Anti-Fascism in Russia

When I was a graduate student at Chicago back in the 1990s, I sat for a seminar that included discussions of the different ways fascism was interpreted in the Federal Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the United States, and the USSR. The USSR was crumbling when I arrived in Hyde Park. It had disintegrated before I sat for the seminar. The seminar was led by the late Moishe Postone, Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Modern History and co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory. Postone was also part of the Committee on Jewish Studies.

Thirty years is a long time. What I recall is that the USSR underplayed the anti-Semitic dimension of German fascism, choosing instead to emphasize the nationalist and militarist dimensions. The GDR up-played the capitalist dimension. The Federal Republic emphasized the anti-modern, anti-democratic dimension. The United States fell closer to the Federal Republic.

The crux of this portion of the seminar hung on the fact that the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) had always presented and always understood itself as an anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, movement. Their opposition to the communists was therefore extremely complex. The Soviets were guilty of two sins. In the eyes of the NSDAP, the Soviets were guilty of dividing the German people along class as opposed to racial lines. German anti-capitalism favored an economic form that rewarded communities racially. Their second sin was their materialism. The anti-capitalism of the NSDAP was first and foremost spiritual, drawing together the entire spirit of the German people into one unified collective.

Not incidentally, for National Socialists, the connection between capitalism and communism was its “Jewish” spirit. It was, on the one hand, abstract, ungrounded, free-floating — like international banking and finance. On the other hand, it was superficial and materialist, focused the surface, not on the underlying value of work.

The Soviets, for their part, viewed National Socialist Germany as an anti-Slavic, nationalist, movement that aimed at expanding Germany at the expense of the Slavic nations. This view was reinforced by Germany’s explicit ranking of Slavs just a little above Jews. This is critical because Soviet communists did not disagree with German’s ranking Jews at the bottom. They merely objected to being ranked just above Jews. The Great Patriotic War proved that Slavs were superior to Germans.

This rhetoric, in turn, allowed Soviets to adopt the same criticism National Socialists had agains “the West”: it was decadent, materialist, consumerist, interested only in money, without spirit, without depth. In other words, it allowed Soviets to ignore the anti-Semitic, ethno-nationalist dimension of fascism — to which they were attracted — and focus instead on the anti-Slavic dimension of fascism.

Am I mistaken to see this same rhetoric in Vladimir Putin’s speeches? Is he not once again fighting “the West” and showing them the superiority of the Slavs?

Of course, the other dimension of the seminar discussion — noting that the US did not enter the war until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that it turned away ships loaded with Jews fleeing the Holocaust, that it was significantly envious of the industrial success of Nazi Germany — is also worth noting.

The New (old) Cold War

There are interpreters of the post-Cold War world who cannot get over 1989, the year their hopes for a socialist world were finally laid to rest. Every peep or murmur, however sotto voce, is met with loud hoots and hollers that Russia is being unfairly victimized and blamed for ills that would better be blamed on capitalism and the west. And so the old Cold War lives on.

And I will admit there are striking similarities. Russia’s current crop of oligarchs, starting at the very top, look very much like the USSR’s old crop of oligarchs, having merely replaced the hammer and sickle with the Russian Orthodox cross. And global capitalism is, well, still global capitalism. Leaner, less regulated, more free-wheeling than its Fordist Cold War ancestor, but still very much what it is.

However, let us accept (just for the sake of argument) that the big difference between old Cold War and the new is that Putin’s Russia would very much like to be admitted into the elite group of global, capitalist, powers. Even as he amassed more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, Putin held a highly publicized video call to Italy’s top business leaders. Moreover, Nord Stream 2 unequivocally reverses the power relation that once prevailed between east and west. No “belt and road” initiative — yet — Putin very much wants Russia to be viewed by the rest of the world as a reliable and desirable player in global markets, thereby perhaps realizing comrade Joseph Stalin’s dream of beating the west at its own game. Russia is capitalist. Or, more to the point, Putin’s policies aim to increase the marginal product enjoyed by Russian manufacturers and investors.

One way Russia could do this is to open Russia up to a second round of neoliberalization. In the first round, we will recall, high ranking party members teamed up with global capitalists and sold (and bought) the shop, leaving rank-and-file party members with absolutely nothing, or worse. Western investors made off like bandits. But so too did high-ranking party members. A win-win . . . ? A second round would differ from the first. It would be governed by the rule of law, by the robust enforcement of property rights, and with an eye on sharing the marginal product — all of which makes perfect sense until you take a look at Russian courts, Russian property law enforcement, and public institutions, all of which are highly compromised.

