Bulletin
N° 681
Subject:
Migrating from Left-Wing Ideologies toward the Right as Artificial Scarcity
Takes Hold of Society.
30
January 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
One
virtue of the Marxist approach to social studies is its method of moving from
the general to the specific, to work deductively from the concept of the whole to
the meaning of a specific part. By placing a particular phenomenon in its
larger context, the true significance of the object of interest is grasped in
its entirety. In jurisprudence this is practiced routinely, when materials like
confessions and eyewitness testimonies are carefully examined for their
veracity by analyzing the conditions under which they were recorded and the
motives that produced them. The truth
is sought by means of non-contradiction, continuity, correspondence to
reality, and sincerity, to name only a few criteria.
My
interest in history stems from the practice of comparing
patterns of behavior of populations living in the past with those in the
present. Social class struggles are one such pattern, and an instructive one;
but there are other social patterns, as well. Recently re-reading Eric Hobsbawm’s 1997 book, On History, I was
struck by his account of the rise of “barbarism” in the 20th
century. In a chapter entitled, “Barbarism: a User’s Guide,” he attempts to
explain how all of us have more or less adapted to the first level of
barbarism, i.e. “the disruption and breakdown of systems of rules and moral
behavior by which all societies regulate the relations among their
members….”(p.253), We are now witnessing the second level, i.e. the reversal of
“the project of the Enlightenment,
namely the establishment of a universal
system of such rules and standards of moral behavior, embodied in the
institutions of states dedicated to the rational progress of humanity: to Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, to Equality, Liberty and Fraternity or
whatever….”(p.254)
Hobsbawm
goes on to develop insights into this “breakdown of systems of rules and moral
behavior” by referring to former Canadian liberal lawmaker and academic,
Michael Ignatieff, whose 1993 book, Blood and
Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, represents a liberal inquiry into the politics of late capitalism.
Let me clarify the fist form of
barbarization: that is what happens with traditional controls disappear. . . .
[We may note] the difference between the gunman of the Kurdish guerrillas of
1993 and those of the Bosnian checkpoints. With great perception [Ignatieff] sees that in the stateless society of Kurdistan
every male child reaching adolescence gets a gun. Carrying a weapon simply
means that a boy has ceased to be a child and must behave like a man. ‘The
accent of meaning in the culture of the gun thus stresses responsibility,
sobriety, tragic duty.’ Guns are fired when need to
be. On the contrary, most Europeans since 1945, including in the Balkan s, have
lived in societies where the state enjoyed a monopoly of legitimate violence.
As the states broke down, so did that monopoly. ‘For some young European males,
the chaos that resulted from [this collapse] . . . offered the chance of entering an erotic
paradise of the all-is-permitted. Hence the semi-sexual, semi-pornographic gun
culture of the checkpoints. For young men there was an irresistible erotic
charge in holding lethal power in our hands’ and using it to terrorize the
helpless.
I suspect that a good many of the atrocities
now committed in the civil wars of three continents reflect this type of
disruption, which is characteristic of the late-twentieth-century world.
As to the second form of
barbarization . . . . I believe
that one of the few things that stands between us and
an accelerated descent into darkness is the set of values inherited from the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This is not a fashionable view at this
moment, when the Enlightenment can be dismissed as anything from superficial
and intellectually naïve to a conspiracy of dead white men in periwigs to
provide the intellectual foundations for Western imperialism. It may or may not
be all that, but it is also the only foundation for all the aspirations to
build societies fit for all human beings to live in anywhere on this Earth, and
for the assertion and defense of their human rights as persons. In any case,
the progress of civility which took place from the eighteenth century until the
early twentieth was achieved overwhelmingly or entirely under the influence of
the Enlightenment, by governments of what are still called, for the benefit of
history students, ‘enlightened absolutists’, by revolutionaries and reformers,
liberals, socialists and communists, all of whom belonged to the same
intellectual family. It was not achieved by its critics. This era when progress
was not merely supposed to be both material and moral but actually was, has
come to an end. But the only criterion which allows us to judge rather than
merely to record the consequent descent into barbarism is the old rationalism
of the Enlightenment.(pp.254-255)
This
progressive liberal argument that ideas serve as a motor force for social
change, independent of the material conditions of production, is reminiscent of
the revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) chiding the Social
Democrats for not standing up for traditional liberal principles in the face of
the conservative, authoritarian backlash following WW I.
She
and Karl Liebknecht were murdered on the orders of the Social Democratic Party
in January 1919, when Social Democratic leader Friedrich Ebert ordered the Freikorps to
destroy the left-wing revolution. In her last speech she had declared on New Year
’s Day in Berlin, which was teaming with socialist ideas at the time, that :
Today we can seriously set about destroying capitalism
once and for all. Nay, more; not merely are we today in a position to perform
this task, nor merely is its performance a duty toward the proletariat, but our
solution offers the only means of saving human society from destruction.
In
the 21st century, we have experienced an unmistakable movement to
the right, Socialists morphing into economic liberals and progressive liberals
into conservatives, and both into Neo-Conservatives; then there is the Donald Trump
phenomenon. Eric Hobsbawm, in the minds of many,
represents this first transition; and the liberal Canadian lawmaker Michael Ignatieff, the second; while we can only wait to see what the
growth of “Trumping opportunism” produces. It is in this context – a virtual
stamped toward the right—that the progressive liberal filmmaker Oliver Stone
has taken a stand. Below is his decidedly non-marxist
critique of US history (the contrast with Howard Zinn’s
People’s History of the US is instructive) which begins inductively with
specific personalities (mostly leaders)
and events (mostly military); then judges them according to the time-honored
values of The Enlightenment. As Rosa Luzemburg said
before she was murdered in 1919: If liberals will no longer defend their
humanist values, then they must be defended by us, the true socialists!
