Was Franco's regime fascist?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I got the idea for this from another thread and a few people who have said to me "Franco's regime wasn't fascist it was right wing nationalist".

Franco's dictatorship and his prior military coup attempt which sparked the civil war came out of a situation of high class militancy and essentially his dictatorship acted as a broad crushing of this. It is estimated franco executed 200,000 political prisoners in the five years after the civil war. Actually not just executed this was the figure of people that died from starvation and being overworked. It is because of the circumstances that Franco's dictatorship rose out of, and the situation fascism traditionally grows out of, that I think it was fascist.

Thoughts?

[Dimentio]

It was a military dictatorship. The governing party was controlled by the military, but consisted of a broad coalition of rightist groups of which some were Fascist.

[syndicat]

a movement that takes an exterminationist line towards the left, that slaughters something like 150,000 people, mostly union members, that aims at a dictatorship, is fascist. when the army captured towns, they'd form a governing committee with a landlord, a priest, a cop, a military officer, and representatives of the Falange (the fascist party). at the time of the onset of the cvil war the CEDA could be regarded as a clerical-fascist party, like the Christian Social Union of Dollfuss in Austria, and Franco forced the merger of these more clerical-right elements with the more orthodox fascists of the Falange. calling it "nationalist" is just conservative cover.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It's hard to say, I am having a debate about whether or not Iran is fascist (I was saying yes)

The way I'd define it is having a State-sanctioned "In group" which is defined in accordance with conservative cultural precepts. The state then uses the military, police, business classes and paramilitary thugs to benefit "pro-regime" in-group proletarians at the expense of the out-group individuals of all classes. All information and news sources in the country are carefully screened and edited to ensure that all blame for all problems in society is placed on the out-group due to their conspiracies with each other and foreigners against the common man, and so are excluded from power.

These elements seem to have existed in Spain, although I don't think they were manifested as extremely as they were in Nazi Germany.

[Red_Struggle]

fuck you too

[Savage]

Any group or party that encourages such intense hatred towards leftism could be considered fascist.

Maybe, if you disregard the correct definition fascism and use it merely as an empty pejorative.

[red cat]

I got the idea for this from another thread and a few people who have said to me "Franco's regime wasn't fascist it was right wing nationalist".

Franco's dictatorship and his prior military coup attempt which sparked the civil war came out of a situation of high class militancy and essentially his dictatorship acted as a broad crushing of this. It is estimated franco executed 200,000 political prisoners in the five years after the civil war. Actually not just executed this was the figure of people that died from starvation and being overworked. It is because of the circumstances that Franco's dictatorship rose out of, and the situation fascism traditionally grows out of, that I think it was fascist.

Thoughts?

All bourgeois regimes are fascist. Their true character is revealed when they have to put down a revolution or aid in extraction of super-profits from the native population.

[Sasha]

@ OP, franco was the self identified fascist leader of an self identified fascist party. Offcourse he was an fascist. He was just a fascist that was acceptable to the allied forces so they kept him in place.

@ redcat, stop talking out of your arse. It's embarrassing.

[Black Sheep]

@ OP, franco was the self identified fascist leader of an self identified fascist party. Offcourse he was an fascist. He was just a fascist that was acceptable to the allied forces so they kept him in place.
I don't think that's correct.
Franco's coalition simply involved the fascists (The Falange), but he did suppress them in order to keep absolute power.

I think the main force of his coalition was the army, and then the carlists.

[Dimentio]

It's hard to say, I am having a debate about whether or not Iran is fascist (I was saying yes)

The way I'd define it is having a State-sanctioned "In group" which is defined in accordance with conservative cultural precepts. The state then uses the military, police, business classes and paramilitary thugs to benefit "pro-regime" in-group proletarians at the expense of the out-group individuals of all classes. All information and news sources in the country are carefully screened and edited to ensure that all blame for all problems in society is placed on the out-group due to their conspiracies with each other and foreigners against the common man, and so are excluded from power.

These elements seem to have existed in Spain, although I don't think they were manifested as extremely as they were in Nazi Germany.

While in general a good anaysis, that does ignore that Mussolini's regime seemed to lack those characteristics. There were no talks about Jewish conspiracies until 1937-1938.

[S.Artesian]

All bourgeois regimes are fascist. Their true character is revealed when they have to put down a revolution or aid in extraction of super-profits from the native population.


What nonsense. According to this, there Weimar Germany was already fascist before the Nazis took power.

Fascism serves a specific purpose, has a specific history, and a specific organization of the state, economy, and "civil society." That's why it's call fascism and not simply capitalism.

It's one thing to say all bourgeois regimes have the capability of becoming fascist. It's something else to say all bourgeois regimes are fascist.

[red cat]

What nonsense. According to this, there Weimar Germany was already fascist before the Nazis took power.

Fascism serves a specific purpose, has a specific history, and a specific organization of the state, economy, and "civil society." That's why it's call fascism and not simply capitalism.

It's one thing to say all bourgeois regimes have the capability of becoming fascist. It's something else to say all bourgeois regimes are fascist.

Yes, I think I should reframe my sentence. All bourgeois regimes either become fascists when they have to put down revolutions or extract super-profits from the native population, or they aid a fascist group to seize power for the same purpose. That is more accurate.

[scarletghoul]

George Jackson's theory of Fascism is by far the most scientific dialectical materialist one I have come across, and I think it's correct. Its generally what red cat said, but I would add that its monopoly capitalist regimes, not all bourgeois regimes.

I can't find any of George Jackson's writings online unfortunately, but i do recommend reading Blood in My Eye, which includes a good essay on Fascism.

Rashid of the NABPP has written an interesting essay on Fascism. Its in
http://theworkersdreadnought.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/from-the-belly-of-the-beast.pdf I have not studied it properly so haven't formed a full opinion on what he says, but it's worth reading. He makes a distinction between 'overt fascism' and 'covert fascism', and says that overt fascism is what emerges when imperialism is in decline and the capitalists are weak (which explains some of the things happening in Europe and America recently).

[bricolage]

Yes, I think I should reframe my sentence. All bourgeois regimes either become fascists when they have to put down revolutions or extract super-profits from the native population, or they aid a fascist group to seize power for the same purpose. That is more accurate.
This still doesn't make any sense.
Countless governments have put down revolutionary movements and all engage in exploitation, this doesn't make them fascist.
Fascism is a lot more than a word for people you don't like or people that are against you.

[red cat]

This still doesn't make any sense.
Countless governments have put down revolutionary movements and all engage in exploitation, this doesn't make them fascist.
Fascism is a lot more than a word for people you don't like or people that are against you.

The extraction of super profits always involves fascism. Also, can you give an example of a government that put down a revolution and did not act like fascists while doing so ?

[bricolage]

The extraction of super profits always involves fascism.
To take a guess at what you are getting at here (ie. Maoist ideas of suport profits) does this not mean that every first world country is fascist?


Also, can you give an example of a government that put down a revolution and did not act like fascists while doing so ?Well it's problematic because we are for starters going to disagree on what was a revolution or not. If you want to name governments that have put down revolutions I could tell you whether or not I think they are fascists.

Here's a post I made once about another post I'd made about how to define fascism... Because I'm doubly egocentric and I heard you like posts, so we put a post in your post so you can post while you post[/meme] here it is again :) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1862971&postcount=8)

[Tim Finnegan]

I would say that it was not. Franco certainly courted the Falangists during his regimes early period, but once we come out the other side of WW2- and, indeed, during WW2's last days- we find that they very swiftly fall out of favour, and the regime becomes more traditionally authoritarian, and, significantly, allows its traditionalist Catholic elements to come to the fore. As such, while it is possible to characterise the early regime as para-fascist, which is to say a regime which adopts the rhetoric, aesthetics and practices of fascism (other examples include Vichy France and Horthy's Hungary) it cannot be said to have been a fascist regime at heart.

[Nolan]

I've wondered about this. It practiced corporatist economic policies, did it not?

Francoist Spain was influenced by falangism and integralism. It could probably be considered third positionist and parafascist.

[S.Artesian]

Franco was certainly supported by the Falange. Franco certainly practiced corporatism, but I don't think his government, as hideous as it was, measures up as fascist against the fascist rule of the Nazis and Mussolini.

For one thing, Franco did not come to power, and did not base himself on a mass social movement of the petit-bourgeois. The Falange was never that powerful a force in Spain. And in my view, that lack of a mass movement is what distinguishes "plain old" [and nasty, vicious] corporatism from the psychopath/sociopath organization of society by fascism.

[S.Artesian]

The extraction of super profits always involves fascism. Also, can you give an example of a government that put down a revolution and did not act like fascists while doing so ?


We need to be a bit more precise in our use of terms rather than throw "super profits" out there undefined, unqualified.

Marx used "surplus profit" to indicate any profit obtained that was above the general, or social average, rate of profit. Certainly not all instances of that amount to fascism.

If you want to argue that super profits amount to wages paid for industrial labor by multinational companies at rates in less developed country far below the rates paid in advanced country, then the answer is clearly, "no, those super profits do not always involve fascism. Doesn't always involve fascism in the SEZ's of Latin America, doesn't always involve fascism in the production of automobiles in Mexico or Brazil; didn't always involve fascism in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Malaysia, Philippines, Angola etc etc.

[synthesis]

Franco was certainly supported by the Falange. Franco certainly practiced corporatism, but I don't think his government, as hideous as it was, measures up as fascist against the fascist rule of the Nazis and Mussolini.

For one thing, Franco did not come to power, and did not base himself on a mass social movement of the petit-bourgeois. The Falange was never that powerful a force in Spain. And in my view, that lack of a mass movement is what distinguishes "plain old" [and nasty, vicious] corporatism from the psychopath/sociopath organization of society by fascism.

How exactly are you defining "fascist" and what is the reason for your definition of it as such?

[Tim Finnegan]

For one thing, Franco did not come to power, and did not base himself on a mass social movement of the petit-bourgeois.
I think this is quite significant. Fascism and Nazism, while both historically willing to collaborate with the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, are rooted in the petty bourgeoisie, and in many ways act as a form of ultra-nationalistic producerism- for all the British press' ramblings about the "white working class" and "disillusioned Labour voters", the fact remains that the BNP draw the core of their support from lower-middle class ex-Tories. (Even those members of the bourgeoisie who did fully involve themselves with the movements were generally afflicted with a heavily petty bourgeois mentality, including the typical over-preoccupation with personal status and national identity. Not for nothing did the Nazis present themselves as the defenders of "productive capitalism" against "Jewish finance capitalism", which is to say the individualistic petty bourgeois-minded capitalism of the 19th century against the impersonal corporate capitalism of the 21st.)
Franco's regime, in contrast, rested on a somewhat tense alliance of the aristocracy and the reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie (much of the bourgeoisie having originally favoured the liberal factions of the Republic), and on the institutions of the military and the church, rather than in any mass movement (and, as both the Civil War and later Revolution indicate in opposition to popular feeling). As such, it was never able- or particularly likely- to absorb the ideology of fascism, which is after all, a populist and revolutionary one.

[L.A.P.]

I would say he was so extreme about his national conservatism that it lead to fascism. Bottom line, he was a Fascist.

[Tim Finnegan]

I would say he was so extreme about his national conservatism that it lead to fascism. Bottom line, he was a Fascist.
But Fascism is not a conservative ideology in the slightest. National Socialism, arguably, but that wasn't a political force in Spain, and certainly not one with any sway in the Franco regime.

[Reznov]

a movement that takes an exterminationist line towards the left, that slaughters something like 150,000 people, mostly union members, that aims at a dictatorship, is fascist. when the army captured towns, they'd form a governing committee with a landlord, a priest, a cop, a military officer, and representatives of the Falange (the fascist party). at the time of the onset of the cvil war the CEDA could be regarded as a clerical-fascist party, like the Christian Social Union of Dollfuss in Austria, and Franco forced the merger of these more clerical-right elements with the more orthodox fascists of the Falange. calling it "nationalist" is just conservative cover.

So the Soviet Union?

[S.Artesian]

@ OP, franco was the self identified fascist leader of an self identified fascist party. Offcourse he was an fascist. He was just a fascist that was acceptable to the allied forces so they kept him in place.
.


I'm not sure about that. I don't recall reading where Franco announces himself as a fascist, and I'm pretty sure he was never the official leader of the Falangists. References would help.

[syndicat]

So the Soviet Union?

some people would call Moscow "red fascists." but that fails to consider the function of fascism which is to defend private property and capitalist class control in a situation where they are being challenged by the working class.

[S.Artesian]

How exactly are you defining "fascist" and what is the reason for your definition of it as such?


I think fascism is quite clearly differentiated from other forms of capitalist repression and militarism by the fact that it involves a mass movement, a mass mobilization in the service of smashing the workers, the workers organizations, and essentially rearranging the relationship between capital and labor to the gross benefit of the former.

It's the mass movement that makes it fascism. There are fascist tactics, fascist organizations, fascist ideologies, but a fascist government is the product, and the producer, of a mass mobilization aimed at pre-emptive counterrevolution.

[x359594]

a movement that...slaughters something like 150,000 people...

As more mass graves are uncovered as part of the campaign by Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory the figure may well be 300,000.

[x359594]

...he did suppress them [the Falange] in order to keep absolute power...I think the main force of his coalition was the army, and then the carlists.

According to histories I've read Franco co-opted the Falange and the Carlists. A significant section of officer layer of the army was composed of Falangists and sympathizers.

[L.A.P.]

But Fascism is not a conservative ideology in the slightest. National Socialism, arguably, but that wasn't a political force in Spain, and certainly not one with any sway in the Franco regime.

Are you serious? Fascism is a very conservative ideology and national conservatism was a very influential political force during the Spanish Civil War and Franco's regime.

[Omsk]

Why do you think Franco's regime lasted so long?Beacouse it was conservative,Catholicism in its most conservative variant was made the official religion of the Spanish State, which enforced Catholic social mores.Francoism professed a devotion to the traditional role of women in society, that is:loving their husband's,kids,speding time doing mostly house-work,cooking,cleaning,however,that changed greatly in later years of Franco's regime,the situation got beter,more liberalized.And when it comes to nationalism,Franco tried to maintain a perspective of a unique Spanish people,and other nationalities and their traditions were greatly neglected,while only the pure,Spanish culture was maintained.

[S.Artesian]

Franco was not the Falange. He certainly represented a coalition that included the Falange, but that's a bit different from constituting a fascist regime. Corporatist, reactionary, murdering-- yes, all those wonderful characteristics of countrrevolution, but his government was not organized around a single party representing the sole political power in the society.

[Tim Finnegan]

Are you serious? Fascism is a very conservative ideology and national conservatism was a very influential political force during the Spanish Civil War and Franco's regime.
I think that you're conflating Fascism and Revolutionary Conservativism, when the two could really not be more removed. Fascism, if we are to use the term properly, is an extremely radical, even revolutionary ideology; its roots lie in the nationalism of the Enlightenment, rather than in the Counter-Enlightenment thought which birthed conservatism, and it is fundamental rationalist (if not rational) in outlook. One only needs to look at the rhetoric of the early Fascists, and particularly those involved with the Futurist movement, to see that Fascism has a very wide modernist streak, a far lessened concern for traditional social orders, and, surprisingly to those who know Fascism only through its insane cousin in Germany and its bastard offspring across post-war Europe, a relative indifference to biological race.
Now, granted, Mussolini's regime- the only truly independent Fascist regime to come into power- was in practice rather conservative, but this was because of its relatively unstable power-base, rather than an honest expression of Fascism proper. Equally, the cultural reactionaryism of Stalin's Russia is not a reflection of Marxism, but of Stalin's regime in particular.

Not that I'm apologising for fascism, of course; nowhere does it say that to be revolutionary is to be virtuous, especially not if the revolutionary path one pursues is the inhuman sort embarked upon by Mussolini et al.

[Dimentio]

The extraction of super profits always involves fascism. Also, can you give an example of a government that put down a revolution and did not act like fascists while doing so ?

What would that make a Maoist government violently putting down a rebellion?

