We’ve been over this many times, Tony. Marx wrote in a period corresponding to Napoleon’s rule when the working class was perceived as revolutionary and a threat to the property and class rule of the big bourgeoisie. In the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, it was prepared to abandon the norms and institutions of bourgeois democracy and transfer power to an emperor even at the expense of its own freedom of speech and assembly expressed through its independent media, parties, and legislature. The same phenomenon occurred during the interwar years of the last century in the wake of the Russian Revolution and mass appeal of Communism when the German, Italian, and Spanish ruling classes willingly subordinated themselves politically to fascism.
There is no such threat to private property today, and the bourgeoisie remains confident in its ability to coopt and, if necessary, to repress dissent through its existing institutions. It is still not clear to me that we are in agreement that a lack of confidence and abandonment of its institutions by the bourgeoisie fearing a revolutionary threat from below was the defining characteristic of both Bonapartism and fascism. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43314): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43314 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120796980/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
