File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 535


Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 20:04:04 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: Re: M-I: state capitalism


How would a Leninist defend the thesis that imperialism is the last stage
of capitalism after the apparently even later development  of fascism?

Fascism, argued William J Blake in an unpublished mss from 1947,  is "a
form of reorganization of the Imperialist battle for redivision of the
world. It seeks to take over without payment direct or indirect, vast
resources, such as the Ukraine, the Caucasus, Romanian oil, and ultimately
Turkish chrome, etc. it seeks to enslave tens of millions of labourers,
thus squeezing effort at the least possible cost. It seeks to enslave
millions of peasantry to obtain cheap deliveries of food, so as to cut the
cost of feeding slaves. Its acquisition of Europe proved that instead of
resolving its difficulties, it took over the difficulties of the Low
Countries, France and Italy, and needed not only plunder which it required
for its own monopolies but enough to render the others workable too. Europe
was not enough because Europe was a recepient of plunders, flowing into the
Imperialist lands, and these had to be made good if the system was to work.
Hence Nazi youth chanted "Tomorrow the World" not as mere megalomania but
as a childish reflection of the necessary motion of their mentors. The
Second WW ended as did the first, the struggle for the redivision of the
world was a failure: Fascism was not strong enough even as an organizing
force (it had the same wastes and contradictions) to defeat the older
imperialisms, partly because of their greater resources in gold, territory,
raw materials, population, that is, industrial population, but above all
because the new challengers, for the first time, had to face
non-capitalists as well. At one time, the Hitlerian and Japanese Empire
were statistical rivals of the older capitalisms: these were pretty much
down to Great Britain and her empire (slightly truncated) and the US. But
the weight of resources and industrial capacity on the other side proved
still to be more than 21/2 times as large in oil, steel, coal. With 5/6th
of Axis land forces in Europe engaged against the non-capitalist foe, the
disparity of resources made defeat certain. Thus fascism, that last denial
of all the freedoms won under capitalism, the negation of the older
Imperialisms which retained democratic forms. From this there can only be
one deduction: that fascism is not a stage of capitalism because an older
imperialism was able to crush the Fascist Imperialism: it crumbled in
Japan, Germany, Italy, and with it went a host of statellite Fascisms, its
creatures, some of it authentic as in France, some of it mere chameleon
play.

"This is far from saying that Fascism cannot be utilized by the remaining
Imperialisms if it suits the books of their monopolists. Where capitalism
cannot solve its problems either through the market or counteract the ever
pressing historical tendency against profits, by utilizing democratic forms
with which to lower the real wage in perpetuity, it will utilize a form of
state intervention identical with or closely related to Fascism."




     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005