[alegab]

Franco had Primo de Rivera's fascist Falanges among his early supporters and allies, but he despised fascism (and specially nazism and Hitler), as soon as he became the leader of all spain he removed almost all of the falangistas from government and took a traditionalist and populist point of view
He was without any doubt an authoritarian conservative strongly-populist iron-fist ruler, which is something usually considered to be fascist, but true fascism supports a strong coperativism, which Franco lacked, and fascism is (and should be) Third Positionist, far-centre, strongly anti-communist/socialist and anti-liberal (European way), while also despising almost any other political position, while Franco only battled those he considered were either leftists or contra-productive (falangistas, etc)
True fascism and para-fascism aren't things you can see every day, these are rare exceptions, if you want to see a moderate version of fascism I advise you to read about the first 2 govts of Juan Perón, he wasn´t nearly as authoritarian as his Euro counterparts, but he said one of his biggest inspirations was early fascist Italy and adopted many of their policies and even their mottos (the most known being "Ni liberales ni comunistas, Peronistas!", nor liberal nor communists, peronists)

[B0LSHEVIK]

It was absolutely fascist down to the classical fascist definition. Traditional, Nationalistic, Militaristic, Thrid-positionist. There is no doubt that some people will try to call Franco's regime a 'state-monarchy' with the head being Franco himself. And thats also fair, but the tendency was fascist in every sense of the word.

Also, as opposed to Franco's rebellion against a revolution in spain, national socialism in germany was considered a revolution of sorts too. The nazi leadership and supporters spoke of their 'revolutionary movement' against the failures of both capitalism and socialism. And the nazi party did make gains in leaps and bounds among the average german proletariat, especially the first 6 years.

[Tim Finnegan]

It was absolutely fascist down to the classical fascist definition. Traditional, Nationalistic, Militaristic, Thrid-positionist.
That's not what "fascist" means. Aside from anything else, fascism is anti-traditionalist, and very much concerned with modernity, having grown out of the national syndicalist and futurist movements, both of which despised the feudal relics which littered Italy, particular the useless and non-productive classes of the clergy and the rural landlords. Franco, on the other hand, fought explicitly to defend clergy and landlord, revelling in their uselessness as the entitlement of their class.

[B0LSHEVIK]

That's not what "fascist" means. Aside from anything else, fascism is anti-traditionalist, and very much concerned with modernity, having grown out of the national syndicalist and futurist movements, both of which despised the feudal relics which littered Italy, particular the useless and non-productive classes of the clergy and the rural landlords. Franco, on the other hand, fought explicitly to defend clergy and landlord, revelling in their uselessness as the entitlement of their class.

Like I said, some people (you in this case) will try to say that Franco fought to rescue feudalism in Spain, and I said its fair to call him a state-monarch. But reactionaries in Spain were not homogeneous and were composed of several right wing factions under the banner of Franco. Thus Francos coalition was a melting pot of right wing ideologies whose outward tendency was that of a fascist regime: nationalist, traditionalist, militaristic, and murderer of the left.

What are you talking about when you say fascism is anti-traditionalist? All fascist parties somehow linked themselves to past glories and culture. Mussolini used the Roman empire to remind Italians of how great they were. Hitler somehow linked the German state to the holy roman empire, have you never seen the Nazi propaganda piece 'triumph of the will?' If you do, tell me the national socialists weren't trying to create a 'traditional german' facade? Franco himself spoke of rebuilding the Spanish empire and of the 2nd reconquest of Spain from the mongrel reds.

And Franco's most despised group was the Falange. He felt many 'reds' had infiltrated the party who always had strong proletarian rhetoric.

[ComradeOm]

I think that you're conflating Fascism and Revolutionary Conservativism, when the two could really not be more removed. Fascism, if we are to use the term properly, is an extremely radical, even revolutionary ideology; its roots lie in the nationalism of the Enlightenment, rather than in the Counter-Enlightenment thought which birthed conservatism, and it is fundamental rationalist (if not rational) in outlook. One only needs to look at the rhetoric of the early Fascists, and particularly those involved with the Futurist movement, to see that Fascism has a very wide modernist streak, a far lessened concern for traditional social orders, and, surprisingly to those who know Fascism only through its insane cousin in Germany and its bastard offspring across post-war Europe, a relative indifference to biological raceAnd....? No one has denied that fascism was a modernist ideology or that it represented a break with the more traditional Legimitist-esque reactionarism; even if the two in practice formed quite a tight alliance. However revolutionary rhetoric does not translate into revolutionary action and in almost every sphere both Mussolini and Hitler proved themselves to be thoroughly conservative. They sought not to overturn social structures but to reinforce them by destroying the power of the one truly revolutionary class - the proletariat - in defence of the existing social order and the ascendency of the bourgeoisie

[Tim Finnegan]

And....? No one has denied that fascism was a modernist ideology or that it represented a break with the more traditional Legimitist-esque reactionarism; even if the two in practice formed quite a tight alliance. However revolutionary rhetoric does not translate into revolutionary action and in almost every sphere both Mussolini and Hitler proved themselves to be thoroughly conservative. They sought not to overturn social structures but to reinforce them by destroying the power of the one truly revolutionary class - the proletariat - in defence of the existing social order and the ascendency of the bourgeoisie
That owes more to the extremely precarious foundation of fascist power than the ideology itself. Remember, Mussolini gained power through a coup backed by elements of the Italian aristocracy and bourgeoisie, not through a mass movement, and so was forced to accommodate those classes. In itself, Fascism tended to be rooted in the petite bourgeoisie, the salaried proletariat and the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, who see it as a defence of both their nationalist-individualist values from the corporate capitalism gaining power at that time.

(And, of course, Hitler was not actually a fascist, but a Nazi, an ideology that owes far more to Revolutionary Conservativism than it does to Fascism; the latter traces its roots to the Enlightenment, the latter to the Counter-Enlightenment.)

[S.Artesian]

That owes more to the extremely precarious foundation of fascist power than the ideology itself. Remember, Mussolini gained power through a coup backed by elements of the Italian aristocracy and bourgeoisie, not through a mass movement, and so was forced to accommodate those classes. In itself, Fascism tended to be rooted in the petite bourgeoisie, the salaried proletariat and the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, who see it as a defence of both their nationalist-individualist values from the corporate capitalism gaining power at that time.

It has everything with the material basis, the social basis of fascism and nothing to do with the ideology. It has everything to do with the fact that the petit-bourgeois even at their most "radical" have no alternative to capitalism; to maintaining the organization of production as private property.

For all the glorification of "nation" and "state," the functional reality is the service of fascism to the maintenance of capitalist social relations.

That stuff about individualism vs. corporate capitalism is designed, consciously, to obscure the reinforcement of precisely that corporate capitalism.

[Tim Finnegan]

It has everything with the material basis, the social basis of fascism and nothing to do with the ideology. It has everything to do with the fact that the petit-bourgeois even at their most "radical" have no alternative to capitalism; to maintaining the organization of production as private property.
Did I ever suggest that the fascists proposed anything other than capitalism? :confused:


For all the glorification of "nation" and "state," the functional reality is the service of fascism to the maintenance of capitalist social relations.Well, yeah, but it also acts to preserve a particular form of capitalism, that of the individualistic entrepreneur.


That stuff about individualism vs. corporate capitalism is designed, consciously, to obscure the reinforcement of precisely that corporate capitalismI disagree. The fascists found their base in a particular segment of the capitalist classes that fought to defend their interests against another segment; as much as fascism was, through its anti-communism, an attack on the proletariat, it was an attack on a rival segment of the bourgeoisie. The ruling class have never been united lock-step behind a particular cause, but have always looked, first and foremost, to defend their personal interests; just look at the English Civil Wars, when the economically merchants supported the Royalist cause against the essentially bourgeois Parliamentarians because it represented the preservation of their commercial coligopoly. Only the disenfranchised classes are truly able to put collective interest ahead of their personal status- "nothing to lose but your chains", and all that.

[S.Artesian]

Well, yeah, but it also acts to preserve a particular form of capitalism, that of the individualistic entrepreneur.

That's just bullshit. "Preserve the interests of the entrepreneur"? That's just the sort of ideological obfuscation that serves the real organization and purpose of fascism. There's no "entrepreneur-ism" defended here, because it was never under attack by the bourgeoisie.

No one says the bourgeoisie are in lock step. And moreover, it doesn't matter whether this or that individual bourgeois agrees, disagrees; is a liberal, a conservative, or a fascist. What matters is what's required to maintain accumulation; what's needed to transfer wealth, reduce living standards, and eventually destroy the means of production.

This crap about entrepreneurship is ridiculous. Sounds like the Koch Bros, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute. It's snake-oil ideology huckstered by displaced carnival barkers.

There is no "entrepreneurial" sector of the bourgeois class as opposed to a non-entrepreneurial sector. Look at the actual functioning of the fascist, and corporate capitalist economies. Show me the entrepreneurial class forms and rulings.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's just bullshit. "Preserve the interests of the entrepreneur"? That's just the sort of ideological obfuscation that serves the real organization and purpose of fascism. There's no "entrepreneur-ism" defended here, because it was never under attack by the bourgeoisie.
No one says the bourgeoisie are in lock step. And moreover, it doesn't matter whether this or that individual bourgeois agrees, disagrees; is a liberal, a conservative, or a fascist. What matters is what's required to maintain accumulation; what's needed to transfer wealth, reduce living standards, and eventually destroy the means of production.

This crap about entrepreneurship is ridiculous. Sounds like the Koch Bros, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute. It's snake-oil ideology huckstered by displaced carnival barkers.

There is no "entrepreneurial" sector of the bourgeois class as opposed to a non-entrepreneurial sector. Look at the actual functioning of the fascist, and corporate capitalist economies. Show me the entrepreneurial class forms and rulings.
You misunderstand; perhaps my fault, given my inconsistent use of tense. My point was that the individualistic industrial capitalism of the late 19th century, which styled itself as entrepreneurial, underwent a sustained attack in the early 20th century as the highest ranks of capital began to accumulate enough wealth to form an effective economic oligopoly, casting out the relatively limited and local firms dominated identified by an identifiable "boss" with more widespread, bureaucratic structures, and often rooted in finance rather than industry. This was hugely intimidating to the petite bourgeoisie, who, quite rightly, saw it as a level of accumulation which would (and did) run them into the ground, and so turned to authoritarians of various stripes to protect.
Of course, many members of the bourgeoisie also played a part in the rise of Fascism, but they were usually those who maintained strongly petite bourgeois attitudes (including sentimental attachments to nationality, religion, particular industries, etc.) and saw the ruthless Social Darwinism of Fascism as a defence of both their own status and their personal values, be they conservative or nationalist-modernist. (And, of course, much of the bourgeoisie flocked to the Fascist and Nazi banners as bastions of anti-communism, but that occurred after the movements had already gained a significant foothold, and so cannot be seen to represent the class basis of the movement.)

At any rate, any mention of "entrepreneurship" today is hollow ideological posturing, just as you say. (Perhaps that's why modern forms of fascism, Nazism, etc. tend to be limited to the petite bourgeoisie and salaried classes; there is simply no bourgeoisie willing to take it on board? (At least, I suppose, until it becomes a mass movement in its own right.)

[ComradeOm]

That owes more to the extremely precarious foundation of fascist power than the ideology itselfAnd how do you distinguish the two? In every practical example of fascist society (particularly during the 1930s) you find a close fascist alliance with the traditional elites and reactionary lobbies. Yet instead of dismissing fascist rhetoric as merely that, rhetoric, you hold that it is of more significance than the actual realities of fascist rule?

Neither Mussolini or Hitler presided over some sort of failed fascist revolution; they were invited into power by a cooperative elite


(And, of course, Hitler was not actually a fascist, but a Nazi, an ideology that owes far more to Revolutionary Conservativism than it does to Fascism; the latter traces its roots to the Enlightenment, the latter to the Counter-Enlightenment.)1) Hitler was a fascist because Nazism is fascism. In many ways it actually provides a 'purer' example of the ideology than Italian Fascism

2) "Revolutionary Conservativism" is a ridiculous oxymoron. There was absolutely nothing revolutionary about the reactionary and conservative lobbies that supported the rise of fascism. Which is very much the point

[RadioRaheem84]

I figured that Franco's regime had fascists in power but that it was not totally compromised of fascists. Primo Di Rivera's JONS or the national syndicalists were the main fascist party in the Franco coalition.

Franco to me was more or less like the Greek Generals or Pinochet before the Chicago Boys.


MR. BUCKLEY: Well, now, Sir Oswald, you've given us, with some taxonomical precision, what it is that fascism consisted of during the Thirties; now let's jump 25-30 years, and let me ask you a couple of questions about states that are currently considered to be Fascist. The list that you gave — for instance, take Spain. Would you consider that Spain is a Fascist state in the sense in which you understood yourself to be a Fascist in the Thirties?

SIR OSWALD: No.

MR. BUCKLEY: Why?

SIR OSWALD: I should say that fascism in Spain died with an old friend of mine, who came to see me in London in the Thirties, Premier de Rivera, the son of the famous old Premier de Rivera, who was murdered by the Communists in prison just before the civil war broke out. And Franco, of course, was a soldier. It was a military coup d'etat, and so he won in the civil war and established a military system. He is a great equilibrist — a man who balances among the army, the church, the agriculture interest — very powerful — the industrialists, and the —

MR. BUCKLEY: Falangistes.

SIR OSWALD: Falange, yes, which was founded by Primo and carried on, very largely, by his sister and other people. But Franco, no, nobody could possibly call him, I think, a Fascist.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, there's not much -well, there is not individual liberty in Spain of a political character at all, but you would not say that the fact that there is nonesuch classifies his society as a Fascist society because there are too many other ingredients missing?


http://www.oswaldmosley.com/william-f-buckley-interview.htm

British Fascist Oswald Mosley on Franco's Spain.....

[RadioRaheem84]

Real theoretical Fascism incorporates the radical syndicalism of early Fascist theotricians. In either national or corporate form, syndicalism is an important part of Fascist ideology. It is obsessed with creating a "harmony of interests" in which classes will compromise with each other and likewise know their place in the nation.

It hates the idea of class warfare. In turn, though it's really just a reactionary ideology though because it does what the capitalists want which is the amputation of radical leftist politics from discourse and puts workers in their place, with any complaints going through a "corporate" body that deals with issues.

[Tim Finnegan]

And how do you distinguish the two? In every practical example of fascist society (particularly during the 1930s) you find a close fascist alliance with the traditional elites and reactionary lobbies. Yet instead of dismissing fascist rhetoric as merely that, rhetoric, you hold that it is of more significance than the actual realities of fascist rule?
I didn't realise that the only observable quantities were rhetoric and practical rule. I guess all that stuff I read about Fascist theory and ideology was just some old bugger making it up to sell books. :rolleyes:


Neither Mussolini or Hitler presided over some sort of failed fascist revolution; they were invited into power by a cooperative eliteDon't recall saying otherwise.


1) Hitler was a fascist because Nazism is fascism. In many ways it actually provides a 'purer' example of the ideology than Italian FascismBut Nazism rejected the concept of the nation-state as a singular organic entity, the very foundation of Fascist thought. How can the Nazis then be considered to be "Fascists" at all, let alone the most "pure" example?


2) "Revolutionary Conservativism" is a ridiculous oxymoron. There was absolutely nothing revolutionary about the reactionary and conservative lobbies that supported the rise of fascism. Which is very much the pointY'know, if you've never even heard of the Conservative Revolutionary movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Revolutionary_movement), then you maybe shouldn't be making proclamations about fascist history. It was a form of militant national conservative that was prominent in the Weimar Republic, its most famous off-shoot being National Socialism, a.k.a Nazism.

(Also, yeah, I may have gotten the name wrong there, but I've seen it translated both ways.)

[S.Artesian]

But Nazism rejected the concept of the nation-state as a singular organic entity, the very foundation of Fascist thought. How can the Nazis then be considered to be "Fascists" at all, let alone the most "pure" example?


Where do you find evidence that the Nazis rejected the nation-state, the corporate state, as a single organic entity?

And what do you even mean by that "single organic entity"? As opposed to what-- an instrument of class rule?

I don't know what stuff you're reading about fascist theory and ideology, but what we're supposed do is explain it, oppose it, on the basis of its actual social content, not on the basis of its idealized presentation of itself.

[syndicat]

I think it's a mistake to define fascism in terms of some particular ideology. Ordinary right wing parties can move in a fascist direction when they give up on "representative democracy" and its trappings like civil liberties. This has happened typically in a situation where there is a high level of militancy and growing or widespread radical tendencies in the working class. Fascism represents the intrinsic dictatorial character of capitalism, reflected in the relationship between capital and labor in the workplace.

In Spain mid-30s the CEDA -- the traditional clerical right-wing party was increasingly moving from proto-fascism to a form of clerical fascism. The role of the Church was central in the movement in Spain. CEDA and the Carlist party did have a mass base among the middle classes. This consisted of the small to medium sized land owners in the northern part of Spain (outside Catalonia and the Basque Country) and the urban middle class of the provincial cities, not including Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country. But they also had the support of the intransigent big landowning oligarchy (who owned 90 percent of the land in the southern half of the country).

