"This is the only way to end the confrontation between Russia and the West"
By Fyodor. A. Lukyanov
[This article posted on 6/28/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://globalbridge.ch/das-ist-der-einzige-weg-die-konfrontation-zwischen-russland-und-dem-westen-zu-beendigen//]
Operation Bagration – how the Soviets outsmarted the Wehrmacht
Jamaal Bowman, AIPAC and our messy world...
The shots of Sarajevo or: When a random spark is enough – The First World War began 110 years ago
Fyodor
Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal "Russia in Global Affairs",
which is published in both Russian and English and can also be read in
the West as an online platform.
The
Western media suggest to their consumers almost daily that all
information and comments from Russia are pure propaganda. This is not
only pure propaganda on their part, but also pure nonsense. The Russian,
Russian- and English-language platform "Russia in Global Affairs"
regularly publishes readable analyses of the current geopolitical
situation and how it came about – often with a thoroughly self-critical
component. The
editor-in-chief of this platform, Fyodor A. Lukyanov, is one of those
who try to avoid pure black-and-white thinking. Here is an example of
his latest contribution. (cm)
On
June 22, 1994, Russia's then Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev signed the
NATO Partnership for Peace program in Brussels. This marked the
beginning of official relations between the Russian Federation and the
US-led bloc (prior to that, the USSR and NATO had conducted a political
dialogue within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council,
which was established only a few days before the dissolution of the
Soviet Union).
The
history of cooperation between Russia and NATO has been quite rich and
interesting. Over the years, there has been a strange mixture of good
intentions, political hypocrisy and mutual misunderstandings, sometimes
natural and sometimes deliberate. Experts often talk about missed
opportunities between the two sides, but this is debatable. In
fact, there was never a real chance of building a genuine partnership
between Russia and NATO, even if there were certain illusions about it
at a certain point in time.
The
Partnership for Peace program originally served a dual purpose: it was
an alternative to NATO membership, but also a preparatory step for
joining that organization (at least for some countries). When the
program was launched, a final decision on NATO's expansion had not yet
been made. The discussions in Washington continued, but the balance was
generally in favor of extending the tentacles.
Russia
rejected the idea, but was not consistent. Kosyrev warned of the
consequences of NATO expansion, but repeatedly said that NATO was not
Russia's enemy. Russian President Boris Yeltsin advised Western leaders
against expanding the bloc, but at the same time told Polish President
Lech Walesa that Moscow was not against Warsaw joining. At
the time, the Partnership for Peace initiative looked like a
life-saving compromise. But two years later, NATO made a binding
announcement that it would accept the first group of former communist
states.
The
prevailing view in Russia today is that the United States and its
allies embarked on a course of military and political takeover of the
former Soviet sphere of influence after the dissolution of the USSR, and
that NATO became the main instrument for achieving this goal. Although
this is how it ultimately turned out, the original motivation may not
have been quite so simple. The
West's easy and unexpected victory in the Cold War gave it a sense of
unconditional victory – a political and economic victory, but above all a
moral victory.
The
West felt that, as the victor (in the Cold War, ed.), it had the right
to determine the structure of Europe and knew exactly how to go about
it. This was not just an expression of sheer arrogance, but rather an
expression of joyful euphoria. It seemed as if things would always be
like this from now on.
The
concept that emerged at the end of the Cold War was that NATO would
guarantee Europe's security and that a larger NATO would mean a more
secure continent. As a first step in this direction, everyone (including
Moscow) agreed that a reunified Germany would remain a member of the
bloc, rather than being given a neutral status, as some had previously
suggested. It
was also agreed that each country had the right to decide for itself
whether or not to join an alliance. In theory, this is the prerequisite
for sovereignty. But in practice, the geopolitical balance of power had
always imposed constraints that forced alliances to take into account
the reaction of non-member countries. However, the triumphalism that
prevailed in the West after the Cold War has significantly reduced the
willingness to take such reactions into account.
In other words, NATO felt it could do anything without any response.
The
situation could have changed dramatically if Russia had considered the
possibility of joining NATO and if the bloc itself had considered such a
scenario. Then the principle of the indivisibility of security,
proclaimed in the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, would have
been respected within the bloc. However,
it was impossible for Russia to join NATO, as even in its weakest phase
it remained one of the world's largest military powers and had the
largest nuclear arsenal. The hypothetical accession of such a state to
NATO would have meant the emergence of a second power within the club,
one that was on a par with the United States and therefore did not put
it on the same footing as other allies. This
would have changed the nature of the organization and turned its
Atlantic principles on their head, if only because of Russia's
geographical position. No one was prepared for this. The qualitative
transformation of NATO was therefore never on the agenda.
As a result, NATO enlargement, which was to some extent automatic, pushed Russia further and further east. Moscow's
attempts to regulate this process – first through participation in
joint institutions (such as the NATO-Russia Council of 2002, which was
an extension of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act) and then through
increasing resistance (starting with Putin's Munich speech in 2007) –
did not produce the desired results. In
addition to the inertia of the West's initial approach (which assumed
that the mere existence of the bloc in itself meant security), the West
also believed that Moscow had no right to impose conditions and that it
had to abide by the rules set by the stronger and more successful
Western community. This is how the EU ended up being drawn into the
current war in Ukraine.
Could
NATO-Russia relations have developed differently? The West believes
that Russia's insistence on continuing to see NATO as a threat to its
security has led to the current military crisis. And indeed, this has
become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But
even if this were true, the speed and ease with which NATO returned to a
strong confrontation with Russia shows that it was very well prepared
for it.
The
Russian memorandum of December 2021 and the military operation in
Ukraine in 2022 should put an end to the idea that the unchallenged
expansion of NATO is the only means of ensuring European security. Two
and a half years later, we see that the scale of the conflict has
exceeded all initial expectations. Judging
by Moscow's statements, the confrontation can only end if the
principles on which European security is based are fundamentally
reconsidered.
This
is not a territorial conflict, but a conflict that can only end if NATO
abandons its main goal and function. So far, no compromise is in sight.
The
West is not willing to reconsider the results of the Cold War, and the
Russians are not willing to withdraw without this assurance. Thirty
years after the signing of the Partnership for Peace program, there is
still no partnership and no peace between Russia and NATO. And there is
also no common understanding of why the two sides have been unable to
achieve it.
"No media freedom for unethical and careless reporting"
The
NZZ (Neue Zuriche Zeitung) claims that Assange should have adhered to
"journalistic ethics". In doing so, it ignores the power relations.
by Helmut Scheben
[This
article posted on 6/30/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.infosperber.ch/medien/keine-medienfreiheit-fuer-unethisches-und-unsorgfaeltiges/.]
To
get out of prison, Julian Assange simply had to sign a statement saying
that he had participated in the illegal acquisition of material. The
question of whether his publication of evidence of serious state
injustice on Wikileaks was part of the freedom of the media or whether
state interests outweighed it is still being hotly debated today. The US
authorities have tried everything to deter copycats.
First, a look back.
In
1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret government report that revealed
that the war in Vietnam was being continued even though it could not be
won, were made public in the USA. Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of the
Rand Corporation, had been given access to the document and went to the
press with it as a whistleblower. The
Nixon administration tried to prevent the publication, but Ellsberg
managed to print out the 7,000 pages on a photocopier at the last minute
before he was arrested and passed them on.