A second way for Russia to open up is to drive down the marginal product among its international competitors. It could do this: (1) by holding a monopoly over the goods its competitors crave, chiefly energy; and (2) interfere with the rule of law, and drive up transaction costs among its competitors — say by promoting divisions and bringing its competitors to distrust public institutions.

Many may not be aware that Putin’s role before 1989 was as a disinformation expert for the Kremlin. Soviet strategists theorized that disinformation and division were as effective as or even more effective, both economically and geopolitically, than tanks and bombers. They may have been right.

Think for a moment how tirelessly western oligarchs have worked to silence the free press and curtail political freedoms. Think for a moment about how tirelessly Mitch McConnell, indeed the entire Republican leadership, plus Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, have worked to undermine democratic institutions. Putin and McConnell are working from the same playbook.

The epitaph for this final stage of history might well be not “workers of the world unite,” but “oligarchs of the world unite.” Which makes it worlds different from your mother’s Cold War.

The Talibanization of American Labor

A report on BBC this morning caught my attention. Apparently since the Taliban seizure of power in Afghanistan, the trade in heroin and crystal meth have surged. Whereas previously heroin could only be traded on the black market and traders faced still penalties, now trade occurs openly in the streets. A government spokesman conceded that (1) the people are hard-pressed for money; (2) there is no ready crop substitute to poppies that brings in steady cash; and (3) the government lacks resources to adequately police the trade in heroin and crystal meth.

And yet they have sufficient resources to adequately police the choices of Afghan girls and women?

While I was sitting in my car stewing over this report, it suddenly occurred to me that the problems to which any people devotes its resources is highly flexible. In the US, Republicans have recently voted overwhelmingly not to police white collar crimes, such as money laundering and tax evasion, while doubling down on the removal of tax breaks and supports for working families — thanks Manchin and Sinema. I can just hear McConnell telling his constituents: (1) businesses are hard-pressed for cash; (2) there is no ready alternative to vulture capitalism; and, besides, (3) the government lacks resources to adequately police the business and banking sectors.

Are we witnessing the Talibanization of the US government?

Consider this. Evidently the Holy Prophet is ok with the epidemic of crystal meth and heroin use among poor, hungry, and unemployed Afghans, but is not ok with women taking control of their own lives. The parallel is obvious. (Isn’t it Joe and Kyrsten?) Evidently the Republican god is ok with an unpoliced business and banking sector, but is perfectly ok and equipped to police women’s bodies.

But, of course, nothing happens without value playing its own peculiar role. In Afghanistan, the Taliban needs to raise revenue and trade in heroin is as good — perhaps even a better — commodity for doing just that. In the US, Republicans need to maintain wealth inequality and political power. Women’s bodies is as good a place to wage this war as any. And with a Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court — it used to be Protestant and Jewish — the odds are good that women’s bodies will be sacrificed to win tax breaks (let’s call it “freedom”) for the exceedingly wealthy.

Prove me wrong.

Tax Workers . . . or else

“Democrats, facing a Republican barrage, scale back plans for a crackdown on tax cheating.”

This is the answer to the question: why are we encountering rising inflation if industry is not operating at full capacity and full employment? If and only if investors are not enjoying a false ceiling on taxation will they reinvest in jobs and production. Clearly, however, if they can win higher returns by not investing, they would be foolish to throw good money into jobs and goods. In effect, they are creating shortages where there need be none.

And let there be no doubt. These same Republican legislators — we used to call them criminal tax evaders — will hoot and howl when inflation continues to increase so that the corporations in which they invest can keep up with inflated prices across the market.

If, by contrast, legislators were to demand that corporations and individuals who enjoy wealth paid their fair share, this would greatly reduce the moral hazard generated by the false tax ceiling. And it would immediately be felt in stabilizing prices and wages. But that’s the last thing we want. Right?

Nord Stream 2?

Since I like to listen to Marketplace on APR, I am always disappointed when Kai Ryssdal misses the mark, which he did in his discussion of Nord Stream 2, the Russian built oil pipeline marketed to deliver relief to energy starved markets in Western Europe. Rhetorically (?) the lead into the story asks: does NS2 provide relief or does it build dependence? Yes and Yes. Right?

