Re: AUT: Fascism

[Michael Handelman <mhandelman1@xxxxxxxxx>]

If Negri+Hardt are right, we are seeing the decline of
the nation-state. With the decline of the
nation-state, nationalism also starts to die.

Hence, to equate fascism with extreme nationalism,
won't make too much sense in a couple of years (hardly
anyone will be seen as a fascist).


--- Tahir Wood <twood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I've just posted the piece below to lbo, where
> there's been a prolonged thread on fascism,
> bonapartism, right-wing populism, etc. Any comments
> and follow-ups will of course be welcomed:
> Tahir
>
> I've been following the fascism debate here with
> interest - it's something that's always interested
> me, not least because there always seems to be this
> problem in pinning down exactly what it is. Often
> what you get is a kind of checklist definition, i.e.
> if x, y and z are present it's fascism and if one of
> them is absent then it's not really fascism, but
> just some form of conservatism or something.
>
> But I wonder if we can't find a more minimalist
> definition that changes the assessment to a
> quantitative one rather than a qualitative one. Let
> me try this: fascism is simply ultra-nationalism. As
> such it manipulates the available cognitive and
> emotive resources, such as 'national symbols', race,
> ethnicity, religion, culture, etc. So the question
> then is not whether each of these manipulations is
> present as a criterion, but simply how nationalist
> is this thing, in other words what degree of fascism
> is there.
>
> By ultra-nationalism I simply mean the subordination
> of the interests of the individual to the interests
> of the nation. 'Nation' here is understood as
> inherently capitalist. Taking these two points
> together, one will therefore also find an opposition
> to transnational 'finance' capital, at least in the
> early stages of the movement. I can imagine a
> non-racial, non-religious, etc., fascism but not a
> non-nationalist one. The nationalist element then
> explains why things like imperialism and colonialism
> are closely associated with fascism although not
> inherent to it. They simply arise when a fascist
> state is able to pursue its national interest beyond
> its borders, but you don't have to be expansionist
> to be fascist and you don't have to be fascist to be
> expansionist.
>
> The advantages of looking at it this way is that
> several of the problems that we have been grappling
> with cease to appear as difficulties. Firslty the
> checklist of criteria disappears. Always a good
> thing. The the problem of classifying a regime as
> fascist disappears. So the question of whether
> Franco, Peron, Thatcher, Chamberlain, apartheid
> South Africa, Bush, Iran, Iraq, etc. were/are
> fascist disappears and the question simply becomes
> to what degree were/are they fascist. In other words
> to what degree did they suppress and cramp the
> subjectivities of their subjects into ultra-national
> allegiances. Another advantage is that it enables us
> to see how the movement changes from a popular mass
> movement to a ruling class one. So we don't get into
> silly debates as to whether fascism really is a
> strategy of international finance capital or
> something.
>
> The case of Franco is a good paradigm. The
> qualitative analysis would have it that Franco's
> nationalist alliance was only one third fascist (the
> falange) - the other elements, monarchism and
> clericalism, prevented that regime from being
> 'purely' fascist. But I am suggesting that the
> clericalism and monarchism notwithstanding, the true
> measure of Franco's fascism is simply the extent to
> which it was a movement of national salvation, aimed
> against the various kinds of internationalists:
> cosmopolitan liberals, anarchists, communists.
> Looking at it in this way the answer would be, not
> that Franco was 'purely' fascist or some such thing,
> but that he was pretty damn fascist.
>
> Now one of the more interesting consequences of this
> way of looking at the matter is that one overcomes
> the rather spurious dichotomising of populist
> movements into fascism and communism. We can
> legitimately and without fear of embarrassment ask
> also: how fascist is/was Castro's Cuba, North Korea,
> Mao's China, Pol Pot, Mariam's Ethiopia, Mugabe's
> Zimbabwe, etc, etc.? Why not? If national salvation
> is the key then this question takes on an
> interesting aspect. It enables us to cut through the
> ideology, the discourse and the rhetoric and get to
> the real stuff. Bordiga said: Capitalism is the
> revolution in agriculature. OK so in various, mostly
> backward or stagnant countries, an iron surgeon is
> necessary to carry out the capitalist revolution
> from above and to establish an industrial base, to
> discipline the workers and to turn the peasants into
> proletarians, etc., why do we need to distinguish
> between the red and brown varieties in such rigid
> ways?
>
> Personally I think Lenin had a lot to answer for
> here. I don't think that the Pol Pots, etc., would
> have emerged if marxism had not been reworked to
> accommodate itself ideologically to the nationalist
> project. Let's look at it like this: Would the
> motley republicans have done a better job than
> Franco in turning Spain into some sort of modernist
> capitalist country (it was certainly their project)?
> And at the end of the day surely one needs to ask
> whether the projects of Castro and Franco were
> really that different. I think we can ask which one
> was more fascist - sure my answer would of course
> have been Franco - but aren't the similarities of
> the national state-capitalist project striking?
>
> Now some clever analysts tell us that there is no
> longer such a thing as nationalist imperialism. That
> we live in a world in which the nation state is
> becoming just a hollow shell and that the real
> action is somewhere else. I don't think so. The
> upsurge in nationalism (maybe not yet
> ultra-nationalism) in the US tells me that the
> nation state is still big - maybe it will be until
> capitalism is no more. The question then, as always,
> is just this: HOW fascist is the US (not IS it
> fascist or not)?
>
> One last point: I don't think that fascism will
> disappear within a capitalist order. It just ebbs
> and flows. The significance of this: democratic
> anti-fascist movements are futile in the the longer
> view of things; they just preserve the social order
> which will bring back fascism again at some later
> stages and in some other places.
>
> Put this all down to my training in semantics.
>
> Tahir
>
>
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