Re: [Pen-l] Socialism Gaining Ground in America

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
What is missing from JD's commentary and critical remarks to CB here  
is not just a mass movement but the militarism that comes out of major  
world wars at that time.  The masses of men who had been in the war  
and that experience shaped 'fascism'.  Combining as it were theories  
of state and capitalism.  You can not have fascism without the  
militarism.  And nation states can't make armies like that anymore for  
interstate settlements.  Civil wars can completely militarize  
societies, Iraq being an example, but the broad general mobilization  
of multiple states with tens a millions of massed soldiers is  
impossible given the nature of weapons of MASS destruction.  This then  
creates nations who internally have no experience with for example the  
meat grinder of trench warfare mentality in Europe.  Simply send men  
in waves to death to exhaust the other side.  Which inculcates an  
attitude to how death is understood in relation to normal 'male' life  
in the army.  And 'bleeds' into civil life and everyone's evaluation  
of the nature of life and death meaning.

Working class movements may arm themselves, but come from a basically  
non-violent experience in civil life.  In which individual violence is  
condemned in ways that made no sense in the trenches.  Mass murderers  
in the trenches (sergeant York) are glorious heroes, mass murderers at  
college campuses are social outcasts and enemies of society.

These sorts of changes in how people feel are real and not easily  
changed.  Fascism as such is never going to return.  Massed armies  
can't be used effectively when WMD exist.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
On Apr 14, 2009, at 6:41 AM, Jim Devine wrote:

> It's also possible to go down the road toward fascism, just as it's
> possible to go up the road away from it.

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