The World Economy and the Color Line: Wilhelm Röpke, Apartheid and the White Atlantic

1999

By Nisrccn Balliish and Anthony Ldwsledt (Webster University. Vienna) I. Introduction The Afrikaans term apartheid, which originally means 'apartness' or 'separateness', has become a globally used, household word for ethnic and ethnicist oppression. There is some irony in this, since South Africa's National Party, which ruled the country from 1948 until 1994, itself coined the term to veil or mask the oppressive elements of its policies and practices. The concept of separateness in itself does not imply any group being favored over any other Segregation per se of ethnic entities, after all, was supported by some South African Blacks 2 Now in common usage all over the world, apartheid has drifted away from its original lexical meaning to denote physically repressive, economically exploitative and ideologically racist or ethnicist segregation. This paper focuses on three apartheid societies, Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa and Israel, and offers conceptual reflections on possible frameworks for future Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, especially with regard to present day Israel Apartheid in comparative focus Throughout this century, the unique developments in South Africa have often confounded political theorists by proving to be exceptions from otherwise global trends. For instance, whilst race in apartheid South Africa became more decisive than economic class, Marxism's central tenet of class struggle was suspended. Ever since the repeal of the apartheid laws in this decade, however, Marxism could be said to have been vindicated "in the last resort" From that perspective, the highly artificially racist society of South Africa is now being replaced by a "conventionally" capitalist class society ' The same Marxist analysis in this regard could be applied to the USA from I86S (abolition of slavery) and 1964 (legislation against segregation), respectively. The US laws of segregation between Blacks and Whites, the non-violent struggle against them and the violent White backlash and reaction to that struggle in themselves manifest strong parallels to South African developments, especially as many formative events in this regard took place around the same time, in the 1950's and the 1960's. Albert Luthuli could indeed be compared to Martin Luther King whilst Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela could be likened with Malcolm X (the latter two at least with regard to strategies of resistance). Blacks in the USA and in the preceding North American colonies, however, were always a minority, as opposed to South Africa. ' We arc indebted to the Austrian Ministry or Science and Traffic (Oslcrreichisches Bundcsniinislerium fur Wisscnschaft und Verkchr) and to VOEST-ALPINE Induslrieanlagcnbau GmbH., Litiz. Tor grants sponsoring the presentation or this paper at the conference. "The TRC Commissioning the Past", jointly organized by the History Workshop at the University of the Wilwalcrsnind and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, in Johannesburg. June 11-14. 1999. 2 Lester. Alan: From Colonization to Democracy: A new historical geography of South Africa. London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies. 1996: 87ff. Without segregation, many South African Blacks may indeed not have been able to keep so many of their cultural traditions-including language-and proud resistant attitudes in defiance of Whiles and their cultures. Of course, this was not part of the Whites' plan. The indigenous culture was supposed to just fade away, due merely to being in the proximity of superior' While culture. Cf, for instance. Jaspers. Karl: Voin Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte. Zurich, 1949: 69, 88. Similarly, the physical separation of races was favored by a Black US emancipationist like Malcolm X. and it still is today by Louis Farrakhan. ' Lester 1996: 2ff Along with Australia and New Zealand, South Africa also stands out as a prominent exception to the "North-South Divide" of rich and poor countries, respectively. It is, for example, an often forgotten fact that the electric power station in Johannesburg in 1914 was the largest and most modern one in the world. Ever since the industrialization of South Africa, it has been one of the richest and technologically most advanced countries in the world. The first ever open heart surgery on a human patient was performed there in 1967 Only a few years later, the NP government procured the country's first nuclear weapons, less than 30 years after the USA. Other comparative attempts to make sense of South African political developments have included comparisons with Nazi Germany, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union, on the other. The National Party (NP) had close ties with the Nazis and openly supported them, but the former were not yet in power when the World War II broke out. The slightly less racist Union Party formed the government at the time, and South Africa joined the war on the allied side. After the war, however, the NP unexpectedly won the 1948 (ail-White) elections-they were to stay in government until 1994. Already in their first few years in power, the NP rehabilitated South African Nazi supporters and introduced racist laws and covert operations reminiscent of Hitler's "master race" policies. 5 Ideology was also similar in these cases: The centuries-old Afrikaner idea of being "God's Chosen People" 6 (which of course goes back to the millennia-old Jewish idea) was mirrored in the Nazi notion of Aryans or Germans being "Nature's Chosen People", the be-all and end-all of natural selection. Especially anthropology and biology were misused to a great extent in order for Whites in Germany and South Africa to attempt to prove these ideas. The parallel with the Soviet Union could also be argued convincingly. Both apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union created a giant state apparatus and undertook massive social engineering programs, including large, forced removals of millions of people, whole segments of the population. These costly adventures-in financial as well as human termswere made possible only by industrialization, the advent of which nearly coincided in the two countries at the beginning of this century. Yet, both states, it has been argued, were rendered obsolete by further industrialization. The further development of globalized capitalism demanded a state with less expenditure and less market intervention and control. 7 Indeed, only half a year lies between the demise of the apartheid state and the end of the Soviet Union The two countries are at present also facing similar restructuring problems manifesting themselves primarily as high unemployment and high crime-rates. Apartheid in an historically wide sense In this paper, we will compare the South African apartheid system as well as the oppressive structures which preceded and influenced it, with Egypt under Greek and Roman rule, from 332 BC continuously until AD 642, on the one hand, and with modern Palestine under Israeli rule since 1948, on the other. Both of these societies have repeatedly been compared to apartheid South Africa in sweeping terms. What we wish to do here is to provide an analysis to match those generalizations, without shying away from the differences. What the parallels of Graeco-Roman Egypt and modern Israel 8 (until the late 1970's, when the Jews

Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (eds.), Ostpolitik, 1969 - 1974. European and Global Responses. , 2009

This article introduces a new way to evaluate the political and theoretical significance of the Carnegie Commission Poor White Study conducted from 1927 to 1932 in South Africa. Building on the recent literature on whiteness and the older literature on scientific racism, I argue that the scientific language about biology and physiognomy that is usually linked to scientific racism must be brought back into conversation with the literary, historical, legal, and cultural analysis of critical whiteness studies to be a more effective scholarly rejoinder to white supremacy. Critical whiteness studies must track the institutional and professional investments in the creation of white supremacy and white nationalism through various colonial relations across geographical and territorial space. In a productive turn toward the specificity of South African history, this essay also makes claims about the nature of whiteness vis-a `-vis Afrikaner and British identity that provide powerful antidotes to the historiographical obsession with autochthonous ethnic identities among white supremacists. Finally, through close attention to the actual experiences of "poor whites" a set of moral directives and knowledge claims emerge about the urgency of antiracist research that makes this racial formation more than simply an add-on in the litany of radical projects.

African Studies, 1976

One of the main problems confronting liberal ideology in the South African context is the nature and role of group identities. This has been no small question because liberal theorists have tended to be hide-bound by a reliance on the inherent rationality of a free market that specifically excludes the role of group interests from its sphere of operations. Thus, while twentieth century liberalism has made a number of important revisions in the classical laissez-faire model of the nineteenth century (I), it still places a considerable emphasis on the free market sector even though, as Professor John Kenneth Galbraith has observed, this now typifies only a minority sector in western capitalist economies (2). It is this dependency on the freemarket model, however, that restricts the liberal view of rationality to one of economics. The most rational figure in this view remains the classic homo economicus. the child of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest. The implications of this model are far-reaching in terms of J social values. If the basis of society is seen to rest on freefloating individuals motivated by a high degree of psychological hedonism then the basis of society's values rests on individual ones to the neglect of the wider community. This is perhaps one reason why capitalist societies in the west have had such difficulty, for example, in regulating and controlling firms involved in spreading pollution: the traditional free-market model only assumes a relationship between buyer and seller and cannot account for a third party involved in the transaction in the form of the community (3). Moreover, in terms of its of white South Africa". It accordingly urged "Vote against Hofmeyr and save South Africa from ruin 1 ', 4. 99. Van der Poel, op. cit., Smuts to M.C. Gillett, 28, June 1948, 212.

„Semitische Wissenschaften“? Ägyptologie und Altorientalistik im „Dritten Reich“, edited by Heike Behlmer, Andreas Effland, Thomas L. Gertzen, Orell Witthuhn, and Annette Zgoll, 1–22. Göttinger Orientforschungen IV: Reihe Ägypten 70. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2025. Published January 22, 2025.

How to Cope with the Nazi Regime. The "Parallel Lives" of Albrecht Goetze and Kurt Bittel and their Meaning for Hittite Studies .