Below is the 12-part series of the documentary film
made by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick “The Untold
History of the United States,” and it is prefaced by a 7-part interview by Paul
Jay, founder of “The Real News Network”, discussing the making of Untold History of the United States.
·
Episode A: 1900-1920 - World War I, The
Russian Revolution & Woodrow Wilson.
·
Episode B: 1920-1940 - Roosevelt,
Hitler, Stalin: The Battle of Ideas (Episode B seems to be
unavailable on the Internet without charge.)
·
·
Chapter 1: World War II.
·
Conclusion.
And
finally, we direct your attention to items below (7 of them) and invite
you to use your general historical knowledge while examining the specific current
events which are presented here in order to derive their true meaning.
Francis Feeley
Professor of American Studies
University of Grenoble-3
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and
Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Migrant mistaken for terrorist shot and beaten to
death
While
Zarhum was bleeding and clearly "helpless"
on the ground, one of the charged men, David Moyal,
slammed him forcefully with a nearby bench, "with the intention of causing
him harm, disability or maiming him," the indictment said.
Two
other men -- Yaakov Shamba, the soldier, and Eviatar Damari -- then approached
Zarhum and forcefully kicked his head and upper body,
the indictment states.
After
this, Ronen Cohen, the prison guard, threw the bench at the victim to prevent
him from moving.
A
bystander moved the bench away, but Cohen and Shamba
put it back, before Shamba pushed away an onlooker
who asked him to stop and kicked Zarhum again, the
indictment states.
==========
b.
Will the 2016
Primaries Be Electronically Rigged?
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34607-will-the-2016-primaries-be-electronically-rigged
by Victoria
Collier and Ben Ptashnik
==========
c.
Sanders camp
suspicious of Microsoft’s influence in Iowa Caucus
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-campaign-suspicious-corporate-influence-iowa-caucus
by
==========
d.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2618
==========
e.
China's Capitalist Crisis Threatens World Economy
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/60926
by John Rainford
==========
f.
Radioactive Water from Fukushima Is Leaking into the
Pacific
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34565-radioactive-water-from-fukushima-is-leaking-into-the-pacific
by Dahr Jamail
==========
g.
From: "Jim
O'Brien" <jimobrien48@gmail.com>
To: haw-info@stopthewars.org
Sent: Friday, 29 January, 2016 7:03:12 PM
Subject: [haw-info] HAW Notes 1/30/16: Saudi Arabia conference;
Peace History Society; website on history of US wars; links to recent articles
of interest
To members and friends of Historians Against the War,
Here are some notes followed by our occasional
listing of some recent articles.
1. Amid increasing scrutiny on Saudi Arabia's role
in the Middle East and its relationship with the US, a number of antiwar groups
are sponsoring a "Summit on Saudi Arabia" Saturday-Sunday
March 5-6 in Washington DC. Code Pink has taken the lead, with co-sponsors
including The Nation, the Institute for Policy Studies, Peace
Action, and many other groups, including HAW.
2. The latest
issue of the Peace History Society's newsletter, edited by
Robert Shaffer is available on-line. Its 50 pages
include short articles and reports on a great variety of topics.
3. This is a reminder of the work-in-progress
website on the history of US wars that Roger Peace is developing. He
is looking for feedback and suggestions for resources as well as collaboration
in developing sections of the site. (A sample
module on the War of 1812 is on the site.) His email address
is rcpeace3@embarqmail.com.
Links
to Recent Articles of Interest:
By Joost Hiltermann, London Review of Books, February
4 issue
Review-essay, seeking
to draw lessons on how wars are ended, on Pierre Razoux’s
book The Iran-Iraq War. The
author is Middle East and North Africa programme
director at the International Crisis Group.
"When 'Made in Israel' Is a Human Rights Abuse"
By Ayed Press, New York
Times, posted January 26
Warns against a proposal now before
Congress that would force a change in US policy toward the Occupied Settlements
By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch.com,
posted January 26
"From
the First Gulf War to Islamic State: How America Was Seduced by the 'Easy War'"
By Sebastian J. Bae, War
on the Rocks, posted January 22
“ISIS and the Reversible Stages of Revolt”
By Paul Pillar, The National
Interest, posted January 20
The author, a 28-year veteran of the
CIA, is a visiting professor at Georgetown University in security studies.
“Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy”
By Thomas Wright, Politico
Magazine, posted January 20
Subtitled: “His views aren’t as confused
as they seem. In fact, they’re remarkably
consistent – and they have a long history.”
“The
Frightening Prospect of a Nuclear War Is About to Become a Lot More Likely”
By Lawrence S. Wittner, History
News Network, posted January 17
The author is a professor of history
emeritus at SUN Y Albany.
“Twenty-Five Years Later: Photos from the First Time We Invaded
Iraq”
By Mark Murrmann
and Bryan Schatz, Mother Jones, posted January 16
By David Bacon, LobeLog,
posted January 11
A visit to Hanoi and reflections on the
Christmas Bombing of 1972
By Rick Shenkman, TomDispatch.com,
posted January 10
The author is founder and editor of the
History News Network.