DOCSLIB.ORG

The Actuality of Communism the Actuality of Communism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Actuality of Communism the Actuality of Communism The Actuality of Communism The Actuality of Communism BRUNO BOSTEELS VI'.RSO First published by Ve rso 2011 © Bruno Bosteels 2011 All rights reserved Themoral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF OEG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New LeftBoo ks ISBN-13: 978-1- 84467-695- 8 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record fo r this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Bodoni Book by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the US by MapJe Vail Contents Introduction The Ontological Turn 42 2 Politics, Infrapolitics, and the Impolitical 75 3 Leftism and Its Discontents 129 4 In Search of the Act 170 5 TheActuality of Communism 225 Conclusion 269 Acknowledgments 289 Index 291 Introduction Communism is the solution of the riddle of history, and knows itself to be the solution. - Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 More than a solution to the problems we are facing today, communism is itself the name of a problem: a name for the difficult task of breaking out of the confines of the market -and -state framework, a task for which no quick formula is at hand. - Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, Thenas Farce In the Name of Communism "Of What Is Communism the Name?" Such was the guid­ ing question behind a recent special dossier of ContreTemps, the French journal of communist critique co-founded by the late Daniel Bensa"id. Partly in response to the March 2009 London conference "On the Idea of Communism;' organized by Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek, partly as a tongue-in­ cheek allusion to Alain Badiou's bestseller The Meaning of 2 THE ACTUALITY OF COMMUNISM Sarkozy, the original French title of which would translate literally as a/What Is Sarkozy the Na me?, partly to defy the half-hearted celebrations of November 2009 in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and partly in preparation for another international conference, "Potentialities of Communism: Of What Is Communism the Name Today?:' held in Paris in January 2010 just days after Bensald succumbed to a long-term illness, a number of ' authors from a variety of backgrounds were asked to define the possible stakes involved in the current revival of interest in the idea and practice of communism: "Have the commu­ nist idea and the communist name been historically compro­ mised in the last century by their statist and bureaucratic uses, to the point of having become unpronounceable? Or else, of what-idea of another world, critical utopia, emanci­ patory movement, strategic hypothesis-can communism be the name today? And wherein lies its still active actuality?"l Daniel Bensa'id,Stathis Kouvelakis, and Francis Sitel, "De quoi Ie communisme est-il le nom?" ContreTemps: ,Revue de critique communiste4 (Winter 2009): 12. In the firstsection ofthe introduc­ tion here, I rework and expand my original answer to the editors' opening question. Other contributors to the ContreTemps dossier include Ve ronique Bergen, Olivier Besancenot, Alex Callinicos, Pierre Dardot, Isabelle Garo, Michel Kozlowski, Christian Laval, Michel Surya, and Ellen Meiksins Wo od. The proceedings from the March 2009 London conference have been published in English as The Idea of Communism, ed. Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek (�ondon: Ve rso, 2010). Alain Badiou's De quoi Sarkozy est-il Ie nom? (Paris: Lignes, 2007) has been translated into English as INTRODUCTION 3 In homage to Bensa'id-whom I met in person only once, in Lisbon, but whose unparalleled internationalist vision and generosity serve as a constant reminder of what an intellec­ tual can and should do-I would want the following chapters to be read as ongoing attempts to answer his request and its guiding question. My original response, like that of many other contributors not only to the special dossier of ContreTemps but also to the proceedings from the Paris conference partially published in a special issue of the journal Actuel Marx, consisted rather coyly in raising a new set of subsidiary questions. Firstly, indeed, what is to be done with the past and with the burden of history? Can we formulate a form of communism-as idea, as movement, as hy pothesis, or as program; for the time being this dispute would not matter TheMeaning of Sarkozy, trans. David Fernbach (London: Verso, 2008). This book's last part was also published separately as "The Communist Hypothesis:' New Left Review 49 (2008): 29-42. The program for the January 