Socialism is hard to define

A friend recently praised Bernie Sanders for making the term "socialism" respectable. 

But what has he really accomplished in this realm? There is no universally accepted definition of socialism. At its core should be the idea of social control of banks and basic industries - what the British Labour Party used to embrace as Clause Four. But that is no longer the rule in the UK, though the concept may be revived. 

Once upon a time, Stalinism was accepted as socialism in pure form. And, partly as a result of conservative propaganda, adoption of a single-payer system of medical care is stigmatized as "socialism," when it is not. They do not have socialism in any serious sense in Scandinavia, merely mitigated capitalism. 

Socialism then is an essentially contested concept, a chameleon that in common usage means many different things.

Changing demography

New York City, where I have lived most of my life, seems to be a multicultural city that works. The borough of Queens boasts more than 200 nationalities. The excellent staff of my building is made up of Dominicans, African Americans, a Filipino, and a Russian.

Sometimes I wish that people in Europe, who are not doing so well with the challenge of integration, could learn from our example. (Well, there are plenty of people in the US who could learn too.)

Yet what is the outlook twenty or so years down the road, when we are told that we will become a minority-majority country? I am not so much concerned about the people themselves - we have proved that they can do all right - but about politicians who find it hard to resist herding individuals into ethnic blocs. While I have no respect whatever for Republicans these days, the Democrats seem to be looking forward to an era in which we will in fact be divided into ethnic blocs, our disputes brokered by politicians. Maybe this will not happen - but the possibility needs to be reckoned with.

This leads to another question: at what point have we in Western societies decided to change our demographic configuration through immigration?  

Without endorsing Trump's nativist extremism, it seems that there is a real problem here.  Of course big business wants lots of immigration, legal or illegal, in order to provide docile workers.  With typical shortsightedness these moguls care nothing about the longterm consequences.  The problem is less serious in the US, where we have long deal with these issues, than in Western Europe.  The Europeans must also deal with the fact that many of the new immigrants are Muslim, with a large continent included therein that is hostile to Western pluralism and freedom of expression.

Islamic art in museums

This morning NPR broadcast an interview with the curator of the recently reopened and enlarged Islamic art galleries in the south wing of the Metropolitan Museum here in NYC. She acknowledged the omission of Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country, which is documented only elsewhere in the Museum (chiefly with works of Buddhist and Hindu provenance). 

A more serious omission is the obscuring of the fact that some of the art actually displayed is not of Muslim origin but is at best "Islamicate," being made by Christian and Jewish craftspeople. As everyone knows, or should know, the Jews have been expelled from the Arab Islamic countries, with the Christians now following them in the current program of ethnic cleansing. 

While figural arts were not forbidden by Islam (except in mosques and other sacred spaces) artists were assigned a low status. Hence the task fell largely to people of other heritages - just as wine, for example continued to be made and sold by Christians. Moreover, it is not always realized that there was a vibrant Jewish art tradition that flourished in figural mosaics and frescoes executed in synagogues right up to the time of the Islamic conquest.

Le Corbusier's alleged fascism

We generally assume that modern art and architecture, as they became consolidated in the 20th century, are part of the enlightenment project for human advancement. If these figures have any political leanings, they will be on the left. Alas, there is no consistent pattern. 

As the recent blockbuster show of Futurism at the Guggenheim Museum showed, this movement allied itself with Mussolini's fascism, a connection that lasted until the end of the regime. Moreover, the architect Terragni, one of the outstanding modernists, is best known for his construction of the Casa del Fascio in Como. 

This background should be considered in relation to three new French books, alleging Le Corbusier's fascism. I have been looking at these books, and they all seem to be rush jobs, and hard to read. Still, the evidence seems largely circumstantial, based in part on personal links with eccentric figures such as Dr. Pierre Winter.

 Moreover, if Le Corbusier were such a right-winger, he would not have done some of his most impressive work of the thirties in the USSR. In truth he seems to have been an opportunist, willing to work for anyone who would hire him, with patrons as varied as the Catholic Church, the Indian state under Nehru, and the United Nations.

The French tend to treat Le Corbusier as the one and only leader in modern architecture. In fact he belonged to a larger group of figures, identified with the International Style and mainly originating in Germany. These figures do not have clean hands either. During WWI Gropius fell for the notion that the Jews had betrayed the Reich - though he later corrected himself. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, arguably an even greater architect than Corbu, lingered in Germany for several years after Hitler's takeover, in the hope that he would get the commission for the Reichsbank building. In short, context is needed.

Le Corbusier legacy threatened by 'fascist' revelations

Paris (AFP) - Revelations that one of the world's most famous modern architects, Le Corbusier, was a "fascist" with links to France's WWII collaborationist...

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