Today,
Wikileaks no longer has these technical problems. The whistleblower
platform has put millions of documents online at the touch of a button.
But something more fundamental has changed in a frightening way since
then. In 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled that the publication was
lawful. The public interest and freedom of the press were to be valued
higher than the state's interest in secrecy. Four
decades later, the situation was reversed: the US government began a
witch hunt against the founder of Wikileaks, deemed the platform to be
criminal and tried to destroy it.
In
1971, two leading newspapers on the East Coast, the New York Times and
the Washington Post, had the courage to publish what the Justice
Department considered to be illegal and wanted to block by all means.
The newspapers insisted on their obligation to seek the truth and on
their journalistic ethos. As the fourth estate, they took on the task of
exposing the actions of a government that was lying to its own people. In doing so, they helped to end a senseless war.
Wikileaks
adheres to the same principles. The platform sees itself as a point of
contact for whistleblowers who want to "expose unethical behavior by
their governments or companies".
Leading
media outlets such as the German magazine Der Spiegel and the British
newspaper The Guardian initially worked with Wikileaks. The platform's
revelations continue to have an impact on the international media today.
US plans to kidnap Assange
The
legal situation is fundamentally different, however. The US considers
Wikileaks to be a hostile espionage service. It has been known since
2017 at the latest that US intelligence agencies were planning to kidnap
and murder Julian Assange. The
US government's attempts to block Wikileaks through legal proceedings
on the internet platforms or to force them to provide information about
Wikileaks personnel fill a shipping container with files.
Julian
Assange was questioned in Sweden on charges of a sexual offense that
proved to be unfounded. He then fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London
because he – undoubtedly rightly – feared that Sweden would extradite
him to the United States, where he would face 175 years in prison for
espionage. After
years of solitary confinement in a British high-security prison, he was
finally released at the end of June by pleading guilty in a deal with
the United States.
President
Joe Biden, who had previously described Assange as a threat to the
United States, may be looking to score points in the election campaign
with the deal. Assange's story is well known, but it is told in
completely contradictory ways, depending on your political position.
Nils
Melzer, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, speaks Swedish and had
access to the files in Stockholm. In his book "The Case of Julian
Assange", he demonstrated how a kind of false "Assange dossier" was
fabricated using false information and the twisting of facts, which is
still reflexively quoted by journalists who want to show that Assange is
a "controversial figure". For
years, false claims were cultivated that he had been questioned in
Stockholm for "rape" and had fled to London to avoid prosecution in
Sweden.
NZZ uses PR methods: attack on the person
Media
such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which firmly support the geostrategy
of the USA and the NATO it dominates, have rarely missed an opportunity
to hammer away at this theme since 2010. To this day, the NZZ describes
Assange as a "misogynistic egomaniac". In the absence of arguments
against the platform, the focus is on the "bad character" of its
founder. When
Assange arrived in Australia last week as a free man for the first time
after 14 years of persecution, the NZZ pronounced its verdict under the
headline "A false hero": "He didn't care about ethical standards."
Once
again, the accusation is made that Assange and his team should not have
published the data on crimes committed by the US army in Iraq and
Afghanistan without filtering or commenting on it. The NZZ writes: "In
doing so, he not only violated journalistic ethics and all due
diligence, but also failed to do what journalists do: organize facts,
explain events and show what consequences events could have."
The
argument is consistently made that the revelations of crimes in
Afghanistan, Iraq and other US wars have put the lives of informants at
risk. What is not said is that the State Department in Washington has
never been able to prove that informants were actually in danger in this
way. The authorities usually answered journalists' questions with
evasive statements.
Daniel
Ellsberg, who had revealed the Pentagon Papers, told the BBC: "This is
the script they roll out every time there is a leak." It is not the
leaks from whistleblowers that put people at risk, but the secret
services and their lies, according to Ellsberg.
Tages-Anzeiger: "A helper of the Kremlin"
The Zurich Tagesanzeiger is even more critical of Assange than the NZZ. In
an article entitled "The two faces of Julian Assange", the paper states
that the "Janus-faced" Wikileaks founder may be an "enlightener of
democratic-imperial despotism" for human rights activists and many media
(although the author does not seem to be aware of the contradiction
between "democratic" and "imperial despotism"), but he also has "a dark
side". Assange
is, in fact, "a compliant helper or even a useful idiot of an
authoritarian power". This power is, of course, the Kremlin.
The
choice of words fits in with the new logic of the "turning point". It
can hardly recognize any evil in the West that is not based on Russian
disinformation and Putin propaganda. The conspiracy fantasies began at
the latest with the story that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to
Donald Trump because Wikileaks, as an assistant to Vladimir Putin, had
made Clinton's e-mails public.
Assange
– as the Tagesanzeiger knows – "sees the USA as a malicious empire that
interferes everywhere and kills people worldwide". All the more reason
for him to serve Russia. As proof, it is cited that Julian Assange gave
interviews to the Russian broadcaster Russia Today and briefly hosted a
talk show there in 2012.
For
leading media, that alone is reason enough to portray him as an agent
of the Kremlin. The fact that Assange gave interviews to a hundred other
Western media outlets and worked closely with leading Western media
such as Der Spiegel cannot persuade either the Tagesanzeiger or the Neue
Zürcher Zeitung to recognize Assange as an "agent of the West".
Wikileaks
(from the Hawaiian word "wiki" meaning "fast" and the English word
"leaks") was not initially focused on the USA. The platform covered a
wide range of topics, from human rights violations by African
dictatorships, to critics of the regime in China, banking offenses and
criminal toxic waste disposal. It
was only logical that a whistleblower platform that aims to expose
secret machinations of public interest would sooner or later come into
conflict with the United States, a superpower that uses almost a
thousand military bases around the world to enforce its economic system
and geostrategy.
Intelligence service makes suggestions for pursuing Assange
In
2012, Wikileaks published five million documents from the Texas-based
company Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting), which operates in a similar
way to an intelligence service and exchanges information with the US
secret services. Among other things, the documents show an exchange of
emails in which advice is given on how to stage the hunt for Assange:
"Move him from country to country to face various charges for the next
25 years," it says. The
proposal includes charges of "conspiracy" and "political terrorism" as
well as the declassification of an informant whose death could be linked
to Wikileaks. The danger that Assange could become a martyr in prison
is also discussed.
For
his book "Die Weltbeherrscher" (The World's Rulers), journalist Armin
Wertz researched, among other things, the use of drones by the USA
abroad. In 25 pages, he lists around 500 drone attacks that became
public between 2004 and 2016. The real number is likely to be much
higher, because many attacks remain secret. The
government in Washington uses these drones to eliminate people it
considers to be enemies of the United States, through extrajudicial
executions.
When
a Julian Assange and seven computer freaks take on the United States,
their chances of success are about the same as those of a mouse crossing
a Los Angeles freeway during rush hour. It is extremely naive to
believe that the world's most powerful military power will respond with
subtle legal considerations when someone dares to prove that it has
committed the worst war crimes.
The
journalists who write that Assange should have "journalistically
categorized" his millions of documents in order to avoid harm are
ignoring the reality in which they live.
