On 2010-09-20, at 9:48 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> ...I do not think fascism as a form of
> government has much of a chance in the US...A radical fascist
> movement of the Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer variety was (and
> still is) DOA in the US - only a moderate reformer like FDR - one who
> would not upset the two fundamental pillars of the US system - the
> party system and the judicial system - had a chance.
Parliamentary democracies aren't a barrier to to fascism when the bourgeoisie loses its ability to contain a growing mass left-wing movement through the system's parties and courts.
The Italian, German, and Spanish ruling classes lost confidence in the fragile parliamentary institutions they had created and turned on them as the source of political gridlock and roiling social crises which threatened their power and property.
The US bourgeoisie did not experience itself as similarly besieged and consequently never felt the need to abandon its liberal democratic institutions. If the US working class had also moved en masse to avowedly anticapitalist parties and movements and expressed its grievances in the streets rather than through the Democratic party, there would have been many more industrialists attracted to fascism (enthusiastically or reluctantly), financing right-wing parties of Americans upset by the social disorder, fearful of the change represented by the godless communist mobs, and ready to enroll as stormtroopers against the left.
> On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>>
>> On 2010-09-20, at 8:51 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>>> [WS:] FDR was an exception that proves the rule. The fact that the US
>>> did not turn fascist in the 1930s as Europe did is due, in a large
>>> part, to its visceral hatred of central government.
>> =================================
>> But all of "Europe" didn't turn fascist. There were violent social struggles between the left and right in all of the countries which did. The urban-based working class organized in trade unions, cooperatives, and social democratic and Communist parties opposed fascism, but was unable to unite effectively against it.
>>
>> Nor was all of the "US" possessed with a visceral hatred of central government. To the contrary, the New Deal was all about strengthening the power of the central government to intervene in the economy and provide a minimal social safety net for the working propulation.
>>
>>
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