A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (95 page)

157
In his
Civilisation and its Discontents
of the 1920 s, Freud seems to accept that the very notion of civilisation is incompatible with humans coming to terms with their instincts in a rational way.

158
See, for instance, G Lukács,
The Historical Novel
(London, 1962) and
Studies in European Realism
(New York, 1964). Lukács sees the ‘realist’ novel before 1848 giving way on the one hand to mechanical naturalism, and on the other to subjectivist psychologism. This leads him to reject most 20 th century literature out of hand. You can, however, accept his central insight without drawing this conclusion.

159
See C P Kindelberger,
The World in Depression
(London, 1973), pp116-117, 124; see also L Corey,
The Decline of American Capitalism
(London, 1938), p184.

160
Figures in E H Carr,
The Interregnum
(London, 1984), p39.

161
Quoted in M Lewin,
Lenin’s Last Struggle
(London, 1969), p12.

162
And even Trotsky did not challenge the decision immediately.

163
The quotations here are given in J G Wright’s translation of L Trotsky,
The Third International After Lenin
(New York, 1957), p36. An English translation of this edition of Stalin’s work is to be found in the British Library.

164
There are accounts of these protests in V Serge,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
, and M Reiman,
The Birth of Stalinism: the USSR on the Eve of the ‘Second Revolution’
(London, 1987). I also once heard the late Harry Wicks describe his personal experience of them as a student at a Comintern training school in Russia.

165
M Reiman,
The Birth of Stalinism,
p2.

166
M Reiman,
The Birth of Stalinism,
p12.

167
E H Carr and R W Davies,
Foundations of a Planned Economy
, vol 1 (London, 1969), p313.

168
Quoted in I Deutscher,
Stalin
(London, 1961), p328.

169
Figures given with sources in T Cliff,
Russia: A Marxist Analysis
(London, 1964), p33.

170
Figures, with sources, given in T Cliff,
State Capitalism in Russia
(London, 1988), p53.

171
Figures, with sources, given in T Cliff,
State Capitalism
, p42.

172
These figures are from R W Davies, ‘Forced Labour Under Stalin: The Archive Revelations’, in
New Left Review
214 (November-December 1995).

173
Figure calculated, with sources, in T Cliff,
State Capitalism
, p130.

174
Speech of Stalin in Moscow, 5 April 1927, quoted in H Isaacs,
Tragedy
, p162.

175
Figures given, with source, in P Frank,
Histoire de l’Internationale Communiste
(Paris, 1979), p634.

176
Figures given in E Rosenhaft,
Beating the Fascists, the German Communists and Political Violence, 1929-33
(Cambridge, 1983), pp44-45.

177
According to a party official cited in E Rosenhaft,
Beating the Fascists,
p45.

178
Figures from
Rote Fahne
, 2 February 1932, quoted in L Trotsky,
Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front, 1930-34
(London, 1969), p39.

179
W S Allen,
The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1930-35
(Chicago, 1965), p292.

180
A full breakdown of Nazi membership figures by class and age is to be found in J Noakes and G Pridham,
Nazism 1919-45, Volume 1, The Rise to Power 1919-34
(Exeter, 1983), pp84-87.

181
See, for instance, M H Kele,
Nazis and Workers
(North Carolina, 1972), p210. Mühlberger, who tries to deny the Nazis had a middle class base, admits that its appeal to workers was mainly among rival workers and the unemployed. See D Mühlberger,
Hitler’s Followers
(London, 1991), pp165, 177, 205.

182
M Mann, ‘As the Twentieth Century Ages’,
New Left Review
214, November-December 1995, p110.

183
K Kautsky, ‘Force and Democracy’, translated in D Beetham,
Marxists in the Face of Fascism
(Manchester, 1983), p248.

184
R Hilferding, ‘Between the Decisions’, translated in D Beetham,
Marxists
, p261.

185
W S Allen,
The Nazi Seizure of Power
, p142.

186
A Schweitzer,
Big Business in the Third Reich
(Bloomington, 1963), p107.

187
J Noakes and G Pridham,
Nazism
, p94.

188
As is admitted by H A Turner, who is generally sceptical about claims that Hitler owed his rise to power to business support, in H A Turner,
German Business and the Rise of Hitler
(New York, 1985), p243.

189
A Schweitzer,
Big Business
, p95.

190
See A Schweitzer,
Big Business
, pp96-97, 100. Turner claims the major Ruhr industrialists were colder towards Hitler than journalistic accounts claim. But he does admit that Hitler addressed influential business audiences. See H A Turner,
German Business
, p172.