Assange
always argued that the public interest in the publication (and
punishment) of major war crimes was greater than the protection of
individuals who had been involved in these crimes in one way or another.
But quite apart from the much-invoked journalistic ethos, how should we imagine the situation at the time?
That
Wikileaks invites a few programmers, who are probably being monitored
by the CIA, to a hideout where they sit and analyze hundreds of
thousands of files at night, write accurate journalistic articles from
them and discreetly peddle them to the major media the next morning? To
the same media that are served daily with warnings about a hostile
espionage group called Wikileaks?
The
Pentagon alone employs around 40,000 PR people who, in their think
tanks, investigative teams and university institutes, do nothing other
than explain to the media worldwide where the enemy is hiding. From 2012
at the latest, the media were on high alert regarding Wikileaks. The
media had been forewarned, because the US had announced that Wikileaks
could not be trusted and that Assange was spreading "Russian
disinformation". The fact that many media outlets still hold this
distorted view is demonstrated by the reactions of the Neue Zürcher
Zeitung and the Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger in recent days.
The "classifying" Edward Snowden is still being persecuted
Sarah
Harrison, a member of the Wikileaks team, knew what she was doing when
she accompanied Edward Snowden to Hong Kong in the summer of 2013, where
he revealed the global surveillance practices of the secret services of
the USA and the UK. Snowden knew what he was doing when he asked for
asylum in Russia, because European countries such as Sweden or Germany
could not be trusted, even if they had offered asylum. Sarah Harrison had seen with her own eyes what happened to Assange. This fate should be spared Snowden.
In
the end, it was understandable that Assange preferred to seek refuge in
the Ecuadorian embassy and wait there for years rather than be
extradited from Sweden to the USA and face the end of his life in
prison. In what world, in what mindset, do journalists still live who
today still demand that Assange should have "gone through the legal
process" and "followed journalistic ethics"?
Assange
is finally free, but the whole story has a bitter aftertaste. As we can
see, it was not necessary to physically eliminate him. It was enough to
hunt him down like a criminal and, in the end, to damage him
psychologically and physically during years of solitary confinement in a
high-security prison.
The
Assange case is a warning to all independent journalists. They should
always remember the words of a judge of the US Supreme Court, which
supported the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971: "Only a free
and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. Above
all the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent all
parts of the government from deceiving the people and sending them to
distant lands to die of foreign diseases and foreign bullets and
shells."
Sleepwalkers into the original catastrophe?
by Detlef Jena
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/06/schlafwandler-in-die-urkatastrophe-69213.html.]
In
2014, German politicians were convinced that the First World War, which
began in 1914, was the "original catastrophe" of the 20th century,
because it gave rise to National Socialism and the horrors of the Second
World War. The
tentacles of the "original catastrophe" now reach into the 21st
century, once again refuting the theory that the leading military and
political figures of the hostile superpowers stumbled into the war that
nobody wanted in 1914.
The
current sequel began with the collapse of the empire, which had been
dominated by the USSR. It focuses on the conflict between Russia and
Western Europe. The war broke out in 2014/2022 with the Russian attack
on Ukraine. Germany was in the front line from the outset, because by
2014 the Federal Republic had established itself as the strongest
economic and political power in Western Europe. The
question of what military role the unified German Empire played in the
concert of great powers after 1871 was also discussed again. The
reintegration of Crimea and some Ukrainian territories by Russia in 2014
could have given rise to the idea that Germany, like Bismarck in his
day, was acting as an "honest broker" to defuse or even resolve Eastern
European conflicts. This
was tentatively attempted, but it did not succeed. After all, they were
in NATO! Instead, a life-threatening spiral of violence was set in
motion, the consequences of which the world is divided over.
In
Ukraine, Russia is following the security policy of Tsars Peter I and
Catherine II, who never lost sight of the goal of establishing Russia as
an equal and recognized great power in Europe. The
escalation of the war has now reached the point where, according to the
German military historian Söhnke Neitzel in an interview with ZDF, the
European Union and NATO are waging an indirect war against Russia in
Ukraine in order to defend the ideals of liberal democracy against
Putin's dictatorial autocracy. The USA is setting the pace for the
actions of the EU and NATO.
However,
despite all the Western efforts to supply weapons and money to Ukraine,
Russia cannot be defeated. For Ukrainian President Zelensky and the
hawks in German politics, the only acceptable outcome is Russian defeat.
Former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is already thundering: "We need
to send a clear signal to Putin: stop this war – or we will take it to
you." However, as we all know, the defense of Western ideals of freedom
has already failed in the Hindu Kush. There is no need to remind anyone of Napoleon.
A
very different danger is looming, which is viewed with irritation by
the militant free-democratic strategists: after the collapse of the
great monarchies in 1918, Europe was covered with a network of
authoritarian or dictatorial national states, from Portugal to Soviet
Russia, whose power-political ambitions triggered the Second World War.
The tendency towards totalitarianism is once again virulent within
individual countries of the EU and NATO. In
Germany, the federal government is almost helpless in the face of the
electoral success of the "alternative" parties in those federal states
that emerged from dictatorship after 1989.
How
will a future group of states in the EU dominated by "right-wing
populists" react to a peace agreement with Russia and to a Ukraine that,
in terms of history and internal structure, is far more similar to
Russia than the liberal West wants to admit?
110
years after the beginning of the First World War, the term "original
catastrophe" is threatening to take on a new meaning for the 21st
century, despite all the tentative attempts at peace to date.
At
the Crimea Conference in February 1945, Josef Stalin, the Russian
dictator, responded to a remark by British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill that his own experience of war guaranteed that the world would
remain peaceful for a long time to come by saying that future
generations would neither know nor want to share this experience. It
is indeed alarming how carelessly the media and politicians treat the
horrors of war. Podcasts everywhere, with legions of "experts" who may
have stood on the Red Square in Moscow in front of the Kremlin walls in a
particular case. If that.
Every
nation has its own view of the horrors of war. It is honorable for
historians to find a formula for the common denominator: "The First
World War began as a normal European war in the spirit and style of the
19th century and turned into a type of war that already had essential
features of total war. These
include the mobilization of the warring nations for military service
and war production, the freezing of strategy in huge material battles
and the radicalization of economic warfare into a total blockade. That
all of this was only an intermediate stage in a much more far-reaching
process only became apparent through the experience of the Second World
War.” (Quoted
from: Thüringische Landeszeitung, February 15, 2014.) And what is the
situation today – in view of the danger of the use of nuclear weapons?
In
Germany, the political elite is wrestling with historical guilt, but
remains silent in the concert of Europeans after the Nazi regime,
irritated that before the past has been "mastered", the military role of
Germany in the world is already being questioned again. But the German
people are now far from letting the world recover from the German nature
of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The
words "never again will war be waged from German soil" have eternal
value and override any phrase about the fatherland having to be ready
for war again in five years' time. Why do so many people no longer
believe the military mantra that the Russians are threatening our German
freedom in Ukraine?
