Accueil
https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article216507
https://fr.metapedia.org/wiki/Karl_Otto_Paetel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Otto_Paetel
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-bolch%C3%A9visme
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvid_Harnack
https://archive.org/details/PaetelNationalBolshevistManifesto
"
(p.7)
"To break away from this task means gambling away the future of Eternal Germany, shifting the Switzerlandization‡ of the German Volk into its final stage." (p.9)
"The name of the task is, becoming a Nation.
Its guarantor is called, Socialism.
The path to it: Revolution.
Only those called to this task from within will understand what it is about, alone and above all: to open the door to tomorrow for a proletarianized Volk; to break all its bonds – chaos, adversity, affirmation of victimhood, class, estate, granting it personal happiness – in order that reality for the German people shall be:
The nation as the highest value." (pp.9-10)
"In 1928, völkisch journalist Hans von Liebig wrote a book called The Switzerlandization of the German Peoples [“Die Verschweizerung des deutschen Volkes”] which is possibly what Paetel is invoking by his use of the term. Switzerlandization, as von Liebig described it, is the process of a nation taking on the qualities of Switzerland, i.e. becoming a multi-ethnic society, peopled by different ethnic minorities with different languages and different cultures, all living sideby-side, without any real national sense uniting them." (note p.10)
"Wherever in Young-Germany today the deathly stillness of official politics is alarmed by an underground tremor – wherever the unconditionality of nationalist youth calls into question the old values of their fathers, over whose funeral-shrouds the elderly wail with spread hands, registering the (still emotional) socialist demand of the national-revolutionary young bourgeoisie – wherever the proletariat seems to recognize that only the German eagle on red flags will create a Fatherland for them which bears the national fervour of those without a Homeland - there does one see in the bourgeois newspapers a watchword:
National Bolshevism !
But what historical fact first arose in Germany to trigger the political movement meant by that phrase ?
It is not enough simply to take a pro-Russia-policy as its criterion, to see in it simply nothing but foreign policy- not at all. Its conception of foreign policy is indeed only the self-evident result of a very basic assessment.
The first truly National Bolshevist document was the ‘Political Testament’ of Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, in which he set down the belief that a German radical socialism must take in hand, beneath the banners of socialism, a policy of freedom against Western imperialism and capitalism." (p.11)
"The quote from the English Prime Minister Lloyd George in Vienna’s Neuen Freien Press shows how dangerous this possibility appeared to the status of Versailles: “The steady expansion of communism in Germany represents a grave danger for the whole of Europe. The War has shown what a powerful people the Germans are when they are put to the test. That’s why a Communist Germany would be far more dangerous to the world than Communist Russia… I cannot imagine any greater danger for Europe, yes, for the whole world, than for there to be a great Communist state in Central Europe, directed and maintained by one of the world’s most intelligent and disciplined peoples.” " (note 5 p.11)
"The second National Bolshevist wave was the policy of fraternization pursued by the Hamburg ‘National-Communist circles’ under Wolffheim-Laufenberg (alongside and within the KAPD, after their expulsion from the KPD), with parts of General Lettow-Vorbeck’s Freikorps in Hamburg and other cities. Later there were the efforts in Munich to come to a policy of joint action between the communist Thomas, völkisch Police-President Poehner, and the fellows Writings such as Wolffheim’s “Nation and Working Class”, a dissertation against the methods in Russia titled “Moscow and the German Revolution”, the “Open Letter to Major-General Lettow-Vorbeck: Communism – A National Imperative” by Judicial Councillor Krüpfgantz, among others – these were the ideological weapons with which those within the circles of the Communist Party and the right-wing radical groups campaigned for this synthesis. The Hamburger Volkswart and at times the Kommunistische Arbeiterzung were the available, representative newspapers. In practical terms all these efforts came to nothing." (pp.11-12)
"The revolutionary bourgeois youth, which to this day undoubtedly for the most part sees in National Socialism the fulfilment of its vision of combining the national and revolutionary-economic impulses, is the sociological bearer of what the bourgeois call National Bolshevism.
There are no politics for the Jugendbünden, cut off from the fronts of their fathers.
There are no politics for the young generation in the battle of youth against age.
