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Do you think A. Lieberman is a fascist politician, leading a fascist movement? He is part of the present government. My own view is there are a variety of fascisms, of which the Nazis were only one strain. Further, I think postwar fascism has been integrated and subordinated to the structures of US "democratic imperialism". I don't adhere to the narrow Paxton view which requires that an actual fascist party be in power to "qualify" as fascist. That would be the requirement for a fascist government, overlooking the possibility that the _regime_ could be fascist, with the actual fascist party or faction on the sidelines as a minority regime supporter. That could easily fit the present Israeli case. But by the Paxton definition neither Franco Spain nor 1930's Japan were fascist. Do you agree? Neither are bourgeois democracy and fascism mutually exclusive. I think that what many define as fascism is actually the "classical" fascism of the 1920's-30's. But times have changed, and so do political movements. Fascism varies both over time and place. BTW, it is interesting and relevant to the Israeli-American case that the Nazi strategy was to convert Europe into its own racially hierarchialized continent sized settler state-empire. Just like the old 19th century USA. Except they failed. This is a clue to one of the historic "functions" of fascism as a political movement, government or regime whose program corresponds to the objective requirements of "primary accumulation", what D. Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession" and what Luxemberg saw as not merely as a prehistory of capitalism, but as coexistent, concurrent and vitally necessary to the existence of capitalist accumulation proper (on this one point I agree with Luxemberg without endorsing other views). "Classical" fascism was therefore the mode of fascism corresponding to the late phase of the colonial imperialism of Lenin's time. Pre-war Showa Japan had a similar project in Asia, which they implemented in Manchuria (See "Japan's Total Empire", Louise Young). Who knows, had the Nazis succeeded, they would have dumped Hitler and "mellowed" in victory as the United States of Europe. Compared to the "orthodox tradition", this is a richer and more nuanced view of fascism that weaves it into the normative structures of capitalism, rather than treat it - and herein lies I believe the Paxton-Berlot political agenda - as a purely exceptional and even accidental phenomenon in relation to capitalism and imperialism, in any case "preventable" with proper political regulation. -Matt "While I share Castro's disgust at the Zionist entity's reprehensible crimes, he misses the point: Israel is a bourgeois democracy, as well as a colonial settler-state, and its state is founded on racism (rights for Jews that Arabs are denied). But to call it Nazi, i.e., fascist, is hardly a defensible Marxist position. Just because a democracy does evil things (e.g., the U.S.'s crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan...), doesn't automatically make it fascist." DT ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
