Egemonia

By Alan Woods

Friday, 26 May 2006

Beethoven's revolution in music was not understood by many of his contemporaries. They regarded this music as bizarre, hair-brained, even crazy. It jolted the philistines out of their comfortable reveries. Audiences resented it precisely because it compelled them to think what the music was about. Instead of pleasant and easy tunes, Beethoven confronted the listener with meaningful themes, with ideas conveyed in music. This tremendous innovation later became the basis of all Romantic music, culminating in the Leitmotifs of Wagner's vast musical dramas. The basis of all subsequent developments is Beethoven.

Of course, there is no shortage of great lyrical moments in Beethoven, as in the Sixth (Pastorale) symphony and the third movement of the Ninth. Even in the fiercest of battles there are moments of lull, but the lull never lasts long and is only the prelude to new periods of struggle. Such is the real significance of the slow movements in Beethoven. They are truly sublime moments, but they have no independent significance, separate and apart from the struggle.

Beethoven's themes mean something. Of course, this is not superficial programme music. The nearest thing to a descriptive programme is the Sixth Symphony, the Pastorale, where each movement is prefaced by a note that conveys a particular mood or setting ("Pleasant feelings on arriving in the countryside"; "By the brook"; "Shephards' merrymaking and storm" etc.). But this is an exception. The meaning of these themes is more abstract and general. Yet the implications are clear.

The Fifth symphony

A revolutionary spirit moves every bar of Beethoven's symphonies, especially the Fifth. The celebrated opening bars of this work (listen to a fragment) have been compared to Fate knocking at the door. These hammer blows are perhaps the most striking opening of any musical work in history. The conductor Nikolaus Harnancourt, whose recorded cycle of the Beethoven symphonies has been widely acclaimed, has said of this symphony: "This is not music; it is political agitation. It is saying to us: the world we have is no good. Let us change it! Let's go!" Another famous conductor and musicologist, John Elliot Gardener, has discovered that all the main themes in this symphony are based on French revolutionary songs.

This is the first symphony to trace in a systematic manner the progress from the minor to the major key. Although this transition had been done before, the irresistible development from minor to major, its dialectical development, has no precedents. Like the revolution itself, the struggle that unfolds in the development of Beethoven's Fifth passes through a whole series of phases: from a tremendous forward thrust that sweeps all before it to moments of indecision and despair, leading up to the last movement with its glorious blaze of triumph.

The central message of Beethoven's Fifth is struggle and triumph over all the odds. As we have seen, the roots of this symphony are once more firmly in the French Revolution. Yet its message does not depend on this, or any other association. It can communicate itself to many people in different circumstances. But the message is always the same: it is necessary to fight! Never surrender! In the end we will surely win!

The Germans who listened to it in Beethoven's lifetime derived inspiration to fight against the French occupiers of their native land. During the Second World War, the opening bars of the Fifth (which by coincidence are the musical equivalent of the Morse code signal for "V" - meaning victory) were used to rally the French people to fight the German occupiers. Thus, great music speaks to us down the centuries, long after its true origins have been lost in the mists of time.

Beethoven was a revolutionary in every sense of the word. The kind of music he wrote had never been heard before. Prior to this, music was mainly an aristocratic affair. Josef Haydn (whose father was a simple wheelwright) worked for the Esterhazy family for over thirty years. His music was designed mainly to please his aristocratic audiences. It is great music, without doubt, but also undemanding. Beethoven’s symphonies are another world.

Egmont

Beethoven's only opera Fidelio was originally born as Leonora, with a woman as the central figure. Leonora was written in 1805 when the victorious French army had entered Vienna. On the first night most of the audience was made up of French officers and their ladies. Like the Eroica, it also has clear revolutionary overtones, especially in the famous prisoners' chorus. The political prisoners who slowly emerge from the darkness of their dungeon into the light of day sing a moving chorus: "Oh what joy to breathe free air..." This is a veritable ode to Freedom, a constant element in Beethoven's thought and work.

Likewise, the incidental music to the play Egmont, based on the events of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule, has an explicit revolutionary message. The historical Egmont was a Flemish nobleman in the 16th century, that terrible period when the Netherlands languished under the heel of Spanish despotism. A gifted and courageous soldier, Egmont fought on the Spanish side in the wars of Charles V, and was even made governor of Flanders by the Spanish. But despite his services to the Spanish Crown, he fell under suspicion and was beheaded in Brussels on June 5, 1568.

Beethoven learned the story of Egmont from the tragedy of that name written by Goethe in 1788, one year before the French Revolution. Here the man whose statue now stands in Brussels is presented as a hero of the war of national liberation of the Netherlands against the Spanish oppressors. Beethoven set Goethe’s play to music. He saw Egmont as a symbol of the revolutionary struggle against tyranny at all times and in every country. By placing the action in the 16th century, he could avoid the accusation of subversion, but subversive it was.

Today only the famous Egmont Overture is well known (listen to a fragment). This is a pity because Beethoven’s Incidental Music to Egmont contains other marvellous material. Egmont’s final speech, as he goes calmly to his death, is a veritable denunciation of tyranny and a courageous call to the people to revolt and, if necessary, to give their lives to the cause of freedom. It ends with the following lines:

Forward, good people! The goddess
of victory leads you. And as the sea
breaks through your dikes, so
crush, tear down tyranny's
ramparts, and sweep them,
drowning, from the ground
which they usurp.
Listen, listen! How often this sound
would call me to step out eagerly
towards the field of battle and
victory! How lightheartedly did
the comrades stride on their
perilous way! I too will step
from this dungeon towards an honourable
death: I die for the freedom which I
have lived and fought for, and to which I
now offer myself up as sorrowful victim.
Yes, rally them all!
Close your ranks, you do not
frighten me. I am used to
standing betwixt spears, and,
beset by imminent death,
to feel my courageous life blood
coursing twice as quickly through my veins.
Friends, pluck up courage! Behind you
are your parents, your wives, your children.
But these people are driven on by their ruler's
empty words, not by their own inclination.
Friends, defend what is yours! and
fall gladly to save those you love most,
and follow as I lead.

These words are followed by the Victory Symphony, which ends the work in a blaze of fire. But how can one end a tragedy on such a note? How can one speak of victory when the leader of the rebellion has been executed? This little detail tells us all we need to know about Beethoven’s outlook. Here we have a stubborn and incorrigible optimist, a man who refuses to admit defeat, a man with a boundless confidence in the future of humanity. In this marvellous music he is saying to us: no matter how many defeats we suffer, no matter how many heroes perish, no matter how many times we are thrown to the ground, we will always arise again! You can never defeat us! For you can never conquer our minds and souls. This music expresses the undying spirit of revolution.

The long dark night


Napoleon's retreat from Moscow
Beethoven’s revolutionary optimism was about to experience its most serious test. Despite the fact that Napoleon had restored all the outward forms of the Ancien Regime, the fear and loathing for Napoleonic France in monarchist Europe was no less than before. The crowned heads of Europe feared the revolution even in the degenerate, twisted form of Bonapartism, just as later they feared and hated Stalin’s bureaucratic caricature of October. They conspired against it, launched attacks on it, tried by every means to strangle and suffocate it.

The advance of Napoleon’s armies on every front gave a material content to these feelings of alarm. The reactionary monarchist regimes of Europe, led by England with its limitless supplies of gold, exerted every nerve and sinew to confront the threat from France. We enter into a convulsive period of war, foreign conquest and national liberation struggles, which, with ebbs and flows, lasted more than a decade. Napoleon’s Grande Armée conquered almost the whole of Continental Europe before finally suffering a serious defeat in the frozen wastes of Russia in 1812. Weakened by this heavy blow, Napoleon was finally defeated by an Anglo-Prussian force on the muddy fields of Waterloo.

For Beethoven the year 1815 was marked by two disasters: one on the world stage, the other of a personal character: the defeat of France at Waterloo and the death of the composer’s beloved brother Kasper. Deeply affected by the loss of his brother, Beethoven insisted on taking charge of the upbringing of his son, Karl. This led to a long and bitter wrangle with Karl’s mother over custody.


The Congress of Vienna
The period after 1815 was one of black reaction. Monarchist-feudal counter-revolution triumphed all along the line. The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) reinstated the rule of the Bourbons in France. Metternich and the Tsar of Russia launched a veritable crusade to overthrow progressive regimes everywhere and support. Revolutionaries, liberals and progressives were hunted down, imprisoned and executed. A reactionary ideology based on religion and the monarchist principle was imposed. Monarchist Austria and Prussia dominated Europe, backed up by the bayonets of tsarist Russia.

It is true that the war against France contained elements of a war of national liberation in countries like Germany. But the outcome was entirely reactionary. The clearest case of this was Spain. Foreign rule was overthrown by a national movement, the main component of which was the "dark masses" - a downtrodden and illiterate peasantry, under the influence of a fanatical and reactionary clergy. Under the reign of Fernando VII, reaction reigned in Spain, where the experiment with a liberal constitution was crushed underfoot.


Goya: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid (1814)
The magnificent, tortured paintings of Goya’s last years reflect the essence of this turbulent period. Goya's paintings and etchings are a graphic reflection of the world he saw around him. Like the music of Beethoven, these paintings are more than art. They are a political statement. They are an angry protest against the prevailing spirit of reaction and obscurantism. As if to underline his protest, Goya chose the road of voluntary self-exile from the repressive regime of the traitor king Fernando VII, his old protector. Goya was not alone in his hatred of the Spanish monarch - Beethoven refused to send him his works.

By 1814 - the date of the Congress of Vienna - Beethoven was at the pinnacle of his career. But the gathering reaction throughout Europe which buried the hopes of a generation had a dampening effect on Beethoven's spirit. In 1812, when Napoleon’s army was halted at the gates of Moscow, Beethoven was working on his Seventh and Eighth symphonies. Then, after 1815, silence. He wrote no more symphonies for almost a decade, when he wrote his last, and greatest symphony.

The final defeat of what remained of the French Revolution buried all hopes and suffocated the creative drive. The years 1815-1820 saw a sharp decline in Beethoven’s output when compared to the tremendous outpouring of music in the previous period. Only six works of note were produced in as many years. They include the song cycle An der fernte Geliebte (To the distant loved one), the last sonatas for cello and piano, the opus 101 piano sonatas and the great Hammerklavier sonata, a work full of inner contradictions and discord, possibly reflecting the discord in his personal life.

He was now profoundly deaf. We read heartbreaking stories of his struggle to hear something of his own compositions. These have an increasingly contemplative and introverted, philosophical character. The slow movement of the Hammerklavier sonata, for instance, is openly tragic, reflecting a sense of acceptance. Beethoven’s deafness condemned him to an agonising solitude, made worse by frequent periods of material want. He became ever more introverted, moody and suspicious, which only served to isolate him still more from other people.

