|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Charles Brown
||
|| Dimitrov
|| Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 23:25:38 +0200
|| From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com>
||
|| ^^^^^^^^^^^
||
|| Hakki,
||
|| Yes, keep thinking about it.
Charles, your material showed me a rather less-known side of Dimitrov. The only reflection it led me to is the rather sad one that Dimitrov wasted his acute political sense. The only place I can go from there is what Greg pointed out, that there's more to stalinism than meets the eye. But what does meet the eye mostly sucks and that ain't gonna change by thinking about it.
|| You still have not made an
|| argument as to why "open
|| terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most
|| chauvinistic and most
|| imperialist elements of finance capital " is not a splendid
|| definition .
I see you're really serious about this. Here goes. 1 - Where's the finance capital behind the Ustashi, Franco, the Iron Guard, the many fascist and protofascist groups in France like Croix de Feu, Cagoulards, etc, the NSDAP when it was first founded up to 1931, when it became part of the German right wing, etc., etc. You're the one who's going to have to dig it out. Right now, the Turkish fascist party is a senior coalition partner and finance capital is opposing it with uncommon energy, especially considering the same party tried to assassinate the head of the second most powerful capitalist family in Turkey (they got his brother instead) because he wanted the war against the PKK to end. Capitalist support just ain't there until the fascists prove they're major players. Mostly, it's the petty bourgies, the landowners, the peasantry, the military, and even aristocracy if there is any, that root for the fascists. 2 - Capital is rational, its motive is profit, not jew-baiting or witch hunts or epic wars. Capitalist class consciousness has no place for fascist irrationalism. It does not need fascism except in times of extreme crisis. But fascist movements continue to exist, like plague-carrying rats, within bourgeois democracy until the conditions are right for an outbreak. A lot of finance capital in Europe was Jewish, for petesake. 3 - Corollary: Fascists don't have to seize power to be fascists, so including a form of government (dictatorship) in the definition is dumb. 4 - What is "the most regressive, the most reactionary" finance capital? Since when are some bankers regressive and others progressive? What could they have meant: Tthe Grameen Bank vs Chase? How can a marxist - especially a stalinist - even think of the same material infrastructure producing "regressive" and "progressive" ideologies? This phrase is the most damning evidence of the kludginess of the Dimitrov thesis. Dimitrov could hardly have defended the thesis (and lived) that the superstructure has a relative autonomy.
|| Nor do I recall you providing a different
|| defintion.
Nobody asked. I'll oblige, but not just now. Got a syllabus to prepare for the coming term.
Hakki