On 2013-11-12, at 2:19 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> 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…
The military high command has generally been drawn from the propertied classes. The ranks have typically come from working class and peasant/farm families. They may share the same political consciousness, but the grunts no more possess the power to control or the privileges and status that comes with power than do workers on the outside in relation to their employers.
> but its behavior depends on the social
> context and social position of its personnel.
Which suggests that it is far from being "a class in itself", whose behaviour is generally predictable
> The German military was as
> split as the Russian military was along similar class lines
In fact, it wasn't. If it had been, the abortive German uprisings in 1919 and 1923 would have turned out differently. Instead of opposing the conservative and social democratic parties, the rank and file soldiers and demobilized veterans, mirroring the overall relationship of class forces in the society, tended to support these parties in suppressing the revolutionary workers.
> - 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.
To my knowledge, no one has employed the concept of a "white military 'civil society'", whatever that means, least of all to explain the rise of the Nazis. The NSDAP was financed by German capitalists and was based on thuggish civilian militias composed primarily of unemployed and unorganized workers, farmers, small shopkeepers, military veterans and right-wing students. By no means did these comprise all of "civil society" which was sharply divided between left and right, and existed outside the military sphere. The German high command, like the conservative industrialists, financiers, and landlords, had ambiguous feelings about the Nazis, who operated outside their control. The generals, as you suggest, were not mainly responsible for the Nazi 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.
Of course not. The Marxist theory of the state or military - or any theory - has to be vindicated on its own terms. But where Marxist organizers were successful at organizing the military, you would expect some relationship between theory and practice. Even where revolutions did not succeed, more often than not, I still find Marxist explanations pointing to the decisive failure of the military to split along class lines very persuasive.
> 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.
In some ways yes, in some ways no, as is true of intellectual history in general.