After the death of his brother he developed an obsession with his nephew Karl and became convinced that he should be in charge of the boy’s upbringing. He used all his influence to get custody over his nephew and then denied Karl’s mother access to her son. Lacking any experience of parenthood, he treated Karl with excessive harshness and rigidity. This eventually led Karl to attempt suicide – a devastating blow for Beethoven. Later they became reconciled, but the whole business led only to great unhappiness and pain for everyone concerned.

What was the reason for this strange obsession? Despite his passionate nature, Beethoven never succeeded in forming a satisfactory relationship with a woman and had no children of his own. All his emotions were poured into his music. This was to the eternal benefit of humanity, but it undoubtedly left a void in Beethoven’s personal life. No longer a young man, deaf, lonely and facing the shipwreck of all his hopes, he was desperately seeking to fill the void in his soul.

Thwarted in the political sphere, Beethoven threw himself into what he imagined was the family life he had never had. This kind of situation is well known to revolutionaries. Whereas in times of revolutionary upsurge, personal and family matters seem to pale into insignificance, in periods of reaction, such things assume a far greater significance, inducing some people to drop out of the movement and to seek refuge in the bosom of the family.

It is true that this affair does not show Beethoven in the best light, and some small-minded people have tried to use the Karl episode to blacken Beethoven’s name. Such accusations bring to mind Hegel’s remark that no man is a hero to his valet, who sees all the faults of his personal life, his eccentricities and vices. But as Hegel comments, the valet may criticise these failings. His range of vision does not see any further than such trivial matters and that explains why he will only ever be a valet and not a great man. For all his failings (and failings are inevitable to all humans), Beethoven was one of the greatest men who ever lived.

Isolation

Despite everything, in this long, dark night of reaction, Beethoven never lost faith in the future of humanity and in the revolution. It has now become commonplace to refer to his great humanitarianism. This is correct as far as it goes but it does not go far enough. It places Beethoven on the same level as parsons, pacifists and well-meaning old ladies who dedicate their spare time to “worthy causes”. That is to say, it places a giant on the same level as a pygmy.

Beethoven as an old man
Beethoven’s outlook was not just a vague humanitarianism which wishes the world were a better place but never gets beyond impotent hand-wringing and pious good intentions. Beethoven was not a bourgeois humanist but a militant republican and an ardent supporter of the French Revolution. He was not prepared to surrender to the prevailing reaction or to compromise with the status quo. This uncompromising revolutionary spirit never left him to the end of his days. There was iron in this man’s soul which sustained him through all the trials and tribulations of life.

His deafness lasted for the last nine years of his life. One by one he had lost his most trusted friends and was utterly alone. In this desperate solitude, Beethoven was reduced to communicating to people in writing. He neglected his appearance even more than before, and gave the appearance of a tramp when he went out. Yet even in such tragic circumstances, he was working on his greatest masterpieces.

Like Goya in his black period, he was now composing not for the public but for himself, finding expression for his innermost thoughts. The music of his last years is the product of the maturity of old age. It is not beautiful music but very profound. It transcends Romanticism and points the way forward to the tortured world of our own times.

Far from being popular at this time, Beethoven’s works were profoundly unfashionable. They were against the spirit of the times. In times of reaction, the public does not want profound ideas. Thus, after the defeat of the Paris Commune, the frivolous light operettas of Offenbach were all the rage. The bourgeoisie of Paris did not want to be reminded of storm and stress but to drink champagne and watch the antics of pretty chorus girls. The merry but superficial tunes of Offenbach reflected this spirit perfectly.

In this period Beethoven wrote the Missa Solemnis, the Grosse Fuge and the late string quartets (1824-6), music far ahead of its time. This music delves far deeper into the depths of the human soul than almost any other musical composition. Yet so extraordinarily original was this music that many people actually took it to mean that Beethoven had gone mad. Beethoven paid absolutely no attention to all this. He cared nothing for public opinion and was never discreet in expressing his views. This was dangerous. Only his status as a famous composer kept him out of prison.

We should bear in mind that at this time Austria was one of the main centres of European reaction. Not only politics but also cultural life was suffocated. The emperor’s police spies were on every street corner. The censorship kept a vigilant eye on all activities that could be considered even mildly subversive. Under such circumstances, the respectable Viennese bourgeois did not want to listen to music intended to rouse them to struggle for a better world. They preferred to have their ears gently tickled by the comic operas of Rossini – the composer of the hour. By contrast, Beethoven’s great Missa Solemnis was a flop.

The torment in the great man’s soul found its reflection in that strange composition known as the Grosse Fuge. It is intensely personal music that undoubtedly tells us a lot about Beethoven’s state of mind at this time (listen to a fragment) . Here we are in the presence of a world of conflict, dissonance and unresolved contradictions. It was not what the public wanted to hear.

The Ninth symphony

Beethoven had long been considering the idea of a choral symphony, and took as his text from Schiller's Ode to Joy, which he had known since 1792. In fact, Schiller had originally considered an Ode to Freedom (Freiheit), but because of the enormous pressure of the reactionary forces, he changed the word to Joy (Freude). However, for Beethoven and his generation the message was quite clear. This was an Ode to Freedom.

The first sketch for the Ninth symphony dates back to 1816, one year after the battle of Waterloo. It was finished seven years later, in 1822-24, after the Philharmonic Society of London had offered the sum of 50 pounds for two symphonies. Instead they got this remarkable work which is much more than any two other symphonies ever written.

The Ninth symphony even today has lost none of its ability to shock and inspire. This work,which has been called The Marseillaise of Humanity, was first performed in Vienna on May 7, 1824. In the midst of universal reaction, this music expresses the voice of revolutionary optimism. It is the voice of a man who refuses to admit defeat, whose head remains unbowed in adversity.

Its long first movement arises gradually out of nebulous chords (listen to a fragment), so indistinct that they seem to emerge out of darkness, like the primaeval chaos that was supposed to precede Creation. It is like a man saying: “Yes, we have passed through a dark night when all seemed hopeless, but the human spirit is capable of emerging triumphant from the darkest night.”

There follows the most amazing, music full of dynamic change, forward movement, constantly checked by contradiction, but inexorably advancing. It is like the first movement of the Fifth, but on an infinitely bigger scale. Like the Fifth, this is violent music, and it is revolutionary violence that tolerates no opposition, but sweeps everything before it. It denotes struggle that succeeds against incredible odds, leading to ultimate triumph.


Beethoven conducting the Ninth
Such music had never been heard before. It was something entirely new and revolutionary. It is impossible today to comprehend the impact it must have made on the audience. The final theme which pours out at the end like a burst of radiant sunshine through the clouds is, in fact, heard throughout the symphony in a variety of subtle disguises. The message of the final, choral, movement (listen here) is unambiguous: "All men shall be brothers!" This is Beethoven's final message to humanity. It is a message of hope - and defiance.

Beethoven, old, dishevelled, unkempt and completely deaf, conducted the symphony. He was unable even to keep time correctly, waving his arms furiously in the air, even after the orchestra had stopped playing. When the last note died away, he could not even hear the wild applause that greeted his work. The great man stood facing the orchestra for a few moments. Then the contralto Karoline Unger gently took him by the shoulders and turned him round to face the public. Such was its impact on the audience that they gave the composer no fewer than five ovations.

So great was the tumult that the Vienna police – ever on the lookout for manifestations of dangerous public demonstrations – finally had to intervene to stop it. After all, three ovations was considered the limit even for the emperor. Would such a demonstration of enthusiasm not be considered an offence to His Majesty? The instinctive reaction of the police was not mistaken. There is indeed something profoundly subversive in the Ninth, from the first bar to the last.

The Ninth symphony was a success, but it made no money. Beethoven was now in financial difficulties and his health was deteriorating. He caught pneumonia and had to undergo an operation. The wound became infected and his last days were spent in agony.

Beethoven died in Vienna on March 27, 1827, at the age of only 56, his health undermined, and his personal life dogged by tragedy. Goya, who was also deaf, died in the same year. 25,000 people turned out for his funeral - a fact which shows the extent to which his genius had been recognised in his lifetime. Yet he remains alive today, as vibrant and relevant as ever. As was the man, so was his music. In his music we feel we have the whole man. We feel that we have known and loved him all our lives.

Beethoven's greatness consists in the fact that in his music the individual is at one with the universal. This is music which constantly suggests a struggle to overcome all obstacles and rise to a higher state. His music was revolutionary because in its searing intensity, it cast light on aspects of the human condition never before expressed in music. It was truth expressed in music.

Postscript

The Ninth symphony was Beethoven’s last word – a fearless challenge to the apparently triumphant reaction that seemed to be all-powerful after the defeat of the French armies in 1815. That apparently final victory of the forces of reaction led to a wave of dispondancy and defeatism that suffocated the hopes of the generation that looked for salvation to the French Revolution. Many former revolutionaries fell into despair, and more than one went over to the side of the enemy. It is a very familiar picture to our own generation, with uncanny parallels to the situation that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Then also it seemed that Europe lay prostrate at the feet of royalist reaction. Who could stand against such a power as the united monarchical powers of Europe, with the might of the Russian Tsar behind every throne and police spies on every street corner? Despotism and religious obscurantism were triumphant. Everywhere there was silence as of the grave. And yet, in the midst of this terrible desolation, a brave man raised his voice and gave the world a message of hope. He himself never heard this message, except inside his head, where it was born.

But the defeat of France and the re-imposition of the Bourbons could not prevent the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, nor halt the tide of revolution, which broke out again and again: in 1830, 1848, 1871. The system of production which had triumphed in England now began to penetrate other European countries. Industry, the power loom, the railways, the steamship, were the motor forces of universal and irresistible change.

The ideas of the French Revolution – the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man – continued to grip the imagination of the new generation. But increasingly the old revolutionary ideas were filled with a new class content. The rise of capitalism meant the development of industry and the working class – the bearer of a new idea and a new stage in human history – socialism.

The music of Beethoven was the starting point for a new school of music, Romanticism, which was inextricably linked to Revolution. In April 1849, in the heat of revolution in Germany, the young composer Richard Wagner conducted Beethoven’s Ninth symphony in Dresden. In the audience was the Russian anarchist, Bakunin, whose ideas influenced Wagner in his youth. Enthused by the music, Bakunin told Wagner that if there was anything worth saving from the ruins of the old world, this score would be it.

Just ninety years after the death of Beethoven the Russian Tsar was himself overthrown by the working class. The October Revolution was to play a role similar to that of the French Revolution. It inspired generations of men and women with a vision of a new and better world. True, the Russian Revolution degenerated, under conditions of frightful backwardness, into a monstrous caricature that Trotsky, using an historical analogy with the French Revolution, characterised as proletarian Bonapartism. And just as Napoleon’s dictatorship undermined the French Revolution and led to the restoration of the Bourbons, so the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship in Russia has led to the restoration of capitalism.

Today, in a world dominated by the forces of triumphant reaction, we face a similar situation to that faced by Beethoven and his generation after 1815. Now, as then, many former revolutionaries have abandoned the struggle. We will not join the camp of the cynics and sceptics, but prefer to follow the example of Ludwig van Beethoven. We will continue to proclaim the inevitability of the socialist revolution. And history will prove us right.

