Comments on: Rosa Luxemburg’s Shock Doctrine

By: hp

hp — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:37:58 +0000

“By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War.”

By: Deadbeat

Deadbeat — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:28:42 +0000

There is an excellent critique of Naomi Klein awful book by Doug Henwood. In my opinion Klein’s book is a diversion from the true influences that led to the war in Iraq — Zionism being among the chief influence. Ironically Milton Freedman was against the War in Iraq yet the premise of her books blames him.

Once again it show how faux analysis can be use to keep people of concern off balanced. This is the heart of the “War for Oil” canard that has been trumpeted by the left and the reason why there is now a vacuum that’s being filled by an Obama. The “left” has only itself to blame for feeding the people with bogus analysis such as Klein’s which effectively divides and weaken the left and misdirect the misguided.

By: ron

ron — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:20:35 +0000

The fact that she was not a Stalinist (plus the fact that she was dead), means she did not build the Berlin Wall, among other things you suggest she was responsible. As to whether that two-month old democracy she opposed was a democracy? That’s why they killed her then? By the way, it was that so-called democracy which enabled the rise of HItler and the Nazis. Like Luxemburg said–democratic forms do not mean there is democracy…

By: ron

ron — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:16:25 +0000

Two quick things, Michael.

Luxemburg was a communist, she was not a Stalinist.
She never renounced socialism except in some revisionist dream.
As for your comments on Chile and Greece , they are ahistorical and not even necessarily true.

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:47:42 +0000

Without going into the question whether one of the founders of the German Communist Party (think Berlin Wall, machine guns, dobermans, Bautzen prison, Stasi …) is really a good source of inspiration for democratic political ideas, two things. First, the coups in Chile and Greece were both counter-productive inasmuch as both countries are now solid democracies and all that is left is a sense on the part of their populations of bitterness towards, and bertayal by, the US. That hardly was what the CIA was hoping for!
Secondly, RL herself was not killed because of her belief in socialism. As mentioned above, she had already abandoned socialism by the time of her death. Moreover, she was killed by a Freikorps, not by social democrats. Oddly, though, she was killed more or less by mistake in the context of a strike and uprising (to which she was actually opposed!) against the two-month old German democracy.

By: sk

sk — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:06:43 +0000

Rosa also refused to be pigeonholed into single issue politics of her time such as the so-called ‘Woman question’ or the ‘Jewish question’:

Do you remember the Great General Staff report on the Trotha expedition in the Kalahari Desert?’…And the rattle of the dying and delirious shrieks of parched men resounded in the majestic stillness of infinity’. Oh! that ‘majestic stillness of infinity’, in which so many cries have echoed away unheard! It rings so loudly in me that I can have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I feel at home in the whole world, wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears.

Also, the first half of this radio program that aired last year has an interview of John Manley on the Luxemburg-Bernstein debate.

By: bozhidar balkas

bozhidar balkas — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:03:39 +0000

yes, even at least 250mn amers will have to cry uncle.
american system of governance is the best thus far devised for controling not only americans but also alien population.
liberal and conservative party in canada is also fed up with us, the untermenschen.
plutocratic gov’ts are also against their own respective working classes.
let’s passively resist them. maybe even by hunger strikes? thank u.