Editing Barbarian (section)

== Twentieth-century barbarianism ==

The romantic reaction against reason and civilisation preceded some attempts to rehabilitate '''barbarianism''' in the 20th century.<ref>
{{cite book
 |editor-last1         = Winkler
 |editor-first1        = Markus
 |editor-last2         = Boletsi
 |editor-first2        = Maria
 |date                 = 31 July 2023
 |chapter              = 5.1.1. New Barbarians, Superior Barbarians, Technicized Barbarians: The Semantics of Barbarism in the Manifestoes and Aesthetic Writings of the Avant-Garde Movements, 1900-1930
 |title                = Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts
 |volume               = 2: Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=TXDOEAAAQBAJ
 |series               = Volume 15 of Schriften zur Weltliteratur/Studies on World Literature
 |publication-place    = Berlin
 |publisher            = J. B. Metzler
 |pages                = 1–2
 |isbn                 = 9783476046116
 |access-date          = 20 September 2024
 |quote                = 
}} 
</ref> The [[German Empire]] [[Hermannsdenkmal|glorified the Germans' Teutonic barbarian past]]. Kaiser [[Wilhelm II]] offered [[Hun speech|the Huns]] as an example to his troops, [[Russian symbolism|Russian symbolist]] poets such as [[Alexander Blok|Blok]] invoked an Asiatic nomad heritage of the [[Scythians|Scyths]] and the [[Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'|Mongol]]s, and [[Nazi Germany]] cultivated a [[Ahnenerbe|pre-civilised nationalism]] to justify/promote enslaving and murdering Jews and Slavs. The [[Goth subculture|Goth sub-culture]] continued the tradition, echoing the name and reputation of the barbarian outsider early-medieval [[Goths]].<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Spracklen
 |first1               = Karl
 |last2                = Spracklen
 |first2               = Beverley
 |date                 = 15 August 2018
 |title                = The Evolution of Goth Culture: The Origins and Deeds of the New Goths
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=1-9mDwAAQBAJ
 |series               = Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization
 |publication-place    = Bingley, West Yorkshire
 |publisher            = Emerald Group Publishing
 |page                 = 3
 |isbn                 = 9781787146778
 |access-date          = 20 September 2024
 |quote                = The new goths take their name from the old Goths [...]. The origins and deed of the old Goths were constructed by Roman historians in fear of the Goth as a barbarian outsider [...].
}} 
</ref>

===Marxist use of term===
In her 1916 anti-war pamphlet ''The Crisis of German Social Democracy'', the [[Marxist]] theorist [[Rosa Luxemburg]] writes:
<blockquote>Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch01.htm |title=Rosa Luxemburg, "The Junius Pamphlet" |publisher=Marxists.org |access-date=2013-09-30}}</ref></blockquote>
Luxemburg attributed her statement to [[Friedrich Engels]], but as was shown by [[Michael Löwy]], Engels had used not the term "Barbarism" but a less resounding formulation: "If the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place."<ref>Friedrich Engels, "Anti-Dühring" (1878), quoted in Michael Löwy, "Philosophy of Praxis & Rosa Luxemburg" in "Viewpoint", Online Issue No. 125, November 2, 2012 {{cite web|url=http://www.viewpointonline.net/philosophy-of-praxis-a-rosa-luxemburg-michael-loewy.html |title=Philosophy of praxis & Rosa Luxemburg: Michael Löwy |access-date=2012-11-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511013653/http://www.viewpointonline.net/philosophy-of-praxis-a-rosa-luxemburg-michael-loewy.html |archive-date=2013-05-11 }}</ref> The case has been made that Luxemburg had remembered a passage from the "[[Erfurt Program]]", written in 1892 by [[Karl Kautsky]], and mistakenly attributed it to Engels:<blockquote>As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://mronline.org/2014/10/22/angus221014-html-2/|title=MR Online {{!}} The Origin of Rosa Luxemburg's Slogan "Socialism or Barbarism"|date=2014-10-22|work=MR Online|access-date=2018-09-25|language=en-US}}</ref></blockquote>
Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by "regression into Barbarism": 
<blockquote>A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe] shows what the regression of bourgeois society into Barbarism means. This World War is a regression into Barbarism. The triumph of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of Imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration{{snd}}a great cemetery. Or the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the International [[Proletariat]] against [[Imperialism]] and its method of war.</blockquote>