From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
Chip Berlet wrote:
>
>
> Exactly, and if we have to call state repression under capitalism
> "fascist" then we become apologists for banal repression under
> capitalism by implying it can't happen under "normal" capitalism so it
> has to be fascism.
>
I used the label "fascist" pretty loosely myself for years -- decades. And it was when I began perceiving how repressive capitalism at its "best" was that made me start rethinking the term. Repression is normal; relative absence of repression is the aberration.
Carrol ^^^^^^^^^^ CB: The obverse is true. Fascsim and Nazism _were_ normal capitalism. By making out that fascism and Nazism were such a special case, one lets "normal" capitalist repression off the hook. For most of the history of U.S. ,"normal" capitalism , genocide against the indigenous peoples and slavery of Africans were the level of repression. Given this, fascism and Nazism were not some abnormal level of capitalist represssion. The repression of the primitive accumulation of capitalism was normal capitalist repression.
It is your persnickitiness about the term "fascism" ,as if using it slanders "normal" capitalism, that implies that normal capitalist repression is not so bad. You imply that the fascist level of repression is rare in the history of capital. On the contrary, we should let people know that the fascist level of repression is the norm in the history of capitalism, as in slavery, colonialism, war, racism and genocide.
In other words, the wolf is usually at the door in capitalism, the snake is in the parlor. It is the exception when they are not.
Furthermore, the U.S. is not "domestically" fascist right now. However, by being so insistent that the term "fascist" not be used to describe the potential and direction of the measures being taken today, one implies an American exceptionalism in the vein that "It can't happen here. We're special." A Marxist and dialectical approach looks at the direction and motion of a phenomenon, not just its instant and static location: "Where are things going; where could they go ?" not just "Where are things right not ?"
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030607/48b99e5b/attachment.htm>