What Charles Brown is arguing is that an intellectual debate over the term fascism is not relevant to the pragmatic propaganda value of an opportunistic term that has mass appeal.
Yikes!
This just totally creeps me out. What kind of society would we be building if this is our model?
Chip Berlet Senior Analyst Political Research Associates http://www.publiceye.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Brown [mailto:cbrown at michiganlegal.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 11:47 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Cc: natbellus at yahoo.com
> Subject: [lbo-talk] War without End, was Neocons Inspired By
> Italian Fascists?
>
>
>
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
> Shane Taylor wrote:
> >
> > Besides, this Administration, with it's war without end,
> warrants it's
> > own, new pejorative.
> >
> > -- Shane
>
> ^^^^^^
> -clip-
>
> We do indeed need a new and descriptive term for what is
> happening in the U.S. today.
>
> Remember the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act!
>
> Query: Has there ever been a substantive broadening of rights
> in the U.S. in the absence of tremendous (non-electoral)
> pressure from one or more sectors of the working class?
>
> It seems to me that there is an unending pressure within
> capitalism for the narrowing of rights, while resistance to
> that pressure comes only from self=conscious independent mass
> movements.
>
> Compare Marx's argument in _Wages, Price and Profit_ that the
> general tendency of capital is to reduce wages and that that
> tendency can only be controlled by constant struggle by workers.
>
> And on finding different words for different things. "Wage
> slavery" is a useful metaphor, but wage slavery is NOT
> slavery, and it is no contribution to the struggle to pretend
> that it is.
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: With respect to terms and metaphors, the problem here is
> a rhetorical one, not a logical one. Of course, Rosa
> Luxembourg committed a logical fallacy when she coined the
> slogan "Socialism or Barbarism" because the fact that
> capitalism in crisis on its way to fascism shared certain
> characteristics with barbarism didn't mean that is _was_
> barbarism. ( All barbarism is white; all crisis capitalism
> is white; therefore all crisis capitalism is babarism). But
> Luxembourg was on point in addressing the mo' important
> rhetorical problem, because any new term coined at that time
> would not have been effective in rousing people to action..
> That is, a new term then would not have had the history that
> "barbarism" had associated with it in people's minds.
> Similarly, Marx used "wage slavery" in writing _Wages, Price
> and Profit_ , because he perceived, correctly, that his task
> was primarily rhetorical - rousing the working class to
> action - not formal logical and technical. The thing is to
> change the world; interpretation is secondary. On the other
> hand, a new term , such as "Mordorites" or" Matrix agents" ,
> that is most likely to be effective today will also be
> "technically" as inaccurate as "fascism".
>
>
>
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