National Bolsheviks Invited to “21st Century Marxism” Confrence??

[Comrade Gwydion]

Russian politics are absurd. Ever heard of "The Other Russia"? An electoral coaltion which didn't include the CPRF, but did include Kasparov's pro-western liberal party, several far-left youth organisations (such as the AKM) and the fucking NazBols....

It's just....
It's...
Incomprehensible. Absurd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oth...28coalition%29

[NewSocialist]

Actually the term was first coined by the German Nationalist Ernst Jünger along with several Left Nationalists who came up with the idea of a National Socialism which inspired people like Goebbels and Roehm who joined the NSDAP.

The basic idea as laid out by Jünger was that you take the bureaucratic control of the economy like the USSR had under the leadership of Stalin and apply it under a highly nationalist framework thus supposedly improving living conditions and creating a Volkish kind of bond between the people as they now work as a collective whole. This was further cemented by the writings of Oswald Spengler who is pretty much the brainchild alongside Julius Evola of Modern Neo-Fascism. The Strassers still have their part but they didn't develop a real ideology until Ernst Jünger came back with several other Nationalists from the USSR and began the development of National Bolshevism.

I think you're thinking of Ernst *Niekisch* who was also a reactionary asshole and friends with Junger.

[Commissar Rykov]

I think you're thinking of Ernst *Niekisch* who was also a reactionary asshole and friends with Junger.

Derp you are right. Niekisch was welcomed back into the USSR by Stalin and even made some kind of member of the party but not fully or something. Strange as fuck. Niekisch was the prime example of Russian Chauvinism and Nationalism though oddly enough not known much in the West. I know most Russian Nationalists I have had encounters with drool over the man and his ideals then they take a dash of Hitler or Strasser and run into Far Right Field. Jünger always bothered me as he would talk about how disagreeable the Nazis were then would give them all the support they needed or would say something extremely positive in the press. Then again I think that was a problem for many German Political Theorists of the time.

[Le Socialiste]

These parties serve an important role in subverting any significant rise in activity undertaken by the Russian people, appealing to nationalist and/or xenophobic rhetoric to channel the working-class into state-friendly actions. So long as the working-class operates under the approval of the ruling-class these psuedo-leftist parties and groups will be tolerated. I doubt there's a large number of the bourgeoisie who genuinely want these groups in power; rather, they perform an important service. By cloaking their true intent with titles and appeals that utilize 'left'-leaning rhetoric (i.e. "21st Century Marxism") these parties seek to divide and weaken the working-class.

[Commissar Rykov]

These parties serve an important role in subverting any significant rise in activity undertaken by the Russian people, appealing to nationalist and/or xenophobic rhetoric to channel the working-class into state-friendly actions. So long as the working-class operates under the approval of the ruling-class these psuedo-leftist parties and groups will be tolerated. I doubt there's a large number of the bourgeoisie who genuinely want these groups in power; rather, they perform an important service. By cloaking their true intent with titles and appeals that utilize 'left'-leaning rhetoric (i.e. "21st Century Marxism") these parties seek to divide and weaken the working-class.

Not only are they channeling Working Class anger into these organizations but these organizations are channeling that anger into protecting and defending Kremlin policy. I will give Putin credit he has done a good job getting pseudo-leftist organizations into step with his program not that it took much convincing. I do feel extreme sympathy for the Russian Workers though as they have a mountain to climb to ever see freedom from oppression again. I do not envy them one bit.

[Ravachol]

Actually the term was first coined by the German Nationalist Ernst Jünger along with several Left Nationalists who came up with the idea of a National Socialism which inspired people like Goebbels and Roehm who joined the NSDAP.

Junger's admiration for the concept is, I believe, from a later date than the so-called "Hamburger National-Kommunismus" of Fritz Wolfheim and Heinrich Laufenberg which inspired Niekisch if I'm correct. Both were ex-SPD members who went on to join the KPD, got kicked out and later Laufenberg went on to join the KAPD before being kicked out again. They attempted to merge Syndicalism (of the Sorelian variety with a focus on Syndicalism as bringing 'unity' or whatever), a weird nationalist approach to 'councilism' and general anti-parlementary nationalism. The logic was strikingly similar to many modern-day anti-impie buffoons, ie. Germany was an oppressed nation due to the Versailles Treaty, the payments strangled the entire national economy making the entire German population the revolutionary subject, not just the working class. These would have to seek to establish a 'national-communist' movement making Germany find it's place amongst the forefront of the world's nations again. There was a decent dose of chauvenism, anti-semitism,etc. as well, obviously.

I believe Junger's position (which you correctly describe) is from a later date and appeals more to the conservative-revolution types and most certainly doesn't pay such a big lip service to councelism and the German Revolutions as the Laufenberg/Niekisch groupies do. In fact, as probably the only guy who actually liked being in the mustard-gas ridden trenches of the Flanders fields, Junger despised the 'Dolchstoss' of the German Revolution and admired the butchery of WWI.

