As pointed out by Georgi Dimitrov, the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International defined fascism to be “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”. Yet, so many fascists claim that fascism and their movements are there to stop finance capital.
One instance I would point out here is that Michael Hudson has done a lot of writing on finance capital. When these discussions come about, you can see fascists by the dozen coming to agreement with someone who almost talks like a Marxist. It goes without saying that Michael Hudson has been hosted, on Geopolitical Economy Report, with Pepe Escobar, a journalist who has made mention to philosophical discussions with people like Alexander Dugin. Interestingly enough, Pepe Escobar has specifically mentioned, in an interview relating to geopolitics (of the current Israeli situation), that he would suggest reading a text about Jewish people. This book was anti-semitic in ways I have never seen before. Relating back to Dugin, I’m at a point where I see “geopolitics” or “multipolar” and assume some relation to the man, so I was already highly suspicious anyway.
So the question is: why do so many reactionaries and fascists try to claim the fight against finance capital is their fight? I haven’t seen any evidence that fascists actually do anything to stop finance. It all gets blamed on immigrants or Jewish people or something else.
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Additionally, what is the deal with all the attemps to form some type of red-brown alliance of sorts? Everything left-wing in nature always seems to hold mention, directly or indirectly, to something that comes out of the LaRouche or Dugin playbooks. These people aren’t even Communists, they’re just fascists.
The worst part is that we know American fascism actually claims to be uniquely American and thus not fascist at all because American fascism just isn’t European. Franklin D. Roosevelt was almost like a competent Mussolini, yet purely electoral and allowed Communists to exist (but under scrutiny and surveillance), and even had a real plot against him by real fascists. On the opposition, it looks like we even have people reading Marx and Engels and Lenin at length, but still co-opting the messaging to do some PatSoc/NazBol/Duginist/Strasserist/etc. adjacent work.
If you sit in pro-China spaces too long, you find a bunch of fascists. If you sit in anti-China spaces too long, still fascists everywhere. If you speak up for Korea, same thing, attacked by anti-Communists on one end and your message is co-opted by neo-fascists claiming Korea is an ethnostate or a PatSoc state, and worthy of praise, on the other. These are the same tactics NazBols would use for recruiting back when Stalin was running the USSR, claiming Stalin as one of their own.
Now we have more anarchists and other leftists attacking Communist spaces for holding a bunch of “tankies” and people like us are getting lumped in with Jackson Hinkle and Haz.
If reading all the theory doesn’t solidify our principles, if our organizations are still infiltrated heavily, if our message is dilluted by opportunists, and if we have people engaging in real-life praxis still falling victim to cult-like behavior and taking on fascist-adjacent viewpoints, then what do we have?
and I won’t ignore people trying to minimize this either. If you look at any left-wing organizations in the “West” (yet another euphemism I hate since it just sounds like right-wing garbage pitting East against West, or Atlanticist fascist against Eurasian fascist), we notice that there are no serious organizations like there used to be. Definitely nothing like the Black Panther Party is alive today.
Then look at how quickly the fascists switch up and adhere to their new lines, like it was a script. From pro-Ukraine to pro-Russia; from pro-Israel to pro-Palestine; from anti-China to pro-China or vice versa. People who were screaming about Communists and (((globalists))) taking over the WEF and the global institutions are now celebrating Javier Milei’s election in Argentina. When leftists bring up international orgs ran by the US? Well, the fascists already had their anti-WTO, anti-World Bank, anti-NED, anti-IMF lines ready to go, getting their voice out and their opinions boosted while the legitimate opposition was censored or removed.
Sorry for the rant. I just need someone to make some sense out of all this. It feels like the internet has been stuck in psyop mode for so many years that every form of opposition left, right, and center, has been infiltrated to the point of never challenging anything. Weird times lie ahead.
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Fascism is the ideology that the status quo is good by nature, but that there is something corrupting it - something preventing the state from being great again. Some form of parasitic force, be it foreigners, women, the jews, bankers, international enemies, communists, even other fascists.
Proletarians on the far-right often share many of the same complaints people who would also be open to having communist beliefs have. Fascism allows these complaints to form incoherent complaints, contradictory ones, etc. It is easy to be a fascist, especially considering class and elements leading to over-exploitation, like not being a cishet man, being foreign, etc. If only the people responsible for this misery would get off their asses and do stuff, everything would be fine. Of course, the policies fascists support are often against the proletarians’ interests. You also have people who know the implications of fascist rule (just as democratic rule) and they want the state to start throwing its military, economic, etc. power around the world to incite conflict and get loot.
