Re: [Marxism] Fascism, the so-called 'far right' and the political middle

[Ralph Johansen <mdriscollrj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Melvin, this is very interesting and challenging. I was going to send 
you this set of slight textual alterations/edits and bracketed 
annotations/queries off-list, but I have decided to put it out on-list 
and go ahead and expose my limited understanding of some aspects of this 
essay to the criticism of a few often overly-exacting list members. 
Others may have the same questions that occur to me, and this discussion 
is too important not to be shared. There's insufficient response here to 
what you're offering. Some of my questions early in the piece are 
answered later, and some are there because to some extent I do not share 
in understandings which may have been commonplace in past sectarian 
organizational discussions. So please tolerate my emendations. I am 
interested only in clarity.

Ralph


Waistline2@xxxxxxx wrote:

(This article originated as part of a reply to the thread Stalinism is 
Fascism but when reading it I liked it as a stand alone piece. Nothing 
in this segment deals with Stalinism.)

The formulation that ************ is fascism is an ideology and 
political thesis stabilized in the post WW II period as one of the 
ideological underpinnings of the Cold War [I think Trotsky summed up the 
fascist phenomenon most succinctly, and I don't understand your 
differences with his characterization of fascism, or precisely how you 
relate it to the American past, and especially to the present, evoking 
as you have the analysis of Michael Lind regarding the Texas landowning 
elite - but that's not directly germane to this discussion]. The 
specific class basis and economic platform that stabilized this ideology 
and political thesis is what Marxists refer to as the “political middle” 
in the countries at the front end of the curve of industrial/capital 
development.

Political fascism and its meaning for me, today - May 28., 2009 - is not 
an academic discussion; it is related to the politics of our new era: 
the era of Obama. The decay of the historical/political phenomenon 
called the anti-fascist/anti-communist bourgeois democrat (the political 
middle [unless you do so further on, how do you define the components of 
'the political middle' - how compares to/differs from those sectors of 
the economic formation that benefit most directly from economic 
expansion and whose political/economic status is most threatened by 
contraction and the shrinkage of wages/benefits - what are the 
boundaries of this middle - how is it not that this middle R us, meaning 
the preponderance of the frequently home-owning/buying, wage-earning 
working class, and if so, who attacks what? Or is it those left out - 
the unemployed/underemployed poor, the racial/ethnic minorities - strata 
and caste, and single parent female heads of household excluded from 
direct participation in the middle- and how do they constitute a 
definable, united force adequate to the task of confronting the middle - 
even if they attain to the position of a majority component?]) has 
emerged as a salient political feature that constitutes an important, if 
not the most important, political aspect of the era of Obama [spell this 
out]. The anti-fascist/anti-communist bourgeois democrat exists on the 
same political continuum that includes the decay of the peculiar 
phenomenon of the black leader in the post-post WW II period [expand - 
connection?]. That is the period closing out the post WW II period. The 
anti-fascist/anti-communist bourgeois democrat and the peculiar 
phenomenon of the black leader have something in common in the post WW 
II period: both merge with and become part of the institutional 
relations that are the economic/political formation called the political 
middle. [how come?]

The collapse of the political middle means the collapse of all the 
primary institutions of political mediation between classes [expand -- 
meaning which institutions - besides the machinery of the so-called 
democratic/electoral process?], as these institutions can no longer 
stabilize the political and production relations between the classes in 
bourgeois society [for me, this needs development]. As these 
institutions expressing real material relations of production collapse 
[expand], what comes to the fore are the external collisions of classes 
seeking to impose their political will on society. The reason for the 
political middle collapse is the uninterrupted (permanent) revolution in 
the productive forces [expand/recap a little - I know that this entails 
advanced automation and digitation, but what more?].

Something has changed in our society.

What has changed is the collapse of the political middle, with the right 
wing [which is who, economically? again, how compares to/differs from 
the petit-bourgeoisie defined as the retail shopkeeper-office 
worker-managerial-civil servant/bureaucratic-small business-diminished 
small farm owner/rancher fractions, often coalescing with religious 
fundamentalism?].] of communism advocating a program demanding that 
revolutionaries invest their meager forces in attacking the "far right" 
rather than in a line of march through the political middle [what means: 
how 'attack the political middle'? what are lines of demarcation between 
political middle social democrats and right wing? Attacking the "far 
right" is the American path to fascism [how so? spell out], because it 
reorients the working class movement to the left, rather than to its own 
demands for socially necessary means of life. The "left" means and has 
always meant the left bench of the bourgeoisie [expand - how does 
working class reorientation to the left relate to the attack on the far 
right as the American path to fascism?].

