Yes, they do come out of the same milieu -- the milieu called "early 20th-century Europe."
My original point, which seems to have gotten lost somewhere, is that Bolshevism and Fascism, as well as lots of other movements, whether political, artistic, social, or whatever, were both products of early 20th-century society and culture, and therefore not surprisingly had things in common. Some of these are things they share with certain artistic movements of the general era, such as: the idea of a sharp break with a dead, discredited past and the idea of a revolutionary new way of seeing the world, as well as a fetish for mechanization tied up with all those nifty new gizmos that were appearing at the time.
--- On Thu, 7/24/08, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> Actually, the three examples that you gave don't come
> out of the
> same milieu. Italian futurism and russian futurism have
> almost
> nothing in common. The russian branch was really focused
> on the
> creation of poetic language and debates with other Russian
> schools
> of art. When you come to Surrealism, it was a movement
> produced
> about two decades after the manifesto (even more
> significantly, WWI
> had occurred). If you were going to look at a parallel
> movement, it
> would have to be Dada, which has some of the fascination
> with shock
> and theatricality of futurism, but not much else.
> In reality, Marinetti wrote the manifesto before
> there was anything
> called futurism. I've always felt that he could be
> compared to
> Malcolm McLaren in many ways (actually, he's much more
> successful
> than McLaren). But I am still skeptical about calling it
> 'proto-fascist.' I've never gotten the sense
> that Marinetti was
> anything other than an opportunist in this situation (with
> the
> biggest opportunist of course being Mussolini)
>
> robert wood
>
>
> > I called Marinetti at this point a
> "proto-Fascist," though the Manifesto
> > does have obvious resonances with Fascist ideology.
> >
> > I was illustrating that they came out of the same
> milieu and had some
> > common elements in worldview, despite winding up at
> polar opposites of the
> > political spectrum. How could they not? They lived at
> the same time,
> > reacted to the same events, had roughly the same
> educational backgrounds,
> > read the same books, and sometimes personally knew
> each other. (To see
> > this work itself out with Surrealism, look at the
> break between Breton and
> > Dali over the latter's sympathy with Franco and
> Hitler.)
> >
> > Similarly, there are obvious similarities between the
> modern-day right and
> > the modern-day left (and center) that mark them as
> clearly
> > early-21st-century political phenomena. Not many
> people of any political
> > stripe are going around advocating absolute monarchy,
> for instance.
> >
> > --- On Thu, 7/24/08, wrobert at uci.edu
> <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
> >> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Nietzsche, Mencken, and
> anarchism
> >> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> >> Date: Thursday, July 24, 2008, 4:32 AM
> >> There's a basic teleological error being made
> here.
> >> Marinetti
> >> becomes a fascist a decade or so after this
> statement, but
> >> fascism
> >> literally doesn't exist when he makes the
> statement.
> >> Similarly,
> >> many of the Russian futurists will support the
> Bolsheviks
> >> in the
> >> revolution, but they are more interested in
> battling
> >> acmeists and
> >> symbolists at the point of the statement. Last,
> the
> >> surrealists
> >> only put their art 'in service of the
> >> revolution'(ie Marxism) with
> >> later statements.lk
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> >
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk