> Michael Meeropol wrote: >>> I wonder how many Penners have thought about whether fascism is a clear and >>> present danger.
Doug Henwood: >> Who needs fascism when there's no left? me: > In addition, there are other really obnoxious kinds of capitalism > besides fascism. For working-class people and the members of the > less-privileged ethnic minority groups, free market capitalism is > pretty bad at present -- even without jack-booted thugs at every > street corner and martial music played over all loudspeakers. For > many, the trend these days seems toward debt peonage much more than > toward fascism. CB: > Since history doesn't repeat itself, an obnoxious and extreme > right-wing form of capitalism may not be in response to a strong left > and working class movement as it was in the last historical > occurrence, but in response to a different combination of factors. I didn't say or imply that an obnoxious/right-wing form of capitalism had to be a response to a strong left. Rather, it's _fascism_ alone (as most historians and Marxists use that term) that is a response to a strong left or working-class movement. In fact, the kind of debt peonage that people in the US seem to be marching toward is a result of the left and working class movements being _too weak_, not too strong (from a capitalist perspective). Different historical conditions -- in this cases, different degrees of organization, consciousness, and power of the working-class and left movements -- lead to different results.[*] (What I am saying is analogous to the (abstract version of the) crisis theory I push: if labor is "too strong" it causes a qualitatively different kind of economic crisis than the case where labor is "too weak.") > On the other hand, the immigration reform movement is a strong left > and working class movement today that contributes to the Tea Party's > fascistic and White suprmacist characteristics. Homeland Security is a > new authoritarian feature of the US system which was started in > response to "terrorism". The "terrorist threat" is another clear and > present and new basis for rationalizing establishing new right-wing > structures in America. 1) Since when is the immigration reform movement a "strong left and working class movement"? Bush #2 represented the strongest force for immigration reform and he's no longer in office. BHO isn't pushing immigration reform at all. I'd say that the Teabaggers' white supremacist attitudes are instead a result of the recession and financial crisis (which spurred the search for scapegoats). 2) what I object to is not the word "authoritarian" to refer to Homeland Security but instead the use -- and over-use -- of the word "fascism." "Fight the fascists" is a cool advertising slogan that justify all sorts of fuzzy thinking and alliances with (or uncritical attitudes toward) reactionaries of other sorts. Usually, it's used in the US to justify unthinking alliance with (or subordination to) with the Democratic Party. > Note that under Nazism most of the German population ( "a superior > race of people") was not subject to fascist oppression. It was certain > minorities who were so oppressed. I beg to differ. I haven't read Daniel Goldhagen's _Hitler's Willing Executioners_, but my reading of history does not fit the idea that the majority of Germans supported Hitler after he took power. (Even before that, he became Chancellor more because of coalition-building with right-wingers of non-Nazi sorts.) It wasn't just that Social Democrats, Communists, Jews, the Roma, independent leftists, and the mentally or physically disabled who were incarcerated and killed. Women were forced into subordinate roles. Even the "Aryan" males of a reactionary bent had to go along with a heavily-regimented and authoritarian society that dragged large numbers of them into an extremely bloody war. My impression is that those folks supported Nazism thinking that it would provide "jobs, jobs, jobs" and didn't know what they were in for. The kind of support they gave the Nazis was more the passive support you see from people who are mere cogs in a machine: they support the system because maybe they can avoid punishment and maybe they can get _something_ out of it, but they are isolated and scared. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. [*] when working-class power is "just right" (within the context set by a capitalist class society), we see social democracy. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
