How do we seriously define fascism?
<Anti-communism
Liberals do it.
<Anti-organized labor
Liberals do it.
<Colonialism
Liberals do it.
<Genocide
Liberals do it.
What, instead of the police beating your ass, it's paramilitary thugs? Instead of parliamentary elections, you have a fascist party dictatorship? But is this really a meaningful difference to liberalism?
How do we seriously define fascism?
>>2262528liberals ARE fascists anon
wake the fuck up
>>2262528fascism can be understood as the revolutionary (or pseudo-revolutionary) movement of the petit-bourgeoisie, especially when that class feels threatened from both above (big capital) and below (organized labor/proletariat). Fascism appeals to the psychological and material anxieties of the petit-bourgeoisie, mobilizing them as a battering ram against the working class during moments of deep crisis.
The petit-bourgeoisie (small shopkeepers, independent artisans, lower professionals, small landowners) exist between capital and labor. They often aspire to move up but fear proletarianization i.e. being swallowed by big capital or reduced to mere wage laborers. They don’t have the collective leverage of the proletariat (no shared labor power) but don’t have the capital of the bourgeoisie either. In times of crisis (economic collapse, social instability), the petit-bourgeoisie can become radicalized.
They fear both monopolistic capital (which kills small businesses) and working-class revolution (which threatens private property). Fascism offers them a sense of order, status, and belonging and a restoration of hierarchy where they aren't crushed from either direction. Fascists use mass petit-bourgeois rage to destroy working-class organizations but in the end, they serve big capital.
Fascism co-opts anti-capitalist rhetoric, promising to punish corrupt elites or international bankers (historically, often coded antisemitically), appealing to petit-bourgeois resentment. At the same time, it crushes unions, bans strikes, and safeguards large property interests thus acting in the long-term interest of capital.
thats its - social democracy is not the "moderate wing of fascism" as some say. The so-called "socialist" or "social democratic" aspects of Nazi economics, for example, were tactically opportunistic and deeply tied to the historical context, especially the need to win over the mass of economically anxious petit-bourgeois and declassed workers during a crisis, not core to fascism as an ideology.
>>2262593 (me)
Also to expand, Nazi racial theory schizophrenia (a rhetorical or ideological device used to justify Generalplan Ost) is not much different from racism being used to justify slavery. Again, there you have the similarity with liberalism.
>>2262562No, what i described is what fascism really is. What you are asking is if liberalism is actually a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, fascism RESULTS in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, what is the difference?
Under "normal" liberal-democratic capitalism there is "rule of law" i.e. bourgeoise rule is done in an orderly fashion, the reason that can't be sustained is that capitalism has inherent contradictions which occasionally grow beyond the scope of traditional bourgeois democratic institutions (like parliaments, elections, and political parties) to manage i.e. in times of systemic crisis, when capitalism faces serious challenges, especially in moments of deep economic instability or social unrest.
In that sense fascism is both inevitable and inevitably transitory in a capitalist system.
Fascism is ad hoc in the sense that it breaks the rules of the system to save it in a time of crisis. Capitalism for example relies on ostensibly voluntary exchange, which is exactly what you don't have with a dictatorship or absolute monarchy - after all how much choice does subject of an absolute monarch have in transacting with someone that can have them executed arbitrarily. Like an early modern monarch forcing their subjects to loan them money (euphemistically called a "benevolence" - and its likely it was just expropriation in the sense it may never be repaid).
Fascism can force economic participation (e.g., state-directed industrialization, war mobilization, or "corporatist" systems) where the market logic of willing exchange is suspended in favor of state mandates. While liberal capitalism operates on the assumption of voluntary exchange, fascism creates direct command economies in which the state is the central economic agent, dictating terms to workers and employers alike.
It's a bit like manual override on a self driving car, because the self driving car is about to drive itself off the cliff, so the driver needs to take direct control for a while until it gets back on a piece of road where it can drive itself again.
Its an extreme method of dealing with the internal contradictions which would otherwise liberal democracy and capitalism to implode, and nearly did in the 1930s.
>>2262549Liberals "screech" about fascism, as you say, because on a subconscious level its sort of living proof that their worldview is wrong or at least incomplete.
Liberals "screech" about fascism not just because it's morally abhorrent (which it is), but because its emergence shatters their self-conception. Fascism isn't an alien force that descends from nowhere; it's a recurring emergency measure that capitalist societies historically reach for when liberalism fails to resolve internal contradictions—rising inequality, crises of legitimacy, declining profit rates, working-class militancy.
So when fascism shows up, it exposes liberalism’s limits. It shows that "the market" and "democracy" don’t always go together. It proves that capitalism doesn’t necessarily need liberalism, but liberalism always needs capitalism. It reveals that law, rights, and norms are not safeguards, but conveniences which are easily suspended when capital demands it.
On some level, liberals sense this, which is why their reaction is often disproportionate, moralistic, and frantic. Fascism doesn’t just threaten "society", it threatens the illusion liberals live in: that capitalism can be reconciled with fairness, stability, and justice without violence.
In short, it implicates them. Because liberalism doesn't stop fascism. Historically, it paves the way for it: by failing to address social contradictions, criminalizing radical resistance, and clinging to "neutral" institutions even as they're turned against the people. Many liberals would rather have a fascist state than a socialist one, because the former preserves property, hierarchy, and capital.
