ࡱ> CEBc #jbjbSS R11]::::: F$:< &~~~~~~~~  ,b V ' ~~~~~' ~~~~V~~ ,,~    jL:: Slouching Towards Utopia?: More Notes Donald Sassoon (1996), One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (New York: New Press: 1565843738). Find picture: Il Quattro Stato Possible cover design: Four panels: containership unloading; Il Quattro Stato; trading screen; mechanized assembly line Donald Sassoon (1996), One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (New York: New Press: 1565843738), pp. xix-xxi: Eric Hobsbawm (1990), Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution (London: Verso: ????). [I]n 1880 the [French] National Assembly [decreed] that 14 July 1889 should become a day of celebration, the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. When a tradition is created, it is essential to make clear what is actually being celebrated: not only a past event, but a contemporary reality in search of legitimation. France, bourgeois and self-satisfied, may have been applauding liberty, equality, and fraternity but, in practice, what was being consecrated was commerce and trade, modernity, and the wonders of technology exhibited in the Galerie des machines, in a word: capitalism. No monument was erected in homage to the martyrs of the Revolution. Instead, the centerpiece of the Exposition universelle and its lasting icon was a huge metallic tower bearing the name of its creator, Gustave Eiffel, which has dominated the Parisian landscape ever since. Under the banner of modernity, progress, and the peaceful pursuit of wealth, the French people would regain national pride and unity after the humiliating defeat of 1870 Founding of the Second International: The capitalists have invited the rich and powerful to the [Paris] universal exposition to observe and admire the product of the toil of workers, forced to live in poverty in the midst of the greatest wealth human society has ever produced. We, the socialists, have invited the producers to join us in Paris on 14 July. Our aim is the emancipation of the workers, the abolition of wage-labor, and the creation of a society in which all irrespective of sex or nationality will enjoy the wealth produced by the work of all workers. August Bebel (Germany) William Liebknecht (Germany) William Morris (England) Keir Hardie (Scotland) Victor Adler (Austria) Amilcare Cipriani (Italy) Friedrich Engels (Germany) Edouard Valliant (France) Jules Guesde (France) Georgii Plekhanov (Russia) Cesar de Paepe (Belgium) Pablo Iglesias (Spain) And 400 other delegates representing the socialist organizations of nineteen countries. Histoire de la IIe Internationale. Congres International Ouvrier Socialiste, Paris 14-22 July 1889, vols. 6-7, Minkoff reprint, Geneva 1976, pp. 19-20; quoted in Donald Sassoon (1996), One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (New York: New Press: 1565843738), The reforms advocated by the Second International were supposed to make working-class life under capitalism endurable and dignified, and to enable the workers themselves to organize freely and independently. But the more successful the socialists became, the more dependent they found themselves on the prosperity of capitalism. Though they dreamt of its final crisis, they gradually realized a dangerous a moribund social system could become. We now know that the first political casualties of capitalist crises in Western Europe would be the parties of the Leftas was the case in the 1930swhile their greatest successes occurred during the thirty glorious years of capitalist growth (1945-1975)the Golden Age of Capitalism. P. xxii. At the end of the twentieth century, the fundamental political conflict in democratic capitalist countries was over the extent and form of the regulation of capitalism. Its abolition was no longer sought. Beyond the advanced countries where capitalism appears to be firmly implanted, conflicts concern nationalism, religion, and the speed or form of capitalist development. No one, any longer, pursues a non-capitalist path. P. xxii. Pre-1914 vulgar Marxism: Capitalism is unfair. Capitalists extract surplus-value from workers. This gives them great wealth and also powercontrol over the economy. The present capitalist stage is transient, and will be replaced by socialism. Workers are united by their common interest. They must organize themselvesinto labor unions and political partiesto overthrow capitalism and bring about socialism, in which there can be not just formal but real human equality. Socialist Parties: Universal Pre-WWI Manhood Electoral Nation Suffrage Peak Austria 1907 25.4% Belgium 1893 30.3% Denmark 1901 29.6% Finland 1906 47.3% France 1848 16.8% Germany 1871 34.8% Holland 1917 11.2% Italy 1919 21.3% Norway 1898 32.1% Sweden 1907 36.4% Britain 1918 7.0% What a post-revolutionary society would look like was hardly every discussed. Between 1882 and 1914 there was only one article on the subject in Neue Zeit. Socialists did not appear to be much interested in socialism. P. 20. Erfurt Program of the German Social Democratic Party: made in 1891: Universal adult (including female) suffrage Referenda Election of judges Separation of church and state Secularization of education Parliamentary control over foreign polcy Eight hour day Regulation of the conditions of work Right to unionize Unemployment insurance paid by the state and administered by the workers (p 24) Late 1920 and early 1921 saw the end of the postwar working class offensive throughout Europe. In France and Italy the unions had suffered or were shortly to suffer serious setbacks; in Germany their republic