What is fascism?

[Specter]

When reading this site, it seems to be fascists everywhere - but its realy a quite dead ideology, exept from the parts of fascist economic and social thought that has made its way into social democracy.

I found a good link here that explains fascism:

http://www.la-articles.org.uk/fascism.htm

Good reading!

[spartan]

We often use the term Fascists as a general term to describe far right wing parties, Nationalists and neo-Nazis etc.

We dont mean Fascist in the sense of Coporatism or National Syndicalism as true Fascism is a very small minority politically in our modern times.

[Specter]

So why not call it nationalism, nazism and racism? Those are the bad things, fascism is just a dead ideology - a wierd dead ideology that social democracy sometimes drag wreckedge out of in order to polish it and re-use it.

Internationalism is cool - I used to be very anti-immigration and perhaps pro-nationalism. Now Im just a autoritarian radical.

One party state dictatorship: Good
Strong labour unions: Good
Corporatism: Good

A new international and political situation requires new myths in order for a revolutionary movement to work. Im not sure what this myth should be though. Sorel is still upp-to-date though, the pinko-socialist and shallow populist-leftwing parties that he claims stupify and passify the working classes are still around.

[Jude]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 03:45 pm
Now Im just a autoritarian radical.

One party state dictatorship: Good
Strong labour unions: Good
Corporatism: Good
umm... why?

[spartan]

Coporatism is'nt good!

It is the Bourgeoisie's way of retaining ownership and control of the means of production through class "collabaration" of the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie.

But the fact remains that the Bourgeoisie owned corporations still own and control the MOP which the workers operate (Just like they do now in our current Capitalist system).

[LSD]

When reading this site, it seems to be fascists everywhere - but its realy a quite dead ideology

Yes it is, but you sure wouldn't know it from reading this forum!

It's a sad fact, but a good deal of the left is unable to enter the twenty-first century.

You see it on this board all the time, people writing as if the world never moved beyond 1936, as if the working class was all gruff men in overalls and the "fascists" were marching down the street.

I suppose it comes out of the fact that the 30s, in many ways, were the hight of the radical workers movement, certainly in this century anyway. Not only does that give the period a romantic attraction, but it also means that a great many classic socialist works date from around that time -- works that can't help but reflect the era in which they were written.

And it would seems that a great many people have internalized those works to such a degree that they, unconsciously or not, think that they're still fighting the Battle of Cable Street.

There may be a couple of rump fascist organizations out there and all number of groups that you might choose to label "fascist", but the fact is, big-F Fascism just doesn't exist anymore.

Indeed this whole leftist obsession with fighting "fascists" is more of a holdover than anything else, a mimicking of the great revolutionary movements of the twenties and thirties which really did have a powerful fascist enemy to fight.

Today, however, the primary agents of destruction and exploitation are not fascists, not in name and not even in ideology, but liberal capitalists and their agents.

Which means that wile "bashing the fash" might seem emotionally satisfying -- and makes for good copy -- it isn't the "great struggle" that "anti-fascist" groups like to make it out.

Cable Street ended a long time ago. it's time stop recreating past glories and start dealing with the world we've got now. It's a much tougher world in many ways, the working class is much less radicalized, the promise of Leninism no longer shines; but on the bright side at least we don't have to deal with fascism anymore!

Not only have the socioeconomic forces that precipitated fascism expired, but the events of the thirties and forties have terminally discredited the ideology in the minds of both the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie will still fight workers' power, and they'll do it with every tool at their disposal; but they'll use a different approach.

Fascism's usefullness died at Normandy.


We often use the term Fascists as a general term to describe far right wing parties

Except, fascism is not just another word for "right-wing"! Fascism refers to a specific kind of socioeconomic arrangement, the kind that existed in Germany, Italy, Spain, Croatia and a couple of other countries in the 1930s.

Merely being a racist does not make one a fascist; merely being nationalistic does not make one a fascist. And, although it really shouldn't need to be said, in no sense of the word is the US (or any other "imperialist" country) "fascist".