Those who predict the end of history have been proved wrong many times. History is not so easy to stop! Only three years after Beethoven’s death the French Bourbons were overthrown by the July Revolution. This was followed by revolutions all over Europe in 1848-9. Then there was the Paris Commune of 1871, the first genuine workers’ revolution in history, which paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Therefore, we see no reason for pessimism. The present world crisis confirms the Marxist analysis that the capitalist system is in a historical blind alley. We confidently predict that the collapse of the Soviet Union, far from being the end of history, is only the prelude to its first act. The second act will be the overthrow of capitalism in one country or another, which will prepare the way for a new revolutionary wave on a scale never before seen in history.

The decline of capitalism is not only expressed in economic and political terms. The impasse of the system is reflected not only in the stagnation of the productive forces but also in a general stagnation of culture. Yet, as always happens in history, beneath the surface new forces are struggling to be born. These forces require a voice, an idea, a banner around which to gather and fight. That will come in time, and when it does it will not only come in the shape of political programmes. It will find its expression in music and art, in novels and poetry, in the theatre and cinema. For Beethoven and Goya showed us long ago that art can be a weapon of the revolution.

Like the great French revolutionaries – Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Saint-Juste – Beethoven was convinced that he was writing for posterity. When (as frequently happened) musicians complained that they could not play his music because it was too difficult, he used to answer: "Don't worry, this is music for the future." We can say the same about the ideas of socialism. They represent the future, while the discredited ideas of the bourgeoisie represent the past. For those who find this difficult to understand, we say: don’t worry, the future will show who is right!

In the future, when men and women look back on the history of revolutions and the repeated attempts to create a genuinely human society based on true freedom, equality and fraternity, they will remember the man who, using for his medium music that he could not hear, fought for a better tomorrow that he would never see. They will relive the great battles of the past and they will understand the language of Beethoven: the universal language of the fight for the establishment of a world fit for free men and women to live in.

First of May, 2006

By Alan Woods

Friday, 19 May 2006

"Beethoven is the friend and contemporary of the French Revolution, and he remained faithful to it even when, during the Jacobin dictatorship, humanitarians with weak nerves of the Schiller type turned from it, preferring to destroy tyrants on the theatrical stage with the help of cardboard swords. Beethoven, that plebeian genius, who proudly turned his back on emperors, princes and magnates - that is the Beethoven we love for his unassailable optimism, his virile sadness, for the inspired pathos of his struggle, and for his iron will which enabled him to seize destiny by the throat."

Igor Stravinsky

If any composer deserves the name of revolutionary it is Beethoven. The word revolution derives historically from the discoveries of Copernicus, who established that the earth revolves around the sun, and thus transformed the way we look at the universe and our place in it. Similarly, Beethoven carried through what was probably the greatest single revolution in modern music. His output was vast, including nine symphonies, five piano concertos and others for violin, string quartets, piano sonatas, songs and one opera. He changed the way music was composed and listened to. Right to the end, he never ceased pushing music to its limits.

After Beethoven it was impossible to go back to the old days when music was regarded as a soporific for wealthy patrons who could doze through a symphony and then go home quietly to bed. After Beethoven, one no longer returned from a concert humming pleasant tunes. This is music that does not calm, but shocks and disturbs. it is music that makes you think and feel.

Early years

Marx pointed out that the difference between France and Germany is that, whereas the French actually made revolutions, the Germans merely speculated about them. Philosophical idealism flourished in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries for the same reason. In England the bourgeoisie was effecting a great world-historical revolution in production, while across the English Channel, the French were carrying out an equally great revolution in politics. In backward Germany, where social relations lagged behind France and England, the only revolution was a revolution in men's minds. Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel argued about the nature of the world and ideas, while other people in other lands actually set about revolutionising the world and the minds of men and women.

The Sturm und Drang movement was an expression of this typically German phenomenon. Goethe was influenced by German idealist philosophy, especially Kant. Here we can detect the echoes of the French revolution, but they are distant and indistinct, and they are strictly confined to the abstract world of poetry, music and philosophy. The Sturm und Drang movement in Germany reflected the revolutionary nature of the epoch at the end of the 18th century. It was a period of enormous intellectual ferment. The French philosophes anticipated the revolutionary events of 1789 by their assault on the ideology of the old regime. As Engels put it in the Anti-Duhring: “The great men, who in France prepared men's minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. They recognised no external authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions — everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism; everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence. Reason became the sole measure of everything. It was the time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon its head; first in the sense that the human head, and the principles arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the basis of all human action and association; but by and by, also, in the wider sense that the reality which was in contradiction to these principles had, in fact, to be turned upside down.”



Bonn in the 18th century
The impact of this pre-revolutionary ferment in France made itself felt far beyond the borders of that country, in Germany, England, and even Russia. In literature, gradually the old courtly forms were being dissolved. This found its reflection in the poetry of Wolfgang Goethe – the greatest poet Germany has produced. His great masterpiece Faust is shot through with a dialectical spirit. Mephistophiles is the living spirit of negation that penetrates everything. This revolutionary spirit found an echo in the later works of Mozart, notably in Don Giovanni, which among other things contains a stirring chorus with the words: “Long live Liberty!” But it is only with Beethoven that the spirit of the French Revolution finds its true expression in music.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn on November 16, 1770, the son of a musician from a family of Flemish origin. His father, Johann, was employed by the court of the Archbishop-elector. He was by all accounts a harsh, brutal and dissolute man. His mother, Maria Magdalena, bore her martyrdom with silent resignation. Beethoven’s early years were not happy. This probably explains his introverted and somewhat surly character as well as his rebellious spirit.

Beethoven’s early education was at best patchy. He left school at the age of eleven. The first person to realise the youngster’s enormous potential was the court organist, Gottlob Neffe, who introduced him to the works of Bach, especially the Well-Tempered Klavier.

Noting his son’s precocious talent, Johann tried to turn him into a child prodigy – a new Mozart. At the age of five he was exhibited at a public concert. But Johann was doomed to disappointment: Ludwig was no childhood Mozart. Surprisingly, he had no natural disposition for music and had to be pushed. So his father sent him to several teachers to drum music into his head.

Beethoven in Vienna

At this time Bonn, the capital of the Electorate of Cologne, was a sleepy provincial backwater. In order to advance, the young musician had to go to study music in Vienna. The family was not rich, but in 1787 the young Beethoven was sent to the capital by the Archbishop. It was here that he met Mozart, who was impressed by him. Later one of his teachers was Haydn. But after only two months he had to return to Bonn, where his mother was seriously ill. She died shortly afterwards. This was the first of many personal and family tragedies that dogged Beethoven all his life. In 1792, the year in which Louis XVI was beheaded, Beethoven finally moved from Bonn to Vienna, where he lived till he died.


Vienna in Beethoven's time


The portraits that have come down to us show a brooding, sombre young man with an expression that conveys a sense of inner tension and a passionate nature. Physically he was not handsome: a large head and Roman nose, a pock-marked face and thick, bushy hair that never seemed to be combed. His dark complexion earned him the nickname “the Spaniard”. Short, stocky and rather clumsy, he had the bearing and manners of a plebeian – a fact that could not be disguised by the elegant clothes he wore as a young man.

This born rebel turned up in aristocratic and fastidious Vienna, unkempt, ill-dressed and ill-humoured, with none of the polite airs and graces that might have been expected of him. Like every other composer in those times, Beethoven was obliged to rely on grants and commissions from wealthy and aristocratic patrons. But he was never owned by them. He was not a musical courtier, as Haydn was at the court of the Esternazy family. What they thought of this strange man is not known. But the greatness of his music ensured him of commissions and therefore a livelihood.

He must have felt completely out of place. He despised convention and orthodoxy. He was not in the least interested in his appearance or surroundings. Beethoven was a man who lived and breathed for his music and was unconcerned with worldly comforts. His personal life was chaotic and unsettled, and could be described as Bohemian. He lived in the utmost squalor. His house was always a mess, with bits of food lying around, and even unemptied chamber pots.

His attitude to the princes and nobles who paid him was conveyed in a famous painting. The composer is shown in the course of a stroll with the poet Goethe, the Archduchess Rudolph and the Empress. While Goethe respectfully gave way to the royal pair, politely removing his hat, Beethoven completely ignored them and continued walking without even acknowledging the greetings of the imperial family. This painting contains the whole spirit of the man, a fearless, revolutionary, uncompromising spirit. Suffocating in the bourgeois atmosphere of Vienna he wrote a despairing comment: “As long as the Austrians have their brown beer and little sausages, they will never revolt.” [1]

A revolutionary epoch

The world into which Beethoven was born was a world in turmoil, a world in transition, a world of wars, revolution and counter-revolution: a world like our own world. In 1776, the American colonists succeeded in winning their freedom through a revolution which took the form of a war of national liberation against Britain. This was the first act in a great historical drama.

The American Revolution proclaimed the ideals of individual freedom that were derived from the French Enlightenment. Just over a decade later, the ideas of the Rights of Man returned to France in an even more explosive manner. The storming of the Bastille in July 1789 marked a decisive turning point in world history.

In its period of ascent the French Revolution swept away all the accumulated rubbish of feudalism, brought an entire nation to its feet and confronted the whole of Europe with courage and determination. The liberating spirit of the Revolution in France swept like wildfire through Europe. Such a period demanded new art forms and new ways of expression. This was achieved in the music of Beethoven, which expresses the spirit of the age better than anything else.


Revolutionary France


In 1793 King Louis of France was executed by the Jacobins. A wave of shock and fear swept through all the courts of Europe. Attitudes towards revolutionary France hardened. Those "liberals" who had initially greeted the Revolution with enthusiasm, now slunk away into the corner of reaction. The antagonism of the propertied classes to France was voiced by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Everywhere the supporters of the revolution were regarded with suspicion and persecuted. It was no longer safe to be a friend of the French Revolution.

These were stormy times. The revolutionary armies of the young French republic defeated the armies of feudal-monarchist Europe and were counter-attacking all along the line. The young composer was from the beginning an ardent admirer of the French revolution, and was appalled at the fact that Austria was the leading force in the counter-revolutionary coalition against France. The capital of the Empire was infected by a mood of terror. The air was thick with suspicion; spies were ever-present and free expression was stifled by censorship. But what could not be expressed by the written word could find an expression in great music.

His studies with Haydn did not go very well. He was already developing original ideas about music, which did not go down well with the old man, firmly wedded to the old courtly-aristocratic style of classical music. It was a clash of the old with the new. The young composer was making a name for himself as a pianist. His style was violent, like the age that produced it. It is said that he hit the keys so hard he broke the strings. He was beginning to be recognised as a new and original composer. He took Vienna by storm. He was a success.