seemed stalemated and in bourgeois custody. Major changes in the ownership or control of the economy had failed to come about. French railroad nationalization was a dead letter; German coal mines remained under private auspices. Workers councils had lost their radical impetus, and the Italian labor movement had given up its hold on the nations factories for the promise of a study committee. With the exception perhaps of Weimars labor ministry, the organized working class did not even have the protection of a social Maginot line by the end of 1920. Charles Maier (1975), Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade After World War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press: ????), p. 192. The problem was that KPD electoral strength was never translated into appropriate political action and that at no stage was the KPD a protagonist in the political life of Weimar. Its votes were in a way subtracted from politics altogether in a way the Nazi vote, equally anti-Weimar, was not. The Nazis used their electoral strength to destabilize Weimar in favor of an authoritarian alternative. The KPD oscillated between putschism and preparation for a putsch. Its insurrectionist strategy never allowed any of its activities to be directed to winning immediate reforms. All issues were subsumed by the overarching belief that the road to revolution was an insurrectionary one. Thus, all one needed to decide was whether the time was ripe. P. 37 Between 1933 and 1938 the SAP-led [Swedish] government introduced employment creation programs, a housing program to the benefit of large families, indexation of pensions, near-universal maternity benefits, paid holidays, and state loans to newly-married couples. The Swedish social democrats used new countercyclical policies, developed by home-grown economists, to fight unemployment. The Swedish social democratic government presided over a successful economic recovery which lasted well into the late 1930s. p. 46. By 1940 [in Swedish social democracy] the welfare state was the new goal; nationalization and class conflict had been dropped; democracy was valued for itself rather than as a tactic; the national road, based on a relatively insulated national economy, had come to prevail over internationalism. The Swedish model had come into being. P. 46. @fH# 9 ARSI #OJQJ56H*6&'()NO`a} ~  7 Q l &'()NO`a} ~  7 Q l @AmnQR  56J^r:;gq/xy<=       ^ @AmnQR  56J & FJ^r:;gq/xxy<=0 1 ;"<"########=0 1 ;"<"######## / =!"#$%J.Ng0.p @nfPaF`0 @ifa `$a J.kgJ.o =n<a `0<a/0.a,Nu"n/ ?<(NuPMNu..<.J.fJ.o <.0a,..RfLa H"HA1F!IBhBh!G0p `g @g @f2<`x(g 2< ah`$"n8`*Title$5CJ$R    #" Jx##%&'=#$(" .9   ' , 7 ? @ H Q Z [ a l s t | A I P S T b d k z KO dkTZ`o Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong=Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of More Notes Brad DeLong0Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:Word Work File A 3 Brad DeLong0Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:Word Work File A 3 Brad DeLong0Pwrbk 1400 HD:Temporary Items:Word Work File A 3 Brad DeLongSPwrbk 1400 HD:From old powerbook:Website:TCEH:1998_Draft:More Notes:More Notes File  hhOJQJo(@H$|;5P@GTimes New Roman5Symbol3 Arial;Helvetica3Times"qh[&c&pH +!0dSlouching Towards Utopia Brad DeLong Brad DeLongT10VL|NuH8@?A? L)$T K) Sists' economic doctrine was largely negative: they were not socialists, and they did not believe that the Marxist platform of the nationalization of industry and the expropriation of the capitalist class was the right way to run an economy. But they did not buy into the national living space, lebensrau" doctrines of Hitler. They were less anti-semitic. They tended to do their killing on a retail rather than a wholesale scale. But fascists were identifiably of the same ideological genus as Nazis. They  Oh+'0p  , 8 DPX`h'Slouching Towards Utopia.0lou Brad DeLongradNormalL Brad DeLong1adMicrosoft Word 8.0t@n@v@X6jHH after the collapse of Hitlers Third Reich found a welcome in Juan Perons Argentina. 2. Authority The fasces were a symbol of order and strength in the more than 2,000 years-dead Roman Republic. They became a standard symbol of republican strength in the iconography of the post-1500 revival of republican doctrines and ideals. Go into the mid-nineteenth century U.S. Treasury building, and look at the ironwork of the railings in the southern staircases. And there you will nd the fasces. The fasces were bundles of sticks, tied together. They were carried by the bodyguards and attendants of Roman politicians. The message was that one stick could be easily broken, but that a bundle of sticks tied together was very strong. Hence the strength and power of the Roman Republic depended on its unity, and its respect for each of its citizens. Fascism as a twentieth-century doctrine was the invention of Benito Mussolini, who had been a rising if erratic star in Italys socialist party before World War I. Mussolini, however, became convinced during World War I of the inadequacy of socialism: it had no place for the enormous outpouring of nationalist enthusiasm that he saw during the war, no place for the struggle between nations, and no recognition of the fact that solidarity was associated with the national communitynot with one's international class or with humanity in general.Moreover, socialism had no plan for how a post-capitalist economy would operate. Mussolini soon became an ex-socialist, intent on integrating the lessons and appeal of nationalism with the appeal of socialism. The movement he produced he called fascism. Mussolinis new movement first supported Italian nationalism, expressed in the occupation of regions on the Italian-Yugoslav border. It second opposed socialism, recruiting groups of young thugs and sending them out into the streets to beat up socialists, disrupt working-class orgnizations, and their supporters among elected officials. Italys elected politicians alternately tried to suppress and to ally with fascism. In 1922, after winning some electoral successes, Mussolini threatened to make Italy ungovernable through large-scale political violence unless named prime minister. The king named him prime minister. And from there he became dictator of Italy: Duce, or leader. 