My final comment on this issue for now:
In evaluating the decision of the German Communist Party and the Communist of the
1920's and 1930's to use the term "social fascist" to apply to some social democrats
( including, I think there was some reference to F.D. Roosevelt by this term) and
socialists, one must not overuse much of the historical hindsight which we now have.
The communists could not be imputed with knowing then that the Nazis would become the
world historic criminals against peace and humanity that they became. The originator
of fascism was Mussolini and his group in Italy. As bad as they were, one could not
readily foresee holocaustic Nazism as a "mutation" of Italian fascism.
Furthermore, consider that in this time period, the main literal "Fascists" were in
Italy and their founder. Mussolini HAD been a leader in the Socialist Party. The
original fascist was actually a sort of "social fascist". The communists were merely
using the evidence at hand to try to anticipate from where a new Mussolini would come.
The working class struggle was so popular at that time, that traitors and opportunists
such as Mussolini, who had demogogic "proworker" sounding raps were one of the best
potential sources for the bourgeoisie to find politicians to divert the working class
struggle and divide it.
It is in this context that the German Communists attitude toward the German Social
Democrats should be considered. The Nazis were a "socialist workers'" party too, all
kidding aside , ha ha. As I said before, the German Social Democrats had assasinated
Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebkneckt, the two heroic communists who led opposition to
the German Social Democratic Labor Party's betrayal of Marxism and opportunistic,
SOCIAL CHAUVINIST support for "their own capitalists" in WWI. The Nazis were unknown
, and certainly their later world historic crimes were not anymore readily foreseeable
than that the German Social Democrats might pull something like Mussolini was pulling.
Charles Brown
>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/04/99 06:27PM >>>
I don't see this discussion going anywhere (but luckily not into
invective), so I'm going to stop my contributions to it.
At 02:02 PM 6/4/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/04/99 12:12PM >>>
>Charles writes: >I don't agree that "fascism" has lost value from overuse.
>I would say it is underused and misapplied.<
>
>I guess we have to agree to disagree on that, but I'll summarize my
>position: using the word "fascism" too much can be like referring to a
>man's disrespectful and unwanted touching of a woman on a date as a form of
>"rape." It devalues the word.
>
>Charles: Or like the little boy who cried wolf. Yes, this is a pretty much a
>common sense idea. It just doesn't apply to "fascism".
>
>I wrote: >>What does calling the Governor of Michigan (Engler?) a "fascist"
>say except that we don't like him?<<
>
>Charles: >That's "social fascist". You are using "fascist" loosely and not
>the way I use it ( I specifically all Engler a "social fascist" because he
>is not a full fascist) . Then you use your loose usage ("rhetoric" ?) as a
>basis for saying all usage of these words is loose and so we shouldn't use
>them.<
>
>I don't see how "social fascist" is somehow less full, somehow milder than
>"fascist." To make it milder, why not call the bastard a "semi-fascist"?
>(Going down this road, we could use Gore Vidal's insult of William F.
>Buckley Jr., "pro crypto-Nazi." But that would be worse, since Nazism is
>even worse than fascism and overuse of the term devalues it, as with the
>US/NATO comparison of Milosevic to Hitler.)
>
>Charles: I think I mentioned earlier in this thread the difference between
>Engler and Hitler is that the former is not carrying out open , direct and
>holocaustic terrorist rule. The cuts in social programs and racist policies
>are the form of his assault on the working class, not direct death camps and
>actual war. It is a "war" on the poor not with guns, but social policty.
>This is aptly captured by SOCIAL fascist. And it has the value of continuing
>the tradition from the 20's and 30's , which I prefer to connect to rather
>than differentiate from. In other words, I see the communist historical
>movement as something that the next generation of revolutionaries should
>draw more from than is the trend right now, in this extreme revolutionary
>slump.
>
>The fact that some people inflate the meaning of fascism by conflating
>political critique with insult does not stop me from using the word
>precisely. As I said, otherwise, Gore Vidal will determine what words I can
>use, Can't have that. We must have semantic self-determination in the
>movement.
>
>(((((((((((
>
>Actually, my impression (which could be wrong) is that Engler is a
>standard, garden variety, neo-liberal. Wouldn't it be great if
>"neo-liberal" attained the negative connotations of "fascist" in peoples'
>minds? I think that's where we should go. Even better, since "neo-liberal"
>is jargon that few outside of the left use, we need to convince people that
>whatever Engler calls himself ("Republican"? "Democrat"?) should have
>really bad connotations.
