[PEN-L:7728] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "social fascism"

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

>
> 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? <<
>

As capitalist culture develops, it is no longer necessary to have 20 people in a
smoky room to have a conspiracy.  Conspiracies are now coalition of interests
organized on multilevel through recognized theories that if accepted,
predetermine interpretations and responses.  So international economics as a
science is a conspiracy within a conspiracy.  The business bankruptcy regime to
escape from labor contracts and the incestuous credit markets are conspiracies.
The notion of the unseen hand does not required the absence of the hand, only
that it be  "unseen".  Even the US calls for a "level playing field" implying
conspiratorial rigging of global markets.  Then there is systemic conspiracy,
unspoken but very real, such as market herd instinct, and technical analysis
which is essentially the science of conspiratorial behavior in fiancial markets.
Conspiracy is not necessarily evil by itself, it is merely an effectuating
devise.  It can be used, like all devices, for both positive and negative
purposes.  However, since conspiracy, to be effective, requires power, and since
power in history has always been the prerogative of the corrupt and exploitative,
conspiracies are generally reactionary.  Their prime function is to circumvent
the very rules that the system itself has declared but not will to follow.

> 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.

Capitalism's concentration camps are the Levitt Towns and similar suburbs and the
"job" in the corporate system.  The plants of GM are frightenly similar to the
network of concentration camps, albeit more outwardly humane, but not less
violent.  Harlem is an occupied zone.

> 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.

That is only partly true.  There is another militia growing as fast in the
white-collar crime sector.  Dollar for dollar, financial crime dwarfs petty
crimes.  In the the decade of 1980s, financial crimes, S&L crisis, Milkin,
Boesky, Soloman, etc, etc, adds up to billions which the tax payer footed the
bill.  But note that most of the convicted perpetrators were of poor and
disadavantage and ethnic backgounds.  Can we draw some conclusion?

> 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.
>

That is a very good and important point.  The faux targets were set up precisely
to deflect aim from the system.

>
> >"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 empireand 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!