A lot of members have trouble grasping this fact. I suspect that that's because they read all this talk of "fascism" and yet see absolutely no manifestation of "fascism" in their daily lives. Looking around, they don't see any "fascists" or "fascist" parties, nor can they even find a reference to "fascism" outside of socialist pamphlets and books on the 1930s.

And so they conclude that "fascism" must just be another way of saying "bad" or maybe "right-wing". After all, it can't possibly refer to the political and economic movement of Hitler and Mussilini. That died sixty years ago.


Corporatism: Good

I suspect that you don't know what that term actually means, as otherwise you might find yourself banned.

And, on the subject, would you mind explaining exactly what's so "good" about "One party state dictatorship"? Seems to me that "one party state dictatorships" are responsible for some of the greatest crimes in human history.

[Specter]

The establishment of a radical one-party state is essential in order to pursue and devolope radical policies, corporatism alows fruitfull cooperation beetween the labourunions and experts withinn each field of work.

[Killer Enigma]

I suspect that you don't know what that term actually means, as otherwise you might find yourself banned.

And, on the subject, would you mind explaining exactly what's so "good" about "One party state dictatorship"? Seems to me that "one party state dictatorships" are responsible for some of the greatest crimes in human history.
I loved your post as a whole but if, as I suspect, our friend was using the term "corporatism" correctly, he does not necessarily refer to corporate-control of the state or the economy. True corporatism is simply the state run via bureaucracy and would thus be consistent with his "one-party state".

Otherwise, a fantastic post. I wholly agree about the misuse of the term "fascist" and the romanticizing of the 1930s. It would be easy to accuse the teenage "leftists" of doing this but I see far too many articles written by socialist parties and anarchist organizations that would make one think they were in Russia, 1917. It's that sort of pretentious and imperious writing which makes the left inaccessible to many today.

[Forward Union]

What is fascism?,

Crap.

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by Specter+November 18, 2007 02:44 pm--> (Specter @ November 18, 2007 02:44 pm)Corporatism: Good[/b]
Corporatism-the merging of state and corporate power.

For instance, 'our' soliders in Iraq are bound by the Geneva Conventions of 1948.
(Though it rarely stops them from whatever they want to do.)

The ****s at Blackwater, however aren't responsible to anyone, not even the myriad foreign governments who've tried to hold them accountable.


Originally posted by [email protected]
Strong labour unions: Good
Corporatism: Good
Corporatism=Privatization.

A corporatist state, which America is heading for, would either ban unions outright, or (corporatist tactic) make it impossible for them to operate, while keeping them legal.

The two are at loggerheads with each other!


Specter

One party state dictatorship: Good
Corporatism: Good

Sounds like this guy (http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.html)
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd298/COMRADE_CRUM/pinochet_icon.gif

[Specter]

Pinochet didnt have his own party, but was he a fascist? Perhaps he was close to Franco-style fascism after the liberalisation policies of the 1950s (Spain didnt manage to make corporatism work, so in the 1950s they gave upp and became free-market liberals with a dictator on top. Some people claimed that this couldnt happen - they said that capitalism and parliamentarism depended on each other)

But under Pinochet they did test out some new policies, wich are now known as "Neo-liberalism" ore something like that. Its about hirering private firms to do jobs that the state used to have its own state-run companies ready for. First the state says that some task must be done, and than they have a auction where the firm that says it can do it for the lowest price and/ore the best quality gets the contract. This must not be confused with corporatism - wich is different, but Im sure they can be combined.

However Pinochet is a bit to rightwinged for me. He did nothing to improve the conditions of the working class, and even though everybody got richer (If the poor people and the rich people both have a 10% wage increase, the poor and the rich both gets happy, but the class differences and the problems that follows remains the same)

Actualy I dont think there has been anny good fascist government yet. Mussolini was kind of cool, but than he went to war with Hitler, and everybody got mad at him. (Ghandi and Churchill and many other people we consider smart and cool used to like him before that) The fact that he was able to do this at all (He wasnt fired by the grand counsil before 1943) shows that corporatism was not deployed fully enough.

