It would be more interesting to hear what characteristics the
Chinese state
has that people feel distinguish it from what was classically
considered
fascist states?
Nathan Newman
===========
-Persistant, aggressive geographic expansion.
>>
Now it seems that there has been a merger of "imperialist" with "fascist"
which confuses the word completely. ============= It's like I told you off list, if our definitions are historically specific and temporally bound, they create problems for naming and reference and the quest for invariants.
>>
Franco's Spain had no particular geographic expansionist goals yet is
generally considered fascist. The same holds for a number of the Latin
American countries often held out as having fascist characteristics.
By this definition, was Italy not fascist until it began its North African
misadventures? ========= I wasn't defining the term, just pointing out problems with a surplus/lack of family resemblance; on the other hand would we say China is fascist because of Tibet? Clearly we need a richer taxonomy of authoritarian political formations if 20th century terms can become so plastic with regards to the empirical facts to which they refer.
>>
Charles seems to reduce fascism as well purely to warfare but that makes
fascism over-inclusive a term, since the Roman empire would be a fascist
state, British colonialism would be fascist, and so on.
He also wants to claim that a key element of fascism was anti-communism and
anti-Sovietism; China of course was guilty of the latter at points in its
occasional alliances with the US against the Soviet Union during the last
two decades of the Soviet Union and in practice suppresses anyone promoting
real Marxism or worker-led communism. But such a limited definition also
negates the class analysis Charles also argues for in analyzing fascism--
fascism is defined as a form of monopoly capitalism dominated by the state,
a definition that fits the evolving business class in China. With the
ruling Communists assuming control of large chunks of capitalist enterprise,
where is the difference from classic corporatism that was the hallmark of
fascism?
-- Nathan Newman ======== Welcome to the problems of nominalism and social kinds, where entanglement 'rules'.
Ian