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Liberalism v.Communism v. Fascism

Week 13 – Lecture 1

22 April 2008

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919): German Expressionism

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F.W. Murnau: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror [1922]

Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926)

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Weimar Republic:

Social crisis /

German Expressionism

http://www.bc.edu/centers/boisi/publicevents/current_semester/gaymarriage.html

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Unity = inter-national (class) Unity = national (state)

NB: Primarily political categories

“Third Estate” “Aristocrats”

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NB: Adds social (i.e., economic) dimension to political categories

Unity = inter-national (class) Unity = national (state)

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A. Inventing Communism

1914 photo of Romanovs: Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra,

five children [Executed night of 16-17 July 1918]

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A. Sarajevo, August 1914

• 1) Serbia wants pan-slavic nation-state• 2) Austria afraid Slavs will leave Empire• 3) Russia wants Serbia• 4) Austrians threaten Serbia: want to provoke war and take over Serbian territory

1) RELIGION: ORTHODOXY[Russia as imaginary center of Eastern Orthodoxy]

2) NATIONALISM: “Slavic people” [non-Roman alphabet [Cyrillic]]

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D. 1915-1917: Stalemate

• 1) Germany deep into France• 2) 1914: Battle of the Marne: finally stop the Germans

– Dig trenches• 3) 1915-1917: two year war of attrition -- Impossible strategic victory

– No govt willing to tell its population they had made a mistake, i.e., their sacrifices had been in vain.

Russian armored train, 1917Revolution needed Great War [Material precondition]

Rasputin: assassinated 1916

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OCTOBER 1917: Storming Winter Palace at St. Petersburg

REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING???

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Eugène Delacroix, 28 July: Liberty Leads the People [1830]

Need to sacralize: create a heroic revolutionary moment

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Sacred Moments:Bastille 1789 ---- Winter Palace 1917

• Self-conscious allusion back to French Revolution:

• COMMUNISM AS ENLIGHTENMENT IDEALS TAKEN ALL THE WAY Not only “political democracy” but “social democracy” as well

Representing the Revolution as ULTRA-MODERN, i.e.,

As TWENTIETH CENTURY

Film still from October 1917, [1927]

Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

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Nappelbaum: Vladimir Lenin [1918; dies January 1924]

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Karl Marx: 19th-c. German

--Britain/Germany: already industrialized; a capitalist bourgeoisie firmly in place

-- Romantic: Dialectical necessity: the revolution will happen necessarily as dialectical synthesis of feudalism (thesis) clashing with capitalism (antithesis)

NB: NO BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION IN CZARIST RUSSIA!

Hence: no dialectic!!!

V. I. Lenin: 20th c. Russian

-- Czarist: ruled by absolutist monarch

-- Economy: largely feudal / agricultural peasantry

--First task: jump-start Russian industrialization massive factories / steel industry

-- No belief in necessity. Rather, WILL!!! Proactive violent revolution is necessary

-- Strong emphasis on students / universities / intellectual “vanguard”: LITERACY

-- Virtue must be imposed: purity Robespierre. DEMOCRACY

Was Communism Marxism?

Joseph Stalin: General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

April 3, 1922 – March 5, 1953

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Mural, Soviet Pavilion at World’s Fair

Ideals of Fr. Rev. / Enlightenment taken to their logical conclusion:

Truly UNIVERSAL EQUALITY based on humanity

[i.e., without Liberalism’s “uneven developments”: class / gender / race

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COMMUNISM“All human beings are created equal”…

a universal claim of total inclusion

• Social democracy = not merely “political”equality a society without class divisions– Liberal democracies:

inherent class / racial / gender conflict

– not true “democracies”– NB: “democracy” =

“communism”

• A) 1920: Literacy Law– Not Marxist emphasis; rather: Europeanized intellectuals --- university students, etc.

• B) WOMEN!– Contrast with Liberalism … and next, Fascism.

“Books! Into all the fields of knowledge!”

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Legalization of female suffrage:

1920: United States1928: United Kingdom

1946: France

Obligatory Literacy: independence. Contrast Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own [1929!]

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Democracy ?

←United Kingdom

↓Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

B. Inventing Fascism

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Fascism: origins of name?• Fasces--- Symbol of the authority of Roman Imperial consuls:

an axe bound within a bundle of rods by a red strap. • Carried before the consul, used to restore order and to carry out

punishment of the courts.• Popular symbol: all the people united cannot break

Fasces in USA House of Representatives

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Paxton’s aim: to “recuperate” a political category

to understand 21st century

Fascism: form of political behavior marked by

a) obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood

b) and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity,

c) a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,

d) working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,

e) abandons democratic liberties [e.g., liberty of the press; liberty of religion]

f) pursues with redemptive violenceand without ethical or legal restraints

g) goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

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Sub-category: Politics of resentment

1) DISAPPOINTMENT: Expectations -- of power, possessions, or prestige -- disappointed.