So when fascism arises, it doesn't just indict the far right, it indicts liberalism for its naivety, its complicity, and its failure to offer a meaningful alternative.
>>2262619War economies are very similar to fascism in that they suspend market logic often through massive state intervention and nationalist mobilization and thus can "reset" capitalism which is why liberals will also often claim the military spending of WW2 saved America from the great depression. So thats partly which capitalism inevitably results in war, fascism or both. I think the key is to see both fascism and war as springing from the same origin (capitalist crisis).
I think one difference is that fascism is more like a war economy for the "internal" class war, rather than merely external war. Liberal states like the US/UK only had war economies in the immediate lead up to and during ww2, Fascism predated ww2 by a decade or more. Fascism emerged during peacetime as a response to internal class crisis, not external war and its solution is to institutionalize war economy-like logic.
Fascism didn’t need an external war to justify economic planning, it used the class war. It directed production, smashed labor movements, and subordinated all civil institutions to the needs of the capitalist state under permanent "emergency." ᴉuᴉlossnW and Hitler were already doing this well before 1939, the war merely expanded what they had already begun.
Liberal war economies mimic fascism functionally during crises, but fascism is that crisis mode explicitly turned into a regime.
Bottom line, you're seeing the same tactics but used for different emergencies, one emergency is Weimar hyperinflation/great depression/socialism/communism/workers militancy. The other emergency is literal war.
So the idea that liberalism can cope with crisis through a war is not particularly novel, as people have accused (bourgeois) politicians of concocting a war to get out of domestic issues all the time (probably correctly).
>>2262528Fascism is understood as its juxtaposition against working class organization.Fascism is the most extreme and violent form of counterrevolution, mobilizing the ruined petty bourgeoisie and lumpen elements as a battering ram to physically annihilate the organizations of the working class—parties, trade unions, etc. Its purpose is to preserve capitalist rule when the threat of proletarian revolution becomes imminent and bourgeois democracy no longer suffices to control the masses.
"The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery."
Fascism is just a form of bourgeois governance when the bourgeoisie is in crisis.
Parliamentarism allows the bourgeoisie their bickering that they like to have with each other: about subsidies here, tariffs on that, privatization of this, etc. This suits the bourgeoisie because the bourgeoisie is a class that is in constant competition with each other in the economic sphere, so their preferred form of governance allows this competition to be reflected in the political sphere.
But in times of crisis, the bourgeoisie realizes it can't afford to bicker when the situation demands class unity. So fascism has a few top finance capitalists: in Germany these were known as the Friends of the Economy, in Japan these were known as the Zaibatsu, etc, run the state in such a way that strict discipline and subservience is demanded of the rest of the bourgeoisie.
This is justified with fascist ideology, but ideology is just a post-hoc thing to justify why the working class and petty bourgeoisie must rally under the fascist flag. ᴉuᴉlossnW and Hitler were both naked opportunists.
So of course anti-communism, anti-organized labor policies, colonialism, etc are all things that are a result of bourgeois society whether or not its led by parliament or fascists. But fascism allows incredible strength of the bourgeoisie because they all become unified under the voice of the most reactionary, most imperialist elements of the bourgeoisie.
>>2262558In every historical example of fascism, monopolistic capital was in charge. In Germany, in Japan, etc.
This was understood as far back as Dimitrov's The Fascist Offensive. Which really should be required reading before any comment about fascism is allowed.
>>2262528According to DeepSeek:
<Fascism is not so much a counterrevolution as a pseudo-revolution, a false rebellion against the status quo that ultimately reinforces domination.<The fascist personality craves strong leaders, despises weakness, and replaces critical thought with stereotyped slogans.<Fascist propaganda is psychoanalysis in reverse: instead of liberating people from irrationality, it deepens their dependency.This doesn't have the connotations with capitalist modernism one typically thinks of except perhaps in this being the domination which is reinforced.
ive always been partial to the "colonial methods used on the core" definition. Its when shit hits the fan bad enough for Capitalists stop pretending to care about enforcing liberal enlightenment era political rights for everyone and sick whatever ultranationalist/turboreactionary running dogs they have available on the general populace. Sometimes said running dogs maul and tear apart the same people who let them out in first place and other times you get more competent regimes.
On an ideological level you might wanna throw in some stuff about how fascism is very big on feels over reals,sentiment and actively and explicitly rejecting modernity and materialism in favor of some mythical past where all the classes lived in harmony that sets it apart from both capitalism and communism which for all there differences promote class struggle(one favors the boss the other the worker) and materialistic mindset(religion is fake and gay what really matters is the economy).
>>2262562tbh you could arguably see fascism and liberalism as two alternative stable states capitalist nation-states switch between based on the ratio of carrot to stick used by the ruling class.
>>2262646>>2263002Just finished reading and I don't get it.
>socdems are to blame for fascism<but also, communists need to unite with socdems to fight fascists>also I will defend socdems from the "Stalinist" social fascist accusations, but also call them uselessWhat did Trotsky mean by this?
>>2262528>How do we seriously define mammals?
<avoids being too dehydratedBugs do it.
<against being eaten by predatorsBugs do it.
<build comfy homesBugs do it.
<enjoy art and cultureBugs do it.