2010 Paris conference "Puissances du communisme (De quoi communisme est-il aujourd'hui Ie nom?):' organized by Daniel Bensa'id,can be fo und on-line at www.contre­ temps.eu together with several videos; its participants partially overlapped with those from the London conference, most notably in the persons of Toni Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Alberto To scano, and Slavoj Zizek, while other speakers, including Etienne Balibar, Alex Callinicos, and Isabelle Garo, despite an underlying sympa­ thy, were openly or covertly critical of Badiou's initiative. Some of the contributions to this conference can also be fo und in the special dossier titled Communisme?, edited by Jacques Bidet for the journal Actuel Marx 48 (2010). 4 THE ACTUALITY OF COMMUNISM much-without automatically having to face up to the disastrous evi.dence stored in the official and unofficial archives? Or is the choice of one of these options, say in favor of communism as an ideological hypothesis rather than as a real movement, already bound to impact our capacity to confront this history critically? This is a genera­ tional question, no doubt, even though the notion of gener­ ation, steeped as it is in the ideology of consumerism based on the model of the parallel development of individuals and eras, seems to me to provide a false window. But it is also a question of transmission and contestation between and across generations, a problem of which Bensald toward the end of his life became acutely aware. "So something has come to an end together with the twentieth century, between the fall (or the toppling) of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks. Something, but what? From this question in suspense is borne an undeniable malaise in transmission;' Bensald wrote in an homage of his own, to the Trotskyist intellectual, militant, and editor Jacques Hassoun, before addressing this malaise or discontent under the rubric of the following questions: What is to be transmitted? How to transmit? And why transmit? But also, I would add so as to make explicit an understated self-criticism: to what extent should we trust the old masters in terms of what they decide to transmit or not in the first place?2 2 ,Daniel Bensaid, "Malaise dans Ia transmission. Jacques Hassoun ou Ie Sage engage" (author's typescript). Bensaid's homage, with the INTRODUCTION 5 If it is communism that is a new idea in Europe today, as Badiou claims, why are the soixante-huitards, whether Trotskyist, Maoist, anarchist or other, the ones to proclaim this novelty, all the while repeating their old quibbles in the process? Should communism not abandon this "most intol­ erable burden" that is also the "once upon a time" or the "it was" of the past, of Es war, as Nietzsche used to say in Thus Sp oke Zarathustra, to which Freud seemed to reply with hi� own maxim of Wo es war soli ich werden, "Where it was, I shall come to be;' as if to echo Zarathustra's So wollte ich es! as the decisive act of the will that solves the riddle of every Es war (''All 'it was' is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful chance­ until the creative will says to it: 'But I willed it thus!"'3)? From pun in its title on Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents (usually translated into French as Malaise dans la civilisation), specif­ ically takes the form of a review of two books by Jacques Hassoun, Les Contrebandiers de la memoire (Paris: Syros, 1994) and Actualites d'un malaise (Paris: Eres, 1997). For a portrait of Bensai'd's life, character, and work that should help the cross-generational trans­ mission, see Sebastian Budgen, "The Red Hussar: Daniel Bensai'd, 1946-2010:' International Socialism: A Quarterly Jo urnal of Socialist The ory 127 (June 2010), available on-line at www.isj.org.uk. See also the special issue of Lignes 32 (May 2010), with contributions from Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Stathis Kouvelakis, Michael L6wy, Enzo Traverso and others. 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, "Von der Erl6sung:' Also sp rach Zarathustra in We rke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 6: 1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,196 8), 177; Thus Sp oke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1969), 163. Sigmund Freud's maxim Wo es war soU ich werden ("Where it was, I shall come to be" or "Where id was, there 6 THE ACTUALITY OF COMMUNISM all sides, we are bombarded with calls to live up to our duty to remember the .past disasters of humanity, lest history repeat itself, but more often than not this inflation of memory comes at the cost of postponing a genuinely critical history of ourselves from the point of view of the present. "As history becomes opaque, a mania for commemoration has devel­ oped. A tyrannical one-way 'duty of memory' has gradually silenced the necessary dialogue between history and memory.