3. The core of fascism There are some who deny the existence of fascism, save as a confidence trick performed by Mussolini to seize power and give some cloak of ideology to his personal despotism. It is certainly true that fascism was disorganized, self-contradictory, confused, and vague. But most political movements are disorganized, self-contradictory, confused, and vague. In forming a coalition or a party the goal is to maintain friendships and alliances by the blurring of differences and the vagueication of concepts inside the group, and not to obtain conceptual clarity, o ՜.+,D՜.+,P  hp  ' Delong groupTo+ : Slouching Towards Utopia Title 6> _PID_GUID'AN{4A0B4703-0120-11D2-8B16-EBDCF8436DC2}nts usually foundin Italy and elsewherein regimes that called themselves fascist: A belief in leaders: good politics sees not representatives expressing the desires of those below but leaders who command; the goals of a country are imposed by leaders of vision from above. A belief in the value of a strong and unified nation: the willing and eager sacrifice of individual goals and lives to strengthen the national purpose, with war and expansion as tests of strength and arenas for heroic sacrifice. Coordination and propaganda: advertising, ceremonies, the ruling party as an enforer of social discipline and respect for the leader. A belief in at least some traditional hierarchies: the army, the family, sometimes the church. A hatred of socialists and liberals: socialists as opponents of national self-assertion (and as potential betrayers of the people to slavery under a foreign Russian elite); liberals as unwilling to take the steps necessary to fight socialists, as self-absorbed individualists who weakened the nation, and as parliamentarians who did not recognize that the nation, not the individual, held rights. A hatred of Jews: rootless cosmopolitans uninterested in the national destiny; theieves and deceivers to boot; people who made their money through financial manipulation rather than heroic feats of engineering and construction. 4. Fascism as critique Perhaps the dominant theme of fascism as an ideology was that liberal capitalism had had its chance and had failed along several dimensions, which were seen assomehowlinked together. The first was economic failure: it had not guaranteed high employment and rapid economic growth. A second was distributional failure: either the rich got richer and everyone else stayed poor, or liberal capitalism failed to preserve an adequate income differential between the more-educated, more-respectable lower middle class and the unskilled industrial proletariat; depending on which aspect of income distribution was highlighted, industrial capitalism produced an income distribution that was either too unequal or not unequal enough. The third dimension was moral failure: the market economy reduced all human relationshipsor at any event many human relationshipsto arms-length market transactions: you do this for me, and I will pay you. But people are not entirely comfortable dealing with each other as nothing but black boxes: machines for transforming your money into useful commodities, or your labor time into your money. Contests and gift-exchanges have more psychological resonance. And by ignoring and trying to suppress as much as possible of the contest and gift-exchange dimensions of economic relationships, the market society dehumanized much of life. Moreover, fascists said, the liberal capitalist order ignored the fact that we are all in this together: that inhabitants of a nation have common interests that are much more powerful than any one individual's interest. Thus economic policy needs to be made in a "syndicalist" or "corporatist" mode: the state needed to mediate between employers and unions, and the state needed to crack heads when necessary to make sure that employers and unions did the right thing. Not market forces but government regulation would set the price of labor and the quantity of employment. Not only the liberal economy but also the liberal government was flawed: parliaments were incompetent. Composed either (a) of time-servers with no initiative, (b) corrupt distributors of favors to special interests, or (c) ideological champions who focused not on   !"#$%&'()+,-./013456789;<=>?@ADRoot Entry@gc>,@ fii,@ Fi@94 Fh1Tableihihi h i$h$iThTB(CU8c8h||E9JgBc@ |A@9*8WordDocumentgcD |@A@9B CU:8(CU:gc>| @A@9 B:CUX8:CUR|.SummaryInformationa!|x#(p| cx.|rH`,@2B$DocumentSummaryInformation8AK8Hrq`, @`8XB:CompObjX FMicrosoft Word DocumentNB6WWord.Document.8fferences among all forms of violent political extremism will blur. The politics of twentieth-century Europe were horseshoe-shaped, and the extremists at both ends seemed close enough to touch.... Individuals moved between fascism and militant socialism as if by connecting channels. Mussolini was a socialist youth leader before he became a fascist duce.... [M]any Nazis tried to make the party conform to its name: the Nat