>>2263008>fascism is a historical phenomena, as bourgeois democracy has largely taken everything from fascism it found useful and combined it with existing policies, so the historical materialist eras are like
1. pre-capitalism
2. classical liberalism
3. revolutionary fascism/communism rejecting liberalism
4. counter-revolutionary neoliberalism ("market totalitarianism")
5. ??? there are no revolutions so we're just doing counter-counter-revolutions like a Loony Tunes character. Brexit, Trump's tariffs, people are rejecting the rejection (what is that, Hegel scholars?)
>>2263323Too much jargon and obscures the class character of fascism.
>Fascism is a voluntary reorganization of laborFascism is imposed by force and it destroys independent labor organizations. I don't believe it's correct to call it pseudo-revolutionary, it's counterrevolutionary it actively opposed to revolutionary movements.
>as a retreat of capitalists (bourgeoisie) to preserve the former society's substructure and superstructure when in crisis"It's not a retreat, it's an offense shift to preserve the economic base(capital) when bourgeois democracy can no longer contain working class movements.
If you look through history, fascism as a movement came after communism, which is important to note, because fascism only became a thing once the first wave of proletarian dictatorships sprung up in Europe. And I think that the best answer to 'what' fascism is, it is the way the bourgeoisie (usually with a voluntary petty-bourgeoisie that supports it) during a crisis (usually) reorganizes the state for complete domination of capital over labor. How fascism 'looks' like depends on the state or nation. For example, where in Europe did you have a fascist movement? Almost everywhere. But where was it able to actually take over state power? Only in those countries that had a proletarian dictatorship organized or in the organization - Germany, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Finland, Spain and so on. In countries like Britain or France they were not able to take state power.
>>2264186 (me)
>How fascism 'looks' like depends on the state or nation.It's probably good to add that, unlike the aesthetic, the method of fascism is usually always the same, and it's using colonial methods on your unruly masses back home.
>>2264199So when this starts happening in America (not in El Salvador) then you'll have fascism.
>>2264204Yes. The fascist were able to the momentum of seizing factories. The communists were really confused how to proceed. It's a good, good, incredibly lucky thing that the Russians experienced the 1905. revolution and actually
knew what it takes to have state power. In Bavaraia, in some town (I can't recall now, but Ernst Tollar writes about the experience in his memoirs), for example, they were as confused, if not more, because they organized some soviet republic, but no one knew how to actually do anything. It was mostly larping. Sufficient still for the bourgeoisie. You can even find Plekhanov's memoirs of the early Russian socialist movement. That was even more confused.
>>2264209>The fascist were able to the momentum of seizing factoriesThe fascists were able to use the momentum of workers seizing factories**
good grief
It's pretty variable, depending location circumstances and who you ask. If you ask a fascist to define fascism though you'll get an incoherent answer or something that's 100% vibes, so they're usually not good sources. Looking at historical fascist governments and present day neofascist movements though there are certain overlapping commonalities, some of which can overlap with authoritarian liberal governments and some of which can even be had by "AES" states. The presence of one of these characteristics isolated isn't necessarily a big deal, but a bunch of them working together means you're more justified when you call it fascist. To itterate some general shared features:
>Extreme nationalism, you cannot be a part of the citizenry without placing love of your nationality and state above all else. Frequently fascist nationalism comes with a certain element of paligenesis in addition to jingoism
>A strong cult of personality to the point where the leadership of the state is equated with the state itself and by extension the nation. This leadership is also officially above the law and is allowed to do whatever they want to secure "the health of the nation" or whatever the excuse of the week is
>The strategic use of mass politics, populist rhetoric, and surface level appeals to the working class. However any "workers' power" they may offer comes with the caveat of being exclusive to the nation
>Corporatism, by which it is meant that different groups of workers and employers are organized into corporations based on their trade. Officially, this is to ensure "class harmony" but in practice the state always sides with the employers often with direct military force
>Xenophobia is actively promoted by the state, if not deliberately incorporated into every aspect of life as much as the love of your nation state. To be a member of the ingroup, to even exist in that ingroup, one must have a cultivated burning and uncompromising hatred for the outgroup. Usually this is where the racism factors in most, although fascism need not be explicitly racist. The important thing is to have an enemy both internal and external
>Promotion of traditional gender roles: men must be strong and manly warriors while women must contend themselves with being homemakers and mothers. This can often tie into above points with Great Replacement rhetoric, we gotta heckin BREEEEEEEEED to pump our numbers up against the mud people! Deviation from these gender norms are paramount to treason…unless, again, you're in the ruling elite
>Strong emphasis on collectivism via organicism. A citizen is not merely a citizen, but likened to a cell where the nation and the state are a body. All cells have assigned roles and need to work in unity for the body to thrive, and this same logic will be applied to state functions.
>State promoted religion, either an already existing faith or something newly created, which both legitimizes the leadership and leading ideology, the "race" now having divine backing. What form this faith takes and what aesthetics it uses can vary heavily, anything from traditional Catholicism to eclectic neopaganism to Islamic fundamentalism, as long as its modified to encourage worship of the nation and/or the state.
>Strength through order. Fascists love "tough on crime" rhetoric and flame fears of crime waves and thugs (often tying into the race stuff) to justify massive crackdowns and militarized police brutalizing the population at will. In the presence of security forces a citizen has no rights and can be killed or tortured with impunity.