Franco regime pursued an extreme form of economic nationalism, which is also a characteristic of pre-World War 2 fasicsm, including a kind of autarky and nationalization of some industries that had been seized by the workers during the revolution (such as railways and telephone system and shipyards). the actual worker unions were crushed and replaced with the Single Vertical Union, which was always controlled by the Falange. Because Franco's coalition was fractious, he engineered a kind of forced merger of the three main political forces, the CEDA, Carlists and Falange.

The movement headed by Franco was also Castilian chauvinist and moved to repress the political and language rights of the ethnic minorities (Galegos, Basques, Catalans). This was why it was opposed by the Basque middle class, even tho the Basque Country at that time was one of the most devoutly Catholic and conservative regions of Spain.

[ComradeOm]

I didn't realise that the only observable quantities were rhetoric and practical rule. I guess all that stuff I read about Fascist theory and ideology was just some old bugger making it up to sell books. :rolleyes:Oh? There is a single textbook written by "some old bugger" that lays out exactly what is and isn't fascism? You should probably inform all those philosophers who have spent the last sixty plus years trying to define the term then

You said that fascism was a "revolutionary ideology". I've pointed out that the two most obvious case studies of fascism (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) were not revolutionary in that they were invited into power by established elites. Perhaps you can point to a fascist revolution? Perhaps you can demonstrate how fascist policies led to social revolutions? Show us real examples of this revolutionary fascism in action


But Nazism rejected the concept of the nation-state as a singular organic entity, the very foundation of Fascist thought. How can the Nazis then be considered to be "Fascists" at all, let alone the most "pure" example?You are honestly contending that Nazi Germany was not fascist? In which case you are flying in the face of all accepted reason. It was not identical to Italian Fascism (how could it be) but remains recognisably fascist

As for the Nazi conception of the state, it differed slightly in that it possessed explicitly racial tones but the Volksgemeinschaft was still an "organic entity" in which class divisions were to be overcome for the good of the nation. It is as good an example of integralism as you are likely to find


Y'know, if you've never even heard of the Conservative Revolutionary movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Revolutionary_movement), then you maybe shouldn't be making proclamations about fascist history. It was a form of militant national conservative that was prominent in the Weimar Republic, its most famous off-shoot being National Socialism, a.k.a Nazism.If you want others to follow then it helps to a) get the name right and b) not misuse the term. Referring to a specific Weimar current is one thing, spinning this off into a broad political tendency that reaches back to the Enlightenment (and calling it "Revolutionary Conservativism") is quite another. Incidentally, drawing a straight line from this nebulous movement to Nazism is deeply reductionist

Edit:

I think it's a mistake to define fascism in terms of some particular ideologyI would agree with this. Outside the obvious examples of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy it becomes difficult nailing down just what is and isn't fascism based on a single set of criteria. Hence I like Rene Remond's talk of 'fascist tendencies' that may develop within traditional reactionary or conservative movements. We might not be able to say that a movement is exactly fascist (ie, it doesn't correspond exactly to the Italian/German template) but it has enough features/tendencies of this to be considered at least leaning that way

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

I think two definitions of Fascism are necessary to deal with this dillema.

On the one hand its perfectly sound that for the purpose of politics you'd characterize military coups against a republic as Fascism, afterall our definitonal bickering aside I bet most on this board would agree that in the context of the 1930's, labeling Franco's rebellion as fascist was appropriate as a political tool for mobilising the maximum support to crush the rebellion. At the end of the day i'm sure it damn sure felt like fascism to the working class, in that it permited no form of working class politics from revolutionary to reformist and the entire union movement was crushed with a bayonet.

On the other hand there is a need to sort of acknowledge the tenuousness academically of braketing regimes that had considerable differences under the same label, its suspect that everything form interwar Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, to Salizar's Portugal, Franco's Spain, and Pinochet's Italy can all be included in same analytical category when these movements had a tremendous diversity of ideologies and material basis, and further were in different time periods and at different levels of historical development.

My personal opinion kind of mirrors the contradictory definitions I just layed out. I think Fascism is a political generalisation that is sometimes useful to slander extreme forms of capitalism based on the complete disenfranchisement of the working class, especially in the case of Interwar Spain where crying Fascism usefully hit a nerve of the international left, and correctly drew attention to the horrifically militaristic form that Spanish reaction was taking. I also think that some of the initial academisizing of Franco's regime as non-fascist came from those segments of intellectuals which were rationalising why Franco's regime can be allowed to survive and Hitler's and Mussolini's couldn't in the context of the Second World War, by painting Franco as non-fascist there is almost the accompanying notion that he isn't so bad.

Yet at the same time as some of these issues have lost their immediate political relevance that Spain really didn't have the material pre-requisites for Fascism at that time. The power of the petite bourgoisie wasn't really possible in a country where there wasn't much of a petite bourgeoisie that had developed. The CEDA which might be the closest approximation to the sort of coalition of conservatives with an electoral mass party and a paramilitary ended up a failure. Furthermore as Fascism is meant to denote somewhat 'conservatism from below' and direct attention towards the notion that in the conservative coalitions of Germany and Italy the radical New Right ended up acheiving hegemony over the Old Right, in Spain that wasn't the case.

The Spanish case was a military reaction, much in the old style of Spanish politics, stretching back into the 19th century and up to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and finally the Franco. It assumed some of the cultural trappings of Fascism to assuage its more radical wing and flatter its international supporters. Yet the New Right based on the petite bourgeoisie did not gain hegemony in the reactionary movement and the type of dictatorship that Franco enacted was in the old style of Spanish politics.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

That's not what "fascist" means. Aside from anything else, fascism is anti-traditionalist, and very much concerned with modernity, having grown out of the national syndicalist and futurist movements, both of which despised the feudal relics which littered Italy, particular the useless and non-productive classes of the clergy and the rural landlords. Franco, on the other hand, fought explicitly to defend clergy and landlord, revelling in their uselessness as the entitlement of their class.


Hmm, I don't think I'd call fascism anti-traditionalist. Heidegger, for instance, became infatuated with Fascism early on. But as an intellectual he was constantly critical of certain notions of modernism, especially technology.

Though, on the other hand, some of his statements after the war which I've seen seem to indicate that he came to regard technological and biological reductionism of the Nazis as their main ideological flaw, so in that sense he was more traditionalist than the Nazis.

Fascist governments actually try to create a unique synthesis of modernism and traditionalism, where they uphold a few traditional values (or even resurrect ancient traditional values) and rejecting the rest while projecting that through the prism of new technological development. So Hitler took certain "traditional" aspects of German history and tried to build it into some kind of future third reich, while mousollini did that with Italy. I don't know if spain and portugal ever developed ideologies like that to the same kind of detail.

As such, whereas Italy was more focused on Italy's military culture and its Roman heritage, Spain was more focused on its Catholic heritage, but both were willing to develop those in the modern sense.

[S.Artesian]

That's not what "fascist" means. Aside from anything else, fascism is anti-traditionalist, and very much concerned with modernity, having grown out of the national syndicalist and futurist movements, both of which despised the feudal relics which littered Italy, particular the useless and non-productive classes of the clergy and the rural landlords. Franco, on the other hand, fought explicitly to defend clergy and landlord, revelling in their uselessness as the entitlement of their class.


I don't know where you get that about fascists being opposed to the clergy and the rural landlords. That certainly was not the case with the Black Hundreds in Russia, who were definitely a fascist formation. Nor was it the case in the US South with the KKK, or the Knights of the White Camelia, definitively proto-fascist organizations.

And it wasn't the case in the Po Valley in Italy after WW1, where the large landowners employed armed bands, including rural smallholders, to terrorize agricultural workers and smash their attempts at unionization.

Too much theory, comrade, and not enough real history, makes Jack an out of synch boy .

[Tim Finnegan]

Oh? There is a single textbook written by "some old bugger" that lays out exactly what is and isn't fascism? You should probably inform all those philosophers who have spent the last sixty plus years trying to define the term then
Are we talking about Marxists? Because, to be quite honest, I've long given up listening to left-


You said that fascism was a "revolutionary ideology". I've pointed out that the two most obvious case studies of fascism (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) were not revolutionary in that they were invited into power by established elites. Perhaps you can point to a fascist revolution? Perhaps you can demonstrate how fascist policies led to social revolutions? Show us real examples of this revolutionary fascism in actionAre you really conflating ideology with implemented program? I would've thought that somebody on a revolutionary socialist forum would understand that there are important distinctions between the two...


You are honestly contending that Nazi Germany was not fascist? In which case you are flying in the face of all accepted reason."Accepted" by who, exactly? Certainly the Fascists or Nazis themselves.


It was not identical to Italian Fascism (how could it be) but remains recognisably fascistAnd a lemur is recognisably a monkey. :rolleyes:


As for the Nazi conception of the state, it differed slightly in that it possessed explicitly racial tones but the Volksgemeinschaft was still an "organic entity" in which class divisions were to be overcome for the good of the nation. It is as good an example of integralism as you are likely to findI think you underestimate the gulf which existed between the biological understanding of nation espoused by the Nazis, and the cultural one preferred by the Fascists. The Nazis viewed the biological race as socially paramount, and arrayed their whole ideological position along those lines (even if, hypocrites that they were, the exact formulation of their theories was often swayed by political convenience). Mussolini and the Fascists, on the other hand, regarded the Nazi racial policies with scorn, seeing them as crude tribalism, preferring a policy of Italianisation with its roots in Enlightenment nationalism.

(The fact that the Nazis based their understanding of race in ethno-linguistics background, and so ultimately in culture, is merely a comment on their own stupidity, and not on their ideological bent.)


Hmm, I don't think I'd call fascism anti-traditionalist. Heidegger, for instance, became infatuated with Fascism early on. But as an intellectual he was constantly critical of certain notions of modernism, especially technology.

Though, on the other hand, some of his statements after the war which I've seen seem to indicate that he came to regard technological and biological reductionism of the Nazis as their main ideological flaw, so in that sense he was more traditionalist than the Nazis.

Fascist governments actually try to create a unique synthesis of modernism and traditionalism, where they uphold a few traditional values (or even resurrect ancient traditional values) and rejecting the rest while projecting that through the prism of new technological development. So Hitler took certain "traditional" aspects of German history and tried to build it into some kind of future third reich, while mousollini did that with Italy. I don't know if spain and portugal ever developed ideologies like that to the same kind of detail.

As such, whereas Italy was more focused on Italy's military culture and its Roman heritage, Spain was more focused on its Catholic heritage, but both were willing to develop those in the modern sense.
Well, it's certainly true that the Fascists being nationalists, necessarily rooted their ideology in tradition, but I wouldn't say that this makes them traditionalists, as such. That, to me, implies an adherence to tradition for traditions sake, while the Fascists tended to regarded tradition as something to be utilised as necessary, and abandoned when not. Their approach to culture was a sort of Darwinism (they probably would have ), focused on maximising the effectiveness of a national essence in extending the power of that nation.

And Hitlerite Nazism is honestly a big schizophrenic mess when it comes to modernity. There were aspects the liked, aspects they didn't, and aspects they never really considered. Unlike the Fascists, they didn't really see the state as a cultivator of national culture, but, rather, held culture to be a natural expression of the "volk", and the state's role to be in guarding the volk from foreign influences. German culture was not to be improved through positive intervention, but through negative intervention, which is to say the purging of all "non-German" elements, so that it could regain its purity. (Of course, in practice, this often ended manifesting as the exact same regulatory practices as the fascists, but, equally, that can be said of "proletarian culture" in the USSR; it seems to be a product of dictatorial regimes as much as of any particular ideological tendency.)


I don't know where you get that about fascists being opposed to the clergy and the rural landlords. That certainly was not the case with the Black Hundreds in Russia, who were definitely a fascist formation. Nor was it the case in the US South with the KKK, or the Knights of the White Camelia, definitively proto-fascist organizations.
The Black Hundreds were ultra-reactionary militants, but they weren't fascists. If we're extending the term that broadly, then it could apply to anything from the Spanish Inquisition to the Edo Shogunate, which is just getting silly.

And, while there is an argument for the KKK and similar groups being proto-fascist, it is only true of their revived forms, which is to say, in those periods after the Southern landholding gentry had dissolved as a major social class, and they became an organisation rooted more firmly in the petty bourgeoisie. The original KKK were simply militant white supremacists, without any unique ideological basis.


And it wasn't the case in the Po Valley in Italy after WW1, where the large landowners employed armed bands, including rural smallholders, to terrorize agricultural workers and smash their attempts at unionization.You're conflating agricultural capitalist with agrarian landlords, but the two are quite distinct.


Too much theory, comrade, and not enough real history, makes Jack an out of synch boy.Tell that to the "fascism is a bourgeois conspiracy" set! :lol:

@Highfructosecornsyrup: I agree. A responsible usage is necessary when discussing theory, but when discussing contemporary ultra-right movements, it's as good a term as any.

[S.Artesian]

One thing is obvious, you know almost nothing about the US South, and the organization, and organizing of the KKK in the battle against Radical Reconstruction. Tell us, comrade, when was the Southern landholding gentry dissolved as a social class?

Agricultural capitalism and agricultural landlords? Are you trying to say what was happening in the Po Valley was not agricultural capitalism, or that it was agricultural capitalism; and that the agricultural landlords were not part of "agricultural capitalism"?

[syndicat]

The Spanish case was a military reaction, much in the old style of Spanish politics, stretching back into the 19th century and up to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and finally the Franco.

this is not quite correct. you're ignoring the role of a mass base for the "movement" as it was called, and the way in which the elite and right wing middle classes were promoting and demanding the army to act. the clerical right (CEDA, Carlists) walked out of parliament and demanded that the army overthrow the government. when the army captured a village, they didn't just set up a direct military government. they created a committee made up of a large landlord, a priest, a cop, a member of the Falange, and an army officer. It was not a purely military movement. Moreover, Franco had to mobilize mass support because 1/3 of the army was dismantled, he lost the navy and air force, and lost 1/3 of the police to the other side. He recruited the requetes and other volunteer forces.

fascism isn't just a military dictatorship.

[ComradeOm]

Are we talking about Marxists? Because, to be quite honest, I've long given up listening to left-No, we're talking about a wide range of philosophers and historians from the likes of Eco and Arendt to Paxton and Kitsikis. Pinning down exactly what comprises fascism has long been an academic talking point. Which you know of course, being so well read on "Fascist theory and ideology" :rolleyes:


Are you really conflating ideology with implemented program? I would've thought that somebody on a revolutionary socialist forum would understand that there are important distinctions between the two...
It really surprises you that a Marxist would pay more attention to the actual policies implemented by these regimes and the material conditions that gave rise to them, as opposed to the intellectual posturing and grandiose rhetoric that cloaked them? Really?

But I repeat my challenge - show us the revolutionary fascist programmes and policies. Show us the social revolution conducted under a fascist aegis. Show us this supposedly revolutionary ideology translated into deeds. In fact, show us one reason other than their own propaganda as to why we should consider the fascists to the revolutionary


"Accepted" by who, exactly? Certainly the Fascists or Nazis themselvesBy pretty much every notable academic or reasonably informed commentator that you care to name. Suggesting that Nazism was not fascist is simply completely at odds with almost all historical consensus. If you want you can list a few historians/whatever who disagree with this; in exchange I'll provide a deluge of sources that disagree

Incidentally, that was a pathetic fallacy: "Certainly the Fascists or Nazis themselves". Hoo, the Nazis considered themselves to be fascist - I guess that completely discredits any attempt to say otherwise. Because the Nazis were, you know, BAD! :rolleyes:


And a lemur is recognisably a monkey. :rolleyes:By your logic there has never been a single fascist regime outside of Fascist Italy and there never will be again. Unless of course you jump in a timemachine and recreate exactly the conditions of 1920s Italy. In either case I'm wondering why we're having this discussion

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

this is not quite correct. you're ignoring the role of a mass base for the "movement" as it was called, and the way in which the elite and right wing middle classes were promoting and demanding the army to act. the clerical right (CEDA, Carlists) walked out of parliament and demanded that the army overthrow the government. when the army captured a village, they didn't just set up a direct military government. they created a committee made up of a large landlord, a priest, a cop, a member of the Falange, and an army officer. It was not a purely military movement. Moreover, Franco had to mobilize mass support because 1/3 of the army was dismantled, he lost the navy and air force, and lost 1/3 of the police to the other side. He recruited the requetes and other volunteer forces.

fascism isn't just a military dictatorship.

These are all interesting points, and before I make it seem otherwise, let me stress I'm of a dual mind about this, I think Franco's movement both was and was not fascist, and there are insights to be drawn through approaching it through either and perhaps even both frameworks.

