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What exactly is Fascism?
In my mind, there is little difference between an authoritarian capitalist country and a fascist country, and I think this is because I do not know enough about fascism. I know it supports the leader-principle; I know it glorifies violence; I know it is highly racist, but that is about where my knowledge of it ends. There are ofcourse some good examples of fascist countries in the recent history, but they all seem to differ in certain things. Like Nazi-Germany was extremely anti-semetic, while the party and bands of Mussolini had above average support from jews, if I am correct. At least, before Mussolini and Hitler became allies. After that, jews were stripped of citizenship and exported etc.
So I don't think you can learn much about fascism from the historical examples themselves. Not just because they differ (we can see all fascist countries where highly racist to some minorities/races/groups of people, only those groups of people differed) but also because many things happened in those countries that were not necissarily part of the idea of fascism itself. For example, there was lots of torturing in fascist countries and also public beatings of people with certain idea's, like our idea's, but I doubt someone wrote it in the 'Fascist Manifesto', if there is such a thing (Is there?), that there should be lots of torturing and beating. But for some reason, torturing still happened in all fascist countries. Is this because all the fascist leaders are sadistic monsters or something?
So what exactly is fascism and why is it so different when it is put to practice? I think this is because it is so populist and opportunistic, adapting their idea's the situation in a country. For example, when Buddhists would be a small minority and the people felt for whatever reason some anger agaisnt Buddhism, the fascists will claim all the problems in the country are because of the Buddhists. And the communists and capitalists ofcourse, because they are their political enemy. But I am not sure of this.
And in what way does fascism differ from an authoritarian (if this is the right term) capitalist country? With an authoritarian capitalist country I mean a capitalist country that expresses her authority with a lot of violence and torturing.
I hope I was clear enough. Thank you in advance!
Fascism is created by a populist petit-bourgeois movement in response to the failure of the revolutionary proletariat. It may be governed much in the same way of an authoritarian right wing capitalist state. If it is not constantly at war a fascist state will not survive and will turn out poorer than your average right wing dictatorship.
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” Charles Bukowski, Factotum
"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped." MLK
-fka Redbrother
Thank you, but what does it want? What are the 'rules'? And why does it have to be constantly at war? The Spanish and Portuguese fascist countries were not end they were able to maintain themselves for quite a while. But I guess they got some foreign help with this.
Nationalist Corporatism would be a good term to describe it.
It's kind of complicated. Here's an excellent book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/The-Anatomy-Fa.../dp/1400033918
GourmetPez: Don't you know anything about
communism? We're for the enslavement of the Aryan
race by a global semitic reptilian dictatorship. Black
people will own white slaves, homosexuality will be
taught in schools, mad blunts will be smoked.
Thank you I will order it.
Trotsky's "Fascism: What it is and how to fight it" will answer your questions fairly well, like him or not.
Fascism is a system that involves a very authoritarian state the maintains corporativism as its economic philosophy. Fascists beleive that state needs to be strong in order for the country to become strong and order to be restored.
And they say I don't know what fascism is!
Fight state with state?
Yes...that's the only 4 words in the entire pamphlet.
Keep your factually incorrect views out of it, and answer his question without taking cheap sectarian jabs.
I guess I can manage that.
I will read the thing you sugested and then tell you what I thought of it, so you can't accuse me of not wanting to learn.
Thank you, I will try to find a copy of it as I find books easier to study. If not, I will study the link you sent me.
I prefer books as well. Good luck, I'm sure you'll learn much!
Again, thank you!
Petit-bourgeois mentality with guns. It's a corporatist state ideology that relies on nationalistic domination and class collaboration.
"Fascism is big business armed with bayonets."
[FONT=Arial Narrow]"Body tissue deprived of life energy turns cancerous. Cancer is the hysteria of cells condemned to death. Cancer and fascism are closely related. Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples. The swastika owes its magnetism to being a symbol of two bodies locked in genital embrace. It all stems from a longing for love. Comrades, make love joyously and without fear."
[/FONT][FONT=Tahoma]Khrushchev: "It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’m of working class origin while your family were landlords."
Zhou: "Yes, and we each betrayed our class!"[/FONT]
Fascism essentially is a socio-economic creation bred from certain material contexts.
These material contexts largely stem from an economic environment where Capitalism is under threat from progressive forces.
As such Fascism is the watch dog of Capitalism.
While there is financial stability within the country many nations will make token appeasement to certain liberal sensibilities and ideals such as freedom of speech and what not.
These are all entertained as they will not upset the status quo and as such the material interests of the bourgeois are protected.