>Totalitarianism, which is to say the state not only demands as much control as possible but forces the citizenry to regularly publicly engage with the state and ruling ideology at every opportunity. Every aspect of life will have the ruling ideology incorporated into it, with citizens required to disregard critical thinking or any thought patterns that may interfere with their utmost devotion to the ruling ideology and by extension the state.
Probably missed a few points and may have conflated some others, but overall when people talk about "fascism" it's usually a big combination of the above. I know some of you are going to blow a gasket at the mention of "totalitarianism" but it's really the best way to describe the forced active enthusiasm and participation in programs that glorify fascism, to the point where you're putting the leader's manifesto in churches alongside the Bible and giving it out for free with every birth.
>>2262528I don't see any reason to bother defining it.
The mainstream conception of fascism is simply a series of discrete tropes produced in degenerated bourgeois-states, resulting in the emergent illusion of "fascism" but even if you seem to perceive it, it is simply not there.
>>2264478Lmao OP pic got it right
I recommend going down the crazy Wikipedia rabbit hole for South Korean history
Think it's this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea >>2264209Regarding the "confusion" following the Bolshevik victory and the years after until Lenin's death. Some weeks ago I was reading about the execution of the Romanov family and the incompetence of the men tasked with the execution of the Romanovs was staggering. The leader of the operation, Yurovsky, was concerned about having to prevent the Romanov women from getting raped or having jewelry stolen and had to plan accordingly. On the day of the execution one of the guys who was supposed to bring shovels was drunk and only brought one. Two of the guys refused to shoot their assigned targets (women). The planned swifty and humane simultaneous execution was botched, only Nicholas died straight away IIRC, the execution took 20 minutes. The dogs were killed for no reason save for one, who by some miracle ended up in Britain later on. One of the dead girls had her genitals fingered by one or more sickos before the bodies were disposed of. The actual logistics of the disposal of the bodies was never planned. When the Whites came, they had no problems finding the remains of the bodies.
Just a staggering amount of incompetence.
Around that time I also read one of Lenin's writings, dated 1923, talking about the incompetence of the Soviet labor inspection organization and basically sounding like he's speaking to retards. "How can you champs learn how to do your job? Maybe you should be reading books about your job!"
This one
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm >>2262528>But is this really a meaningful difference to liberalism?do you actually go outside
at all
this thread is extremely anti-materialist
>>2262528WHAT FASCISM IS NOT: Some metaphysical standing point on reality when you are the motherfucker that identifies himself by negating the other, scapegoating some minority or neighboring nation or some shit. Why? because if this is so, fascism is the most successful political ideology ever, being held from the dawn of time. Also, liberalism would be fascism, fascism would be so many things it would just become some circlejerk form of talking shit to one another, like "motherfucker" or "piece of shit".
What IS fascism: the political movement that took power in the axis states in the aftermath of ww1, alongside the copycats and puppet states that couldn't do it by themselves, in that specific time under those specific conditions, with specific economic and geopolitical strategies that answered specific problems at that time in that specific way… etc; and that lost in world war 2 aside from some pockets of pseudofascistic entities which were never fully fascist, like Spain Portugal and Greece (entities which gradually became only ceremonially "pseudo-fascistic" while at the same time working virtually the same as any other similar country) and which has since then only survived in some fringe small groups that have no political influence whatsoever.
Most of what people call fascist, like Meloni, Trump, the german ones, you name it, are just neoliberals with a xenophobic, reactionary, extremeley conservative or otherwise old-ass discourse in social and cultural matters. Some fags that use the term fascist left or right if dropped in any 18th century state would die from a scandal-driven heart attack or seizure: the whole god damn world is fascist! fascism has won! *dies*. Picrel was not much economically liberal, but that and the fact he was an anticommunist doesn't mean he was a fascist: he was just some interventionist, anti-communist, authoritharian autocrat in control of a state with his political friends (nobody holds power alone) and pivoting on daddy usa. Fascism is not even a marxist proper category, just another dumb ass ideological configuration of a bourgeois state with an ancien regime flavour to fit into ancient regime countries, and some other historically dependent funny unique characteristics. Give same techonology to an 18th century state and shit might have gone just as bad as holocaust, and shit has got that bad since without the need for fascism. It is more of a liberal term, more concerd with civil liberties and such, just as totalitariansim and other politically socioeconomically braindead terms. Also historically brainded might I add
It's time for the left to drop this god damned terminology stuck in ww2, communism is in dire need of new categories, some really new outlook because this is getting so tiresome, the same arguments for the past 80 fucking years…
>>2264903Yes, because it is assumed that fascist germany, italy and japan are the especially fascist entities, which have a definite set of characteristics accountable on the conditions that were there when they rose. But the use of fascism that I'm critizing applies the label to almost every political entity ever (funny enough, only exceptions would be some liberal parlimentary democracies and some "heterotopies" that anarkieddies, which are criptoliberals, always shill about). Therefore, there is an inconsistency in referring to both things at the same time: fascism in the general sense make so that germany, italy and japan were not especially fascist, they would only be special inasmuch as industry at that time made them make a lot more noise than hitherto possible. Making so that both Stalin and Trump, or Videla and Franco, Pinochet and Netanyahu (in my opinion the best candidate for the label but still not strictly applicable) are fascists, turn fascism into a meaningless term that actually does not especially refer to anything worth compiling into a single term, both for practical and theoretical ends. And on the other hands if we focus on the very special conditions which germany, italy and japan partook in, then we are no longer able to generalize the term. Not even Netanyahu's Israel would be fasicst, a guy that is in my opionion the current best candidate because of his ethno bullshit, but mass killing and political-economic interests manifested as ethnic conflict has been there from antiquity, so, not fascism.