I think I acknowledge the role of the popular base of the reaction when i say that the right wing middle classes and 'New Right' elements put pressure on the movement to adopt many of the elements of fascism. But i classify these elements as superficial ones, cultural trappings, and concessions which do add a specificity to Franco's reaction, but not quite the mix which makes it sensible to include the Spanish case within a rigorously academic concept of fascism.

The Spanish Right was of extremely heterogeneous composition, in its political imaginings, social basis, and institutional loyalty, binded through a hysterical opposition to the Republic. But all elements in this coalition were firmly welded together and subordinate to Franco's military machine, which was a reactive machine, performing a style of politics aimed at turning the political clock backward rather than to establish any sort of new fascist society. That element which was based on the modern revolutionary ideology and social base associated with fascism, while influencing the shape and language of the movement, were never at its head in the same way that the German and Italian fascist parties came to be. Indeed Franco threw the head of the falange party in jail and performed a great deal of realpolitik aimed at both utilising and marginalising this aspect of the movement.

To typify the regime as fascist mirrors a familiar fallacy made by the right when describing the left, often they classify everything from the USSR, Contemporary China, Mitterand's France and Obamas US as 'Socialist'. Maybe it feels that way in all these cases to a passionate rightist but to paint them with the same brush - while potentially useful politically, is glaringly weak analytically in that it ignores the different basis of the state, and most importantly the tensions within the left which are useful to explain the dynamics all these scenarios.

Similarly to define Franco's movement as fascist risks broadening the definition to such a degree that it loses its capacity for foregrounding the tensions within the right. To blanket the whole conservative coalition as Fascist risks losing sight of the tension within that movement between the Old Right of Generals, Monarchists, Catholic Nationalists, Economic Elites, and the (due to historical underdevelopment) the much weaker New Right of Petite Bourgeoisie, National Syndicalists, and Paramilitary elements. It also risks mischaracterising the balance of power within this coalition which was firmly Old Right, whereas I think in the Italian and German case it was much more tilted in favor of the New Right.

If we widen the analytical brackets of Fascism to include the Authoritarian Conservatism of Spain with that of Italy and Germany, then we must include the Hungarian, Portuguese, and Romanian cases as well, and if we do that then we risk painting any brand of authoritarian conservatism as Fascist, and including a lot of regimes in the 19th century as well, and if we do that then Fascism loses its identity as a novel phenomenon characteristic of modern mass politics.

Yet I think your right bring out the novel, modern elements of the rightist movement and there is a good case for approaching the movement through the concept of Fascism as well. It took on the specificty of the uniquely uneven terrain of Spanish politics, had many shared dynamics with the German and Italian cases - an army brutalised through imperialist war coming to reconquer and reinvigorate the nation, a commitment to an extremist form of capitalism which allowed no political expression of working class politics, afterall Primo De Rivera had legalised the Socialist Party at least.

Finally, if it seems hypocritical that I can sort of contend that Francoism both was and was not fascist let me offer a way of redefining the question. I propose that instead of 'Was Franco's regime Fascist?', a more sophisticated wording which takes into account the virtues of both answers to that question might be 'What does the comparative history of fascism tell us about the inner dynamics and goals of the Franco's movement and/or regime, and the international system in which it operated?' This avoids the pitfalls of an either/or in which you inevitably have to diminish the strong case that can be made for either.

[syndicat]

I think I acknowledge the role of the popular base of the reaction when i say that the right wing middle classes and 'New Right' elements put pressure on the movement to adopt many of the elements of fascism. But i classify these elements as superficial ones, cultural trappings, and concessions which do add a specificity to Franco's reaction, but not quite the mix which makes it sensible to include the Spanish case within a rigorously academic concept of fascism.



frankly you're engaging in a lot of not very clear tripe of the sort that I associate with certain academics. So "rigorous academic concept" can in fact be a contradiction in terms...depending on the "academic" you're talking about. but who gives a fuck what "academics" think anyway? you're writing as if there is some privileged group that knows more simply in virtue of its job. I've been an academic and I know the petty crap and virtual nepotism that goes on there.


The Spanish Right was of extremely heterogeneous composition, in its political imaginings, social basis, and institutional loyalty, binded through a hysterical opposition to the Republic.

right there you show you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. the conflict in Spain was first and foremost a class conflict. for the mass working class movement in the CNT, the "Republic" was something they intended to get rid of.

the fight wasn't about "the Republic." It was about the increasing radicalization of the masses, the increasing mass moblizations, the mass strike wave in the spring of 1936, the mass land seizures. the agricultural and industrial elite were hysterical about the mass working class threat to their system, to their property.


Similarly to define Franco's movement as fascist risks broadening the definition to such a degree that it loses its capacity for foregrounding the tensions within the right. To blanket the whole conservative coalition as Fascist risks losing sight of the tension within that movement between the Old Right of Generals, Monarchists, Catholic Nationalists, Economic Elites, and the (due to historical underdevelopment) the much weaker New Right of Petite Bourgeoisie, National Syndicalists, and Paramilitary elements. It also risks mischaracterising the balance of power within this coalition which was firmly Old Right, whereas I think in the Italian and German case it was much more tilted in favor of the New Right.


again, your academic prattle doesn't really say much. the right in Spain moved towards a fascist solution. you falsely assume that the various social groups you list were some kind of static political entity. in that case you'd have a hard time understanding the US Republican party's evolution since the '70s. It's increasingly evolved into a hard-right force, more disciplined than in the past, and increasingly leaning in a proto-fascist directiton...like the current moves to smash the public employee unions via elimination of their legal rights.

[B0LSHEVIK]

in that case you'd have a hard time understanding the US Republican party's evolution since the '70s. It's increasingly evolved into a hard-right force, more disciplined than in the past, and increasingly leaning in a proto-fascist directiton...like the current moves to smash the public employee unions via elimination of their legal rights.

Ok, I agree with Synd on what he said mostly, but what about the GOP since the 70's?

Yes I agree they are becoming ever more fascist. Yes I agree they are becoming (or already are) hard-right. But let us not forget that this party would have ceased to exist already if Americans simply STOPPED VOTING FOR THOSE DOUCHEBAGS.

And, in my understanding, the South was actually Democratic ground before 1964, the year the Dems sought Civil Rights legislation. Apparently, whites angered over blacks/minorities being guaranteed civil rights (yea uh-huh) got them all riled up and so they switched sides to the Republicans who have ever since been playing a 'Us-Americans VS. THEM.'

Could it be that many people vote for the GOP out of racism?

Maybe they should reconsider, as Im sure, many Wisconsians have already.

[S.Artesian]

Ok, I agree with Synd on what he said mostly, but what about the GOP since the 70's?

Yes I agree they are becoming ever more fascist. Yes I agree they are becoming (or already are) hard-right. But let us not forget that this party would have ceased to exist already if Americans simply STOPPED VOTING FOR THOSE DOUCHEBAGS.

And, in my understanding, the South was actually Democratic ground before 1964, the year the Dems sought Civil Rights legislation. Apparently, whites angered over blacks/minorities being guaranteed civil rights (yea uh-huh) got them all riled up and so they switched sides to the Republicans who have ever since been playing a 'Us-Americans VS. THEM.'

Could it be that many people vote for the GOP out of racism?

Maybe they should reconsider, as Im sure, many Wisconsians have already.

If we know, and we do know, that capitalism will not be abolished by voting, then we surely must know that it will not be abolished by not voting.

People vote because they think their interests are represented by the party they vote for. The Republican's represent significant interests of the US bourgeoisie, and what votes they lack from that support, they simply beg, buy, steal, or destroy, disallow, prohibit, or any combination thereof.

You are correct about the racist vote switching to the GOP, but it was a process that started before the 1960s-- when the Dixiecrats walked out on the Dems over the integration/equal rights planks in its platform and nominated Strom Thurmond in 1948 [if I remember correctly-- no sure thing these days].

[B0LSHEVIK]

Addressing the OP's question, I tend to think that fascism is more of a tendency than a actual political ideology. Most fascist regimes are very organic and easily identified with their respective society. As a result of this heterogamy this also leads to different flavors of fascism instead of say a handful of tendencies. Mussolinis fascism differed from Hitlers and Peron and Franco. The one thing that unites them really is their nationalism, authoritarianism, and anti-communist agenda. Then again, the definition of fascism will differ between everyone.

[syndicat]

Yes I agree they are becoming ever more fascist. Yes I agree they are becoming (or already are) hard-right. But let us not forget that this party would have ceased to exist already if Americans simply STOPPED VOTING FOR THOSE DOUCHEBAGS.



there has actually been a decline in voting since the '50s. Mainly this is a decline in working class voting. the trend of the Dems since the '70s to neo-liberalism and increasing subservience to the corporate elite (as in Obama's politics for example) makes it ever clearer they are not an alternative to the Repubs. the Dems are in a kind of hard place because they're competing with the Repubs for the upper middle class vote and for capititalist funding. to do this they do things that make them less relevant to the working class. the neoliberal trend of the Dems is also partly due to pressure from the increasing hard-right character of the Repubs.

[Tim Finnegan]

@ComradeOm: Given that your response consisted almost entirely of vague references to external authorities and sarcasm, neither of which I really feel like grappling with, I'll just have to let what I've said so far stand for itself.

Although, I will address your demand for proof of the fascist program of social revolution, if I understand the term to be used in the strict Marxist sense, by simply stating: there isn't one, nor did I ever suggest there was. The "revolution" intended by the Fascists was political, cultural and economic, based on a program derived from National Syndicalism and Futurism; not "revolutionary" in the sense that we might use it, perhaps, but hardly a quiet reformism.


Addressing the OP's question, I tend to think that fascism is more of a tendency than a actual political ideology.
Then I would suggest that you are using "fascism" as an abbreviation of "militaristic far-right authoritarianism", and while that's fine in casual usage, it's really a bit broad-brush when discussing historical movements and regimes.

[B0LSHEVIK]

Then I would suggest that you are using "fascism" as an abbreviation of "militaristic far-right authoritarianism", and while that's fine in casual usage, it's really a bit broad-brush when discussing historical movements and regimes.

Well yes, but then, what else is fascism?

[Tim Finnegan]

Well yes, but then, what else is fascism?
Well, at the very least, you would have to defined it as a specific set of ultranationalist currents which emerged in inter-war Europe, espousing an Idealistic understanding of the nation as an organic entity in need of single collective identity mobilised through strong, authoritarian leadership, and characteised in that period by a palingenetic nationalism (that is, an advocacy of "national rebirth") in reaction to the "degenerating" influences of liberalism, conservatism and socialism. (I would also that Fascism proper demands a view of the nation as a social and cultural entity defined by political organisation, while Nazism views the nation as a biological unit preceding the state. But, as has been illustrated in this thread, whether or not this is essentially Fascist is somewhat contentious...)
While the Spanish Falangism that Franco toyed with during the Civil War and World War 2 certainly qualifies as such, it was never a dominant ideology in his regime- what he took from them was mostly populist rhetoric, rather than substantial ideology- and was abandoned in the period 1942-1945 as the demise of Fascism as a major political movement became imminent, retreating into a traditionalistic authoritarianism that (somewhat self-consciously, given the unpopularity of Fascism at the time) stressed conservative values such as monarchism and clericalism. As such, his regime can be considered para-Fascist until the mid-'40s, and simply far-right authoritarian after that.

[syndicat]

While the Spanish Falangism that Franco toyed with during the Civil War and World War 2 certainly qualifies as such, it was never a dominant ideology in his regime- what he took from them was mostly populist rhetoric, rather than substantial ideology- and was abandoned in the period 1942-1945 as the demise of Fascism as a major political movement became imminent, retreating into a traditionalistic authoritarianism that (somewhat self-consciously, given the unpopularity of Fascism at the time) stressed conservative values such as monarchism and clericalism. As such, his regime can be considered para-Fascist until the mid-'40s, and simply far-right authoritarian after that.

IMO, this is not plausible. Franco forced a merger of the three main ideological currents of the extreme right at the time of the revolution -- the clerical authortiarianism-becoming-clerical-fascism of CEDA and the carlists,plus the Falange. The merged party remained the only legal political party throughout the 40 years of the dictatorship. Also, saying that it wasn't fascist because it was monarchist & clerical ignores the fact there is such a thing as clerical fascism, such as when the Social Christian Party in Austria, comparable to CEDA, moved in a fascist direction in 1934. Throughout the 40 years of the dictatorship it was a police state, one-party regime in which a corporatist labor control scheme...very much a feature of fascisms...remained in place. The positions in the Single Vertical Union were always held by members of the Falangist party (that is, the merged version). The Single Vertical Union was destroyed by a mass worker strike wave cerca 1976. Right wing authoritarianism does not always impose a corporatist vertical union scheme. This was much more characteristic of fascism.

[Tim Finnegan]

I don't think that this "merger" of yours actually every took place, at least, not in the form of the construction of a syncretic ideology. The National Movement was a political coalition, akin to (a somewhat better organised version of ) the Popular Front, but not an ideological entity in and of itself. The basic incompatibility of the Carlist and Falangist positions (monarchist reactionaryism vs republican revolutionism) was never properly resolved, and was only overcome because Franco (as well as many high rank members of the Falange) ditched Fascism during WW2, so as to distance themselves from the faltering powers of Italy and Germany. During this period, it retained many fascistic features- one-party state, militarism, corporatism, etc.- but those are products of Fascist ideology, rather than essential characteristics, and not something that the movement had any monopoly on.

[Omsk]

ditched Fascism during WW2, so as to distance themselves from the faltering powers of Italy and Germany.
Not quite,Franco kept relations with Hitler,he just didnt join the war,and because of that,he passed without penalty. (although he created his volonteres units that helped Hitler's Wermacht,but in a smaller scale.He also supported the Germans with weapons and cheap-quickly produced trucks and lighter vehicles.

[B0LSHEVIK]

Not quite,Franco kept relations with Hitler,he just didnt join the war,and because of that,he passed without penalty. (although he created his volonteres units that helped Hitler's Wermacht,but in a smaller scale.He also supported the Germans with weapons and cheap-quickly produced trucks and lighter vehicles.

Franco also gave the third reich exclusive mining rights to valuable wartime resources that Germany otherwise would have had trouble finding. Also, Ive read Hitler didnt want Franco to necessarily 'join' the war effort. Apparently the Wermacht wasnt too impressed with Spanish fighting capabilities (or armaments) during the Civil war and only suspected that Germans would be needed to supply, train, and fight alongside spanish fascists (look at italy in 43). German command thought it advantageous to have a neutral friendly controlling the straits of gibraltar rather than a actual German unit. It could've been for hitler, as it was for napoleon, the 'ulcer that will bleed you to death.'

Oh, and the cold war actually is what saved Franco IMO.

[Omsk]

Oh, and the cold war actually is what saved Franco IMO.
Well,that is likely,since after WW2 the fascist and the nazis were replaced by a new enemy - the communists.Good think the brave comrades in the GDR successefully arrested and prosecuted many of the nazi slime.

[Tim Finnegan]

Not quite,Franco kept relations with Hitler,he just didnt join the war,and because of that,he passed without penalty. (although he created his volonteres units that helped Hitler's Wermacht,but in a smaller scale.He also supported the Germans with weapons and cheap-quickly produced trucks and lighter vehicles.
The distancing in question didn't take place until around 1943, when the tide was beginning to turn against the Axis. Franco was canny enough to realise that, even if the Axis powers survived, they would not have the hegemony they craved, and so he would need to deal with the Allies as well. This necessitated the adoption of a less explicitly fascistic state ideology, which would likely be seen a threat by the liberal capitalist powers. (It helped, of course, that the end of the Civil War meant that the populist rhetoric supplied by the Falange was no longer a strategic necessity for the regime, both because there was no longer a left-wing opposition that demanded ideological confrontation, and because his swollen military now had a free hand to focus on crushing civilian dissent.)


Oh, and the cold war actually is what saved Franco IMO.
I agree. Without it, the Allies would probably have been suspicious enough of Franco's regime to press the Spanish state for, if not a regime change, then a great number of reforms and concessions, but with the "Red Menace" looming in the East, they were happy to accept his rejection of Fascism as grounds for retaining an authoritarian anti-communist regime.

[syndicat]

I don't think that this "merger" of yours actually every took place, at least, not in the form of the construction of a syncretic ideology. The National Movement was a political coalition, akin to (a somewhat better organised version of ) the Popular Front, but not an ideological entity in and of itself. The basic incompatibility of the Carlist and Falangist positions (monarchist reactionaryism vs republican revolutionism) was never properly resolved, and was only overcome because Franco (as well as many high rank members of the Falange) ditched Fascism during WW2, so as to distance themselves from the faltering powers of Italy and Germany. During this period, it retained many fascistic features- one-party state, militarism, corporatism, etc.- but those are products of Fascist ideology, rather than essential characteristics, and not something that the movement had any monopoly on.


you keep trying to claim that fascism is somehow defined by a specific ideology. but you've not provided any good argument for that assumption. it's sheer assertion on your part.

