my opinion nothing more nowadays than disruptive "pseudo radical Trolls".. having some sort of general " anti capitalist" personal ideology/ies , and often a good grasp of marxist theory, but essentially really simply deriving great satisfaction from picking constant fault with other, particularly Radical Socialist, posters, bullying them if possible (as he has just done outrageously to you on this thread MP3 - you were far too patient, you should have told him to fuck off a long time ago), and always trying to prove that they alone have the "real insight" as to what is "going on" ,as opposed to to all us clumsy schmuks, with our outdated 19th century socialist ideology.


 
You sad doctrinaire wanker. You can't even spell _schmuck_ properly, you _gonif_.



> However I have noticed that Butchers and his ilk will NEVER go into any detail as to what his/their "immensely superior" global analysis and offered "political solution" actually is... NEVER. Because he/they simply haven't got a coherent one -- or not one which they are prepared to spell out on Urban anyway. .


 
Could that be because unlike you, some other posters are rational enough to know that a "one size fits all" solution won't work? No, there must be something sinister behind it, instead! 



> Despite Butchers outraged claiming of no connection with the IWCA there is a very nasty sub theme running through the periodic postings of this little , perhaps loosely connected, mutual support group when issues around "multiculturalism", Muslims and supposed " grooming" predilictions, and the impact of immigration on "indigenous job opportunities, the "unstoppable rise of the Far Right, the "uselessness of the Left"... surface....because here they all tail behind the Lumpen white working class support base of the Far Right, by making very slippery, unspelled out, concessions to these Lumpen obsessions and misrepresentations.


 
You've used my username and "credited" such thinking to me. Now prove it. If you can't (which you can't), then shut the fuck up with your conspiracy theories.



> My harsh advice to fellow radical socialists is to treat this loosely connected little coterie of obsessive posters with considerable suspicion, and not to allow them to rubbish the socialist cause with the endless posturing of being genuine anti capitalist radicals that they have chosen to present for years on Urban and other Boards. Beware them all . They are not nowadays actually allies of the radical Left in my opinion..


 
You're inflexible, dogmatic and indoctrinated. That makes your opinion somewhat tainted.


----------



## elbows (Aug 19, 2012)

Barged into my house singing songs of freedom, but once they'd left I noticed they'd trodden dogma into my carpets and the chorus wasnt about freedom at all.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 20, 2012)

Next piece is up - 
1941-1945: barbarism in a world gone mad

It laughs at rmp3:



> The dual logic of Nazi racism and German imperialism led to large-scale genocide as huge swathes of Poland and Russia were overrun. The genocide intensified as the tide of war turned against the invaders. The Jews in particular became scapegoats for defeat and suffering.


 
The piece is even worse than the second one (the subject of this thread). It offers nothing as to why the list of atrocities it contains happened.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 20, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> My harsh advice to fellow radical socialists is to treat this loosely connected little coterie of obsessive posters with considerable suspicion, and not to allow them to rubbish the socialist cause with the endless posturing of being genuine anti capitalist radicals that they have chosen to present for years on Urban and other Boards. Beware them all . They are not nowadays actually allies of the radical Left in my opinion..


 
If you believe that the socialist cause - the emancipation of the working class by the working class - can be effectively rubbished by posts on a bulletin board, then you are wrong.

If not then what are you posting this 'harsh advice' for?

Louis MacNeice


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 20, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Next piece is up -
> 1941-1945: barbarism in a world gone mad
> 
> It laughs at rmp3:
> ...


but... but... but it's challenging the dominant ideas about the second world war [/rmp3]


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> How come you insist (post 99) that the 1440 words challenge the dominant notions of the second world war, but now you're arguing for the "imperialist analysis" which is in.fact a commonplace argument about ww2 and has found expression in a number of recent texts on the subject?


I repeat for the hard of reading here


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Next piece is up -
> 1941-1945: barbarism in a world gone mad
> 
> It laughs at rmp3:


"It laughs at rmp3:" 
you truly are a delusional fuckwit.


> The piece is even worse than the second one (the subject of this thread). It offers nothing as to why the list of atrocities it contains happened.


so, write a better one.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> If you believe that the socialist cause - the emancipation of the working class by the working class - can be effectively rubbished by posts on a bulletin board, then you are wrong.
> 
> If not then what are you posting this 'harsh advice' for?
> 
> Louis MacNeice





barney_pig said:


> Some fun may be had with the latest installment of this series on counterfuck website.
> Niel Faulkner has written an 'interesting' account of ww2 which was, apparently, an entirely imperialist conflict, which was marked by horrific massacres by the western powers and soviet union, while the Germans were simply attempting to regain a fair division of imperialist spoils. No holocaust, no death camps, no mass slaughter of Jews, slavs, gypsies, homosexuals etc. No mass terror of civilian populations ( except by the allies).
> There is a comments box, can anyone get something past the clusterfuck moderators?


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Aug 21, 2012)

Two quotes which have almost no relevance to each other you loon


----------



## barney_pig (Aug 21, 2012)

there was nothing on the counterfire site which has any relation to the emancipation of the working class as the act of the working class.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> The main aim, as is very clear, was to defend the homeland. The fact that outposts of empire needed to be defended had roots in two main issues:
> 
> 1) Those outposts were often where they were due to strategic considerations. If you held Singapore you could deny access to a very large area from there.
> 
> ...


I think that is a perfectly reasonable analysis panda I've heard before. No doubt part of the analysis. However, I do think there are other factors playing in their, the ruling classes, decision-making process. In every war there is an element of 'the game'. " I haven't become the Kings first minister to preside over the destruction of British interests".. <Nemo comment.

by and large, I have no problems, I feel no need to "have some fun" with the idea that World War II was an imperialist war. of course, other people are free to do so.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Spanky Longhorn said:


> Two quotes which have almost no relevance to each other you loon


what's the difference between posts on a bulletin board, and posts in a comments box?


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 21, 2012)

RMP3 could you explain what your post is meant to mean?

Cheers - Louis Macneice


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 21, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> what's the difference between posts on a bulletin board, and posts in a comments box?


 
Did anybody claim that NF was rubbishing the socialist cause? I thought he was accused of doing some poor marxist history...which he did.

Louis MacNeice


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 21, 2012)

General point: Louis was directing his post at the ayatollah (and what a fitting board name for one so dogmatic and authoritarian) regarding his 'harsh advice' for other posters not to associate with "Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective" and, for some reason best known to himself, _the lead singer from Def Leppard_ - due to our collective undermining of the ability of the working class to emancipate itself through its own self-activity _by disagreeing with him_ on here.

