Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 10:27:02 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Bourgeois politics and fascism


At 9:00 AM 2/15/96, Louis N Proyect wrote:

>Pat Buchanan said yesterday to 250 reporters, "New Hampshire, like every
>other part of American, feels that sense of economic security, economic
>stress. They are suffering, too, from wages that seem to go down as the
>Dow Jones hits 5000."
>
>Some l*st members interpret such rhetoric as "fascist".

Of course it's not fascist. And of course Buchanan is not the head of a
mass movement a la Adolph. What Buchanan represents is a brand of
conservatism, common in Europe but rare in America, that is anti-market.
One reason it is anti-market is that it is reactionary in the literal sense
of the term - it hates that aspect of capitalism that causes all that's
solid to melt into the air. It undermines patriarchy, religion, nation, and
other received hierarchies.

But surely there's some sort of continuum running from Michael Lind to Pat
Buchanan through the Tradition Family Property crowd and Franco on out to
the author of Mein Kampf, a book that contains these words:

<quote>
The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy
offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the German
economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an independent
national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The
development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know
that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile
nations, but against international capital.
[...]
In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant mistress of the
state, money became the god whom all had to serve and to whom each man had
to bow down. More an dmore, the gods of heaven were put into the corner as
obsolete and outmoded, and in their stead incense was burned to the idol
Mammon. A truly malignant degeneration set in....
[...]
A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow disappearance of the right
of private property, and the gradual transference of the entire economy to
the ownership of stock companies [italicized in original].... At length...
[German industry] fell a victim to the united attack of greedy finance
capital which carried on this fight, with the special help of its most
faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
<endquote>

There's a family resemblance here, no?

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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New York NY 10024-3217
USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice
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