A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

[American Dream]

"Fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism. It first endeavors to transmute the anticapitalism of the masses into nationalism."

— Daniel Guérin

[jakell]

I'm wondering if at some point the forum can once again look at that F-word and hopefully tease a manageable and useful meaning out of it

On the one hand it is an empty snarl-word. On the other hand it can be found to be stuffed so full of emotional/cognitive intricacies as to cause any group of honest hardworking investigators to give up on it. Thereby letting it revert back to a snarl-word.

I'm also wondering WTF is the 'anticapitalism of the masses'?

[Sounder]

"Fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism. It first endeavors to transmute the anticapitalism of the masses into nationalism."

— Daniel Guérin

Communism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism. It first endeavors to transmute the assets of the total population into the property of the state, and then it uses said assets as collateral for loans,-from banks.

--Sounder

I do agree with Daniel also, in case your worried about it AD.

[American Dream]

Daniel Guerin was a very important anti-fascist figure, amongst other things:


http://libcom.org/history/articles/1904 ... iel-guerin

Guerin, Daniel, 1904-1988



A biography of the French libertarian communist and gay liberationist intellectual, Daniel Guerin.

Daniel Guerin was born in Paris on 19th May 1904. His family was well-off, with a liberal and Dreyfusard* outlook. His family background was conducive to a vivid interest in the arts, letters and music. He distinguished himself at university. Reading Marx, Proudhon, Sorel, Lenin and Trotsky in 1930, Guerin broke with his bourgeois upbringing and began to be active on the left. Later, as he says in his own words: “the reading of Bakunin, in the six volume edition of Max Nettlau and James Guillaume, immured me to any type of authoritarian socialism, whether it called itself Jacobin, Marxist, Leninist or Trotskyist. Under the effects of the commotion provoked by this reading, I was led to fundamentally revise the sentiments of admiration that the revolutionary strategy of Lenin had inspired in me... I concluded…that socialism must rid itself of the fake notion of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in order to rediscover its libertarian authenticity. This led me, when I revised my historic work on the French revolution to substitute ‘revolutionary constraints’ for ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’”.

In 1936 Daniel had been active with Marceau Pivert in the left wing of the SFIO (forerunner of the Socialist Party). By successive stages he moved in a libertarian direction. One of these stages was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He first of all took up “What I call classic anarchism , which I explained in ‘The Youth of Libertarian Socialism’(1959) then ‘Anarchism’ (1965) and simultaneously ‘Neither God nor Master’, an anthology of anarchism, where at the side of Bakunin space was given to Stirner, Proudhon, Kropotkin and many others. Then distancing myself a little from classical anarchism and not turning my back so much on my previous Marxist readings, I published ‘For a Libertarian Marxism’, whose title, I admit, leant itself to confusion, and shocked my new libertarian friends”.

After the 1968 events in France, in which he took an active part, marching at the side of Daniel Cohn-Bendit on many demonstrations, he helped set up the Mouvement Communiste Libertaire (MCL) with Georges Fontenis. Following the collapse of the MCL, he was active in the Organisation Communiste Libertaire (OCL) – Mark I - and then the Organisation Revolutionnaire Anarchiste ( ORA) and then in the Union des Travailleurs Communistes Libertaires from 1980 up until his death.

“For nearly a quarter of a century I attached myself to libertarian socialism or libertarian communism (the word ‘anarchism’ appeared too restrictive to me, and I only adopted it if it was completed by the word ‘communist’.)”

Daniel took a position against fascism from the start and his ‘Fascism and Big Business’ is still read to this day. He took a leading part in the struggle against French colonialism - he protested against the situation in Algeria from the 1930s right up until the 1960s. In the last few years of his life he was active in the fight against French occupation of New Caledonia (Kanaky). He was a convinced and active anti-militarist, and as a working journalist and proofreader was active in the CGT union central. He was not afraid to proclaim his homosexuality from the beginning of the gay liberation movement. His memoirs are remarkably honest on his sexual preferences.

I only met Daniel once whilst attending a conference of the ORA as an observer from the UK-based Anarchist Workers Association in 1975. He had a fluent command of English, developed during his exile in the Second World War, and had an acute interest in the situation in Britain. Nestor Makhno in his ‘ABC of the Revolutionary Anarchist’ wrote that nine out of ten intellectuals would not rally to the cause of the oppressed or would attempt to fool them. One out of the ten would be their friend and fight with them against the mystification of the others. Daniel Guerin was that one in ten, a singular person, the intellectual devoted to the cause of libertarian communism. In his own words: “Libertarian communism is not an approximation and not a dogma without variation…it should not be rooted in the past, but should be a point of departure for the future. The only conviction that animates me is that the future social revolution will be neither Muscovite despotism nor social democratic chloroforming, that it will not be authoritarian but libertarian and self-managed, or if you like councillist”.