He has previously suggested in my case at least that i do this work due to being some sort of undercover fascist, some sort of tout or grass or some sort of copper/secuirity service bod. As a sign of his general clear grasp of the current general perspective he has also argued the working class is just about to go over to the SWP _en masse. _

_Heed the prophets harsh advice!_


----------



## love detective (Aug 21, 2012)

the more you hear about that joe elliot the worse he seems


----------



## Jeff Robinson (Aug 21, 2012)




----------



## JimW (Aug 21, 2012)

The drummer's 'armless though.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 21, 2012)

Luckily the ayatollah has uncovered our very own Herr Vogt.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Are bulletin board posts and posts in a comments box, of any consequence to the emancipation of the working class by the working class?


----------



## rekil (Aug 21, 2012)

How I picture butchers.

"Today at hydra buuuukes, 15% off selected t-t-t-titles, nnnyeh"


----------



## Joe Reilly (Aug 21, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> General point: Louis was directing his post at the ayatollah (and what a fitting board name for one so dogmatic and authoritarian) regarding his 'harsh advice' for other posters not to associate with "Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective" and, for some reason best known to himself, _the lead singer from Def Leppard_ - due to our collective undermining of the ability of the working class to emancipate itself through its own self-activity _by disagreeing with him_ on here.
> 
> He has peviously suggested in my case at least that i do this work due to being some sort of undercover fascist, some sort of tout or grass or some sort of copper/secuirity service bod. As a sign of his general clear grasp of the current general perspective he has also argued the working class is just about to go over to the SWP _en masse. _
> 
> _Heed the prophets harsh advice!_


 
Inspired.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 21, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Are bulletin board posts and posts in a comments box, of any consequence to the emancipation of the working class by the working class?


 
A very different question from the one I asked and which prompted you to produce your spurious analogy; what is the point you are trying to make?

Louis MacNeice


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Aug 21, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Are bulletin board posts and posts in a comments box, of any consequence to the emancipation of the working class by the working class?


 
Do you feel yourself being dragged into a pit of quicksand?


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 21, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> and I still say, out of all the stuff that has been written about the second world war, the article is much nearer to the best stuff, than the worst stuff.


Ok. Name the books you've read on the second world war from which you derive this bold statement


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 21, 2012)

Spanky Longhorn said:


> Do you feel yourself being dragged into a pit of quicksand?


Too good for him.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 21, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> General point: Louis was directing his post at the ayatollah (and what a fitting board name for one so dogmatic and authoritarian) regarding his 'harsh advice' for other posters not to associate with "Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective" and, for some reason best known to himself, _the lead singer from Def Leppard_ - due to our collective undermining of the ability of the working class to emancipate itself through its own self-activity _by disagreeing with him_ on here.


 
To be fair, Joe is a fiend when he's been on the coke. I wouldn't associate with him either. He comes over all "Iron Lady".



> He has previously suggested in my case at least that i do this work due to being some sort of undercover fascist, some sort of tout or grass or some sort of copper/secuirity service bod.


 
Well you are. I saw you at Century House last week when I was picking up my paycheque and some fresh ammunition!



> As a sign of his general clear grasp of the current general perspective he has also argued the working class is just about to go over to the SWP _en masse. _
> 
> _Heed the prophets harsh advice!_


 
The working class will only ever be "about to go over to the SWP _en masse"_ in the micro-seconds before a massive asteroid strike destroys the earth, and even then they'll only do it for a laugh.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 21, 2012)

love detective said:


> the more you hear about that joe elliot the worse he seems


 
Some would add that the more you hear him, the worse he seems.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> A very different question from the one I asked and which prompted you to produce your spurious analogy; what is the point you are trying to make?
> 
> Louis MacNeice


that "effectively", neither are of any use.

Between them, butchers panda pickman are approaching, roughly, a quarter of 1 million posts. Most of their political stuff, like this thread, sneering at people who are blissfully unaware.  Effectively, for the emancipation of the working class by the working class, for what? If their posts cannot 'rubbish that cause', can they build it?

Whilst rubbishing socialists/ism, they don't accept the challenge to present a coherent alternative.  Without constructive criticism, what is the point for people who want to change the world, Socialists?

Sure, it's good to have your views challenged, but with no coherent alternative they are like  navelgazing philosophers, "Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, _*the point*_ however is to _*change it*_" . Harsh, IMO, no.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 21, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> that "effectively", neither are of any use.
> 
> Between them, butchers panda pickman are approaching, roughly, a quarter of 1 million posts. Most of their political stuff, like this thread, sneering at people who are blissfully unaware. Effectively, for the emancipation of the working class by the working class, for what? If their posts cannot 'rubbish that cause', can they build it?
> 
> ...


 
Ayatolla was accusing  posters of the gargantuan task of rubbishing socialism; that is what I said was impossible to do on a bulletin board.

However, posts on the internet can play much smaller roles such as criticising an article for providing at best a partial and therefore misleading  historical account.

You seem determined to compare apples and orchards; it's a pointless exercise so I'll leave you to it.

Louis Macneice


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> Ayatolla was accusing posters of the gargantuan task of rubbishing socialism; that is what I said was impossible to do on a bulletin board.


Well in my opinion you are putting your usual dishonest spin on his words;





ayatollah said:


> I've pondered this issue too (with genuine growing sadness ) for some time MP3, especially as some of the people who post in the same general terms as Butchers are old ex-comrades with a very creditable political past. (Butchers probably does himself - but because of our assumed names apart from "Joe" I don't know who anyone really is).
> 
> Butchers , (and violent Panda, 39th Step, Love Detective, Joe Elliot , and a few others in their loose self-supporting claque) -, are in my opinion nothing more nowadays than disruptive "pseudo radical Trolls".. having some sort of general " anti capitalist" personal ideology/ies , and often a good grasp of marxist theory, but essentially really simply deriving great satisfaction from picking constant fault with other, particularly Radical Socialist, posters, bullying them if possible (as he has just done outrageously to you on this thread MP3 - you were far too patient, you should have told him to fuck off a long time ago), and always trying to prove that they alone have the "real insight" as to what is "going on" ,as opposed to to all us clumsy schmuks, with our outdated 19th century socialist ideology.
> 
> ...





