One could equally argue that fascism was a ‘response’ to the perceived inadequacies of democracy.
To my mind, fascism was not a ‘response’ to any one thing; stuff like the unrest spread by class-based politics, the perceived failures of democracy, the horrors of WW1 all gave it a chance, but they did not produce the theoretical basis for fascism.
That was an extreme development from many trends already long present in European civilization and thought - particularly, Romanticism combined with the ‘science-y’ social implications of discoveries in biology and anthropology (Eugenics, Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism).
It was an interesting time. Italian Futurism with its emphasis on the mechanical, speed, anti-feminism and (notably) violence and purification and rejection of other human instincts was uncomfortably close to fascism too.
There was a General Strike in the UK in 1926 – in Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder volunteers for a militia to put it down – but it only lasted 10 days and really had very little revolutionary potential. The strikers only wanted what strikers usually want, and expropriation of the means of production was not on the agenda.
That’s not what I’m arguing, and I think Goldberg was wrong about that particular fact. Wilson’s total mobilization was something which both Progressives and Totalitarians admired for the same reason, but I do not think he specifically inspired the Fascists (though he was a borderline one himself).
If I inadvertently confused you on that point, I apologize. It’s always hard to communicate a hugely complex bit of history, even in the overly-long posts I’ve made here.
First, Mussolini had nothing like a “dalliance” with Socialism. he was a flat-out Socialist and hard-core Leftist, whose major disagreement of his Left was that it was too weak to succeed. He disagreed with some concepts which were fundamentally Leftist, yes - but he fulfilled most of them. You could just as easily, and just as validly, argue that Lenin, Stalin, Kim Il-Sung, and Mao were all anti-Socialist.
Communism is not the whole of the Left. It’s outrageously wrong to claim that. It was never the whole of the Left. And neither is the fact that the few modern-day Socilists, as well as the mild modern Left’s sensibilities, descend from the kinder internationalists and not the far-less kindly old Left. Some people still think that whipping up a one-liner about how they conflict proves their point. But it does not, because it’s my point that neither could ever tolerate the other, precisely because they are twins: born of the same mother by different “fathers”, and hating each other the more similar they were.
Second, as I have tried repeatedly to point out, there was never anything contradictory about a nationalistic socialism. Socialists have been heavily nationalistic around the world, from American Progressives to German Democratic Socialists. Every Communist regime has been just so. You may argue they are not “Socialist” because of that, but again, if not Socialist then what? If you wish to reserve the word Socialist only for those who magiucally fulfill the perfect lilly-pure conditions… well, then about what could we be arguing? You would be talking about a theory, and I am talking about practice.
Because it’s wholly incorrect as a fact, and because it pretends to assign guilt which is not there. The Classical Liberal position (which is now more or less Conservativism) opposed these things then and now. Moreover, the current American Left position, which is usually a wasted holdover 60’s radicalism highlights on a poorly-thought out quasi-Progressive platform, but mostly classical liberal in practice, has little to do with the old Left. That old Left is mostly gone. But not totally, and its real story needs to be told. There are more than a few Lefties on this board. The Left likes to portray its story as a mighty triumph. But it’s not true and not a pleasant one, for some very simple reasons.
The one big failing of Classical Liberals, or Conservatives today, is not what the Left thinks. We have always been called monsters, the living human nightmare, the utter evil. But it’s untrue and was never true. Only the Left could really be so, because onyl the Left was willing or able to completely abandon any form of limitation on its power. Conservativism may never be truly as good as it could be, or maybe morally should be depending on your view. But it does not produce monsters. You can only become a demon if you are certain you are an angel. You can only create Hell on Earth if you are willing to sacrifice it to create Heaven on Earth. And that was the ultimate goal of the Left, from the moment it tore free from its womb to shower France with blood in the Revolution and drown Europe in death under Napoleon, to the Fascist and Communist experiments.
Likewise, the Left as such made vastly lot less progress than they like to imagine, because they were always looking for perfection, not improvement. Time was always their enemy: they wanted everything, a world with no choices, where no good came at the cost of another good, and they wanted it yesterday.
Your comment says nothing about us, but a great deal about you. Motes and planks and all that.
Brainglutton, I was waiting for someone to pull that out. First off, he’s utterly wrong. No Fascist regime was born by “international finance capital” or capitalists, and I have never been able to find any credible source even to argue against it. Orwell was often perceptive, but he was just as often incredibly dense, and able to see what he wanted to see. His argument fails to even be an argument: he asserts it, but does not have any particular reason for it. Orwell was right in that Fascism was wholly against Orwell’s brand of Socialism. But it was definitely not about Capitalism. Fascism, if anything, encourage a form of Neo-Mercantilism in the economic sphere.
Wow. Rarely do I get to see such a stunning display of ineptitude in the use of logic. Nice try, though.
Thanks for the lesson in British history, but you are utterly wrong if you think the General Strike had little revolutionary potential. The undercurrent, in particular in the minefields, where the strike started, involved calls for soviets…
But you are missing the importance of the General Strike. It wasn’t whether the working class in the UK actually was on the verge of rising up in bloody rebellion, it is whether the forces of capital thought they were. And their response to the General Strike shows that they were terrified by it, and the posibility of more working class action.
