File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 82


Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 12:29:12 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Fascism and social fascism


Rakesh Bhandari wrote:

>"the reform programme of the social democracy, which it could not
>inaugurate during the time of its own reign was put into practice by
>Hitler, not the social democracy but Hitler fulfilled the long desire of
>the socialists, the Anschluss of Austria, not social democracy but fascism
>established the wished-for state control of industry and banking; not
>social democracy but Hitler declared the first of May a legal holiday. A
>careful analysis of what the socialists actually wanted to do and never
>did, compared with the actual policies since 1933, will reveal to any
>objective observer that Hitler realised no more than the progamme of social
>democracy, but without the socialists...*And what is necessary to realise
>such a program was not dared by the socialists but undertaken by the
>fascists*...The life of Kautsky can teach the workers that in the struggle
>against fascistic capitalism is necessarily incorporated the struggle
>against bourgeois democracy, the struggle against Kautskyism. The life of
>Kautsky can in all truth and without malicious intent, be summed up inte
>words: from Marx to Hitler." (emhasis mine)
>
>Paul Mattick, "Karl Kautsky: From Marx to Hitler", 1939. Reprinted in
>Anti-Bolshevik Communism. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe Press, 1978.

Now wait a minute, this is grossly overstated. Social democrats - or at
least many of them - also believe in political democracy and independent
unions, both of which were eradicated under Hitler. There's a big
difference between state control of industry in the interests of big
industrialists and stoking the war machine, and state control of industry
in the interests of a more rational system of planning and a flatter
distribution of income. This style of argument is reminiscent of right-wing
slanders against Keynes.


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
250 W 85 St
New York NY 10024-3217 USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
email: <mailto:dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>




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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005