Life can play the cruellest tricks on men and women. In Beethoven's case, fate prepared a particularly cruel destiny. In 1796-7 Beethoven fell ill – possibly with a type of meningitis – which affected his hearing. He was 28 years old, and at the peak of his fame. And he was losing his hearing. About 1800 he experienced the first signs of deafness. Although he did not become completely deaf till his last years, the awareness of his deteriorating condition must have been a terrible torture. He became depressed and even suicidal. He wrote of his inner torment, and how only his music held him back from taking his own life. This experience of intense suffering, and the struggle to overcome it, suffuses his music and imbues it with a deeply human spirit.


The young Beethoven
His personal life was never happy. He had the habit of falling in love with the daughters (and wives) of his wealthy patrons – which always ended badly, with new fits of depression. After one such spell of depression he wrote: “Art, and only art, has saved me! It seems to me impossible to leave this world without having given everything I have felt germinating within me.”

At the beginning of 1801 he passed through a severe personal crisis. According to the Heiligenstadt Testament, he was on the verge of suicide. Having recovered from his depression, Beethoven threw himself with renewed vigour into the work of musical creation. A lesser man would have been destroyed by these blows. But Beethoven turned his deafness – a crippling disability for anyone, but a catastrophe for a composer – to an advantage. His inner ear provided him with all that was necessary to compose great music. In the very year of his most devastating crisis (1802) he composed his great Eroica symphony.

The dialectic of the sonata

The dynamics of Beethoven's music were entirely new. Earlier composers wrote quiet parts and loud parts. But the two were kept completely separate. In Beethoven, on the contrary, we pass rapidly from one to another. This music contains an inner tension, an unresolved contradiction which urgently demands resolution. It is the music of struggle.

The sonata form is a way of elaborating and structuring musical matter. It is based on a dynamic vision of musical form and is dialectical in essence. The music develops through a series of opposing elements. By the end of the 18th century the sonata form dominated much of the music composed. Although it is not new, the sonata form was developed and consolidated by Haydn and Mozart. But in the compositions of the 18th century we have only the bare potential of the sonata form, not its true content.

In part (but only in part) this is a question of technique. The form that Beethoven used was not new, but the way in which he used it was. The sonata form begins with a quick first movement, followed by a slower second movement, a third movement which is merrier in character (originally a minuet, later a scherzo, which literally means a joke), and ending, as it began, with a fast movement.

Basically, the sonata form is based on the following line of development: A-B-A. It returns to the beginning, but on a higher level. This is a purely dialectical concept: movement through contradiction, the negation of the negation. It is a kind of musical syllogism: exposition-development-recapitulation, or expressed in other terms: thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

This kind of development is present in each of the movements. But there is also an overall development in which there are conflicting themes which are finally reconciled in a "happy ending". In the final coda we return to the initial key, creating the sensation of a triumphal apotheosis.

This form contains the germ of a profound idea, and has the potential for serious development. It can also be expressed by a wide range of instrumental combinations: piano solo, piano and violin, string quartet, symphony. The success of the sonata form was helped by the invention of a new musical instrument: the pianoforte. This was able to express the full dynamic of romanticism, whereas the organ and harpsichord were restricted to play music written according to the principles of polyphony and counterpoint.

The development of the sonata form was already far advanced in the late 18th century. It reached its high point in the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, and in one sense it could be argued that the symphonies of Beethoven are only a continuation of this tradition. But in reality, the formal identity conceals a fundamental difference.

In its origins, the form of the sonata predominated over its real content. The classical composers of the 18th century were mainly concerned with getting the form right (though Mozart is an exception). But with Beethoven, the real content of the sonata form finally emerges. His symphonies create an overwhelming sense of the process of struggle and development through contradictions. Here we have the most sublime example of the dialectical unity of form and content. This is the secret of all great art. Such heights have rarely been reached in the history of music.

Inner conflict

The symphonies of Beethoven represent a fundamental break with the past. If the forms are superficially similar, the content and spirit of the music is radically different. With Beethoven - and the Romantics who followed in his footsteps - what is important is not the forms in themselves, the formal symmetry and inner equilibrium, but the content. Indeed, the equilibrium is frequently disturbed in Beethoven. There are many dissonances, reflecting inner conflict.

In 1800 he wrote his first symphony, a work that still has its roots in the soil of Haydn. It is a sunny work, quite free from the spirit of conflict and struggle that characterises his later works. It really gives one no idea of what was to come. The Pathetique piano sonata (opus 13) is altogether different. It is quite unlike the piano sonatas of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven was influenced by Schiller's theory of tragedy and tragic art, which he saw not just as human suffering, but above all as a struggle to resist suffering, to fight against it.

The message is clearly expressed in the first movement, which opens with complex and dissonant sounds (listen here). These mysterious chords soon give way to a central agitated passage which suggests this resistance to suffering. This inner conflict plays a key role in Beethoven's music and gives it a character completely different to that of 18th century music. It is the voice of a new epoch: a thunderous voice that demands to be heard.

The question that must be posed is: how do we explain this striking difference? The short and easy answer is that this musical revolution is the product of the mind of a genius. That is correct. Probably Beethoven was the greatest musical genius of all time. But it is an answer that really answers nothing. Why did this entirely new musical language emerge precisely at this moment and not 100 years earlier? Why did it not occur to Mozart, Haydn, or, for that matter, to Bach?

The sound world of Beethoven is not one composed of beautiful sounds, as was the music of Mozart and Haydn. It does not flatter the ear or send the listener away tapping his feet and whistling a pleasant tune. It is a rugged sound, a musical explosion, a musical revolution that accurately conveys the spirit of the times. Here there is not only variety but conflict. Beethoven frequently uses the direction sforzando – which signifies attack. This is violent music, full of movement, rapidly shifting moods, conflict, contradiction.

With Beethoven the sonate form advances to a qualitatively higher level. He transformed it from a mere form to a powerful and at the same time intimate expression of his innermost feelings. In some of his piano compositions he wrote the instruction: "sonata, quasi una fantasia", indicating that he was looking for absolute freedom of expression through the medium of the sonata. Here the dimension of the sonate is greatly expanded in comparison to its classical form. The tempi are more flexible, and even change place. Above all, the finale is no longer merely a recapitulation, but a real development and culmination of all that has gone before.

When applied to his symphonies the sonata form as developed by Beethoven reaches an unheard-of level of sublimity and power. The virile energy that propels his fifth and third symphonies is sufficient proof of this. This is not music for easy listening or entertainment. It is music that is designed to move, to shock and to inspire to action. It is the voice of rebellion cast in music.

This is no accident, for Beethoven’s revolution in music echoed a revolution in real life. Beethoven was a child of his age – the age of the French Revolution. He wrote most of his greatest work in the midst of revolution, and the spirit of revolution impregnates every note of it. It is utterly impossible to understand him outside this context.

Beethoven boldly swept aside all existing musical conventions, just as the French revolution cleaned out the Augean stables of the feudal past. His was a new kind of music, music that opened many doors for future composers, just as the French revolution opened the door to a new democratic society.

The inner secret of Beethoven’s music is the most intense conflict. It is a conflict that rages in most of his music and reaches its most impressive heights in his last seven symphonies, beginning with the Third symphony, known as the Eroica. This was the real turning-point in the musical evolution of Beethoven and also of the history of music in general. And the roots of this revolution in music must be found outside of music, in society and history.

The Eroica symphony

A decisive turning-point both in Beethoven's life and in the evolution of western music was the compsition of his third symphony (the Eroica). Up till now, the musical language of the first and second symphonies did not depart substantially from the sound world of Mozart and Haydn. But from the very first notes of the Eroica we enter an entirely different world. The music has a political sub-text, the origin of which is well known.

Beethoven was a musician, not a politician, and his knowledge of events in France was necessarily confused and incomplete, but his revolutionary instincts were unfailing and in the end always led him to the correct conclusions. He had heard reports of the rise of a young officer in the revolutionary army called Bonaparte. Like many others, he formed the impression that Napoleon was the continuer of the revolution and defender of the rights of man. He therefore planned to dedicate his new symphony to Bonaparte.

This was an error, but quite understandable. It was the same error that many people committed when they assumed that Stalin was the real heir of Lenin and the defender of the ideals of the October revolution. But slowly it became clear that his hero was departing from the ideals of the Revolution and consolidating a regime that aped some of the worst features of the old despotism.

In 1799, Bonaparte's coup signified the definitive end of the period of revolutionary ascent. In August of 1802 Napoleon secured the consulate for life, with power to name his successor. An obsequious senate begged him to re-introduce hereditary rule “to defend public liberty and maintain equality”. Thus, in the name of “liberty” and “equality” the French people were invited to place their head in a noose.

It is always the way with usurpers in every period in history. The emperor Augustus maintained the outward forms of the Roman Republic and publicly feigned a hypocritical deference to the Senate, while systematically subverting the republican constitution. Not long afterwards, his successor Caligula made his prize horse a senator, which was a far more realistic appraisal of the situation.

Stalin, the leader of the political counter-revolution in Russia, proclaimed himself the faithful disciple of Lenin while trampling all the traditions of Leninism underfoot. Gradually the norms of proletarian soviet democracy and egalitarianism were replaced by inequality, bureaucratic and totalitarian rule. In the army, all the old rank and privileges abolished by the October revolution were reintroduced. The virtues of the Family were exalted. Eventually, Stalin even discovered a role for the Orthodox Church, as a faithful servant of his regime. In all this, he was only treading a road that had already been traversed by Napoleon Bonaparte, the gravedigger of the French Revolution.

In order to find some kind of sanction and respectability for his dictatorship, Napoleon began to copy all the outward forms of the old regime: aristocratic titles, splendid uniforms, rank and, of course, religion. The French revolution had practically wiped out the Catholic Church. The mass of the people, except in the most backward areas like the Vendee, hated the Church, which they correctly identified with the rule of the old oppressors. Now Napoleon attempted to enlist the support of the Church for his regime, and signed a Concordat with the Pope.

From afar, Beethoven followed the developments in France with growing alarm and despondency. Already by 1802 Beethoven’s opinion of Napoleon was beginning to change. In a letter to a friend written in that year, he wrote indignantly: “Everything is trying to slide back into the old rut after Napoleon signed the Concordat with the Pope.”

But far worse was to come. On May 18 1804 Napoleon became Emperor of the French. The coronation ceremony took place at the cathedral of Notre Dame on December 2nd. As the Pope poured holy oil over the head of the usurper, all traces of the old Republican constitution were washed away. In place of the old austere Republican simplicity all the ostentatious splendour of the old monarchy reappeared to mock the memory of the Revolution for which so many brave men and women had sacrificed their lives.

When Beethoven received news of these events he was beside himself with rage. He angrily crossed out his dedication to Napoleon in the score of his new symphony. The manuscript still exists, and we can see that he attacked the page with such violence that it has a hole torn through it. He then dedicated the symphony to an anonymous hero of the revolution: the Eroica symphony was born.

