Djehuti
2nd August 2007, 16:23
I came across Zygmunt Bauman reading about Auschwitz, he means that the holocaust could not happen without Germany's transition into modernity - the modern capitalism and it's beaurocratic institutions enabled one to look past one's fellow man, because modern capitalism has created a social distance between people through the modern industri, specialization of labour, proletarization etc. that shattered old social bands.
Another jewish sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies describes the development from gemeinschaft to geschellschaft: All that is solid melts into air and the real people disappears into statistics, surveys, parliamentary elections and become abstract. Bauman points out that the appearance of arguments such as "I just followed orders" were created through this social distance; it produced a beaurocratic moral.
This moral, a result of modern capitalism, enabled the holocaust. It is also interesting how Bauman shows how the affective national socialism failed to be effective, just because it was "anti-modern" (for example the strasserites and those killed during the Night of Long Knives). He points out that manifestations such as the Crystal Night in fact were fiascos and that a "modern" solution to the "jewish question" was needed. The nazis discussed sending the jews and others to Madagascar, but it turned out to be more effective, cheap etc. - economicly and beaurocraticly - with the "final solution".
This is interesting in the sence that capitalism has created a calculating mind, a calculating, fragmentized humanity... Perhaps it is then a radical attitude to life not to ask what it costs. Another german jew, the sociologist and outsider Georg Simel, sais just this in a lecture of what his guru Nietzsche wrote about being distinguished. To be distinguished is to not ask for the price. A kind of non-calculating and personal egoism instead of the beurocratic calculating egoism that rule today. If we look at workers struggle, it is really in a way about breaking with use, function etc. (that would say capitalist use = acumulation of capital, and capitalist function (work).
Back on topic... I find it really interesting that the modern thinking with its belief in large narratives and large solutions enabled a new view on society. A view that saw society as a kind of garden - this all ideologies had in common; society should be planned.
Anti-semitism was changed from, as earlier be about the wrong belief (the jews could then change religion), into being about the wrong genes, the wrong race. The changers of society were gardeners who would remove weed (jews, capitalists, lazy workers etc.): The socialists wanted to remove the capitalists, the nazis - jews and others. One were forced to exterminate the jews in order to get a nice and clean society.
This has to do with the entire medicinist thought that was changed during the 18th and 19th century with the growth of the bourgeoisie. One started to define and do statistics on (in fact invent) diseases, sexualities, crime etc; one started to classify people. Suddenly the gay man existed, who earlier together with the unfaithful, the pervert etc. simply was a sodomite. The sodomite was not a sort of personality but rather a juridical type. Now one started to speculate in the nature of humanity. While Linnaeus traveled around the world to examine our flora, a Linnaeus of crime invented new forms of punishment, a Linneaus of races found differences between people etc. (That is why nazi Germany only was the nation who went furthest in its modernity; the same forces enabled race thought and sterilizations all over our world.)
We should also not forget that the "garden-view" also made it possible to create planned capitalism and mixed economies.
The utopic view of humanity (society as a garden) did not just enable express ways, hospitals and schools but also prisons, the extermination of entire peoples and sterilizations. Also remember that stalinists and maoists murdered (directly and in-directly) millions of people because they (according to the stalinists) built the paradise for coming generations, similar arguments had the nazis when they exterminated (what they thought of as) degenerated people. Fact is that there existed communists who believed in a kind of proletarian eugenics (workers were according to these geneticly more advanced and higher standing than the bourgeoisie).
This is why it is so important to see communism as a real movement that can be derived from proletarian practice and attacks on the social relations of capitalism, and not a future society to build. Belief in the perfect society has so far just brought with it misery so let us drop that illusion.
I would like to recieve more tips in marxist sociologists such as Bauman, what little I have read has proven very interesting so far.
Another jewish sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies describes the development from gemeinschaft to geschellschaft: All that is solid melts into air and the real people disappears into statistics, surveys, parliamentary elections and become abstract. Bauman points out that the appearance of arguments such as "I just followed orders" were created through this social distance; it produced a beaurocratic moral.
This moral, a result of modern capitalism, enabled the holocaust. It is also interesting how Bauman shows how the affective national socialism failed to be effective, just because it was "anti-modern" (for example the strasserites and those killed during the Night of Long Knives). He points out that manifestations such as the Crystal Night in fact were fiascos and that a "modern" solution to the "jewish question" was needed. The nazis discussed sending the jews and others to Madagascar, but it turned out to be more effective, cheap etc. - economicly and beaurocraticly - with the "final solution".
This is interesting in the sence that capitalism has created a calculating mind, a calculating, fragmentized humanity... Perhaps it is then a radical attitude to life not to ask what it costs. Another german jew, the sociologist and outsider Georg Simel, sais just this in a lecture of what his guru Nietzsche wrote about being distinguished. To be distinguished is to not ask for the price. A kind of non-calculating and personal egoism instead of the beurocratic calculating egoism that rule today. If we look at workers struggle, it is really in a way about breaking with use, function etc. (that would say capitalist use = acumulation of capital, and capitalist function (work).
Back on topic... I find it really interesting that the modern thinking with its belief in large narratives and large solutions enabled a new view on society. A view that saw society as a kind of garden - this all ideologies had in common; society should be planned.
Anti-semitism was changed from, as earlier be about the wrong belief (the jews could then change religion), into being about the wrong genes, the wrong race. The changers of society were gardeners who would remove weed (jews, capitalists, lazy workers etc.): The socialists wanted to remove the capitalists, the nazis - jews and others. One were forced to exterminate the jews in order to get a nice and clean society.
This has to do with the entire medicinist thought that was changed during the 18th and 19th century with the growth of the bourgeoisie. One started to define and do statistics on (in fact invent) diseases, sexualities, crime etc; one started to classify people. Suddenly the gay man existed, who earlier together with the unfaithful, the pervert etc. simply was a sodomite. The sodomite was not a sort of personality but rather a juridical type. Now one started to speculate in the nature of humanity. While Linnaeus traveled around the world to examine our flora, a Linnaeus of crime invented new forms of punishment, a Linneaus of races found differences between people etc. (That is why nazi Germany only was the nation who went furthest in its modernity; the same forces enabled race thought and sterilizations all over our world.)
We should also not forget that the "garden-view" also made it possible to create planned capitalism and mixed economies.
The utopic view of humanity (society as a garden) did not just enable express ways, hospitals and schools but also prisons, the extermination of entire peoples and sterilizations. Also remember that stalinists and maoists murdered (directly and in-directly) millions of people because they (according to the stalinists) built the paradise for coming generations, similar arguments had the nazis when they exterminated (what they thought of as) degenerated people. Fact is that there existed communists who believed in a kind of proletarian eugenics (workers were according to these geneticly more advanced and higher standing than the bourgeoisie).
This is why it is so important to see communism as a real movement that can be derived from proletarian practice and attacks on the social relations of capitalism, and not a future society to build. Belief in the perfect society has so far just brought with it misery so let us drop that illusion.
I would like to recieve more tips in marxist sociologists such as Bauman, what little I have read has proven very interesting so far.