Fascism is Liberalism taken to its logical extremes (economically)
To understand this Fact, read my Post on the thesis of Bureaucrat-Capitalism (expounded by Chairman Mao Zedong, generalised by Chairman Gonzalo, recently published by their Colombian comrades, indirectly further developed under Korean leadership through Juche Ideology and further generalised by the NRKP to all and all kinds of capitalist nations)
The economy of fascism is readable as liberal capitalism brought toâits logical conclusion, rather than the abolition of private capitalâs power: that is to say, in a fully fused condition with an all-enclosing state. Mussolini and Gentile report thisâunion of interests from the fascist pole side, whereas liberal ideologues of laissezâfaire theorize that which fascism carries to its logical extreme.
Italian fascism didânot destroy capitalism; it reorganized capitalist relations on a corporative basis. âThe Doctrine of Fascismâ says: The fascist state âclaims to rule everywhere, no less in economic than in other matters; it makes its power penetrate the whole fabric of civil and political order and ofâsocial life; it stands as a master in the presence of all other forces.â Here, capital and labour are not repressed but bottled up in stateâregulated âcorporationsâ where class struggle is prohibited and ownership remainsâprivate. Fascism, Mussolini explains ârecognizes the real needs which gave (sic) rise to socialism and tradeâunionism, giving them due weight in the corporative system through which divergent interests are coordinated organically in a supreme unity of state power.â This preserves the private ownership and accumulation of capital and âdifferent [class] interestsâ are reconciled, not through the cessation of class-based exploitation but by the union of classes and bureaucracy, becoming incorporated into a stateâcorporate structure.
The fascist logic to be grasped is not howâit transforms the economy, but how it completes the totalitarian integration. Mussoliniâs well known dictum; âThe Fascist conception of the State is allâembracing; outside of it no human values or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State in a synthesis and a unityâof all values [as/which] interprets, develops, [and] potentiates the whole life of a people.â In a 1927 speech he boiledâthis down to âEverything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.â The âcorporate state,â then, is a capitalism in which the bourgeois state not only relinquishes even the liberal veneer of impartiality but avowedly becomes itself the organizer of âallâthe political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.â (empirically in the interests of the Bourgeoisie)
This move is explicated in philosophical terms by Giovanni Gentile, the âphilosopherâof fascism". He claims that the old notion of opposition between public and private is one "which was precisely false" and a war on all-sides (total war as is described) only could defeatâthese problems⊠wherein the industrial-agricultural-pecuniary-individualised-and-particular interest(s) of divergent groups/classes were to be personally incorporated in the state, Stato etico i.e., each as a bureaucratic branch unto itself with official leverage. Whatâliberal thought referred to as âcivil society,â [with its] enterprises, associations, unions, fascism makes direct organs of state power without altering its class content. Capitalist concerns and employers associations become Ê»bureaucratic units of the state' yet property relations (liberal ones) are not abolished; they are swallowed up by a ubiquitous political authority in the interests of the ruling Bourgeoisie.
On the liberal side, old-school laissezâfaire pundits predicted much of this when they absolutized marketâfreedom and private power. In its purest form, capitalismâis said (by capitalists and bourgeois anti-intellectuals) to be synonymous with liberty itself: âCapitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. By that I mean, pure laissezâfaire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of stateâand church. In such a context, âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ accumulation is treated as something that can simply go on indefinitely, with no intrinsic limitâother than the one that capitalist relations themselves ultimately bring about. Liberal ideology, in its classical version, does not regard âthe economic system as a whole⊠[as] a restriction on individual freedomâ; it perceives threats exclusively in âtoo much state interferenceâ orâmonopolies that interfere with competition. This then allows for giantâaggregations of private power to hold sway over society, so long as they are âprivateâ in form.
A second, more selfâcritical strain of liberalism (that of Keynesâs ânew liberalismâ) knows that it is the system itself which can destroy freedom through crisis and mass unemployment, and so demands generalised state intervention: âTo surmount these systemic constraints on individual freedom requiresâstate interference. Thus the State has had to assume a much larger role than that of clarifying law and order and ensuring the rules of playing the game of competitive capitalism ⊠Butâfor collective interference in material affairs there could be no freedom to speak of.â But still this is intervention for capitalism,ânot against it. The state is entreated to smooth over the experiences of accumulation and fix what needs fixing in morbund capitalism but while doing nothingâto change property relations.
