It must be remebered in the first half of the 20th century the middle class itself was largely independant, that is occuppy a classic petit bourgeois existence and embracing the middle state bureacracies and rising technocrats.
As a class this middle has been very much transformed, losing much of its previous quasi-independence and becoming the large managerial sector of corporate organisations. I would expect its political expression to be transformed by this as well.
I could not imagine the middle class, given its largely bureacratic character, being expressed as a mass movement of any description. But reaction certainly has this class on-side, feeding and pandering to its fears and there is definite social coalition.
I am not sure if the view that the ruling class formed a coalition out of fear of being toppled in Germany or Italy. In the former case, the actual threat had been staved off earlier and the KPD while very significant did not by the 1930's pose a dire threat. IN Italy the movement started earlier as hired blackguards especially against land redistribution and rural unrest, but again by the time the fascists took power with the march on Rome these things had effectively put a dampener on expectations arising from WWI.
Not knowning the analysis to which you refer and the arguments may well be sound, I neverthless would point to the fact that this fascism arose most spectacularly in those places where further imperial expansion was not by other means possible except by military brinkmanship. Now this does not compare well to the situation today.
History does not repeat itself, so I think we are safe from fascist revival of the classical kind. But this new bonapartism, media smoothed, creating and exploiting a moving social consensus, breaching the previous norms of the bourgeois state, bellicose and bloody, remains to be analysied.
--- Message Received --- From: "Chip Berlet" <cberlet at igc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 09:55:41 -0500 Subject: RE: The New Nazism
CHIP: Hi,
I agree that there are echoes of fascism in all authoritarian and repressive measures instituted under capitalist political systems. Echoes. Bits and Pieces. Parts. Quasi- or Proto-
And we all would be foolish to not object to authoritarian and repressive measures, not just in and of themselves, but becasue they can be precursors to fascist state poewr. But where does fascism come from? Is it a top down creation, or does it arise from a mass movement of the middle class, or is it a fusion of the two? I am arguing that for state fscism, there must be an autonomous middle class mass movement, a crisis, and a decision by one faction of ruling elites to build a coalition with the mass movement to stave off the crisis resulting in their being toppled. This thesis is one of many of the new theories about where fascism comes from. It is key to my objections to the overbroad use of the concept of fascism.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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