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Waistline2 wrote: "Fascism - bourgeois rule, seeks destruction of the bourgeois democratic republic based on preserving new forms private property and private wealth as a social power. .." So..."Fascism" exists as all forms of rule by the bourgeoisie or just one particular one. This statement seems to see "Fascism" entirely as a distinct entity. My point to Michael, as yet unanswered, is why he even uses this term at all? What IS the point of using it? It's entirely an emotional term without political content OR context (Waistline at least makes an attempt to historically contextualize it but loses it in his own verbiage). Like Louis I use the historical Marxist use of the term, where fascism, above all, is "reaction" and doesn't exist, really, as an independent ideological expression capable of going this way or that. It doesn't. Fascism, real fascism, is not something that capitalism 'natural' aspires too but is 'last resort'. You don't turn around or wake up and say "Hey, we now live under fascism". Doesn't happen like that. I think this is the real issue here. Obviously the US is not fascist, in fact it's Liberal Democratic in the most exacting definition of THOSE terms and any repression or 'fascist like' expressions by the State are in THAT tradition and not the fascist one. With accusations of fascism thrown about, it of course raises the issue of what is NOT fascist? The old CP line was like that, as if when capitalists repressed communists in the US, this was fascist and only if it weren't so then the gov't is 'progressive'. The level of the class struggle and the *way* in which the US capitalist state is run, there would be no apparent reason to head toward fascism, at all. Unions have never been weaker, the left never smaller and un-influential as a part of society and aside from the capitalists own crisis, nothing in the US threatens their rule. Capitalism is most profitable with various forms of bourgeois democratic rights in effect. Fascism is remarkably unprofitable. It is only used to stamp out the workers movement not because "it can" but because such a movement, however expressed, is a threat to the *rule* and *power* of the capitalists. So there no 'degree' of fascism in the US, it's liberal democracy at work, which includes a genocidal foreign policy based on globalized capital investment and trade, war and austerity abroad; de-regulation, privatization, racism at home. This is not fascism folks, it's your every day, liberal inspired capitalist democracy and THIS is what needs to be opposed, not the wlly-nilly use of words like "Fascism" to describe liberal US democracy in crisis. David ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