But I guess that's just the different tendencies on the looniest part of the loony fringe of the far-right

[NewSocialist]

Junger's admiration for the concept is, I believe, from a later date than the so-called "Hamburger National-Kommunismus" of Fritz Wolfheim and Heinrich Laufenberg which inspired Niekisch if I'm correct. Both were ex-SPD members who went on to join the KPD, got kicked out and later Laufenberg went on to join the KAPD before being kicked out again. They attempted to merge Syndicalism (of the Sorelian variety with a focus on Syndicalism as bringing 'unity' or whatever), a weird nationalist approach to 'councilism' and general anti-parlementary nationalism. The logic was strikingly similar to many modern-day anti-impie buffoons, ie. Germany was an oppressed nation due to the Versailles Treaty, the payments strangled the entire national economy making the entire German population the revolutionary subject, not just the working class. These would have to seek to establish a 'national-communist' movement making Germany find it's place amongst the forefront of the world's nations again. There was a decent dose of chauvenism, anti-semitism,etc. as well, obviously.

I believe Junger's position (which you correctly describe) is from a later date and appeals more to the conservative-revolution types and most certainly doesn't pay such a big lip service to councelism and the German Revolutions as the Laufenberg/Niekisch groupies do. In fact, as probably the only guy who actually liked being in the mustard-gas ridden trenches of the Flanders fields, Junger despised the 'Dolchstoss' of the German Revolution and admired the butchery of WWI.

But I guess that's just the different tendencies on the looniest part of the loony fringe of the far-right

Is it true Carl Radek was a nazbol too and did he have any relation with Wolfheim, Laufenberg and Niekisch? Where do you get all this info and are there any books which can help us understand this crazy loony movement? Are there still nazbols influenced by these fools in Germany?

[Ravachol]

Is it true Carl Radek was a nazbol too and did he have any relation with Wolfheim, Laufenberg and Niekisch? Where do you get all this info and are there any books which can help us understand this crazy loony movement? Are there still nazbols influenced by these fools in Germany?

No, Radek was never a 'NazBol'. There was a brief period during the German Revolutions when there were relations between Laufenberg and Radek, but give n Laufenberg's involvement in the Hamburg council, that's logical. Wolffheim and Laufenberg eventually set up a meeting to found a new party and invited Radek. Radek only discovered their nationalist positions there (keep in mind that neither Radek nor Laufenberg had a facebook or twitter and political polemics and positions weren't exchanged every day or week ;p). He didn't digg it, dissed them and left.

Eventually Laufenberg and his clique kept approaching the local bourgeoisie for cross-class alliances, increasingly let go of class struggle approaches and started lauding the 'community of language and culture' of the 'german proletarian nation' which would 'organically revolt against the foreign opressors', calling for a 'proletarian wehrmacht'. Eventually Laufenberg and co. allied with those from the 'conservative revolution' current (of which Junger and Niekisch were progenitors) and begon to conceive of 'communism' (by now a hollow phrase describing a sort of less bureaucratic state-capitalism) as a geopolitical necessity, seeing it as the only possiblity for Germany's national independence in an alliance with Russia, something echoe'd by the contemporary Nouvelle Droite in their appeals to Russian nationalism and the 'Berlin-Moscow' axis.

The whole thing is a very particular phenomenon where some former councilists never managed to rid themselves of the appeals of 'liberation nationalism' and eventually moved head-on into class-collaboration and chauvenist nationalism. On the other hand, some members of the Berlin workers' councils included SPD members, of the same party which later brutally repressed the revolutionary wave. One needs to keep in mind that revolutionary situations push people from all directions into more or less revolutionary directions, but that doesn't mean they immediately let go of all reactionary bullshit, the risk of which is it developing into degenerated, reactionary shit.

For a deeper look at 'National Bolshevism' during the German Revolution, I recommend Gilles Dauve's work: http://libcom.org/library/appendix-i...nal-bolshevism

As for those who espouse contemporary versions of National Bolshevism, that differs. Those in Eastern Europe are usually autoritarian fascists who look to Stalin instead of Hitler for their Fuhrerprinzip and, as Goti123 said, see the Soviet Union as more of a nationalist thing and the 'glory of mother russia' than a Marxist thing.

Then there's the Strasserists who are more in line with the work of Gregor and Otto Strasser and some folks in the Sturmabteilung. They don't subscribe to any form of communism (which is 'jewish' and 'foreign') nor class struggle, instead they seek to pacify class struggle in favor of organic class unity in the form of 'natural german guild socialism', which is corporatism but with a sauce of medieval bullshit.

Those who place themselves in the tradition of Laufenberg, Wolffheim, Niekisch, Paetel and to an extent Junger usually hold similar positions but mainly subscribe to the bullshit notion of Germany as an opressed nation (by 'Anglosaxon and Zionist/Jewish imperialism and their multiculturalist anti-proletarian assaults', the national liberation of the entire German people is then done through some form of class-collaborationist, racist approach to 'socialism', which is simply a more decentralised form of state-capitalism.

There's all kinds of variants on this kind of nonsense, drawing inspiration from things as diverse as the Falange's National-Syndicalism, the antisemitic integralist 'Cercle Proudhon' or volkische nonsense like 'National-Anarchism'. It's all marginal bullshit only espoused by 20-something Nazi teenagers who digg the whole revolutionary leftist scene appeal but still want to 'hate on the darkies and the jews'. In Germany it's main proponents are the now defunct magazine 'Der Fahnentrager' and the associated Netzwerk Sozialistischer Nation, which is like 5 guys or whatever. Some of the autonomous nationalists are inspired by it as well (mainly strasserism) and the same goes for the 'Freie Kameratschaften'. In France there's some small groups into this stuff and I guess it's the same for Eastern-Europe's 'Autonomous Nationalists'.

All in all nothing to worry about because it's even more marginal than the most marginal sects on the left (which says something) but meh.