Thursday, May 7, 2009

Lukacs on Right & Left & Hitler

More snippets from Democracy and Populism as food for thought and as a taste of Lukac's mind at work:

“[Hitler’s] example was, and remains, proof that the ancient categories “Right” and “Left” have become, at least in one important sense, outdated.” (21)

“Hitler, for one, was an idealist, not a materialist: an idealist of a dreadfully German and frightfully deterministic variety, and a believer in the power of ideas over matter. These men [Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron, etc.] knew how to appeal to the masses—something that would have filled Maistre with horror. They knew (as did Proudhon and not Marx) that people are moved by (and at times even worship) evidences of power rather than by propositions of social contracts.” (23-24)