To a great extent, the Marxian designation of religion as the “opium of the people” has lost currency among the Eurocommunists. When Eurocommunists do make rare mention of religion, they describe it as a humanist commitment to a better world, one which the Eurocommunists see as currently unrealizable. Marxism-Leninism as a worldview has also lost currency. It is true that the West European Communists are still devoted to Marx, Engels, Lenin—as well as the “classical” Gramsci and Togliatti; but this ideology is no longer seen by them as a uniform, dogmatic view of man, nature and history. Rather, it is conceived as an instrument for analysis of political and social relations, as a “methodology for historic initiatives.”

Karl Marx's master plan, as originally laid down in the Communist Manifesto, saw the world, led by Europe, moving away from feudal particularism through bourgeois nationalism toward proletarian internationalism. The failure of the Revolution of 1848 meant a flaw in practice, not theory, and Marx saw no need to change the plan. He was waiting for the world to continue in its materially determined direction when events made possible the founding of the First International in 1864. Three years later he wrote Friedrich Engels: “In the next revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and I), have this powerful machinery in our hands.”

This essay is meant to help prepare a confrontation with the philosopher who is the most penetrating and thoroughgoing opponent of liberal democratic civilization. Nietzsche characterizes the modern democratic spirit, in all its forms, as “decadence.” This decadence he understands, however, as the final, catastrophic emergence into broad daylight of a previously hidden historical process which has been unfolding in all Western history: the “nihilism” of Athens and Jerusalem, of scientific rationalism and Judeo-Christian monotheism. Nietzsche understands himself as the thinker through whom this process finally attains self-consciousness. Now by Nietzsche's own testimony, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the published writing in which his mature philosophy finds its fullest expression. Yet Zarathustra, because it comprises the “Yes-saying part” of Nietzsche's project, because in it “the eye is spoiled by the tremendous need for seeing far,” possesses a “remoteness” that makes it the most difficult to approach of all his finished works (cf. EH, p. 1141). It seems to presuppose, rather than supply, an account of how Nietzsche understands the cultural crisis to which Zarathustra is responding. My purpose here is to attempt to gather from Nietzsche's diverse pronouncements a synoptic, consistent statement of his critique of the West.

The starting point for explaining modern Palestinian political history is the assumption that Palestinians failed to organize adequately during the British Mandate (1918–1948), were defeated by the Zionist movement, and consequently dispersed from their homeland. That Palestinians did not unite politically during this crucial period in their history, nor cooperate economically, nor even band together militarily is considered corollaries of this organizational incapacity and reasons enough for their failure to achieve a national sovereignty of their own. Thus Porath notes that ultimately no Palestinian political organization could bridge the divisions of region, family, and narrow economic or political interest which encouraged the proliferation of parties and weakened the drive against Zionism. Ann Mosely Lesch calls her book on Arab politics in Palestine, “the frustration of a nationalist movement.”

Among recent American historians, few topics have provoked more controversy than the character of the Confederation period. On one side, scholars like Forrest McDonald have contended that the era from the end of the revolutionary war to the creation of the federal constitution was a time of economic confusion and political chaos, a “critical period” in which popular protest became violent enough to threaten civil war. On the other side, critics of this view led by Merrill Jensen have argued that the period was in fact prosperous and relatively stable, that political protests were few and mostly well behaved, and that, in short, the “critical period” was really not very critical at all. This article does not enter into this debate. Instead, it works from the premise that events are often less important than the perception of events. That is, actual conditions aside, it considers how Americans of the day perceived these conditions. In particular, it describes how they viewed their politics through the filter of their understanding of history.