But there is a mission for young nationalism, particularly the post-War youth, which– after over ten years of the Front-generation’s struggling in vain – only they are able to resolve: to plant the flags of the nation in the camp of the class-struggle, to pass on by the word of mouth the watchword “Germany” in the Heerbann of the revolution, to form alongside the formations of the proletarian parties an order of nationalist, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist revolutionaries. To establish the focal point of immortal Germanness in the camp of today’s Fatherland-less, in readiness of the morrow’s duties." (p.18)
"We do not consider following Oswald Spengler’s counsel: “Endure the lost position of a sinking world, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a gate in Pompeii, who died at his post because, during the eruption of Vesuvius, they had forgotten to relieve him.” "(p.18)
"At the moment when those under Versailles alone were capable of making history, the slogan of rebellion against Versailles was supplemented by the domestic-political slogan “Against Marxism”, turning on its head the willingness to, in the Party’s name, take the side of the destitute or homeless, the Fatherland-less, in order to create for them a homeland via radical change to societal and economic life. Upon realizing that the demand of the hour was “Through Socialism to the Nation”, the calculation of the fascist propertied bourgeoisie became: “Beat Marxism – and you eliminate Volk-destructive class-stratification!’ " (p.22)
"One may reject certain points of the Marxist program, one may maintain that its worldview is deficient and out-of-date, but one will refute it neither by coaxing nor with Stormtroopers. It can only be overcome from within itself." (p.24)
"Revolutionary nationalism strives for the implementation of a socialist planned economy on the basis of autarchy (for the transition to a German-Russian autarchy!), for the elimination of private ownership over the means of production, and for the nationalization of land and soil, all as a precondition for the sovereignty of the nation to be created by the revolution." (p.32)
"Revolutionary nationalism does not believe in the possibility of eternal peace, in a humanity capable of nullifying the antagonisms between different peoples (friendenemy-principle). Revolutionary Marxism strives for a pacified world, guaranteed after the abolition of economic antagonisms.
Revolutionary nationalism strives for an appropriately German solution to the peasant question [Bauernfrage]. It is of the conviction that an integration of the small peasants into the planned economy through a private-property-abolishing fiefsystem must preserve the ‘eternal category of the peasant’, and must be utilizable by the state as a reservoir of power.
Revolutionary Marxism strives to liquidate the ‘regressive class’ through collectivizing and rationalizing farming operations, with the end goal being a synthesis with the worker into a higher, ‘classless’ human type. (Russia)
Revolutionary nationalism understands the potency of the Idea, the need for religious renewal and the existence of irrational forces; it sees in the idea of the nation its ultimate goal and in folkdom a fatefully imminent power. All political and economic imperatives are the means of giving this idea form and reality.
Revolutionary Marxism, building on historical materialism, interprets the processes of human history from their economic conditions and assigns the ‘ideological superstructure’ to the secondary role. Belief in the irrational is to be (and certainly will be) overcome.
Revolutionary nationalism is anti-fascist because fascism, aside from its racially-alien characteristics [fremdvölkischen Zügen], does not understand how to incorporate the leadership of the proletariat; in its economic order is only a reform of capitalism; and in its corporatist state-form is a camouflaged dictatorship over the working Volk which thereby perpetuates the division of the nation into ruler and ruled." (p.33)
"Revolutionary nationalism rejects any intention of acquiring colonies, in recognition of the fundamental rights of oppressed peoples to national freedom and in accordance with its own watchword of national sovereignty. On the path towards a community of free peoples it hails the liberation movements of India, China, Egypt, etc., as allies in the fight against the signatory-powers of Versailles, just as it hails the international struggle of the proletariat against international fixed capital. Revolutionary Marxism hails the national-revolutionary movements of colonial- and semi-colonial peoples as precursors of the proletarian world-revolution." (p.34)
"As national-revolutionaries we stand for the nation as the “ultimate value”. Its existence and sovereignty is the political criterion."
"We see in these demands – which represent the political position of an enslaved, proletarianized Volk, a semi-colony of the foreign imperialists – the only path forwards for carrying out the integration of the oppressed, disenfranchised, homeland-less proletarians, which is necessary for the restoration of the nation’s sovereignty. For the sake of the nation, for the sake of its people: Socialists ! That does not mean the lunatic wish to see these proletarians miserable in their new state of affairs. But indeed, we do demand from the individual, as Saint-Just demands, as is done in Russia, a sacrifice of happiness and affluence for the development of the community, which, through its freedom and power, will again be capable of giving happiness and freedom to its members." (p.41)
-Karl Otto Paetel, The National Bolshevist Manifesto, Berlin, 1933, 83 pages.
https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article216498
https://fr.metapedia.org/wiki/Karl_Otto_Paetel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Otto_Paetel
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-bolch%C3%A9visme
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvid_Harnack
https://archive.org/details/PaetelNationalBolshevistManifesto
"
(p.7)
"To break away from this task means gambling away the future of Eternal Germany, shifting the Switzerlandization‡ of the German Volk into its final stage." (p.9)
"The name of the task is, becoming a Nation.
