I think it's important for the left to reconsider what they mean when they talk about "class interests." (Maybe if we think about it a bit more, we can communicate more clearly to non-leftist workers and other oppressed folks. Talking about "finance capital" liking something is alien to most people's thinking -- unless you're talking in terms of conspiracy theory.)
There's a difference between what an individual capitalist wants (which usually differ from what the other individual capitalists want) and the capitalist class interest (the shared interests of all capitalists, e.g. preservation of capitalist private property rights). There's also a difference between what a capitalist wants now (high profits) and what he or she wants over the long term (stability of profits).
I had written: >In any event, the long-term goals of finance capital do not involve mass murder. They want us all to be willing borrowers, consumers, and workers...<
Charles answers: >Well, I agree that the preferred form of government and rule of the bourgeoisie is the bourgeois democratic republic and not fascism. Just as they must have wage-labor and not slavery. And I agree that when they turn to fascism it is a sign of desparation. But there is a repeated tendency from slavery to fascism to cheat on their own preference, especially among sort of noveau riche or those ignorant of the core capitalist values. But the vulgar capitalists do hold sway at some points in history. <
Then we agree.
But this links up with what I said above: the vulgar-capitalist drive for profits at all cost can easily conflict with capitalist property rights and social stability. Individual greed drives such events as WW 1 and the Great Depression. Neither of those events were in the benefit of the capitalist class as a whole, either before or after the fact. Both unleashed social movements that (for a time) threatened capitalism. The Bolshevik revolution was spurred by WW 1, while the Depression encouraged a revival of the CPs (as did WW2, in W. Europe). It's hard to say that the capitalists "liked" the rise of Bolshevism or the CPs. (They did learn to live with the CPs sometimes, in Bologna, Italy, but that's a different issue.)
>I don't disagree with your outline of some of the main elements of how
things fall into open terrorist rule. But when the dust cleared, I don't
think the surviving capitalists were upset with the removal of Hitler's
main victims, especially communists , trade unionists, and millions of
Soviets people, not to mention destroy Soviet industry and "everything". <
Yes. But we can't assume that capitalists wanted Hitler's Holocaust ahead of time. Just because they benefited from it doesn't mean they planned it. We can't assume that all the bad things in life are the result of capitalist class interest. A lot of history happens totally as an accident, or due to the logic of events that are beyond individual or group intentions.
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They're too damned greedy." -- Herbert Hoover