> However, posts on the internet can play much smaller roles such as criticising an article for providing at best a partial and therefore misleading historical account.


a quarter of 1 million posts from just three people? what percentage of them do this?  The vast majority I see are just sneering at someone. Dickman almost entirely, Panda less so..



> You seem determined to compare apples and orchards; it's a pointless exercise so I'll leave you to it.
> 
> Louis Macneice


Which is the exact point I made.  In fact in the very first post I asked people to provide an alternative. As far as I know nobody has produced a like-for-like alternative, IE a newspaper style article, similar length, and from the same International affairs perspective.

there is nothing fraternal about this thread, is there?


----------



## love detective (Aug 21, 2012)

Frats


----------



## cesare (Aug 21, 2012)




----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 21, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> Ayatolla was accusing posters of the gargantuan task of rubbishing socialism; that is what I said was impossible to do on a bulletin board.
> 
> However, posts on the internet can play much smaller roles such as criticising an article for providing at best a partial and therefore misleading historical account.
> 
> ...


and a second bite at Cherry. Whilst as a gargantuan task it may be impossible, they do try to rubbish socialism at every opportunity. What's more, politically they are bound to, literally bound hand and feet to.


> Anarchism as a revolutionary political philosophy has many diﬀerent voices, origins and interpretations. From the individualist anarchism of Stirner, to the collectivist, communal anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin, anarchism is diverse series of philosophies and political strategies. These are united, however, by a fundamental rejection and critique of political authority in all its forms. The critique of political authority — the conviction that power is oppressive, exploitative and dehumanizing — may be said to be the crucial politico-ethical standpoint of anarchism. For classical anarchists the State is the embodiment of all forms of oppression, exploitation and the enslavement and degradation of man. In Bakunin’s words, “the State is like a vast slaughterhouse and an enormous cemetery, where under the shadow and the pretext of this abstraction (the common good) all the best aspirations, all the living forces of a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred.” 9 The State is the main target of the anarchist critique of authority. It is for anarchists the fundamental oppression in society, and it must be abolished as the ﬁrst revolutionary act.
> 
> This last point brought nineteenth century anarchism into sharp conﬂict with Marxism. Marx believed that while the State was indeed oppressive and exploitative, it was a reﬂection of economic exploitation and an instrument of class power.
> Thus political power was reduced to economic power. For Marx the economy rather than the State was the fundamental site of oppression. The State rarely had an independent existence beyond class and economic interests. Because of this the State could be used as a tool of revolution if it was in the hands of the right class — the proletariat.
> ...


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 22, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Well in my opinion you are putting your usual dishonest spin on his words...
> 
> ...Which is the exact point I made.
> 
> In fact in the very first post I asked people to provide an alternative. As far as I know nobody has produced a like-for-like alternative, IE a newspaper style article, similar length, and from the same International affairs perspective.


 
1. I quoted what he said. What he said was silly which is his problem not mine.

2. It is a completely different point; one you see determined to miss.

3. Perhaps the reason nobody has done it, is because it's a bad idea due to the very partial nature of the historical account that would neccessarily be the result.

Louis MacNeice


----------



## articul8 (Aug 22, 2012)

It's like Monty Python's "Summarise Proust" contest


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 22, 2012)

articul8 said:


> It's like Monty Python's "Summarise Proust" contest


 
But without the laughs.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 22, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> But without the laughs.
> 
> Cheers - Louis MacNeice


Just 'harsh advice'. That was _quite_ funny.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> and a second bite at Cherry. Whilst as a gargantuan task it may be impossible, they do try to rubbish socialism at every opportunity. What's more, politically they are bound to, literally bound hand and feet to.


any chance of an answer to #281?


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 22, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> that "effectively", neither are of any use.
> 
> Between them, butchers panda pickman are approaching, roughly, a quarter of 1 million posts. Most of their political stuff, like this thread, sneering at people who are blissfully unaware. Effectively, for the emancipation of the working class by the working class, for what? If their posts cannot 'rubbish that cause', can they build it?


 
Show me a post where I've sneered at anyone who is "blissfully unaware". Go on!
You won't be able to, because I don't have a go at people who are uninformed, just at the dogmatists like you and ayatollah. You see, uninformed people can inform themselves if they wish to. It's a simple process. Dogmatists, though...it's more difficult to deprogram someone. To get them to "update" their cherished political beliefs.

The real joke here is that you obviously don't realise what a rancid sneerer you yourself are.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Aug 22, 2012)

It's quite scary, the thought of someone like ayatollah getting even a whiff of power over people.  Wouldn't touch his 'socialism' with a barge pole.


----------



## love detective (Aug 22, 2012)

not sure it's meant for the 'likes of you'


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Aug 22, 2012)

True, being a 'backward element.'


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

backward elements at work recently


----------



## barney_pig (Aug 22, 2012)

enemy of socialism


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Aug 22, 2012)

Build SOCIALISM, you swines!


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 22, 2012)

Will you all please stop rubbishing socialism.

Socialism just called and is very upset; it said it's going to have spend ages and ages explaining to the working class why it isn't rubbish.

Thank you - Louis MacNeice


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 22, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> 1. I quoted what he said. What he said was silly which is his problem not mine.


you quoted, then distorted, as you usually do.I can't believe you do this continually, unintentionally.




> 2. It is a completely different point; one you see determined to miss.


I've never known you make a point, sneer yes.  So what is your point I have missed?



> 3. Perhaps the reason nobody has done it, is because it's a bad idea due to the very partial nature of the historical account that would neccessarily be the result.


and yet, looking purely at the perspective of international affairs he came to a conclusion which was not dissimilar from the 'gargantuan' work butchers suggested reading, that it was an imperialist war from which Germany sort to get a share of the imperialist advantage.

the imperialist war analysis, is a reasonable analysis, not the only analysis, but reasonable one.  He made this point in a succinct fashion.

But feel free to do what you do best.


----------



## ayatollah (Aug 22, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> Will you all please stop rubbishing socialism.
> 
> Socialism just called and is very upset; it said it's going to have spend ages and ages explaining to the working class why it isn't rubbish.
> 
> Thank you - Louis MacNeice


 
I may have remembered this wrongly. Quite possible, can't be arsed to hunt down the thread. But didn't you. "Louis"  on some thread some time ago, actually knock up some ideas for a "21st century" set of progressive objectives, to replace all that boring olde socialist stuff ? I think you did. Didn't some posters say how groovy it was, and they wanted it for an inspirational wall poster ? If so.. you , if my memory is correct, at least had a go at some "alternative narrative". It was actually banal a-historical stuff that would have embarrassed a 14 year old "liberal studies" class trying to put together a "manifesto to sort out all the world's troubles... by everyone just being very, very, nice and considerate to each other"... but hey.. it was a lot more forthcoming than anything put forward by the likes of Butchers, Panda, and their loose claque of nitpickers, misrepresenters of other peoples'arguments, and general "aren't we just sooooo clever" Trolls.

