-clip-
The labels "fascist" and "nazi" are intellectual obstructions: they deflect attention from the real dangers (which might be quite different from past dangers). One of the things one ought to be able to "learn" from history is that in fact it never repeats itself except in ways that only after the fact can be recognized as repetitions, because they were so totally different in their specific features. -clip Carrol ^^^^^^
Charles: History doesn't repeat itself exactly , but there is a science of history ( some of us call a main branch of it historical materialism) by which we can draw generalizations from the past, theories, which we use to anticipate developments in the present. Otherwise, history would just be part of the entertainment industry.
For example, Marx and Engels' assertion that history is a history of class struggles would be useless to us today if we did not think that some patterns from the past are repeated in the present , even if in modified form.
So it is with the history of fascism. We look to general patterns in it that may give insight into fighting "open terrorist dictatorship by the most reactionary sectors of capital" should it develop in the present or near future. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030430/e87caf4b/attachment.htm>