From: "Jeff Sparrow" <jeffs-AT-werple.mira.net.au>
Subject: M-I: fascism and Holocaust
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 23:21:44 +1000


Karl wrote: 
The more fundamental problem, which has featured on this list, is
the exclusive identification of what is known as the Holocaust with
fascism. It has frequently been said here and elsewhere that fascism,
particularly German fascism, is the source of the Holocaust. This
thesis effects an artificial bifurcation between fascism and
capitalism. The fundamental point is that the source of the Holocuast
is capitalism. It is this that is generally ignored. By effecting a
false dichotomy between fascism and capitalism the political basis of
any analysis of the Holocaust necessarily entails a coresponding
bifurcation between the struggle against fascism and the struggle
against capitalism. In this way the condition is created for struggle
against fascism assuming a reactionary all-class form rather than a
revolutionary anti-capitalist/fascist form. The former is precisely the
character of much of the anti-fascist organisations that exist today.

The "we're here because we're right" mantra will never serve
proletarian class interests.

Jeff wrote:

And hi to you, Karl.

I'm afraid I don't understand how arguing that German fascism is the source
of the Holocaust involves "effecting an artificial bifurcation between
capitalism and
fascism." 

I'm not being sarcastic. I honestly don't understand how anyone
could arrive at that conclusion from what I sent.

As I said in my post, Nazism was a necessary cause for the Holocaust. But
Nazism – fascism – was a movement of the petit-bourgeois that developed as
a result of the deep crises of the twenties and thirties. There is no
dichotomy between fascism and capitalism – fascism is the form of
capitalist rule that the bourgeoisie adopts in in particular circumstances.

So, yes, the source of the Holocaust is capitalism. But that is a banality.
We are all living under capitalism. We are not all living through a
Holocaust. The point is to try to understand why the Holocaust occurred in
the circumstances that it did.

The only sense I can make of your post is that you regard all forms of
capitalist rule as fascist. Surely that is not really your position?

I find the last sentence of your post particularly puzzling. What is
the 'we're here because we're right' mantra, and what does it have to do
with what I wrote?

Regards,
Jeff

PS.  I  would add my endorsement to just about everything that James
Heartfield says in his elegant post on Goldhagen.




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