[PEN-L:7628] Re: "social fascism"

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 06/03/99 11:33AM >>>
At 10:01 AM 6/3/99 -0400, Charles wrote:
>This is social fascism, brutalization through economic policy as deadly as
>war in the long run.

Charles, please _don't_ use this terminology ("social fascism"). It has a
long and bad history: as far as I can tell, it was first used by the
Communist Party of Germany to describe the German Social Democratic Party
during the 1920s -- meaning that the latter were as bad as Mussolini. As
often pointed out, this rhetoric -- and similar "third period" nonsense --
when put into practice prevented an alliance that could have prevented or
at least slowed the rise of Hitler, who was much much worse than Mussolini
(who seems pretty respectable compared to many or most US allies outside of
rich countries today). (It is almost never pointed out that similar
rhetoric by the social democrats (i.e., the "totalitarian" theory that
conflates the Communist Party with the Nazis), when put into practice often
prevented similar alliances that could have strengthened the social
democrats' own program.)

(((((((((((

Charles: As far as I can tell, the term "democracy" has a long and worse history than "social fascist", but I am not about to let some abusers of the term "democracy" make me stop using it.

By your test of usage, I would have to ask you to  stop using half the political words in your vocabulary. Believe me, I can give you  historical horror stories of many of the words and phrases you use. So, lets not get into such a silencing semantic game.

"Social fascist" is a good way to describe this IMF policy and the policy of the Governor of Michigan, Engler, for example, which is not openly brutal, but is covertly and indirectly brutal.

(((((((((((((((((

We need some other phrase for the structural violence that is embodied in
the normal workings of capitalism, imposing poverty, starvation, and even
death on the masses (unless successfully they fight back). Fascism plays a
role, in creating the order needed to allow capitalism to flourish (with
Pinochet being the classic case). But typically, once order is restored,
this fascism fades into the backgroud to merge with the normal coercive
organization of the state. Once there, commodity fetishism (the illusions
created by capitalist competition) hides the normal coercion inherent in
capitalism. You don't need Mussolini to order a bunch of deaths (or Clinton
to order strategic bombing). Rather, a financial crisis or the central bank
hikes interest rates, raising the reserve army of labor, raising people's
debt loads, etc., driving many toward penury. Falling profit rates also
have this kind of result, as economic crises are "solved" on workers' backs.

(((((((((((

Charles: Yes, capitalism in non-fascist form does cause premature deaths on a holocaustic scale.

As Lenin argued, the preferred form of rule of capital is the bourgeois democratic-republic. Fascism arose as a specific desparate response to the emergency crisis of capitalism in the early twentieth century. The current Reaganite regime is not open terrorist rule, as with actual fascism, but it is an indirect terrorist regime that is well captured in the phrase
"social fascist", as it is in the form of welfare cuts, suppression of labor rights , rights of the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class, massive expansion of the prison industrial complex so as to creep up on concentration camps ,all around SOCIAL rather than naked police/political terror. The term "social fascism" fits this well, despite historical misuses. The danger of the social fascism itself is much greater than some repetition of an obscure misuse by the German Communist Party , the extent of which error I cannot sign onto your version of without looking at that specific history. I know enough of Germany in the 20's and 30's to know that many critiques of the German Communist Party, I don't fully agree with.

For example, Luxembourg and Liebkneckt were assasinated by SOCIAL DEMOCRATS. Thus, there was some "social" fascism in the recent history of that party. As somebody mentioned again, Mussolini had been in the Socialist Party. It was not at all clear that "socialists" and "social democrats" could not transform into fascists in that period.  The Nazis were demogogically "Socialists" as Ron Hay mentioned recently on a related thread. The point is hindsight on what the "social fascists" were in the 1920's misleads about the acuity of the German CP assessment of the situtation.

Thus, I don't sign on fully to as far as you can tell on this.

Charles Brown