Russia wants someone — anyone — to pay top ruble for their oil. Since demand for oil in the EU is inelastic (its not as though they could say “no”), Russia was more than ready to pony up 5 of the estimated 10B € it cost to build a pipeline that bypassed the annoying former Soviet states that refuse to bow down to the Kremlin (with Uniper, Wintershall Dea, OMV, Engie, and Royal Dutch Shell covering the other 5). And so like heroin to an addict, once the oil begins to flow, the EU will experience the rush of energy. Yes, Nord Stream 2 will provide relief.

Nevertheless, since it recommits the EU to a carbon future, it also ties them into the economic — and let us admit, the political — fortunes of mother Russia in ways that will, without question, further undermine the social and political integrity of the EU. Russia has made no secret of its own agenda in this regard, playing the anti-US-UK-EU hand it has been dealt brilliantly. Thus, it sells NS2 as a means to secure energy independence from the US-UK-EU; which is part of its larger aim: to weaken the political, social, and economic fabric of the US-UK-EU. Those who doubt this are either not familiar with Russian agit-prop or are willfully ignoring it.

So should the EU cut energy ties to Russia? Not so fast. How will it supply its insatiable energy needs in that case? From the US? From Norway? From the near east? Markets behave everywhere, well . . . like markets. They create dependencies. Dependencies in doing good are fine things. Dependencies in doing evil, not so much. And dependencies over fossil fuels are dependencies that do evil. Thus the critical importance not simply of energy self-sufficiency in the EU; fine words those. But the importance of sustainable energy. There is only one reason why NS2 will be embraced by the EU. And let there be no question, NS2 will be embraced. And that is because the EU’s energy policy is unsustainable. If for no other reason, the EU is compelled to dose itself good and well with the narcotic Russia is promising, which will momentarily ease the pain and reinforce the dependency.

Pericles: Afghan Edition

Ever since President Biden committed himself to fulfill President Trump’s unkept promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan (August 21, 2017; October 8, 2020; October 20, 2020), I have not been able to stop myself from thinking about two classical works: Homer’s Iliad and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Two passages from Thucydides come to mind: first, when General Pericles admits that although his nation-building efforts have utterly failed, it would be unwise for Athens to withdraw; second, when, in the face of mounting casualties Pericles has the audacity to urge mothers to bear more sons to avenge the deaths of their fathers, uncles, brothers, and grandfathers. The passage from the Iliad is no less relevant. It is from the close of the epic poem, where a chorus of women weep and chide the men of Troy and Athens for their supreme folly in believing that war was the answer. The resounding conclusion of the Iliad, announced by the women in chorus is that war is not the answer.

“O my husband . . .” cries Andromache, “cut off from life so young! You leave me a widow, lost in the royal halls — and the boy only a baby, the son we bore together, you and I so doomed. . . . You’ve brought your parents accursed tears and grief but to me most of all you’ve left the horror, the heartbreak!” Then Hecuba leads them in lament. “Hector, dearest to me by far of all my sons . . . whom Apollo, lord of the silver bow, has approached and shot to death with gentle shafts.” Then it is Helen’s turn. “There is no one left in the wide realm of Troy, no friend to treat me kindly — all the countrymen cringe from me in loathing!”

From the eighth century to the fourth, for nearly four centuries, Greeks sang and chanted this story, publicly, often, with feeling. And for nearly four centuries they assiduously avoided war. But then up stepped Pericles, not content to share power with other oligarchs; Pericles, of whom the framers of the US Constitution wrote:

The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the Samnians. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the Magarensians . . . or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened . . . or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, or from a combination of these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war . . . which terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth.

Federalist No. 6

It is this Pericles, celebrated in US high school textbooks as the “father of democracy,” who had the audacity to counter the grief of the Athenian bereaved by mansplaining why the loss of life was their fault and why, in any case, it would be ill-advised to withdraw troops.

Do not think that the only issue at stake is slavery or freedom: there is also loss of empire, and the danger from the hatred incurred under your rule. You no longer have the option to abdicate from your empire, should anyone out of present fear affect this idea as a noble-sounding means of disengagement. The empire you possess is by now like a tyranny — perhaps wrong to acquire it, but certainly dangerous to let it go.

Peloponnesian War ii.64

This is the argument now being trumpeted throughout the US Congress: perhaps wrong to acquire it, but certainly dangerous to let it go. Yes. Indeed.

But even more cynical are those who ape Pericles’ Funeral Address, which urges mothers to add more and more sons to the unending fodder of war in order to avenge the deaths of more and more sons sacrificed . . . to avenge the deaths of more and more sons sacrificed . . . So that they might not have died in vain! (It is, in fact, all vanity.)