>
>Charles: I agree that we need to convince people that whatever Engler calls
>himself should have bad connotations, but we should have our own names for
>him too. We don't have to JUST call him a social fascist. The proposal
>isn't that people be restricted to that term. To describe him would actually
>take a number of paragraphs, not just two words, but you know, soundbitism.
>People need to be shocked out of their complacency and comfort with the
>"Englers" of today, and "social fascist" has some potential for that.
>"Neo-liberal" helps with analysis. Actually, I am not sure that Engler is
>exactly a neo-liberal. His constituency is largely the
>isolationist/anti-free trade/militia crowd.
>
>
>I wrote: >>(b) Do you think that the "financial oligarchy" (which I think
>could be described in less hackneyed terms) <<
>
>Charles: >If we start calling terms hackneyed, the impliedly fresh
>vocabulary that gets substituted for terms like "financial oligarchy" will
>win the hackneyed prize over "imperialism", "monopoly capital" , "financial
>oligarchy". All of Doug Henwood's work that I have seen confirms that
>there is a huge financial oligarchy running the global economy.
>"Wallstreet" is a financial oligarchy. Debt is the leash system of the
>whole thing. Financial Oligarchy is so fresh and unhackneyed it isn't even
>funny. A hedge fund is a form of the financial oligarchy's organization.
>What a perfect description of it.<
>
>Jim D.
>The problem with "financial oligarchy" is not that it's hackneyed as much
>as it suggests a conspiracy. It ignores a central problem of the rule of
>finance capital these days, i.e., competition and "invisible hand"
>automatic operations.
>
>Charles: This is not different from the time that Lenin used the term. Lenin
>was an originator of the critique of conspiracy analysis of capitalism. He
>analyzes state-monopoly capitalism as a system, not a conspiracy. Thus, the
>term "financial oligarchy" orignates in a systematic ,not a conspiracy
>analysis. An oligarchy is a ruling CLASS. Or the leading elements of the
>class. The bougeoisie has leading elements.
>
>Jim D.
>There doesn't have to be a conspiracy: speculators
>suddenly begin to believe a country's finance minister might do something
>mild that goes against the ruling financial orthodoxy (like a mild Tobin
>Tax). So they all panic, like a herd of cattle, pulling their funds out of
>the country, imposing a financial crisis. Or they impose a crisis on Brazil
>because of things that happen in Russia.
>
>Now there are oligarchic elements to finance capital: the Federal Reserve,
>the IMF, the big banks, Hedge Funds, etc. all are pretty clubby, sharing a
>common culture and a common ideology (the financial orthodoxy referred to
>above). But to simply refer to the oligarchy without the competition/market
>dimension of it is to provide an incomplete picture.
>
>Charles: See above. Lenin's use of "financial oligarchy" is part of a
>classic systematic , not conspiratorial, analysis of state-monopoly
>capitalism. The financial oligarchy is a ruling class , not a conspiratorial
>cabal, although there are cartels within the oligarchy.
>
>I have not here given the overall description of finance capital and the
>financial oligarchy, because this is an e-mail post. I am using the term
>"financial oligarchy" as a syntagmatic ( or is it metanomyic) reference for
>the whole system of fianance capital. This is a standard Leninist analysis
>of imperialism. This fianancial oligarchy is just one part of that.
>
>
>Jim D.
>I asked if the "financial orthodoxy" >>is likely to become desperate in the
>near future? <<
>
>Charles: >The periodic crisis is a permanent feature of capitalism. Despite
>the hype, the business cycle has not been "cured". Eventually, there will
>be economic crisis in the U.S. too. That would be a potential time of
>desparation for the U.S. ruling class. They prepare for it. The prison
>system is being expanded in case they have to go to full concentration
>camps. The storm troopers are in PROTO form in the various and sundry
>rightwing fascistic fringe groups and militias.<
>
>Jim D.
>I agree that economic crises are inevitable under capitalism. But an
>economic crisis isn't a social crisis for capitalism unless there's a big
>opposition. Without the social crisis, there's no need for concentration
>camps. Mussolini was responding to a social crisis in Italy, while Hitler
>responded to one in Germany. If people are instead sucking opiates and
>watching TV, there's no social crisis of the sort that threatens capital's
>rule.
