Brad wrote:
>... Observers from George Orwell to Hannah Arendt found the similarities
>of political practice between Nazis and Stalinists, communists and
>fascists, to be remarkable. Zinoviev and Kamenev's last words may have
>been that they were victims of a fascist coup.
>
>Orwell, Arendt, Zinoviev, Kamenev--that's pretty good company to be in...
I don't know enough about Arendt to comment. I'd say Orwell is fine, except
that in his last year or so he finked to the secret police (perhaps because
he was depressed at the failure of revolution after WW 2 and knew he was
going to die soon, of tuberculosis). The fact that he was used as a weapon
in the Cold War (complete with editing out the pro-socialist content in the
introduction to _1984_) isn't his fault. I'm surprised, however, that Brad
cites Zinoviev and Kamenev, since they were Bolsheviks. If Brad is
consistent with his fascism = communism line (which just a few hours
earlier was fascism = socialism, but he changed it), he should reject their
testimony. He should also reject Orwell, who supported the communist POUM
in the Spanish Civil War. They're all communists/fascists, whose testimony
should be totally worthless from a liberal point of view -- unless one
stoops to simply quoting the parts that are convenient to one's
preconceived vision, something Brad would never do.
The fact is that the there are lots of similarities between top-down
bureaucratic organizations, the worst of the communists (Stalinists, Pol
Pot) and the worst of the capitalists (fascists, Nazis). Sometimes they
ally with each other, as with the Hitler-Stalin pact. Of course, this
behavior is not unique to Stalin. It should be mentioned that one reason
why Hitler got so far was that many powerful people in the "western
democracies" thought that tacitly allying with Hitler against Stalin was a
good idea. (That's the basis of English "neutrality" in the Spanish Civil
War and Chamberlain's appeasement policy at Munich, BTW.) Though I am not
sympathetic to Stalin, I can almost see the point of the Hitler-Stalin
pact in terms of national defense (a motive which covers a multitude of
sins). It's not a policy that worked, however.
(Alliances between the US government and fascists didn't end with WW 2, of
course. The US has since been perfectly willing to ally with fascists like
Pinochet, whereas US-based TNCs ally with the junta in Burma (a.k.a.
Myanmar). The US friends at the IMF encourages authoritarian governments
(often called "democratic") to impose their anti-working-class policies.)
We should also stress that the worst behavior does not simply fall from the
sky. Stalin didn't decide one fine morning that he was a despot and then
impose his "solution" on Russia. Rather, the rise of Stalin and people like
him to power was encouraged by the decline of the Russian Revolution after
1917, which in turn was encouraged by a serious Civil War and imperialist
invasions. A chaotic situation encouraged an authoritarian government. The
problems of Russia's poverty (something that preceded 1917), the need for
economic development, and the problems arising from the NEP meant that
Stalin-type "solutions" (forced collectivization, the effort to eliminate
the kulaks as a class, rapid industrialization) became increasingly popular
with the powers that were. National development replaced the Bolshevik
goals, so as Isaac Deutscher points out, a lot of _Mensheviks_ joined the
rising Stalinist movement. Not only did the socioeconomic situation limit
and shape the kind of government that the USSR had, but it shaped the
people, too. I'm sure that even Stalin was more "Stalinist" in 1935, for
example, than in 1915.
Similarly, Hitler's policies were encouraged by the collapse of the German
economy after 1929 and the long-lasting effects of the earlier
hyperinflation and the way that the victorious allies ran roughshod over
Germany at Versailles. It's not simply that Hitler was a horrible person.
Social forces were necessary to make his ideas popular enough that he could
take power. One of these was the German capitalists, who knew that Hitler
would preserve capitalism whereas the communists wouldn't. They turned out
to be right.
We've been lucky here in the US to live in one of the richest and most
powerful countries in the world, where the authoritarians have usually not
been in power enough to use state force against the working class and its
organizations (with the notable exception of the Wilson-Palmer and
Truman-McCarthy periods). Unfortunately, the authoritarians here have
typically used their power against the working people of _other_ countries,
as with the war against Vietnam or the recent adventure in the former
Yugoslavia. Since the white "middle class" is relatively well organized,
the authoritarians also aim their violence at the folks with the least
political power within the US, such as Blacks in the ghettos or Indians on
the reservations. This can be seen, for example, in President Clinton's
hearty endorsement of the "war against drugs" and its disproportionate
punishment for "crack" cocaine.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
