[lbo-talk] Bruce Bartlett: " I think it is only a matter of time before the Tea Party morphs into unapologetic fascism"

[Wojtek S]

Marv: "I didn't understand that to be your point. I understood you to be
suggesting, as you have done previously, that the military - meaning the
military high command - drove radical political change from the top, rather
than it being the result of class struggles from below."

[WS:] Not at all.  I think I explained this in my subsequent posts.  The
military is a class in itself but its behavior depends on the social
context and social position of its personnel.  The German military was as
split as the Russian military was along similar class lines - but the
timing (at the end of the WW1 and 10+ years after) made a big difference in
the roles the military played in these two countries.  In Russia it was
civil war that the reds won.  In Germany it was white military "civil
society" that propelled the nazis to victory.

I also pointed out that organizing and theorizing the military are two
different things.  The organizers who called themselves marxist might have
been successful at organizing the military, but that does not vindicate the
marxist theory of the state or the military.  I think that Weber travels
much further here than Marx, although I also see Weber standing on Marx's
shoulders rather than in opposition to him.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."