Who Remembers Franz Neumann?

I recently read the good news that Franz Neumann’s 1944 classic, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944, will finally be reprinted in English (by Ivan R. Dee Publishers).   In a previous blog entry (German Lessons for Americans), I  already commented on the importance of this work whose Harper Torchbook edition dates back to the 1960’s.  Behemoth is required reading for anyone interested in trying to understand the phenomenon of National Socialism and certain of its homologous relations with the current political and economic situation in the Western world.

I believe that in many respects we have more to learn from German thought of the period between the two World Wars than we have from what passes for philosophy and theory in our present time.   There are certainly  issues, for example those dealing with globalization and environmental concerns, that were less obtrusive in that period.  Yet our understanding of fundamental economic and political concerns in the Occident can only be enhanced by the reading of  Franz Neumann’s impressive study of National Socialism.   (In this sense, there is a kind of parallelism with what I’ve previously written about the sciences.  In a certain way, Neumann plays the same  role here that Husserl played in my blog entry on philosophy and science.)

The euphoria in North America surrounding the election of a new president may very well lead to deception and disappointment.  It is unlikely that the fundamental parameters of economic and political life will undergo radical modification once Western societies have weathered the current economic “correction”.  Memories in North America are short.  We tend to forget how far America has departed from its post World War II liberal capitalist course.  If the Obama presidency succeeds in coming close to reversing some of  the political and economic deviation of the Reagan years, it will have accomplished a major task.  However, even such a reversal is not equivalent to structural change.

It is not my intention to examine Behemoth in detail: not only does the book contain a wealth of details on many aspects of the NS regime, but it also opens up many possible topics for detailed discussion.  It demands a more systematic study.  My intention is rather to make a few simple observations about certain aspects of the book.

The most important service that we obtain from  Franz Neumann is the dissipation of many of the myths concerning the rise and practice of fascism in Germany.  Post-structuralist acolytes have too often fostered the simpleminded dictum that Western rationalism leads directly to Auschwitz.   Behemoth’s strength lies in its detailed description of  the  situation in which National Socialism seized power and in its painstaking elaboration of the relations between power, politics and economics during its control of the German state.  Neumann’s  careful exegesis of the elements woven together in that complexity is exemplary.

It is possible to shortcut the description of the development of  fascism by borrowing from Adorno/Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment:  in fascism Myth takes its revenge against Enlightenment.  Or, to put this in Neumann’s terms,  a rational state (say in the sense of Hegel) is not compatible with the (racial) movement state espoused by National Socialism.  But Behemoth corrects the abstract character of this type of observation.  Neumann shows that National Socialism had no real theory of society, no real philosophy beyond the promotion of a type of citizen activism that hardly left room for thought.  Non-rational concepts derived from bogus racial theory and questionable geopolitical considerations were useful in hiding the real structure of power and  in manipulating the masses (helped, of course,  by the threat of terror).  German society was structured by the dynamic of  four groups (party, army, industry, bureaucracy),  each organized according to the “leadership principle”.  NS Germany was not really a state in any classical sense:  it was not ruled by law, but rather by a series of technical rules whose foundation rested on a sort of arbitrariness. This is the sense in which Myth takes its revenge.

From my personal ethnic standpoint ( given that I am of Polish descent), it is somewhat chilling to read the details of the structure which was to govern a European continent ruled by National Socialism.  Also, from the standpoint of  someone who has been involved in education, it  is  particularly sad to read the disappointment that Neumann expresses in the “almost complete moral corruption of the German intelligentsia, especially of the academic world”.  Even more damning to the educational system is his  note that statistics showed that 23% of all party political functionaries came from the teaching professions, primarily from the ranks of  elementary school teachers.

This sort of  account echoes the description that Karl Löwith gives of his experience in the German universities of the time (in My Life in Germany Before and After 1933).  Unfortunately, our experience with the character of academics since the Reagan years is not much different.  Following years of flirtation with philosophical tendencies (commonly grouped under rubrics  such as post-modernism or post-structuralism) most compatible with globalism  (in the sense this term is used by Ulrich Beck) and least  conducive to critical examination of the  unfettered reign of transnational corporations, current philosophy has more or less loss its credibility, its moral authority and its critical function.

Finally, it is evident that the most crucial element in understanding the Germany of this period is the role of the cartels and the manner in which the cartellization of the German economy depended on totalitarian political power to help it avoid any perturbation.  Neumann insists on the importance of the profit motive and the creation and maintenance of a political and social climate in which empire builders such as Flick, Wolff, Mannesmann, and Krupp could prosper.  It was the role of National Socialism to provide the power necessary to support this monopolistic system.  The aims of the German cartels could not be carried out in a political democracy.  The accomplishments of the goals of  German monopolistic capitalism demanded the state control of labor.

Imperialism was a product of  this monopolistic capitalism, of  industrial leadership backed by the NS controlled government.  Strict control of  raw materials markets, systematic dumping and currency manipulation were tools  for the subjugation of  foreign economies.  Neumann claims that even the war itself can be partially viewed as  resulting from a set of  internal contradictions in the German economy.

Helmut Dubiel (in Theory and Politics) describes the assessment of the relation between fascism and capitalism as a point of division in the Frankfurt School  of the years 1940-41.  Neumann’s group  ( Neumann, Marcuse, Kirchheimer, Gurland ),  insisted  on the primacy of the economic sphere, on the proposition that fascism is the form of political organization most appropriate to monopoly capitalism.  The group consisting of Pollock, Adorno and Horkheimer, basing themselves on Pollock’s theory of state capitalism, believed that a developed fascist system , such as National Socialism, reversed the classical Marxist view by establishing complete political control over economic processes.  Adorno and Horkheimer ’s subsequent version of Critical Theory favored the thesis which considers domination in highly developed industrial societies as  founded in more immediate political forms  (see, for example,  the well-known case of Adorno’s  treatment of the  Kulturindustrie).

It is certainly incontestable that the painstakingly rigorous and richly detailed analysis of NS in Behemoth is exemplary.  It is a necessary task for philosophers and social theorists today to carefully analyze the homologies of our current situation with what prevailed in Germany in that epoch.  As much as I was taken with Adorno and Horheimer’s elaboration of  the dialectic between Reason and Myth and the realization that the very act of writing that text allows Reason to dialectically reposition itself against Myth, I am even more convinced that we now need to rely on philosophically guided analyses  such as  Behemoth to counteract the complacent and cynical position which substitutes narrative and cultural artifices  for politics.  By denigrating politics and refusing it a legitimate  place in public life,  by acquiescing in the control that economic power has accumulated, certain contemporary philosophical tendencies  facilitate the return of fascism.  The new appearance of Behemoth should remind us of what is at stake in today’s politics and remind theorists that it is time to revisit some basic questions about the relation of man, society and economy.                                                           

Maybe my next question should be:  who also remembers Karl Mannheim?

Another Reading List: German Lessons for Americans

The title of this post is, of course, deliberately misleading.  The post is certainly not about lessons in the learning of the German language.  For some years now, I have been convinced that one of the best ways to think about almost all aspects of contemporary philosophy is to return to the questions that occupied certain German philosophers in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  I believe that there is much to learn about fundamental philosophy by re-examining that era (and perhaps jettisoning some of the derivative questions that have characterized later 20th century thought).

But fundamental philosophy cannot be separated from social and political philosophy.  So it would indeed be an interesting intellectual exercise to examine a number of pertinent social, political and (more strictly) philosophical questions in the light of certain texts from that period in Germany.  We could also include a few important texts written later, but dealing with that period.  If, at this moment, I were an academic with a captive audience, I would say that there is a way to structure a meaningful course around a well chosen set of these writings.  By presenting this reading list, I wish to suggest a few books that have something to say about certain aspects of the current context.  Three of these recommendations may be more of interest to students of philosophy.  The first (and most important) entry should be of interest to anyone concerned about better evaluating the current social/political/economic crisis.

It is my intention to use the latitude and the informality that a blog permits to write more detailed entries concerning these types of topics in the future.  I would like to remind the reader that it is a lesson learned from the Marxist current in western thought that we cannot draw lines which clearly limit philosophy to what are often referred to as questions of technique.   So, in light of the coming American elections and the social controversy that this election year has used as its backdrop, here are a the first few entries for our reading list:

Franz Neumann, Behemoth (The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944), Oxford University Press, 1944 (reprinted in 1966 by Harper&Row).  This work has virtually disappeared from circulation , yet it may in many ways be the most important text produced by the thinkers that are commonly identified as the Frankfurt School. (On a more deeply philosophical level, that distinction surely belongs to Adorno & Horkheimer’s  Dialectic of Enlightenment).  Neumann’s description of the social structure of Germany and its adaptation to National Socialist rule is insightful.  His analysis of the structure and aims of the cartels is detailed.  I do not know of any writing which gives a better picture of the Germany of that period.  This book should be required reading for anyone who is serious about understanding how NS worked and who is interested in a certain homology between it and the contemporary situation.

Karl Löwith, My Life in Germany Before and After 1933, University of Illinois Press, 1994 (original German text published in 1933).  The great philosopher Löwith’s “record” of his life is notable for what we learn of the difficulties of assimilated Jews in the changing German society leading to National Socialism and for what we see of the reaction/adaptation of academics to political change in the universities in that era.

Leo Löwenthal, An Unmastered Past, University of California Press, 1987. We all owe respect to Löwenthal’s reflections on the Weimar Republic, Adorno , Benjamin,  post-modernism, etc.

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926 : Living at the Edge of Time, Harvard University Press, 1997.  I had the privilege of being a student in a seminar Gumbrecht gave at l’Université de Montréal years ago.  Students of German thought will understand the tradition from which Gumbrecht works.  A book of this type is a sort of first step in Husserl’s project of a true science of the Lebenswelt (although the author would undoubtedly not characterize his work that crudely). The reader will get a surprisingly vivid idea of life in 1926 and also benefit from the thought of one of America’s leading intellectuals.

A Reading List for the American Election

Spending too many years around academics has left me with the habit of constructing spur of the moment reading lists.  My daughter Andrée was often a victim of these spontaneous lists.  Of course, she usually politely ignored them.  At any rate, here is a short reading list for the impending U. S. election:

Robert Kuttner, The Squandering of America, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007. The one book every American should read.  Kuttner touches all the bases in this one.

Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, America: What Went Wrong?,  Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1992. This book, taken from a series of Philadelphia Inquirer articles, is still pertinent.

Louis Uchitelle, The Disposable American, Vintage Books, New York, 2007. The author examines the effects of layoffs in all sectors of the economy.

Ulrich Beck, The Brave New World of Work, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000. The translations of Beck’s works are not smooth reading. One suspects that the German is also a little stylistically challenged. But Beck is one of the best at attacking questions of the global economy. This is definitely worth reading.

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Life, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005. I have to add a more philosophically oriented book to the list.  There are other titles from Bauman that I could cite, but this is definitely one of his better efforts.