>>2262528I'm gonna put it plain and simple: fascism was just the ideological flavour that filled the protectionist, interventionist, cucked-syndicalist, industrialist, militarist, you name it, state policies niche available at that time due to 1. great depression, hence "state capitalism" and all that jam everywhere in all geopolitical blocks (liberal, fascist, communist) 2. fresh military industry advancement like never before 3. axis powers lost, this and point 2 explains militarist expansionist shit 4. colonialism situation, also explains warmongering. So, due to this conditions, in some countries that had either lost in ww1 or ideologically struggled to adapt to modernity due to a too fresh ancien regime past, which also includes ww1 loosers (hence the social organic discourse of the state and the apparent hostility towards civil society), rose an ideology that filled that specific general niche in those specific particular countries with that were in that situation. The rest was just aesthetic flavour, inspired in rome, in this or that… not politically relevant (the politically relevant terms are only class and empire, and nothing else, everything else is just flavour, an accident ignorantly considered to part of the substance). Holocaust does not make them special either, due to the fact that many events that have since then happened show that genocidal tendencies are not exclusive to them. Their genocidal way is sometimes considered special due to its technicality, but that says nothing to me, they were trying out the new systematizing tools that modernity offered them, nothing special about that. The special thing about that would be industrialization, science etc. which provide the capability to both fascist and non-fascist states to act in that sort of way, some things that were happening in some states decided to just fill that niche, and? congratulations. Some ancient state would have loved such tools instead of passing old people, women and children through the knife en masse, which is the same shit but slower and less efficient.
So, let's call a spade a spade, let's not refer to capitalism's ideological "cherry flavor" as "strawberry flavour" just because it's colored red, let's not call dirt and shit both shit just because they are both brown… Let's not call some stupid economically center-right neoliberal faggot party a fascist party just because in it's media electoral discourse it choose to play the old scapegoat card or just because it has some imperial ambitions, or just because they do some unconstitutional or unlawful shit (we should do that too as communists), or just because they have a populist weird guy as the frontman… Don't make me laugh, such sensibiloid liberal discourse all the time with this fascist shit, it is not even practically relevant as a category and has not been since the end of ww2.
The mistake lies on focusing on the entities and extracting from them some stupid eternal quality applicable indiscriminately everywhere regardless of history, economy, class state empire, you name it. One most focus on the conditions, the rest are just filling out niches provided and the actual movement, call it force call it contingency call it how you want, that then actually goes and fills in those niches, because they are the things that work and other dont. Lesson: stop focusing on this supposed entity called fasicsm, focus on the conditions.
>>2264957Also, somebody explain why are the items grouped under the generalist conception of the "fascist" are EXACTLY those political configurations that are too salty for the delicate taste of liberal values to digest? Is this a mere coincidence? Does this mean that liberal are sensible to detecting items that fall under fascism? Should we have a little liberal pet as a fascist-detector?
Yes, some liberals call putin a fascist while not calling israel fascist, but this is not because they use the term differently, but because due to propaganda they believe the term to be applicable to x and not to y, while for leftists users of the term is the opposite. They see putin as violating ukrain's rights and freedom, and in turn leftists users see israel as violating the rights of palestine and etc.
>>2262906>I'm pointing out that monopolistic capital was a thing before "fascism" appeared. According to Lenin, in Imperialism.Yes imperialism is a pre-requisite for fascism.
>>2264273>When you expand "America" past "America" fascism becomes a more reasonableAs an internationalist should.
>>2262528>But is this really a meaningful difference to liberalism?Good question, ultimately I think the answer is basically no, but its more that liberalism is the ideological competent of capitalism as a system, and imperialism being the highest stage of its logical development, so more important is whether there is a difference between fascism and imperialism. One definition of fascism is that it is imperialism turned inward, and Lenin says that imperialism is capitalism in decay. He says this because initially compared to feudalism, capitalism is a progressive force because it increases the means of production and gives a society more capacity for freedom, but this has a limit found inherent in capitalism itself. Market competition leads to consolidation of productive forces into monopoly and when technological innovation becomes saturated the rate of profit falls due to the increase in the organic composition of capital and resulting falling rate of profit it ceases to be progressive and instead comes to live off rent from existing infrastructure which provokes a crisis of overproduction as workers become unable to afford what they produce. This leads the monopoly capitalists to expand into markets outside the legal territory of their nation which in turn results in war that redivides territories and you have imperialism. Nobody called the British, Dutch, or Belgian imperialism fascist, but as soon as Germany started doing it in Europe they made a new term. And this is the key difference between fascism and liberalism, Germany's imperial colonialism didn't work, they were shut out by rival imperialists. This forced the German monopoly capitalists to the last resort turning inward to the final and ultimate source of profit, labor, implementing brutal austerity to increase profits at home. Which is the next key part of fascism, as a reaction to a failed socialist revolution due to underdeveloped class consciousness and lack of organization. If the workers simply accept the austerity then you have neoliberalism. It is only when they fight back and lose that you get fascism, which by eliminating the only solution to the inevitability of falling profit rates under private ownership starts enslaving the reserve army of labor and working them to death directly turning life into money and bringing capitalism to its completion by consuming itself. Just as imperialism transforms yet repeats capitalism at a higher stage internationally fascism is a repetition and return of imperialism but at a higher stage and domestically.