[Tim Finnegan]

you keep trying to claim that fascism is somehow defined by a specific ideology. but you've not provided any good argument for that assumption. it's sheer assertion on your part.
Firstly, that's not what the word "assumption" means.
Secondly, I have already laid out what I considered to be the essential characteristics of Fascism, and why they do not apply to the Franco regime. If you have a problem with what I've said, then contest it directly, don't just resort to the "sheer assertion" that they are not "any good".

[S.Artesian]

Firstly, that's not what the word "assumption" means.
Secondly, I have already laid out what I considered to be the essential characteristics of Fascism, and why they do not apply to the Franco regime. If you have a problem with what I've said, then contest it directly, don't just resort to the "sheer assertion" that they are not "any good".

Not quite the definitive contradiction of Syndicat's assertion about your assumptions you wish it to be. Look again at what you wrote and he quotes [with a little help from the boldface html feature:


I don't think that this "merger" of yours actually every took place, at least, not in the form of the construction of a syncretic ideology. The National Movement was a political coalition, akin to (a somewhat better organised version of ) the Popular Front, but not an ideological entity in and of itself. The basic incompatibility of the Carlist and Falangist positions (monarchist reactionaryism vs republican revolutionism) was never properly resolved, and was only overcome because Franco (as well as many high rank members of the Falange) ditched Fascism during WW2, so as to distance themselves from the faltering powers of Italy and Germany. During this period, it retained many fascistic features- one-party state, militarism, corporatism, etc.- but those are products of Fascist ideology, rather than essential characteristics, and not something that the movement had any monopoly on.

Yes you have stated what you think the essential characteristic of fascism are, and clearly you think those essential characteristic derive from a fascist ideology.

You counter pose the National Movement to fascism in that the former, unlike the latter, did not exist as a distinct ideological entity.

You place the conflict between the Carlists and the Falangists as one of ideology, and even make the claim that the ideology of the Falangists was one of "republican revolutionism," which I guess is your way of avoiding the massive conservative, reactionary social nature of fascism in its maintenance of the pre-existing relations of land and labor [even, and through its own organizations of "social justice"-- labor unions; small farmers organizations, and even land "reform" programs].

In fact, iwhat you consider the defining, determining unique character of fascism, its ideological "anti-conservatism" is not at all unique to fascism but is common to fascism, various corporatisms, and yes.. supposedly "radical" nationalism, as in the nacionalismo that dominated [and continues to shape the struggle] in Argentina, where the vicious anti-socialism, anti-Jewish, anti-communist of old Alianza de la Juventud Nationalista was fused with demands for "social justice" and "revolutionary land reform" to break the power of the "estancieros."

All of this, needless to say, has always come down on the side of reaction in practice.

It is, if I may be so bold as to speak for him, Syndicat's argument that the ideology of fascism is not its essential defining characteristic. Rather it is its social character, its material existence as a specific class force in the service of the exploitation of labor that defines, and determines fascism.

In this I agree completely with Syndicat, even if, or maybe especially if it makes me review my previous assumptions about Franco's rule.

[Tim Finnegan]

Actually, my comments as to Fascisms essentially character were earlier, in response to BOLSHEVIK:

Well, at the very least, you would have to defined it as a specific set of ultranationalist currents which emerged in inter-war Europe, espousing an Idealistic understanding of the nation as an organic entity in need of single collective identity mobilised through strong, authoritarian leadership, and characteised in that period by a palingenetic nationalism (that is, an advocacy of "national rebirth") in reaction to the "degenerating" influences of liberalism, conservatism and socialism.
Now, while I certainly don't disagree with your description of the social character of Fascism, I don't think this means that one can simply toss the particular ideology of the Fascist movement aside; that would be like arguing that all assault rifles are AK-47s, because they all hold the same tactical function. Rather, Fascism should be viewed as one of several ideologies which emerged in that period, all fulfilling more or less the same social function (the repression of proletarian movements and the defence of the bourgeois state), but with varied ideological tenets and class bases.

Anyway, even if you did conflate Fascism with the social function of Fascism, that doesn't really resolve the question posed in the OP, because Franco had no single class base; his movement acted on behalf of both the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, which, although aligned in their opposition to the peasant and proletarian movements, were themselves necessarily in conflict. It is to a great extent this conflict which informs Fascism, generating its rejection of both conservatism (which, in Italy and Spain, protected the feudal landowning classes who stifled technological progress) and liberalism (which had failed to complete a bourgeois revolution by ousting the conservative landowners). Remember, the greater body of the Italian and Spanish landowning classes did not, as in Britain and Germany, attempt to integrate themselves into capitalism by applying the capitalist mode of production to their property, but were happy to continue on with the comfortable stagnation of peasant tenancy, something which inevitably provoked resentment from the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie, who recognised this as placing a severe limit on capitalist expansion and development (or, in rhetorical terms, of "holding the nation back").

[B0LSHEVIK]

I think its important to note that the Falange was not very popular until the outbreak of the civil war when its numbered swelled (most likely from people trying to save their own behinds). And while Franco is widely considered to be a defender of feudalism, he actually was not. I think Franco is a good example of third-positionism IMO.

[Tim Finnegan]

And while Franco is widely considered to be a defender of feudalism, he actually was not. I think Franco is a good example of third-positionism IMO.
A fair point. As I said, Franco had no single class base; his ultimate loyalty was always to the Spanish nation, and the implementation of his nationalism was strongly informed by his background (and that of many of his closest collaborators) in the Spanish colonial system. He was, whatever you think of him, a cunning bugger, and one who knew how to play classes and political factions of each other for his own ends.

[Agnapostate]

Regardless of the ultimate answer, an important point to consider in its determination is that systematic racial/ethnic/cultural discrimination was institutionalized under Franco's regime. Despite being a Galician, his administration promoted a Castilian supremacist worldview (while incorporating certain non-Castilian cultural practices that did not challenge its overriding nature, such as the Andalusian dance of flamenco), persecuting Catalans, Basques, and other Spanish minority groups, and causing their language and culture to substantially diminish.

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm not sure why that's so significant- Spanish nationalism has always been an essentially Castilianism nationalism, much as French nationalism is squarely rooted in the d'Oil region and British nationalism rarely strays outside of the Home Counties. A great many nationalisms are, upon close examination, really nothing more than localised imperialisms.

[Omsk]

The distancing in question didn't take place until around 1943, when the tide was beginning to turn against the Axis. Franco was canny enough to realise that, even if the Axis powers survived, they would not have the hegemony they craved, and so he would need to deal with the Allies as well. This necessitated the adoption of a less explicitly fascistic state ideology, which would likely be seen a threat by the liberal capitalist powers. (It helped, of course, that the end of the Civil War meant that the populist rhetoric supplied by the Falange was no longer a strategic necessity for the regime, both because there was no longer a left-wing opposition that demanded ideological confrontation, and because his swollen military now had a free hand to focus on crushing civilian dissent.)
In 1944 when Franco witnesed the allies invade Europe,he suddenly left his 'friends' and wrote to Churchill,saying how he will do his best in the attempt to go against the red menace,and Churchill agreed.And yes,there was this un-proven fact,that Churchill bribed Franco's generals to influence Franco not to enter the war on Hitler's side.
Although,i never saw Spain as a potentially powerafull ally of Hitler.Back than,it just got out of a civil war,i don't think it would survive another one.
And yes,the war had a major turn-point in 1942.Not 1943.

[B0LSHEVIK]

And yes,the war had a major turn-point in 1942.Not 1943.

If you dont mind me asking, what was that turning point?

[Omsk]

The battle of Stalingrad.

[B0LSHEVIK]

The battle of Stalingrad.

Oh, but the Germans conceded in 43, right?

I mean sure, the the battle had been decided by mid December 42 when it was clear Hoth was not going to break the encirclement of the kessel. But for all purposes, the wermacht fought on even when it was clear their great leader had abandoned the Sixth army to its fate.

[Tim Finnegan]

In 1944 when Franco witnesed the allies invade Europe,he suddenly left his 'friends' and wrote to Churchill,saying how he will do his best in the attempt to go against the red menace,and Churchill agreed.
True, but, even before that, Franco had begun distancing himself from ideological Fascism, in an attempt to hedge his bets. The quasi-formal defection you reference was simply the culmination of this.


And yes,there was this un-proven fact,that Churchill bribed Franco's generals to influence Franco not to enter the war on Hitler's side.
Although,i never saw Spain as a potentially powerafull ally of Hitler.Back than,it just got out of a civil war,i don't think it would survive another one.Yeah, I tend to think that Fascist support for Spain was simply to make sure that their back was guarded by a friendly power. If the Republic had won the Civil War- which, past a certain point, would most likely have meant a similarly ruined state and consequent need to remain neutral- would provide a base of operations for the French resistance, particularly that part of it aligned with the Soviet Union (who, let us be frank, would have been pulling the strings behind any surviving Spanish Republic.)


And yes,the war had a major turn-point in 1942.Not 1943.Well, the date I offered is certainly debatable, in part because it really refers to a period, rather than any one event.

[syndicat]

Anyway, even if you did conflate Fascism with the social function of Fascism, that doesn't really resolve the question posed in the OP, because Franco had no single class base; his movement acted on behalf of both the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy,

Fascism NEVER has a "single class base." There are usually certain segments of the capitalist elite, whether based in industry or agriculture, who fund and support these movements (the Ansaldo brothers were early important funders of Mussolini), but it typically also has a mass base in the "middle classes"...professionals, small business owners, farmers, and sometimes some support among sections of skilled workers, and maybe even a faction of the labor movement.

in the case of Spain there was no "aristocracy" if this is meant to refer to some group with a feudal basis. the big landowning elite, the 3,000 families who owned 90 percent of the land in the southern half of the country, were certainly part of the basis of the "national movement" in Spain but they were not a feudal class. Feudalism in agriculture in Spain had been destroyed in the early 1800s. the chuch lands were sold off. restrictions on market sale of land were eliminated. what then happened is that capitalist investors moved in and bought up the big estates. by the '30s Spains' agriculture was organized entirely on a capitalist basis. this is why there was a massive agricultural union movement in Spain.

the "national movement" in Spain also had a base of support in a secton of labor...the former leaders of the old Free Union. This had been formed after World War 1 by Carlist skilled workers who advocated a kind of proletarian clerical-fascist ideology (of partnership with employers). This federation grew to 250,000 members under the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in the '20s, due to support from the state and the banning of the CNT, and was destroyed when legal rights to organize were restored in 1930. Workers in Catalonia flooded out of the "Free Union" and into the CNT. but the small clerical-fascist Carlist core of the "Free Union" remained as part of the base of the "national movement."

in the case of Italy, when Mussolini moved in a nationalist direction to support Italy in World War 1 in 1915, the leadership of the revolutionary syndicalist USI initially supported him. but at the next congress the anarchists organized their base and successfully removed the pro-Mussolini leadership. they then split off but only took 10 percent of the union with them, to form the nationalist Italian Labor Union. some of these people then continued with Mussolini into the fascist movement.

because fascist movements exhibit different ideologies, depending on the particular political events, culture and social mix of a particular country, I think my hypothesis that fascism should be understood in terms of its social role is a hypothesis that better fits the facts than your hopeless attempt to define it in terms of some ideology.

[Omsk]

I mean sure, the the battle had been decided by mid December 42
That is your answer,but let me elaborate comrade:

Stalingrad was more than a tactical victory for the esteemed comrades of the Red Army,that was also a victory that served as a moral boost,for the all ready tired and battle worn Soviet soldiers,while the defeat at Stalingrad smashed all hopes of the rotten fascist swines,thus serving as a far more influental factor in the war in the east,things were over even before 1943,the fact that the nazi's prolonged the conflict in hopes of help,is negated by the fact that the brave comrades of the Red Army basically achieved victory before all the fascist were killed and punished.The nazis continued their doomed defense in hopes that their mad bastard leader will be driven to help them,and he did,by telling the other mad-drug addict bastard to send his 'sky heroes' to help the encircled 6-th army.
The luftwaffe failed,it failed in delivering the supplies to the wermacht ground forces and that resulted in a complete and total destruction of a major fighting element of the monster reich.
The soviet industry,its capacity and power shined during the battle,tanks and tools were produced with breath taking speed and the brave comrades earned them,they fought house by house killing the nazi invader that have done countless horrible crimes in their agresion on the Union.
The capture of Stalingrad was important to Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini, for two primary reasons. First, the city was an important base on the transportation route provided by the Volga River between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia.
Consequently a German capture of the city would effectively sever the Soviet river link to the north. Second, its capture would secure the western flank of the German armies as they advanced into the oil-rich city of Baku — with the strategic aim of cutting off fuel from Stalin's war machine. The fact that the city bore the name of the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, would make its capture an ideological and propaganda coup.
But the brave comrades crushed all hopes of a nazi victory,and soon,they took the fight to the nazis.
Not to mention that all of Hitlers pups also got what they deserved,
German 6th Army
German 4th Panzer Army
Romanian 1st Army
Romanian 2nd Army
Romanian 3rd Army
Romanian 4th Army
Italian 8th Army
Hungarian 2nd Army
Croatian Legion
All perished under the heroic boots of the brave comrades who protected their homes and their motherland.
But the victory was not only with muscle and heroic deeds of the comrades who fought and died in the many streats of mighty Stalingrad,but also by the tactics used to destroy the invader,the so called- hugging,a prevention to the panzer blitzkrieg tactic used by the nazis,their tanks were in-efficient and slow in the rable covered streets,they bombed the city to smithereens only to find that they have buried themselves,in a heap of rable that prevented the panzers from sucessefully navigating through the narrow streets of Stalingrad,where they became easy pray for bombs and hand thrown home made explosives. Stalingrad was truly a battle worth of song and tale,and when one mentions world war two,Stalingrad should be always there,as a beacon of light and a reminder that evil can,and must be stoped.

@Finnegan:im glad that we agree,one thing is certain,Franco was never the 'simple minded' lesser-dictator everyone thought him to be.

[B0LSHEVIK]

That is your answer,but let me elaborate comrade:

Stalingrad was more than a tactical victory for the esteemed comrades of the Red Army,that was also a victory that served as a moral boost,for the all ready tired and battle worn Soviet soldiers,while the defeat at Stalingrad smashed all hopes of the rotten fascist swines,thus serving as a far more influental factor in the war in the east,things were over even before 1943,the fact that the nazi's prolonged the conflict in hopes of help,is negated by the fact that the brave comrades of the Red Army basically achieved victory before all the fascist were killed and punished.The nazis continued their doomed defense in hopes that their mad bastard leader will be driven to help them,and he did,by telling the other mad-drug addict bastard to send his 'sky heroes' to help the encircled 6-th army.
The luftwaffe failed,it failed in delivering the supplies to the wermacht ground forces and that resulted in a complete and total destruction of a major fighting element of the monster reich.
The soviet industry,its capacity and power shined during the battle,tanks and tools were produced with breath taking speed and the brave comrades earned them,they fought house by house killing the nazi invader that have done countless horrible crimes in their agresion on the Union.
The capture of Stalingrad was important to Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini, for two primary reasons. First, the city was an important base on the transportation route provided by the Volga River between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia.
Consequently a German capture of the city would effectively sever the Soviet river link to the north. Second, its capture would secure the western flank of the German armies as they advanced into the oil-rich city of Baku — with the strategic aim of cutting off fuel from Stalin's war machine. The fact that the city bore the name of the leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, would make its capture an ideological and propaganda coup.
But the brave comrades crushed all hopes of a nazi victory,and soon,they took the fight to the nazis.
Not to mention that all of Hitlers pups also got what they deserved,
German 6th Army
German 4th Panzer Army
Romanian 1st Army
Romanian 2nd Army
Romanian 3rd Army
Romanian 4th Army
Italian 8th Army
Hungarian 2nd Army
Croatian Legion
All perished under the heroic boots of the brave comrades who protected their homes and their motherland.
But the victory was not only with muscle and heroic deeds of the comrades who fought and died in the many streats of mighty Stalingrad,but also by the tactics used to destroy the invader,the so called- hugging,a prevention to the panzer blitzkrieg tactic used by the nazis,their tanks were in-efficient and slow in the rable covered streets,they bombed the city to smithereens only to find that they have buried themselves,in a heap of rable that prevented the panzers from sucessefully navigating through the narrow streets of Stalingrad,where they became easy pray for bombs and hand thrown home made explosives. Stalingrad was truly a battle worth of song and tale,and when one mentions world war two,Stalingrad should be always there,as a beacon of light and a reminder that evil can,and must be stoped.

