Modernity and the Holocaust

Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman, 207 pages

In Modernity and the Holocaust sociologist Bauman attempts to explicate how the Holocaust, far from being the uncharacteristic irruption of atavistic drives and premodern ways of thinking it is so often reflexively (or, perhaps, defensively) characterized as, was, in fact, distinctively modern.  In Bauman's view, while modernity did not make the Holocaust inevitable, it did make it possible.  Indeed, in Bauman's account, modernity was crucial in virtually every element of the genocide.  Obviously, modern technological sophistication was necessary to manufacture the vast machinery of death that is virtually unique to the Holocaust.  But perhaps even more necessary was the organizational sophistication of the modern state, which created a distance between the actual killing and those responsible, both those giving the orders and those carrying them out.  

The most important element of the "elective affinity" between modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman maintains, is the foundation of the latter in the former's characteristic confidence in the power of man to reshape himself and his society.  The Holocaust is unthinkable without a belief in social engineering, a hygenic logic that demands the efficient removal of any threat to public health.  Modern genocide is not the spontaneous product of passion, but a planned, rational process.  The anti-ethical space in which the Holocaust took place was prepared by a technocratic outlook which "scientifically" excluded all considerations besides efficiency and technique, with moral concerns further displaced by the innate consequentialism of progressivism - the belief that history will justify any crime in the glorious future that is always aborning.  The monopolization of violence and authority by the modern state meanwhile leave society physically defenseless against injustice, but, even more importantly, the ideology of rational calculation and enlightened self-interest on which the modern state is founded leaves individuals morally unequipped for resistance.

It is these qualities which separate modern genocide from more traditional forms of mass murder - the latter was aimed at destroying communities, the former with the complete physical annihilation of a class of people, the latter was a passing disorder, the former an enduring order, the latter was a violent attack entirely from without, while the former involved the suborned collusion of the victims themselves.  In considering these characteristics of the Holocaust as a product of modernity, Bauman does more than contribute to our understanding of a specific historical event, he forces a reconsideration of the "legitimizing myth" of modernity itself.