I think we can safely take it that, when challenged by me, Resistence MP3, or anyone else over the years to "put up (some sort of coherent radical alternative narrative or analysis or solution to the capitalist crisis) or shut up", the usual empty nitpicking faction (possibly with the exception of "Louis") , will continue to refuse to put their ideas (if any) "above the parapet" for criticism/review  by Urban posters. On the basisapparently  that the small space available on Urban (infinite surely ?)  just aint enough to portray the complexity and subtlety of their grand analysis ? Soooo, lazy, soooooo, cowardly...soooooooo dishonest. Instead , when challenged or criticised they will continue to behave like the inhabitants of a henhouse which has just had a very rude fox chucked in amongst them !


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> you quoted, then distorted, as you usually do.I can't believe you do this continually, unintentionally.
> 
> 
> I've never known you make a point, sneer yes. So what is your point I have missed?
> ...


and turning unwillingly to post 281...


----------



## love detective (Aug 22, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> I may have remembered this wrongly. Quite possible, can't be arsed to hunt down the thread. But didn't you. "Louis" on some thread some time ago, actually knock up some ideas for a "21st century" set of progressive objectives, to replace all that boring olde socialist stuff ? I think you did. Didn't some posters say how groovy it was, and they wanted it for an inspirational wall poster ? If so.. you , if my memory is correct, at least had a go at some "alternative narrative". It was actually banal a-historical stuff that would have embarrassed a 14 year old "liberal studies" class trying to put together a "manifesto to sort out all the world's troubles... by everyone just being very, very, nice and considerate to each other"... but hey.. it was a lot more forthcoming than anything put forward by the likes of Butchers, Panda, and their loose claque of nitpickers, misrepresenters of other peoples'arguments, and general "aren't we just sooooo clever" Trolls.
> 
> I think we can safely take it that, when challenged by me, Resistence MP3, or anyone else over the years to "put up (some sort of coherent radical alternative narrative or analysis or solution to the capitalist crisis) or shut up", the usual empty nitpicking faction (possibly with the exception of "Louis") , will continue to refuse to put their ideas (if any) "above the parapet" for criticism/review by Urban posters. On the basisapparently that the small space available on Urban (infinite surely ?) just aint enough to portray the complexity and subtlety of their grand analysis ? Soooo, lazy, soooooo, cowardly...soooooooo dishonest. Instead , when challenged or criticised they will continue to behave like the inhabitants of a henhouse which has just had a very rude fox chucked in amongst them !


 
this is rich, as when asked similar you can only point us to failed experiments based in and on 19th century conditions and this liberal and thoroughly non-materialist idea that everything can be solved by just magically rentaghosting ourselves into some idealist/utopian SOCIALISM in the 21st century

when actually pointed towards attempts to develop ideas for pro working class alternatives from a contemporary perspective, you rule these out for some reason because of your sectarian blinkers and then pretend they never existed in the first place so you can continue to roll out the kind of tired ass shite that you talk about above


----------



## elbows (Aug 22, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> it was a lot more forthcoming than anything put forward by the likes of Butchers, Panda, and their loose claque of nitpickers, misrepresenters of other peoples'arguments, and general "aren't we just sooooo clever" Trolls.


 


> Instead , when challenged or criticised they will continue to behave like the inhabitants of a henhouse which has just had a very rude fox chucked in amongst them !



Arent these points somewhat conflicted? In the first quote you are finding various ways to dismiss criticisms as being nothing more than invalid bitching, misrepresentation or people showing off their intellect. Then at the end you are making fun of people for not being able to handle criticism, or not wanting to be subjected to it. 

Its a joke because these concepts together make up a cheap shield that anyone can use to defend their own ego, dismiss valid criticism, and pretend that anyone that disagrees with them does not have a proper stance or analysis of their own.


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## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> ........ by the likes of Butchers, Panda, and their loose claque of nitpickers, misrepresenters of other peoples'arguments, and general "aren't we just sooooo clever" Trolls.......


 
Perfectly put.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Aug 22, 2012)

Is it fuck.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> and turning unwillingly to post 281...


 
Undoubtably  some people will have missed post 281. Here it is in all it's glory:

"Ok. Name the books you've read on the second world war from which you derive this bold statement".


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Captain Hurrah said:


> Is it fuck.


 
I'm so not convinced by your eloquent argument.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Undoubtably some people will have missed post 281. Here it is in all it's glory:
> 
> "Ok. Name the books you've read on the second world war from which you derive this bold statement".


i don't know what you hope to achieve by your little intervention, but i think we can safely say that helping establish resistancemp3's bona fides as someone who can tell what is and what is not among the best writing on the second world war is unlikely to figure high on your list of aims.


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## Captain Hurrah (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> I'm so not convinced by your eloquent argument.


 
Any doctrinaire weirdo will do.


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> i don't know what you hope to achieve by your little intervention, but i think we can safely say that helping establish resistancemp3's bona fides as someone who can tell what is and what is not among the best writing on the second world war is unlikely to figure high on your list of aims.


 
Piss off picky.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Piss off picky.


what's this in aid of? YOU quoted ME, not the other way round. in fact, you quoted me in such a way that if i'd not been looking at this thread i'd have missed it: you didn't use the quote function, you underhand dog. come on now, prove you're not a one trick pony, that you're not a pile of pony, that you can in fact justify your posts.

why did you quote me and what did you hope to achieve?


----------



## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> why did you quote me and what did you hope to achieve?


 
My only hope, ( a forlorn one), was to stop you derailing a quite interesting thread. Actually, that's always been my hope. Almost from the beginning.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> My only hope, ( a forlorn one), was to stop you derailing a quite interesting thread. Actually, that's always been my hope. Almost from the beginning.


don't lie, it doesn't become you.


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## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> don't lie, it doesn't become you.