If in the process of our epochal fight for socially necessary means of 
life, we wrench health care from the bourgeoisie and some welfare 
checks, so much the better. I see no need to wait until the advent of 
communism to get a check in the mail. How to fight for reform is not the 
issue. Fighting for the political independence of the workers is always 
job one and this fight is conditioned by another set of factors.

The collapse of the political middle is nothing new to communists, but 
we faced this phenomenon in only a partial sense, with a host of 
peculiar features [such as?], at the front curve of industrial 
development. We [now] face liquidation of the political middle as the 
transition from one quantitative boundary [expand] of development of the 
system to the next. With each recovery from capitalist crisis the 
political middle, as an economic formation, would expand. The 
representative of the political middle appeared as social democrats, the 
so-called "labor aristocracy," and the various apologists and stool 
pigeons of capital. However, the political middle is a massive economic 
formation at the front curve of industrial development.

A historic collapse of any political/economic formation means that which 
was fundamental to its existence and sustaining its life force has 
broken down, has begun to decay and become polarized [spell this out]; 
and society is compelled to leap to a new basis through which to 
reestablish the broken unity of the productive forces and production 
(social) relations.

Rather than repeat old formulations, old dogmas and orgies of 
ideological profession, let's try and add something new to the 
discussion and outline the historic meaning of the political middle.

Politics of the Past/present

As the US continues to aggressively impose its will on the world stage, 
it must develop and use increasingly sophisticated means to crack down 
at home and further militarize society to guarantee that neither the 
American people [nor anyone else], resist the plans of the bourgeoisie. 
The capitalists must drive down the price of labor power of the American 
workers so [the US corporations] can compete globally. They have to 
crush the growing social response to do this, while maintaining 900 
military bases, two hot wars of imperial aggression, rallying against 
tiny North Korea, keeping an eye on all of South America, trying to 
stabilize the Middle East, pushing to realign continental Africa, and 
then to support its imperial friends and neighbors. They must at all 
cost prevent the growing social movement in America from achieving 
political consciousness as to the cause of their problems and the 
solution. Fascism is the only route for the capitalists to achieve these 
goals [develop why 'the only', and a more precise definition of fascism, 
as opposed to a unique, newly minted form of authoritarianism arising 
our of new conditions].

American communists need a new language to talk about what’s taking 
place and a way to describe our boundaries of development. As the 
political superstructure consolidated in our country, the ruling class 
made sure that there would be neither working-class parties nor 
proportional representation. Their ability to impose such a class 
dictatorship in the name of democracy grew from key particularities of 
American history. One was the availability of farmland as the Native 
Americans were slaughtered and their lands expropriated. The other was 
slavery, which made color more important than class. These factors 
created a broad and stable "political middle" that held the two poles of 
worker and capitalist together. The Republican Party and Democratic 
Party - the twin parties of capital - stabilized on this basis. 
"Republican Party" and "Democratic Party" are the names of the political 
formations in our superstructure, expressing the will of the political 
middle.

For objective reasons all past attempts to break away from the two-party 
system have been in the form of a third party [as opposed to what?]. 
Such parties represented the interests of the economic "middle" and were 
essentially reactionary, despite their radical pronouncements. Has not 
every communist wondered at some point why every attempt at a "Third 
Party" formation consists basically of middle class whites, with the 
noblest of intentions? No disrespect is meant to the Green Party or to 
the Peace and Freedom Party.

The reason resides in the existence of the economic middle, rather than 
dubious concepts about the bribery of the working class based in profits 
extracted from colonial plunder. Look, the WW II expansion was based on 
rebuilding Europe, not the American exploitation of Puerto Rico or the 
direct colonies of American imperialism [well, also built on the 
productivity increas and expansion of .

In the United States, this economic/political middle for historical 
reasons was very large, consisting of small farms, small businesses, 
home ownership, concentration of capital investments here at home [and 
abroad] and so forth. After World War II, a political alliance was 
formed between the organized, (unionized) sector of the working class in 
heavy industry and monopoly capitalism. The union movement is not the 
labor movement, nor necessarily needs to be the voice of the labor 
movement. The labor movement in America is all those who have to sell 
their labor for wages. The most economically depressed section of the 
labor movement remains the soft underbelly of capital, precisely because 
it lacks organizational structures mediating its political relations 
with capital.

This political alliance between organized labor and capital was not just 
an ideological agreement where one read a book and said, "I agree with 
that," but expressed a material unity as the process of capitalist 
production in an expanding economy. Everyone in America of my generation 
understood the goddamn agreement; the agreement was the GI Bill and 
Social security; Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Laws.