Daniel Guerin died in the night of April 14th 1988, at the age of 83.

By Nick Heath, edited by libcom


* Dreyfusards were opposed to the anti-Semitic victimisation of a Jewish officer in the French Army in the Dreyfus Affair

[jakell]

"Fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism. It first endeavors to transmute the anticapitalism of the masses into nationalism."

— Daniel Guérin

Communism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism. It first endeavors to transmute the assets of the total population into the property of the state, and then it uses said assets as collateral for loans,-from banks.

--Sounder

I do agree with Daniel also, in case your worried about it AD.

Nice instructive switcheroo there Sounder.

Communism doesn't function so much as a snarl- word anymore, but it certainly did a few decades back. Now we have the F-word which has the extra value of causing peoples brains to glaze over.

[Sounder]

Good profile on Daniel AD thanks. Notice that his thinking changed over time.

Nice instructive switcheroo there Sounder.

I would like to think that it is more than a simple switcheroo. It is what I have thought about Communism since I was a kid. I guess some thinking doesn’t change.

Please, anybody, change my thinking.

[jakell]

Nice instructive switcheroo there Sounder.

I would like to think that it is more than a simple switcheroo. It is what I have thought about Communism since I was a kid. I guess some thinking doesn’t change.

Oh it is more that simple , it is deceptively simple, hence my use of the word 'instructive'.

At the very minimum it produces a new perspective on the 'fascism' dimension, and perspective is often the first thing to diminish when certain emotive words are invoked.

[elfismiles]

I am not at all familiar with Gilad Atzmon - though I figured he'd likely have come up in this and allegedly related threads and, sho-nuff, forum search brought up his name here.

A local Austin friend just posted this...

Gilad Atzmon at Brave New Books 2/24/2014: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDcoGoB71yM

Published on Feb 27, 2014

Former IDF soldier Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, writer, and devoted political artist. At this appearance at Brave New Books in Austin, Texas, Gilad plays some music with local jazz guitarist Trevor LaBonte and discusses Jewish identity politics, Israel, Zionism, the oppressiveness of political correctness, and the growing shift of consciousness.

[seemslikeadream]

...1...2....3.....

you should read these threads more often

I'm sure you will be well informed very soon

but if Alice doesn't show up here...maybe you should check out her opinion ...two sides of a story would be nice

[Searcher08]

@Miles
Quick head-up - Jeff prohibited posting Gilad's stuff here and if you do you will get suspended.
This came in after the Atzmon thread which nearly destroyed the board.

[seemslikeadream]

oh I didn't know that ...how does one know? Is it pinned somewhere?

[American Dream]

@Miles
Quick head-up - Jeff prohibited posting Gilad's stuff here and if you do you will get suspended.
This came in after the Atzmon thread which nearly destroyed the board.

I'm not urging a revival of the Atzmon food fight, as I don't think that's likely to be very productive at all.

That said, the above is news to me.

A specific cite would be helpful.

[solace]

@Miles
Quick head-up - Jeff prohibited posting Gilad's stuff here and if you do you will get suspended.
This came in after the Atzmon thread which nearly destroyed the board.

I'm not urging a revival of the Atzmon food fight, as I don't think that's likely to be very productive at all.

That said, the above is news to me.

A specific cite would be helpful.

I think I need to be clear upfront in this one: I'll regard advocacy here for Atzmon as a violation of RI's posting guidelines

.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35253&p=473208&hilit=+atzmon#p473208

[American Dream]

@Miles
Quick head-up - Jeff prohibited posting Gilad's stuff here and if you do you will get suspended.
This came in after the Atzmon thread which nearly destroyed the board.

I'm not urging a revival of the Atzmon food fight, as I don't think that's likely to be very productive at all.

That said, the above is news to me.

A specific cite would be helpful.

I think I need to be clear upfront in this one: I'll regard advocacy here for Atzmon as a violation of RI's posting guidelines

.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35253&p=473208&hilit=+atzmon#p473208

That's very, very different from what Searcher wrote but thanks for the reminder, solace!



.

[Searcher08]

You are personally teaching me so much AD!

@Miles
Quick head-up - Jeff prohibited posting Gilad's stuff here and if you do you will get suspended.
This came in after the Atzmon thread which nearly destroyed the board.

I'm not urging a revival of the Atzmon food fight, as I don't think that's likely to be very productive at all.

That said, the above is news to me.

A specific cite would be helpful.

bluenoseclaret was given a two-week timeout after posting an Atzmon post.

If anyone wants to see the debate, there is the board melting thread already described or MondoWeiss. Temporary loss of the will to live may be involved!!

Good discussion, bad subject line.

I don't think Atzmon is what we talk about when we talk about Krishnamurti. And after the forum's latest near-death experience in our last Atzmon thread, I think I need to be clear upfront in this one: I'll regard advocacy here for Atzmon as a violation of RI's posting guidelines.