 
Just piss off then, Picky.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Just piss off then, Picky.


if your aim was to stop me derailing this thread then you wouldn't have cut and pasted my post (incidentally, it's not my post 281 in 'all it's glory' because you've missed out what i quoted from rmp3 - another of your lies). you'd have used the quote function: or you wouldn't have bothered. because you've been warned, as have i, that we shouldn't engage with each other. i won't descend to your abysmal depths and tell you 'fuck off you old cunt': you're not worth it.


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## Lock&Light (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> if your aim was to stop me derailing this thread then you wouldn't have cut and pasted my post (incidentally, it's not my post 281 in 'all it's glory' because you've missed out what i quoted from rmp3 - another of your lies). you'd have used the quote function: or you wouldn't have bothered. because you've been warned, as have i, that we shouldn't engage with each other. i won't descend to your abysmal depths and tell you 'fuck off you old cunt': you're not worth it.


 
Yeah, yeah.


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## elbows (Aug 22, 2012)

A snarxist history of the curled, live from the abysmal depths.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Yeah, yeah.


^ this serves to keep the thread on topick how?


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Just piss off then, Picky.


^ this serves to keep the thread on topick how?


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Undoubtably some people will have missed post 281. Here it is in all it's glory:
> 
> "Ok. Name the books you've read on the second world war from which you derive this bold statement".


^ this serves to keep the thread on topick how?


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## discokermit (Aug 22, 2012)

i don't believe ayatollah is real. not that there aren't people like him in the swp, there are, just something doesn't add up.

either that or he's a cunt.


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## cesare (Aug 22, 2012)

discokermit said:


> i don't believe ayatollah is real. not that there aren't people like him in the swp, there are, just something doesn't add up.
> 
> either that or he's a cunt.



People seem to know him on the BTF thread.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

cesare said:


> People seem to know him on the BTF thread.


doesn't stop him being an objectionable and less than valuable member of society.


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## cesare (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> doesn't stop him being an objectionable and less than valuable member of society.



Hmm. Well I can't really have an objective view on that, so far.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

cesare said:


> Hmm. Well I can't really have an objective view on that, so far.


nor do i but i don't let it bother me.


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## cesare (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> nor do i but i don't let it bother me.



Oh, I'm not bothered but equally I'm not giving him a reason to have yet another pop at me.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 22, 2012)

cesare said:


> Oh, I'm not bothered but equally I'm not giving him a reason to have yet another pop at me.


doesn't matter if you do or if you don't; people like him don't need reasons to be tossers.


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## cesare (Aug 22, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> doesn't matter if you do or if you don't; people like him don't need reasons to be tossers.



Well he does seem to have taken against quite a lot of people. But I don't know the backstory to it, cos I only started posting again relatively recently.


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## discokermit (Aug 23, 2012)

cesare said:


> People seem to know him on the BTF thread.


i know, it's a puzzler.


----------



## Riklet (Aug 23, 2012)

(((radical socialists oppressed on bulletin boards by the vanguard of counter-revolutionary elements)))


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

This is the sum total of L&L's posts on this thread:



Lock&Light said:


> I can. It seems analogous to your relationship with me. You think me a time-waster, yet you waste time on me. I think that's something like what Resistance is saying in that post.


 


Lock&Light said:


> You would be shocked if you counted up how many minutes and hours those seconds have taken from your life.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Good for you. I find it hard to see past the arrogance.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Do you also teach your granny to suck eggs?


 


Lock&Light said:


> Wierd grannys some people have.


 


Lock&Light said:


> It's a bit like a monkey on a typewriter. Eventually some sense will come out of it.


 


Lock&Light said:


> That made me chuckle.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Perfectly put.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Undoubtably some people will have missed post 281. Here it is in all it's glory:
> 
> "Ok. Name the books you've read on the second world war from which you derive this bold statement".


 


Lock&Light said:


> I'm so not convinced by your eloquent argument.


 


Lock&Light said:


> My only hope, ( a forlorn one), was to stop you derailing a quite interesting thread. Actually, that's always been my hope. Almost from the beginning.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Just piss off then, Picky.


 


Lock&Light said:


> Yeah, yeah.


 
You may note that there is _not a single post on the topic of the thread_, not one. You may also note that _every single post_ is support of attacks on other posters who have contributed to the thread (and attacks not on the content of their posts but on them), attempts to derail or simple abuse. You will undoubtedly have noticed his later whining:



Lock&Light said:


> My only hope, ( a forlorn one), was to stop you derailing a quite interesting thread. Actually, that's always been my hope. Almost from the beginning.


.


----------



## love detective (Aug 23, 2012)

discokermit said:


> i don't believe ayatollah is real. not that there aren't people like him in the swp, there are, just something doesn't add up.
> 
> either that or he's a cunt.


 
He is very real and has a very credible & admirable history (which doesn't excuse the present however)


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 23, 2012)

ayatollah said:


> I may have remembered this wrongly. Quite possible, can't be arsed to hunt down the thread. But didn't you. "Louis" on some thread some time ago, actually knock up some ideas for a "21st century" set of progressive objectives, to replace all that boring olde socialist stuff ? I think you did. Didn't some posters say how groovy it was, and they wanted it for an inspirational wall poster ? If so.. you , if my memory is correct, at least had a go at some "alternative narrative". It was actually banal a-historical stuff that would have embarrassed a 14 year old "liberal studies" class trying to put together a "manifesto to sort out all the world's troubles... by everyone just being very, very, nice and considerate to each other"... but hey.. it was a lot more forthcoming than anything put forward by the likes of Butchers, Panda, and their loose claque of nitpickers, misrepresenters of other peoples'arguments, and general "aren't we just sooooo clever" Trolls.
> 
> I think we can safely take it that, when challenged by me, Resistence MP3, or anyone else over the years to "put up (some sort of coherent radical alternative narrative or analysis or solution to the capitalist crisis) or shut up", the usual empty nitpicking faction (possibly with the exception of "Louis") , will continue to refuse to put their ideas (if any) "above the parapet" for criticism/review by Urban posters. On the basisapparently that the small space available on Urban (infinite surely ?) just aint enough to portray the complexity and subtlety of their grand analysis ? Soooo, lazy, soooooo, cowardly...soooooooo dishonest. Instead , when challenged or criticised they will continue to behave like the inhabitants of a henhouse which has just had a very rude fox chucked in amongst them !


 
If you go and look at the posts I think you're refering to - page 12 onwards here - I think you can see that far from trying to rubbish socialism what I'm actually after are ways to progress working class self-emanicipation. Also I don't think audiotec (who if memory serves me correctly comes from and is supportive of the IS tradition?) is in the habit of calling things groovy; it was him who wanted to post my contribution elsewhere.

