The Same Old Story : Peasant Economy and Nationalist Revisions of Marxism, 1914 and 2014

Examined here is the link between the collapse of internationalism in 1914, as some on the left endorsed nationalist and/or pro-war positions, and the analogous shift a little short of a century later, as some leftists saw virtue in the support of nationalist and/or ethnic politics advocated by postmodern theory. This entails a comparative analysis of the debates and conditions leading to the break-up of internationalism, both in Germany before 1914 and with regard to Asia currently. Reformism common to both conjunctures is linked to combined processes that have their origins in academia. On the one hand the abandonment of class analysis, socialist politics and allied concepts of progress, modernity and development; on the other, the recuperation
of the agrarian myth and the championing of peasant smallholding.