When threatened we see the rise of Fascism. Often they may differ slightly with certain characteristics such as what reactionary ideology they will follow and what symbolism they use and around what mysticism they attempt to unite a country around. But the core principles remain the same where big business is protected and progressive forces are crushed.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power" - Benito Mussolini
Aristotle's mind was so completely dominated by his economic environment that he was unable to conceive of a world in which there would be no chattel slaves, and so declared that slaves must always exist. A prophecy now falsified for hundreds of years.
- James Connolly
this thread, though it starts out as a silly discussion about ron paul, actually turns into a pretty interesting discussion of fascism, particularly on page two:
http://libcom.org/forums/north-ameri...-paul-24022012
i think many on revleft will disagree, but i think revol68 makes two very pertinent points when he says:
and...
... clr james' lot made a pretty similar argument re: state capitalism taking different forms (fascism, the welfare state, stalinism) in its period of dominance. or something. been ages since i read that.
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
Fascism is a liberal economy with government deeply in bed with corporate powers, sometimes to the degree that they are indecipherable. It is highly authoritarian, nationalistic, and imperialistic, whether in the traditional sense or the modern neo-colonial sense, etc.
They had mostly poor rural societies with a lot of illiteracy.
What does it want? (it's funny how it sounds as if we were talking about a monster).
Most of all, the Fascist program (and in its historical variants, though Spanish fascism was a curious beast, mostly connected to the landed gentry) upholds capital and the continued and expanded accumulation of capital, though it does so differntly from liberalism for instance.
The role of the state is heavily emphasized in Fascism, and the Fascist state differs from the liberal-democratic state in that it has historically tended to single-party rule (thus effectively fusing the party and the state) and comprehensive domination over both public and private life (enforcing ideology aimed at women and their position - both in the workplace and at home, for instance). Alongisde this, and probably more important, is the corporatist nature of the fascist state which entails the loss of independence of the workers' movement and its organs (actually, this loss has historically occured rather bloodily - by attacks and direct violence of armed fascist gangs against workers; it then proceeded politically though always in connection with that kind of repression; here you can see that fascists were actually useful for liberals and capitalists as they represented the vanguard of reaction and counter-revolution, so to say).
Labour relations are mediated by the activities of the state and geared towards the fulfillment of the interests of the capitalist class.
The war drive behind fascism is somewhat historically determined. You'd have to look into the havoc caused by the Depression and consider the fact that the competition fostered by the world market will not be always structured by peaceful means. As the need for raw materials, and especially for cheap or slave labour, intensifies with the projected (or commenced) industrialization, war, imperialism and outright colonialism are possible ways of getting forward. This might be the crux of the issue - that capitalism, the world market, actually foster these social and political conditions by the very fact that competition cannot be eliminated from the way social relations are organized. This is especially pertinent for Italy and Germany as they were, in the 19th ct., relatively new nation-states (I think the unification occured in both cases in 1870s) with pressing needs for industrialization. But the problem was that the colonial spoils have been pretty much taken by the end of the century (as I said, colonies and the relationship between the so called core and periphery is very important the dynamics of capital accumulation; both as markets and as pillage grounds).
As for Spain and Portugal, as I said, Spanish fasicsm was a very curious thingy, and I even think that "real" fascists were overshadowed by conservative monarchists, sporting ties with, most importantly, the rural proprietors of land (big landed gentry) and the clergy, while the social basis of, for instance, nazism was to be found in the industrial capitalist class (and the petite bourgeoisie).
Well, with regard to the first quote, I think it's somewhat of a semantics argument. When the person you quote says "roots", s/he's thinking of historical origin, especially in relation to Mussolini and his own personal trajectory. I don't think this can be validly said about Nazism. What I find most important about an analysis of fasicsm is its social basis and class poltiics.Originally Posted by ed miliband
As for "bastardized socialism", I don't think Italian Fascism can be shown to share significant similarities with even 2nd International social democracy, let alone revolutionary communism at the margins of the Third International. So does this amount to saying that one man "bastardized socialism"? How is that relevant when it is clear that the "end product" has very, very little in common with the starting point?
FKA LinksRadikal
“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.” Friedrich Engels
"The proletariat is its struggle; and its struggles have to this day not led it beyond class society, but deeper into it." Friends of the Classless Society
"Your life is survived by your deeds" - Steve von Till
Georgi Dimitrov once described fascism in power as the "open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital."
You should read his report on fascism:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...1935/08_02.htm
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." - Karl Marx
"It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it." - V.I. Lenin
Formerly Random_Girl