There is also this thread where I'm not rubbishing socialism but trying to provide some clarity; or at least the space where some clarity might be carved out.

Louis MacNeice


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 23, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Perfectly put.


 
To someone with the same ego defects that you manifest, it would seem that way.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 23, 2012)

discokermit said:


> i don't believe ayatollah is real. not that there aren't people like him in the swp, there are, just something doesn't add up.
> 
> either that or he's a cunt.


 
Or maybe he's actually a she - it's Lindsey German, folks!


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## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> Or maybe he's actually a she - it's Lindsey German, folks!


from beyond the grave


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## Smokeandsteam (Aug 23, 2012)

LD is right about Ayatollah's past being more than credible but sadly he's not interested in clarity or even debate - via a message board remember - about how progressive working class politics might be promoted given the objective facts of now.  

By way of example on the recent thread about trade unions (sorry don't know how to paste the quote) he stated "We are now in a new era , since the 2008 Crash, of world capitalist crisis, and the many defeats today, combined with the odd victory (the electricians recently for instance) will eventually make trades union members more open to Left militant arguments for resistance, and the election of same to key union positions, at local and national levels, to change the attitudes and direction of the big unions. There really isn't any alternative for the Left but to work to rebuild militant trades unionism"


----------



## ViolentPanda (Aug 23, 2012)

love detective said:


> He is very real and has a very credible & admirable history (which doesn't excuse the present however)


 
So you're saying he's *not* Lindsey German?

 I feel so cheated!


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

It would be good if the ayatollah managed to outline what he sees wrong with the discussions Louis started and to offer some thought out ANALYSIS and SOLUTIONS instead.


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## Louis MacNeice (Aug 23, 2012)

Smokeandsteam said:


> LD is right about Ayatollah's past being more than credible but sadly he's not interested in clarity or even debate - via a message board remember - about how progressive working class politics might be promoted given the objective facts of now.
> 
> By way of example on the recent thread about trade unions (sorry don't know how to paste the quote) he stated "We are now in a new era , since the 2008 Crash, of world capitalist crisis, and the many defeats today, combined with the odd victory (the electricians recently for instance) will eventually make trades union members more open to Left militant arguments for resistance, and the election of same to key union positions, at local and national levels, to change the attitudes and direction of the big unions. There really isn't any alternative for the Left but to work to rebuild militant trades unionism"


 
I hope that carries on to say that it is to be done to act as a bolster for and conduit into the most advanced ranks of the party of the working class; the necessary vehicle for the transformation of class consciousness and therefore class action.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice


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## Smokeandsteam (Aug 23, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> I hope that carries on to say that it is to be done to act as a bolster for and conduit into the most advanced ranks of the party of the working class; the necessary vehicle for the transformation of class consciousness and therefore class action.
> 
> Cheers - Louis MacNeice


 
Sadly not. Clearly an oversight.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

Saul Newman made more sense of anarchism in a few pages, than you three have in a quarter of 1 million posts


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## frogwoman (Aug 23, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> I hope that carries on to say that it is to be done to act as a bolster for and conduit into the most advanced ranks of the party of the working class; the necessary vehicle for the transformation of class consciousness and therefore class action.
> 
> Cheers - Louis MacNeice


 
Forward to the workers' bomb.


----------



## Random (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Saul Newman made more sense of anarchism in a few pages, than you three have in a quarter of 1 million posts


RMP3 sometimes you post things worth reading, and sometimes you just seem hung up on vendettas.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

Random said:


> RMP3 sometimes you post things worth reading, and sometimes you just seem hung up on vendettas.


fair comment.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> Saul Newman made more sense of anarchism in a few pages, than you three have in a quarter of 1 million posts


Saul Newman gave a rather disengenous one-sided account designed to hide the large scale crossover between the anarchist tradition that concentrates on the economy and the state as intertwined manifestations of capital (traditionally and currently by far the largest anarchist tradition) and the marxist tradition. He did this because he's a post-anarchist who thinks class and all that flows from it are outdated conceptions and should be dropped. You mistook a polemical piece for an analytical one. He did this in a book designed to defend and publicise the ideas of a paedophile. What a good representative choice of author you made. Well done.


----------



## Random (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> fair comment.


Just look at Lock and Light, and think "just say no".


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Saul Newman gave a rather disengenous one-sided account designed to hide the large scale crossover between the anarchist tradition that concentrates on the economy and the state as intertwined manifestations of capital (traditionally and currently by far the largest anarchist tradition) and the marxist tradition. He did this because he's a post-anarchist who thinks class and all that flows from it are outdated conceptions and should be dropped. You mistook a polemical piece for an analytical one. He did this in a book designed to defend and publicise the ideas of a paedophile. What a good representative choice of author you made. Well done.


so;


> _Anarchism as a revolutionary political philosophy has many diﬀerent voices, origins and interpretations. From the individualist anarchism of Stirner, to the collectivist, communal anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin, anarchism is diverse series of philosophies and political strategies. These are united, however, by a fundamental rejection and critique of political authority in all its forms. The critique of political authority — the conviction that power is oppressive, exploitative and dehumanizing — may be said to be the crucial politico-ethical standpoint of anarchism._


is wrong?


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> so;
> is wrong?


 
Can you imagine an anarchism that dosen't see all power as 'oppressive, exploitative and dehumanizing'? If so then it would seem somewhat wide of the mark.

Louis MacNeice


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Saul Newman gave a rather disengenous one-sided account designed to hide the large scale crossover between the anarchist tradition that concentrates on the economy and the state as intertwined manifestations of capital (traditionally and currently by far the largest anarchist tradition) and the marxist tradition. He did this because he's a post-anarchist who thinks class and all that flows from it are outdated conceptions and should be dropped. You mistook a polemical piece for an analytical one. He did this in a book designed to defend and publicise the ideas of a paedophile. What a good representative choice of author you made. Well done.


But if the "the economy and the state as intertwined" his account makes sense of YOUR objections to a WORKERS state, WORKERS party etc, and yours doesn't.

If in socialism, every workplace is controlled by workers councils democratically controlled by the workers in each workplace, and the state apparatus is democratically controlled, and they are both are dialectical whole as you describe, what's the problem?

If you recognise anarchism as he does, anarchism's objection to a WORKERS state makes sense.


