On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:46:46 -0700 (PDT) "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com>
writes:
> Jim,
>
> Some of what you mention is covered nicely in
> Elizabeth Glatzer Rosenthal's _Nietzsche in Russia_,
> which includes A. L. Tait's essay "Lunacharsky: A
> Nietzschean Marxist?"
>
> Nietzsche's trenchant commentary on power relations,
> as well as the psychological appeals of power for many
> people, were ahead of their time. And let's not forget
> the strident anti-Christian rhetoric; his
> _Anti-Christ_ was up there with Bakunin's _God &
> State_ -- which venerated Satan as a sort of
> archetypal symbol of the positive force of revolt --
> in endearing itself to anarchists and social
> iconoclasts of all stripes. The World Social Wesbite
> 3-part condemnation of Nietzsche includes the quote
> from Horkheimer that 'Nietzsche is more important than
> Marx."
>
> Georges Sorel, a proponent of a kind of Nietzschean
> syndicalism, was also admired early on by
> organizations such as the IWW, as you might also be
> aware, though later you'll find Sorel included in
> volumes on "The French Right" and the like.
Well if one reflects upon Sorel's analyis of political myths and his Nietzschean-Bergsonian irrationalism, it's not so hard to understand how he could have been influential among people on both the radical left and the extreme right, or indeed how his own sympathies could shift back and forth between the extreme left and the extreme right. For him the anarchosyndicalists' doctrine of the general strike was a political myth whose value was to be assessed not in terms of its truth value, in the sense that a scientist might evaluate it, but rather in terms of its utility in mobilizing people into action. Sorel tended to disparage the scientific rationalist side of Marxism while praising its more mythopoic aspects.
Sorel's thought was influential in Italy especially during the 1910s and 1920s. Both Mussolini and Gramsci professed to be admirers of him.
Jim F. ____________________________________________________________ Are you safe? Click for free quote on home security system. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3ni3dNdlm18kbXdwAS2EFoTU5iimjgphpPNivwXNx7picQQl/