Fascism is capitalism in decay.
While my head is throbbing with pain, I'd like to take this moment and talk a bit loosely about capitalism and fascism. I've talked before about the reactionary waves that the 9/11 attacks brought out everywhere in Europe and America. "Islamofascism", the new Republican buzzword, is so tragical because it is really the pot calling the kettle black. In the shadow of persecution of Muslims, blacks, etc. the old welfare systems are slaughtered. New laws are passed all the time, in the European Union - far away from the watchful eyes of the european peoples. In the United States, there is talk about military intervention to break strikes. Walls rise to hold the Mexicans out from the United States; Israel's state terrorism strikes day after day and their wall swallows up more and more of Palestine. In old Europe we are fortunate. Black people can drown in the straits of Gibraltar. No need for us to build walls.
The media is giving us a pervasive feeling that the barbarians are at the gates (or walls, as it may be). Their teeming masses, their recklessness, their violence, their strange ways. They are our enemies. Or so it is said.
Mao Tsetung famously stated that "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun". Mao was right. Franz Fanon said that the slave must kill his master to truly be free: that in the action of destruction and death there is liberty. In the sense that this is true, 2006 has been a good year for the anti-imperialists of the periphery. But to say that unreservedly would be folly, romantic delusions of what violence is. Lebanon is a country devastated. Palestine bleeds. In the end, we have to realize that it is Joshua from Nashville who is shooting Ali from al-Khwarzim and not a titanic battle of Platonic ideals, locked in a struggle to the death in some heaven. Imperialism lives on, and will live on, for as long as there are capitalist states.
There have been people's victories during 2006, however. Many of them in the center. Election after election has defeated the right (with the narrow and special example of my own nation). The presence of troop abroad has been a deciding factor for the vote. The current of neoliberalism and fascism might be halted. Austria's racists more or less vanished after years as the avant-garde of the new blackshirts of Europe. In Holland, the socialists of (what I understand to be) a typical reformed communist party made a strong advance. One of the first parties in that situation to do so. Yet, everything is hanging in the balance. The Tomb of Lenin writes an interesting post about all of this. While he might forget that capitalism as a system has been written off time and time again, it is worth noting.
But to go back to Mao and the classes struggling through periphery and center. If indeed the tidal wave is breaking, what then? Will the capitalists of the world sit back, go on the defensive again while we repair the breaches in the walls of the welfare state? Will we see a hastened burgeoise offensive against specific groups: like the United States against the Black Panther Party of the 60's? Will the fascists be boosted, like in 20's Italy and Germany? Of course, there is no way of telling what will happen. But for the radical left, I cannot believe that there can be anything but a search for something else. The society that breeds imperialism must be broken with in the ideology and politics of 21st century socialism. It is easy to say, of course, but it bears a lot of meaning. Reformism has rolled back all across Europe; instead creating pseudopoliciary states like Sweden and Britain with the watchful eyes of the government at every turn.
Capitalism might not be dying. But it's weakness leaves huge rifts. With the environmental problems and the upcoming oil crisis that will just deepen and deepen, what will happen? Perhaps it is actually one of the ends of the Kondratrieff cycles and we now have a chance to break decidedly with capitalism. In the end, though, 2007 will be an interesting year politically. With the Israeli threatening nuclear war, the attempt to revive the European Constitution (a pathethic exercise of dry liberal attempts to "give" a people a document it didn't bring out of itself, didn't give birth to in it's struggles for emancipation), with the proxy war of Somalia-Ethiopia and the mass privatization of Iraqi oil we will see if the reactionaries will break and retreat, and if so, if the peoples of the center and periphery will make something off of all of this.
The media is giving us a pervasive feeling that the barbarians are at the gates (or walls, as it may be). Their teeming masses, their recklessness, their violence, their strange ways. They are our enemies. Or so it is said.
Mao Tsetung famously stated that "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun". Mao was right. Franz Fanon said that the slave must kill his master to truly be free: that in the action of destruction and death there is liberty. In the sense that this is true, 2006 has been a good year for the anti-imperialists of the periphery. But to say that unreservedly would be folly, romantic delusions of what violence is. Lebanon is a country devastated. Palestine bleeds. In the end, we have to realize that it is Joshua from Nashville who is shooting Ali from al-Khwarzim and not a titanic battle of Platonic ideals, locked in a struggle to the death in some heaven. Imperialism lives on, and will live on, for as long as there are capitalist states.
There have been people's victories during 2006, however. Many of them in the center. Election after election has defeated the right (with the narrow and special example of my own nation). The presence of troop abroad has been a deciding factor for the vote. The current of neoliberalism and fascism might be halted. Austria's racists more or less vanished after years as the avant-garde of the new blackshirts of Europe. In Holland, the socialists of (what I understand to be) a typical reformed communist party made a strong advance. One of the first parties in that situation to do so. Yet, everything is hanging in the balance. The Tomb of Lenin writes an interesting post about all of this. While he might forget that capitalism as a system has been written off time and time again, it is worth noting.
But to go back to Mao and the classes struggling through periphery and center. If indeed the tidal wave is breaking, what then? Will the capitalists of the world sit back, go on the defensive again while we repair the breaches in the walls of the welfare state? Will we see a hastened burgeoise offensive against specific groups: like the United States against the Black Panther Party of the 60's? Will the fascists be boosted, like in 20's Italy and Germany? Of course, there is no way of telling what will happen. But for the radical left, I cannot believe that there can be anything but a search for something else. The society that breeds imperialism must be broken with in the ideology and politics of 21st century socialism. It is easy to say, of course, but it bears a lot of meaning. Reformism has rolled back all across Europe; instead creating pseudopoliciary states like Sweden and Britain with the watchful eyes of the government at every turn.
Capitalism might not be dying. But it's weakness leaves huge rifts. With the environmental problems and the upcoming oil crisis that will just deepen and deepen, what will happen? Perhaps it is actually one of the ends of the Kondratrieff cycles and we now have a chance to break decidedly with capitalism. In the end, though, 2007 will be an interesting year politically. With the Israeli threatening nuclear war, the attempt to revive the European Constitution (a pathethic exercise of dry liberal attempts to "give" a people a document it didn't bring out of itself, didn't give birth to in it's struggles for emancipation), with the proxy war of Somalia-Ethiopia and the mass privatization of Iraqi oil we will see if the reactionaries will break and retreat, and if so, if the peoples of the center and periphery will make something off of all of this.
posted by Björn at 5:30 PM
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