These days, it is hard for us to even understand or take seriously what actually motivated these folks.
Hence, what we see in this thread - an attempt to make them out to be an example of the theoretical school opposed to one’s own, only taken to an extreme.
The problem with such analysis, I contend, is that it obscures what actually motivated the fascists - which was truly wierd in its own right.
Do you know anything at all about the economic structure of Nazi Germany? Because you are making it pretty apparent you don’t.
Other than actions specifically aimed at Jewish owners of department stores, the Nazi regime let the owners of the means of production continue unhindered, and in fact assisted them by destroying the union movement. Wages were supressed under facism. Profits sky-rocketed. Labor disruption was criminalized, while there was not a single attempt made to remove control from the hands of capitalists.
I don’t know where you get this nonsense from, but it is nonsense none the less.
By the time fascism (and socialism, and capitalism, really) were becoming actual world views with some kind of support, the nation-state was still a pretty new concept itself, and the increasing “modern world” (fast transport, mass media, large - international - industry, ever more powerful weaponry etc) was in many ways undermining the stability of sovereign countries.
Fascism at some practical level was a system that tried to forge a cohesive and powerful nation-state by myth and violence whilst keeping - even accelerating - the “modern world” more or less for its own sake. If people get caught under the wheels, well, who cares? If you can strengthen “society” by singling out minorities (bonus points if they’ve got loot you can rob), go right ahead.
Of course, while mass media are great, if any paper or movie threatens the ones in power, they should go out and shoot them. It would be immoral not to.
I do know something about the Nazis, though they were again not the only Fascists (a “mistake” more than few people are eager to make). Do you know the details? The Nazis permitted unrestrained profit-seeking, yes. They also hammered employers who didn’t toe the line. They destroyed unionism, just as the Communisats did, in roder to make workers easier to control.
Moreover, they were very much Neo-Mercantilists. While Mussolini never totally got his program off the ground, his conquest of Ethiopia and failed attempt to control Greece would have guarranteed resources for the home country. Germany displayed this more aggressively. And neither group had much use for international trade.
Seriously? Yes, industry was left in private ownership. Hitler didn’t nationalize the factories. But the industrialists were mobilized in the same way as the rest of society. The factory owner might have owned his factory, but he was not in control of the factory any more than a common citizen was in control of his own life. The fascists gave the orders and the capitalists obeyed.
The notion that fascism was a triumph of the capitalists and controlled by the capitalists is almost as nonsensical as the argument that the fascists were a bunch of leftists.
The capitalists kept their positions, they kept their “ownership”, but that meant nothing. They had a better position than a proletarian, but they didn’t run things, they passed on orders. Yes, they had responsibility and priveleges, but they were in the position of a General in the army. The General is subject to military discipline just as much as any private, and frequently more.
I’m a little confused by what distinction you mean between the “middle class” and the “working class”. In the United States at least, “middle class” is virtually synonymous with the people who work for an employer for wages; the only thing below that is the “lower class” which corresponds apporximately to what Marx called the Lumpenproletariat, which my Encyclopedia Britannica defined as “marginal and unemployable workers of debased and irregular habits, and including paupers, beggars and thieves”. Are you using the term “middle class” to mean the petite bourgeoisie?
There’s just no evidence of this. That the economy became more controlled after the move to ‘total war’ isn’t enough - all countries in the war (and often to a greater extent and earlier than Nazi Germany) placed controls on industry.
There’s no real evidence of capitalist opposition to Hitler after the take over. What opposition there was class or religious based.
Because capitalists do not, despite the ferevered dreams of your imagination, form a unified bloc, hold significant political power, or even hold much in the way of common interests. Furthermore, noone could act against Hitler after the take-over, as he effectively kneecapped all existing opposition, much less . Industries which didn’t support the Nazis, however, were quickly made to toe the line. This is almost exactly the Progressive vision for an industrial army, wherein all workers are placed into huge combines which serve the government line - and precisely the corporatist idea popular with the 1920’s Left in Europe.
For Fascists, unlike Communists, capital was a beast of burden to be enslaved for the economy, and not slaughtered for temporary chow.
My position is that attempting to fit fascism into the modern political-economic left-right spectrum is an exercise in pounding a square peg into a round hole. Although they share some aspects with many other political movements, they simply do not fit anywhere in the modern conception of politics, even as an ‘extreme form’, as none so far as I’m aware truly depricate reason itself in favour of romantic passion and will.
Just because you say this, doesn’t make it true. You can say it till you are blue in the face (or even black in the shirt) but it will still be just as false then as it was at the start.
Sorry, didn’t see this drivel before. The army could have easily dealt with Hitler. It chose not to because it was getting shiny toys to play with. Indeed, it is only once the defeats started that the army showed any interest in getting rid of Hitler, well after the true barbarism of the Nazis was evident to all (not just the filthy lefties who were pointing it out when good, upstanding, Christian conservatives were more than happy to sit down with Hitler as a bulwark against communism).
Thus the foolishness of attempting to classify them based on a spectrum used to analyse various economic-political theories. At various times Hitler either embraced or repudiated them at will (and it is the “at will” part that is significant).
They do in America, and have since the Gilded Age.