"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.

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"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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

In this respect, voting for parties that now call for a ceasefire and consider a quick "freeze" of the war to be a solution, as if both warring parties were equally to blame for the bloodshed, is certainly a strengthening of the view of the war in which the attacking and attacked sides are hardly recognizable. Those who see it differently, who insist that there is an aggressor and a victim, are suspicious in terms of peace policy, as they are seen to be encouraging the continuation of the war if they do not want to deny Ukraine the necessary support.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 jour fixe initiative berlin has existed since October 1997. With lecture series on the critique of domination, exploitation and immaturity, it offers a platform for discussion and theory formation within the radical left and aims to contribute to overcoming capitalist socialization.

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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.