Date: 21 Feb 2002 12:11:06 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: Fascism




>>> cwright-AT-21stcentury.net 02/21/02 09:03AM >>>
 Fascism may certainly respond to mass workers'
movements, but it is a specific response, not just of the bourgeoisie, of
the capitalists.  It also took place in the era of the transition from
professional to mass worker.  What might this have to do with fascism as we
knew it?  Would it also be connected to statification as a way of
reorganizing the class composition, hence the tendency towards state
capitalism?  

Tahir: But isn't state capitalism inherently connected with nationalism in some or other way, as I was suggesting? All the examples I can think of suggest this.

If so, maybe we would have to reverse the relation of fascism
and state capitalism, with fascism being one means of bringing about greater
integration with the state of all aspects of social life for the working
class?

Tahir: This is a bit too telelogical, isn't it? For example, how does this explain WHY the bourgeoisie, or a section thereof, would suddenly favour the state cap option at a particular moment?

If this is reasonable, then might the end of the professional worker and a
mass petty bourgeoisie have meant the end of classical fascism?  After all,
even if I argue that the PB still exists as a class, it is certainly much
tinier than it was in the 1930's, prolly less than 20% of the total
population.  Might this also not explain the emergence of fascist or
fascist-like regimes in countries with the professional worker class
composition?  (Harald's comments on Iraq and the Baathists come to mind, but
others as well, such as Argentina, Greece, etc.)  As such, it would also
explain why fascism has ceased to appear in the developed countries.

Tahir: You mean to become dominant at the level of the state in recent times? You surely don't believe that fascist movements don't exist and have any appeal right now? It is certainly not accurate to say that fascism has ceased to appear.

Also, fascism is not an aberration of the state form (as Poulantzas
thought), but one of the actual representations of its form.

Tahir: Why not the purest of all its forms?

  If in thinking
of the discussion of form and essence raised a while back, we might want to
concretize it in the Hegelian idea of Universal, Particular and Unique, in
which essence and form play the role of Universal and Particular, while any
actual state is not a form (the Particular), but the Unique, since each
state apparatus is a unique happening of the state form as the
particularization of the political as Universal.  Of course, I could also be
stretching the Hell out of this and mixing my categories.  ;)

Tahir: I would like you to expand on "each state apparatus is a unique happening ..." I find this uniqueness very hard to see.



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