|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Greg Schofield
||
|| Again in the case of fascism I would point to Dimtirov if only
|| he gave the definition of fascism which was a particular
|| historical conjunction of class forces lead by the section
|| interests of finance capital (ie nationalist, expansionist and
|| bellicose). It is not that fascism cannot occur without this
|| confluence of forces, but only with it can it come into world
|| dominance as a significant force.
||
Greg, Dimitrov was clearly wrong on two counts:
1 - Finance-capital was nowhere to be seen when the brownshirts first appeared, otherwise why would they have landed in jail? In fact Roehm personifies the transition of Nazism from a spontaneous lumpen movement all dressed up with nowhere to go, to a bonapartist dictatorship hired by German capitalists in fear of a red uprising. The transition was when Hitler killed Roehm (all that gay lovers' spat BS nonwithstanding).
2 - Krupp and Thyssen are clearly not just the "most regressive, bellicose, etc." section of finance capital.
Stalinists couldn't stomach the fact that Hitler hijacked a part of the working class. It went against their idea of historical determinism, and consequently threatened the omniscience of the Great Leader. So they invented the Dimitrov kludge.
|| As for structuralist analysis steming from scholastic circles,
|| it may have its place but is bereft of being able to pose the
|| right questions in the first place - sociological definitions
|| interest me not at all. I am not accusing you of moving down
|| such a path, as you mentioned these only in passing, but
|| classification is not a way forward. I can be accused of
|| prejudice in this, but at least it is a thorough-going prejudice.
||
|| Marx may be an antique (old and valuable) but not I think
|| antiquated by any means, and certainly does not stink of
|| intellectual decay as much as many live and kicking socialologists do.
You're right on there. Reducing the struggle against the protofascist coup to the scholarship of ethically compromised, sanitized theories of fascism is the classic maneuver for sidetracking the struggle of the left, like when pomo replaced marxism and social studies replaced class studies (such as there were). The French left may be sucking up to their pomo philosophers out of contrition for their maoist sins but in the US there are no such indigenous causes, it's all a matter of the pipers' payers calling the tune.
Hakki