Results 1 to 12 of 12
I'm not as well versed on German history as I would like to be. So I thought I'd start a thread about the man who united the German states, Otto von Bismarck.
What do people know about Bismarck ( the man not the battleship) and what kind of leader was he? I'm assuming he was a "Nationalist" as he unifide the German states.
In Solidarity,
RC
from an interview with Marx
''I asked Dr. Marx
What He Thought of Bismarck
He replied that "Napoleon was considered a genius until he fell; then he was called a fool. Bismarck will follow in his wake. He began by building up a despotism under the plea of unification. his course has been plain to all. The last move is but an attempted imitation of a coup d'etat; but it will fail. The socialists of Germany, as of France, protested against the war of 1870 as merely dynastic. They issued manifestoes foretelling the German people, if they allowed the pretended war of defense to be turned into a war of conquest, they would be punished by the establishment of military despotism and the ruthless oppression of the productive masses. The Social-Democratic party in Germany, thereupon holding meetings and publishing manifestoes for an honorable peace with France, were at once prosecuted by the Prussian Government, and many of the leaders imprisoned. Still their deputies alone dared to protest, and very vigorously too, in the German Reichstag, against the forcible annexation of French provinces. However, Bismarck carried his policy by force, and people spoke of the genius of a Bismarck. The war was fought, and when he could make no conquests, he was called upon for original ideas, and he has signally failed. The people began to lose faith in him. His popularity was on the wane. He needs money, and the state needs it. Under a sham constitution he has taxed the people for his military and unification plans until he can tax them no longer, and now he seeks to do it with no constitution at all. For the purpose of levying as he chooses, he has raised the ghost of socialism, and has done everything in his power
To Create an Emeute"
"You have continual advice from Berlin?"
"Yes," he said; "my friends keep me well advised. It is in a perfectly quiet state, and Bismarck is disappointed. He has expelled forty-eight prominent men -- among them Deputies Hasselman and Fritsche and Rackow, Bauman, and Adler, of the Freie Presse. These men kept the workmen of Berlin quiet. Bismarck knew this. He also knew that there were 75,000 workmen in that city upon the verge of starvation. Once those leaders were gone, he was confident that the mob would rise, and that would be the cue for a carnival of slaughter. The screws would then be put upon the whole German Empire; his petty theory of blood and iron would then have full sway, and taxation could be levied to any extent. So far no emeute has occurred, and he stands today confounded at the situation and the ridicule of all statesmen."
Man's dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once.He must so live that dying he can say, all my life and all my strength have been given to the greatest cause in the world, the liberation of mankind
Ostrovski
Muriel Spark:
If I had my life to live over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
Otto Von Bismarck was the leader who used realpolitik, right? Realpolitik and ruled with "blood and iron", and united the German States. That's all I know.
Yes, but (to reply with a platitude) sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
He was the real ruler behind Prussia. Ferdinand let him get away with more then his power allowed him to.
\"Revolutions are dreamt up by intellectuals but their aims are so unrealistic they\'ll stoop to drastic measures. Following the revolution the worthy passions for rebirth are swallowed up by bureaucracy and mediocrity. Intellectuals dislike this so they
Bismarck was friends with the leader of the German Social Democrats, Lasalle, a party Marx and Engels worked closely with until Marx was humiliated by the Lasalle who revealed he spent more on buttons and ties in a month than Marx did on anything (Karl was unemployed in exile in London and got by on the generosity of Engels and other dear friends). Lasalle was a strange man in that he considered himself a Marxist but thought it necessary to ally with the monarchy against the bourgeoisie, and he thought that the Monarch would be the supposed 'Dictator' of the Proletariat.
<span style=\'color:red\'><u>THERE IS NO GOD</u>
</span>
As socialist you should all appreciate the fact that bismack did more, in practical not ideological terms, for socialism than probably anyone, definitely more so than any marxist leninist of the 20th century. Bismarcks realpolitik forced him to give up his repression of socialist elements within the empire and by ww1, germany was perhaps the most socialist nation on earth.
Bismarck created one of the most powerful nations in all time. The creation of the Second Reich (The First was the Holy Roman empire and the Third was the Nazi regime) was announced in 1867 in the Palace of Versailles after the short but decisive Franco-Prussian war. This empire was to last until 1918 when a German defeat in WW1 caused the collapse of the monarchy and military high command which had ruled Germany for so long. The victorious powers forced concessions out of Germany that were to cripple them for some time. The misery created by the peace imposed on Germany by the allies would eventually lead to the Germans voting Nazi ushering in the Third Reich which lasted from 1933 to 1945 when Naziism collapsed in the face of the might of Socialist Russia and the Capitalist United States of America.
There quick summary of German history.
BANDlong \"The love of money is the root of all evil\"
he was a great leader and military strategist, but in more ways then one he was an obsessive control freak. but most great leaders are.
Pacifism is for those who wish to delay true action --- from Big Com
He was very anti-feminist......he thought that a woman's place was in the home, and his wife agreed....
\"It\'s crazy, it seems it\'ll never let up, but please - you gotta keep ya head up\" - 2pac \"keep ya head up\"
"By World War I, Germany was the most socialist nation on earth." I'm not sure what this was intended to mean; there weren't ANY socialist countries before World War I.
If it refers to the German Social-Democratic Party, that party was probably the largest and certainly the best-organized socialist party at the beginning of World War I...not that it helped them any; most of them fell all over themselves into the same orgy of murderous patriotism that swept over nearly all of Europe.
Finally, if it refers to the social welfare schemes that Bismarck introduced with the idea of buying off the discontent of the working class...well, in that sense Bismarck was an innovater who was copied by ruling classes everywhere after World War I and especially after the Great Depression of the 1930s. But there was nothing "socialist" about THAT.
Listen to the worm of doubt for it speaks truth.
The Redstar2000 Papers
Also see this NEW SITE:@nti-dialectics
What then, is socialism about? If you would scoff at Bismarck's and Wilhemine Germany's "social welfare schemes" because by alleviating the material conditions of people's existances they prevented class conflict and "socialist revolution" Then you've lost yourself in the means and lost sight of the ends. Socialism is not about class conflict, unless you're perverse; in its motivations, it is about material conditions of people's existance's and Bismarck's Germany war far more "progressive" in that sense than any of its peer nations, and than nearly all "socialist" regimes that followed on the road to history.
Then "perverse" I must be.
No, communism is NOT about material welfare. It IS about whether or not the planet should be ruled by a small minority whose wealth is extracted from the labor of the large majority.
Who should RULE? Capitalists or the working class???
Material well-being is simply a sub-set of conditions that may or may not be relevant. The 20th century prosperity of American (white, male) workers came at the price of super-exploitation of black, hispanic and female workers at home and workers in many third-world countries abroad. There was NOTHING "progressive" about it!
The welfare schemes of Bismarck were financed in much the same way: plunder from France; exploitation of workers in eastern Europe, and super-exploitation of African workers in the German colonies. Also, Germany was an enthusiastic participant in the looting of coastal China. There was NOTHING "progressive" about any of it!
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." If workers in a particular capitalist country are temporarily "prosperous" with a generous welfare system, it's only because workers somewhere else are being screwed even worse. That's how capitalism operates; that's WHY it must be overthrown EVERYWHERE.
Listen to the worm of doubt for it speaks truth.
The Redstar2000 Papers
Also see this NEW SITE:@nti-dialectics
