Understanding the Nazi Genocide : Marxism After Auschwitz Paperback
by Enzo Traverso
Part of the IIRE S. series
Paperback
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Many thinkers on the Left, from Marx and Lenin to Abram Leon, have viewed Eastern European anti-Semitism as an expression of pre-capitalist backwardness.
They fully expected that under socialism, the East would follow the Western European model of civic equality and assimilation.
Only a few later Marxists such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin identified late-capitalism's capacity for destructive mass rage, made possible through modern bureaucratic orgnisation and the availability of advanced technology.
The Holocaust vindicated such prophecies. Auschwitz was a pre-eminently modern genocide. If racial hatred was its first cause, its execution required a "rationality" typical of modern capitalism.
Enzo Traverso argues that the stumbling-block of classical Marxism's analysis of anti-Semitism was a 19th-century faith in the inevitability of progress.
He demonstrates that the concept of anti-Semitism is rooted in fascism, and in turn, fascism in capitalism.
He sets out to reveal how anti-Semitism, and racism in general, are creatures of the present as well as the past. As a non-Zionist however, Traverso resists the conventional portrayal of anti-Semitism as an endemic illness of the Jewish diaspora for which Israel is the cure.
Ultimately anti-Semitism, he argues, can only be eradicated in a world where difference is tolerated and valued.
First published to great acclaim in France, this analysis of anti-Semitism should challenge many commonly-held views.
This edition includes a new afterword and a new introduction for the English-language market.
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Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback
- Pages:128 pages, bibliography, index
- Publisher:Pluto Press
- Publication Date:25/12/1998
- Category:
- ISBN:9780745313535
Other Formats
- Hardback from £40.24
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Paperback
- Pages:128 pages, bibliography, index
- Publisher:Pluto Press
- Publication Date:25/12/1998
- Category:
- ISBN:9780745313535