The more common argument is "Fascism is just more authoritarian capitalism", and that's because it literally is. It does nothing to actually dismantle capitalism, end private property ownership of the MoP, and move towards ending commodity production and instead moves towards privatizing its own governments public services and infrastructure, having those business/factory owners who are in close relation with the government retaining private ownership over over their businesses and factories while helping enforce the wages set for their workers, and embracing (or just ignoring) commodity production as something to keep or ignore rather then eventually get rid of. At best you could say fascism is more a brutal or direct form of social democracy, and at worst the highest form of neoliberal/neoconservative collusion.
Marxist Texts About Fascism
there's nothing succdem about. it's literally the culmination of conservative operation. a state which appeals to our fearful nature in order to justify privatisierung.
It depends on what you mean by "extreme." It isn't necessarily neoliberalism at its most rapacious, which is what we might think of currently as "extreme capitalism," or even the more traditional laissez-faire idea, but rather a form of capitalism where capitalists are desperate enough to resort to strongmen with a certain type of social-nationalist program (in the more literal sense of social) in the face of an economic and social chaos that threatens it. Maybe it's better said that it is capitalism driven to extremes rather than extreme capitalism, though.
Fascism is the end result of the failure of Marxist education.
Far from being the total opposition to Marxism in all ways, in marketing terms they both share numerous demographics–generally speaking–especially among their respective "intellectual" castes (the "activists" or theorists in the parties) and Fascism only emerges in cases where material analysis cannot reach the masses in terms they can easily understand.
What makes the fascist "truth" so memeable and so powerful is that it doesn't necessarily rest on concrete theory, but vague proclamations of enemies, traitors, and a coming golden age. The sad truth of the world is that this is far better at getting people motivated to support a cause than "boring" theories, no matter how correct they are.
Honestly the "superiority" of Fascism comes from its knowledge of how humans, generally speaking, think. As an example, far from Trump's failures destroying support among his base, if anything they make it more rabid in their defense of him. Similarly, the Nazis were willing to defend Hitler until the last block of Berlin had fallen while the conditions of WWI were intolerable enough to prompt a revolution.
In all honesty it's amazing that the wider left has trouble understanding this. The emphasis on theory is a good thing, in most cases, but it fails when you try to speak theory to the common people–if anything it has the reverse effect. Take, for example, leftist internationalism and opposition to "nationalism". You can quote Marx, you can talk about how the nation isn't "helpful", but the problem ultimately lies in the fact you're arguing against "the nation" as perceived by the people, and if anything the more vigorous your critique of it, the more vigorous "light" nationalists are to defend it.
Does this mean you should abandon anti-nationalism or internationalism? No. But the trap of internationalism is the same trap of "abolishing whiteness", nationalism in the common lexicon has taken the form of something akin to patriotism–it isn't merely the U.S. government you're perceived as opposing when you oppose nationalism, but the American people themselves, the entirety of their history, their culture, their values and traditions. In the end even if you show them what our government does to poor third worlders, they still wouldn't care–if anything you'd have created a monster that's openly tolerating if not celebrating the exploitation of "weaker" peoples, because the only perceived route out is hating their own people, history, and culture.
Ditto for "abolishing whiteness"; the theory itself may refer to Whiteness as a social construction, but if Joe Schmoe hears professor Shekelstein saying "the social construction of the white race has to be DESTROYED" he interprets it as what amounts to brown supremacy and deeply triggering and problematic hatred.
If you corner an army with no way out, they'll fight to the last man as no other option is available to them. If you leave them an opening or offer them a surrender, then you win with far less of a cost to your own side. The false dichotomy of leftist theory has to be defeated before Fascism can, people have to be given something to see that isn't "America loving jingoist or America hating pansy"
that is not what Adorno and Horkheimer were saying. They are saying that firms increasingly wield a sort of social control that is fascistic. Firms are driven by profit to homogenize the tastes of consumers, which potentially lays groundwork for fascism.
good post tbh
I think this is incorrect, and fascist states were much worse on this matter during World War II. Nazi Germany didn't switch from consumer production to a total war economy until 1943, well after the war had decisively turned in the Allies favor, and after the other major combatants had already switched over. This was because of the inordinate power of big-capitalist industrialists in the Nazi economy. There is a very good book about the Nazi economy called "Wages of Destruction" I would look up.
yep. just look at how much of the Nazi party involved the research gained from the advertising and marketing industry. Nazism is just a brand identity, but a small form of an infinite possibility of superficially different Fascisms.
Also, the Nazi war machine was basically tapped out for manpower from day one of the war. They were only able to even grow the economy after that point at all through invasions, looting the industries of occupied countries, and importing millions of slaves to bolster the domestic economy. The Nazi economy was quite literally unsustainable.
Myself: I see fascism as a kind of insane and metastatic reaction to capitalism in crisis that is counterproductive in many cases to the more liberal elements of the bourgeoisie. Like a grotesque parody of imperialism and capitalism. But in any case, most fascist regimes were just proxy states for the U.S. government in the Cold War. The ones in Italy and Germany I see as like experiments that got carried away – like an infected zombie escaping from the lab and infecting a society. They also burn out, and the project collapses before the imagined-for fascist future ever arrives. Can you imagine a Nazi victory and seeing a reconstituted European order except they're all fascist states? It doesn't work. It'd just be endless war and bloodshed for eternity.
What that kind of New Order would actually look like in reality, I think, is a victorious Germany becoming "post-Nazi" like a Latin American junta. Once the Bolshevik menace is out of the way, the bourgeoisie would have no need for Hitler and his cronies.
America loving communist?