The
answer is made up of many components, but it is taking on a whole new
aspect. What significance does the recent electoral success of the AfD
in the eastern federal states have for Germany's role in the war in
Ukraine and, more generally, for Germany's responsibility in restoring
peace in Europe? The fact is that the internal situation in political
Germany is becoming more unstable from year to year. This is no wonder
when politics is treated as a commodity. Week
after week, colorful catalogs of offers flood the good citizens who go
shopping. Week after week, political surveys and statistics cloud the
independent thinking of citizens and do not lead to decisive action by
those in power. Complaints from retailers about a lack of consumer
confidence correspond punctually with political studies on the
"loneliness" of people. So out you lonely ones into the temples of
consumption or now back to arms!
Humanitarian
aid for the suffering Ukrainian people is a dictate of human morality
and ethics. However, there is no way to peace if the Ukrainian
president, who travels the world, demands weapons and dollars at every
door he knocks on, and this request is always granted.
Mr.
Zelenskyy thanks the Western world with an illusion: peace will only
come to Ukraine after Russia's defeat. Who has not been mistaken in
history about such a goal and lost their own head in the process...
However, in the event of a new "original catastrophe", this could happen
to all sides involved.
World political views
by Erhard Crome
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from The German on the
Internet,
https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/06/weltpolitische-sichten-69223.html.]
After
Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein and André Gunder Frank had opened
up the view of world history as an economically based world system,
works by historians on the "subjugation of the world" by European
expansion, on the "birth of the modern world" and on the "transformation
of the world" in the 19th century appeared.
These
include the book "Empires" by Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Jörn
Leonhard. It is particularly interesting because of the clearly
accentuated methodological questions. For example, the authors emphasize
that in view of the Russian war in Ukraine and China's policy towards
Taiwan, imperialism and empire are once again being talked about, which
also puts the "Imperium Americanum" of the USA and Europe back in the
spotlight. However, this is an "inflationary use of these terms, whose explanatory power is asserted rather than analytically proven".
The
authors want to make the empire approach fruitful again. The focus
should be on "the logic of empires, their imperial nature". However,
"the perspective of the subjects, the colonized and the dominated should
be at the center". First, it is stated that the European nation state
in the 19th century was "a rather late and initially isolated
phenomenon", but that it "repeatedly drew on imperial pasts". This was true from the late 18th century to the end of the post-war period after the First World War.
During
this period, "it was not the nation states that were established in
Europe that dominated, but rather the tense transitions between empires
and nation states, which increasingly blurred the differences between
the two forms of statehood. In practically all the nation states of the
19th century, imperial agendas and colonial expansion fantasies
developed, especially in the newly founded nation states of Italy and
Germany between 1859 and 1871. Many
contemporaries believed that only 'imperializing nation states' could
survive in the international competitive struggle. Conversely, in
'nationalizing empires', the orientation towards the nation as the
supposed core of integration intensified, whether in the Pan-Germanism
of the Habsburg monarchy, in the Pan-Slavism of the Tsarist Empire or in
the Pan-Turkism of the Ottoman Empire." The
"imperializing nation state", however, as the reviewer would argue, is a
rather Western European perspective, as represented by Belgium, for
example. In
the struggle for the nation state in the East, according to the
Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Poles and Finns, it was not about colonies
in distant countries, but about the territory on which the peoples
concerned had always lived or which had been wrested from them when they
were subjugated by other powers.
The
choice of title is problematic. The term "empire" is charged with
universal historical significance and in the 19th century "became
increasingly politicized or even a term of struggle". That is why the
authors decided on "Empire". This
is an "ideal-typical definition" that is based on five criteria:
firstly, a particular spatial extent; secondly, "a pronounced ethnic
diversity" and "a large number of heterogeneous territories with
different political and legal status”;
thirdly, soft borders and fluctuating border areas; fourthly,
“supranational forms of rule and specific power hierarchies within their
territory” and finally, fifthly, the idea of the long duration of this
rule.
However,
these criteria already applied to the Roman and Byzantine Empires. In
Herfried Münkler's book "Imperien" (2005), corresponding criteria were
defined for the "Empire". Thus, the choice of title seems artificial,
especially since historically only the British Empire was an "Empire".
Nevertheless, this review follows the authors' choice of words.
The
volume is divided into five empirical chapters. In the section
"Conquering and Opening Up", it is pointed out that around 1800, a third
of the world's surface was under European rule, and by 1914 it was
already more than three quarters. (The
Ottoman Empire is also treated as one of the empires in terms of
methodology.) Large parts of Asia, Africa and Australia had been
conquered by the European powers, who waged colonial wars, forced taxes
on local communities, built railways and laid canals. All the new
technologies that the 19th century produced were used for this purpose.
One of the most consequential strategies was to give settlers a free
hand. "The
new transport routes were intended to help secure borders militarily,
to better control distant societies, to globalize trade or to make it
easier for pilgrims to travel." However, in many cases the new
infrastructures led to a dynamic that the colonized and subjects also
knew how to use for their own purposes. In this respect, the new
possibilities of the empires to conquer spaces also created the
boundaries of imperial power.
As
the chapter title suggests, war and conquest had to be followed by
"ruling and negotiating" if the imperial power was to become
established. Resistance from suppressed local groups could no longer be
dealt with by force, and the representatives of the empires, who had
only limited power resources at their disposal locally, were forced to
rely on cooperation. In
this context, local forces, often from the traditional upper classes,
played an important role, especially in tax collection and
administration. The law came to the fore, which was both an instrument
of power and a tool for the colonized and subjects to act. With
modernization in colonial societies, language, education and schools
came to the fore. Just
as they were essential factors in the formation of nations in Europe in
the 19th century, they resulted in the nationalization of individual
groups here, which in turn increased the vulnerability of the empires to
crises. The
self-image of the British "Pax Britannica" is that of a period of peace
between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the First World War in 1914.
However, if one looks not from London at the colonial societies, but
from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean or the South Pacific, "not to mention
Ireland", Great Britain was involved in a "small war" in some part of
its empire in almost every year of the long 19th century.
The
empires also depended on the belief in them of the people, the
representatives of power and those subject to it. This is discussed in
the chapter "Believing and representing". Attempts to use the
traditional monarchies, as in Great Britain, Austria-Hungary and Russia,
often failed to achieve their intended purpose, and the politicization
of religion also failed. The
volume of world trade increased twenty-five-fold between 1800 and 1913.
Imperial rule and the exploitation of colonies became increasingly
important for the development of capitalism. The progressive economic
dynamism resulted in the integration of more and more economic areas
into global economic contexts. This is the subject of the chapter
"Prospering and profiting".
The
section "Fighting and defending" begins with a reference to Halford
Mackinder and the birth of geopolitics. Around 1900, "the world appeared
to many observers more and more as a space of rival territorial
states". However, this was not just an appearance, it was reality. The
colonial division of the world came to an end, the "white spots" on the
map of the world disappeared, as the authors note. The
ability to wage war became the focus of attention, and the empires were
to be "able to meet the challenges of heightened rivalry". The colonial
empires became huge recruiting grounds for the First World War.
However, the rights of the recruits did not improve as a result of their
military service. The world war thus led to a crisis of imperial
legitimacy.
The
authors' conclusion fits in with current state policy. Western European
societies and those of the USA would be conducting debates on coming to
terms with their own imperial history and practicing the restitution of
stolen goods, while China and Turkey were trying to build on "an
imperial past" and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine seemed
to be bringing back the empire...
