Jim Farmelant
On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:53:11 -0500 "Charles Brown"
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:
>In this vein, fascist demogogic claims
>to be socialists are central to their
>project. Mussolini was a Socialist
>Party leader in the 1910's. "Nazis"
>is short for National "SOCIALISTS".
>Hitler pretended to be anti-
>capitalist in _Mein Kampf_.
>So, in this regard, Strasser
>is typical, not exceptional.
>
>The appeal of socialism was
>so great in the era that
>fascism arose, that the bourgeoisie
>made demogogic
>imitation of socialist
>ideology a central feature
>of their main counterrevolutionary
>thrust.
>
>Goddamn the bourgeoisie.
>
>Charles Brown
>
>>>> <Apsken at aol.com> 01/13 2:38 PM >>>
>Off-list James heartfield asked me for documentation of my report on
>Paul
>Mattick's connection to Otto Strasser. Below is a copy of my reply.
>Incidentally, the political point is not simply one of 50-plus years
>past.
>Several of the insurgent Nazi terror groups, both in the U.S. and in
>Europe,
>are Strasserite (revolutionary anti-capitalist plebeian national
>socialist --
>"red" Nazis) whose political lines are pitched to militant
>proletarians,
>marginal family farmers, and struggling petit bourgeois. Some of them
>believe
>that sections of the Marxist left also are prospective converts.
>
>Ken Lawrence
>
>James,
>
>Unfortunately my archives are beyond my reach in Mississippi, in the
>hands of
>a hostile former spouse. Some years ago at a Socialist Party book
>bazaar in
>Chicago I purchased a run of Living Marxism from the 1940s and 50s,
>which
>included a pile of the organization's leaflets. Among those was the
>one
>advertising the Strasser tour.
>
>Abstractly, it should not have surprised me, because it reflected the
>triumph
>of spontaneist politics above all, as well as the view that Leninism
>is the
>main enemy of the proletariat. But I was myself part of the broader
>spontaneist Marxist current myself, being a friend and comrade of
>C.L.R.
>James, so this caused me plenty of soul searching.
>
>The Who's Who I quoted also says this about Strasser: "During his
>exile in
>Sweden and Canada, Otto Strasser became an advocate of 'solidarism', a
>third
>path between capitalism and communism, which he gave a
>national-socialist,
>Christian and decentralized 'Europeanist' colouring. Returning to
>post-war
>West Germany, Otto Strasser tried and failed to win public support for
>these
>ideas in the 1950s after he had recovered his German citizenship. In
>other
>respects he appeared to have learned nothing from the past, still
>espousing a
>vicious, demagogic anti-semitism in his journmalistic publications."
>
>I think you can see from that the points that appealed to Mattick. But
>the
>collaboration was unforgivable nonetheless.
>
>Ken
>
>
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