* From: Michael Perelman Sound familier? Robert O. Paxton. 2005. The Anatomy of Fascism (NY: Vintage). 218: "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalism militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." -- Michael Perelman
^^^^^^ CB: Yes, significant similarities. The Reaganite dismantling of the New Deal constitutes economic fascism, a mon avis. Better term than "social fascism". The premature deaths and morbidity of tens of millions , and imprisonment of in the U.S. system, including the drug "crime" camps, is forseeable, and thereby intentional on the part of governmental officials who have dismantled the welfare/collective bargaining system to the extent that they have. We find the U.S. power structure "Guilty" of economic fascist policies, aimed at keeping the U.S. proletariat off of its path, by creating mass poverty, with resultant increased disease, insanity, alcoholism, spousal abuse, suicide, tragedy, working class on working class crime, and premature death in the proletarian population. The wars on Iraq for 15 years, and other U.S. crimes against peace, constitute fascism, straight up, tout court. The Nazis executed based on war crimes tribunal verdicts were convicted of crimes against peace or illegal wars of the type the U.S. has engaged for a long while now. The U.S. is fully fascist from the standpoint of prosecuting illegal wars. As these are imperialist wars, they begin to meet Trotsky and Gramsci's criteria of "the activity which the bourgeois class carries out to halt the proletarian class on its path," The post WWII U.S. is literally past master at fascist war in this respect, as the wars against Korea, Viet Nam, Dominica, Nicaragua, Angola, etc., were most directly and clearly to halt leading proletarian classes on their paths. Although, the Iraqi proletariat may not have been "on its path" to the satisfaction of some, nonetheless, the U.S. wars on Iraq , etc. are aimed to keep the proletariat of the region from even thinking about getting on its path. Thus, it is fascistically preemptive; we might say more fascist than previous fascist wars. Surely, we don't think the U.S. aggression against Iraq is about anything but international class struggle , and keeping proletariats everywhere off their paths ? Anyway, illegal , aggressive war is a major facet of fascism. Fascism is not just defined by "domestic" policy , the actions of a national bourgeoisie keeping its "own" proletariat off its path. An essential characteristic of Nazi fascism was its wars against proletarian interests internationally - and so the U.S. today, with troops occupying 100 countries around the world, ready to keep the many proletariats from taking up their paths. Fascism is reaction all across the board and abroad. The Marxist consciousness is proletarian _internationalist_. The class struggle is international. Those who ignore the international front of class struggle in defining fascism do not take a Communist viewpoint on the issue. To define fascism solely based on U.S. domestic policy is a chauvinist perspective. The fact that the proletariat of the U.S. has not been on the verge or conceivable , anyway, on its way to taking state power as in Germany, maybe Italy, France, Spain in the 1920's and 1930's, does not render the use of the concept of "fascism" impractical-critical today. The key thing in "fascism" is not the state of the proletariat, but the state of the bourgeoisie. Anyway, if the proletariat is weaker in the U.S. today than in Europe then, that makes the fascist ratio , the ratio of proletarian power to bourgeois power WORSE today than then ! Proletarian Power ________________ = Class balance of power ratio Bourgeois Power Citing Trotsky and Gramsci one is saying that somehow the bourgeoisie will go easy on proletariat, and not institute fascism domestically in the U.S. , because the proletariat is not rising up in the U.S. in 2005. As if the bourgeoisie would only institute fascism as a last ditch measure against a proletariat about to take power. You don't know the viciousness of the bourgeoisie , if you are relying on their not having domestic fascism because the proletariat is weak relative to its strength in Europe in the 20's and 30's. The bourgeoisie are quite capable of kicking the proletariat when it is down. Fighting dirty. Dirtier than even you seem to imagine. Waging an unfair fight. The U.S. retains a significant system of civil liberties, even though eroded from the level of their high point under the Warren Court. Thus, it is not a fully open terrorist rule, domestically. Internationally, U.S. imperialism rules very terroristically. The U.S.'s shift back from social democratic/Keynesian welfare state/collective bargaining regime is economic fascism in its backstabbing, undermining of the livelihoods of millions of workers dependent upon the benefits of said welfare system. Thus, privatization and structural adjustment is economic fascism in the welfare states.
