Re: "Fascism" again, was Re: Chile

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Seems to me in defining "fascism" , we should start with Mussolini and the 
Fascist
Party. It was a form of Bonapartism, as Louis points out. But the most specific
historical context is the bourgeois , which was at top a financial oligarchy as 
Lenin
analyzed in _Imperialism_, responding to the world on the eve or morning after 
the
socialist revolution. Mussolini invented the specific form, and the Nazis 
developed
the most horrific model.

Anyway, Dimitrov still gives the most succinct definition: the open terrorist 
rule of
the  most chauvinist, reactionary sector of finance capital. Open terrorist rule
contrasts with the veiled terrorist rule which is the nature of all states in 
class
exploiting societies. The bourgeois prefer to rule in the  bourgeois democratic
republic ( which is still a state and still rule by terror ultimately; See _The 
State
and Revolution_ ).

Fascism today , if the term is used, must be linked to the world financial 
oligarchy.
It rules with open terror in many of its neo-colonies. So, the definition has 
some use
there. But as Yoshie has mentioned, it is important to see the U.S. and 
imperialism as
the locus of the financial oligarchy ruling the colonies , in order not to feed 
into
the socalled humantarian intervention syndrome au courant.


Charles Brown

>>> Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> 09/09/99 03:43PM >>>
>No I don't care to. I never use the term myself just because its usual
>use is so damn sloppy that it has ceased to mean anything.
>
>Carrol

Carrol in his characteristically curmudgeonly fashion has pointed to the
need for a definition of fascism, which I will now supply. We had a
cyber-seminar on fascism on the old Marxism list, which was highly
successful. This is the Trotskyist approach to the question, which is part
of my lengthy treatment on the subject at:
http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/fascism.htm

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