> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shane Mage [mailto:shmage at pipeline.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 8:30 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Bohemian Grove
>
>
> Chip talks about the Strasser bros. as archetypes of
> fascist criticism of the Bohemian Grove cabal.
>
> Joseph talks, in effect, about Thyssen and Stinnes as
> archetypes of the Bohemian Grove cabal.
>
> Which pair did more to create the Third Reich?
>
> Shane Mage
Precisely a major point of disagreement.
I would argue that the Strasser brothers were far more important in the rise of fascism as a mass movement.
I am rejecting the Dimitrov analysis of fascism.
This attitude it what prompts Charles Brown to engage in his childish rants. He is like a broken radio stuck on one channel.
Stalinism warped what had been a credible analysis of fascism by Marxists. Some have recovered from the disaster of Dimitrov and his wretched definition.
The most cited Comintern definition is:
"Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital," Thirteenth ECCI Plenum on Fascism, 1933.
This is a worthless definition!
Marxist discussions of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s actually included a number of complex analyses that considered the cross-class contradictions and autonomous populist base of fascism. This is discussed by Dave Renton in:
"Towards a Marxist Theory of Fascism" http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/old/old3.html
See, for example, these quotes from Renton:
==="If fascism is a movement shaped at one and the same time by mass support and by reactionary goals; then there is an antagonism at the heart of the movement. This contradiction explains the 'Bonapartist' aspect of fascism. In so far as fascism is a mass movement, it promises to rule against the interests of capitalism. In so far as fascism is a reactionary movement, it does rule against the interests of the class that provided the bulk of the fascist party's members"
"Towards a Marxist Theory of Fascism" http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/old/old3.html
==="The moment when fascist parties have been at their most vulnerable was at the start of the second stage, just as they became mass movements. They were then most dependent on popular support. They made then the most dramatic promises to their followers, with the least expectation of fulfilling them. At this point, we may speak of a 'fascist contradiction'. For although the fascist programme offered nothing to anyone but the existing rulers, the fascist party was an organisation of plebeians. Fascism could not be simply a capitalist movement. There were not enough rich businessmen to wage a successful war against the workers, alone. The national and local leadership of both fascist of the classical parties was composed of shopkeepers, civil servants, the owners of small businessmen, merchants and traders, the 'petty bourgeoisie'. While these men dominated the local branches, the mass membership of the party included large numbers of unemployed workers. Indeed, it was the mass base of fascism, its popular support, which provided the movement with its destructive energy. Fascism took the anger of ordinary people, not the rich, and turned this force against democracy itself."
"The political economy of fascism" http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/research/polecon.htm
===
Chip Berlet