Re: Buchanan a fascist?

[concrete@xxxxxxxxxx (Bradley Mayer)]

Brian Alexander:

>Then again, Buchanan might be considered a prot-fascist actor within a
>time period not readily amenable to fascism: a character for the active
>repression of insurgent labor when such measures are not needed.Tragic,
>really...

Yes, this is precisely the point that I wished to draw attention to. This
point was not addresed in Louis Proyect's response (which, by the way, is
appreciated and generally agreed with).  The point is: fascism is not
simply a force to be deployed in the breach by bourgeois society in
extremis, but attains a transitional form as a permanent structural
feature of bourgeois society *in this new phase of the epoch of its decay*,
even in periods of relative political and economic stability.  How else
do we explain the phenomena of Le Pen, Fini, etc., and their U.S.
counterparts, at a time when there are no mass revolutionary workers'
movements to be crushed in these countries? Classical fascism appeared as
an exceptional mutation of bourgeois society in its time (and that is the
way liberal ideology would have us remember it); today it is a permanent
part of the structure of the bourgeois political regime. There is even
the prospect that transitional fascism can become a junior partner in a
particular generic rightwing government, as was the case with the
Berlusconi government in Italy (1994).

This conception has nothing in common whatsoever with the sort of hysterical
tactics deployed by those such as Crossroads magazine, which featured
California Governor Pete Wilson dressed in full Nazi uniform on its front
cover during the '94 elections - this a continuation of the "Reagan is a
fascist" line put out by the CPUSA crowd in the 1984 elections. This
tactic is obviously designed to buffalo leftists into voting for the Democratic
Party (now, that's getting pretty evil to be lesser than...a "fascist").

Finally, one small but significant correction to L. Proyect's comments on
the Nazis:  they are quite famous for having deployed a transitional
"democratic" parliamentary tactic to great effect in their rise to power
- Hitler hardly relied solely upon the Brownshirts. That election
campaigns were run side by side with streetfighting campaigns says alot
more about a certain, now forgotten feature of the old German political
regime, than it fixes the character of fascism: the prevalance of party
militias, especially within the left working class parties.  One of the
oldest and largest of these was the Reichsbanner, the militia of the SPD.
So it would not be surprising for a "radical" right party such as the NSDAP
to organize its own militia - in fact it should have been second
political nature for any German political party with mass asperations in
the old days. Note also that, once Naziism attained power, the SA was
disposed of right with - almost at the same time as - the Reichstag.

The question is, how do we grasp fascism both in the process of its
development and in its connection to the rest of bourgeois society,
rather than limit ourselves to the correct "orthodox" teleology of
fascism. This cannot be simply an academic question, or else we really
will have nothing else to do in this regard except to twiddle our thumbs
until the "final crisis" arrives that will allow us to put our
understanding to practical use...

                        -Brad Mayer

P.S.: This is logically parallels the question of the "collapse of
capitalism", which is not something that occurs "at the end of
capitalism", but which, as a result of its inner laws of motion, is
manifested as a continuous and permanent historical process.


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