Currently viewing the tag: "Germany"
This morning I had a wonderful breakfast conversation with my grandma. She read a letter to the editor on the topic of the current media and political circus around contraception where a reader pointed out that Hitler was never excommunicated from the Catholic Church. She was clearly dismayed, noting that she and my (“step”) grandpa were excommunicated from the Church when they got married, because both were divorcees, my grandma having divorced my abusive biological grandfather. They lived happily married until my (step) grandpa passed away from cancer.
Such are the priorities of the leaders of the Catholic Church. Abuse is fine. You can’t divorce abusive husbands. Hitler was fine. The Church collaborated with him. But birth control? That needs a “debate”. Even when 85% of Catholics support the right to birth control and 99% of women will use birth control in their lifetime.
The Church is serving a very destructive role at the moment. We need comprehensive healthcare. Yet the Catholic Church, in opposition to the opinions of the overwhelming majority of of its members, is saying that one component of healthcare is “sinful” and that Catholic health services should be except from providing whatever services it chooses.
Its almost unbearable to listen to the President these days. He talks about “religious freedom”. But what “freedom” is there in denying services that the vast majority of people want access to (because they need access to it)? The media circus is meant to distract us from the need for comprehensive healthcare reform – and to distract from the insurance industry giveaway that was Obama’s healthcare program.
Thankfully, it seems, that not many people are falling for the attempts at divisions.
On the 30th of August 1932, amidst the worst crisis of the capitalist system the world had thus far faced and in the shadow of the rising Nazi power, Clara Zetkin - German Marxist and member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) – opened what would become the last session of the Reichstag (Germany’s parliament). As the oldest member of the assembly she was its chairwoman and had the right to an opening speech. She used her speech to call for all working and oppressed people to not let political differences divided them and to unite to smash the fascist threat and move towards a socialist revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie. She called for the overthrow of the bourgeois government, for its complicity in the Nazi’s rise, its violation of the German constitution, and its absolute impotence in the face of the horrors of the Great Depression. Despite being nearly blind, unable to walk (she had to be carried to the podium), and in the face of Nazi threats that they would assassinate her if she spoke, Comrade Zetkin gave an impassioned speech outlining the strategy of the “United Front of all workers in order to turn back fascism”.
The workers movement did not to succeed in turning back the Nazi threat. By January what would be called the “Machtergreifung” (seizure of power) took place: President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The Reichstag was dissolved. The Communist Party was banned. Its members either went underground, into exile, or were tortured and murdered. The organisations of the working class were annihilated. Nearly a hundred of the non-Nazi members of the Reichstag were hunted down and killed.
Clara fled to Moscow, were she died in June. In a period of a little over a decade Germany went from a country on the brink of communist revolution to a Nazi dictatorship which would bring war and genocide to all of Europe.
Below is the text of her speech, as recorded in the Reichstag’s minutes and published in the International Publishers collection of Zetkin’s selected writings and speeches. Perhaps after reading them you, like I, will see their profound relevance for today’s struggles against capitalism.
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Fascism Must Be Defeated
The Opening Address of
The Honorary President
Of the Reichstag
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to “survive.” The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.” – Sophie Scholl
“Paris, spring of 1937: Pablo Picasso wakes up and reads.
He reads the newspaper while having breakfast in his studio.
His coffee grows cold in the cup.
German planes have razed the city of Guernica. For three hours the Nazi air force chased and machine-gunned people fleeing the burning city.
General Franco insists that Guernica has been set aflame by Asturian dynamiters and Basque pyromaniacs from the ranks of the Communists.
Two years later in Madrid, Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the German forces in Spain, sits beside Franco at the victory parade: killing Spaniards was Hitler’s rehearsal for his impending world war.
Many years later in New York, Colin Powell makes a speech at the United Nations to announce the imminent annihilation of Iraq.
While he speaks, the back of the room is hidden from view, Guernica is hidden from view. The reproduction of Picasso’s painting, which hangs there, is concealed behind an enormous blue cloth.
UN officials decided it was not the most appropriate backdrop for the proclamation of a new round of butchery.” – Eduardo Galeano, from Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
A few links from today’s wanderings:
“Marx and Engels as David and Jonathan?” by Roland Boer
Roland is posting from the FUTURE (1 March 2011), a.k.a Australia. If you haven’t checked out Stalin’s Mustache yet, you probably should. Roland Boer is a phenomenally engaging writer on Marxism, religion, and theology. In this post he shows a warmer side of Lenin, speaking of Engels and Marx’s loving relationship.
“Anal Sex in Accordance with God’s Will” by Sex in Christ
Hilarious. Case in point: “[Question:] “Isn’t anal sex dirty?” The Bible says, “To the pure, all things are pure.” (Titus 1:15) The Lord created your body, and no part of it is imperfect or unclean. God also created our bodies for pleasure, and anal sex is just one of the many ways, including standard sexual intercourse, that we can enjoy this pleasure and share it with a partner.”
“Women’s Stories, Movies, and the Oscars” by Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency
“Nobody earns the right to hoard. Plan the economy!” by Aaron PK at A Better World is Probable
Indeed! Let’s plan the economy!: “Bill Gates could send over 1,766,600 students to college for four years and still have over a billion dollars for himself. A billion dollars, which no average person could reasonably spend in their lifetime. It would take an average US income earner saving every penny they made over 21,700 years to save up a billion dollars. That means it would take that person over 1,173,900 years to save up as much as Bill Gates is worth. That’s just a little less than three times as long as the history of human existence!“
“Modern capitalism’s boring architecture” by Aaron PK at A Better World is Probable
Aaron PK with another brilliant post, this time on the type of architecture and aesthetics that capitalism promotes, and the type it lets rot:
“In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi” by Paul Levi, edited and introduced by David Fernbach, from the Historical Materialism Book Series
Expected June 2011!
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Have something that might interest others? Shoot me an e-mail at butterflywalking (at) gmail dot com with tips and suggestions!
“The question today is not democracy or dictatorship. The question that history has put on the agenda reads: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy. For the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean bombs, putsches, riots and anarchy, as the agents of capitalist profits deliberately and falsely claim. Rather, it means using all instruments of political power to achieve socialism, to expropriate the capitalist class, through and in accordance with the will of the revolutionary majority of the proletariat.” – The Spartacist Manifesto, 1918
“The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were on the heights; they have developed this ‘defeat’ into one of the historical defeats which are the pride and strength of international socialism. And that is why the future victory will bloom from this ‘defeat’.
‘Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid henchmen! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already ‘raise itself with a rattle’ and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!”
The last written words of Rosa Luxemburg, 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919, revolutionary marxist, leader of the socialist movement in Germany, betrayed by the social democrats, murdered by the fascists.
Socialist Politics:
Recommended Readings
