> From: "Stephen Schwartz" <karastjepan at yahoo.com>
> To: "H-Net Network on American communism and anticommunism"
> <H-HOAC at H-NET.MSU.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2003 11:33 AM
> Subject: McWilliams and Fascism
<SNIP>
> Trotsky's main contribution to political science in our time consisted,
> in
> my view, in the insistence on not confusing the ordinary conditions of
> capitalism with the extraordinary nature of fascism as a system of
> domination. To confuse conservatives with fascists is to confuse a
> situation of political conflict within the system of bourgeois law, and
> continuing institutionalization of the labor movement, with a situation
> of
> lawless repression and the complete destruction of the labor movement.
>
> Regarding Trotsky, it is worth noting that the period in which McWilliams
> handily referred to "farm fascism" in California was also that in which
> Trotskyists were routinely denounced as "fascists." For myself, I think
> the
> nadir of the "fascism" trope in California was reached in the Hitchcock
> film
> SABOTEUR where it is suggested that the entire wealthy class in
> California,
> as well as the whole local system of law enforcement, consisted of Axis
> agents and sympathizers. That is pretty ridiculous. But I also recall
> that
> when cinema writers were asked why the Hollywood version of FOR WHOM THE
> BELL TOLLS did not identify the enemy as "ther fascists" they answered
> that
> "the fascists" prevented it. This was a situation in which anything
> including college football could be labelled fascist.
>
> Of course, we see similar abuse of the term "fascist" today. But that is
> another matter entirely.
>
> Stephen Schwartz
>
-- Michael Pugliese American imperialism has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic. Harold Innis, 1948 http://www.monthlyreview.org/sr2004.htm