> _Anarchism as a revolutionary political philosophy has many diﬀerent voices, origins and interpretations. From the individualist anarchism of Stirner, to the collectivist, communal anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin, anarchism is diverse series of philosophies and political strategies. These are united, however, by a fundamental rejection and critique of political authority in all its forms. The critique of political authority — the conviction that power is oppressive, exploitative and dehumanizing — may be said to be the crucial politico-ethical standpoint of anarchism. For classical anarchists the State is the embodiment of all forms of oppression, exploitation and the enslavement and degradation of man. In Bakunin’s words, “the State is like a vast slaughterhouse and an enormous cemetery, where under the shadow and the pretext of this abstraction (the common good) all the best aspirations, all the living forces of a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred.” 9 The State is the main target of the anarchist critique of authority. It is for anarchists the fundamental oppression in society, and it must be abolished as the ﬁrst revolutionary act._
> 
> _This last point brought nineteenth century anarchism into sharp conﬂict with Marxism. Marx believed that while the State was indeed oppressive and exploitative, it was a reﬂection of economic exploitation and an instrument of class power._
> _Thus political power was reduced to economic power. For Marx the economy rather than the State was the fundamental site of oppression. The State rarely had an independent existence beyond class and economic interests. Because of this the State could be used as a tool of revolution if it was in the hands of the right class — the proletariat._
> ...


Plus, there are lots of other things that is interpretation make sense of your words I've observed in the last nine years.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> Can you imagine an anarchism that dosen't see all power as 'oppressive, exploitative and dehumanizing'? If so then it would seem somewhat wide of the mark.
> 
> Louis MacNeice


The one butchers has just described. See above.

Also slightly different, but very important point imo;


> ResistanceMP3 said:
> 
> 
> > the point is to abolish power.
> ...


----------



## cesare (Aug 23, 2012)

Apologies, I've lost track of that thread RMP3, I kind of recall responding further to you about power though.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> The one butchers has just described. See above.


 
So if anarchisms can exist which don't meet Newman's 'crucial politico-ethical standpoint', then his take on what makes anarchism anarchism (and not something else), would seem wide of the mark.

In the space of a few posts you seem to be flatly contradicting yourself by putting firstly Newman forward as making sense of anarchism but then rapidly accepting that his 'crucial politico-ethical standpoint' of anarchism (i.e. it's defining characteristic) isn't correct.

Or is your point that butcher's description is not of anarchism, because it doesn't meet Newman's criteria? If so then you need to be clearer and provide some evidence as to why you opt for Newman.

Louis MacNeice


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

cesare said:


> Apologies, I've lost track of that thread RMP3, I kind of recall responding further to you about power though.


you did. do you mean this response?>





cesare said:


> There's no easy answer, but I suggest the starting point is awareness of the use of power and how it plays out often in subtle ways. Worth reading is The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene ISBN 1 86197 278-4


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

Is there any thread that he's been on that he hasn't fucked up like this  - meandering off on massive misquotes, oddness and stuff from other threads?


----------



## cesare (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> you did. do you mean this response?>


Yeah, that's it. I'm not sure why you've taken what I said and imported it here.


----------



## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> So if anarchisms can exist which don't meet Newman's 'crucial politico-ethical standpoint', then his take on what makes anarchism anarchism (and not something else), would seem wide of the mark.
> 
> In the space of a few posts you seem to be flatly contradicting yourself by putting firstly Newman forward as making sense of anarchism but then rapidly accepting that his 'crucial politico-ethical standpoint' of anarchism (i.e. it's defining characteristic) isn't correct.
> 
> ...


if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

Anyway, rmp3, a reply to 281 would be good.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


The state for marx is the tool by which one class oppresses another so there is clearly oppression at the heart of the state. Don't you do marx anymore?


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


Now, what did MARX say? As if it even matters. As if this is not just your usual incoherence,


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

He's the cowdenbeath of politics


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


All your misunderstandings now make sense to you because someone else made the same misunderstandings for polemical reasons?  And - as a brucie bonus - all the the anarchists you name agree with saul newman. Despite them not doing so, nor the majority of anarchists agreeing historically or currently.


----------



## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> He's the cowdenbeath of politics


The accrrington stanley.


----------



## cesare (Aug 23, 2012)

And, for the avoidance of doubt RMP3, I'm not an anarchist.


----------



## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


Forget answering 281. You're not well read on the second world war, you're not even well read on basic marxist theory. It's one of those 'you stupid boy' moments.


----------



## Louis MacNeice (Aug 23, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> if you look through the lens that Sall provides, Sall's interpretation of anarchism, all the objections I have read in the past by butchers panda etc to workers state, political parties, the lumpenproletariat etc make sense. ie they object to a worker state, because "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."


 
When picking a lens shouldn't it be the clarity of the image produced rather than its rosiness that determines the choice; you may be comforted by the view Newman provides but that doesn't make it accurate. Why do you think Newman is right?

Louis MacNeice


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## love detective (Aug 23, 2012)

Pickman's model said:


> He's the cowdenbeath of politics


 
that's insulting to the blue brazils!


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

Good to learn from rmp3 that anarchists oppose the state - and that he has just grasped this.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Good to learn from rmp3 that anarchists oppose the state - and that he has just grasped this.


He's on the ball today


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## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

Perhaps it's time for someone to leave rmp3 with a pistol with one round in and wait for him to do the decent thing.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

Louis MacNeice said:


> When picking a lens shouldn't it be the clarity of the image produced rather than its rosiness that determines the choice; you may be comforted by the view Newman provides but that doesn't make it accurate. Why do you think Newman is right?
> 
> Louis MacNeice


Observing what they, Butchers Panda, have said, I thought they would agree with Salls general statements about anarchism. His views seems to chime very well with lots of things they had said on here. ie "So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes."  Whether you agree with it are not, Salls is A coherent analysis as to why anarchists should object to ie a worker state. A coherent analysis.

whereas this





> Saul Newman gave a rather disengenous one-sided account designed to hide the large scale crossover between the anarchist tradition that concentrates on the economy and the state as intertwined manifestations of capital (traditionally and currently by far the largest anarchist tradition) and the marxist tradition.


leaves butchers objections to a worker state incoherent. Again. 

Oh, well.


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

All about the coherency.


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## JimW (Aug 23, 2012)

Down with Butchers-Panda ultra-left obscurantism! Points on power must be made in PowerPoint!


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

caring-apronism is dust.


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

_Bombard the mosque!_


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## elbows (Aug 23, 2012)

Regarding the state, socialism, marx and anarchism stuff, Im not terribly well read so I thought Id go looking for something to help flesh this stuff out a bit.