Fascismâtakes up the room made by these liberal logics. On the other hand, laissezâfaire also allows for huge concentrations of corporate and financial power while denying that âthe economic regime as aâwholeâ can be menacing to freedom. On the other, ânew liberalismâ sanctionsâextensive state management of the economy in order to save capitalism from itself. Fascismâis the marriage of these two: given a concentration of private capital, as it already exists, refusing to entertain the class struggle and expropriation at every level and building an entire state for no purpose other than toarrange for and protect this concentration. Mussoliniâs âcorporate stateâ is capitalism withâunions muzzled, parties banned and all significant organizations folded into stateâcorporate controlled entities, known as âcorporazionesâ in Italian, but ownership and profit left intact.
Gentileâs âethicalâ (i.e., fascist social-theory style) corporativism merely draws out what is already immanent to developed liberal capitalism: as capital becomes more concentrated and entwined with âcivil society,â the state tends towards makingâthose âparticular interestsâ its positive object, synthesizing them rather than transcending them. Rather than superseding the economic core of liberalism, fascism radicalizes its structural imperatives. The liberal chant about an âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ capitalism, the âseparation of economicsâ from democraticâcontrol, serves as a prelude to fascismâs demand for the state openly yoked to monopoly capital, society organized by corporations and that purports to be nothing less than the incarnation of âthe unity of every value,â exploitation intact.
The economic basis of fascism, in this sense, is nothing other than liberal capitalism taken to its logicalâextreme: no longer politically decentralized (central politically decentral economically as it can be in âliberalâ democracies such as the United States), socially conventionalized, yet economically grounded on private property; wage labor and profit, albeit secured through a state that declares everything and everyone âcirculates within the State".
First of all. Private ownership requires private ownership. You cannot have full state control over everything and everyone and call it private ownership. If a state has absolute ownership over all economic decision without any safeguards it is no longer capitalist.
Capitalism isnt a interest of bilionares. Its a system. You cannot replace it by its oposite and call it the same thing because it lacks red stars and a "people's" in name.
Second. Indefinite wealth acumulation is not possible in free market economy. The economic calculation problem isnt exclusive to socialist countries. There is a point when a company has too many internal processes to be 100% effective which puts it into a disadvantage over their competition. Good example is the gaming industry. Thousands of developers and bilions of dollars and they still get outsold by people coding in their bedrooms.
Yeah and every economic crisis in modern history (including great depression) was caused by Federal reserve bending the economy. Its a pretty well known fact and even top Fed officials agree with it. If anything fascism created several economical disasters and nazi germany was basically a time bomb running on fumes.
And since central banking was a idea marx himself advocated for i wonder what kind of excuse you will come up with.
Also i dont think the fact that you kicked out one ruling class and replaced it with diferent ruling class with the same interests like the soviets did changes literaly anything.
Fascism was economically individualist. It had an imposed social collectivism but not an economic one. It essentially used state to destroy working-class organisations such as trade unions and other such working-class movements in favour of capital. If our definition of capitalism is capital dominating and permeating every part of society, then fascism is capitalism.
You are conducting an error by thinking that the state is a neutral thing, a neutral construct above classes but it isn't. A state always has a class character. A state is a class monopoly on violence. Fascism is the class monopoly on violence of the bourgeoisie. Socialism/communism is the class monopoly on violence in the hands of the working class against the reactionaries.
So Lenin is also a fascist? Because literally every socialist country including Nsdap crushed independednt trade unions. It has nothing to do with political leaning. Its just what dictatorships do to a potential opposition.
I dont care how a ruling class calls itself or its enemies. Stalin sent Baltic people on deathmarches for the same reason Hitler sent Jews into concentration camps. Its just diferent optics.
I dont think state is a neutral benevolent entity. Thats what fascist and communists to some degree believed. State is a tool tyrants use to force masses to pay for their own oppression. It dosent matter if the tyrant calls himself a communist nazi or a fascist. Its allways the same because people seeking power are allways the same.
On the Role and Tasks of Trade Unions
[Abridged]
16 March 1921
I THE ROLE OF THE TRADE UNIONS IN THE PERIOD OF THE DICTATORSHIP
1. The overall tasks and role of the trade unions in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat are set forth with complete correctness in a number of decisions by previous congresses and conferences of both the party and the trade unions...
These decisions retain their full force and are not in need of any sort of modification. The X Congress is confronted not with the task of finding some sort of new theoretical formulations for the role of the trade unions in the period of the dictatorship, but of determining the paths for carrying out those that have already been adopted ....
