Raghu writes:
On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Marv Gandall <[email protected]>
wrote:
If this crucial distinction between fascism and communism, between right
and
left, is not quite clear to David and Raghu, it was crystal clear to the
big
industrialists, financiers, and landowners in those societies, whose
existence turned on it.
I do understand this difference. But David and other libertarians are
understandably unhappy to be classified as "capitalist" along with the
extreme right i.e. the Fascists just because they happen to agree on
property rights issues. For all their flaws, it is also true that
libertarian ideologues have often been far more progressive on many
social issues (e.g. dealing with racial, gender discrimination, civil
rights etc) than institutions like trade unions. It is intellectually
dishonest and unfair to group libertarians and fascists together in
the name of a rigid left-right classification, and I think David is
quite right in challenging that.
=======================================
There is a further distinction, of course, to be drawn at the level of the
political system - between parliamentary or "bourgeois" democracies and
"totalitarian" fascist systems which suppress the democratic rights
associated with the former, including the right to form competing political
parties. But the mode of production in both cases is capitalist, based on
private ownership and wage labour.
Libertarians, social democrats, liberals, and most self-described
conservatives defend multi-party political systems and the full range of
democratic rights, and many fought and would actively fight fascism.
FWIW, I admire David's spirited and open approach to these debates, and
look forward to his contributions, as I'm sure we all do.
Whether libertarians, as you claim, have been more progressive on social
issues than the trade unions is another discussion.
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