Our imperialist bourgeoisie and their spokespersons are practical and 
speak in simple terms: "you work and I will pay you a good wage; medical 
coverage and a pension, with enough left over to send your kids to 
college and you can pay off the mortgage. Everyone will not be paid the 
same or treated equally, but everyone will get a better shot at the good 
life than their parents. And the blacks are not going to stay segregated 
and will take their place, as did others, at the bottom of the 
industrial social order as everyone moves up, including them."

This political alliance between organized labor and capital broadened 
and stabilized the middle. Everyone in America was taught that Henry 
Ford Sr., and automotive production created the modern American middle 
class and most agree with this but never draw political conclusions from 
it. When the autoworkers, steel workers and workers in heavy industry 
led the charge for industrial unionism, many saw the prospect of social 
revolution rather than the crossing of a boundary in the development of 
the industrial system. Today, I understand why I thought like that. I 
could not see the edge of a political and economic boundary and where 
one boundary passes into another. [expand]

For forty-five years the American middle became bigger and stronger and 
so did the unions. The unions peaked before the middle but both are in 
fundamental decay and cannot be restored on the old basis. One thing is 
perfectly clear to me. Those communists who fail to see the transition 
from one boundary to another are like the old communists stuck in the 
era of domination of craft unionism. As long as the old communists did 
not fight against their new comrades promoting industrial unionism, 
there was no problem.

The theoretical and philosophically correct political concept of 
"throwing the main blow at the middle," as a practical strategy and 
approach did not make sense under these conditions. Throwing the main 
political blow at the political middle is strategically correct and 
politically sound; but in an expanding economy, each expansion runs you 
over and renders one's organizational forms sectarian and obsolete, as 
new members rise within the system, and seek new and better employment 
opportunity; and one is reduced to a tiny group now dubbed "professional 
revolutionaries."

In America, we call such a situation "being in the right place at the 
wrong time," or in the case of the "old heads": "Catch 22."

(Note: Where ‘Catch 22’ is not translatable, this means being stuck in a 
maze impossible to escape because there is no outlet; but having a map 
used by others that have escaped the maze, instructing one how to escape 
the maze. To make this analogy complete, the pathways of the maze change 
configuration every few days [without more, this is confusing] so you're 
spending a lifetime wondering why the map does not work. "In a period of 
expansion of the system, at the front of the curve of industrial 
development, nothing worked according to the "blueprint." Y’ all know 
what I am talking about; the Leninist blueprint for political revolution. )

For 45 years, those condemning the two-party system and the flowing of 
individuals and groups into and out of the Democratic Party could rest 
comfortably with the notion of being philosophically sound and 
politically impotent. The political middle could not, was not and cannot 
ever be defeated without political polarization.

It is . . . or rather was, impossible.

Without the possibility of defeating the political middle there is no 
real chance of fighting for the political independence of the working 
class. After all, the workers are not physically connected to the 
bourgeoisie as a class in the political arena. The connection is 
institutionalized as political parties and the institutions of the 
political middle.

Political polarization can only take place if there is something to 
cause it: economic polarization. One is the subjective expression of the 
other. Economic polarization is the result of something changing in the 
economy. The serious revolutionaries had to bide their time, educate 
themselves and those close to them, and participate in the reform 
struggle in such a way as to prepare for the inevitable change, while 
surrendering not one molecule of revolutionary Marxism. For the section 
of communists I come from this meant unconditional support and defense 
of Soviet Power, no matter what its internal political struggle and 
watching political groupings of revolutionaries rise and fall, while 
blaming each other or the next guy, for "us" being insufficiently 
committed to the "cause" or "suffering from one deviation or another," 
that led the workers down the wrong path.

Well, the workers generally take the path open to them as a class, and 
that meant going to work and making a living for oneself and family. At 
any rate, the revolutionary went to work and in the main did well for 
their families. Some to their credit made good investments and are in a 
position to help in the education of the working class full time.

Riddle me this, Batman.

If the objective motion of the working class is the result of 
communists' weakness, in say the CPUSA or the SWP [is it? solely?], then 
how comes this same logic that is expansion of the political middle, 
which has evolved in every single country at the front of the curve of 
industrial development? The back of the curve experienced an expansion 
of the political/economic middle, but not to the same degree as the 
front of the curve, owing to the greater capital investment at the front 
of the curve [and at the back end, how about the prevalent diagnoses of 
the recurrent crises of profitability of capital, and the related 
successful efforts to put the cost on the working class - by 1) 
importing immigrant wage-earners, 2) crushing worker organizations, 3) 
exporting production, 4) increasing productivity without benefiting the 
working class, and 4) pushing the credit system: credit cards, and 
subprime mortgages, and the securities investments associated with 
pension plans?]

