>>2638363I don't think it's "just" nationalism to be honest.
Let me try to explain: I've got a hypothesis that Fascism acts as a check on socialist revolution
by existing, in that sense it doesn't even need to be successful or claim power or even directly confront Socialism. I think what Fascism accomplishes, is that it splits radicalism down the middle.
Like a lot of the guys that would go on to fight in the Red Army weren't really "Communists" in a meaningful sense. You've got Kerensky remarking that he saw graffiti that said "Down with the Jew, Kerensky! Long live Trotsky!" You had Trotsky claiming that the Russians would try to accept Bolshevism while rejecting Communism. Allegedly you even had some Red Army conscripts boo the term "Communism" when it was used in a speech.
With Fascism I think something unique happened which imperiled Socialism, which is that those guys who still retained reactionary tendencies but understood the need for revolution had an alternative now. Which isn't to say Fascism is de facto "revolutionary" but rather it heavily presents as such. It isn't so much that Fascism "beat Socialism into submission" so much as it created a fracture that could be exploited by liberals and even Fascists themselves. I believe it was Nicola Bombacci who was in exile in Russia that was asked by a Communist why they didn't just kill ᴉuᴉlossnW when they had the chance, and his answer was basically that the Fascists absorbed some of the most violent (and thus most willing to assassinate) cadres of the Socialist movement. I think even Hitler briefly remarked (before he got into power) that he wanted to convert more Communists to Nazism because he admired their commitment to ideological violence.
So this gives Fascism a distinct advantage, because when liberalism fails and it becomes obvious to everyone, Fascism presents itself as the "revolutionary" alternative. It appeals to prejudices and rhetoric that people already have, and in order to counteract this co-opting of revolutionary language, Socialists have illustrate and propagandize their differences. Fascists will absorb Socialist tendencies and tolerate them to a degree while keeping them broadly out of power, but Socialists filter out conservative and Fascist tendencies with greater and greater urgency. A man who rants about "fat cat capitalists" would not necessarily get expelled from a Fascist movement, but if he were to rant about "the Jews" he would undoubtedly get expelled from a Socialist one.
This is not to argue "we should tolerate anti-semitism" but rather just an observation.
Anyways, when Fascism fractures a revolutionary movement, it's fairly common for Socialists to ally with liberal forces to defeat them. This has especially been the case in modern times with France, where National Rally gets pushed back in no small part because centrists and leftists are willing to work against them (with of course plenty of backstabbing from centrists), but where these Fascist pushes are "defeated" it doesn't result in a Left-Wing victory because it can't "absorb" these disparate forces, it doesn't even want to! Whereas when Fascism gains a victory, it tries desperately to "absorb" certain segments of the Left. Socialism in that regard becomes like a dam while Fascism is like a river: the dam can break and the river will wash it away, but the river isn't ever "swallowed" by the dam, it merely stagnates while it waits for an opportunity to break free.
>>2638401Oh for sure, I don't think its a case of "this is gonna be this way for all time" and I think one thing is that these extreme right wing regimes still fall to the contradictions of capitalism; like I told some TradCath over here that claimed to be a "former Communist who read all the literature" that if he can't actually explain how the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to fall is "solved" then he's had less of an ideological conversion and more has just chosen to close his eyes to stuff he supposedly already learned.
I think what makes Nationalism enduring and a powerful force is that everyone relates to "The Nation" differently, and it can even conceptualize a splinter of class consciousness under its umbrella; i.e. you can conceptualize income inequality as being bad for "the nation" for example.
>>2638405>I am not familiar with Sorelianism, what does this ideology mean by this?I've gone on for a bit so I'll try to be brief. Georges Sorel was a French Syndicalist and laid some ideas down that would go on to inspire Socialists and Fascists alike. One of these ideas was that of a "revolutionary myth". Think of it like an ideal that makes itself "real" by virtue of inspiring to act on it. For example: Early Christians believed in the imminent return of Jesus Christ and the end of the world, they believed in that so much they formed communes, they let themselves be torn apart in grisly spectacles of martyrdom, they preached to anyone who would hear them about the "One True God" and while Jesus didn't return, over time Christianity became the State Religion of Rome.
Lets use another example: regardless of whether one believes in the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad or that he was guided by an omnipotent God and that's what let him succeed, the fact is that his preaching Islam convinced people to believe in Islam and those believers would, through the audacity of genuine faith, go on to completely shape a third of the world and become one of the most populous religions on earth.
Finally, Sorel brings his claims of myth to "the present" or rather his present, in the notion of the Syndicalist general strike. Basically, its the belief in a General Strike as a myth, as this eschaton, this final battle between Bourgeoisie and Proletariat, that spurs workers towards making it a reality. When a worker is sabotaging a piece of equipment or a factory in the name of a General Strike, it's not because of rational or scientific planning necessarily, but because he's spurred on by a myth, the myth of the General Strike. Another worker in another factory learns of this act of sabotage, and having already internalized the myth of the General Strike, he too commits an act of sabotage in order to bring this General Strike about.
To Sorel, "Myths" weren't idle Utopias or conceptions of "the world to be", they were romanticized conceptions of struggle. If the early Christians or Muslims didn't genuinely believe in their respective "myths" they likely wouldn't have struggled as hard to make them real. If they didn't believe in a Heaven or a final revelation or what have you, they'd have no reason to let themselves be eaten by lions or stand up to overwhelming odds.
Sorel conceived of Marx as a brilliant sociologist who created an effective modern myth: The Class War. And it was that enduring belief in Class War that Sorel was convinced would spur radical and violent conflicts with Capitalism.