@Finnegan:im glad that we agree,one thing is certain,Franco was never the 'simple minded' lesser-dictator everyone thought him to be.


^ I completely agree...

But we should also consider the tactical mistakes by Germany (like attacking Stalingrad in the first place). The deterioration of the wermachts fighting capabilities and equipment, the fact that just reaching the Volga took a whole year of intense fighting just to reach, the weather and poor preparation for it by the Germans, etc.

All honor to the defenders of the soviet state against bavarian fascism though.

[Tim Finnegan]

Fascism NEVER has a "single class base." There are usually certain segments of the capitalist elite, whether based in industry or agriculture, who fund and support these movements (the Ansaldo brothers were early important funders of Mussolini), but it typically also has a mass base in the "middle classes"...professionals, small business owners, farmers, and sometimes some support among sections of skilled workers, and maybe even a faction of the labor movement.
Yes, but Fascism as a mass-movement has its origins in the petty bourgeois, and those segments of the proletariat which widely retained a petty bourgeois mentality- managers, professionals, smaller capitalists, workers in traditionally petty bourgeois crafts, etc. The major economic powers- the grand bourgeoisie and the great landowners only came to support it once its potential as an effective anti-communist mass-movement had been demonstrated.


in the case of Spain there was no "aristocracy" if this is meant to refer to some group with a feudal basis. the big landowning elite, the 3,000 families who owned 90 percent of the land in the southern half of the country, were certainly part of the basis of the "national movement" in Spain but they were not a feudal class. Feudalism in agriculture in Spain had been destroyed in the early 1800s. the chuch lands were sold off. restrictions on market sale of land were eliminated. what then happened is that capitalist investors moved in and bought up the big estates. by the '30s Spains' agriculture was organized entirely on a capitalist basis. this is why there was a massive agricultural union movement in Spain.Firstly, when I say "aristocracy", I mean the elite landowning class with its roots in the pre-capitalist aristocracy, and which retained much of the mentality of that class, including a preference for archaic modes of production.
Secondly, yes, by 1936 older quasi-feudal modes of production were in a minority, but for the most part this was a novelty dating to the agrarian reforms of 1932, something which the landowners were keen to reverse- as they soon did. As such, it cannot be said that the ubiquity of this mode of production had been settled.


the "national movement" in Spain also had a base of support in a secton of labor...the former leaders of the old Free Union. This had been formed after World War 1 by Carlist skilled workers who advocated a kind of proletarian clerical-fascist ideology (of partnership with employers). This federation grew to 250,000 members under the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in the '20s, due to support from the state and the banning of the CNT, and was destroyed when legal rights to organize were restored in 1930. Workers in Catalonia flooded out of the "Free Union" and into the CNT. but the small clerical-fascist Carlist core of the "Free Union" remained as part of the base of the "national movement."

in the case of Italy, when Mussolini moved in a nationalist direction to support Italy in World War 1 in 1915, the leadership of the revolutionary syndicalist USI initially supported him. but at the next congress the anarchists organized their base and successfully removed the pro-Mussolini leadership. they then split off but only took 10 percent of the union with them, to form the nationalist Italian Labor Union. some of these people then continued with Mussolini into the fascist movement.True, a portion of the proletariat did support fascism, but that is not the same as providing a concious class base. False consciousnesses of class and nationality should not be a novelty to leftists.


because fascist movements exhibit different ideologies, depending on the particular political events, culture and social mix of a particular country, I think my hypothesis that fascism should be understood in terms of its social role is a hypothesis that better fits the facts than your hopeless attempt to define it in terms of some ideology.I think this may be the source of miscommunication: you're recognising a range of ideological movements with a similar social role and identifying them collectively as "fascism", while I am starting with explicit ideological fascism (that is to say, the particular ultra-nationalist movement originating in Italy) and identifying other movements of similar character. We are, to a certain extent, arguing past each other.
Now, I would agree that there was a certain range of movements with this role you mention (although, as I have suggested, I think that it was a role which varied depending on the state of capitalism with the given country), but I don't think that it's entirely reasonable to conflate them all with no reference to their actual ideological basis or class character, nor to appropriate a specific label to use in reference to a far broader set.


@Finnegan:im glad that we agree,one thing is certain,Franco was never the 'simple minded' lesser-dictator everyone thought him to be.
:thumbup1:

[syndicat]

Firstly, when I say "aristocracy", I mean the elite landowning class with its roots in the pre-capitalist aristocracy, and which retained much of the mentality of that class, including a preference for archaic modes of production.
Secondly, yes, by 1936 older quasi-feudal modes of production were in a minority, but for the most part this was a novelty dating to the agrarian reforms of 1932, something which the landowners were keen to reverse- as they soon did. As such, it cannot be said that the ubiquity of this mode of production had been settled.



Nope. you're wrong about this. what "older quasi-feudal modes of production" are you talking about? certainly not the big latifundias. they were run as commercial ventures. and only a relatively small minority of the 3,000 families who owned the 90 percent of the land in the south derive from pre-capitalist feudal aristocracy.

in many European countries during the transition to capitalism, some of the older gentry were able to convert their way of making a living and running their estatets into a capitalist basis. thus a chunk of the capitalist elite in Britain in the early 1900s were descended from the old "aristocracy." but it would be totally misleading to think they were not fully capitalist in terms of their relationship to the economic system. and the same is true of Spain in the '30s. in fact the "agrarican reform" never got off the ground. the liberal Republicans were extremely timid and afraid of pissing off the elite. in fact the ubiquity of capitalism was very definitely "settled" by the early 1900s in Spain. Spain had gone thru a vast capitalist industrialization and urbanization boom in the '10s and '20s and northeastern Spain was as developed in a capitalist sense as France. the idea that Spain the '30s was in any sense "quasi-feudal" is complete nonsense.

and why should we define "fascism" solely in relation to the *ideology* of the Mussolini fascist party? as I said, it makes more sense to look at it as an extremist reaction to the Italian working class developing to the verge of revolution in its level of class consciousness, and its level of militancy, in 1919-20. this was WHY Mussolini's group were able to build a mass petty bourgeois base.

as i said, it is a better explanation for that Italian form of fasicsm to look at it in terms of the particular historical and social role it played at that time. When we do that, it makes fascism a concept that is more readily applicable to anti-working class reactions that took on a similar character and played a similar role in other countries. thus I think it is plausible to think of the Nazi movement, the Mussolini movement, and the "national movement" in Spain in 1936 as sufficiently similar to group them under the "fascist" label.

[Tim Finnegan]

and why should we define "fascism" solely in relation to the *ideology* of the Mussolini fascist party?
Semantic accuracy.

[Edit: In retrospect, this dismissive reply wasn't really fair, so I'll try to expand my position.

To start, we both accept that the social role of the fascist movement, in whatever sense, is to affirm capitalism and the bourgeois nation-state, rather to construct a truly novel system. However, if that is all that defines it, then, as Highfructosecornsyrup observes, then we broaden it to the point of a meaningless pejorative. As such, I would suggest that we look at the particular means by which fascism affirms capitalism and the nation-state, which means looking at practical implementation on the one hand, and ideological implementation on the other. The former offers some substance through its characteristic populist rhetoric, militarism, state violence, etc., but the same could be said of at best quasi-fascist regimes like Ba'athis Iraq, or entirely non-fascist regimes, like Soviet Russia. This means that we are obliged to examine the ideological implementation of fascism, which is to say the reconstitution of the ideological superstructure in defence of capitalism, which itself entails examining the ideological basis of these movements. This means that we find ourselves addressing the significant divergence between the fascists proper (the National Fascist Party, the Falange, etc.) and other far-right wing authoritarians of the era, such as the Carlists, Pétain's regime, and Franco himself, which makes it difficult to stretch the use of the label without again diluting it to near-meaninglessness.

Now, it could be that we need a new label to refer to the range of far-right bodies which came to power in the Interwar period, which I will agree represent a broadly coherent backlash against liberalism and socialism, but "fascism" simply isn't it.

/edit]

And the stuff about "quasi-feudalism" and what have you really isn't all that important (although I will concede that I seem to be confusing the waged system of the latifundas with a more traditional system of tenancy). It was just an aside noting that the Fascists posed themselves in opposition to the conservative landed gentries of Italy and Spain, who they saw as retarding the nation's development, hence their claims to be waging a revolutionary campaign within their respective nations (which is to say, what they say as the completion of the bourgeois nationalist revolutions of the 19th century).

[Invader Zim]

The battle of Stalingrad.

A strong argument can be made that in actual fact the turning point was the failure of the Wehrmacht to win the Battle of Moscow.

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

frankly you're engaging in a lot of not very clear tripe of the sort that I associate with certain academics. So "rigorous academic concept" can in fact be a contradiction in terms...depending on the "academic" you're talking about. but who gives a fuck what "academics" think anyway? you're writing as if there is some privileged group that knows more simply in virtue of its job. I've been an academic and I know the petty crap and virtual nepotism that goes on there.



right there you show you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. the conflict in Spain was first and foremost a class conflict. for the mass working class movement in the CNT, the "Republic" was something they intended to get rid of.

the fight wasn't about "the Republic." It was about the increasing radicalization of the masses, the increasing mass moblizations, the mass strike wave in the spring of 1936, the mass land seizures. the agricultural and industrial elite were hysterical about the mass working class threat to their system, to their property.



again, your academic prattle doesn't really say much. the right in Spain moved towards a fascist solution. you falsely assume that the various social groups you list were some kind of static political entity. in that case you'd have a hard time understanding the US Republican party's evolution since the '70s. It's increasingly evolved into a hard-right force, more disciplined than in the past, and increasingly leaning in a proto-fascist directiton...like the current moves to smash the public employee unions via elimination of their legal rights.

Thanks for being frank, I'll try not to take your claims that I 'don't know what the fuck' I'm talking about to heart, even though they are inappropriate as this was a comradely exchange about the virtue and vices of labeling the Franco regime as Fascist. Also I'm not sure that sentence you've quoted is any evidence that I somehow decentre class from my analysis of Spain, of course it was a class conflict... not contradicting your rant about the role of the CNT and importance of class - I was just generally making a point that the reaction was extremely heterogeneous and anti-Republicanism (but obviously also anti-working class politics) was a central adhesive binding the rightist coalition together.

This was part of a more general point about the balance of power within the rightist coalition which you failed to address. The closest you came to it is saying that the right moved 'toward' fascism, which to me admits that they weren't there and corroborates the point I was making about fascist politics definetly shaping the rightist movement but not gaining hegemony within it, due to the historical underdevelopment of the Spanish petite-bourgeoisie.

As to your last point about the contemporary US, I think that a wide range of rightist politics aims at smashing union power, and curtailing legal rights. The usefulness of a distinction between 'academic' and 'political' definitions of fascism is relevant here because your definition of fascism is so broad that it risks subsuming what was specific and novel about the interwar extreme right into a notion that generally most rightist politics are fascist.

By 'acadmically rigorous' rather than any appeal toward title or expert opinion, I mean simply 'conceptually sound'. The politics of screaming fascism might justify calling a whole range of regimes fascist, but its not analytically justified in that it ignores the tremendous diversity in social composition, ideology, and historical context in which rightist politics surface.

To group the Contemporary Republican Party's form of extreme rightist politics or 'Neoliberalism' with the statist and revolutionary anticapitalist movement of the petite bourgeoisie against the immediate possiblity of proletarian revolution, is to broaden the concept of fascism to the point where it loses its real descriptory power. If the Republican Party has simply been proto-fascist since the 1970's then its difficult to theorize the novel tension within it which has developed relatively recently. This conceptualisation ignores the struggle between the New Right, the proto-fascist (proto again implies not fully fascist) elements associated with the Tea Party and the Old Conservatives, against whom the Tea Party positions itself.

My point simply is that if Franco's movement and regime was fascist than so was Salazar's, the Hungarian, Romanian, Japanese, Chinese Nationalists etc. And if you broaden it so far then why not bring in any rightist meanie in the later half of the twentieth century and throw in the Republicans while your at it. Sarkozy, Berlusconi, you name it, all fascists. Thatcher? Cameron? Fascists. The bulk of Europe falls under the aegis of fascism when you simply blow up the definition to include neoliberalism or any form of right politics generally. It's a steep slope after you expand the definition away the petite-bourgeois revolutions of Italy and Germany to cover simply any capitalist offensive against the working class.

[S.Artesian]

A strong argument can be made that in actual fact the turning point was the failure of the Wehrmacht to win the Battle of Moscow.

And I think Glantz makes the argument that there are 3 distinct turning points.

Moscow-- when it was clear that Germany could not achieve its goals prior to the onset of winter as the USSR defense proved capable of absorbing all German attacks.

Stalingrad-- when it became clear that Germany would have to go over to the defensive as the USSR proved it could go over to the offensive and win after an exhausting period of defense.

Kursk-- when, in response to Germany's attempt to mount another offensive, the USSR proved that it could accomplish both 1 & 2 and seize and hold territory that the Germans had previously controlled, in short demolishing German defenses.

The turning point of WW2 as a whole, IMO, is Kursk. I think Kursk showed that, even without the opening of a Western Front against Germany, the USSR would have defeated the Wehrmacht.

Khad certainly knows more about this than I do.

[syndicat]

This was part of a more general point about the balance of power within the rightist coalition which you failed to address. The closest you came to it is saying that the right moved 'toward' fascism, which to me admits that they weren't there and corroborates the point I was making about fascist politics definetly shaping the rightist movement but not gaining hegemony within it, due to the historical underdevelopment of the Spanish petite-bourgeoisie.

again, you seem to be operating, as Tim F is, with a static conception. The right in Spain evolved. They already had behind them the experience of the 7 year military dictatorhship. From the early 1800s to 1923 there were numerous pronunciamentos. In the early 1800s the military were a force that acted against the old feudal aristocracy, a liberalizing force in the economic sense.

When I say that CEDA moved towards fascism, I am NOT saying they didn't arrive there. I'm saying it took them time. For a while in the '30s they thought they could achieve their aims within the framework of the Republican constitution and electoral politics. The 1931-33 rule by the right was very repressive. But by the first half of 1936 they had given up on that. They'd come to accept to accept the fascist thesis that the Republic had to go. Moreover, as I pointed out, the Free Union, which had been founded after World War 1 by Carlist skilled workers, already had a proletarian clerical-fascist ideology and in the '20s were certainly influenced by Italian fascism.

The very strong and important role of the Church, as a bastion of the right, in Spain made for a difference with other forms of fascism...but as I say, each form depends on the particular culture and political evolution and social & class forces in each country. The Castilian church hierarchy (but not the Basque, who were equally devout and conservative) were very much a part of the national movement. the working class in Spain was intensely anti-clerical, and the entire Spanish left was also. This was a difference in the way the culture war (overlaid on the class war) played out in Spain.



As to your last point about the contemporary US, I think that a wide range of rightist politics aims at smashing union power, and curtailing legal rights.

yes, and this is a proto-fascist element of the Republican party. It's not yet fascist because, altho it has exhibited lately increasing dicatorial tendencies, it's not there yet. It hasn't gone as far as the Spanish right did in the '30s.



The usefulness of a distinction between 'academic' and 'political' definitions of fascism is relevant here because your definition of fascism is so broad that it risks subsuming what was specific and novel about the interwar extreme right into a notion that generally most rightist politics are fascist.

First of all, there is no meaningful use to the word "academic" in this context. There is no relevant science here in which more rigorous technical conceptions have been developed through a real consensus. It's merely an elitist claim to some privileged epistemological status that is completely unjustified.

Second, you've yet to actually show how my conception is contradicted by the facts. As I said, my conception is that fascism arises in countries where republican institutions ("representative democracy") have developed, and the rising militancy and revolutionary consciousness of the working class in practice are becoming a threat to the power of the elite and to the very continued existence of their system. There then emerges a party/movement that proposes to smash the republican framework, smash the rights to free organization of the working class, and does so through a political movement that relies on direct action and mass mobilization of support within the various middle layers...the exact mix will depend on the social composition of a particular country, but especially small employers, smaller property in general, elements of the bureaucratic class (such as managers and lawyers and police and army officers), and often some reactionary sections of the working class. This party/movement can be centered more or less in sections of the miltiary officer corps.

