The book is great, but largely because the author understands fascism a little too well, if you know what I mean... looking into abysses and all that...
Brad DeLong
>for the life of me, I can't understand the old subject line of this
>thread (which was RE: [lbo-talk] Fwd: (Carrol Cox: Trotskyist!)).
>
>Anyway, I agree that the word "fascist" has been over-used. There
>are at least three different meanings.
>
>1) specifically referring to Mussolini and his followers, or to a
>more general type of social movement that's Mussolini-like. (Often
>Nazism is seen as a sub-type of fascism, but it's often seen as
>separate from fascism.)
>
>2) referring to a general type of socio-economic system.
>
>3) referring to a psychological type or a personality structure.
>This originated, I think, with Wilhelm Reich, but became very
>popular with the New Left in the US (and elsewhere?)
>
>
>------------------------
>Jim Devine jdevine at lmu.edu & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
>
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Pugliese [mailto:debsian at pacbell.net]
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 10:13 AM
>> To: lbo-talk
>> Subject: [lbo-talk] Fwd: (Carrol Cox: Trotskyist!)
>>
>>
>> ------- Forwarded message -------
>> From: John Earl Haynes <haynes at mail.h-net.msu.edu>
>> To: H-HOAC at H-NET.MSU.EDU
>> Subject: essay on McWilliams in JAH (Schwartz)
>> Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 08:32:45 -0500
>>
>> > 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
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- "Burke ever held, and held rightly, that it can seldom be right toŠ sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the futureŠ. It is not wise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal. It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very chary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appearŠ. We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking. There is this further consideration that is often in need of emphasis: it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transitionŠ"
--John Maynard Keynes
____________________ J. Bradford DeLong Department of Economics U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027 delong at econ.berkeley.edu http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/