2) ABSOLUTIZING: Relative deprivation – real or imagined (nostalgic) – taken as absolute deprivation

MELODRAMATIC [MANICHEAN]: Imagine the world as divided into absolute binaries: good/evil, light/dark, pure/unclean

Reduce explanations to simple/single cause

4) VICTIMIZATION: Represent themselves as victims [even if they’re actually in charge!]

5) SCAPEGOATING: Scapegoat other(s) for their “loss”

[witches; Jews; Communists; homosexuals …]

Enrico Corradini, The Proletarian Nations and Nationalism (1911)

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An “agrarian counter-revolution”

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KEY: THE STATE

Answer to problems = nation-state

Contrast:

Liberalism = individual

Socialism = class

Benito and Italia Bella

(Benito and Beautiful Italy)

(12 July 1926)

1935: Ethiopia!!!

1880: Eritrea!!!

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Mussolini: Model of Imperial Rome: appeal to “when Rome was great”Meaning: appeal to exclusivity of the “Roman race”

Radical Democracy --- Radical Imperialism

Where do you look for your myths of origin?

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Casa del Fascio(Tuscany) [ca. 1928]

Note a-historicism of Fascism!

Tuscany [Florence] and Rome?

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11 February 1929: Lateran Agreements

between Italy (King Victor Emmanuel III/ Prime Minister Mussolini) and Papacy

-- Pope Pius XI recognizes the state of Italy; Italy recognizes state of Vatican City (cf. 1870!)

-- Mussolini gains reduction in claims for lost church property to 2 billion lire

-- Church gains authority over education, marriage and family (e.g., no divorce)

↑↑↑↑↑

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Unity = inter-national (class) Unity = national (state)

Subjective Individualism v. STATE

BOTH end up being absorption of the subjective individual into the STATE

↓↓↓↓

↓↓

↓↓↓↓

↓↓

Exacerbating cause: GREAT DEPRESSION

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“No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time…. The great wealth created by our enterprise and industry, and saved by our economy, has had the widest distribution among our own people, and has gone out in a steady stream to serve the charity and the business of the world…. The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.”

Calvin Coolidge, 4 December 1928

October 24, 1929 “Black Thursday”

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• July 13, 1931: Collapse of the Danat Bank: all savings trusts and stock exchanges closed by law

• 1931-32: In USA, Herbert Hoover cuts federal spending and increases taxes to balance budget-- pushes recession into Depression

• RESULT: economic chaos in Germany

• 1932: FDR elected in Nov.

Elections in Weimar Republic: 14 September 1930• 1928: Nazis receive 0, 800,000 votes• 1930: Nazis receive 6, 400,000 votes

– Increase representation from 12 to 107 seats

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““SONDERWEGSONDERWEG””??????– 1930/1933=moment of disaster:

1928 Reichstag could have ridden out worst of the Depression

– By turning to the public in turmoil, limits the alternatives

– USA constitution is not a parliamentary system: you’re stuck with them for entire terms

–– NO NO ““SONDERWEG,SONDERWEG,”” i.e., i.e., ““particular /alternative pathparticular /alternative path””

–– Rather: DISASTROUS Rather: DISASTROUS HUMAN CHOICE OUT OF HUMAN CHOICE OUT OF PANICPANIC

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“National-Socialism:

The organized WILL of the Nation

Hitler’s invention:

hybridize “socialism” [internationalism] with nationalism [labor + state]

The appeal of Nazism:

Nationalist Socialismtrumps class boundaries?

“Our Last Hope: Hitler”

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1933Jan 30: Hitler appointed chancellor

Feb 27: Reichstag burns

Feb 28: Suspend civil liberties

Mar 5: New elections: Nazis receive 44%

Mar 24: Enabling Lawpassed: Hitler granted dictatorial power

“Today our people know our will was stronger than the German crisis. After fifteen years of despair a great people is back on its feet.” --Hitler, 1933

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2005:

Hitler’s People’s State:

Robbery,

Race War

and

Nationalist

Socialism

Standard story:Hitler maintains popularity by “bringing Germany out of the Great Depression”

public works / militarization

New story: key to Hitler’s popularity =

social benefits + large tax cuts.

Works in short runReich bankrupt by 1937Needs war for plunder

NB: American title!!!