Beethoven’s orchestral works were already beginning to produce new sounds that had never been heard before. They shocked the Viennese public, used to the genteel tunes of Haydn and Mozart. Yet Beethoven’s first two symphonies, though very fine, still look back to the relaxed, easy-going aristocratic world of the 18th century, the world as it was before it was shattered in 1789. The Eroica represents a tremendous breakthrough, a great leap forward for music, a real revolution. Sounds like these had never been heard before. The unfortunate musicians who had to play this for the first time must have been shocked and completely bewildered.

The Eroica caused a sensation. Up till then, a symphony was supposed to last at most half an hour. The first movement of the Eroica lasted as long as an entire sypmphony of the 18th century. And it was a work with a message: a work with something to say. The dissonances and violence of the first movement are clearly a call to struggle. That this means a revolutionary struggle is clear from the original dedication.

Trotsky once observed that revolutions are voluble affairs. The French Revolution was characterised by its oratory. Here were truly great mass orators: Danton, Saint-Just, Robespierre, and even Mirabeau before them. When these men spoke, they did not just address an audience: they were speaking to posterity, to history. Hence the rhetorical character of their speeches. They did not speak, they declaimed. Their speeches would begin with a striking phrase, which would immediately present a central theme which would then be developed in different ways, before making an emphatic re-appearance at the end.

It is just the same with the Eroica symphony. It does not speak, it declaims. The first movement of this symphony opens with two dissonant chords that resemble a man striking his fist on a table, demanding our attention, just like an impassioned orator in a revolutionary assembly. Beethoven then launches into a kind of musical cavalry charge, a tremendously impetuous forward thrust that is interrupted by clashes, conflict and struggle, and even momentarily halted by moments of sheer exhaustion, only to resume its triumphant forward march (listen here). In this movement we are in the thick of the Revolution itself, with all its ebbs and flows, its victories and defeats, its triumphs and its despairs. It is the French Revolution in music.

The second movement is a funeral march – in memory of a hero. It is a massive piece of work, as weighty and solid as granite (listen here). The slow, sad tread of the funeral march is interrupted by a section that recaptures the glories and triumphs of one who has given his life for the revolution (listen here). The central passage creates a massive sound edifice that creates a sensation of unbearable grief, before finally returning to the central theme of the funeral march. This is one of the greatest moments in the music of Beethoven – or any music.

The final movement is in an entirely different spirit. The symphony ends on a note of supreme optimism. After all the defeats, setbacks and disappointments, Beethoven is saying to us: “Yes, my friend, we have suffered a grievous loss, but we must turn the page and open a new chapter. The human spirit is strong enough to rise above all defeats and continue the struggle. And we must learn to laugh at adversity.”

To be continued...

Footnote:

[1] Beethoven was wrong about the Austrians. Two decades after his death, the Austrian working class and youth rose up in the revolution of 1848.

il manifesto, 25 Maggio 2006

È una vicenda assurda. Comincia con una discussione a «L'Infedele» di Gad Lerner cui è invitato fra gli altri Alberto Asor Rosa. E' da poco uscito un suo libro, La guerra che, riprendendo un tema già toccato nel saggio sull'Apocalisse, sostiene che la belligeranza e la persecuzione dell'altro sono iscritte nel genoma maledetto dell'occidente. Al quale egli contrappone l'ebraismo, antitesi, «oriente». Basta sfogliare il libro per coglierne il filo. Ma ecco che uno degli astanti lo accusa di avere usato una volta la parola «razza» invece che «nazione» ebraica. E' vero che il Novecento ha dato al termine una eco terribile. Ma il contesto dell'intero volume rende impensabile che Asor Rosa la utilizzi in senso, appunto, razzista. Tantomeno antiebraico. Eppure di qui ad accusarlo di antisemitismo il passo è breve. Tanto più che ha anche scritto che a quel popolo di perseguitati è accaduto di diventare persecutore.
Apriti cielo. Qui non è più una parola ambigua, è una constatazione dolorosa che per gli attuali leader della comunità ebraica italiana è intollerabile. Differentemente da quelli che l'hanno preceduta - la generazione antifascista di Elio Toaff, Tullia Zevi, Amos Luzzatto - essi non concepiscono differenza alcuna fra ebraismo e governo di Israele, le cui scelte sono sacre e intoccabili. Ogni critica nasconderebbe una (inconfessata) volontà di distruzione di quello stato. Sarebbe oggettivamente fascista, filoaraba, anzi oggi terrorista.
Un paio d'anni fa successe alla sottoscritta di essere assediata perché si teneva una riunione noglobal in preparazione del forum sociale europeo in una scuola dismessa dell'ex ghetto di Roma. Una folla tumultuosa, agitata da qualcuno che ci additò come terroristi antisemiti in quanto filopalestinesi, ci voleva prendere a pietrate. Aspetto ancora le scuse del professor Di Segni. Figuriamoci quando una settimana fa viene in mente a Oliviero Diliberto che Asor Rosa sarebbe un buon ministro dell'Università - il Pdci è il solo partito che non chiede posti per i suoi. Il nuovo leader della comunità ebraica, Morpurgo, che manifestamente non ha letto La guerra ma ha sentito quel torbido vociare, protesta vivacemente sul Corriere. Un così tremendo antisemita nel governo! Ha un bel protestare a sua volta, e con fin troppo pazienti argomentazioni, e sul Corriere medesimo, il nostro professore. Fassino, che pure lo conosce e sa bene che uomo è, finge di spaventarsi e spaventa, pare, Romano Prodi. In breve exit Asor Rosa, ministro sarà Fabio Mussi. Penso che Mussi sarà un buon ministro, sono sicura che per Asor Rosa è una grana di meno, ha da scrivere e scrivere. Ma è ben amaro quel che si lascia dire su di lui, e così a vanvera, e così contro il vero. Nessuno ha aperto bocca. E sarebbe finita così se qualche giorno dopo non fossero apparse nientemeno che su l'Unità due colonne a firma di Victor Magyar che più stolte e velenose non potrebbero essere. Magyar passa per un uomo di sinistra. Si presume che, meno impegnato di Morpurgo, Fassino e Prodi, abbia letto La guerra. No. Asor Rosa, scrive, è un razzista, un antisemita, frascheggia con i negazionisti e con Auschwitz.
Adesso basta. Questa è una canagliata. Non ha a che vedere con la politica il dare dell'antisemita a chiunque critichi Israele. Soltanto una immensa sofferenza, nessun diritto divino ha dato a quel popolo una terra dove può sentirsi al sicuro da persecuzioni secolari. Ma né le grandi potenze ieri né l'Europa si sono date cura di compensare i palestinesi perché gli era tolta una terra che avevano ragione di considerare loro. Penso che portiamo una responsabilità se la lotta fra Israele e Palestina è diventata atroce. Penso che il Muro non è meno odioso di quello di Berlino, che Ehud Olmert ha meno coraggio dell'ultimo Sharon ma nessuno dei due è stato o è un giusto, che i kamikaze sono ferocemente disperati e gli omicidi mirati di Tsahal sono solo feroci, e via. Leggo che da un paio di giorni le coppie miste - di sangue? di religione? - sono obbligate a lasciarsi o lasciare Israele. Insomma è una tragedia sulla quale ho non solo diritto ma dovere di esprimermi. Che nessuno si permetta di darmi dell'antisemita. Non a gente come Asor Rosa, come me.

il manifesto, 25 Maggio 2006

Le nuove regole del dominio messe a profitto
I marines e i corpi speciali che hanno invaso l'Iraq sono le avanscoperte del nuovo governo mondiale immaginato dagli Stati Uniti
«Guerra perpetua», il provocatorio saggio di David Harvey. Dal mercato mondiale alla crisi del capitalismo, appunti di lettura sul «nuovo imperialismo»

Benedetto Vecchi

E' un saggio che analizza un tema impegnativo, il cosiddetto «nuovo imperialismo», con un bersaglio polemico mai del tutto dichiarato. Le tesi che l'autore, il geografo David Harvey, vuole confutare ne La guerra perpetua (Il Saggiatore, pp. 223, euro 17,50) è quella proposta da Toni Negri e Michael Hardt nel fortunato Impero (Rizzoli). Ne apprezza il carattere innovativo ma al contempo ne critica alcune articolazioni considerate apodittiche, quali l'annuncio che Negri e Hardt fanno della fine dello stato-nazione e la conseguente formazione di una sovranità appunto imperiale che sussume quella esercitata finora dagli stati nazionali.
Va subito ricordato che David Harvey non è nuovo a esplorazioni in territori lontani dalla sua disciplina. Dalla Crisi della modernità, come recita il titolo dell'affascinante saggio sull'affermazione di un nuovo regime di accumulazione capitalistico definito «flessibile», all'esercizio del governo della metropoli (L'esperienza urbana, entrambi pubblicati negli anni scorsi dal Saggiatore), ha infatti puntato a definire la centralità dello «spazio» nel capitalismo. D'altronde anche il «nuovo imperialismo» è analizzato anche dal punto di vista dei «fix spazio-temporali», cioè degli sforzi del capitalismo tesi a coordinare un processo lavorativo su base planetaria al fine di annullare le distanze geografiche tra un nodo e l'altro della rete produttiva e dunque sincronizzando il flusso lavorativo. Tuttavia, per comprendere meglio le critiche di Harvey alla nozione di «impero», è indispensabile partire dalla griglia analitica proposta in questo libro.
Per David Harvey, la guerra permanente contro il terrorismo avviata dopo l'attacco alle Torri Gemelle non ha nulla a che fare con l'obiettivo dicharato da George W. Bush di sbaragliare i gruppi armati del fondamentalismo islamico. La vera posta in gioco dietro l'intervento in Afghanistan e l'invasione dell'Iraq è la costituzione di un governo mondiale che veda gli Stati Uniti come guida indiscussa. In altri termini, Washington vuole rimettere in riga i paesi che mal digeriscono l'ordine neoliberista e, allo stesso tempo, prevenire la formazione di forti economie nazionali che possano minacciare la sua leadership. I nemici da combattere non vanno dunque cercati nel network terrorista di bin Laden, quanto sulle coste della popolosa Cina e nell'altrettanto prolifica - di talenti, ingegneri, imprese - India. E se la crisi del 1997 ha spuntato irreversibilmente gli artigli delle tigri asiatiche, Pechino e New Delhi sono gli attuali e futuri antagonisti da battere.
I marines e i corpi speciali americani e inglesi sono perciò niente altro che le truppe mandate in avanscoperta da chi ha in mente la definizione di avanguardie di grandi progetti politici per definire le nuove «geometrie dell'imperialismo». Per fare ciò Harvey fa leva su punti di vista eterogenei e tuttavia accomunati dalla convinzione che l'imperialismo abbia costituito uno spartiacque nello sviluppo capitalistico. E se Hannah Arendt aveva colto nel segno quando affermava che l'imperialismo è un atto prima di tutto politico teso a garantire un ordine sociale interno e un'espansione del mercato all'esterno dei confini nazionali, la sociologia dell'imperialismo di Joseph A. Shumpeter serve tutt'ora a focalizzare il circolo virtuoso tra espansione geopolitica e innovazione, come attestano le creative strutture organizzative della world factory.