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Writings from the Early Notebooks Edited by Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas Copyright Information More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67180-4 - Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from the Early Notebooks Edited by Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas Copyright Information More information FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Writings from the Early Notebooks EDITED BY RAYMOND GEUSS University of Cambridge ALEXANDER NEHAMAS Princeton University TRANSLATED BY LADISLAUS LÖB University of Sussex © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67180-4 - Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from the Early Notebooks Edited by Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas Copyright Information More information CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ The selected material in this volume is used and re-translated from Friedrich Nietzsche, SÄMTLICHE WERKE, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, by arrangement with STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS © Cambridge University Press, for this edition First published Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge World English Language rights to the complete critical edition of Friedrich Nietzsche, SÄMTLICHE WERKE, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, are owned exclusively by Stanford University Press and the -volume Colli-Montinari Edition is being translated and published by Stanford University
    [Show full text]
  • REVIEWS 393 Writings from the Late Notebooks Friedrich Nietzsche
    REVIEWS 393 Writings from the Late Notebooks Friedrich Nietzsche; ed. Rüdiger Bittner, trans. Kate Sturge Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, xliv + 286 pp. $50 h.c., $18 pbk. 0521008875 DANIEL W. SMITH Nietzsche famously wrote most of his later books while he was out on long walks in the Swiss Alps or in the towns of the French and Italian Riviera. He carried notebooks with him, and would write down his thoughts as they occurred to him, often in an almost illegible handwriting that he (or his amanuensis, Peter Gast) would later have to decipher. These notes would then serve as the basis for his published works. “Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely,” Nietzsche advised in his autobiography, Ecce Homo; “The sedentary life is the real sin against the holy spirit” (“Why I am So Clever,” §1). Many, if not most, of these notebooks have survived, and are currently housed in the Goethe- Schiller archive in Weimar, Germany. The existence of these unpublished notes (the Nachlass), however, has sparked controversy among Nietzsche’s commentators, largely over the question of whether it is legitimate to make use of the notes in interpreting Nietzsche, or whether one should rely exclu- sively on his published texts. In Writings from the Late Notebooks, editor Rüdiger Bittner has pub- lished a generous selection of excerpts (about one third of the total) from the notebooks Nietzsche kept between April 1885 and August 1888, shortly before his collapse in January 1889. In his introduction to the volume, Bittner has provided a persuasive justification for publishing a translation of these selections.
    [Show full text]
  • The Idea of New Middle Ages in the Light of Friedrich Nietzsche’S Nihilism
    ROCZNIKI KULTUROZNAWCZE Tom/Vol. XI, numer/number 4 – 2020 DOI: http://doi.org/10.18290/rkult20114-6 PIOTR PASTERCZYK * THE IDEA OF NEW MIDDLE AGES IN THE LIGHT OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S NIHILISM What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastro- phe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to dec- ade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. — Friedrich NIETZSCHE, The Will to Power, Preface The historical period of the Middle Ages was a time of enormous change in the heart of European culture, which we can call a catastrophe in the am- bivalent sense of the end and dawn. The Middle Ages was the definitive end of the old Greek–Roman world and, at the same time, it was the definitive dawn of the Christian world preparing the new shape of Western Civilisa- tion. The concept of New Middle Ages refers to the cultural change occurring inside the modern and postmodern world according to Oskar Spengler’s idea of the end of Western Culture and the Nietzschean idea of nihilism.