Those of you who are still of an age to bear children should hold firm to the hope of further sons. In their own lives some will find that new children help them forget those they have lost, and for the city there will be double benefit — both maintenance of the population and also a safeguard, since those without children at stake do not face the same risks as the others and cannot make a balanced or judicious contribution to debate.

Peloponnesian War ii.44

In other words, those who have not lost sons or husbands or uncles or brothers cannot contribute to the debate over whether we should perpetuate the sacrifice, ad nauseam.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if women’s education and freedom can only be maintained in a community by massive force of arms into the indefinite future, then how can this strategy ever be a strategy of life? Women’s freedom is absolutely central to this question. But freedom won by perpetual violence is not freedom. It is tyranny, perhaps wrong to acquire it, but certainly dangerous to let it go.

But then I notice that these works have been in the public domain for over two and a half millennia. Anyone can read and study them. And, yet, here we are.

UnHerd | think again

Challenging the herd with new and bold thinking in philosophy, politics and culture.
— Read on unherd.com/

A graduate school friend shared a post from http:www.unherd.com. The post left me conflicted. On the one hand, for twenty years Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics has anchored every course I have taught. More specifically, Aristotle’s distinction between the “bovine” approach to life, which counts anything that is pleasurable good, and mistakes the good for the pleasurable; and the life of “virtue” or aristes, where “the good” is counted as that which depends on no other, but upon which all else depends. It is from this principle that Aristotle then derived the social or political character of the human being, the good for the many being superior to the good for the one, the principle covering the many superior to the principle covering the one. On the other hand, the supreme classicist Friedrich Nietzsche took Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics at face value to derive its natural successor: the good for the many could not possibly be the good at all. The “good for the many” was, by definition, the very “herd” mentality that Aristotle had initially castigated. It followed, for Nietzsche, that Aristotle was mistaken.

I am not a critic of Nietzsche. At least not a uncritical one. But I also feel that, in this instance, he was a less than careful reader of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the good for all was not, under any circumstances, a democratically derived principle. The good could only be thought by those who acted good — who were themselves good. And being good was not itself a matter of thought, but a consequence of care. For Aristotle, any individual who had been cared for — fed, clothed, secured against harm, sung to, read to, walked with, talked with — in Greek society only a privileged individual was equipped to act virtuously and therefore privileged to know the good, the true, and the beautiful. In theory, therefore, every individual who was thus privileged could be equipped to judge, to identify the right path.

What Nietzsche — and Aristotle — objected to was granting to individuals who had not been so equipped the power to judge. This, for Aristotle, would be the equivalent to granting preference to “the herd.”

There is a curious anthropological footnote to this dissonant discourse. Anthropologists have shown that so long as communities maintained a size not exceeding one hundred and twenty-five, lying is ineffective. For communities larger than 125, the only way to organize effectively is to collectively embrace shared lies. To this extent, the herd mentality is a function of size. From this vantage-point, Aristotle was eager to press the limits of this functional limit. He hypothesized that freedom could expand the circle of individuals equipped to conduct their lives transparently: freedom from fear, freedom of knowledge, freedom from hunger, freedom from loneliness, freedom from want.

The classical republican theory is that a society composed entirely of highly educated, healthy, secure, safe, cared for individuals could conduct themselves individually and collectively as an independent society, irrespective of their size, far beyond the anthropological limit of 125 individuals.

Ideally, I would like to believe that radical republicans are right. A highly educated, cared for, well fed, healthy community could push the anthropological limit. But, of course, this was not at all Nietzsche’s ideal. Instead, he viewed the vast majority of human beings, exceeding ninety per cent, as irredeemable members of the herd. Only a minuscule few could unherd. And, in a very real way, he was right. Until all members of a community are sufficiently equipped, they will remain members of the herd, and those who are not members of the herd will be condemned either to manipulate the herd or remain subject to their judgments.

This means, however, that unherding requires a concerted, collective, effort to generate the conditions that make for freedom. It requires an operationalization of achieving the unherd, a very un-Nietzchean idea.

The modernity of anti-modernism in Islam

“Throughout the colonized lands of the Middle East and North Africa, the voice of modernism and integration with the Enlightenment ideals of the European colonialists was consistently drowned out by the far louder and more aggressive voice of traditionalism and resistance to the insufferable yoke of imperialism.”