>>2265101>Yes imperialism is a pre-requisite for fascismno, the possibility of proletarian dictatorship is - see
>>2264186was poland or yugoslavia imperialist in any meaningful sense?
>>2265130Cause otherwise i dont disagree that it is a component
1) highest stage of advanced monopoly capitalism
2) failed imperialist expansion
3) austerity
4) crisis of overproduction
5) failed proletarian movement
6) open terroristic dictatorship of finance capital
i'm just situating it historically and explaining why the proletarian movement comes from crisis of overproduction and falling rate of profit, class consciousness rises out of declining conditions. colonial policy applied to the domestic citizen and communist revolution are the two ways to deal with the "sovereignty of the bourgeois state" affirming or negating it resulting in barbarism or socialism as capitalisms final form that either way abolishes and overcomes its liberal foundation
>>2262528If we're defining it as a government:
An Authoritarian state with a Corporatist Economic model combined with intense nationalism seeking to maintain its hegemony via imperialism, ethno-statism, racism, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and anti-democratic/ anti-socialist policies.
The Comintern concisely defined communism nearly 100 years ago but still people insist on lib definitions ("Fascism is when xenophobia") or (wrongly) identifying fascism with the petite bourgeoisie.
Make no mistake, the petite bourgeois are drawn to fascism, but they're mere foot soldiers in the hands of finance and industrial capital, which are the driving forces, as they were in Germany, Italy and Japan.
This and the genocidal expansionist violence is what sets fascism apart from ordinary liberalism. Fascism is what happens when capital is incapable of growing except through violence. And to no surprise, fascism coincided with energy and resource crises in (upstart) competing imperialist powers.
It's also why fascism isn't mere anti-communsim either. Though all fascism is anticommunist.
>>2262787Definition like these are idealist, because they pretend fascism follows from "ideas".. The ideological content of various "fascisms" is contradictory nonsense. What matter is what it entails structurally and terms of actions.
>>2264898Trump and his other oligarch backers are fash not least because they're motivated by capitalist crisis (including competition with China) and anti communism.
tl;dr; stop being idealists
>>2265115I don't know about Poland but as for Yugoslavia fascism never took off. The last prime minister before the outbreak of WW2 in Europe Milan Stojadinović was in charge of a fascist coalition-party (Yugoslav Radical Union) which wished to model ᴉuᴉlossnW and seek greater economic integration with Germany but
<The British historian Richard Crampton wrote that the basis of Stojadinović's power rested on "political jobbery" and corruption as the JRZ functioned more as a patronage machine of a type very common to the Balkans rather than the fascistic mass movement that Stojadinović had intended.<In late 1938 he was re-elected, albeit with a smaller margin than expected, failed in pacifying the Croats, raised a military-like legion of his own followers ('Green Shirts'), and did not formulate any clear political programme, providing the regent Paul with a welcomed pretext upon which to replace Stojadinović, on 5 February 1939, with Dragiša Cvetković.[46] Prince Paul had by early 1939 come to see the ambitious Stojadinović with his dreams of being a fascist leader, as a threat to his own power.[46].And Stojadinović was thus removed from power by the prince regent, detained, and given to the British to be kept in exile for the entirety of WW2. The Yugoslav Radical Union wasn't banned but with the disappearance of Stojadinović it ceases to be mentioned, presumably falling into obscurity.
The Croatian anti-Yugoslav Ustashe, meanwhile, never came to power before the Axis occupation and partition of Yugoslavia. In occupied Serbia, the Government of National Salvation was a Quisling regime without support from Serbians. Serbian fascist Dimitrije Ljotić and his party is famously remembered as being politically irrelevant.
<Founded in 1935, it received considerable German financial and political assistance during the interwar period and participated in the 1935 and 1938 Yugoslav parliamentary elections, in which it never received more than 1 percent of the popular vote.In summary, outside the Ustashe (and only with the help of the Axis), there was no serious fascist current in Yugoslavia.
>>2265213>for Yugoslavia fascism never took off.In Yugoslavia it was known as monarchofascism. It encapsulates the time of Obznana (when the communist party was forbidden to operate, given that in the first free elections they got a third of the mandates and a few years before there was the affair Diamantstein, when it was leaked that the comparty is organizing a revolution) and the period during the January 6th dictatorship till his assasination. Stojandinović was just a muppet. Even Ljotić. No, when we talk of fascism in Yugoslavia, we mean the period 1921.-1934.
Poland's fascist period is refered to as the Sanacja.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation >>2266567>who resort to terroristic meanscolonial means
terrorism today means any non-state anti-imperialist (not necessarily communist) organization that threats 'global stability' (mobility for western finance capital)
>>2266611On the contrary, my impression is that Westerners don't give a shit about the suffering of Eastern Europeans at the hands of Nazis.
In fact, my impression is they are barely taught about it. A legacy of the Cold War, I'm guessing.
>2267480
Well, the problem is that for starters, it's unclear if the Holocaust refers to only Jewish victims or non-Jewish victims as well. The Western historian consensus seems to be that the different genocides shouldn't be "lumped together" due to different methods and different Nazi groups being responsible. However, the problem is that the Jewish Holocaust itself involved multiple different methods and was conducted by different Nazi groups. It just feels like Western historians want to downplay the genocide of Eastern Europeans. Also no, I don't think it's antisemitic to point out that Jewish people were not the only victims of Nazis.