    [Show full text]
  • Nietzsche's Nihilism in Walter Benjamin
    Nietzsche’s Nihilism in Walter Benjamin Mauro Ponzi Nietzsche’s Nihilism in Walter Benjamin Mauro Ponzi Rome , Italy ISBN 978-3-319-39266-0 ISBN 978-3-319-39267-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39267-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958128 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2017 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
    [Show full text]
  • Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School April 2021 Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis William A. B. Parkhurst University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Parkhurst, William A. B., "Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis" (2021). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/8839 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis by William A. B. Parkhurst A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Joshua Rayman, Ph.D. Lee Braver, Ph.D. Vanessa Lemm, Ph.D. Alex Levine, Ph.D. Date of Approval: February 16th, 2021 Keywords: Fredrich Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, History of Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Copyright © 2021, William A. B. Parkhurst Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Carol Hyatt Parkhurst (RIP), who always believed in my education even when I did not. I am also deeply grateful for the support of my father, Peter Parkhurst, whose support in varying avenues of life was unwavering. I am also deeply grateful to April Dawn Smith. It was only with her help wandering around library basements that I first found genetic forms of diplomatic transcription.
    [Show full text]
  • Clases Sociales Y Estado En El Pensamiento Marxista: Cuestiones De Método
    Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Programa de Posgrado en Estudios Latinoamericanos Taller de investigación: clases sociales y Estado en el pensamiento marxista: cuestiones de método Profesor: Matari Pierre Email: [email protected] Semestre 2021-1 (septiembre-diciembre 2020) 15 sesiones de 4 horas (jueves 16 a 20 horas) Objetivo general El análisis de las clases sociales y de las formas de Estado estructura el pensamiento social y político marxista. Sin embargo, estos conceptos no fueron claramente definidos ni por Marx ni por Engels. Los comentarios posteriores se apoyan en algún aspecto o aforismo de sus obras. De suerte que ambas nociones entrañan problemas de teoría y de método que tensan el marxismo desde sus orígenes: el determinismo económico del proceso histórico; la antropología subyacente a las definiciones de las clases y de sus relaciones recíprocas; la naturaleza específica de lo político y de las formas de Estado. El taller propone introducir y discutir estas tres cuestiones a partir de una selección de textos de representantes, comentaristas y críticos del pensamiento social y político marxista del siglo XX. El programa está organizado en dos grandes partes divididas en tres secciones cada una. Introducción (dos sesiones) Lecturas obligatorias: Eric J. Hobsbawm, “La contribución de Karl Marx a la historiografía”. Shlomo Avineri, El pensamiento social y político de Marx (capítulo I “Reconsideración de la filosofía política de Hegel). Jean-Paul Sartre, Cuestiones de método (primera parte “Marxismo y existencialismo”). Lecturas complementarias: Raymond Aron, Las etapas del pensamiento sociológico (“los equívocos de la sociología 1 marxista” extracto del capítulo 3). Tom Bottomore y Maximilien Rubel, “La sociología y la filosofía social de Marx”.
    [Show full text]
  • Mazzino Montinari = La Volonté De Puissance
    Mazzino Montinari “La Volonté de Puissance” n'existe pas Traduction: Patricia Farazzi, Michel Valensi Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 1997 (144p) Note des traducteurs 1. «Tant qu’il ne fut pas possible aux chercheurs les plus sérieux d’accéder à l’ensemble des manuscrits de Nietzsche, on savait seulement de façon vague que La Volonté de puissance n’existait pas comme telle […] Nous souhaitons que le jour nouveau, apporté par les inédits, soit celui du retour à Nietzsche.» Gilles Deleuze & Michel Foucault, «Introduction générale» à l’édition des Œuvres philosophiques complètes de Friedrich Nietzsche, établie d’après les manuscrits par Giorgio Colli et Mazzino Montinari, simple feuille volante glissée dans Le Gai savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1965. Trente ans plus tard, la réédition de La Volonté de puissance par le même éditeur répond péremptoirement aux vœux de Gilles Deleuze et Michel Foucault: le “retour à Nietzsche” ne viendra pas encore. Une nouvelle fois, raison sera donnée aux faussaires. Une nouvelle fois, raison sera donnée à la “raison économique”. 2. Sous le titre «La Volonté de puissance» n’existe pas , nous avons voulu rassembler – sur la suggestion de Paolo D’Iorio – quatre essais de Mazzino Montinari, traitant diversement des problèmes posés par l’édition des écrits de Friedrich Nietzsche et portant plus particulièrement sur la question de La Volonté de puissance . Si ces essais ne prétendent pas 2 apporter directement la preuve de la non-existence d’une œuvre de Nietzsche intitulée La Volonté de puissance , ils constituent néanmoins des documents de première main sur ce sujet et devaient être présentés au public francophone.
