>>> cberlet at igc.org 06/26/01 06:35PM >>>
Hi,
Actually, contrary to several off-list complaints, I am not red-baiting Nathan Newman or Charles Brown, I am saying they are using definitions of fascism that the Comintern articlulated, but which have been discredited over the last 30 years throughout social science.
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Charles B: Well, not quite "throughout" social science. We communists are social scientists too, and we have very good arguments defending against your attacks on our thesis on fascism. And as far as practice as the proof of theory, it was the Marxist-Leninists who carried out 95% of the defeat of fascism, not your groups.
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It is a serious question. Other than the Comintern-sponsored work on Fascism (such as R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, Martin Lawrence, London, 1933), what can they cite to back up their overly-broad use of the term fascism? When Charles Brown parrots "the openly terrorist rule of the most chauvinist, reactionary sectors of finance capital" it is not red-baiting to say that comes from the Comintern. I read that statement first while reviewing Comintern documents on fascism that I read 30 years ago.
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CharlesB: It is somekind of baiting to arrogate to yourself by mere assertion , while calling me a parrot, the superior analysis of fascism. It baits me to look at the article you refer us to. I just looked at it. It's theory is in terms of "ideal types". Sounds like the type of social "science" that I dropped for Marxist social science a while ago.
A whole lot of what has been written in the last 60 years is wrong on a lot of subjects. Quantity of writing doesn't make your argument. So, far the Dimitrov's and the Comintern's arguments are more persuasive to me than the one you cite below.
Just to reiterate "my" ( Dimitrov's/Comintern's Leninist) argument: Fascism arose in the imperialist stage of capitalism, in which finance capital is the form of the bourgeois ruling class ( thus include by reference, Lenin's whole argument in _Imperialism_). It marked a point at which the proletarian revolutions were on the verge of challenging for power in Italy, Germany and other Western European countries, following the successful Russian Revolution. Although not by means of a simple committee, the dynamics of bourgeois politics and desparation ended in a dispensing of many bourgeois democratic-republican forms and rule by dictatorship. It represented the ascendence of the most reactionary and bellicose sector of capital to dominate those bourgeois states in which crises was greatest etc.
That makes a lot more sense than what Roger Griffin writes in what you cite. His sounds like a bunch of social "scientific" bs. - " Ideal types and "fascism really is revolutionary." Hey , Wojtek ? Give me a break. The following from the article you cite is really bad theory ( as I said to you once before. Your concrete work on the rightwing in the U.S,is good , but your theory is weak). You do realize that he is saying that Mussolini had a good social theory of fascism ? He is basing his theory of fascism on the Fascist's theory of fascism.
Excerpt from Revolution from the Right: Fascism
by Roger Griffin
'Revolution' and 'fascism' as ideal types
If the terms 'revolution' and 'fascism' are both conceptually fuzzy and value-laden, then any discussion of their relationship risks being so subjective as to become pointless. The solution to such dilemmas, which are a recurrent feature of the human sciences, is to create an artificially tidy definition known in the social sciences as an 'ideal type'. An ideal type has the same sort of relationship to the empirical reality being defined as a stylized underground railway (subway) map has to the actual network of rails and stations it displays. It does not tell you about the characteristics of any one phenomenon, but singles out the things which all manifestations of one type of phenomenon have in common.
'Revolution' can be used as an ideal type to refer to 'a fundamental (structural) change which, while manifesting itself in a particular sphere of human activity, has radically innovative consequences for a wide nexus of social and psychological realities associated with it'. This means that, as long as the break with the past is sufficiently radical, a set of events may be revolutionary without necessarily furthering the Marxist or liberal scheme of historical progress. As for our working definition of fascism, a ready-made, off-the-shelf ideal type can be brought into service without resorting to a piece of conceptual do-it-your-self. In the course of the 1990s there was a growing consensus outside the Marxist camp that fascism is a form (or genus) of modern, mass politics which draws its ideological cohesion and mobilizing force from the vision of imminent national rebirth. In other words, for fascists a period of perceived national decline and decadence is giving way to an!
era of renewal in a post-liberal new order.
Approached from this angle, fascism is an essentially revolutionary form of ultra-nationalism (i.e. a highly chauvinistic and overtly anti-liberal nationalism). It is characterized by a populist dimension which involves mobilizing the masses to provide authentic (and not simply engineered and manipulated) support from below for the drastic actions taken by the self-appointed new elite from above to save the nation from what it perceives as terminal decline. This suggests that we should not dismiss simply as empty rhetoric, or 'mindless Latin nonsense', a speech made by Mussolini on the eve of the March on Rome which brought him to power:
"We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, that we subordinate everything else.
