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"More precisely, it is impossible to answer the questions ‘How can the various problems of the modern world be solved in accordance with Marxism?’, or ‘What would Marx say if he could see what his followers have done?’ Both these are sterile questions and there is no rational way of seeking an answer to them. Marxism does not provide any specific method of solving questions that Marx did not put to himself or that did not exist in his time. If his life had been prolonged for ninety years he would have had to alter his views in ways that we have no means of conjecturing. Those who hold that Communism is a ‘betrayal’ or ‘distortion’ of Marxism are seeking, as it were, to absolve Marx of responsibility for the actions of those who call themselves his spiritual posterity. In the same way, heretics and schismatics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accused the Roman Church of betraying its mission and sought to vindicate St. Paul from the association with Roman corruption. In the same way, too, admirers of Nietzsche sought to clear his name from responsibility for the ideology and practice of Nazism. The ideological motivation of such attempts is clear enough, but their informative value is next to nothing. There is abundant evidence that all social movements are to be explained by a variety of circumstances and that the ideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they seek to remain faithful, are only one of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action. We may therefore be certain in advance that no political or religious movement is a perfect expression of that movement’s ‘essence’ as laid down in its sacred writings; on the other hand, these writings are not merely passive, but exercise an influence of their own on the course of the movement."
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"Thomas Mann was entitled to say that Nazism had nothing to do with German culture or was a gross denial and travesty of it. In fact, however, he did not say this: instead, he inquired how such phenomena as the Hitler movement and Nazi ideology could have come about in Germany, and what were the elements in German culture that made this possible. Every German, he maintained, would recognize with horror, in the bestialities of Nazism, the distortion of features which could be discerned even in the noblest representatives (this is the important point) of the national culture. Mann was not content to pass over the question of the birth of Nazism in the usual manner, or to contend that it had no legitimate claim to any part of the German inheritance. Instead, he frankly criticized that culture of which he was himself a part and a creative element. It is indeed not enough to say that Nazi ideology was a ‘caricature’ of Nietzsche, since the essence of a caricature is that it helps us to recognize the original. The Nazis told their supermen to read The Will to Power, and it is no good saying that this was a mere chance and that they might equally well have chosen the Critique of Practical Reason. It is not a question of establishing the ‘guilt’ of Nietzsche, who as an individual was not responsible for the use made of his writings; nevertheless, the fact that they were so used is bound to cause alarm and cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the understanding of what was in his mind. "
I didn't know this connection.
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@sim did this guy forgot that Nietzsche was a German? He explained his argument more about how the Natsocs used Nietzsche in their philosophy and less about how the movement was not Germanic in nature.
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@MK2boogaloo I'm sure that he is aware. He used it as an example for what he wanted to do with his work on Marx... so he isn't really going to get into detail about the Natsocs.
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@sim that guy's argument about Germanic side of the NatSoc is trash then. I never read anything about him, but he does sound like a Liberal cuck from the US.
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@MK2boogaloo Who is? I don't know about Mann, but this guy that I'm reading is not from the US. Lol.
He's Leszek Kołakowsk. So, Polish judging by which country my copy is translated from.
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@sim oh shit I thought you're talking about Thomas Mann.
>Polish
Yeah that makes sense, you can't really have a good look into Germany with the lens of the Poles.
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@MK2boogaloo Oh, Kolakowski just used what he did in his book as an example for what to expect in his own book so it makes sense from that perspective.
Yeah, it's probably a good thing that I'm not trying to look at Germany in that sense, except through Marx. He sounds reasonable so far anyway.
Looking into him, "was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas." His main contribution that he is known for "Due to his criticism of Marxism and of the Communist state system, Kołakowski was effectively exiled from Poland in 1968. He spent most of the remainder of his career at All Souls College, Oxford. Despite being in exile, Kołakowski was a major inspiration for the Solidarity movement that flourished in Poland in the 1980s and helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to his being described by Bronisław Geremek as the "awakener of human hopes"."
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@sim @MK2boogaloo that glows so hard. Brighter than the full moon on a clear night. How many times did he talk with Soros in the 80's?
sim
New Janny in Town
みくちゃん
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