[lbo-talk] 14 characteristics of fascism

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Sat Jun 7 09:16:30 PDT 2003


On Sat, 7 Jun 2003 11:47:39 EDT, <BrownBingb at aol.com> wrote:


> 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."

Yup, Carrol is showing Lovestoneite tendencies! And I don't mean the Lovestone http://archive.workersliberty.org.uk/wlmags/wl59/reviews.htm#covert that wrote, "American Imperialism: The Menace of the Greatest Capitalist World Power, " (Chicago: Workers Party of America, n.d. [1925]) http://www.marxists.de/trotism/fisk/ch1.htm
> ...To which (William Zig Zag) Foster replied lamely:

Powers, the CP decided that policy. As a good Communist I just have to go along. [6]

The 6th Congress of the Comintern, in 1928, pushed the leftward course on the ground that there was a world economic crisis and a growing radicalization of workers. Neither crisis nor radicalization in the US was visible to the Lovestone leadership, which held out for US exceptionalism. In fact the economic crisis in the US was still in the future, but only one year away, and the radicalization in the US would begin only in the mid- ’30s. For not making the turn, for sympathies with the right-wing views of Bukharin, for American exceptionalism, Lovestone was stripped of leadership of the party, in which he had a majority, by personal actions of Stalin. He was expelled In 1929, and formed his own political tendency, which functioned during the ’30s.

-- Michael Pugliese



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