>>> Jim heartfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/16/99 04:50PM >>>
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Charles Brown
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Chas.: To be fully fascist, a state must be an agent of imperialism. The U.S. is
>not fascist in its domestic regime, but it has had a fascist colonial system for
>50 years. That is , it has open terrorist rule in many of its neo-colonies.
Sorry, run that one by me again...
>To be fully fascist, a state must be an agent of imperialism.
Jim H.:
So virtually every state currently constituted is fascist, I take it?
(((((((((((((
Charles: This is simple. To say it another way, there are no states that are not
agents of imperialism that are fascist, because the definition of fascism includes
that it is the open terrorist STATE rule of imperialists. But it does not follow in
the strictly formal logical sense from my saying that all fascist states are agents of
imperialism that all states that are agents of imperialism are fascist states. That's
elementary formal logic. So, no your implication that what I said implies that
"virtually every state currently constituted is fascist" is a logical error on your
part.
Not all of the U.S. neo-colonial states are fascist, but many are. They constitute a
different sort of fascist system than that of Italy or Germany, the classical forms of
fascism, so to speak. Things change. That's dialectics.
Charles Brown
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Or
perhaps you think there is some state somewhere that is not an agent of
imperialism? I see the Japanese state, and the British, and the Turkish,
and the Rwandan all acting to defend the interests of imperialism. Are
they then fascist? Hardly (though the Rwandan and the Turkish might be
said to be military dictatorships).
>Jim:
>But you really trivialise the experience of fascism, of the
>organisational liquidation of the working class organisations and the
>mobilisation of a MASS petit-bourgeois reaction, when you toss the word
>around like it was an epithet.
>
>Chas.: I am not in the LEAST trivializing the term fascism. You don't seem to
>have a precise definition of it. The first and foremost CLASS element of fascism
>is its connection to imperialism or state-monopoly capitalism's financial
>oligarchy. The mobilization of a mass of petit-bourgeoisie is a secondary class
>element. The petit bourgeois are duped puppets in fascism.
What defined the difference between the two Fascist states in the inter-
war period and the bourgeois democracies. Both state forms were agents
of imperialism. But in Italy and Germany the Fascist parties mobilised a
petit bourgeois, mass movement to crush the independent organisations of
the working class, on behalf of imperialism. That was what distinguished
these states as fascist. The _class_ character of these states was
precisely that they had liquidated the working class movement through
the mobilisation of mass reaction.
>Chas.: Agreed. And my usage is derived directly from the historical experience
>of the most effective anti-fascists,led by Dimitrov - "open terrorist rule of
>the most reactionary, most chauvinist, most militarist sector of the financial
>oligarchy" I have the proper and historically concrete usage. You don't.
Dimitrov? His credentials on understanding Fascism are hardly sound.
Indeed he seems to have considered support for the reformist parties as
'social fascism': 'By its role of agent and pace-maker of social fascism
among civil servants, it [he means the SPD] does great harm and the
struggle against it must be continued with unabated energy'. Quoted in
Fascism in Germany, Robert Black, p530.
Later on there were attempts to suggest that Dimitrov was not a part of
the general CI view that the greatest threat of fascism came from
reformist workers, but as we can see any differences he had with the
leadership of the KPD were subordinate to his inability to distinguish
between reformism and fascism. Little wonder then that his definition of
fascism precisely leaves out the class character of the fascist
movements (petit bourgeois, not working class) and of the fascist states
(premised not just upon authoritarian rule, but on the liquidation of
the working class movement.)
Chas' definition is no definition at all. He just means that fascism one
end of a continuum of reactionary politics. But he fails to identify
what is the differentia specifica of Fascism, that it mobilises a mass,
petit bourgeois movement to liquidate working class organisations. No
wonder he sees fascism at work in the House of Congress, and no doubt in
the AFL-CIO too.
--
Jim heartfield
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