Ulrike von Hirschhausen / Jörn Leonhard: Empires. A Global History 1780-1920. Verlag C.H. Beck, Munich 2023,
736 pages, 49.00 euros.
Strengthening the forces of peace
by Jan Opal, Gniezno
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/06/staerkung-der-friedenskraefte-69209.html.]
I
received an astonishing signal from eastern Germany: the peace forces
had been strengthened! What was meant was the result of the European
elections, whereby the European level, which is hardly accessible at a
glance, was quickly broken down to the manageable situation in the
eastern German states. The
decision of almost half of the participating electorate to vote either
for the Alternative for Germany or for the self-seeking party of Sahra
Wagenknecht had a touch of resistance, of adventure, perhaps even of the
outrageous. But is this vote to be equated with a strengthening of the
forces of peace? As if the other parties standing for election were
deliberately playing into the hands of war!
When
the GDR disappeared from the stage, the newly formed East German
federal states became part of the European Community in the same second.
There were no long labor pains when entering the European structures,
because everything that was experienced in the transformation process is
almost completely attributed to the accession process in Germany led by
Helmut Kohl and Wolfgang Schäuble. This
is a specific situation that the later EU members from the former
socialist world do not know. There, "Europe" had to be fought for, often
enough also suffered through, before the finishing line could be
crossed in May 2004 or later.
Behind
Görlitz, on the Saxon side, I was told in a heated discussion that
Poland was supporting Ukraine so strongly because it had always been
against Russia, and I was now being asked to explain myself. My
response was that what often appears to be anti-Russian from a German
perspective would probably be seen in a different light if one took a
more eastern perspective, and that it had a lot to do with experiences
from a direct and not so easy neighborhood, which Germany did not share
in this way. Moreover,
a country like Poland had often enough suffered the situation of
Ukraine in the past, and knew only too well what it meant to be alone
and outnumbered in such a conflict with the mighty Russia.
In
Potsdam, I was confronted with a different argument: Bismarck's policy
towards Russia. The Chancellor of the Reich had pursued a strategic
policy towards Russia that should serve as a warning today, because the
ruling Berlin has self-inflictedly abandoned Bismarck's warning that it
should always strive for a relationship of trust with its powerful
neighbor Russia, otherwise the danger of war in Europe will increase. The situation in Ukraine is merely a consequence of the break with Russia, provoked by wrong decisions.
Quite
apart from the contradictions in Bismarck's Russia policy, which was
primarily based on considerations of German national interest, the
question must be allowed: did Bismarck's Russia policy even leave any
room for Poland? And if so, what was that room? Poland is here a symbol
of the great space that separates Berlin from Moscow. It
is now completely different from what it was in Bismarck's day, and
after the huge upheavals of 1989 and 1991 it has entered the political
arena in a completely new and self-confident way – without touching the
European post-war borders in the least! I
immediately heard the accusation that countries like Poland, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were America's vassals, its yapping dogs, so to
speak.
Vladimir
Putin may lament the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, but he fails to mention
that the decisive demiurge in the rapid disintegration of the Union in
1991 was not a Ukraine that had become unfaithful, but rather
influential sections of the Russian elite. Those who claim that the Soviet Union was destroyed are usually mistaken if they look for those responsible outside Russia.
The
path of disregarding state borders, violating them militarily, invading
neighboring countries and annexing foreign territory is based on
reasons that allow for the right to rectify historical injustices in
this way. However,
one of the prerequisites for convincing peace work in Europe is that
existing borders should not be violated unilaterally, because this has
always been the greatest danger to the existing peace – however shaky it
may be. The long period of peace in Europe after 1945 lasted because,
in addition to all the arms control and disarmament attempts, there was
an essential struggle for the recognition of existing state borders. Why
should it be any different now? Why
should different standards apply to Russia? Because the break-up of the
Soviet Union along the borders between the former union republics might
mean the theft of sacred Russian soil? There is not a single case in
which a former Soviet republic – now an independent and internationally
recognized sovereign state – has claimed a millimeter of Russian
Federation territory. Not a single case.
Kafka II: Works
by Mathias Iven
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/06/kafka-ii-werke-69263.html.]
He
spoke and wrote what he was, without any ambition for form or success.
His language is clear, factual and pure. It avoids all ornamentation, it
gets by without cantilenas and resounding chords. Nevertheless, it is
rich, gives visions and dreams and is always personal." These words are
taken from Rudolf Kayser's obituary of Franz Kafka. The first lines were
published more than 100 years ago...
*
The
early works – it is hard to believe. Despite numerous new editions of
his works, it is only now, a hundred years after his death, that a
volume is being published that brings together for the first time all of
Kafka's texts printed between 1908 and 1912. Ulrich Hohoff's exemplary
edition not only offers the versions of the first prints and further
information on their creation, but also information on the printing
templates, further versions and reprints, as well as word explanations. So anyone who wants to look back at the beginnings of Kafka's writing will not be able to avoid this edition in the future.
"It
is possible that some people feel sorry for me, but I feel nothing of
it." With these words, Franz Kafka addressed his future readers at the
beginning of 1908. It was the first sentence of a short prose piece that
was published together with seven others, written between 1904 and the
end of 1907, under the title "Betrachtung" in the Munich-based
bi-monthly magazine Hyperion. Four
of these eight texts, together with the sketch "Zum Nachdenken für
Herrenreiter" (For Gentlemen Riders), were reprinted in March 1910 in
the German-language Prague daily newspaper Bohemia. And finally, all
these texts, some of which had been revised again, were collected in
Kafka's first book, "Betrachtung" (Contemplation), which was published
by Rowohlt in Leipzig at the end of 1912 and contained a total of 18
prose texts.
Due
to internal disputes within the publishing house, the publication of
"Hyperion" was discontinued after only two volumes in March 1910. The
extent to which Kafka regretted this decision – the "Conversation with
the Man Praying" and the "Conversation with the Drunkard" had appeared
there as recently as the summer of 1909 – and how close his relationship
was with the two founders, Franz Blei and Carl Sternheim, is shown by
the obituary of a "deceased magazine" published in Bohemia in March
1911. In
it, Kafka prophesized that Hyperion would "simply be a bibliographical
treasure in ten or twenty years" – which proved to be true.
Kafka
also made a name for himself as a literary critic in his early years.
In February 1909, for example, he reviewed the volume of short stories
"Die Puderquaste. Ein Damen-Brevier" by Franz Blei in the magazine Der
neue Weg, published by the Genossenschaft deutscher Bühnenangehöriger
(Association of German Stage Workers). And
in January 1910, he wrote a review of Felix Sternheim's epistolary
novel "Die Geschichte des jungen Oswald" for the Sunday supplement of
the Bohemia.
Kafka
even worked as a reporter. The article "Die Aeroplane in Brescia" was
written after a summer vacation in Italy with Max Brod and his brother
Otto. On September 10, 1909, the three of them set out from Riva to
Brescia, where the first international air show on Italian soil was
taking place. Kafka's report on this event was published in Bohemia at the end of the month, albeit in an abridged version.
Franz
Kafka: Die frühen Publikationen (1908–1912), edited according to the
first printings. by Ulrich Hohoff, Allitera Verlag, Munich 2024, 245
pages, 22.00 euros.
