Re: Fascism and Juan Peron

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>Comrade Julio: Now with respect to Juan Peron in Argentina, I
believe item
(a) and item (b) can be shown to be true even though Peron used
anti-British
rhetoric in his 'bonapartism'. Item (c), I may admit, did not come to
full
bloom until Peron was gone, however, but it was well 'in-process'
in-so-far
as it was tollerated on a certain scale when Peron held office. In
short,
the level of violence against the 'left' was kept to a minimum under
Peron
(except in the trade union movement where it was blatant) but not
extinguished by him or his leadership. You have every right to
disagree with
the criteria offered here. I only present it to justify my
characterization
of Juan Peron's leadership. However, if you generally agree with my
criteria, then we have only to throw facts, events and Peronist
speeches at
each other to settle this point. Shall we go to this next level or
shall we
first diagree about the criteria as I have presented them?<<

Your "criteria" forget one "little" thing . . . the difference between
an imperialist country and a semi colonial country. Moreover, you've
got all sorts of formal categories but forget all about the
relationship between classes . . . not the ones that fall into neat
categories like "comprador bourgeoisie" but the ones that actually
live, breathe and fight.

For this reason, you now have a definition of fascism so sweeping that
it encompasses everything from the ultra-right wing, savagely
imperialist and anti-working-class Hitler regime to Peronism, a
national movement in a semicolonial country that challenged
imperialist domination, promoted unionization, relied on the working
class for support, and gave rise to a real improvement in the standard
of living of working people, modernization of the country's
infrastructure and services to the population.

The issue is not whether Perón used "anti-British rhetoric." For that
matter so did Hitler. What you so blithely dismiss as "rhetoric"
represented in the case of Peronism an expression of the totally
legitimate and entirely progressive *national* aspirations of the
Argentine masses.

Contrast this to Hitler's use of the self-same "anti-British"
rhetoric, which was simply an expression of the rivalry of the German
imperialists with their British brothers, was completely reactionary,
and was aimed precisely against the legitimate national aspirations of
colonial and semicolonial countries like Argentina.

It makes absolutely no sense to draft abstract, ahistorical criteria
to try to "demonstrate"  that Peronism=fascism. The real root of that
equation is NOT in any real similarity, but rather in the need of the
imperialists to discredit a regime that challenged it.

José


----- Original Message -----
From: "George Windau" <gwindau@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 11:47 AM
Subject: Fascism and Juan Peron


Comrade Julio: The points I was trying to make with my posts were

<snip>