This is the first thing I found, and it seemed like a reasonable fit:

'Notes on Anarchism' in For Reasons of State. Noam Chomsky, 1970.

http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/sp000281.html

I found it rather helpful, any obvious failings in it that anyone would like to alert me to?


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

It's a great intro.


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Good to learn from rmp3 that anarchists oppose the state - and that he has just grasped this.


yes, I was blissfully unaware of your opposition to the state. 

It is not so much the anarchists opposition to the state, so much as the why?


> So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes .
> Indeed Bakunin argues that Marxism pays too much attention to the forms of State power while not taking enough account of the way in which State power operates: “*They (Marxists) do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form of the State but in the very principle of the State and political power.*”14 Oppression and despotism exist in the very structure and symbolism of the State — it is not merely a derivative of class power. The State has its own impersonal logic, its own momentum, its own priorities: these are often beyond the control of the ruling class and do not necessarily reﬂect economic relations at all. So anarchism locates the fundamental oppression and power in society in the very structure and operations of the State. As an abstract machine of domination, the State haunts diﬀerent class actualizations — not just the bourgeoisie State, but the worker’s State too. Through its economic reductionism, Marxism neglected the *autonomy and pre-eminence of State* — a mistake that would lead to its reaﬃrmation in a socialist revolution. Therefore the anarchist critique unmasked the hidden forms of domination associated with political power, and exposed Marxism’s theoretical inadequacy for dealing with this problem .


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## butchersapron (Aug 23, 2012)

What is?


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## cesare (Aug 23, 2012)

RMP3 could you just tell us what your overall point is rather than building up to it in quotes?


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## TremulousTetra (Aug 23, 2012)

cesare said:


> RMP3 could you just tell us what your overall point is rather than building up to it in quotes?


My point is quite simply, that Sall SEEMED to make sense of Panda and butchers. A lot of their remarks seemed to chime with his view of the state, as autonomous, having a logic of its own, which inevitably leads to oppression of the many by the few. Butcher says it doesn't reflect his views, he says; 





> the economy and the state as intertwined manifestations of capital


 this is clearly not the same as Sall.

In my view, in a workers state the economic base and the state would be intertwined.



> The revolutionary Socialist denies that State ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the State cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism will be fundamentally an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activities and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of Socialism. The transition from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political State throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the Republic of Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic freedom of all---it will be, therefore, a true democracy.


I still don't understand why butchers objects to this form of workers state.

Still haven't finished all the work from Chomsky, perhaps it will become clear from that.


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## mk12 (Aug 23, 2012)

In purely theoretical terms I don't think there's much difference between the Marxist (not Leninist) dictatorship of the proletariat and the anarchist post-revolutionary stateless society. Both seem to propose the democratic control of industry and political institutions by the majority, in the interests of the majority.

However, the question of "the Party" and its role in all this seems to be the major dividing line between the two traditions. Obviously there were nuances between Bakunin and Marx, and there must have been _something_ in Marx's views that led many at the time to accuse him of authoritarianism. I think this was exaggerated by anarchists at the time though (see Marx's comments on Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy).

To suggest Lenin, Trotsky or many others who the SWP venerate subscribed to the "workers state" detailed in that RMP3 quoted is just incorrect.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 23, 2012)

mk12 said:


> In purely theoretical terms I don't think there's much difference between the Marxist (not Leninist) dictatorship of the proletariat and the anarchist post-revolutionary stateless society. Both seem to propose the democratic control of industry and political institutions by the majority, in the interests of the majority.
> 
> However, the question of "the Party" and its role in all this seems to be the major dividing line between the two traditions. Obviously there were nuances between Bakunin and Marx, and there must have been _something_ in Marx's views that led many at the time to accuse him of authoritarianism. I think this was exaggerated by anarchists at the time though (see Marx's comments on Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy).
> 
> To suggest Lenin, Trotsky or many others who the SWP venerate subscribed to the "workers state" detailed in that RMP3 quoted is just incorrect.


from what i've read marx said basically fuck all about the post-revolutionary society, and the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was never really gone into. unless you know better, of course. whereas some thought has been given by anarchists to potential forms of a post-revolutionary society.


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## mk12 (Aug 23, 2012)

Yeah, I agree with you there. I think this commentary on Bakunin's 'Statism and Anarchy' is quite revealing however (although I think some of his comments seem naive with the benefit of hindsight):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm



> If Mr Bakunin only knew something about the position of a manager in a workers' cooperative factory, all his dreams of domination would go to the devil. He should have asked himself what form the administrative function can take on the basis of *this workers' state, if he wants to call it that*.


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## Random (Aug 24, 2012)

mk12 said:


> However, the question of "the Party" and its role in all this seems to be the major dividing line between the two traditions. Obviously there were nuances between Bakunin and Marx, and there must have been _something_ in Marx's views that led many at the time to accuse him of authoritarianism. I think this was exaggerated by anarchists at the time though (see Marx's comments on Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy).


 Between Marxism and Anarchism? isn't it only with Lenin that a disciplined party becomes central? The Mensheviks were also left-Marxists.


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## mk12 (Aug 24, 2012)

Yeah I meant throughout the 20th century, so it was Leninism v Anarchism really.


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 24, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Is there any thread that he's been on that he hasn't fucked up like this - meandering off on massive misquotes, oddness and stuff from other threads?


 
No comment.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 24, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> No comment.


no, comment


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 24, 2012)

ResistanceMP3 said:


> yes, I was blissfully unaware of your opposition to the state.
> 
> It is not so much the anarchists opposition to the state, so much as the why?


 
You're quoting Bakunin on Marxism.
Have you got any idea of why that's not the best route for you to take?


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## Pickman's model (Aug 24, 2012)

ViolentPanda said:


> You're quoting Bakunin on Marxism.
> Have you got any idea of why that's not the best route for you to take?


it's time for that pistol, the solitary bullet and the locked room.


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## butchersapron (Aug 24, 2012)

Ayatollah, i crave SOLUTIONS. Help me.


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## Lock&Light (Aug 24, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> Ayatollah, i crave SOLUTIONS. Help me.


 
Perhaps Picky has offered you a solution in his post just above yours.


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## Pickman's model (Aug 24, 2012)

Lock&Light said:


> Perhaps Picky has offered you a solution in his post just above yours.


it's a solution you should try yourself, if not with a pistol then with a ligament and a beam.


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