    [Show full text]
  • The 'New' Heidegger
    Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Philosophy Collections 1-2015 The ‘New’ Heidegger Babette Babich [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Other German Language and Literature Commons, Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons, Radio Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons Recommended Citation Babich, Babette, "The ‘New’ Heidegger" (2015). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 65. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/65 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Chapter 10 The ‘New’ Heidegger Babette Babich 10.1 Calculating Heidegger: From the Old to the New The ‘new’ Heidegger corresponds less to what would or could be the Heidegger of the moment on some imagined ‘cutting edge’ than it corresponds to what some wish they had in Heidegger and above all in philosophical discussions of Heidegger’s thought. We have moved, we suppose, beyond grappling with the Heidegger of Being and Time . And we also tend to suppose a fairly regular recurrence of scandal—the current instantiation infl amed by the recent publication of Heidegger’s private, philosophical, Tagebücher, invokes what the editor of these recently published ‘black notebooks’ attempts to distinguish as Heidegger’s ‘historial antisemitism’ — ‘historial’ here serving to identify Heidegger’s references to World Jewry in one of the volumes.
    [Show full text]
  • PCA CASE NO. 2013-15 SOUTH AMERICAN SILVER LIMITED V
    PCA CASE NO. 2013-15 IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITRATION UNDER THE RULES OF THE UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW SOUTH AMERICAN SILVER LIMITED CLAIMANT v. THE PLURINATIONAL STATE OF BOLIVIA RESPONDENT Claimant’s Statement of Claim and Memorial September 24, 2014 KING & SPALDING LLP Henry G. Burnett Roberto J. Aguirre-Luzi Fernando Rodriguez-Cortina Louis-Alexis Bret On behalf of Claimant South American Silver Limited TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND ..............................................................................................6 A. SOUTH AMERICAN SILVER HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE BOLIVIAN MINING SECTOR SINCE 1994 ..................................................................................................6 B. INVESTMENTS AND ACTIVITY AT MALKU KHOTA ...................................................10 C. BOLIVIA’S EFFORTS TO OBTAIN A PARTICIPATING INTEREST IN THE PROJECT PRIOR TO THE EXPROPRIATION ...............................................................................25 D. BOLIVIA EXPROPRIATED MALKU KHOTA WITHOUT PROVIDING ANY COMPENSATION ......................................................................................................36 III. THE TRIBUNAL HAS JURISDICTION OVER THIS DISPUTE ..................................45 A. SOUTH AMERICAN SILVER IS A PROTECTED COMPANY UNDER THE TREATY .........45 B. SOUTH AMERICAN SILVER HAS MADE QUALIFYING INVESTMENTS
    [Show full text]
  • Losurdo, Domenico. Non-Violence: a History Beyond the Myth Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015
    The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence Vol. I, Issue 2/2017 © The Authors, 2017 Available online at http://trivent-publishing.eu/ Losurdo, Domenico. Non-Violence: A History beyond the Myth Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. vii + 246 pp. Domenico Losurdo, in his book Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth, aims to demonstrate the historical contradictions of non-violent action. This book embraces two centuries of the history of non-violence, reconstructing the great historical crises that this movement has faced from its inception. In his analysis, Losurdo does not limit himself to a history of the ideas, but instead investigates theories, political opinions, contradictions, moral dilemmas, and concrete behaviors in the context of central historical crises and transformations. Losurdo affirms that the popularity of non-violence movements is in part based on frustration with wars and revolutions that promised to achieve a state of perpetual peace by implementing their different methods. In other words, violence was used to guarantee the eradication of the scourge of violence once and for all. The First World War was greeted by mass enthusiasm