>In what little reading on fascism I've done, historically at least, fascism
>gained numbers primarily from people who were pushed to the margins by
>capital's dynamic (either in the short- or long-term). I see the same sort
>of thing happening now, but in slow
>motion, over decades, as capitalism starts hitting its limits again, and
>people who don't want to lose what they have start making hard choices and
>turning gimlet eyes on the "Other".
There is truth there- it's also truth that the racist aspects of fascism and racism have great appeal to certain elites in capitalism that need to justify the inequality and stratification, creating a basis especially in times of scarcity and want for why certain groups should get the proceeds of society while others should be denied.
This relates to the China reference in noting that as China creates greater and greater inequality and even celebrates the wealthy, there does need to be a social ideological justification for this. Nationalism is a hardy favorite, of course, and whether with the Olympics or nationalist posturing against the US government - even as both happily cut necessary economic deals for their respective capital elites -China has been pursuing that direction. But eugenics has always been a useful part of the ideological justification for capitalist inequality, from social Darwinism through the more twisted versions of Nazism.
So mere inequality plus repression is too limited a definition of fascism, but my point is that no repression is without ideological justification over the long term, and for repressive capitalism, fascism is the natural mode of its state justification. It is for that reason that when capitalism finds that formal democratic structures are failing its purposes and it needs to resort to dictatorship, it readily finds fascist forces as its best mass base to solidify such a dictatorship for its needs. That is often not the goal of the fascists themselves, but the successful fascists - ie. the ones that actually get state power - make the compromise with capital as their only route to power.
-- Nathan Newman