[Pia Fidelis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 07:44 pm
One party state dictatorship: Good
Strong labour unions: Good
Corporatism: Good
I am also an authoritarian, but I see the final point you mentioned a bit off par. The very idea of Corporatism is based in the extensive expansion of privatised industrial/economic structure. Do you instead mean the State controlling the economy? I cannot see how anyone who considers themselves leftist would possibly approve of this idea (as you have conveyed it).

Unless you are talking about State Industrial and Economic expansion and intensification, then I think you are on the wrong forum.

[jaffe]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 09:27 pm
Pinochet didnt have his own party, but was he a fascist? Perhaps he was close to Franco-style fascism after the liberalisation policies of the 1950s (Spain didnt manage to make corporatism work, so in the 1950s they gave upp and became free-market liberals with a dictator on top. Some people claimed that this couldnt happen - they said that capitalism and parliamentarism depended on each other)

But under Pinochet they did test out some new policies, wich are now known as "Neo-liberalism" ore something like that. Its about hirering private firms to do jobs that the state used to have its own state-run companies ready for. First the state says that some task must be done, and than they have a auction where the firm that says it can do it for the lowest price and/ore the best quality gets the contract. This must not be confused with corporatism - wich is different, but Im sure they can be combined.

However Pinochet is a bit to rightwinged for me. He did nothing to improve the conditions of the working class, and even though everybody got richer (If the poor people and the rich people both have a 10% wage increase, the poor and the rich both gets happy, but the class differences and the problems that follows remains the same)

Actualy I dont think there has been anny good fascist government yet. Mussolini was kind of cool :angry: , but than he went to war with Hitler, and everybody got mad at him. (Ghandi and Churchill and many other people we consider smart and cool used to like him before that) The fact that he was able to do this at all (He wasnt fired by the grand counsil before 1943) shows that corporatism was not deployed fully enough.

Actualy I dont think there has been anny good fascist government yet

Duuuhh....
and there will never be one


Ghandi and Churchill and many other people we consider smart and cool used to like him before that

who is we?

[RedAnarchist]

It's a sad fact, but a good deal of the left is unable to enter the twenty-first century.

Soviet-Empire.com springs to mind. Also the NazBols.



You see it on this board all the time, people writing as if the world never moved beyond 1936, as if the working class was all gruff men in overalls and the "fascists" were marching down the street.

I agree - 1936 was so long ago that most people here are the great grandchildren of people who were in their twenties and thirties. The Thirties were their fight, ours is the 21st century.



I suppose it comes out of the fact that the 30s, in many ways, were the hight of the radical workers movement, certainly in this century anyway. Not only does that give the period a romantic attraction, but it also means that a great many classic socialist works date from around that time -- works that can't help but reflect the era in which they were written.

It does have such an attraction, but I'm sure most leftists nowadays don't have a fetish for the 1930s.



And it would seems that a great many people have internalized those works to such a degree that they, unconsciously or not, think that they're still fighting the Battle of Cable Street.

Again, I agree. Cable Street is most likely a very different place nowadays - you won't see fascists marching down there ever again.




There may be a couple of rump fascist organizations out there and all number of groups that you might choose to label "fascist", but the fact is, big-F Fascism just doesn't exist anymore.

And we should all be glad about it.



Indeed this whole leftist obsession with fighting "fascists" is more of a holdover than anything else, a mimicking of the great revolutionary movements of the twenties and thirties which really did have a powerful fascist enemy to fight.

I agree, and it sometimes seems that such an obsession holds us back. Too much of the working class sees the revolutionary left as an archaic relic, of the Cold War and the 19th century as well as the 1930s and 40s.




Today, however, the primary agents of destruction and exploitation are not fascists, not in name and not even in ideology, but liberal capitalists and their agents.

It seems like we are pulling our opponents further to the centre, which can only be a good thing.





.