La fabbrica mondiale
Un marxista come Harvey, però, non può non sottolineare il legame tra le crisi generate dallo sviluppo capitalistico e le misure politiche volte a superarle, sia che siano crisi da sovrapproduzione di capitale che di sottoconsumo. In entrambi i casi, l'imperialismo è la risposta al tempo stesso politica e economica. Perché consente di accedere manu militari a mercati esterni, a materie prime, a bacini di forza-lavoro a basso costo, consentendo di investire le «eccedenze» di capitale inutilizzate. Ma se questo è lo schema che ha tenuto banco nel movimento operaio per oltre un secolo, la globalizzazione economica ora lo mette in scacco.
Ma, a differenza di quanto sostiene Harvey, la novità del «nuovo imperialismo» non risiede nella costituzione di un mercato globale, né in quella «accumulazione per espropriazione» che porta a uno sviluppo capitalistico di realtà nazionali e continentali che hanno visto prevalere finora economie non capitalistiche. Il terzo incomodo è semmai rappresentato da quella difficoltà nella «riproduzione allargata» che ha avuto come prolegomeni l'insubordinazione della forza-lavoro nei gloriosi anni d'oro del fordismo a cui il capitale ha risposto con il decentramento produttivo, la privatizzazione dei servizi sociali e del sapere tecnico-scientifico e della conoscenza sans phrase, diventati quest'ultimi la pregiata materia prima di cui le imprese capitalistiche si nutrono per fronteggiare la crisi oramai endemica dello sviluppo economico.
La globalizzazione neoliberista è dunque il risultato di strategie volte a fronteggiare questa endemica crisi. Da questo punto di vista lo stato nazionale non è certo scomparso, ma ha cambiato funzione, come attestano, ad esempio, le diverse legislazioni sulla proprietà intellettuale, dispositivi giuridici volti alla sussunzione del sapere en general. Il protagonista «locale» di queste enclosures della conoscenza è certo lo stato-nazionale, ma inserito però in un network politico istituzionale che vede all'opera organismi internazionali, factory law e appunto stati nazionali. Allo stesso tempo il confine tra zone economiche capitalistiche e zone economiche non capitalistiche è una frontiera «virtuale» perché è smantellata e ricostruita a seconda della necessità.
David Harvey scrive spesso di biopirateria, che è espropriazione di una materia prima - il sapere tacito accumulato nei secolo dai popoli indigeni - e al tempo stesso processo di valorizzazione capitalistico della conoscenza. E viene proprio dalla possibilità di brevettare il vivente e l'«organico» l'esempio più cogente che attesta come il confine tra dentro e fuori del mercato mondiale sia una convenzione socialmente necessaria. Viene cancellato quando le popolazioni convolte diventano nodi di un processo produttivo reticolare che ha come protagonisti le multinazionali farmaceutiche o colossi agro-alimentari; riprodotto quando quei popoli e quelle realtà locali vengono classificati come «patrimonio dell'umanità» da salvaguardare dal potere predatorio dell'occidentalizzazione. A differenza di quanto sostiene Harvey il capitalismo più che governare i «fix spazio-temporali» ha necessità di mettere in riga le forme di vita.

In cerca di governance
La guerra perpetua si apre con l'intervento in Iraq e si conclude con alcune considerazioni sulle conseguenze che questa operazione militare ha avuto sulla società, la politica e l'economia statunitense. Per Harvey il fallimento americano è la prova tangibile che l'«Impero» è solo una boutade giornalistica. Quel fallimento pone semmai il problema di come la costituzione di una sovranità imperiale non sia un processo lineare, come invece il libro di Negri e Hardt tendeva a descrivere, e che la multilevel governance in cui essa spesso si esprime ha come limite e contraltare i conflitti sociali che deve dirimere. Ciò che è problematico nella tesi di Negri e Hardt non è dunque l'obiettivo che i due autori perseguono - la costituzione di un nuovo tipo di sovranità -, come invece afferma Harvey, quanto l'inadeguatezza delle forme politiche a cui tale sovranità dà vita per fronteggiare le pratiche di resitenza, cioè di conflitto, che incontra. Nelle settimane successive al luglio 2001, molti commentatori scrissero che la guerra e la rinuncia all'esercizio della mediazione era la risposta che i «potenti della terra» avevano scelto per contrastare l'opposizione al Washington consensus. Anni dopo quella forma specifica della politica ha mostrato il carattere distruttivo, perché il capitalismo più che di una guerra ha bisogno di una pace perpetua.


Quel New Deal oltre il patto luciferino tra guerra e liberismo

Enzo Modugno

Le ragioni non dette della guerra sono diventate a tal punto gli insopportabili arcana imperii di questi anni, che anche gli antropologi si sono impegnati ad indagare il New Imperialism, titolo originale del libro di David Harvey tradotto dal Saggiatore come Guerra perpetua. Il suo è un tentativo ampio e documentato di approfondire l'argomento che va considerato, perché nelle interpretazioni dell'imperialismo sono frequenti invece le semplificazioni delle visioni troppo specialistiche. I politologi hanno fornito analisi parziali solo politiche. Perfino Schumpeter - uno dei maggiori economisti del '900 - volle credere che l'imperialismo fosse un residuo feudale e non un fenomeno capitalistico. Gli economisti ufficiali poi, o non hanno visto il saccheggio, o erano pagati per giustificarlo.
Per questo il movimento operaio resta l'interprete insuperato di questa fase del capitalismo. Nel giro di pochi anni, all'inizio del '900, Rosa Luxemburg, Hilferding e Lenin, hanno detto tutto ciò che c'era da dire su questo argomento.
I punti fermi del libro pertanto sono numerosi.
Prima di tutto, e a maggior ragione a distanza di un secolo, si pone la questione che affrontarono sia Luxemburg che Lenin, se cioè sia l'imperialismo ad assicurare la sopravvivenza del capitalismo, continuamente sconvolto da crisi economiche e considerato dalle previsioni di destra e di sinistra sempre a rischio di crollo imminente.
La teoria marxiana della crisi ne vede l'origine nella contraddizione tra produzione da un lato e mercato, circolazione, realizzazione del plusvalore dall'altro: si tratterebbe quindi di crisi di sovrapproduzione. A partire da questa formulazione però si è aperto un ventaglio di interpretazioni. Prima di tutto tra riformisti e rivoluzionari, cioè tra chi ritiene possibile ovviare alla crisi e chi postula invece il superamento del capitalismo. Tra questi ultimi si è svolto il dibattito principale: Rosa Luxemburg da una parte, con la sua teoria del sottoconsumo e l'importanza data alle spese militari che ha influenzato i «neomarxisti» come Kaleski e Sweezy, e dall'altra parte le posizioni di Lenin e dei marxisti «ortodossi». Questo contrasto però, almeno per ciò che concerne le spese militari, è più apparente che reale, perché se Luxemburg sostiene che queste spese consentono al capitale di realizzare il plusvalore, gli «ortodossi» rispondono che questo non è vero per la totalità del mercato mondiale capitalistico, ma è vero solo per la nazione dominante che se ne avvantaggia a spese di quelle dominate. E questo potrebbe essere un buon compromesso, almeno ai fini del nostro discorso.
Questa premessa per segnalare che il testo di Harvey, che è del 2003, contiene un'ipotesi che non si è verificata: le spese militari - ormai sappiamo da Joseph Stiglitz che le spese per le ultime guerre sono dieci volte superiori alle previsioni - non solo non hanno provocato, come Harvey sostiene, una più profonda recessione, almeno finora, ma hanno invece contribuito a sospingere il Pil degli Stati uniti oltre il 4,5%. Né si è verificata la sua previsione di petrolio a buon mercato.
Ma tornando alle interpretazioni dell'imperialismo, Harvey procede saggiamente giudicandole non per la loro purezza teorica, ma al vaglio di oltre un secolo di storia. E aggiunge il suo punto di vista. Riformulando la teoria marxiana della caduta tendenziale del saggio di profitto, rileva una cronica tendenza verso crisi di sovraccumulazione, di eccesso di capitale. Per assorbire tali eccedenze si imporrebbe quindi l'«espansione geografica» e l'«accumulazione per espropriazione», per ritardare, se non risolvere, la tendenza alle crisi.
Il dominio sul territorio esercitato dal potere politico insomma - la logica «territorialista» secondo la definizione di Arrighi - svolge un ruolo influente nell'allestire la scena dell'accumulazione capitalistica. Stati o imperi dunque operano, «quasi sempre», coerentemente con le motivazioni capitalistiche. Per questo Harvey considera l'interferenza degli Usa nel «permanente stato di insicurezza», non come la soluzione ma come il cuore del problema: perché il capitalismo, se non ha a portata di mano gli sbocchi per i capitali eccedenti, «deve in qualche modo produrli».
Harvey tuttavia pensa che valga la pena di battersi per un nuovo New Deal. Sa bene che esistono soluzioni più radicali «in agguato tra le quinte» ma ritiene che, almeno nella presente congiuntura, non siano praticabili. Piacerà dunque alle sinistre che rimpiangono il welfare. Volendo sondare soluzioni più radicali invece, proprio a partire dalle sue lucide conclusioni, dovremmo considerare il processo storico che ha portato alla ormai irreversibile combinazione di neoliberismo e militarismo, strutturalmente complementari, prodotti dalla logica dell'accumulazione. Le trasformazioni produttive hanno reso possibile l'emergere del neoliberismo perché le nuove macchine informatiche non hanno più bisogno di tenere insieme le competenze del team di operai e tecnici necessario alla fabbrica fordista. Questo rende inutile il keynesismo civile perché le nuove macchine incorporano nuove competenze e possono perciò essere servite da nuovi lavoratori precari, flessibili, delocalizzati e senza diritti.
Per questo possono essere spogliati di quel sistema di garanzie che era la loro unica difesa contro le vicissitudini dell'economia di mercato, e ridotti a trovare l'unica fonte di guadagno nella vendita non garantita della propria forza-lavoro, costretti a lavorare alle nuove condizioni poste dalle nuove forme di capitale. Cambia non solo la fabbrica ma tutta la società, in un processo storico contro il quale potranno ben poco i nostri in Parlamento.
Il necessario controllo della domanda globale invece, nonostante l'iconoclastia antikeynesiana del neoliberismo, viene affidato sempre di più al solo keynesismo militare, «keynesismo in un paese solo» come ha scritto Halevi su questo giornale. Il militarismo Usa dunque, con il riarmo illimitato per sostenere la domanda da un lato, e dall'altro con la conseguente capacità di dominio sui mercati, i campi di investimento e le risorse, costituisce l' indispensabile sostegno per la sopravvivenza stessa del capitalismo: chi lo intralcia diventa «un nemico dell'Occidente». Per questo le lotte del precariato e le lotte antimilitariste non possono tendere al lato buono perduto del capitalismo, ma ormai soltanto al suo superamento.

Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci: The Intellectuals

First Published: Gramsci, Antonio. 1949. Gli intellettuali e l'organizzazione della cultura, Edited by F. Platone. Turin: Nuovo Universale Einaudi;
Source: Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. “The Intellectuals”, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated and Edited by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith. New York: International Publishers, page 3-23;
Transcribed: Jason Sanford Greenberg.

Introduction by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith

The central argument of Gramsci’s essay on the formation of the intellectuals is simple. The notion of “the intellectuals” as a distinct social category in men are potentially intellectuals in the sense of having an intellect and using it, but not all are intellectuals by social function. Intellectuals in the functional sense fall into two groups. In the first place there are the “traditional” professional intellectuals, literary, scientific and so on, whose position in the interstices of society has a certain inter-class aura about it but derives ultimately from past and present class relations and conceals an attachment to various historical class formations. Secondly, there are the “organic” intellectuals the thinking and organising element of a particular fundamental-social class. These organic intellectuals are distinguished less by their profession, which may be any job characteristic of their class, than by their function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belong.

The implications of this highly original schema bear on all aspects of Gramsci’s thought. Philosophically they connect with the proposition that “all men are philosophers” and with Gramsci’s whole discussion of the dissemination of philosophical ideas and of ideology within a given culture. They relate to Gramsci’s ideas on Education in their stress on the democratic character of the intellectual function, but also on the class character of the formation of intellectuals through school. They also underlie his study of history and particularly of the Risorgimento, in that the intellectuals, in the wide sense of the word, are seen by Gramsci as performing an essential mediating function in the struggle of class forces. Most important of all, perhaps, are the implications for the political struggle. Social Democracy, following Kautsky, has tended to see the relationship between workers and intellectuals in the Socialist movement in formal and mechanistic terms, with the intellectuals – refugees from the bourgeois class – providing theory and ideology (and often leadership) for a mass base of non-intellectuals, i.e. workers. This division of labour within the movement was vigorously contested by Lenin, who declares, in What is to be Done, that in the revolutionary party “all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals... must be obliterated”. Lenin’s attitude to the problem of the intellectuals is closely connected with his theory of the vanguard party, and when he writes about the need for socialist consciousness to be brought to the working class from outside, the agency he foresees for carrying this out is not the traditional intelligentsia but the revolutionary party itself, in which former workers and former professional intellectuals of bourgeois origin have been fused into a single cohesive unit. Gramsci develops this Leninist schema in a new way, relating it to the problems of the working class as a whole. The working class, like the bourgeoisie before it, is capable of developing from within its ranks its own organic intellectuals, and the function of the political party, whether mass or vanguard, is that of channelling the activity of these organic intellectuals and providing a link between the class and certain sections of the traditional intelligentsia. The organic intellectuals of the working class are defined on the one hand by their role in production and in the organisation of work and on the other by their “directive” political role, focused on the Party. It is through this assumption of conscious responsibility, aided by absorption of ideas and personnel from the more advanced bourgeois intellectual strata, that the proletariat can escape from defensive corporatism and economism and advance towards hegemony.

International Gramsci Society Newsletter
Number 8 (May, 1998): 14-16

Juha Koivisto

Glienicker bridge, connecting Berlin to Potsdam, forming together the dissolved axis of German economic, political, and military power, was before the recent German unification known as a remote place for exchanging captured Cold War spies. Glienicker Jagdschloss, the former royal hunting castle near the bridge, has since the days of feudal splendor been turned into a prosaic schooling site, though with interesting international projects. It was also the site for the founding conference of Berliner Institut für kritische Theorie (InkriT) on April 18-20, 1997--an international conference commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of of Antonio Gramsci's death.

The three day event combined succesfully two interrelated aims: on the one hand, to establish an association that can help to secure the further work on the huge project of publishing the Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, of which up to now three sizable volumes have reached the market, as well as the completion of the German translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (that has now, with seven volumes, reached notebook 15). Indeed, this newly founded Berliner Institut für kritische Theorie has not been altogether unsuccessful considering that its scientific advisory board includes such luminaries as Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Zygmunt Bauman, and the recent Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo.

On the other hand, the confrence presented recent work on Gramsci (or that makes use of Gramsci's ideas), with emphasis on analyzing the current conjucture of neoliberalism. There were often two parallel sessions going on since most of the some 60 participants had come along with their own presentation. There were thematic sessions dealing with how to understand the economy, the eradication of the former GDR, the history of Gramsci-reception in Germany, subjectivity and post-fordism, culture, education and social work, Gramsci compared with Mao or Korsch, and readings of other intellectuals (e.g. Hume, Pestalozzi, Weber) from a Gramscian perspective. Concerning this last topic, Jan Rehmann's paper "Max Weber: Modernization as a Passive Revolution", was a significant critical intervention in the thriving field of Weber-studies, with rich implications for our time. Rehmann's main thesis was that Weber's way of conceptualizing modernization anticipated fordism and represented, at the time, a passive [END PAGE 14] revolution with respect to the worker's movement. To show this, Rehmann analyzed Weber's discussion of class struggle, labour aristocracy, and cooptation of the social democrats. Rehmann, furthermore, has maintained in his article "A Gramscian Reading of Max Weber: Modernization as a 'Passive Revolution'" (published in German in Das Argument 222/1997) that this project of passive revolution pervaded not just Weber's political analysis in any restricted sense but his overall strategy of conceptualization, including his study on protestant ethics. These interesting themes are developed in more detail in Rehmann's forthcoming book (in German) Max Weber: Modernization as a Passive Revolution (Berlin: Argument).

The current relevance of Gramsci's concepts--such as passive revolution--wasprobed in Bernd Röttger's "Passive Revolution of Capitalism: Political Restructuration of the Market and the Neoliberal Expansion of the State." He criticized the prevalent dichotomy of the market and the state (e.g., as found in Polanyi) and, instead, conceived neoliberalism as a political project that aims at a radical restructuring of social relations. Indeed, through state action the neoliberal block has reshaped the terrain and parameters of class struggle. His lively debated thesis--directed against the current common sense of diminishing state power--was that the neoliberal form of state expansion, through organizations and treaties like European Union or NAFTA, has shifted the balance of forces in favour of transnational capital.

In his presentation on "Lorianism, the Cultural Industry, and Postmodernism," Tilman Reitz studied the usefulness of Gramsci's concept of Lorianism (after the Italian economist Achille Loria) in analyzing the recent vogue of [END PAGE 15] postmodernism. His presentation (published in German in Das Argument 219/1997) was useful for its discussion of both the concept of Lorianism ("lack of responsibility both for intellectual seriousness and the social meaning of intellectual production") and its lamentable current relevance.

Moving to the opposite end of the scholarly spectrum, Peter Jehle, one of the German translators of Gramsci, discussed Benedetto Fontana's recent book Hegemony and Power. On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (University of Minnesota Press). In his contribution, now published as "Philosophy in Action" (in German, in Das Argument 219/1997), Jehle criticized Fontana's book--while acknowledging all the merits--for losing sight of the whole significance of Gramsci's notebook on Machiavelli. In Jehle's critical view, Fontana, after positioning Croce and Gramsci as antipodes, actually ends up with a 'Crocean' Gramsci. Fontana construes a chain of equivalences (hegemony = consensus = mutual discourse and equal speech = public and political space) that is opposed to the force of the despotic state (and Marxism represented by "Kautsky/Lenin"). For Jehle, the complexity of Gramsci's 'integral state', 'civil society', and 'political society' can not be reduced to this binary array. Besides, though Fontana refers to 'hegemony' in the title of his book, he does not show interest in the apparatuses of hegemony--hardly grasped as 'mutual discourse and equal speeech'. Against the current vogue of identifying Marxism as a state ideology (e.g., from the "contemporary post-Marxist perspectives" lauded on the back of Fontana's book), Gramsci's critique of liberalism and his reading of Machiavelli represent, for Jehle, a vital self-critique and development of Marxism as the backbone of a 'new culture' surmounting 'subalternity'.

Indeed, Klaus Bochmann, in his "Gramsci's Relevance for a Democratic Approach to Language," pointed out how Gramsci's critique of various intellectuals and their political, philosophical, or literary works functions simultaneously as a critique-language. Thomas Barfuss, in his "Island in the Island? Aliens and Alienation in Gramsci," reflected on the contribution that Gramsci can make to current analyses of racism and identity-politics. By propelling the 'self'-- experienced with increasing intensity under the strain--racism and identity-politics entrench people in subalternity. If the local or particular identity is conceived in a stern opposition to what is 'alien', this 'self' will generate 'alienation'. For Gramsci, instead, the particular is not something to get rid of, but a kind of bridge to the more universal, something to be articulated in this direction.

"The Neoliberal Shaping of Biotechnology" was the topic of Daniel Barben who discussed the various problems connected with biotechnology (conflicts of innovation, regulation of risks, patent law, biodiversity, and bioethichs) and the neoliberal responses to them. Dissecting neoliberal regimes of innovation, regulation, and enculturation, Barben presented a strong critique of technological determinism. Like a previous speaker--Helono Saña, a Spanish writer working in Germany--Barben also criticized the ethical-political emptiness of the neoliberal project. ForBarben, the neoliberal perspective on biotechnology covers this emptiness with market logic coupled with exalted promises for solving global problems like cancer, hunger, and pollution. Thus, the political-ethical emptiness of the neoliberal strategy of 'letting go' is filled with an ideology and aesthetics of biotechnology. Barben's presentation (published in German in Das Argument 220/1997) ended with a plea for positive alternative articulations of biotechnology that would integrate it with more egalitarian scenarios for future.

A book based on this productive conference is forthcoming from the Argument publishing house in Germany.

April 25, 2006

Wars, Debt and Outsourcing
The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Is the United States a superpower? I think not. Consider these facts:

The financial position of the US has declined dramatically. The US is heavily indebted, both government and consumers. The US trade deficit both in absolute size and as a percentage of GDP is unprecedented, reaching more than $800 billion in 2005 and accumulating to $4.5 trillion since 1990. With US job growth falling behind population growth and with no growth in consumer real incomes, the US economy is driven by expanding consumer debt. Saving rates are low or negative.

The federal budget is deep in the red, adding to America's dependency on debt. The US cannot even go to war unless foreigners are willing to finance it.

Our biggest bankers are China and Japan, both of whom could cause the US serious financial problems if they wished. A country whose financial affairs are in the hands of foreigners is not a superpower.

The US is heavily dependent on imports for manufactured goods, including advanced technology products. In 2005 US dependency (in dollar amounts) on imported manufactured goods was twice as large as US dependency on imported oil. In the 21st century the US has experienced a rapid increase in dependency on imports of advanced technology products. A country dependent on foreigners for manufactures and advanced technology products is not a superpower.

Because of jobs offshoring and illegal immigration, US consumers create jobs for foreigners, not for Americans. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs reports document the loss of manufacturing jobs and the inability of the US economy to create jobs in categories other than domestic "hands on" services. According to a March 2006 report from the Center for Immigration Studies, most of these jobs are going to immigrants: "Between March 2000 and March 2005 only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults (18 to 64) went to natives. This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18 to 64 year old population."