*
The
Trial. – "Someone must have slandered Josef K., because one morning he
was arrested without having done anything wrong." Do you know this
sentence? Or have you ever heard of the fate of this Josef K.? If not,
then you should get hold of the first volume of the new Kafka edition,
which is planned to be published in five volumes by the Wallstein
Verlag. It
is edited by Reiner Stach, whose 2000-page Kafka biography is now
considered a standard work. Based on Kafka's manuscripts, the edition
not only provides a reliable basic text, although it should be noted
that there is still disagreement about the order of the surviving text
parts. For
the first time, all the works are accompanied by extensive commentaries
aimed at a broad readership, which, according to Stach, are intended to
"enable an understanding of the text, primarily through the text
itself".
A
hundred years after its creation, Kafka's "Process" is not only part of
the canon of world literature, but the book has now achieved a
virtually "pop-cultural status". With its placeless events, the novel
challenges readers to constantly find new interpretations. Stach says:
"The fact that the process of understanding never comes to an end is not
a hindrance, but a prerequisite for its lasting impact." The
sketch-like nature of the characters, their surreal actions, is
unsettling. Bureaucracy
has been perverted into an instrument of power that erases the
individual. Everything that happens seems inscrutable. In his review,
published in the Berliner Tageblatt in September 1925, Hermann Hesse
wrote: "What a strange, exciting, wonderful and what a delightful book!"
Conclusion: definitely worth reading again!
Franz Kafka: The Trial. Annotated edition, edited by Reiner Stach, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2024, 398 pages, 34.00 euros.
*
Kafka
at work. – Andreas Kilcher, to whom we owe not only a Kafka biography
published in 2008 but also an opulent volume of Kafka's drawings (see
Blättchen 3/2022), explores the question in his latest book: "How do
[Kafka's] texts work? And how can they be read appropriately – without
simply glossing over their difficulties?"
Kafka,
according to Kilcher, was a "text worker". To understand his work, one
must, on the one hand, deal with the "construction" of his texts and, on
the other hand, ask about the origin of the "building material". The
latter was provided by his wide-ranging reading, which was not limited
to books alone, but also included "utilitarian literature" such as
newspapers, magazines and publishing catalogs. The
assimilation of other people's thoughts encouraged the production of
his own, and writing developed from reading. "Some books," Kafka
explained to his friend Oskar Pollak in 1903, "act like a key to other
rooms in your own castle."
To
illustrate Kafka's working methods, Kilcher chooses a text from 1917
that "is perhaps considered his most enigmatic". This is "The Care of
the Father". The highly strange and ambiguous character named Odradek,
who appears in it, continues to challenge readers to new interpretations
to this day. Clemens
J. Setz recently said that Odradek seems to him to be "the most perfect
image of the future", and for Dirk Oschmann he seems "to embody the
ideal of positive freedom". Andreas Kilcher concludes his book with the
sentence: "Odradek, that is – to put it in a nutshell – the many-faceted
uncanny of Kafka's modernity."
All
of this does not just sound very theoretical. This special study
requires a certain amount of prior knowledge on the part of the reader.
And ultimately, what Walter Benjamin wrote in 1934 on the occasion of
Kafka's 10th anniversary of his death is once again proven true, namely
that Kafka "took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation
of his texts".
Andreas Kilcher: Kafka's Workshop. The Writer at Work, Verlag C. H. Beck, Göttingen 2024, 302 pages, 28.00 euros.
*
Reading
Kafka – Can you explain Kafka's work in 100 pages? Perhaps not, but you
can whet your appetite for reading. Because: "Reading Kafka means
experiencing what modern literature can do and what it is." At
least that is the opinion of Oliver Jahraus, who, with a sideways
glance at literary studies, rightly takes up Benjamin's statement quoted
above and asks the question of the extent to which Kafka's texts "can
or should be understood at all". And
in this context he reminds us of Susan Sontag's essay "Against
Interpretation" from 1964, in which she laments: "The work of Kafka, for
example, has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three
armies of interpreters." That
said, Jahraus encourages us to engage with Kafka's "play between offers
of meaning and refusals of meaning" without reservation. The only thing
we should be careful about is "that our desire to understand where it
is not satisfied does not turn into a rage of understanding".
Oliver Jahraus: Franz Kafka, Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen 2023, 102 pages, 10.00 euros.
Against nationalism
Warning against a rebellious-conformist ideology
by jour fixe initiative berlin
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.sozonline.de/2024/07/wider-den-nationalismus/.]
Nationalism
is the demand for "one people, one state, one nation". Being a "nation"
means that a people claims its own existence. The corresponding state
is called a "nation-state". Nationalism is the ideology that claims a
political right to statehood and derives it from the "people".
Every
form of nationalism claims the existence of a "people". This refers to a
particular group of people who are different from all others. They are
said to have existed for a long time, and to be united by descent,
language, tradition, religion, family, habits, a particular territory,
destiny and goal. They form a community in which the individuals are at
home. If
the bond within the community is disturbed, if there is a lack of
common good, solidarity and harmony, then this is because parts of the
people have distanced themselves from their nature and their destiny,
which is usually due to "foreign elements in the people".
Some
nationalisms emphasize language more strongly, others emphasize
descent, and still others emphasize territory or religion. In most
cases, it is a bundle of criteria that characterizes the particularity
of "our people". This can mean important differences between
nationalisms, but what they all have in common is the assertion that
"our people" have formed as a particular group of people throughout
history. This
distinctiveness requires that they live together in a state, otherwise
they are living in a foreign country. The claim to self-determination is
derived from the distinctiveness of the people. Only in their own state
can the people freely realize their nature.
The ideology
In
the triad of "one people, one state, one nation", "the people" is the
fundamental category, according to nationalist ideology. In reality,
however, the "people" is a nationalist invention. In the quest for a
state of their own, nationalists construct a "people" that supposedly
has existed since time immemorial. Most
"peoples" were invented by the respective nationalistic intellectuals
in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. They had no mass basis anywhere
before the 19th century. It was only the "nationalization of the masses"
(Eric Hobsbawm) that created "the people". Nationalism is the origin of
the people. But
nationalism turns it into a fiction of a people that has existed since
time immemorial and is concerned about its own identity.
The
rise of nationalism since the 19th century has run parallel to the rise
of capitalism, imperialism and decolonization. The worldwide
establishment of a capitalist (including post-colonial) economy required
and still requires a world order that secures the capitalist conditions
of ownership, market and law. However, this does not happen in a world
state, but in a multitude of particular states.
Capitalism
is characterized by this dialectic: a global economy in a multitude of
states constitutes capitalism. Without states, there is no capitalism.
This is the source of the significance and effectiveness of nationalism:
it legitimizes a political sovereignty of self-determination, law,
protection and belonging, apparently independently of the capitalist
economy, which would not exist without the political order. The
state appears to be a protection against the global power of capital,
while capital can only reproduce itself through the political order of
the world of states.
For a left critique, four theses follow from this concept of nationalism.
Four theses
–
Firstly, all nationalism is particularist. It postulates the
distinctiveness of a group of people. It claims that the difference
between »us« and all »others« is decisive for the political order of the
world. Nationalism means understanding the world as »peoples«.