Its guarantor is called, Socialism.
The path to it: Revolution.
Only those called to this task from within will understand what it is about, alone and above all: to open the door to tomorrow for a proletarianized Volk; to break all its bonds – chaos, adversity, affirmation of victimhood, class, estate, granting it personal happiness – in order that reality for the German people shall be:
The nation as the highest value." (pp.9-10)
"In 1928, völkisch journalist Hans von Liebig wrote a book called The Switzerlandization of the German Peoples [“Die Verschweizerung des deutschen Volkes”] which is possibly what Paetel is invoking by his use of the term. Switzerlandization, as von Liebig described it, is the process of a nation taking on the qualities of Switzerland, i.e. becoming a multi-ethnic society, peopled by different ethnic minorities with different languages and different cultures, all living sideby-side, without any real national sense uniting them." (note p.10)
"Wherever in Young-Germany today the deathly stillness of official politics is alarmed by an underground tremor – wherever the unconditionality of nationalist youth calls into question the old values of their fathers, over whose funeral-shrouds the elderly wail with spread hands, registering the (still emotional) socialist demand of the national-revolutionary young bourgeoisie – wherever the proletariat seems to recognize that only the German eagle on red flags will create a Fatherland for them which bears the national fervour of those without a Homeland - there does one see in the bourgeois newspapers a watchword:
National Bolshevism !
But what historical fact first arose in Germany to trigger the political movement meant by that phrase ?
It is not enough simply to take a pro-Russia-policy as its criterion, to see in it simply nothing but foreign policy- not at all. Its conception of foreign policy is indeed only the self-evident result of a very basic assessment.
The first truly National Bolshevist document was the ‘Political Testament’ of Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, in which he set down the belief that a German radical socialism must take in hand, beneath the banners of socialism, a policy of freedom against Western imperialism and capitalism." (p.11)
"The quote from the English Prime Minister Lloyd George in Vienna’s Neuen Freien Press shows how dangerous this possibility appeared to the status of Versailles: “The steady expansion of communism in Germany represents a grave danger for the whole of Europe. The War has shown what a powerful people the Germans are when they are put to the test. That’s why a Communist Germany would be far more dangerous to the world than Communist Russia… I cannot imagine any greater danger for Europe, yes, for the whole world, than for there to be a great Communist state in Central Europe, directed and maintained by one of the world’s most intelligent and disciplined peoples.” " (note 5 p.11)
"The second National Bolshevist wave was the policy of fraternization pursued by the Hamburg ‘National-Communist circles’ under Wolffheim-Laufenberg (alongside and within the KAPD, after their expulsion from the KPD), with parts of General Lettow-Vorbeck’s Freikorps in Hamburg and other cities. Later there were the efforts in Munich to come to a policy of joint action between the communist Thomas, völkisch Police-President Poehner, and the fellows Writings such as Wolffheim’s “Nation and Working Class”, a dissertation against the methods in Russia titled “Moscow and the German Revolution”, the “Open Letter to Major-General Lettow-Vorbeck: Communism – A National Imperative” by Judicial Councillor Krüpfgantz, among others – these were the ideological weapons with which those within the circles of the Communist Party and the right-wing radical groups campaigned for this synthesis. The Hamburger Volkswart and at times the Kommunistische Arbeiterzung were the available, representative newspapers. In practical terms all these efforts came to nothing." (pp.11-12)
"The revolutionary bourgeois youth, which to this day undoubtedly for the most part sees in National Socialism the fulfilment of its vision of combining the national and revolutionary-economic impulses, is the sociological bearer of what the bourgeois call National Bolshevism.
There are no politics for the Jugendbünden, cut off from the fronts of their fathers.
There are no politics for the young generation in the battle of youth against age.
