Chomsky should retire. This attempt to understand one period by comparing it to some other historical period is the surest way to be wrong.
There are NO parallels between the U.S. and Wimar Germany. None at all. It is always possible by exercisign a bit of fancy separated from practice to compare almost anything t o anything and sound wise. But it utterly distorts political judgment and provides entertainment for those who choose to be merely political spectators (or bleacher bums as they call one category of Chicago Cubs fans). Carerol On 5/17/2011 11:21 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote: > [From Louis Proyect's blog]: > > Robinson is not the first highly respected thinker to invoke the Weimar > Republic. Last April, when Chris Hedges interviewed Noam Chomsky for > Truthdig, the two concurred that the USA was like the doomed German > republic. Chomsky said: > > It is very similar to late Weimar Germany. The parallels are striking. There > was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most > striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the > Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the > Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. > > ----------------- > > I want to add a different way to look at this. > > I've thought about Weimar a lot and studied some of its history to position > Leo Strauss in his social history as a student and early scholar in Zionism > and Jewish studies in Berlin. His authoritarian ideals for a republic were a > result of those Weimar years and those studies. > > We are not in Weimar conditions at the moment. At various points in Weimar > the chaos was so bad, the food distribution system was breaking down, > hyperinflation was wiping out middle class wealth, and reparations were > draining the state treasury. We don't have eleven political parties > struggling to get majority coalitions. We don't have a several centuries of > antisemiticism built into the national myth. The list goes on and on. > > On the other hand, what does resemble Weimar (and Vienna) to a certain > extent is the rise of a reactionary wing of intellectuals who would later > justify the Third Reich as necessary for national stability and to preserve > the state. The best known examples were Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and > Werner Heisenberg. (Heisenberg may have just been a highly nationalistic > conservative. He was a scout leader in of the Wandervogel groups in the > 1920s. Strauss was in one of the Zionists versions, called the Blau Weiss. > Nation building must start early.) > > What's humorous in these comparations, Strauss probably thought he was > headed into another Weimar in Chicago in 1968 and so did his well known > students Allen Bloom, Harvey Mansfield, and other reactionary academics. > Their political vision, heavily influence by their readings of european > intellectual history under Strauss, Cropsey et al, was a cross between the > late Roman Republic, Machiavelli's musings in exile, the bad parts of Plato, > Aristotle, and various items drawn from the Old Testament. > > There is also Carl Schmitt to mention and his concept of the political as a > single national body under a strong leader where Jews were the enemy of that > national body. Schmitt was part of the legal structuring of the early > National Socialist state. So there is the link to the Nazis. The wiki on > Schitt is pretty scary reading, but worth the time. Note particular the > theory of state of emergency and one man sovereign power: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt > > I've got Mansfield's translation of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and > read most of it. If you go down the list of Mansfield's books you get the > general idea of what's behind the educated and elite wing of the neocons: > Aristotle, Burke, Machiavelli, de Tocqueville, and Hobbes. There is a pretty > good and short summary of Mansfield's political philosophy and his politics > on wiki. He is a real piece of work: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Mansfield > > ``Mansfield, has argued that the President of the United States has > extra-legal powers ... observing that the U.S. Constitution does not ask the > President to take an oath to execute the laws, but rather, to execute the > office of the president, which is larger.'' > > So the president is charged with duties beyond the law? > > An interesting comparsion is the corporate model with CEO's and VPs in > charge of everything. College and university administrative structures work > on similar top-down system with their presidents and chancellors. What the > hell are these institutional structures doing in a democracy? > > The neocon school of philosophy has a fact v. value argument that makes them > enemies of empirical based political science or empirical based anything. > The school values its own judgements and makes political philosophy into a > system of deduction from selected past and present authority. It's big enemy > is the enlightenment project to form a modern state based on popular > sovereignty, equal representation, equality before the law...etc. > > This denial of the validity of empiricism is a pretty interesting problem. > If you privilage the value side over the facts, you don't need to study the > world, history, or find out what the polity thinks. You don't have to bother > with facts because you know everything you need to in order to do what you > want---and since your intentions are good, we know you will do the right > thing. That same arrogance of power is what got us into the war on terror, > Iraq, and Afghanistan. It helps keep the US linked to Israel and on and on. > In other words, the neocon ideas carried out as foreign policy have brought > death, chaos and ruin to at least hundreds of thousands. Applied to domestic > policies they have eroded the constitution's separation of powers, drained > away civil rights, and re-enforced the national security state through > expansion of executive power. > > We all know what non-fact based policies in economics have done. > > The best weapon against neoliberal theorists are empirical studies with lots > of statistics, charts, and graphs. In other words the facts of neoliberalism > can be used to break down its supposed Hayekian values in such a system of > thought. > > On the other hand the same anti-empiricism gang seem to need empiricism when > it comes to spying on the polity. The rulers, military, and police need to > know every detail they can about people who are using their freedom of > speech and assembly to change centralized power. > > What was the point of this long rant? Ideas are a medium of history. The > last thing we need is a Germany-Austria unification with German political > philosophy wedded to Austrian economics. The point was the ideas imported > from Weimar and Vienna that have become the doctrine of US political > economy, are reshaping our political, legal, and economic institutions. > These political and legal efforts form a preparatory phase so if and when > the socio-economic conditions get worse, people will have little > institutional protection in elected government and law. > > The recent events of Benton Harbour serve as examples. The governor declared > a state of emergency and appointed a finance manager who abolished the city > council and now rules by decree in the name of what's best for the economy. > > CG > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