Nationalism is the opposite of universalism.
–
Secondly, the distinction between "us" and the others is the basis of
"xenophobia" in the broadest sense of the word. Every form of
nationalism establishes who does not belong and thus has fewer rights,
in the extreme no right to life. Racism is based on nationalism.
Nationalism is not possible without racism, the demarcation from the
"other". With concepts such as "people's friendship" and
"internationalism", this hostile demarcation should be overcome.
–
Thirdly, nationalism is an ideology that legitimizes political rule. It
justifies why this particular "people" should have this particular
"state". The spectrum of possibilities ranges from a bourgeois democracy
to the "socialist fatherland" to the National Socialist
Volksgemeinschaft: the people are the sovereign, the reason and the goal
of political rule.
–
This makes it clear, fourthly, that nationalism is
rebellious-conformist (Erich Fromm). It is conformist because it
legitimizes state power, and rebellious because it can demand a state
that is truly in line with the "people" against an existing, corrupt,
externally determined state. It is therefore only rebellious, not
revolutionary, because it only wants to replace the existing political
power with a different one.
These
general theses do not deny that there are a variety of justifications
for "one people, one state, one nation". On the contrary, this is
precisely what makes nationalism historically so effective. In the name
of the people, it is possible to fight against feudalism or colonialism,
for freedom and democracy, against lawlessness and heteronomy. In
the name of the people, ruling cliques, corrupt elites and imperialist
forces, but also foreigners, minorities and other peoples, can be
declared the enemy.
However
different these enemies of the people are defined, one can switch from
one to the other without breaking the nationalist logic. A "people" is
always claimed that will only find happiness when it determines itself,
and that means excluding the stranger. In this particularist logic, the
problem is ultimately always that "our people" would be happy if it were
freed from the stranger.
The workers have no fatherland
There
have been various attempts from the left to overcome nationalism on the
basis of a class position, which assumes that humanity is not divided
into nations, but into social classes that pursue the same interests all
over the world. To this day, the class and the national question stand
irreconcilably opposed as contradictory social concepts. The
best-known examples are probably the First, Second and Third
Internationals, which existed from 1864 to 1943 with the aim of uniting
and representing the global labor movement.
The
First International (International Working Men's Association – IWA) was
the first international association of labor societies that pursued the
"complete emancipation of the working class" on a global scale, which
they were just as unsuccessful at as their three successors. While
the First International was destroyed by the competition between
Marxists and anarchists, the Second International, founded in 1889,
failed in 1914 by abandoning its class position in favor of nationalism
and war: the Burgfrieden. It broke up at the beginning of the First
World War. The lack of protest by the SPD against the invasion of
neutral Belgium discredited the German Social Democrats internationally.
Anti-colonialism
It
was a small social democratic minority that opposed the Burgfrieden and
gathered in Zimmerwald, which, after the October Revolution in 1917,
gave rise to the Third International (Communist International – CI),
which united various international currents until the mid-1920s. The
special feature of the CI was that, unlike its predecessors, it took up
the cause of anti-colonialism.
The
organization, founded in 1919, represented the first attempt at a
global, anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist policy. It
conveyed a sense of belonging in which ethnic, national and social
origin, as well as gender, played no role. In the eyes of the
Communists, internationalism was the path to modernity.
However,
the history of the CI is also a history of conflicts, differences,
dissidence and splinter groups, which were homogenized in the 1930s
through repression and murder.
But
in the early years, the universal scope of the October Revolution and
the spread of world revolution were at stake. In this conception,
nationalism had no place – except for the so-called "oppressed nations".
At that time, anti-imperialism meant overcoming colonialism in order to
achieve socialism.
Before
the Second Congress of the CI, Lenin had drafted theses on the national
and colonial question, in which he defined a rather imprecise concept
of oppressed peoples. The Comintern was finally to fulfill the tasks
that the Second International had criminally neglected, namely to
support all revolutionary liberation movements of dependent,
disenfranchised nations, such as the Irish or the blacks in the USA and
its colonies. This created political common ground not only between the colonial countries, but also between those oppressed by racism.
But
after the revolution had been limited to Russia and the International
had been subordinated to the state interests of the USSR by Stalin, the
struggle of the "oppressed nations" ended with national liberation.
Socialism was postponed until later. The class question had supposedly
reconciled with the national question in the communist world movement. As
a result, the Comintern found itself on the side of the
counter-revolution in worldwide conflicts such as in China, the Spanish
Civil War and Greece, and it dissolved in 1943.
History is written by the victors
Nevertheless,
there were many inter- and anti-national movements that took place
outside the institutionalized communist world movement, but which were
inscribed in the heretical history of communism.
These
included the West Indian Federation in the Caribbean from 1958 to 1962,
which was formed from twelve provinces of the former British colonies
and attempted to shift the exchange of goods between the individual
provinces away from London. It too failed due to the nationalism of
Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago.
The
African socialism of the 1950s to 1970s, represented by Modibo Keïta,
Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Walter Rodney and Julius Nyerere, did not
strive for "national liberation", but for the Socialist States of
Africa. Accra was to replace Moscow as the capital of socialist
internationalism. The
project failed due to the bureaucratization and institutionalization of
the movements and the failure to overcome colonial structures in
socio-economic terms.
Pan-Africanism,
which had already been developed in the 19th century and became
politically influential after the First World War, aimed to "unite all
African people worldwide, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality"
and united various political currents and communist representatives such
as W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James. A
similar attempt was the Non-Aligned Movement, founded in Belgrade in
1961, which not only started with an anti-colonial and anti-Stalinist
impetus, but also clearly and unequivocally opposed the war and armament
of the two blocs of the Cold War. The
reasons for the defeat and failure of these movements are manifold, but
the sad consequence that nationalism ultimately emerged victorious from
all these attempts to overcome it is decisive for today. In order to
prevent its ultimate triumph, we must learn from these attempts and
understand what we need to do differently.
A disservice to the working class
"We
will not abandon our own country in its hour of need," promised Social
Democrat Hugo Haase in 1914. "Socialism in one country" proclaimed
Stalin ten years later. The devastating appeal of nationalist thought
patterns has been entering left-wing strategy discussions long before
Sahra Wagenknecht's new party (BSW) was founded.
The
term left-wing populism is commonly used to describe such programmatic
deviations, which, under the guise of "being in touch with the working
class", transfer reactionary set pieces into a "left-wing agenda". The
political point of reference is not the translation of the fundamental
social contradiction between capital and labor into an appropriate and
forward-looking program, but the attempt to glorify social attitudes and
problems as the primary political logic.
This
strategic decision also includes the abandonment of the basic
internationalist understanding that the contradictions of global
capitalism can only be countered by organizing workers internationally.
Instead,
economic protectionism is being embraced, which seeks to protect the
national workforce from the "harmful" competition with colleagues across
the border. Karl Marx criticized this as the "narrowest national point
of view" because he understood capitalism as a constantly advancing
international mode of production.
Almost
150 years later, market-liberal capitalism has become a global system.
The cooperation with reactionary actors called for by the BSW to "defend
the nation state as a place of protection against the socially
disruptive volatility of markets and relative prices" (Wolfgang Streeck)
would not only divide workers along national borders, but also mean an
authoritarian political practice.