>
>Charles: Yes, there must be opposition for it to be a crisis for capital. I
>agree with that. Yes , there is some possibility that there will be working
>class opposition to the ruling class at the next economic crisis and that
>this will contribute to the ruling class' desparation.
>
>Jim:
>The above (and Charles' previous message) seems a bit paranoid, too. It
>makes it sound as if the "financial orthodoxy" cultivated the militias etc.
>(though my impression might be wrong). I would say instead that the failure
>of US capitalist growth to give to many white male younger workers the same
>standard of living that their fathers had received encouraged a bitterness
>and resentment (along with their bitterness that women and "minorities" are
>getting any respect at all) that spawned the militias and the like. In
>other words, it's the "economic crisis" (another overused phrase) that
>spawned the militia, rather than their genesis being orchestrated from above.
>
>Charles: I prefer to think that you are somewhat opiated against worry about
>the real danger of the open terrorist methods of the bourgeoisie the next
>time they feel desparate. It is easy to look at the proto-fascist groups and
>pols in strict isolation from the overall class picture with the ruling
>class, and say well ,the bourgeoisie didn't exactly put these proto-fascist
>groups together directly. Sure ,socio-economic factors make potential storm
>troopers. This is a partial picture , not dialectical , in the sense of not
>thinking holistically. The bourgeoisie are opportunist enough and ruthless
>enough to use the materials at hand when the time comes. The political
>"material" they use does not have to be created by them anymore than the
>computer technology wealth they steal has to be originated by them. What I
>would say the bourgeoisie impact in the U.S. is preventing the outlawing of
>the fascistic groups. They use their influence to keep them hanging around
>as fringe groups !
>!
>in case they become necessary. Unfortuntely , there is no premature
>anti-fascism and calling that paranoia is lulling yourself to sleep in the
>face of danger.
>
>Charles: >The word "fascist" is like the word "imperialism" or the term
>"military-industrial complex" . It comes from "them". The bourgeoisie's
>boy Mussolini invented the term "fascism". Who is it , Hobson, from whom
>Lenin got "imperialism". The "military-industrial complex" was a concept
>from the inside given us by an insider Eisenhower. They know their own
>system better than we do.<
>
>
>Jim D.
>Of course there does exist an elite, or competing elites, that are most
>powerful decision-makers in the imperialist system and the
>military-industrial complex. But to focus on elites alone is to miss the
>organization structures of these two institutions, missing the fact that
>the elites "make history, but not exactly as they please." These are social
>institutions with internal contradictions.
>
>Charles: "Elite" is your concept here. My focus is on economic classes ,
>about as social institutionalist in analysis as you can get. The term
>"elites" is not precise in describing what I am referring to. Notice how
>often I speak of the "ruling CLASS" or "financial oligarchy" . I can't
>understand how you would think I am not analyzing internal contradictions.
>This is dialectical materialism. The internal ruling class contradictions
>are discussed at length in my analysis. You have heard of interimperialist
>rivalry. You aren't seriously saying that Lenin doesn't do analysis of the
>internal contradictions of social institutions, but only looks at "elites" ?
>
>
>Jim D.
>One of Lenin's big theoretical contributions (and I'm not a Leninist) is
>that he argued that imperialism is a system rather than merely a policy.
>That's an insight to think about.
>
>
>Charles: Exactly. See above. Why would you say that the standard Leninist
>analysis I am giving here treats imperialism as a conspiracy and not a
>system ?
>
>>"Fasces" are the bundle of rods in the SPQR Roman symbol that Brad D
>quoted (Senatus Populisque Romanus; The enate and the Roman People). The
>Roman culture is an ancestor of all Western culture. So "fascism" is a good
>general statement of the tendency of the modern West to go to a
>barbarically cruel state as the Romans had.<
>
>Jim D.
>I think that illuminating the similarities between the Roman empire and the
>US empire would be more useful than labelling either "fascist."
>
>Charles: I know you do, but I gotta use words when I talk to you.
>"Labelling" has become an overused .vague criticism for words people don't
>like. Email would come to an end without "labelling" at this level. What
>word would you use to describe them ?
>
>
>CB
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground Troops make things worse! US/NATO out
of Serbia now!