to enlist in “the war to end all wars.” Similarly, the revolution in Russia was expected to overcome the brutality of capitalist exploitation and war. Therefore, we are familiar with the blood and tears that have dirtied projects to change the world through war or revolution, but what do we know of the dilemmas, “betrayals,” disappointments, and veritable tragedies that have befallen the movement inspired by the ideal of non-violence (5)? The author recognises that the first group committed to build a socio-political order characterized by non-violence was the Christian abolitionists in the United States in the nineteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Domenico Losurdo
    C Abstract: C R R I Starting from the category “totalitarianism” mainstream ideology I S considers Hitler and Stalin as twin brothers. On the contrary, during S I the struggle for his country’s independence, starting in this case from I Stalin and Hitler: S S the category “colonialism”, Gandhi considered Churchill as the twin & brother of Hitler: the goal of the latter was to build the “German Indies” & in Eastern Europe and in Soviet Russia in particular. Which of the C C R two categories can help us understand the twentieth century better? R I Nowadays renowned historians agree on characterising the war between I Twin Brothers or T T I the Third Reich and the Soviet Union as the greatest colonial war in world I Q history. We can say that Hitler and Stalin were both “totalitarian” but we Q U are not allowed to forget that the former, while continuing and further U E E radicalising the Western colonial tradition, strived to subjugate and even Mortal Enemies? / enslave the “inferior races” in Eastern Europe, and that this attempt was / vanquished by the fierce resistance of the country ruled by the latter. In Volume 3 / Volume 3 / Issue 1 this sense Stalin was not the twin brother but the mortal foe of Hitler. The Issue 1 rout in Stalingrad of Hitler’s project to build the “German Indies in Eastern Europe was the beginning of the decline of the British Indies too and of the world colonial system in general. Keywords: Domenico Totalitarianism, Colonialism, German Indies, World War II, British Indies 1.Historical Events and Theoretical Categories When philosophers investigate historical events, they try to discuss at the same time the categories with which historical events are Losurdo reconstructed and described.
    [Show full text]
  • Transtext(E)S Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 Journal of Global Cultural Studies
    Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 Journal of Global Cultural Studies 14 | 2019 Re-thinking Latin America: Challenges and Possibilities Epistemología de la crisis: apuntes zavaletianos sobre coyuntura chilena y andina Epistemology of the Crisis: the Chilean and Andean Situation Through a Zavaleta Mercado’s Framework of Analysis Felipe Lagos-Rojas Edición electrónica URL: http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1301 DOI: 10.4000/transtexts.1301 ISSN: 2105-2549 Editor Gregory B. Lee Referencia electrónica Felipe Lagos-Rojas, « Epistemología de la crisis: apuntes zavaletianos sobre coyuntura chilena y andina », Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 14 | 2019, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2019, consulté le 28 juillet 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1301 ; DOI : https:// doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.1301 Este documento fue generado automáticamente el 28 julio 2020. © Tous droits réservés Epistemología de la crisis: apuntes zavaletianos sobre coyuntura chilena y an... 1 Epistemología de la crisis: apuntes zavaletianos sobre coyuntura chilena y andina Epistemology of the Crisis: the Chilean and Andean Situation Through a Zavaleta Mercado’s Framework of Analysis Felipe Lagos-Rojas Introducción 1 El año 2019 nos dejó un mapa sociopolítico latinoamericano en el que resalta la franja andina, en un proceso de ajuste de placas sociales que promete tener alcances continentales, si bien desiguales o asincrónicos, y cuyo epicentro actual solo recientemente se ha desplazado desde la región andina hacia los Estados Unidos.1 El núcleo de este artículo estará puesto en el proceso Chile, pero se hacen necesarias asimismo referencias al proceso boliviano, así como alusiones a otros países del continente.
    [Show full text]