Conditions for fascism?

[CAleftist]

How many of these are conditions that lead to fascism?

-An alliance between capitalists and the state

-A failed or weakened leftist/socialist movement

-Large scale inequalities, unemployment, and class resentment

-A petty-bourgeoisie that is growing increasingly angry, militant, and fearful of both the ruling class and the working class

-The failure of social democracy

-A ready scapegoat for society's ills


Is there anything you would add or subtract from that?

[Fawkes]

Capitalists = the state. There isn't an alliance, they are the state.

[CAleftist]

Capitalists = the state. There isn't an alliance, they are the state.

You are right, thank you.

[Dimmu]

What happens in Europe at the moment are perfect examples. All you need is a bad economic situation and scapegoats to blame the hole thing on.

[Omsk]

- A strong leader that can control the mases and use it for his own goals.
- community breakdown.
- mass unemployment

[dernier combat]

Capitalists = the state. There isn't an alliance, they are the state.
Strange. I was always under the impression that the state arose out of a need to defend the mutual interests of all the ruling class; it isn't comprised of the whole ruling class itself. Your argument would be valid if we were living in, for example, feudal society, where the vast majority of the ruling class was composed of landowners such as lords who also ruled over their territory and performed the functions of the state for the monarch.

But we're not living under a feudal system, and I would refrain from claiming that any old capitalist has significant control of the state apparatus.

[FarewellSlavianka]

The following conditions have played a big part in the establishment of past Fascist governments. Looking at the most famous fascist regimes, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, both of these nations had;

-Heavy war losses and economic collapse
-Scapegoating and blaming of minorities for losses and misfortunes.
-Uprisings of a formerly small political group that gains heavy ground on the war torn nation. ie, the Nazi Party, the blackshirts.
-Mass anti-worker and anti-socialist fear
-A cult of personality around a specific figure or person, who promises to make their nation the greatest, superior to the rest.

And you can probably guess what happens from there. Oppression, attacks on minorities and leftists, imperialist expansion, all leading up to a inevitable collapse/defeat.

[Highfructosecornsyrup]

A rambling checklist open to discussion and revison:

A fragmenting world market: associated with general crisis of capitalism, a revival of dialogues about alternatives to liberal capitalism.

A declining imperial state: utlising rhetoric of decline to argue for a reinvogoration of the nation via a new form of nationalism, bringing home the brutality and vocabulary of empire to conquer and subdue and internal threat.

A strong, but divided left: revolution must really be pounding on the door before the Old Right will shift into it's last survival strategy.

A shift in the form of rightist politics: via the growth of a bottom-up mass movement combining paramilitarism, direct-action, and electoral politics, often posturing itself against both the left and the Traditional Right.

A protracted political crisis: an inability to retain stable parliamentary regimes, a clear failure of traditional bourgois political norms to maintain the capitalist system.

[ComradeOm]

-An alliance between capitalists and the stateQuite the opposite: fascism arises when the bourgeoisie feel that the state in no longer responsive to their needs. It thus becomes necessary to introduce radical elements in order to reorient the state apparatus to better serve capitalist interests (typically in response to a perceived working class challenge). Hence both Hitler and Mussolini raged against the 'trade union state' and were invited into power with the express intention of destroying the parliamentary regime. So it would be more accurate to talk of an alliance of capitalists and reactionaries/fascists against a supposedly malfunctioning bourgeois state

[bricolage]

Fascism has always been a response, a reaction against working class movement.

In Germany, Italy, Spain... it's always been the same story.


The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.

[Ocean Seal]

-An alliance between capitalists and the state

The capitalist state lives to serve the capitalists. But yes, the capitalists give in to certain demands



-A failed or weakened leftist/socialist movement

No, a more militant leftist movement is what leads to the rise of fascism. Or else the capitalist class would prefer neo-liberal economics.





-Large scale inequalities, unemployment, and class resentment

With the emphasis on unemployment because the mobilization of the lumpen against the workers is an important character of fascism.




-A petty-bourgeoisie that is growing increasingly angry, militant, and fearful of both the ruling class and the working class


Yep.



-The failure of social democracy


More the failure of neo-liberal economics.



-A ready scapegoat for society's ills

Yep.