But there is a mission for young nationalism, particularly the post-War youth, which– after over ten years of the Front-generation’s struggling in vain – only they are able to resolve: to plant the flags of the nation in the camp of the class-struggle, to pass on by the word of mouth the watchword “Germany” in the Heerbann of the revolution, to form alongside the formations of the proletarian parties an order of nationalist, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist revolutionaries. To establish the focal point of immortal Germanness in the camp of today’s Fatherland-less, in readiness of the morrow’s duties." (p.18)
"We do not consider following Oswald Spengler’s counsel: “Endure the lost position of a sinking world, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a gate in Pompeii, who died at his post because, during the eruption of Vesuvius, they had forgotten to relieve him.” "(p.18)
"At the moment when those under Versailles alone were capable of making history, the slogan of rebellion against Versailles was supplemented by the domestic-political slogan “Against Marxism”, turning on its head the willingness to, in the Party’s name, take the side of the destitute or homeless, the Fatherland-less, in order to create for them a homeland via radical change to societal and economic life. Upon realizing that the demand of the hour was “Through Socialism to the Nation”, the calculation of the fascist propertied bourgeoisie became: “Beat Marxism – and you eliminate Volk-destructive class-stratification!’ " (p.22)
"One may reject certain points of the Marxist program, one may maintain that its worldview is deficient and out-of-date, but one will refute it neither by coaxing nor with Stormtroopers. It can only be overcome from within itself." (p.24)
"Revolutionary nationalism strives for the implementation of a socialist planned economy on the basis of autarchy (for the transition to a German-Russian autarchy!), for the elimination of private ownership over the means of production, and for the nationalization of land and soil, all as a precondition for the sovereignty of the nation to be created by the revolution." (p.32)
"Revolutionary nationalism does not believe in the possibility of eternal peace, in a humanity capable of nullifying the antagonisms between different peoples (friendenemy-principle). Revolutionary Marxism strives for a pacified world, guaranteed after the abolition of economic antagonisms.
Revolutionary nationalism strives for an appropriately German solution to the peasant question [Bauernfrage]. It is of the conviction that an integration of the small peasants into the planned economy through a private-property-abolishing fiefsystem must preserve the ‘eternal category of the peasant’, and must be utilizable by the state as a reservoir of power.
Revolutionary Marxism strives to liquidate the ‘regressive class’ through collectivizing and rationalizing farming operations, with the end goal being a synthesis with the worker into a higher, ‘classless’ human type. (Russia)
Revolutionary nationalism understands the potency of the Idea, the need for religious renewal and the existence of irrational forces; it sees in the idea of the nation its ultimate goal and in folkdom a fatefully imminent power. All political and economic imperatives are the means of giving this idea form and reality.
Revolutionary Marxism, building on historical materialism, interprets the processes of human history from their economic conditions and assigns the ‘ideological superstructure’ to the secondary role. Belief in the irrational is to be (and certainly will be) overcome.
Revolutionary nationalism is anti-fascist because fascism, aside from its racially-alien characteristics [fremdvölkischen Zügen], does not understand how to incorporate the leadership of the proletariat; in its economic order is only a reform of capitalism; and in its corporatist state-form is a camouflaged dictatorship over the working Volk which thereby perpetuates the division of the nation into ruler and ruled." (p.33)
"Revolutionary nationalism rejects any intention of acquiring colonies, in recognition of the fundamental rights of oppressed peoples to national freedom and in accordance with its own watchword of national sovereignty. On the path towards a community of free peoples it hails the liberation movements of India, China, Egypt, etc., as allies in the fight against the signatory-powers of Versailles, just as it hails the international struggle of the proletariat against international fixed capital. Revolutionary Marxism hails the national-revolutionary movements of colonial- and semi-colonial peoples as precursors of the proletarian world-revolution." (p.34)
"As national-revolutionaries we stand for the nation as the “ultimate value”. Its existence and sovereignty is the political criterion."
"We see in these demands – which represent the political position of an enslaved, proletarianized Volk, a semi-colony of the foreign imperialists – the only path forwards for carrying out the integration of the oppressed, disenfranchised, homeland-less proletarians, which is necessary for the restoration of the nation’s sovereignty. For the sake of the nation, for the sake of its people: Socialists ! That does not mean the lunatic wish to see these proletarians miserable in their new state of affairs. But indeed, we do demand from the individual, as Saint-Just demands, as is done in Russia, a sacrifice of happiness and affluence for the development of the community, which, through its freedom and power, will again be capable of giving happiness and freedom to its members." (p.41)
-Karl Otto Paetel, The National Bolshevist Manifesto, Berlin, 1933, 83 pages.
https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article216498
