Racial struggle

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The term race struggle was used in 19th century Darwinian sociology - most thoroughly by Ludwig Gumplowicz  - to explain the conflicts between social groups in history as social processes . The Social Darwinism applies since the 1920s as outdated, but influenced by then social policy discussions to a considerable extent by racism and colonialism sought to legitimize scientifically. It also served as the ideological basis of eugenics. The social Darwinist ideology of racial struggle can be understood in the sense of middle extremism as a reactionary bourgeois counter-concept to the socialist movement of the 19th century.

"Race struggle" before Gumplowicz

Moses Hess , a mentor and co-author of Karl Marx at the Rheinische Zeitung and Die deutsche Ideologie , proclaimed in his work Rome and Jerusalem of 1862 the necessity of a “last racial battle”. According to Moses Hess, history moved in racial and class struggles, with the "racial struggle" being the "original" and the class struggle being the secondary. The last “ruling race” was the “Germanic” until the French people had “reconciled racial antagonism” by “beheading the last ruling race in their boss”. Thanks to the French Revolution , "racial rule" had come to an end among the French people. As a German in exile, Hess believed that one last “racial warfare certificate (s) had to be fought through before the Germans had social and humane education as well”. In addition, Hess assumed the existence of an original “Jewish race”, whose “type has always remained the same over the centuries”.

"Rassenkampf" at Gumplowicz

According to the teaching of Ludwig Gumplowicz, who is considered to be one of the fathers of European sociology, it is the task of sociology to apply Darwin's general laws of development to human beings in their social actions. According to Gumplowicz, sociology is a “doctrine of social groups , their mutual behavior and the fate they cause”.

Gumplowicz regards the individual as a social atom, a passive member of a group and a product of his environment . The group is the social element that connects people. According to Gumplowicz, social phenomena are “conditions that come about through the interaction of groups of people and communities”. There are defined rules in the groups. According to Gumplowicz, “social activity” is the “self-preservation of the group [which] seeks to increase its power, establish and strengthen its rule or at least its social position in the state and society”. In contrast to Karl Marx 's historical materialism , Gumplowicz assumes that constant historical development does not exist. The only constant factor in history is the "race struggle". According to Gumplowicz, the “social law of nature” states: “[...] every more powerful ethnic or social element strives to make the weaker element within its sphere of influence or which is about to serve its purposes”. In contrast to Marxism , Gumplowicz viewed struggle and war, subjugation and exploitation as a universal motif of social movement that could not be eradicated.

Racial struggle, anti-Semitism and National Socialism

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Eugen Dühring took the position that the “sowing of class hatred” through Jewish socialism had led to general agitation and racial hatred. He claimed that a "racial struggle" would arise as "retaliation for the excitement of class hatred" which, as a result, would restore social peace "by checkmating the main authors of the class struggles". As a counter-concept, Dühring proclaimed an Aryan socialism . Friedrich Engels dealt critically with his theories in his work Anti-Dühring . Karl Eugen Dühring influenced later anti-Semites such as Theodor Fritsch , Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Georg von Schönerer .

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Richard Wagner's son-in-law and an acquaintance of Hitler , strongly shifted the term “race” from sociology to biology and, with his work The foundations of the nineteenth century published several times, provided the “historical foundation” of the racial struggle ideology. He interpreted world history as a Darwinian "race struggle" for living space. The " Aryan " peoples had a culture-building effect, but were repeatedly infiltrated by "mixing blood". Their racial opponents are, in terms of cultural history, the “racial Jews” or “ Semites ” as destroyers of culture.

Building on this basis, Alfred Rosenberg developed the official commentary on the party program of the NSDAP , the nature, principles and goals of the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1920 . The program of movement . The National Socialists rejected classism and class struggle . Instead, according to Ernst Piper , they strove to reunite national and social currents. Rosenberg's Nazi ideology rejected Marxism because, on the one hand, it emphasized the equality of peoples, but on the other hand it called for class struggle within its own people . The Marxists only pretend to fight capitalism , but are in truth in league with the financiers of banks and stock exchanges. According to Piper, this is "a very central ideologue of the National Socialist declaration of the world". According to Piper, the apparent opposites of socialism and capitalism coincide, because both leaderships are “in the hands of representatives of the same people […]: in the hands of the Jews.” And they wanted a popular “power and culture struggle for everyone The peoples of Europe ”; as a result, they would challenge a “race war”. According to Piper, the National Socialists therefore did not see themselves as right-wing extremists , but as a party of the center that wanted to remove an alleged one-sidedness of socialism and nationalism.

This open racial struggle ideology ended with the Holocaust and the defeat of the Nazi dictatorship in World War II .

literature

swell

  • Karl Eugen Dühring: Social salvation through real law instead of robbery policy and servant law. Thomas, Leipzig 1907.
  • Ludwig Gumplovicz: The race struggle. Innsbruck 1883. (Reprint: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-3739-4 ).
  • Moses Hess: Rome and Jerusalem. Wengler, Leipzig 1862. (Reprint: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-1528-6 ).
  • HG Wells: History of Our World. Novel. 1922. (Reprint: Diogenes, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-257-20217-2 ).

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikibooks: Sociological Classics / Gumplowicz, Ludwig  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The racial struggle . 1883
  2. ↑ p. 591 .