To me fascism is the open, terrorist rule of the most reactionary sector of monopoly capital. The Italian Fascist Party was obviously the prototype. The Nazis were its nadir. There are other forms of tyranny which must be opposed, but I would reserve the word "fascist" for this phenomenon. On Malcolm X ,this issue can be got beyond, because part of the point that Louis Pro, others and I make is that Malcolm X was a self-described street criminal at one stage in his life, which is pretty bad politically; but what is important about him in that regard is that after that he shows a model for ,for example, current Black gangster rappers, to move from horrible politics to progressively more and more progressive politics. He is a model for misguided rebellion to change for the better. If we are going to have a revolution in our lifetime, it will not be carried out by some "entirely new" bunch of people. The people who are now in various ways unprogressive or apolitical are going to have to change. So, in various ways, many people will have to go through a transformation that is in one sense comparable to that of Malcolm X ( though obviously very different for most people. I don't mean that everybody is a criminal or the like) MAYBE (!) Kurt whats his name, (Waldheim) president of Austria and UN official is a rough comparable. Charles Brown >>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/12 12:20 PM >>> I don't want to get into ad hominems, so I won't mention the names of any of the participants in this "debate" or even the debate itself. But isn't it possible that someone (Malcolm X) could have been a "fascist" (very broadly defined) at one point in his life (e.g., when he was heir apparent to the leadership of what was then termed the "Black Muslims" and toed Elijah Mohammed's line) and then learned that he was wrong and move on to a better political vision? After all, the story of Malcolm's life is very protean. His visit to Mecca changed his life dramatically, for example. And it's possible that Mattick could have had a "youthful indiscretion" of supporting "left-wing" Nazis and then could have moved on to a more sane and mature view. [*] For both of these thinkers, I think the question is whether or not they contributed to the struggle for justice when they went away from their early views. In general, what we need is facts about these guys, not insults. Also, the word "fascist" is over-used and should be used only gingerly. Please define the term! Does it refer to Mussolini types? to Nazis? or to people with "authoritarian personalities" (who score high on the Frankfurt School's F-scale)? [*] Schiess, I was once a member of both the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement, which were the organizations that merged to produce the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). I hope that no-one ever holds those youthful indiscretions against _me_. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