[RedAnarchist]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 03:22 am







Which means that wile "bashing the fash" might seem emotionally satisfying -- and makes for good copy -- it isn't the "great struggle" that "anti-fascist" groups like to make it out.

Antifa seem quite effective in some ways.



Cable Street ended a long time ago. it's time stop recreating past glories and start dealing with the world we've got now. It's a much tougher world in many ways, the working class is much less radicalized, the promise of Leninism no longer shines; but on the bright side at least we don't have to deal with fascism anymore!

The first part of this made me think of Tories sitting around daydreaming about the British Empire :lol:. Fascism has indeed gone and if we keep fighting ghosts, we'll not notice the far more solidified enemy who pose an actual danger to the working class.



Not only have the socioeconomic forces that precipitated fascism expired, but the events of the thirties and forties have terminally discredited the ideology in the minds of both the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie.

It was discredited for different reasons. The working-class saw it as the hateful, oppressive ideaology it was. The petty-bourgoisie realised that it had past its sell-by-date and that they had to find a new idea to keep the workers at bay with.

[Specter]

Corporatism is about putting the representatives of labourunions, employees organications, experts, consumers, and buraucrats working in the field into the same room.

When the whole corporation is gathered it will be somewhere beetween 90 and 120 people, one third employees representatives, one third labourunion, and one third experts, buraucrats and consumers. This people decide things like wages - and some policy areas of the field. Some times by voting, some times by consensus. The minister, ore sub-minister of the field works like the boss of the corpotion. He decides what cases comes up, and leads the word. Some fascists wanted the corporation to elect the minister, but this has never become policy in anny fascist country (Italy, Spain and Portugal all had corporations, not in Argentina, even though they had a close colaboration with the labourunions)

In Italy there where 22 corporations - one for each field of work, theire names where such as "Aviation" "Farming" "Mining" and so on. Each corporation elected some dude as their main representative (I think that this person should be elected by a common labourunion for the whole field, thus removing one level - but this was not how they did it in Italy, probably not in Spain ore Portugal either - but I dont know) and this representative sits in a place called "the corporative counsil." This counsil is gathered some times a year, and decitions and plans created in the various corporations must all be apporved by majority voting ore consensus in the corporative counsil (Lead by the head of state, the head of state has one vote even though he is not a corporation-representative - thats how it worked in Italy, and I agree)

The head of state was in Italy elected, and could be fired by the "grand counsil" wich was the leaders of the varous party branches, and the most important ministers. Mussolini had meetings with the grand counsil every now and than (There should be rules here, alowing each member to summon a meeting, and there should be meetings many times a year.) The grand counsil can fire and replace head of state by majority vote if they wish. (They fired Mussolini in 1943)

However, according to fascist ideology, all parts of the state must over time be corporatised, meaning that there must be corporative representation also at the level that elects and fires head of state. For this reason some of the poeple from the corporative counsil was given seats in the grand counsil in 1939 - but after this some different emergency-laws (due to the second world war) was innstalled that extended Mussolinis power, so now the grand counsil didnt have anny meeting before 1943 - when the king used his right to gather the counsil - and Musssolini was fired.

In my thinking, the corporative counsil should be fused with the grand counsil shortly after its creation. The corporative counsil should have meetings more often than the grand counsil, as this is where all the political details are decided - but every time the grand counsil has a meeting, the whole corporative counsil should be present, along with the leaders of the various party branches, and the most important ministers.

However, corporatism doesnt say annything about privaticing state businesses, ore the other way around. The minister can make a suggestion, and than the corporation votes over it. It can go in all direction, depending on what the state and the corporations thinks is good policy. One corporation can decide that what is best for them at a certain time is a free market, and little regulation - another corporation can decide that they want regulation in this ore that area. Its a very flexible system that alows the state to have expert opinons awailable at all times, and the differents experts (also the consumers, the labouruinons and the employees representatives are experts in their field, one knows if a product stinks, the other knows if he is about to go bancrupt, and the third knows if the people working theire have some major problems) can debate with each other and with the ministers when the corporation is gathered.