It is not an essential feature of fascism that its economic nationalism has to take central planning forms. The Pinochet regime in Chile followed a neoliberal path. The Franco, Mussulini and Nazi regimes followed a statist path in the '30s in part because central planning and economic pump priming and direct state controls were in vogue in that era...in "democratic" and "socialist" countries as well as fascist.

moreover, if you do think that statist economics is central to fascism, this is an argument in favor of holding the Franco regime to be fascist. It practiced a kind of economic autarky, and large parts of the economy were state owned and managed. Since the "transition" in the '70s the government has moved to dump these various state owned operations or privatize them in various ways or contract out the work...with shipyards, railways, the telephone system, ports, etc.


By 'acadmically rigorous' rather than any appeal toward title or expert opinion, I mean simply 'conceptually sound'. The politics of screaming fascism might justify calling a whole range of regimes fascist, but its not analytically justified in that it ignores the tremendous diversity in social composition, ideology, and historical context in which rightist politics surface.


You've not provided any reasonable explanation or justification for this notion of "conceptually sound." As I say, you've not shown how my hypothesis about fascism doesn't fit the facts.



To group the Contemporary Republican Party's form of extreme rightist politics or 'Neoliberalism' with the statist and revolutionary anticapitalist movement of the petite bourgeoisie against the immediate possiblity of proletarian revolution, is to broaden the concept of fascism to the point where it loses its real descriptory power.

now you're making shit up. i never said the Repubs were fascist. I said they were "proto-fascist". this means they are tending in a fascist direction in certain respects. they've been moving over time to make the relationship between the working class and the capitalist elite increasingly dictatorial.



If the Republican Party has simply been proto-fascist since the 1970's then its difficult to theorize the novel tension within it which has developed relatively recently. This conceptualisation ignores the struggle between the New Right, the proto-fascist (proto again implies not fully fascist) elements associated with the Tea Party and the Old Conservatives, against whom the Tea Party positions itself.

I didn't say they've been proto-fascist since the '70s. Again, you're making shit up. I said that since the '70s they've moved in a proto-fascist direction.

if you want to claim that my conception would apply to governments, parties or movements that we would not consider fascist, you need to make an argument. you've not done that yet.

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

again, you seem to be operating, as Tim F is, with a static conception. The right in Spain evolved. They already had behind them the experience of the 7 year military dictatorhship. From the early 1800s to 1923 there were numerous pronunciamentos. In the early 1800s the military were a force that acted against the old feudal aristocracy, a liberalizing force in the economic sense.

When I say that CEDA moved towards fascism, I am NOT saying they didn't arrive there. I'm saying it took them time. For a while in the '30s they thought they could achieve their aims within the framework of the Republican constitution and electoral politics. The 1931-33 rule by the right was very repressive. But by the first half of 1936 they had given up on that. They'd come to accept to accept the fascist thesis that the Republic had to go. Moreover, as I pointed out, the Free Union, which had been founded after World War 1 by Carlist skilled workers, already had a proletarian clerical-fascist ideology and in the '20s were certainly influenced by Italian fascism.

The very strong and important role of the Church, as a bastion of the right, in Spain made for a difference with other forms of fascism...but as I say, each form depends on the particular culture and political evolution and social & class forces in each country. The Castilian church hierarchy (but not the Basque, who were equally devout and conservative) were very much a part of the national movement. the working class in Spain was intensely anti-clerical, and the entire Spanish left was also. This was a difference in the way the culture war (overlaid on the class war) played out in Spain.



yes, and this is a proto-fascist element of the Republican party. It's not yet fascist because, altho it has exhibited lately increasing dicatorial tendencies, it's not there yet. It hasn't gone as far as the Spanish right did in the '30s.



First of all, there is no meaningful use to the word "academic" in this context. There is no relevant science here in which more rigorous technical conceptions have been developed through a real consensus. It's merely an elitist claim to some privileged epistemological status that is completely unjustified.

Second, you've yet to actually show how my conception is contradicted by the facts. As I said, my conception is that fascism arises in countries where republican institutions ("representative democracy") have developed, and the rising militancy and revolutionary consciousness of the working class in practice are becoming a threat to the power of the elite and to the very continued existence of their system. There then emerges a party/movement that proposes to smash the republican framework, smash the rights to free organization of the working class, and does so through a political movement that relies on direct action and mass mobilization of support within the various middle layers...the exact mix will depend on the social composition of a particular country, but especially small employers, smaller property in general, elements of the bureaucratic class (such as managers and lawyers and police and army officers), and often some reactionary sections of the working class. This party/movement can be centered more or less in sections of the miltiary officer corps.

It is not an essential feature of fascism that its economic nationalism has to take central planning forms. The Pinochet regime in Chile followed a neoliberal path. The Franco, Mussulini and Nazi regimes followed a statist path in the '30s in part because central planning and economic pump priming and direct state controls were in vogue in that era...in "democratic" and "socialist" countries as well as fascist.

moreover, if you do think that statist economics is central to fascism, this is an argument in favor of holding the Franco regime to be fascist. It practiced a kind of economic autarky, and large parts of the economy were state owned and managed. Since the "transition" in the '70s the government has moved to dump these various state owned operations or privatize them in various ways or contract out the work...with shipyards, railways, the telephone system, ports, etc.


You've not provided any reasonable explanation or justification for this notion of "conceptually sound." As I say, you've not shown how my hypothesis about fascism doesn't fit the facts.



now you're making shit up. i never said the Repubs were fascist. I said they were "proto-fascist". this means they are tending in a fascist direction in certain respects. they've been moving over time to make the relationship between the working class and the capitalist elite increasingly dictatorial.



I didn't say they've been proto-fascist since the '70s. Again, you're making shit up. I said that since the '70s they've moved in a proto-fascist direction.

if you want to claim that my conception would apply to governments, parties or movements that we would not consider fascist, you need to make an argument. you've not done that yet.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
A couple posts ago, I made the point that the question 'Was Franco's regime Fascist?' loads the response into either sidelining the significant differences between the Spanish counter-revolution and the Italian or German counter-revolutions OR rehabilitating Franco's reputation, ignoring the striking comparisons which can be drawn. Instead, I proposed the question 'What does the comparative history of fascism tell us about the inner dynamics and goals of Franco's movement and/or regime, and the international system in which it operated?'

You, perhaps fairly, characterized this as 'academic prattle'. But the analytic space it opens up allows that instead of a regime having to be either totally fascist or totally unfascist, can be anywhere on a continuum of rightist politics, incorporating some elements of fascism but not others. This allows space for both the compelling comparisons to be drawn and the substantial differences separating the Spanish experience from that of Germany and Italy. Dispensing with the either/or method, I'll address some of the valid points you made about the specificity of what might be called Spanish fascism, then show how the German and Italian variants had crucial commonalities not shared by Spain. Finally, I will bring up a couple different case studies that I think highlight the difference in our understandings of fascism.


First, I agree that CEDA moved towards fascism, but I don't think they arrived there. Or at least, they failed to successfully follow the same route to power that had triumphed in Italy and Germany, which might merit some difference of classification. You've made an interesting observation about the Free Union, and elements of the Carlist working class coming to develop their own variant of fascism, but just because an aspect of the movement embraced fascism does not mean that they were dominant in the counter-revolution, in fact they were marginal. You make good points about the specificity of the Spanish counter-revolution such as the centrality of the Catholic Church.


Also, I think your definition of fascism is satisfactory enough for the task at hand, but applying it to Spain has difficulties. For one, your definition would position Franco's revolt as a frantic last ditch effort to crush the class struggle, but actually the serious prospect of working class power only arose after Franco's revolt. Your definition has plenty of virtues and goes far to explain a lot of the dynamics of the Spanish Civil War, but it fails to convincingly demonstrate that Spanish authoritiarianism included enough of the exceptoinal features held by the Italian and German varients to justify classifying them as the same species, but I would agree at least that they are in the same family of authoritarianism.


While agreeing with your sort of macro-definition of fascism which privileges it's relation to crushing rising working class energy and saving the capitalist system, I'd also like to offer a couple more qualities of the fascist movement that widen the gulf between Spain, Italy and Germany. One of the central features marking the Italian and German cases, was the regime faced with an immanent challenge from the left, yet found itself incapable of using the traditional repressive apparati of the state (the army) to crush the movement. In the Spanish example the state worked just fine.


Additionally, if we think of fascism as proceeding through several stages of development, we can see that in the Italian and German cases, the right triumphed through an alliance of small and medium-sized farmers with urban elements, which was absent in the Spanish case. The Italian and German fascist organizations penetrated the urban petite-bourgoisie, and a significant element of the industrial working class by offering an anticapitalist, nationalist, version of 'socialism' which had significant ramifacations for the character of the movement as a whole, again these aspects were marginal in the Spanish case. This character of the far right movement in Italy and Germany resulted in a distinct 'Party-State' complex governing the character of the emergent regime which was absent in the Spanish case.


At this highest stage of fascist implementation, Imperialism became a central feature of the resulting state. The Italian and especially German fascist states reached their most radical stage during wars of conquest, where the fascist machine could diffuse over new spaces, unencumbered by political concessions to conservatives which shaped it's rule in the fascist metropole. In this new space, the ferocity and unprecedented brutality of the New Fascist Imperialism was unleashed, crafting new forms of administration and coercion that reverberated back to the metropole, bringing fascism to it's most realized state. Total industrial warfare was a key variable and consequence of the fully fascist regimes.


In fact the whole of the fascist experience is bound up with that of total war. The early fascist movement was rooted in a cult of violence carried from World War I and nurtured in those regimes that were defeated or felt a frustrated victory, and the political problems emanating from that war were central to the rise of fascism in both Italy and Germany. Finally as outlined above, the making of war was a decisive factor in the cohesion, explosiveness, and general trajectory of the fully fascist regimes. Whatever your definitional preference, it's clear that there were more similarities between the Italian and German cases than the German and Spanish.


The Spanish case, perhaps, is missing enough of these features to merit declassifying it as 'fascist', perhaps not. If you were to classify it as fascist, which is doable, you'd need to account for those crucial differences. It might be useful to create a typology of fascism, a spectrum where you can account for the extremely sharp instances of Germany and Italy, the odd one's out like Spain and Japan, and maybe a new category of 'occupation fascism' for regimes like Petain's France or Austria. No matter whether you choose to use the term fascist or not, there need to be deliniations between regimes and movements which had tremendous structural differences.


I'm curious, can you lay out for me what regimes you'd cover with the same umbrella, for instance would you consider the Romanian and Austrian cases, where mass fascist movements developed but were crushed and brought under the control of traditional conservatives fascist?


Finally, with regards to the Republican Party, what exactly do you mean when you say 'Since the '70s they've moved in a proto-fascist direction'? If a party is moving in a proto-fascist direction, does that make it proto-proto fascist? I think neoliberalism has been implemented largely from above, not necessitating the mass movement that fascism entailed, and that it's a bit premature to throw out that label, I'd classify the Tea Party though as 'proto-fascist'.

[syndicat]

While agreeing with your sort of macro-definition of fascism which privileges it's relation to crushing rising working class energy and saving the capitalist system, I'd also like to offer a couple more qualities of the fascist movement that widen the gulf between Spain, Italy and Germany. One of the central features marking the Italian and German cases, was the regime faced with an immanent challenge from the left, yet found itself incapable of using the traditional repressive apparati of the state (the army) to crush the movement. In the Spanish example the state worked just fine.

Additionally, if we think of fascism as proceeding through several stages of development, we can see that in the Italian and German cases, the right triumphed through an alliance of small and medium-sized farmers with urban elements, which was absent in the Spanish case. The Italian and German fascist organizations penetrated the urban petite-bourgoisie, and a significant element of the industrial working class by offering an anticapitalist, nationalist, version of 'socialism' which had significant ramifacations for the character of the movement as a whole, again these aspects were marginal in the Spanish case. This character of the far right movement in Italy and Germany resulted in a distinct 'Party-State' complex governing the character of the emergent regime which was absent in the Spanish case.

At this highest stage of fascist implementation, Imperialism became a central feature of the resulting state. The Italian and especially German fascist states reached their most radical stage during wars of conquest, where the fascist machine could diffuse over new spaces, unencumbered by political concessions to conservatives which shaped it's rule in the fascist metropole. In this new space, the ferocity and unprecedented brutality of the New Fascist Imperialism was unleashed, crafting new forms of administration and coercion that reverberated back to the metropole, bringing fascism to it's most realized state. Total industrial warfare was a key variable and consequence of the fully fascist regimes.


you're wrong on every point:

1. the state did NOT "work just fine." in the spring of 1936 there was the biggest strike wave in Spanish history, with many revolutionary overtones, such as the occupations in the Madrid building strike in June, the dozens of city wide general strikes, and the mass movement of tens of thousands of farm workers seizing the big estates through the UGT Land Workers Federation, which had become a mass revolutionary movement in the countryside.

the Spanish elite and their provincial urban middle class & northern small farmer allies simply didn't believe the mild, wavering liberals would be able to prevent the mass revolutionary working class movement from moving towards seizure of their assets...asi indeed they were already doing. so, indeed, the state wasn't "working for them."

2. the Spanish "national movement" also made the usual veneer of being a "workers" movement that you find in other fascist ventures...while being as bitterly anti-labor in practice as those other movements. Like German and Italian fascism, the Spanish brand also nationalized very large parts of the Spanish economy.

and they certainly "penetrated" the urban petit bourgeoisie...in provincial, non-coastal cities. one difference of the Spanish case from the Italian and German is that the Spanish state was multi-national, built originally on Castilian dominance and conquest. thus elements of defense of rights of the ethnic minorities affected the way the line was drawn. the "national movement" had difficulty gaining a lot of traction among the Catalan petit bourgeoisie in Catalonia because that political space was already taken by the ERC (altho the Estat Catala party in fact was a form of Catalan fascism). in Valencia, on the other hand, the Catalan autonomist party was proto-fascist (based on the small citrus orchard owning class). the "national movement" could gain no traction in the Basque country because the petit bourgeoisie there was committed to the Basque Nationalist Party, but in a situation similar to that with Catalans, in Navarre, which is also ethnically basque, the right Catholic Carlists were dominant and provided the paramilitary shock troops of the requetes. but in Galicia, again, nationalist middle class was autonomist, and the "national movement" gained no support there. so the "national movement" did base itself very substantially on sections of the urban petit bourgeoisie, but this tended to be the provincial cities in the south, in Castile, Navarre.

3. in regard to nationalist conquest and a re-invigorated imperialism, the Franco regime had these kinds of aims as well. The only reason that Franco did not declare war in 1939-41 was because Hitler refused to go along with Franco's demand that Spain be alloted all of the Mahgreb in the new fascist imperialism in exchange for jumping in with Germany & Italy.

4. you're also mistaken that the working class made no threat or challenge to capitalism until after the military golpe got underway. I've already mentioned the mass strike wave of the spring of 1936. the CNT, the largest union in the country, was a revolutionary syndicalist union. the UGT and its Left Socialist leadership had moved to a revolutionary position in the wake of "Red October" 1934, when the military and Foreign Legion were used to brutally crush the two week rebellion in Asturias...a stronghold of the UGT/PSOE. before the election of Feb 1936, Largo Caballero was making speeches all over the country calling for a "proletarian revolution" and the formation of a "workers government."

in the midst of the spring 1936 strike wave, Joan Peiro, the main theoretician of the treinstista faction of the CNT, told a journalist that "the masses are moving towards revolution."

It was precisely to prevent the revolution that was in motion that the right finally made the decision to support a fascist solution.

[Tim Finnegan]

you're wrong on every point:
The debate aside, this attitude is getting really rather tiring. Comrades who have offered you nothing but civility deserve it in return, and your consistent refusal to give it is an insult.

[S.Artesian]

The debate aside, this attitude is getting really rather tiring. Comrades who have offered you nothing but civility deserve it in return, and your consistent refusal to give it is an insult.


Asserting you're wrong, and then providing analysis and evidence that you are wrong is hardly a lack of civility.

"Debate aside"? It's the debate that provides the proof that Syndicat isn't being insulting. He is seriously responding and disputing your claims.

[Tim Finnegan]

Asserting you're wrong, and then providing analysis and evidence that you are wrong is hardly a lack of civility.
Of course not, but asserting that another poster is "wrong on every point" and that they "don't know what the fuck [they're] talking about" is hardly necessary for that, is it?

[S.Artesian]

Come on-- he said you are wrong on every point referring to the three specific points you have raised in the previous post. It is the same as if he had said "you are wrong on all points."

His remark "don't know...." wasn't directed at you.

Anyway, your analysis of the relations of agricultural production in Spain is simply not accurate. Spain was characterized by "semi-feudal" "neo-feudal" "quasi-feudal" relations of agricultural production, no more than the the fincas, the haciendas, the estancias of Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina were relations of feudal production in the 20th century.

