[PEN-L:7714] Re: Re: Re: Re: "social fascism"

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles writes: >I don't agree that "fascism" has lost value from overuse.
I would say it is underused and misapplied.<

I guess we have to agree to disagree on that, but I'll summarize my
position: using the word "fascism" too much can be like referring to a
man's disrespectful and unwanted touching of a woman on a date as a form of
"rape." It devalues the word.

I wrote: >>What does calling the Governor of Michigan (Engler?) a "fascist"
say except that we don't like him?<<

Charles: >That's "social fascist". You are using "fascist" loosely and not
the way I use it (  I specifically all Engler a "social fascist" because he
is not a full fascist) . Then you use your loose usage ("rhetoric" ?) as a
basis for saying all usage of these words is loose and so we shouldn't use
them.<

I don't see how "social fascist" is somehow less full, somehow milder than
"fascist." To make it milder, why not call the bastard a "semi-fascist"?
(Going down this road, we could use Gore Vidal's insult of William F.
Buckley Jr., "pro crypto-Nazi." But that would be worse, since Nazism is
even worse than fascism and overuse of the term devalues it, as with the
US/NATO comparison of Milosevic to Hitler.)

Actually, my impression (which could be wrong) is that Engler is a
standard, garden variety, neo-liberal. Wouldn't it be great if
"neo-liberal" attained the negative connotations of "fascist" in peoples'
minds? I think that's where we should go. Even better, since "neo-liberal"
is jargon that few outside of the left use, we need to convince people that
whatever Engler calls himself ("Republican"? "Democrat"?) should have
really bad connotations.

I wrote: >>(b) Do you think that the "financial oligarchy" (which I think
could be described in less hackneyed terms) <<

Charles: >If we start calling terms hackneyed, the impliedly fresh
vocabulary that gets substituted for terms like "financial oligarchy" will
win the hackneyed prize over "imperialism", "monopoly capital" , "financial
oligarchy".  All of Doug Henwood's work that I have seen confirms that
there is a huge financial oligarchy running the global economy.
"Wallstreet" is a financial oligarchy. Debt is the leash system of the
whole thing. Financial  Oligarchy is so fresh and unhackneyed it isn't even
funny. A hedge fund is a  form of the financial oligarchy's organization.
What a perfect description of it.<

The problem with "financial oligarchy" is not that it's hackneyed as much
as it suggests a conspiracy. It ignores a central problem of the rule of
finance capital these days, i.e., competition and "invisible hand"
automatic operations. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy: speculators
suddenly begin to believe a country's finance minister might do something
mild that goes against the ruling financial orthodoxy (like a mild Tobin
Tax). So they all panic, like a herd of cattle, pulling their funds out of
the country, imposing a financial crisis. Or they impose a crisis on Brazil
because of things that happen in Russia.

Now there are oligarchic elements to finance capital: the Federal Reserve,
the IMF, the big banks, Hedge Funds, etc. all are pretty clubby, sharing a
common culture and a common ideology (the financial orthodoxy referred to
above). But to simply refer to the oligarchy without the competition/market
dimension of it is to provide an incomplete picture.

I asked if the "financial orthodoxy" >>is likely to become desperate in the
near future? <<

Charles: >The periodic crisis is a permanent feature of capitalism. Despite
the hype, the business cycle has not been "cured". Eventually, there will
be economic crisis in the U.S. too. That would be a potential time of
desparation for the U.S. ruling class. They prepare for it. The prison
system is being expanded in case they have to go to full concentration
camps. The storm troopers are in PROTO form in the various and sundry
rightwing fascistic fringe groups and militias.<

I agree that economic crises are inevitable under capitalism. But an
economic crisis isn't a social crisis for capitalism unless there's a big
opposition. Without the social crisis, there's no need for concentration
camps. Mussolini was responding to a social crisis in Italy, while Hitler
responded to one in Germany. If people are instead sucking opiates and
watching TV, there's no social crisis of the sort that threatens capital's
rule.

The above (and Charles' previous message) seems a bit paranoid, too. It
makes it sound as if the "financial orthodoxy" cultivated the militias etc.
(though my impression might be wrong). I would say instead that the failure
of US capitalist growth to give to many white male younger workers the same
standard of living that their fathers had received encouraged a bitterness
and resentment (along with their bitterness that women and "minorities" are
getting any respect at all) that spawned the militias and the like. In
other words, it's the "economic crisis" (another overused phrase) that
spawned the militia, rather than their genesis being orchestrated from above.

Charles: >The word "fascist" is like the word "imperialism" or the term
"military-industrial complex" . It comes from "them".  The bourgeoisie's
boy Mussolini invented the term "fascism".  Who is it , Hobson, from whom
Lenin got "imperialism". The "military-industrial complex" was a concept
from the inside given us by an insider Eisenhower.  They know their own
system better than we do.<

Of course there does exist an elite, or competing elites, that are most
powerful decision-makers in the imperialist system and the
military-industrial complex. But to focus on elites alone is to miss the
organization structures of these two institutions, missing the fact that
the elites "make history, but not exactly as they please." These are social
institutions with internal contradictions.

One of Lenin's big theoretical contributions (and I'm not a Leninist) is
that he argued that imperialism is a system rather than merely a policy.
That's an insight to think about.

>"Fasces" are the bundle of rods in the SPQR Roman symbol that Brad D
quoted (Senatus Populisque Romanus; The enate and the Roman People).  The
Roman culture is an ancestor of all Western culture. So "fascism" is a good
general statement of the tendency of the modern West to go to a
barbarically cruel state as the Romans had.<

I think that illuminating the similarities between the Roman empire and the
US empire would be more useful than labelling either "fascist."

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground troops make things worse. US/NATO out
of Serbia!