— No god but God by Reza Aslan
https://a.co/bWWTQjj

And, yet, Aslan would be the first to admit that empire was often resisted in a voice that is as much the voice of capital is empire: the voice of nationalism. Islam and Islamic empire was born prior to the emergence of capitalism. In its best expression, Islamic empire was multi-ethnic and even multi-religious, even if the clan or tribe always lay not far beneath the surface. But this means that the drawing out and extension of what we imagine the past to have been — traditioning — which Hadith got wrong even before the Holy Prophet was buried, should not be confused with its fetishized form under capitalism, which, in its opposition to the specific fetish Islam calls “the West,” incorporates the logic of capitalism itself into its very core. Modernism and the Enlightenment are not enemies of traditionalism, but its perfect complement; traditionalism is among its most illustrious fetishes. A deep critique of Islam, a critique in which Islam redeems criticism, has yet to be written.

Divine Violence

I have been chanting the Benedictine hours through Covid. This entails many, many Psalms, every day, every week, along with the accompanying Canticles. Much of it is about war. Much of it places God at the head of armies. Initially I found this deeply offensive. The Trump White House has changed my views. Was I naive?

I have never been a pacifist. Even though I find the retrospective arguments for the US entering WWII historically unconvincing — we did not enter the war when we learned that Hitler was killing Jews, Communists, and homosexuals — I believe defeating fascism was a relative good.

But I have also never countenanced religious justification for war.

Well. That’s kind of the point of the Hebrew sacred text. And the Psalms. And the Canticles. So. How do you handle that?

Lately, I have become increasingly convinced that truly evil people — like Trump and his supporters — need to be defeated. They will be using real guns, real bombs, real violence. They will be fighting for the right to eliminate women’s rights, eliminate gay and lesbian rights, eliminate the rights of Muslims. They will be fighting with real weapons.

In graduate school I studied German Nazi culture. Not so much the war. I read about the war. But I was more interested in Nazi law, Nazi education, Nazi advertising, etc. These people wanted to eliminate Jews, homosexuals, and anyone who displayed divergent mental, physical, or spiritual characteristics. Who will defeat them?

I am now reading the war texts of the Hebrew Bible in a different light. Who defeats this evil? What does David (or whoever) mean by the arm of God? The sword of God? The army of God? Who is that? Who does this?

In the Hebrew sacred text, these are people. They are us. Although they are credited with divine agency.

Emptying into the streets. Holding banners. Pounding the pavement. Descending on state houses. All of this is good. This is the army of God. But the Hebrew sacred text suggests that there might be another stage.

Obama’s and the Left’s Blind Spot

As I near the end of volume one of Barrack Obama’s memoir, The Promised Land (2020), two sections are coming to stand out for me; sections that are indicative of a blind spot Obama shares with many of his detractors on the left. In one of these sections, Obama offers a sympathetic reading of the visceral white Christian nationalist hostility to him and everything he stands for. In the second passage, he openly wonders at why Republicans refuse to entertain legislation that only months earlier with Bush in the White House they had lustily endorsed. The two phenomena are intimately related. But Obama, and many of his left-wing detractors, keep them separate.

The hatred directed toward him, Obama attributes to un- and underemployment, to having been ignored by members of both parties since the 1970s. The refusal of Republicans to countenance legislation they had supported only months earlier, legislation that would lift working families out of poverty and extend the same privileges to them that are enjoyed by the educated, investor class, Obama cannot quite fathom. Why would Republicans refuse to help those whose anger is directed against him, against Obama.

This dilemma ought to be familiar. Left-wing Obama detractors regularly lay into the elitist, educated class, blaming them for having ignored the working class. The elite, educated class should abandon their identity-based, environmental, tree-hugging, trade- and tech-hungry narratives and embrace the working class, manufacturing carbon-heavy, predominantly white and male narrative that feeds anger against Wall Street Democrats like Obama. Then Democrats could seize the white Christian nationalist initiative and defeat the Republicans at their own game, like Andrew Jackson did, when he fed white anger by rounding up and slaughtering Indians in droves, before expanding the slave state into Texas.

Remember, Jackson too donned an anti-elitist, anti-banker, anti-Wall Street demeanor. But, of course, the bankers had the last say. They were only all too happy to have Jackson doing their bidding. And that precisely is the blind spot.

Indian Wells did not create white Christian male anger against the elites. Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s neoliberalism was a petri-dish for white Christian male anger. Indian Wells simply packaged that anger. They created the narrative that is now on the tongues of every left- and right-wing pundit: white Christian men are angry. They are angry at educated, elitist, social democrats who wish to deprive them of their freedom. Why would Republicans want to promote this narrative?

If you don’t know the answer to this question, you are not paying attention.