I had to reply to Richard's claim below but could not properly do so on the Science forum in "The Corruption of Science by Modern Philosophy".
There are NO instances of successful fascism. Contrary to popular belief the reason for this is that Fascism is a relatively new movement, barely 100 years old and is thus still finding its feet - paradoxical as this might seem despite already wearing jackboots; however, I am merely using a metaphor.
What I have to explain here is WHY Fascism arose in the first place - as opposed to the crazy-sounding seemingly irrelevant title of the thread, whose significance will gradually become apparent to you!
Of the three Fascisms - not including Imperial Japan which had certain features resembling the Western varieties - the order was Italy then Germany then Spain. Hence I will explain them in reverse order, providing the reason for the ultimate Italian origin last.
The great significance of Spanish Fascism, and its victory (and subsequent ultimate conversion to a constitutional monarchy) was rapidly obscured by WW2, the Soviet victory as the primary combatant over Nazi Germany obscuring the significance both of Fascism itself and Spanish Fascism's defeat of both Communism and Anarchism, despite Orwell's belief in 1937 that the Civil War would end in compromise. Only with the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union and Western Communism generally in 1991 did the true fundamental significance of Franco's victory start to become clear - though nobody on the Left seemed to notice it. Remember first and foremost that Franco wished to rid Spain of Communists, Jews and Freemasons. And you can blame Joe Atwill for exposing the vicious machinations of the last!
The Communists and Anarchists could NOT agree about what needed to be done to combat Franco - shooting at each other in Barcelona, while Orwell, a non-Trotskyist member of POUM, was stuck in the middle on a rooftop, gradually realizing that POUM would be blamed for the particular fighting in the 'Barcelona May Days'. Nothing destroyed the Left's morale more than this! Meanwhile Franco ensured his victory by promising his Moroccan troops - Moslems - independence after the war.
Going back to the major Fascist movement, Nazi Germany; the Nazis were defeated for one reason alone - their racism, stigmatizing Slavs as inferior, ensured that the Soviet Union would rise as one to defend the country, and not merely communism since they termed the conflict 'The Great Patriotic War'. Hitler failed to capitalize on the Holodomor - the forced collectivization in Ukraine which gained the Nazis initial sympathy there (Ukrainians being one fifth of the Soviet population); nor was he able and willing to support the very able General Vlasov, the Soviet renegade general who was looking to overthrow Bolshevism once and for all. Hence Hitler's racism merely guaranteed his defeat.
This leaves Mussolini's Fascism as the pioneering representative. Remember that Mussolini began as a socialist, turning against Germany in 1914 and joining the non-socialists lobbying for Italy's entry into war against Germany. He fought in WW1, Italy gaining less territory than promised by Austria should she keep out of WW1. With this ludicrous result, after the war Mussolini's Fascists fought and defeated the Communists in Italy.
So the question is: why did Fascism arise in the first place? When we consider the support it received from the middle class and even some of the working class in Italy, we have to ask why the socialist Left did not have the overwhelming strength of the masses behind it.
The answer is that Fascism arose throughout Europe - not just in Italy, first due to her resentment at not sharing in the gains of Britain and France - because of the threat posed by Bolshevism to Europeans generally, not just the big capitalists but small business and farmers too.
The deeper reason is that the emerging Fascists saw the murderous danger of Bolshevism bringing class war to Russia. We need to remember that the 'bourgeois' February 1917 Russian Revolution marked only the start. When Kerensky's army was rapidly defeated by the Germans in June-July of 1917, army morale broke down, with hordes of peasant-soldiers abandoning the front and heading back to their homelands. We know this from the failure of the Kornilov Coup, where he could not even get the trains to carry his troops to the right destinations.
These ill-educated peasant ex-soldier hordes were not Bolsheviks (at least not yet) but anarchists. Returning to their homelands they attacked and destroyed the nobility and the richer peasants - the kulaks. By the time of the Bolshevik coup in November (October in the old calendar) Lenin merely declared his solidarity and support for these anarchists and their class war. By destroying the nobility, the feudal order and the richer peasants, the anarchist-Bolshevik horde destroyed the necessary agricultural organization for producing a surplus of food - particularly grain.
Before WW1 Russia exported grain, but now with transport damaged and civil war rife, the need was merely to get enough food to feed the cities, but the anarchist assembly of geniuses now running the rural lands merely broke up the feudal estates into individual peasant plots. I.e. peasant plots that could feed the peasants with a small surplus - but could NOT produce the necessary surplus to feed the cities.
Lenin's support for these anarchist activities e.g. the Poor Peasants' Requisitioning Committees that declared "merciless war on the kulaks" and essentially wiped the latter out, ensured that NO surplus grain would be planted, harvested to feed the cities. Hence Petrograd's population from 1917 to 1921 fell from 3,000,000 to 750,000 as starving people fled into the countryside to find food! The cities were instead fed by imported food - paid for by Tsarist gold.
