Re: AUT: Fascism

["Greg Schofield" <g_schofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My apologies entering into this thread as I am involved on the same topic on another list (I will not bother you with the arguments there).

I was struck by the observation involved below. Struck because I believe it to be a most accurate observation of something quite important to the history of the 20th century and the differences created.
 Commie00:
"interestingly, i suspect that fascism is one of the reasons the pb [independant petit bourgeois] was
eventually destroyed as a class (some being brought into the bourgeoisie,
and the rest being proletarianized)... that is: to destroy their inverse
threat to capitalism, etc."

Fascism and the USSR before it, World war II and the corporatism that followed it. Forget all the other differences and class thread can be seen. A transition from classic private capital with its compliment of independant petit bourgeois, to corporate capital (socialisied in all or in part) and the bureacratisation of old petit bourgeoisie. In so far as they recieve wages they can be seen as proletarianised but only to this limited degree.

They retain their petit bourgeois character as a shadow of the big bourgeoisie, but the big bourgeoise themselves have also changed becoming incorprated socialising amongst themselves the means of production.

If there was ever a case of the relations of production coming into conflict with the power to produce the vast expansion of non-productive management is its manifestation, not as abstract relations but embodied in real people who daily effect production.

Other arguements about the USSR aside, one achievement is that well before anyone else this process of transformation was under way, and in many senses prefigures the modern international corporation.

Nazism's most characteristic feature the concentration and death camps, did nothing to further the productive powers of the regime, but hampered it to an enormous extent. Why be so stupid? In a perverted way we see the same process of a traditional petit bourgeois (or aspiring) creating their own work, creating a system in which they could become managers on a scale far accelerated from what would be normal (hence its perverted nature).

To understand the death camps, requires first understanding bureacratic organisation, the perversity not withstanding. What more ideal bureacrtic structure where managerial interference in production is a direct and rewarded part of the system where working otherwise productive people to death doing marginally (and in some cases not even this) production is a carreer asset, where slowing production by needlessly increasing the hardship is actually a virtue.

The fascists in this odd sought of catch-up made a field day for the petit bourgeois empire builders, in fact Hitler made no bones about it and so it as the nature of the regime (where the "oppressed" gained power and priviledge  - the "oppressed" being people like himself - the frustrated middle class).

The fact that the USA war effort reproduced on a more civilisied fashion this same impulse towards the bureacratisation of the middle class, that management has become so vast and ever-present feature of the present.

No I do not think the petit bourgeois proletarianisied for this would also mean that they became productive members of society, the old petit bourgeois was productive, the new petit bouregeois has abandoned this aspect of proletarianisation even if it sells itself for a wage (I do not make management a labour aristocracy because there is no productive labour involved).

Aside from these disagreements I think your "speculation" is spot on.

--- Message Received ---
From: commie00 <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>
To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 05:59:36 -0500
Subject: Re: AUT: Fascism

> After all, even
> commie00 would agree, I think, that a mass petty bourgeoisie existed in
> Germany and Italy in the 1920's and 1930's.

i would. =P   and further, i've often wondered if fascism wasn't, at least
in part, a response of the begining of mass proletarianization.

that is: the pb was defined, in part, by a desire to be grande-bourgeois...
and fascism may represent their last ditch effort to integrate themselves
into the ruling class.

interestingly, i suspect that fascism is one of the reasons the pb was
eventually destroyed as a class (some being brought into the bourgeoisie,
and the rest being proletarianized)... that is: to destroy their inverse
threat to capitalism, etc.

and, as dauve has noted, the strengthening of bourgeois democracy was
another result.

this is all just speculation, tho.




Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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