The
rhetoric of left-wing anti-globalists also conceals the fact that
nation states are by no means retreats for social romanticism, but
rather pursue a policy of globalization. In this respect, the term
left-wing nationalism seems more appropriate to describe such actors
than the term left-wing populism, which was coined primarily in the
context of Latin American strategy debates.
Inciting
hatred against migrants and refugees, playing off local workers against
their foreign colleagues, sacrificing solidarity with the oppressed in
favor of supposed gains in votes in the right-wing camp – with this
strategic arsenal, left-wing nationalists are dividing the already weak
organizational capacity of the political and social left.
Their
anti-globalism, which they share with the radical right, also has the
hallmarks of a not only tactical but fundamentally reactionary worldview
that is incompatible with the fundamental principles of the
international labor movement. In the face of multiple global crises,
retreating into the national sphere seems increasingly attractive, but
anti-globalism is not a new phenomenon. Not
least its triumphal march with the outbreak of the First World War
should be a warning to the left and motivate it to a decisive criticism
of any nationalism.
The workers and the fatherland
A necessary look back at a historical debate
by Angela Klein
[This
article posted on 7/1/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.sozonline.de/2024/07/die-arbeiter-und-das-vaterland/.]
Since
the end of the 18th century, the term "nation" has acquired a dual
meaning: on the one hand, it refers to the population of a state with a
more or less developed domestic market in which the old customs barriers
have fallen. This is the sense in which Marx and Engels used the term
"nation" and celebrated it as a step forward. On
the other hand, it also referred to an ethnic community, especially in
economically backward countries, that is united by language, culture and
a shared history. Marx and Engels used the term "nationality" for this.
It is not tied to a state; conversely, a nation (a nation state)
usually encompasses several nationalities.
The
"Communist Manifesto" states: "The workers have no fatherland." This
sentence has given rise to a wide range of interpretations. However, it
is important to bear in mind the historical context in which it was
written.
The
phrase was coined by the League of Communists, an association of around
500 German journeymen in exile in Paris who had fled from poverty,
repression and a feudal order in which they had no rights. According to
Roman Rosdolsky, the term "fatherland" referred to a democratic nation
state to which workers could feel a sense of belonging. However, the
state in which they lived had nothing to offer them. They had no loyalty to it because it was only an expression of the organized violence of the ruling classes.
But
the phrase does not only have this negative meaning. Marx and Engels
used it offensively: the workers' fatherland is the world; they do not
stand for the national narrow-mindedness of the bourgeoisie, which
separates nations from one another. They are the true heirs of the
humanistic and universalistic ideas of the Enlightenment. This
does not mean that they are "anational", belonging only to an abstract
cosmopolitan community; they are rooted in their culture, which they
share with other classes of their "nationality". Internationalism is
thus unity in diversity.
Capitalist internationalization
The
"Communist Manifesto" celebrated big industry for creating "a universal
interdependence of nations," uniting not only material production but
also intellectual life: "The national separations and antagonisms of
peoples disappear more and more with the development of the bourgeoisie,
with freedom of trade, the world market, the uniformity of industrial
production and the corresponding conditions of life."
The
increasing internationalization of capitalist production relations and
the development of a world market with more and more interdependent
components would thus generalize and homogenize life systems beyond
national borders, creating the conditions for the fusion of peoples into
a universal community under socialism. It would "perfect the forces of
assimilation of nations that are already at work in capitalism" (Enzo
Traverso).
As
we know, things turned out differently. What appears here as a simple
continuation of a historical tendency already inherent in capitalism has
in reality turned out to be a path of development that requires the
most rapid reversal. The "dependence of nations on each other" that the
internationalization of capital has created is not an enriching
amalgamation on an equal basis, but a relationship of exploitation and
obstruction of independent economic development. It does not create a "world of brotherhood", but one of profound inequality. Marx later analyzed this in the Irish example.
Colonialism
The
capital-driven unequal development began with the industrial
revolution. After the end of the first major international capitalist
crisis in 1857, which Marx examines in Capital, the core countries of
Central Europe also experienced an industrial boom. In the Habsburg
Empire, this resulted in an unequal development between the
industrialized and the agricultural-craftsman areas. This
led to an internal colonization that primarily disadvantaged the Slavic
population, as they made up the majority of the peasantry and, at best,
a dependent state bureaucracy.
Thus,
in the cities of the Danube Monarchy, national-cultural movements
developed, mainly among the intelligentsia and within the churches
(among the Czechs, Croats, Ukrainians, etc.), which did not see the
struggle against their oppression so much as a
social task (liberation of the peasants and agrarian reform), but
rather as a cultural one (freedom of language, religion, education and
thus opportunities for advancement) and then also as a political one:
withholding taxes, voting rights, statehood. The
emerging bourgeois class claimed its share of economic progress, but in
most cases was neither willing nor able to develop a program for the
liberation of the peasants. In Poland, and later in Ukraine, this led to
a situation in which socialist intellectuals from the cities were able
to build up a mass following for a time and thus became the bearers of
the "national idea".
Proletarian internationalism
This
ran completely counter to the historical view of the Second
International. The majority of its members adhered to the idea that the
economically backward countries of Europe had to catch up with the
bourgeois development of Western Europe, because only capitalist
development could create a working class that could then overcome its
contradictions.
Rosa
Luxemburg was a particularly strong advocate of this point of view with
regard to Russian-occupied Poland, which led her to flatly deny the
necessity of Polish independence. Lenin rejected the idea that a
bourgeois-capitalist phase was a necessary transitional stage to
socialism. And
as the harshest critic of Russian chauvinism, he made the political
right to national self-determination, i.e. the right to form one's own
state, a fundamental principle of Soviet rule, i.e. he was prepared to
give up areas of the Tsarist Empire, which the Austro-Marxists and also
the majority of German Social Democrats were not prepared to do.
The
unconditional support of Polish independence, which had been so dear to
the International Working Men's Association, no longer had the same
backing in the Second International, which hoped for the overthrow of
tsarism through the awakening labor movement in Russia. At
its London Congress in 1896, the Second International adopted a
resolution in which it emphasized the right to national
self-determination in very general terms, which only served to paper
over the differences.
The
blindness or even helplessness of important leaders of the Second
International, such as Rosa Luxemburg, in the face of the national
awakening among the Slavic peoples is only part of the truth, however. For
on another point she was absolutely right: she insisted on an
internationalist approach, on the cooperation of the Polish and Russian
working classes to overthrow the Tsar, while the Polish Socialist Party
(PPS), her opponent in the dispute, conceived of an independent Poland
as a European bulwark against the Tsarist empire and demanded that the
Second International adopt the anti-Russian perspective.
Luxemburg
was in complete agreement with Lenin, who wrote in 1916: "[T]he
socialists of the oppressed nations [must] insist on and bring about the
complete and unconditional, organizational unity of the workers of the
oppressed nation with those of the oppressing nation. Without
this, it is impossible to insist on the independent politics of the
proletariat and on its class solidarity with the proletariat of other
countries...
The
position of the PPS led to the affirmation of the war against Russia,
while the internationalist position of Lenin and Luxemburg led to its
strongest rejection.
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