On Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 02:20 PM, Charles Keener wrote: > > The first is that in the 1920s, there was a strong leftist movement > represented by Communists and social democrats. Yes, they quarrelled and > obstructed each other. But they were strong and popular. Today, no such > movement exists.
As I recall, Louis Proyect used to argue that fascism was not really possible in our time because of the absence of a strong leftist movment as had been the case in the 1920s and 1930s when the twentieth century fascist movements rose to power. Louis basically repeated Trotsky's argument that fascism was a backlash against the workers movement. But that is precisely what we don't have today, and yet we still have movements that look a lot like the fascist movements of the last century. How is that to be explained? To be sure, today's far-right movements differ from those of the last century in certain important respects. The fascist movements of the last century were not necessarily opposed to the welfare state as such. Germany, after all, had a welfare state since the days of Bismarck. The Nazis did not seek to overturn it but instead insisted that social benefits were to go to certain favored groups, namely to "Aryans" who were not political dissidents and who were willing to toe the line under National Socialism. Trumpism, on the other hand, is supported by currents that are quite hostile towards the welfare state. We may well see under the incoming Trump Administration renewed efforts at privatizing Medicare and social security. To be sure this isn't necessarily true for all of today's right-right movements. In eastern Europe, in Hungary, Orban gained much traction by promising to preserve the social safety net that had been originally created under the Communist regime, which was under threat by neoliberalism. The fact that the center-left parties, including the ex-Communists, had largely bought into neoliberalism, alienated the working class and created a vacuum that could be filled by the far-right. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33653): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33653 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109651081/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