Having defeated the inadequately-supplied Whites in the Civil War, Lenin, having established increasingly tight bureaucratic control over the country, faced an anarchist rebellion in Kronstadt! Before it was crushed in 1921 it made numerous demands for restoring democracy in the councils (=Soviets) but in particular the 15 points, which demands included:
8) To abolish immediately all Bolshevik requisitioning squads (which suppressed traffic and trading in goods and seized goods at the marketplace, accusing and punishing the sellers of indulging in speculative/capitalist activity).
11) To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means; that is, WITHOUT EMPLOYING HIRED LABOR.
This is true anarchism - Cultural Marxism - radical egalitarian levelling such that any peasant organizers who would hire labor (e.g. budding kulaks) would be utterly supressed. The end result of such policies would be local rural self-sufficiency and thus the utter collapse of cities like Moscow and Petrograd due to lack of surplus food production to feed them. Hardly a surprise then that not only did the Bolsheviks crush the anarchist uprising, but took an economic about-turn to encourage the formation of larger farms organizing by the hiring of labor - these run by kulaks - and a (money-based) market economy to get the transfer of goods flowing with the Bolsheviks taking a tax (in grain then in money) from this procedure (i.e. the New Economic Policy - NEP). This also meant the suppression of all claims to democracy lest the anarchists rise again. Lenin called this "economic democracy", a return to capitalist norms, a temporary measure however, hoping to restore communism in 10-20 years. Stalin restarted it in 7-8 years with forced collectivization, replacing capitalists with mere bureaucrats. By 1991, the bureaucrats voted the system out, becoming capitalists individually in their own right.
Quite apart from the mass killings of the middle class in Petrograd and Moscow, particularly associated with the Left-SR coup and the assassination attempt on Lenin, one can now easily see why knowledgeable people in Europe were fearful of Bolshevism and class war: its anarchistic levelling destruction of social order leading to civil conflict and starvation based on strictly egalitarian (cultural Marxist) principles. Hence these knowledgeable people felt the need to prevent the spread of Bolshevism - so no wonder Fascism was invented. Soon Mussolini's initiatives were hailed by the Right and the middle class throughout interwar Europe. And so do you have to wonder why?
Yours faithfully
Claude
PS: Now I know what you're going to say - when are you getting to the SnDnR&R? Be patient and read your Lukacz, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse.
Richard Stanley said:I suppose you will grace us with instances of successful fascism, possibly an enlightened and benign fascism? And that you will describe the social structure of your fascism? How will leadership succession be managed, or deposition? Like Plato, DeVere, Evola, and others posit caste systems where everyone is granted a dignified life (each according to their needs and suchand/or karma
There are NO instances of successful fascism. Contrary to popular belief the reason for this is that Fascism is a relatively new movement, barely 100 years old and is thus still finding its feet - paradoxical as this might seem despite already wearing jackboots; however, I am merely using a metaphor.
What I have to explain here is WHY Fascism arose in the first place - as opposed to the crazy-sounding seemingly irrelevant title of the thread, whose significance will gradually become apparent to you!
Of the three Fascisms - not including Imperial Japan which had certain features resembling the Western varieties - the order was Italy then Germany then Spain. Hence I will explain them in reverse order, providing the reason for the ultimate Italian origin last.
The great significance of Spanish Fascism, and its victory (and subsequent ultimate conversion to a constitutional monarchy) was rapidly obscured by WW2, the Soviet victory as the primary combatant over Nazi Germany obscuring the significance both of Fascism itself and Spanish Fascism's defeat of both Communism and Anarchism, despite Orwell's belief in 1937 that the Civil War would end in compromise. Only with the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union and Western Communism generally in 1991 did the true fundamental significance of Franco's victory start to become clear - though nobody on the Left seemed to notice it. Remember first and foremost that Franco wished to rid Spain of Communists, Jews and Freemasons. And you can blame Joe Atwill for exposing the vicious machinations of the last!
The Communists and Anarchists could NOT agree about what needed to be done to combat Franco - shooting at each other in Barcelona, while Orwell, a non-Trotskyist member of POUM, was stuck in the middle on a rooftop, gradually realizing that POUM would be blamed for the particular fighting in the 'Barcelona May Days'. Nothing destroyed the Left's morale more than this! Meanwhile Franco ensured his victory by promising his Moroccan troops - Moslems - independence after the war.
Going back to the major Fascist movement, Nazi Germany; the Nazis were defeated for one reason alone - their racism, stigmatizing Slavs as inferior, ensured that the Soviet Union would rise as one to defend the country, and not merely communism since they termed the conflict 'The Great Patriotic War'. Hitler failed to capitalize on the Holodomor - the forced collectivization in Ukraine which gained the Nazis initial sympathy there (Ukrainians being one fifth of the Soviet population); nor was he able and willing to support the very able General Vlasov, the Soviet renegade general who was looking to overthrow Bolshevism once and for all. Hence Hitler's racism merely guaranteed his defeat.
