Stan Goff on fascism/ process logic of a reactionary bourgeois democracy

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        From: Marvin
Charles, let's keep perspective here. We're arguing over a word not a
program, and since I know we agree about Iraq, Israel, the Patriot Act,
Katrina, social spending cuts, and just about anything else you could name,
I'm not sure how much value there is in pounding away at each other.

^^^
CB: We get sidetracked into the arguments over the word  by and large by
those who try to stop some of us from using the word. Most of my
argumentation over the word is in response to those who make a big thing
about how important it is not to use it.

I guess we should just continue using it ,and ignore the naysayers.

^^^^^^^

Whether we choose to call the Bush administration "reactionary",
"neo-conservative", "proto-fascist" or outright "fascist", we all oppose its
policies equally strongly, and all else is secondary and not worth getting
too steamed over.


If we were at the head of mass socialist parties, as our political forebears
once were, this kind of precision in political analysis would be crucial
because it would influence our choice of allies and how strongly to present
our demands, and consequently the outcome of the social conflicts we were
engaged in. For example, Lenin had to know when to ally with the Mensheviks
against the Kornilov threat and when to break with them; the fate of the
Russian Revolution depended on it. Same problem confronted the left in the
30s in dealing with the rise of fascism in Germany and Spain. But we don't
have this responsibility anymore, so the consequences of any confusion, mine
or yours, are mostly academic.

^^^^^^
CB: Well, sort of , except that we really do have to proceed here "as if"
what we say might have some impact on real events. The argument over the
term "fascistic" is an argument over what our rhetoric should be in order to
impact mass action, somehow.  Of course, what we say here may ( probably ?)
won't matter, but it might.

At certain points, the Bolsheviks were not really a mass party,no ? I don't
think it was a mass party when the tendency distinguished itself from
Menshevism. Lenin proceeded as if it would one day be one.

^^^^^

The discussion has been interesting, but I've exhausted whatever I had to
say.

^^^^
CB:  Yes, I'll just continue using "fascist", "fascistic" etc. and ignore
the "mosquitos".