These were units of production of value, for the urban and world markets.

[Tim Finnegan]

Come on-- he said you are wrong on every point referring to the three specific points you have raised in the previous post. It is the same as if he had said "you are wrong on all points."

His remark "don't know...." wasn't directed at you.
It's not about whether or not his remarks aimed at me- both of the examples I offered were not, as it happened- but about a general attitude problem I perceived in his posts. Granted, my initial remark was properly a bit over-the-top, but I still think that the line has been crossed from civility to rudeness, and not by either myself or Highfructosecornsyrup. Vigorous disagreement is one thing, condescension another.


Anyway, your analysis of the relations of agricultural production in Spain is simply not accurate. Spain was characterized by "semi-feudal" "neo-feudal" "quasi-feudal" relations of agricultural production, no more than the the fincas, the haciendas, the estancias of Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina were relations of feudal production in the 20th century.

These were units of production of value, for the urban and world markets.
Yeah, we covered that already.

[S.Artesian]

Yeah, we covered that already

That's the point, isn't it? He disputed your analysis and showed where it is incorrect. Harsh language is harsh language, and really, on the scale of things, saying to someone or someones that "you don't know WTF you're talking about," hardly qualifies.

These things are a matter of taste and personal orientation.

The issue of Franco and Spain however is of considerable complexity. My original take is that Franco himself was not a fascist, in that he did not rely on a mass-movement, organized in a specific political party to pre-empt the workers' revolution and pulverize the workers' organizations. He made use of what was at hand to do that, part of the military, the Falange, the Church-- true corporatist that he was.

But I find your arguments about the historical basis, the "necessary" ideology of fascism to be weak at best, and almost wrong on every point, or wrong on almost every point.

Which makes me think Syndicat's analysis is a bit more nuanced, and accurate. It certainly is more detailed, and the devil is in the details.

The "take home" is what the analysis means going forward, tactically and strategically in class struggles currently and in the future.

In this too I think Syndicat is correct in his evaluation of the "proto-fascist" movement among and within the Republican Party.

You might remember that in the US, after the health "care" bill was passed, the assaults and threats that were made upon Democrats [including the attempt to blow up the home of a brother of a US representative; and of course the spitting on John Lewis, former head of SNCC, and despite his allegiance to the Democrats, a truly noble figure in the struggle for black emancipation] and how the Republicans refused to condemn these acts as criminal, terrorist acts, but rather spoke about "putting the anger to good use."

Before anyone jumps too high-- no we don't rush out and defend the Democrats-- except in cases like that of John Lewis whom we should defend physically, and with honor.

[syndicat]

condescension another.



someone who talks about some non-existent "academic standard of rigor" not being met is being elitist -- claiming some privileged epistemological status in virtue of their being some kind of academic -- and is being condescending him or her self. talk about technical academic concepts and some level of technical exactitude might be appropriate if we were discussing physical theory or evolutionary biology. it presupposes a field where a consensus emerged around certain technical methods and concepts. there is no such area of theoretical consensus in history. the topic can be discussed entirely in ordinary language quite adequatly. so, this person is being, quite frankly, a snob. and that is why i responded as i did.

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

someone who talks about some non-existent "academic standard of rigor" not being met is being elitist -- claiming some privileged epistemological status in virtue of their being some kind of academic -- and is being condescending him or her self. talk about technical academic concepts and some level of technical exactitude might be appropriate if we were discussing physical theory or evolutionary biology. it presupposes a field where a consensus emerged around certain technical methods and concepts. there is no such area of theoretical consensus in history. the topic can be discussed entirely in ordinary language quite adequatly. so, this person is being, quite frankly, a snob. and that is why i responded as i did.

Well we've both hashed out our analysis on the Spain reaction to death, so it's there for readers to see and judge for themselves.

I think you were a bit condescending but it's a forum after all, I am not offended. In my defense as far as being 'a snob' goes, I think if you reread what I wrote, just because I used the word 'academic' doesn't mean I was appealing to any elitist consensus or privileged epistemological status, or to any job title - I'm not an academic and I didn't imply that I was.

But actually, if we wanted to talk about a field in which a consensus emerged around certain technical methods and concepts we could. Comparative fascism is a field in sociology and history, and is studied just the same as physical theory and evolutionary biology.

The consensus within that field is shaped by debates between theorists of fascism and experts on Spain such as Robert Paxton, Michael Mann, Helen Graham, Paul Preston, Sebastian Balfour, Zeev Sternhill, George Mosse, Stanley Payne etc.

A lot of these authors aren't explicit leftists (though quite a few are), but their insights need to be accounted for and acknowledged by those leftists who want to strengthen their own arguments and situate their own views within the larger conversation about Spain.

But again never in any of my posts did I appeal to any sort of elite consensus or expect anyone to bow before the word 'academic', I think your shrill objections to my usage of that word are based on a misunderstanding of the sense in which I was deploying it and it's place in my overall argument, which I invite anyone to go back and reread to judge for themselves if they think I was appealing to any sort of authority as proof of my analysis. If I was, I'd agree with you, that'd be snobbish, but I wasn't, you've misunderstood me and become a bit overly disagreeable based on that mistranslation.

Finally, a personal note. I'm new to this forum, I don't have a lot of experience posting on forums, and haven't fully acquired forumspeak yet. I guess I'm used to discussing the Spanish Revolution with a different audience and in a different context, and so your insistence that I've failed to utilize 'ordinary language' may have some validity to it.

Though I'm not sure why I should differ to your idiom as 'ordinary language' while carefully moderating my discursive style for words you might think out me as 'snobbish'. Frankly, I think your assumptions about who I am and what I do as well as your intransigent argumentative style are elitist.

Anyway these personal attacks have derailed our conversation about Spain, but luckily it derailed it pretty close to the end of the line anyway so we can drop it. I think many of your points are valid and interesting and look forward to learning more about what you think on other posts in the future!

[Kiev Communard]

The issue of Franco and Spain however is of considerable complexity. My original take is that Franco himself was not a fascist, in that he did not rely on a mass-movement, organized in a specific political party to pre-empt the workers' revolution and pulverize the workers' organizations. He made use of what was at hand to do that, part of the military, the Falange, the Church-- true corporatist that he was.

As I agree with David Woodley's idea that fascism is a movement of lower middle class / declassé elements, the leaders whereof strive basically to substitute the "old" ruling class with the "new" one, composed naturally of themselves, I am inclined to believe that Franco, unlike Hitler or Mussolini (or, for that matter, Khomeini), was not a fascist.

Just like Salazar and Dollfuss, he was more precisely an authoritarian conservative coming from the traditional layers of ruling bourgeoisie / landowners' bloc, who used fascist elements of his own regime (that is, more "orthodox" Falangistas) to provide for some cover of "national revolution" fallacy for indoctrination and subordination of pro-fascist petty bourgeois / professional strata, while being firmly for the retaining of "old" composition of the ruling class, not for the establishment of a "new" one.

Of course, Hitler and Mussolini did not completely get rid of the industrialists and landowners who supported them at the beginning either. But it was this subordination of "traditional" bourgeoisie to the "new", upstart one, intrinsically connected with the enlarged military-industrial complex and hailing from "plebeian" backgrounds that distinguished both German Nazism and Italian fascism - and what Franco-Salazar-Dollfuss corporatist regimes lacked.

[syndicat]

I'll accept your statement explaining your intent here. I'm allergic to a certain terminology which I associate with certain kinds of academic writers (of the "critical studies", pomo, and similar varieties)...and it's true that non-academic intellectuals sometimes fall into the same language.

the use of obscure neo-logisms and academicisms tends to make the discussion less accessible to those with less formal training, those less "in the know"...and is elitist for that reason. Hardt & Negri's "Empire" is a good example of a book written in an elitist rhetorical style.

and there certainly is no consensus whatsoever in regard to interpretation of the Spanish civil war/revolution. Those who follow the liberal line (like Stanley Paine and Paul Preston, to mention two you list) are going find themselves sorely at odds with people who take seriously the role of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain and the actual workers revolution, and they will find themselves subjected to the kind of critique that Gabriel Jackson and Hugh Thomas got at the hands of Chomsky back in the '70s.

but a position that a person argues for has to stand or fall based on how good a case they make for it. and I accept that standard.

[syndicat]

As I agree with David Woodley's idea that fascism is a movement of lower middle class / declassé elements, the leaders whereof strive basically to substitute the "old" ruling class with the "new" one, composed naturally of themselves, I am inclined to believe that Franco, unlike Hitler or Mussolini (or, for that matter, Khomeini), was not a fascist.



but i think you're confusing propaganda with reality. the old ruling class in Germany & Italy remained firmly in ownership of the country's wealth as before. German & Italian fascism did use the state as a base to beef up the power of a new bureaucratic class. but so did Franco. apparatchiks of the One Party remained firmly in control, for example, of the Single Vertical Trade Union...until the worker strike wave in the '70s destroyed it.

[Kiev Communard]

but i think you're confusing propaganda with reality. the old ruling class in Germany & Italy remained firmly in ownership of the country's wealth as before. German & Italian fascism did use the state as a base to beef up the power of a new bureaucratic class. but so did Franco. apparatchiks of the One Party remained firmly in control, for example, of the Single Vertical Trade Union...until the worker strike wave in the '70s destroyed it.

I didn't mean that Hitler "destroyed" the bourgeoisie, I have just said that the formerly "plebeian" leaders of NSDAP (such as Ribbentrop or Goebbels) became the "new bourgeoisie", co-existing with the old one that allowed them to power as "lesser evil", but clearly sidelining it in political and even economic life, as Tissen and some of Krupps were clearly repressed, as was Schacht, to give way to new, more properly Nazified bourgeois. And I don't have to say anything additional about the fate of Jewish capitalists who were expropriated, and their property given to pro-Nazi "Aryan" bourgeois.

To sum it up, the bourgeois rule remained, and was firmer than ever, but the personal composition and social origin of the individual members of the ruling class changed dramatically.

[S.Artesian]

I didn't mean that Hitler "destroyed" the bourgeoisie, I have just said that the formerly "plebeian" leaders of NSDAP (such as Ribbentrop or Goebbels) became the "new bourgeoisie", co-existing with the old one that allowed them to power as "lesser evil", but clearly sidelining it in political and even economic life, as Tissen and some of Krupps were clearly repressed, as was Schacht, to give way to new, more properly Nazified bourgeois. And I don't have to say anything additional about the fate of Jewish capitalists who were expropriated, and their property given to pro-Nazi "Aryan" bourgeois.

To sum it up, the bourgeois rule remained, and was firmer than ever, but the personal composition and social origin of the individual members of the ruling class changed dramatically.


I think the actual change is not so much in the composition of the ruling class, and certainly not at all in the ruling relations of production. Yes, minorities get expropriated and murdered, but that's just it, they are truly distinct minorities.

The change is in the political agency through which those ruling relations are maintained, enforced, extended.


This is the real basis for what fascism shares with say nacionalismo in Argentina, the early nationalism that provided the backdrop for the MNR in Bolivia; Vargas in Brazil; even "left" ruling formations like those that established themselves through the long process of the Mexican Revolution; and of course Franco in Spain.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's the point, isn't it? He disputed your analysis and showed where it is incorrect. Harsh language is harsh language, and really, on the scale of things, saying to someone or someones that "you don't know WTF you're talking about," hardly qualifies.
Actually, I really wasn't referring to that. He corrected me in regards to the latifundas, bluntly but not necessarily rudely, and I conceded that I was over-estimating the prevalence of "quasi-feudal" tenant-landlord relationships in Spain, which, while still present to some extent, very indeed a minority by that time. I was trying to elaborate on my observation that fascism made claims to a revolutionary program, which, while certainly bloated and rhetorical in part, also had an element of truth to them in Spain and Italy, where there were still substantial landlord classes who, even when they had adopted a capitalist mode of production, were economically non-progressive in that they preferred an underdeveloped but stable arrangement to the more thorough modernity which the fascists craved.


The issue of Franco and Spain however is of considerable complexity. My original take is that Franco himself was not a fascist, in that he did not rely on a mass-movement, organized in a specific political party to pre-empt the workers' revolution and pulverize the workers' organizations. He made use of what was at hand to do that, part of the military, the Falange, the Church-- true corporatist that he was.I agree, as I commented some time ago (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2027574&postcount=17).


But I find your arguments about the historical basis, the "necessary" ideology of fascism to be weak at best, and almost wrong on every point, or wrong on almost every point.Would you care to offer a more detailed counter-claim? Simply saying "I think you're wrong, suck it" is, in fact, the sort of condescension which I was commenting on... :bored:

(And, yes, before you say, I know Syndicat responded to some of my posts, but unfortunately "no you are wrong", which more or less all I could get from him, isn't really what I'm looking for.)

[syndicat]

I think the actual change is not so much in the composition of the ruling class, and certainly not at all in the ruling relations of production. Yes, minorities get expropriated and murdered, but that's just it, they are truly distinct minorities.

The change is in the political agency through which those ruling relations are maintained, enforced, extended.



yes, I agree with S. Artesian here. to talk about substituting a "different ruling class," to be meaningful, has to talk about how social production is controlled and the surplus allocated. the economies of Germany and Spain were subjected to greater state control...but so was the economy of Francoist Spain, and, for that matter, the American economy of the New Deal and World War 2. the same social relations of production remained in place in Germany & Italy & Spain. the fascist regimes may have favored particular dominating class factions over others, but that happens also under parliamentary "representative democracy." in the case of Spain for example, the foreign capitalists who had been expropriated in the revolution often did not get their capital back. it was nationalized...this happened to Spanish National Telephone Co, MZA railway, Ebro Power & Light etc.


I know Syndicat responded to some of my posts, but unfortunately "no you are wrong", which more or less all I could get from him,

actually i provided arguments to defend that claim. you've not shown where those arguments are wrong. so to say "all you could get from me" is that claim that "you're wrong" is, frankly, a lie. and you accuse me of being rude.

[S.Artesian]

Would you care to offer a more detailed counter-claim? Simply saying "I think you're wrong, suck it" is, in fact, the sort of condescension which I was commenting on... :bored:



The reason I did not go into more detail here is that I went into more detail previously in the posts on page 2 of the thread, and again in post 77 on page 4 of the thread.

[Agnapostate]

I'm not sure why that's so significant- Spanish nationalism has always been an essentially Castilianism nationalism, much as French nationalism is squarely rooted in the d'Oil region and British nationalism rarely strays outside of the Home Counties. A great many nationalisms are, upon close examination, really nothing more than localised imperialisms.

Discrimination against ethnic minorities has been a traditional element of fascist regimes.

[Tim Finnegan]

Discrimination against ethnic minorities has been a traditional element of fascist regimes.
But it is neither a universal or exclusive characteristic of fascist ideology, and so can't really be taken as indiciative of anything one way or the other. One may as well note that wearing shoes has been a traditional element of fascist regimes.

[Agnapostate]

But it is neither a universal or exclusive characteristic of fascist ideology, and so can't really be taken as indiciative of anything one way or the other. One may as well note that wearing shoes has been a traditional element of fascist regimes.

No, I think it has been considered a fairly universal (though certainly not exclusive) characteristic of fascist regimes. Glorification of the motherland and its "true" people does to some extent necessitate a scapegoat population to pin blame for failures on.

[Tim Finnegan]

No, I think it has been considered a fairly universal (though certainly not exclusive) characteristic of fascist regimes. Glorification of the motherland and its "true" people does to some extent necessitate a scapegoat population to pin blame for failures on.
Yeah, in retrospect I think I may have been entertaining an overly narrow understanding of "discrimination against ethnic minorities" as being based on a static understanding of ethnicity in opposition to the assimilationism of some fascist movements, which is, of course, nonsense. As you say, fascism demands a strong cultural chauvinism, even if it is occasionally posed as an ideology of ethnic unity (for example, Brazilian Integralism).

However, as I said, that's not exceptional, and so its presence in Spain doesn't really say much one way or the other.

[No_Leaders]

I don't think that's correct.
Franco's coalition simply involved the fascists (The Falange), but he did suppress them in order to keep absolute power.

I think the main force of his coalition was the army, and then the carlists.
Franco used the support of the Falange, but he himself despised the Falange leader Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera mostly because he knew he would be a threat to consolidating power. The Republicans offered Franco to swap Jose Antonio as a prisoner in exchange for Largo Caballero's son but Franco turned down the offer knowing the Republican's would execute Jose Antonio. Basically Franco merged most if not all the right wing groups into one diminishing any power base they had prior to the coup.