Looking it up, about 2.7 million civilian ethnic Poles were killed by Nazis.
About anywhere from from 10 to 15 million non-Jewish Soviet civilians were killed by Nazis. This excludes the 3 million Soviet POWs killed by Nazis.
It's interesting that as far as I've noticed the Soviet POWs are more likely to be mentioned by Westerners than the Soviet civilians.
Admittedly, there has been difficulty with historiography of the genocide of Eastern Europeans from the Westerner side due to lack of access to historical archives and documents. But I still can't shake the feeling there is an ideological bias or prerogative to downplay the Eastern European genocide. Generalplan Ost and the so-called Hunger Plan were not the schizo dreams of Himmler, but active Nazi policy: Eastern Europe was to be literally colonized and settled by Germans, Eastern Europeans, like Jews, were to be either enslaved if they were "fit for work" or exterminated. The Eastern Front was basically a genocidal conquest. Once you realize that, it adds a whole chilling dimension to the Eastern Front. Soviet soldiers were literally fighting to save their families.
>>2267469>people are arguing whether fascism is led by the petty borg and middle classes(trotsky position) Trotsky never said fascism is led by the petty bourgeoisie. He clearly states that fascism is a tool of monopoly capital, directed by the big bourgeoisie, but mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie as its mass base.
"German fascism, like Italian fascism, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organizations of the working class and the institutions of democracy. But fascism in power is LEAST of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, IT IS the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital. "
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com >>2267514>Well, the problem is that for starters, it's unclear if the Holocaust refers to only Jewish victims or non-Jewish victims as well. The way I remember it being taught in school, the Holocaust referred also to the killing of disabled people, gypsies, and homosexuals. But you're right that it doesn't tend to include the killing of non-Jewish ethnic Poles and other Slavs.
>But I still can't shake the feeling there is an ideological bias or prerogative to downplay the Eastern European genocide.It doesn't take a big leap to conclude that deaths of non-Jewish Soviet civilians was downplayed in the West because the Cold War. On the flip side, the Soviet deemphasis of a certain special or unique Jewish story of the Holocaust seems wrong at some level and also political.
The way the Nazis looked at Jews as not just targets but the ultimate enemy feels qualitatively different. The rapid acceleration of the Holocaust where whole Jewish populations were being carted off into industrialized death camps very late in the war was really psychotic.
>>2267488>>2267488>the US and NATO preserved Krupp and IG Farbin with the nuremburg sham condemning soldiers instead of their capitalist backersthis is what Gravity's Rainbow is
really about, beneath all the pretentious prose and whacky shenanigans
Fascism is not so complicated as people make it out to be.
…
The leftist view of Fascism is vindicated.Leftist view of Fascism is that Fascism is merely the dictatorship & absolutism of the bourgeoisie.Rightwingers don't prescribe to Fascism as Italian Fascists laid down anyways.
Evola even makes fun of Fascism, calling himself a super-fascist (meaning, the stress on transcendence over immanentism / actual idealism of Gentile), & rightwingers hate the Statism / unitary politics of Fascism.
>>2262528<How do we seriously define fascism?Leftist definition.
1. Fascism is merely the dictatorship & absolutism of the bourgeoisie.
Fascist definition.
2. State Corporatism / totalitarianism with the immanentism of Actual Idealism.
If we take Fascism as Fascists describe it:Fascism is State Corporatism / totalitarianism with the immanentism of Actual Idealism.
>What is State Corporatism?i.e. like Hobbes' Leviathan, the State as a Corporation of One Person.
It is a unitary mode of politics, generally with a one-party state.
Historically, this unitary mode of politics goes with Plato's Republic & maxims like,
>The state is unitary, supports the idea of many in one or working as one body / corporatism.>political & economical having the same science>one party or one estate (one-party regime or absolute monarchy) in unitary fashion<one party (fascism) or one estate (absolute monarchy) for State Corporatism, an arbitrary or unilateral authority – as opposed to Aristotle's concord of hosts / independent partnership of clans & their convention / virtue, representing multi-parties (multi-party democracy) or multi-estates (neofeudalism).
>TotalitarianismHolistic view of the State concerned with the life and consciousness of the citizens.
Fascism is mobilized & an active politics, totalitarian and Statist thanks to Actual Idealism.
The immanentism makes the consciousness of citizens and participation in politics worthwhile. It is another reason why they are Statists and not esoterics or like the traditionalists do place Church over State.
>Actual Idealismhttps://philosophyball.miraheze.org/wiki/Actual_Idealism>Gentile believes that the only true reality is the dynamic act of thinking itself — the thinking that thinks. Reality is not found in static entities or separated objects but in the active process of self-consciousness, where thought manifests as a pure act. This pure act is inherently self-referential, as it constitutes the unity of subject and object within the spirit.>emphasizing that spirit and matter are inseparably united in the act of thinking. Reality is thus entirely immanent, rejecting external or transcendent presuppositions.
>Arbitrary power / violenceThis usually comes with unitary / authoritarian politics because of the rejection of Aristotle's concord of hosts.
Think of it as the impossibility of all these factions to paint a canvas together.
