me:
... fascist corporatism seems to be qualitatively different from Dubyament's corporatism. The latter is more like the "the business of America is business" governments that the US saw during the 1920s or during the Gilded Age. I think we can understand Dubya better if we study William McKinley than if we study Mussolini.
Charles Brown:
I'm not so sure about what you say about Mussolini. Afterall, he defined his fascism as corporatism. Seems like he made the business of Italy business, didn't he ?
I think that McKinley-Harding-Coolidge-Hoover "laissez-faire" is qualitatively different from the kind of merger of the state with capital that occur ed under Mussolini. Laissez-faire is much less statist, collectivist, in its orientation than is fascism. "laissez-faire" involves the subordination of the state to the short-term and individual interests of businesses. (cf. the looting done by the Bush2 cronies. A key difference of Bush2 from classical laissez-faire is that it's based on borrowed money.) On the other hand, fascism is an effort to save capital's bacon via the forcible suppression of an active and militant labor movement (or perhaps some other movement seen as threatening the _status quo_). It's more about capital's survival. Fearing its demise, capital sometimes "signs a deal with the devil" (Hitler, Mussolini, or whomever) in order to deal with mass social disorder. In this case, the state personnel can gain more than the usual "relative autonomy," often lording themselves over the capitalists, engaging in military adventures, etc. that sometimes contradict the long-term class interests of the capitalists. (Mussolini didn't seem to be serving the interests of the Italian capitalists very well when he invaded Ethiopia -- or when he later allied with Hitler.) Attorney General Palmer (appointed by President Wilson, a Democrat, BTW) might be seen as a fascist. But the kind of fascism he embodied did not become established as a _fascist system_ the way it did in Italy. Instead, it set the stage for a period of _laissez-faire_. Perhaps it was because capital was relatively strong and labor was relatively weak during the period of the Palmer Raids. Laissez-faire can also go against the long-term interests of the capitalists. For example, the "greed is good" decade of the 1920s produced rapidly rising social inequality, which encouraged the onset of the Great Depression. (What does serve the long-term class interests of capital? social democracy. But that's not as profitable as possible from the individual capitalist's perspective. Its hey-day corresponds to the perceived threat from the USSR.) Of course, no real-world phenomenon fits abstract categories exactly. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
