On Mon, 26 Oct 1998 17:06:01 -0600 Carrol Cox <cbcox at mail.ilstu.edu>
writes:
>(1) Fascism/Nazism are capitalism just as a rabbit is a mammal. They
>are just
>two of a so-far probably incomplete list of the *political* forms
>which a
>capitalist mode of production can generate.
Explain.
>(3) And the post's playing around (and acceding to) the word game
>("National
>Socialism") the Nazis played is simply offensive and Alex should
>apologize to
>every socialism (marxist or not) from Babeuf on for being such a
>sucker for
>Hitler's word coinage.
Look, I'm not trying to be controversial for controversy's sake. But I think there's a tendency for socialists to dismiss the crimes of nominally socialist regimes by saying that such regimes weren't socialist in the first place.
"Stalinist purges? After Lenin, the USSR became a state capitalist society. Nazi holocaust? Hey, Nazism is really capitalism."
I mean really, capitalists could play the same rhetorical trick if they wanted to. How many times have free marketeers and libertarian capitalists argued that atrocities committed under capitalism aren't really capitalist atrocities, since they didn't happen in perfect, unregulated free market societies. I've seen Libertarian Party stooges on Usenet use this line of reasoning. "National guard firing on striking workers? Well that wasn't really capitalism. After all, it was the state committing those atrocities."
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