A country that cannot create jobs for its native born population is not a superpower.

In an interview in the April 17 Manufacturing & Technology News, former TCI and Global Crossing CEO Leo Hindery said that the incentives of globalization have disconnected US corporations from US interests. "No economy," Hindery said, "can survive the offshoring of both manufacturing and services concurrently. In fact, no society can even take excessive offshoring of manufacturing alone." According to Hindery, offshoring serves the short-term interests of shareholders and executive pay at the long-term expense of US economic strength.

Hindery notes that in 1981 the Business Roundtable defined its constituency as employees, shareholders, community, customers, and the nation." Today the constituency is quarterly earnings. A country whose business class has no sense of the nation is not a superpower.

By launching a war of aggression on the basis of lies and fabricated "intelligence," the Bush regime violated the Nuremberg standard established by the US and international law. Extensive civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction in Iraq, along with the torture of detainees in concentration camps and an ever-changing excuse for the war have destroyed the soft power and moral leadership that provided the diplomatic foundation for America's superpower status. A country that is no longer respected or trusted and which promises yet more war isolates itself from cooperation from the rest of the world. An isolated country is not a superpower.

A country that fears small, distant countries to such an extent that it utilizes military in place of diplomatic means is not a superpower. The entire world knows that the US is not a superpower when its entire available military force is tied down by a small lightly armed insurgency drawn from a Sunni population of a mere 5 million people.

Neoconservatives think the US is a superpower because of its military weapons and nuclear missiles. However, as the Iraqi resistance has demonstrated, America's superior military firepower is not enough to prevail in fourth generation warfare. The Bush regime has reached this conclusion itself, which is why it increasing speaks of attacking Iran with nuclear weapons.

The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against an opponent. If six decades after nuking Japan the US again resorts to the use of nuclear weapons, it will establish itself as a pariah, war criminal state under the control of insane people. Any sympathy that might still exist for the US would immediately disappear, and the world would unite against America.

A country against which the world is united is not a superpower.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

(tratto da: CounterPunch)

By Geov Parrish, AlterNet. Posted January 14, 2006.

The acclaimed critic of U.S. foreign policy analyzes Bush's current political troubles, the war on Iraq, and what's really behind the global 'war on terror.'
For over 40 years, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been one of the world's leading intellectual critics of U.S. foreign policy. Today, with America's latest imperial adventure in trouble both politically and militarily, Chomsky -- who turned 77 last month -- vows not to slow down "as long as I'm ambulatory." I spoke with him by phone, on Dec. 9 and again on Dec. 20, from his office in Cambridge.

Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why?

Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting is that the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an opposition party would be making hay, but the Democrats are so close in policy to the Republicans that they can't do anything about it. When they try to say something about Iraq, George Bush turns back to them, or Karl Rove turns back to them, and says, "How can you criticize it? You all voted for it." And, yeah, they're basically correct.

How could the Democrats distinguish themselves at this point, given that they've already played into that trap?

Democrats read the polls way more than I do, their leadership. They know what public opinion is. They could take a stand that's supported by public opinion instead of opposed to it. Then they could become an opposition party, and a majority party. But then they're going to have to change their position on just about everything.

Take, for example, take your pick, say for example health care. Probably the major domestic problem for people. A large majority of the population is in favor of a national health care system of some kind. And that's been true for a long time. But whenever that comes up -- it's occasionally mentioned in the press -- it's called politically impossible, or "lacking political support," which is a way of saying that the insurance industry doesn't want it, the pharmaceutical corporations don't want it, and so on. Okay, so a large majority of the population wants it, but who cares about them? Well, Democrats are the same. Clinton came up with some cockamamie scheme which was so complicated you couldn't figure it out, and it collapsed.

Kerry in the last election, the last debate in the election, October 28 I think it was, the debate was supposed to be on domestic issues. And the New York Times had a good report of it the next day. They pointed out, correctly, that Kerry never brought up any possible government involvement in the health system because it "lacks political support." It's their way of saying, and Kerry's way of understanding, that political support means support from the wealthy and the powerful. Well, that doesn't have to be what the Democrats are. You can imagine an opposition party that's based on popular interests and concerns.

Given the lack of substantive differences in the foreign policies of the two parties --

Or domestic.

Yeah, or domestic. But I'm setting this up for a foreign policy question. Are we being set up for a permanent state of war?

I don't think so. Nobody really wants war. What you want is victory. Take, say, Central America. In the 1980s, Central America was out of control. The U.S. had to fight a vicious terrorist war in Nicaragua, had to support murderous terrorist states in El Salvador and Guatemala, and Honduras, but that was a state of war. All right, the terrorists succeeded. Now, it's more or less peaceful. So you don't even read about Central America any more because it's peaceful. I mean, suffering and miserable, and so on, but peaceful. So it's not a state of war. And the same elsewhere. If you can keep people under control, it's not a state of war.

Take, say, Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia ran Eastern Europe for half a century, almost, with very little military intervention. Occasionally they'd have to invade East Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, but most of the time it was peaceful. And they thought everything was fine -- run by local security forces, local political figures, no big problem. That's not a permanent state of war.

In the War on Terror, however, how does one define victory against a tactic? You can't ever get there.

There are metrics. For example, you can measure the number of terrorist attacks. Well, that's gone up sharply under the Bush administration, very sharply after the Iraq war. As expected -- it was anticipated by intelligence agencies that the Iraq war would increase the likelihood of terror. And the post-invasion estimates by the CIA, National Intelligence Council, and other intelligence agencies are exactly that. Yes, it increased terror. In fact, it even created something which never existed -- new training ground for terrorists, much more sophisticated than Afghanistan, where they were training professional terrorists to go out to their own countries. So, yeah, that's a way to deal with the War on Terror, namely, increase terror. And the obvious metric, the number of terrorist attacks, yeah, they've succeeded in increasing terror.

The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. And the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror. The American intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a "dirty bomb," a dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in the next ten years, is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high. Are they doing anything about it? Yeah. They're increasing the threat, by increasing nuclear proliferation, by compelling potential adversaries to take very dangerous measures to try to counter rising American threats.

This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted.

By people who knew what they were doing.

Yeah, people who knew what they were doing. It meant that they were taking the high-precision equipment that you can use for nuclear weapons and missiles, dangerous biotoxins, all sorts of stuff. Nobody knows where it went, but, you know, you hate to think about it. Well, that's increasing the threat of terror, substantially. Russia has sharply increased its offensive military capacity in reaction to Bush's programs, which is dangerous enough, but also to try to counter overwhelming U.S. dominance in offensive capacity. They are compelled to ship nuclear missiles all over their vast territory. And mostly unguarded. And the CIA is perfectly well aware that Chechen rebels have been casing Russian railway installations, probably with a plan to try to steal nuclear missiles. Well, yeah, that could be an apocalypse. But they're increasing that threat. Because they don't care that much.

Same with global warming. They're not stupid. They know that they're increasing the threat of a serious catastrophe. But that's a generation or two away. Who cares? There's basically two principles that define the Bush administration policies: stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said.

You've been tracking U.S. wars of foreign aggression since Vietnam, and now we're in Iraq. Do you think there's any chance in the aftermath, given the fiasco that it's been, that there will be any fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy? And if so, how would it come about?

Well, there are significant changes. Compare, for example, the war in Iraq with 40 years ago, the war in Vietnam. There's quite significant change. Opposition to the war in Iraq is far greater than the much worse war in Vietnam. Iraq is the first war I think in the history of European imperialism, including the U.S., where there was massive protest before the war was officially launched. In Vietnam it took four or five years before there was any visible protest. Protest was so slight that nobody even remembers or knows that Kennedy attacked South Vietnam in 1962. It was a serious attack. It was years later before protest finally developed.

What do you think should be done in Iraq?

Well, the first thing that should be done in Iraq is for us to be serious about what's going on. There is almost no serious discussion, I'm sorry to say, across the spectrum, of the question of withdrawal. The reason for that is that we are under a rigid doctrine in the West, a religious fanaticism, that says we must believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq even if its main product was lettuce and pickles, and the oil resources of the world were in Central Africa. Anyone who doesn't believe that is condemned as a conspiracy theorist, a Marxist, a madman, or something. Well, you know, if you have three gray cells functioning, you know that that's perfect nonsense. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy system. Which means that if the U.S. manages to control Iraq, it extends enormously its strategic power, what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its critical leverage over Europe and Asia. Yeah, that's a major reason for controlling the oil resources -- it gives you strategic power. Even if you're on renewable energy you want to do that. So that's the reason for invading Iraq, the fundamental reason.

Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or journals and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to bring about a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is that even a remote possibility? Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand.

Now, any discussion of withdrawal from Iraq has to at least enter the real world, meaning, at least consider these issues. Just take a look at the commentary in the United States, across the spectrum. How much discussion do you see of these issues? Well, you know, approximately zero, which means that the discussion is just on Mars. And there's a reason for it. We're not allowed to concede that our leaders have rational imperial interests. We have to assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're perfectly sensible. They can understand what anybody else can understand. So the first step in talk about withdrawal is: consider the actual situation, not some dream situation, where Bush is pursuing a vision of democracy or something. If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk about it. And yes, I think there should be withdrawal, but we have to talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world.

How will the U.S. deal with China as a superpower?

What's the problem with China?

Well, competing for resources, for example.

NC: Well, if you believe in markets, the way we're supposed to, compete for resources through the market. So what's the problem? The problem is that the United States doesn't like the way it's coming out. Well, too bad. Who has ever liked the way it's coming out when you're not winning? China isn't any kind of threat. We can make it a threat. If you increase the military threats against China, then they will respond. And they're already doing it. They'll respond by building up their military forces, their offensive military capacity, and that's a threat. So, yeah, we can force them to become a threat.

What's your biggest regret over 40 years of political activism? What would you have done differently?

I would have done more. Because the problems are so serious and overwhelming that it's disgraceful not to do more about it.

What gives you hope?

What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in the United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it. It's rarely reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that, you know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on most issues. I'm not on some, not on gun control or creationism or something like that, but on most crucial issues, the ones we've been talking about, I find myself pretty much at the critical end, but within the spectrum of public opinion. I think that's a very hopeful sign. I think the United States ought to be an organizer's paradise.

What sort of organizing should be done to try and change some of these policies?

Well, there's a basis for democratic change. Take what happened in Bolivia a couple of days ago. How did a leftist indigenous leader get elected? Was it showing up at the polls once every four years and saying, "Vote for me!"? No. It's because there are mass popular organizations which are working all the time on everything from blocking privatization of water to resources to local issues and so on, and they're actually participatory organizations. Well, that's democracy. We're a long way from it. And that's one task of organizing.

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the "Straight Shot" column for WorkingForChange. Noam Chomsky is an acclaimed linguist and political theorist. Among his latest books are Hegemony or Survival from Metropolitan Books and Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order published by Seven Stories Press.

(tratto da: AlterNet)