The election of Obama is rapidly clarifying the new features of this era 
and placing the issue of political fascism on the table. Interestingly, 
a certain political group is advocating that communists focus all their 
energy into attacking the "far right," rather than the political middle 
. . . as it collapses, because their political orientation is of the 
last period and they deeply feel that political policy can restore the 
"economic middle" or an old historical formation shattered by the 
revolution in the productive forces.

Let us visualize the process.

The Republican Party is in the process of fundamental collapse as the 
result of a huge section of the economic/political middle detaching 
itself from Republican Party politics. The Democratic Party is filling 
the electoral void at the highest reaches of the electoral system. This 
means the time is ripe for the push for a working class party and 
working class politics. Political America as its exists and is evolving 
on May 28, 2009 is radically different from political America as it 
existed in September 2008. The difference is the election of Obama 
[exemplified by}.

Let's attack this process from the standpoint of the "lesser of two 
evil" body politics. Lesser of two evils means more than electing the 
lesser evil. Lesser of two evils implied that a Third Party or Workers 
party or a Nader would automatically mean the most fascistic of the 
party would be elected because the voting section of the working class 
was evenly split.

So went the theory.

What happens when the voting section of the working class proves by its 
actions it is not evenly split between the two parties? The shift of the 
voting section of the working class to the Obama campaign was so massive 
that organizing outside of and through the Democratic Party is the right 
thing to do at the right time. This does not require splitting the 
Democratic Party or somehow trying to wreck it, because the workers are 
poised to defect anyway, and these workers along with millions of 
non-voters can be won to the cause of communism in their own self-interest.

Heck, two million votes for a class party of labor would galvanize America.

Finally, a section of the Democratic Party is more than capable and 
willing to effect a transition to political fascism if there is no 
independent action of the workers. To concentrate one's line of fire 
against the "far right" guarantees the political victory of fascism in 
America [expand a bit].

The path through the political middle means winning these workers over 
to their own spontaneous communist demands. If you need health care or 
unemployment checks that is a need for communism or some form of 
socialism and every person in America pretty well understands this right 
now today. If you need help with your phone bill - get a magic jack, but 
for your mortgage payment you need some kind of communism or socialism 
or however you understand the government being on the side of the 
working class and not the speculators of finance capital. What the 
workers do not understand is the cause of their economic decay and its 
solution. We have to teach them this story and lessons through political 
forums, speeches, books, literature of all kinds, etc. [insofar as 
possible, directly and temporally immediately related to their 
individual and especially common experiences]

The instant Obama was inaugurated, things changed.

In my opinion the election of Barack Obama - Mr. Cool, brings to a 
practical end a political juncture of history that historically actually 
ended in 1978, from my point of view. When the Communist Labor Party and 
the SWP ran independent candidates in the state of Michigan - openly 
communist and socialist rather than Third Party formations, a historical 
period ended and the politics of the past period became historically 
obsolete. Well, all communists eventually learn, as did I, the vast 
difference between social and political phenomena being rendered 
historically obsolete as opposed to practically obsolete. What stood in 
our way was the economic strength and political stability of "the 
political middle" and we hit the wall of "revolutionary assertion."

The good part is that it only took 30 years to figure out the difference.

Generally, the period of 1976/1978 is considered the high point of 
working class insurgence and the 1979 collapse of Chrysler became an 
index, as the beginning of the long lull in the movement. Various 
segments of the working class would push forward, based on the new Civil 
Rights legislation, to secure expanded political liberties, but the lull 
had set in. These so-called identity movements kept open the pathway and 
channels of our political liberties, working through and pushing the 
boundaries of Constitutional liberties.

I could just kick myself in the fat part of my behind for having spoken 
despairingly about the "identity movements’ and wanting "this phase of 
struggle to end" so we could get on "with the real fight" or the "real 
working class movement."

At any rate it is going to be impossible as the struggle evolves for an 
economic/political formation to remain anti-fascist and anti/communist, 
because communism as an economic movement is the spontaneous movement of 
labor for socially necessary means of life.

If nothing else, the so-called "far right" has explained this to all of 
America. "You are demanding government aid, and that is socialism and 
bad for you."

Thus far, the general response of the American workers being charged 
with having socialistic cravings has been "so what!"

"So what," ain't that an old Miles Davis tune?

WL.

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