191
Quoted in F L Carsten,
Britain and the Weimar Republic
(London, 1984), pp270-271.

192
Even Turner cannot fault this account of the sequence of events. For further sources, see I Kershaw (ed),
Why Did Weimar Fail?
(London, 1990), and P D Stachura,
The Nazi Machtergreifung
(London, 1983). For an overview of all the arguments from a Marxist point of view, see D Gluckstein’s excellent
The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class
(London, 1999), ch 3.

193
J Braunthal,
History of the International
, vol II (London, 1966), p380.

193a
Vorwärts
evening edition, 30 January 1933, quoted, for instance, in E B Wheaton,
The Nazi Revolution 1933-85
(New York, 1969), p223.

194
E Rosenhaft,
Beating the Fascists
, provides an excellent account of this.

195
See A Merson,
Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany
(London, 1986), p29.

196
Quoted in J Braunthal,
History of the International,
p383.

197
A Merson,
Communist Resistance
, p61.

198
A Sturmthal,
The Tragedy of European Labour 1918-39
(London, 1944), p51.

199
A Sturmthal,
The Tragedy of European Labour,
p172.

200
Speech quoted by J Braunthal, a leading social democratic activist in Vienna at the time, in J Braunthal,
In Search of the Millennium
, (London, 1945) p280.

201
J Braunthal,
In Search of the Millennium
, p280.

202
Quoted in A Sturmthal,
The Tragedy of European Labour
, p176.

203
A Sturmthal,
The Tragedy of European Labour
, p177.

204
J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France, Defending Democracy 1934-38
(Cambridge, 1990), p28.

205
J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, p28.

206
J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, pp5-6.

207
The figures and the quote are from J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, p88.

208
Quoted in J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, pp10, 88.

209
According to J Damos and M Gibelin,
June ’36
(London, 1986), p229.

210
According to J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, p112.

211
J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, p13.

212
Figures given in J Jackson,
The Popular Front in France
, pp219-220. See also J Danos and M Gibelin,
June ’36
, p214.

213
For figures on numbers sacked and locked out, see J Danos and M Gibelin,
June ’36
, p230.

214
G Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia
, (London, 1938).

215
Quoted in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution and the War in Spain
(London, 1972), p82.

216
Description of the 1 May demonstration in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, p81.

217
Figures from a speech by Robles, given in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, p84.

218
See the accounts of what happened in the major towns in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, pp102-118.

219
P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, p121.

220
The report of the meeting, by the anarchist leader Santillan, is translated in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, p130.

221
Report of his speech to a CNT gathering soon afterwards, in R Fraser,
Blood of Spain
(Harmondsworth, 1981), p112. For an account sympathetic to the anarcho-syndicalists see J B Acarete,
Durutti
(Barcelona, 1975), pp176-179.

222
See the account of the war in the north in P Broué and E Témime,
The Revolution
, pp389-414.

223
This argument was used, for instance, by the German philosopher Heidegger to excuse his membership of the Nazi Party: ‘To the severe and justified reproaches over “a regime that has exterminated millions of Jews, that has made terror a norm”…I can only add that instead of the “Jews” one should put the “East Germans” (letter to Herbert Marcuse, 20 January 1948), in R Wolin,
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader
(London, 1993), p163.

224
C K Kindelberger,
The World in Depression
, p233.

225
C K Kindelberger,
The World in Depression
, p272.

226
American Civil Liberties Union report quoted in A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
(New York, 1982), p17.

227
A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
, p45.

228
A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
, p61.

229
See, for example, B J Widick,
Detroit, City of Race and Class Violence
(Chicago, 1972), p74.

230
B J Widick,
Detroit
, p64.

231
A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
, p67.

232
A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
, p67.

233
Quoted in A Preis,
Labor’s Giant Step
, p70.

234
J T Farrell,
Selected Essays
(New York, 1964).

235
R Ellison,
Invisible Man
(Harmondsworth, 1965), p404.

236
A H Hansen,
Economic Stabilisation
(New York, 1971), p76.

237
For figures and details, see T Mason,
Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class
(Cambridge, 1995), p114.

238
E Hobsbawm,
The Age of Extremes
, p144.

239
Quoted in J Anderson,
The United States, Great Britain and the Cold War, 1944-1947
(Missouri, 1981), p6.

240
A J P Taylor,
The Second World War
(Harmondsworth, 1976), p86.

241
Quote in J Anderson,
The United States
, p6.

242
G Kolko,
Century of War
(New York, 1994), p253.

243
Figures given in G Kolko,
Century of War
, p207.

244
This process of double-think is well described in Gunter Grass’s novel,
The Dog Years
.

245
Quoted, for instance, in R Miliband,
Parliamentary Socialism
, p281.