The bourgeois on the other hand, use fascism as a weapon when it seems that the current form of capitalist rule (usually some kind of democracy) is not “working” well enough for them - that they are outperformed by foreign capital, that strikes are ongoing, that a reformist government that might or might not be popular is lowering their profits, that the current government policy is making the country unstable and risk their profits, etc. You saw this in Germany of the 1930s with Hitler’s pacts with industrialists, and you see it now in Germany when there was a secret meeting of AfD-fascists, hardline neo-nazis and some wealthy people, discussing donations to the party and how to do “re-migration”.
If reading all the theory doesn’t solidify our principles
Ah, but is the reading done? And what is read? This is not provable and can’t be answered, but for example Capital has the reputation of being this extremely difficult book people get bored of very fast.
if our organizations are still infiltrated heavily, if our message is dilluted by opportunists, and if we have people engaging in real-life praxis still falling victim to cult-like behavior and taking on fascist-adjacent viewpoints, then what do we have?
What do we have? Nothing to lose but our chains. It seems like we are taking L after L after L for the last (many) years, but we also have nothing else to do but keep getting our message across, and fight for a better world, a classless and stateless society. Giving up or watering down what we want for the sake of harm reduction/doing stuff faster is a tactic that leads to nowhere, unfortunately. Taking peasant rebellions as an example, there were many many many throughout history, and the vast majority failed. But not all. There were times where it did get better. And if it can’t? Then I’d keep trying out of spite.
Fascists try to convince the working class that they’re looking out for them, that’s why time from time they use socialist rhetoric and even go as far as naming themselves socialists (like the nazis). But the moment they end up in a position of power, they reveal their true nature.
This, 100%.
To add on, its also to restructure the economy to better suit whatever big bourgeois interests founded said fascist movement, if you break down the structures in place and set new legal-economic, military and political ones that suit yor investors in particular it much faster and easier than toying with those in place, a little shuffling and terror of bourgeois sentiment is no big deal, also you ensure loyalty as well to keep things going as well as your short-sighted money-vision can sense.
I’m reading The Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, would recommend so far.
From the dawn of capitalism, the interests of the middle classes have been in sharpest conflict with the industrial and financial big bourgeoisie, and after the war the middle classes became frankly anti‐capitalist.
But their anti‐capitalism was somewhat different from that of the proletariat. Proletarian socialism aims straight at the heart of capitalism. It wishes to destroy its motive force—the exploitation of labor power and the theft of surplus value. Hence it attacks the capitalist system as a whole, and proposes as a goal the socialization of the means of production.
But the middle classes are not the victims of the exploitation of labor power but chiefly of competition and the organization of credit. Hence, when left to themselves, when their anti‐capitalism is not given direction by proletarian socialism, they tend to have reactionary aspirations.
They do not demand that capitalist development be pushed to its ultimate conclusion, the socialization of the means of production. They want “to roll back the wheel of history.”16 “They call for an economy that is not dynamic or progressive but a routine economy. They want the state to regulate economic freedom and activity in order to restrict the competitive capacity of their rivals.”17 They dream of a modified capitalism, freed from the abuses of concentration, credit, and speculation.
On the other hand the technicians and office employees of the big industrial consortiums have anti‐capitalist aspirations closer to those of the proletarian. “Many wish,” writes Herisson, “for the nationalization of those big enterprises that have not succeeded in winning their loyalty. They hope that as functionaries they would achieve material advantages, moral prestige, and security. Their anti‐capitalism is much more socialistic than that of the tradesmen.”18
While proletarian socialism is breaking the framework of private property, now grown too narrow, the middle classes cling to an archaic conception of property. And the capitalist bourgeoisie, while daily expropriating them without pity, poses before the middle classes as the defender of sacrosanct property and erects as a scarecrow, socialism […] that denies property.”
(Source.)
I knew Pepe Escobar is a strange fellow, but you’re making it clearer how strange.
Michael Hudson literally comes from a Trotskyite family, but he’s very positive about China as an AES, and seems to be highly regarded in today’s China, considering how often they invite him to give talks. I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on account of having ever had a panel discussion with a sketchy guy. I wouldn’t necessarily call him an M-L but I think he’s an invaluable resource in the realm of economics.