Hobbes infamously makes a war of all against all and defers to an arbitrary / unilateral authority to reject this.
To really understand this view, think how well the most opposed political factions might agree or have concord – take the most ardent nationalists like the Nordicists and Pan-Slavists or Southern Europeans and ask them how they'd like to divide Europe, because inevitably they'd disagree on the boundaries and make deference to an arbitrary decision-making inevitable. Are the borders drawn by a concord of hosts or by the sword?
>>2305075>>2262541>>2262599Giovanni Genitle:>Far from being the negation of liberalism and democracy (which even the leaders of Fascism have regularly repeated for polemical reasons) [Fascism] actually aspires to be the most perfect form of liberalism and democracy.To be a liberal is to deviate from the Christian traditionalism.
Unless you are committed to returning to pre-Reformation Europe under Catholicism, you are basically somewhat of a liberal.
The only people who can claim to not be liberals are the most hardcore tradcaths / orthobros.
>>22625281. I just want to get out of the way the fact that fascism is both a historical political movement, and a word we use to try to describe a form of capitalism and the state in a way that assumes there's some kind of universality to it. I only care about the latter
2. In general capitalism is expressed socially and in the state in diverse ways; if there are discreet phases we should expect only that they express some characteristics more strongly and others more weakly, rather than being something completely new
In capitalist crisis, the bourgeoisie is looking for new markets to exploit, for cheaper material costs, and cheaper labor costs. This leads to such manifestations as the bourgeoisie pushing for wars, suppressing union activity, reaching for total control of the state in order to push it's agenda against the proletariat, working to divide the proletariat in furtherance of these goals, supporting slavery, as well as individual capitalists looking to control the state outside of normal bourgeois democracy and suspending bourgeois rights, in order to pillage and clear away other capitalists, meaning a movement away from bourgeois democracy and for clique/elite control of the state, away from any participation of other classes in any formal mechanisms of democracy left, etc.
So there we already basically have the general idea of fascism. Then on the side of the working class, they're looking for someone to blame for their economic issues, and someone to plunder to fix them. There are generally two possible (forward-looking) answers: plunder vertically (up) or plunder horizontally. Socialists say we can blame the bourgeoisie, and therefore restrict their rights and take from them to fix our economic woes. The Fascists say we can blame members of the working (including the unemployed) and small-owning classes on the basis of race, nationality, ability, gender, etc. and plunder from and restrict the rights of a portion of our own class in order to address the economic woes of one portion of the class. Obviously the latter works very well for capitalists, who see they will actually profit from any plundering, as well as the division of and support of their own reduction in rights and freedoms from the working class.
Therefore in times of crisis the bourgeoisie and a section of the working and small-owning classes (with the strongest impulse in the small-owners, since they are hit hardest and first by crisis) support: wars of plunder, rolling back rights of the working class as whole, removal of democracy, limited expropriation of some capitalists, etc. Since the bourgeoisie and part of the working class are united in bringing about these conditions, they will prevail before revolution is possible as an answer to the crisis. So, fascism is also the repressive stage that communism is incubated in.
Many of these things can happen under liberalism. The only difference is the form of the state, and that's also the real terrain of struggle that makes fascism seem like a huge deal. At some point some of the capitalists desire to openly take over the state in order to have a monopoly on the advantages it can confer, against all other capitalists. This causes infighting among the owning class, and requires a more or less visible power struggle and change of the form of the state. This is why fascism appears to be a large change. But all the other aspects can be present without the state changing its form.
In light of this, I think we should talk about degrees and specificities of capitalist response to crisis, as well as the working class's level of a sense of crisis and their response (socialist or fascist). While understanding that the state changing form is one aspect that deepens the capitalists' response and allows them more repressive and war-pursuing abilities, while not being a disconnected aspect or coming out of nowhere.
>>2344832you can easily observe with clarity that any one of those fourteen points pertaining to totalitarianism is fascism. All cut from the same cloth and
it is not insignificant to contemplate
how these points fundamentaly serve to subjugate the proletariat and bolstr the mercantile structures. We shall resist against such manifestations of this opressive
force, stalin himself faught against this horror.
I've thought about it more and I think the mistake is ascribing "fascism" as distinct from totalitarianism.
Fascism IS totalitarianism, they are one and the same.
This came to me when I was re-reading the opening chapters of Lenin's State and Revolution.
Lenin, citing Engels, is making three claims:
1. The state exists as a result of class antagonism
2. The power of the state intensifies with greater class antagonism
3. The state is alienated from society, it represents the interests of the ruling class in the sense that officials are literally bribed (or increasingly nowadays themselves bourgeois), or the state has financial incentives aligning with the ruling class through the stock market, etc., but the state exists above society and the alienation never ceases.
What I did not realize when I first read this text years ago that not only here do we have the ingredients for totalitarianism, we can literally also explain the "irrational" destructiveness of states seemingly destabilizing capitalism and going against bourgeois interests. The state is an autonomous actor, acting independent of the bourgeoisie. As the state's power grows, the contradiction of its autonomy on one hand and its defense of the social order intensifies. Destruction follows, by violation of liberal rights, by police terror, by war, and, in the case of Nazi Germany, by state-planned genocide.
In the final conclusion, one can debate if the USA is "fascist", but one cannot debate, knowing the facts, if it is totalitarian, because it absolutely meets the threshold.
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