I Think corporatism is exelent. In Italy they didnt start with corporatism before in the mid 1930s (The fascist party had all sorts of other huge problems to deal with) and they didnt get to carry on so long before they all died - more ore less. But it was always Mussolinis, and the fascist partys idea to radicalise it over time, making Italy a more socialist (in a different way from the Russian state-socialism where the state owned all industries. Facists disagree with those who claim that a big state is in it self is radical and worker-friendly, its more about who decides what and how) direction.

[Killer Enigma]

Isn't there some huge anti-fascist policy on revleft?

[Specter]

Uhm, yes - and Im probably about to get banned.

Annyway - todays radicals should focus on fighting the evil liberals who sometimes maskerades as leftwingers and socialists. In Norway where I live they tried to put their marhuana-march on the first of may, but I think they where pushed out after some protests.

Both "leftwing" and rightwing liberals are dangerous, as they belive in silly, oversimple ideas - and take focus away from important stuff.

Annyway, corporatism will only have limited powers (also when fully devoloped I think, but Im not sure. Perhaps one should make some sort of foreign-affairs corporation that can stopp the head of state from doing something completly silly like going to war with a racist madman), and it works best by making the state smarter. And the state should be a radical leftwing one-party state.

[Specter]

Through having the right decition-processes, the state gets smarter and makes better decitions. Democracy is one way, corporatism is another. Within the "society corporatism" of social democracy (wich is not real corporatism) they have some of both.

Another way is one-man rule. Under one man rule, like Stalins ore Saddam Husseins government, the state becomes as stupid, ore as smart as the man that rules it. If the head of state suddenly becomes stupid because of sickness, insanity ore old age, the inteligense of the state is gradualy reduced together with its leader - and the leader will not be removed before he dies, witch was the case of Stalin, Franco and some other people.

Was Kruchov fired by the way? I have heard that he got fired, and startet working as a car-mechanic ore something.

Im not quite sure if Mussolini was a one-man ruler ore not however. Most heads of state (considered dictators ore not) have some groups of people that they work for. For Franco it was the catholic church, the army and the big landlords, for Pinochet it was USA and big business. For Mussolini it was a bit of everything I think. Some people claim that it was a "pluralist dictatorship" wich means that it was hundreds of different groups hoping to get something out of it, with only a small minority of groups (liberals, communists, anarchists) wich was completly on the outside - being banned from both party and corporative positions, and imprisoned if doing political agitation.

[Killer Enigma]

While I'm surprised you haven't been banned, more power to you. No one seems interested in discussing fascism on a theoretical level, and as LSD put it, they instead wish to fight a make-believe battle with "fascists" in the forms of skinhead punks and neo-nazis.

[jaffe]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 06:37 pm
For Franco it was the catholic church, the army and the big landlords, for Pinochet it was USA and big business. For Mussolini it was a bit of everything I think. Some people claim that it was a "pluralist dictatorship" wich means that it was hundreds of different groups hoping to get something out of it, with only a small minority of groups (liberals, communists, anarchists) wich was completly on the outside - being banned from both party and corporative positions, and imprisoned if doing political agitation.
liberals, anarchists and communists were very big groups doring the 30' in the Italian society.
It's true that Mussolini formed a coalition with fascists, liberals, social-democrats and catholics, but he threw them all out after a time. So only the beginning of his regime could be named pluralist.
Mussolini completly whiped out any political group standing up for the working class trough his fascist gangs/bootboys.


While I'm surprised you haven't been banned, more power to you. No one seems interested in discussing fascism on a theoretical level, and as LSD put it, they instead wish to fight a make-believe battle with "fascists" in the forms of skinhead punks and neo-nazis.
true, some people have a 'fetish' on this topic. But on the other hand in many countrys the nazi bootboys form a direct threat to the leftwing movement. Russia for example.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 03:22 am
Fascism's usefullness died at Normandy.

That's not historically accurate.