For us the nation is not just territory, but something spiritual. There are States which have had immense territories and which have left no trace in human history. It is not just a question of size, because there have been minute, microscopic States in history which have bequeathed memorable, immortal specimens of art and philosophy. The greatness of the nation is the totality of all these qualities, of all these conditions. A nation is great when it translates into reality the force of its spirit"
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CharlesB: This is in our definition is referred to as "chavinism".
Incredibly, as I read the article you cite, it adopts the attitude that a statement by Goebbels too, is not just rhetoric, but a valid theory of revolution. This is pretty far out of the box, comrade. Your theorists of revolution are Mussolini and Goebbels ???!!!
Then later you post:
Chip B: Let me ask a blunt question. Has Charles Brown or Nathan Newman or anyone else claiming that it is hard to define fascism, or offering Dimitrov or R. Palme Dutt (or any of the other Comintern definitions), actually read anything written by Griffin? Anything written about fascism in the last 20 years?
CharlesB: I just read your cite to Griffin. See what I say above. I find it astonishingly bad theory and politics to claim that fascism is a revolutionary movement. Too bad for words. Makes me want to start cussing. Stupid even. (strike that ) .
As for more recent articles, Herbert Aptheker has written several essays demonstrating the links between German big business and the Nazi party. One ( in two parts) "Big Business and Hitlerism" is in Political Affairs September and October 1985. This is in a critique of David Abraham's _The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis_) Aptheker also has an article " Racism, Fascism, and Human Rights" in _Political Affairs_ March and April 1974. Then as I said in an earlier post, the whole international jurisprudence on genocide is based on the Nazis' crimes in WWII. Attorneys William Patterson and Paul Robeson's _We Charge Genocide_ is pertinent in this regard, for example. Actually, I have even published an article "For outlawing fascistic racist speech" in the now defunct _Crossroads_. Of course, the Nazi fascists had a big emphasis on racism, so much of the social scientific analysis of racism is pertinent to analyzing fascism. I have read quite a bit o! f that. There is , not surprisingly, a pretty big Soviet literature on the phenomenon of fascism. I have read some of that. As a solidarity activist, I have read articles in the last twenty years , well thirty, on the rightwing regimes in Chile, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina,South Africa, et al. The whole Apartheid experience is pertinent to understanding fascism. I'd even say Apartheid was fascism. I have read on that within the last twenty years. I have even read some of your articles, and your associate, Detroiter Russ Bellant's _Old Nazis, New Right_ . Because I read on fascism, I had heard of you before you had heard of me. Russ and I have been in anti-fascist activist groups in Detroit together.
Literally, a few days before the Oklahoma City bombing, I had written a memo to the Detroit NAACP on the need for us to up our diligence against militia terrorism ( that coincidence even scared me). I co-sponsored with a Michigan State Senator, a hearing on legislative response to militia and fascistic racist threats and violence. I have helped organize and participated in a number of counter demos against Nazis in Ann Arbor and Detroit. So, I have not only read, but acted against fascism in the last twenty years. Hey it's a family tradition. My father was an infantry seargent in Italy in WWII. I've been an anti-fascist since I was little.
In general , I'd say our approach to understanding fascism is more materialist than yours. We emphasize its role in the class struggle of the twentieth century. Your emphasis on national identity and myth is more idealist, in the philosophical sense.
It is not for no reason that "first the Nazis came for the Communists" not for the liberals. The fascists know who their most implacable and fiercest enemies are, and we Communists keep an eye on them.
Like Hemingway said, there is no premature anti-fascism.
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Folks, there has been a whole lot written on fascism in the last 60 years that makes the Comintern position on fascism look simplistic and almost useless. Today there is a distinction made between fascism as an insurgent mass populist movement of the right, and fascism in state power.
And before some nit raises the issue, corporate power is not the same thing as corporatism, which was originally a form of Italian Catholic syndicalism in which workers, managers, and owners from each industrial sector would form congresses that would send representatives to a state congress that would rule the country. Interesting scheme. Has little to do with WTO, eh? Friendly Fascism was a great title but a creaky theory.
See the critique of the Comintern school of fascist theorizing by Griffin at:
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/humanities/Roger/fascrev.htm
-Chip Berlet