On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Shane: "I disagree totally. There is no agreed definition of the term--on
> the contrary, there are as many definitions as there are definers--and
> usages of the term,"
>
> [WS:] True. But this can be said of many concepts, for example civil
> society. While vague and imprecise, it nonetheless played a very useful
> role in Gramsci's analysis, explaining quite a bit (i.e. why communist
> revolutions in Western Europe failed) and what is to be done for those
> revolutions to succeed. The analytic usefulness of the term fascism comes
> from the fact that there is a fundamental difference between "ordinary"
> conservative movements and what for the lack of better terminology can be
> called fascist reaction. Ordinary conservatives merely preserve the status
> quo, whereas fascist reaction is a revolutionary - so to speak - movement
> that aims at overhauling the status quo by revolutionary means (just as
> left wing revolutionaries want) but in the direction opposite to that
> desired by left wing revolutionaries. Corey Robin had it right on the
> target.
>
> We can of course argue whether the use of an ambiguous and emotionally
> charged term is appropriate for denoting the phenomenon dubbed "fascist
> reaction" - and I will be more than happy to use another term as long as
> it clearly expresses the nature of the beast as fundamentally different
> from "ordinary" conservatism.
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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