This leaves Mussolini's Fascism as the pioneering representative. Remember that Mussolini began as a socialist, turning against Germany in 1914 and joining the non-socialists lobbying for Italy's entry into war against Germany. He fought in WW1, Italy gaining less territory than promised by Austria should she keep out of WW1. With this ludicrous result, after the war Mussolini's Fascists fought and defeated the Communists in Italy.
So the question is: why did Fascism arise in the first place? When we consider the support it received from the middle class and even some of the working class in Italy, we have to ask why the socialist Left did not have the overwhelming strength of the masses behind it.
The answer is that Fascism arose throughout Europe - not just in Italy, first due to her resentment at not sharing in the gains of Britain and France - because of the threat posed by Bolshevism to Europeans generally, not just the big capitalists but small business and farmers too.
The deeper reason is that the emerging Fascists saw the murderous danger of Bolshevism bringing class war to Russia. We need to remember that the 'bourgeois' February 1917 Russian Revolution marked only the start. When Kerensky's army was rapidly defeated by the Germans in June-July of 1917, army morale broke down, with hordes of peasant-soldiers abandoning the front and heading back to their homelands. We know this from the failure of the Kornilov Coup, where he could not even get the trains to carry his troops to the right destinations.
These ill-educated peasant ex-soldier hordes were not Bolsheviks (at least not yet) but anarchists. Returning to their homelands they attacked and destroyed the nobility and the richer peasants - the kulaks. By the time of the Bolshevik coup in November (October in the old calendar) Lenin merely declared his solidarity and support for these anarchists and their class war. By destroying the nobility, the feudal order and the richer peasants, the anarchist-Bolshevik horde destroyed the necessary agricultural organization for producing a surplus of food - particularly grain.
Before WW1 Russia exported grain, but now with transport damaged and civil war rife, the need was merely to get enough food to feed the cities, but the anarchist assembly of geniuses now running the rural lands merely broke up the feudal estates into individual peasant plots. I.e. peasant plots that could feed the peasants with a small surplus - but could NOT produce the necessary surplus to feed the cities.
Lenin's support for these anarchist activities e.g. the Poor Peasants' Requisitioning Committees that declared "merciless war on the kulaks" and essentially wiped the latter out, ensured that NO surplus grain would be planted, harvested to feed the cities. Hence Petrograd's population from 1917 to 1921 fell from 3,000,000 to 750,000 as starving people fled into the countryside to find food! The cities were instead fed by imported food - paid for by Tsarist gold.
Having defeated the inadequately-supplied Whites in the Civil War, Lenin, having established increasingly tight bureaucratic control over the country, faced an anarchist rebellion in Kronstadt! Before it was crushed in 1921 it made numerous demands for restoring democracy in the councils (=Soviets) but in particular the 15 points, which demands included:
8) To abolish immediately all Bolshevik requisitioning squads (which suppressed traffic and trading in goods and seized goods at the marketplace, accusing and punishing the sellers of indulging in speculative/capitalist activity).
11) To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means; that is, WITHOUT EMPLOYING HIRED LABOR.
This is true anarchism - Cultural Marxism - radical egalitarian levelling such that any peasant organizers who would hire labor (e.g. budding kulaks) would be utterly supressed. The end result of such policies would be local rural self-sufficiency and thus the utter collapse of cities like Moscow and Petrograd due to lack of surplus food production to feed them. Hardly a surprise then that not only did the Bolsheviks crush the anarchist uprising, but took an economic about-turn to encourage the formation of larger farms organizing by the hiring of labor - these run by kulaks - and a (money-based) market economy to get the transfer of goods flowing with the Bolsheviks taking a tax (in grain then in money) from this procedure (i.e. the New Economic Policy - NEP). This also meant the suppression of all claims to democracy lest the anarchists rise again. Lenin called this "economic democracy", a return to capitalist norms, a temporary measure however, hoping to restore communism in 10-20 years. Stalin restarted it in 7-8 years with forced collectivization, replacing capitalists with mere bureaucrats. By 1991, the bureaucrats voted the system out, becoming capitalists individually in their own right.
Quite apart from the mass killings of the middle class in Petrograd and Moscow, particularly associated with the Left-SR coup and the assassination attempt on Lenin, one can now easily see why knowledgeable people in Europe were fearful of Bolshevism and class war: its anarchistic levelling destruction of social order leading to civil conflict and starvation based on strictly egalitarian (cultural Marxist) principles. Hence these knowledgeable people felt the need to prevent the spread of Bolshevism - so no wonder Fascism was invented. Soon Mussolini's initiatives were hailed by the Right and the middle class throughout interwar Europe. And so do you have to wonder why?
Yours faithfully
Claude
PS: Now I know what you're going to say - when are you getting to the SnDnR&R? Be patient and read your Lukacz, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse.
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