====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
To sum up my view on this, all sorts of things can be compared by analogy, analogy by definition not being an equality or identity of items; that is analogy is always by definition an imperfect comparison. Thus to say that the Prussian war on France has the same character as the US Civil War or is similar to it in any fundamental sense is an incredible stretch. The point of departure for me is not what the needs of capital or great powers are, but the human aspect. Thus as with the Holocaust in World War II, the issue of human slavery actually was the fundamental human and moral issue of high order that caused this war to be justified and necessary to progressives and people of good will. The needs of capital and great power reasoning, while perhaps interesting and illuminating in an academic sense, are alien ruling class doctrines that should be rejected and certainly aren't my point of departure, although it is of the think tank elite who are always, with genteel equivocations about contradictory realities etc etc.(hey, aren't we "nation building" in Iraq and Afghanistan?) justifying imperialist adventures on that basis. Thus any equitable similarities between the cause of Prussia and its minions in the 1870 and the US Civil War, a social revolution on a great scale, are very slight. The argument to the contrary is, quite frankly, an insult to the millions of Americans, particularly African-Americans, who fought in this struggle. To listen to Marxists give apologies and justifications for this is very disturbing and foreshadows what socialists did in 1914 and also brings to mind Bakunin's warning that Marx and Marxism is something people need to really watch their backs around, a potential tyrannical menace of the intelligensia who can justify anything with their contempt for morality and their [fascistic] "scientific" reasoning. Personally, I could care less what the needs of German capitalists were in 1870 or now, beyond understanding the machinations of these creeps. that somehow this impinged slightly on the prospects of the labor aristocracy at the time. . . Hey, tell me a sob story! that's comparable to the plight of the African slaves in the South? Bullshit!! go ahead and have a war over it, but don't expect me to support it. Shouldn't it be telling that actual Hitler was a big advocate of this narrative of 1870, No? No, in 1870 Prussia had more railroad track than all of France according to Wikipedia. It's cause was thus not a compelling one. Thus, as in 1914, neither side-the gravediggers of the Paris Commune-merited support. Thus, sadly, it was actually Bakunin's position that foreshadowed the approach of Lenin and the socialist-and anarchists-in 1914. > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