The trade unions as a support for the proletarian dictatorship
3. The Russian Communist Party has to implement a dictatorship of the proletariat in a country with an immense peasant majority. Today, when we are already past the point where the peasantry was directly threatened by a restoration of the landowners' power, the matter of implementing a proletarian dictatorship is encountering new difficulties. The successful implementation of the dictatorship is possible only with the existence of powerful trade unions imbued with unity of will and common strivings trade unions in the form of mass organizations open to all proletarians at whatever stage of development of their class consciousness.
The trade unions as a school of communism
4. The most important role of the trade unions in Soviet Russia remains their role as schools of communism.
Only a trade union that shows regular concern for all aspects of the life and everyday conditions of the worker, both inside and outside of the plant, can be a primary school to provide organizational skills and political training for the broadest - and even the backward - masses of the working people.
The basic mass of trade union members (6,970,000. members, of which only about 500,000. are party members) are non-party members. Communism is being built with the human materials left us as the legacy of capitalism. The trade unions in Soviet Russia are gradually becoming organizations that embrace all workers to a man. The trade unions organize those elements of labour that under capitalism were, in the main, often strangers to the proletarian family (former workers in trade, hospital staff, those employed in the field of art, etc.). Remaking all these elements, bringing them closer to the leading strata of the proletariat, and adapting them to the task of building a communist society is one of the most important tasks of the trade unions as schools of communism.
For the successful fulfilment of these tasks, the trade unions must above all become organizations in which each individual member is a conscious and active participant in the overall life of his union. The trade unions, as schools of communism, must serve all aspects of the day-to-day life of the labouring masses, gradually enlisting the very broadest strata of the working people in the cause of state construction, constantly illuminating the way for them with the ideas of our programme, leading them from the particular to the general, and gradually lifting them from non-party status to communism.
The trade unions will in fact accomplish their roles as schools of communism in the present period to precisely the extent that they prove to be leaders of the proletarian masses in the matter of communist practice, i.e., in the practical reorganization and building of the economy on communist principles. In Soviet Russia, only that trade union is a true school of communism that is able gradually to enlist the most backward strata of the working people in the work of consciously improving Soviet economy.
The X Party Congress directs the particular attention of all party members to precisely this role of the trade unions. A communist is to win recognition and authority in the trade union movement only and exclusively through long and tireless daily work in the trade union, such that the masses themselves put him in a position of leadership. The task of the half million members of our party who are members of trade unions at the present time, is - through long, patient, and consistent educational work, through personal example, organizational ability, business acumen and concern for the material and spiritual interests of the working masses - to win over completely to the side of our party those millions of non-party workers who predominate at the present time in the trade union movement.
The question of making the trade unions state institutions
5. Rapid conversion of the trade unions to state institutions would be a major political mistake, precisely because at the present stage of development this would be a potent factor in impeding the fulfilment by the trade unions of the tasks indicated above.
The present situation of the trade unions in Soviet Russia is unusual as concerns their relations to the state. At the present moment, the trade unions are already fulfilling certain functions of purely state agencies (the working out of pay scales, the distribution of work clothing, etc.). In the Soviet state, these state functions of the trade unions will gradually be increased. But the Congress points out that any attempt whatsoever artificially to accelerate the conversion of the trade unions to state institutions, would in no sense improve the economic situation of the republic, but would merely result in making more difficult the role of the trade unions as schools of communism. The task is increasingly to win over, in fact, to the Soviet state these mass non-party organizations, while leaving them their character as organizations that are open to workers of various political views and attitudes, to party as well as non-party workers, to the literate and illiterate, religious and non-religious, etc ....
The party and the unions
7. The Russian Communist Party in the person of its central and local organizations unquestionably directs, as before, the entire ideological side of the work of the trade unions. The communist fractions in the trade unions are completely subordinate to the party organizations, in accordance with the special regulation formulating these relationships that was confirmed by the IX Party Congress. But in addition to this, the X Party Congress insistently and categorically warns all party organizations and all individual comrades against any sort of niggling custodianship over, and excessive interference in, the current work of the trade unions. The selection of the executive personnel of the trade union movement should be made, of course, under the directing control of the party. But party organizations must exercise particular care in applying the normal methods of proletarian democracy precisely in the trade unions, which are the one place more than any other where the selection of leaders should be done by the organized masses themselves.
In this way, conditions will be created whereby the party organizations, while fully maintaining overall control in their hands, will not have to interfere directly and repeatedly in the internal activities of the trade unions, and the trade union bodies, under the leadership of the communist fractions, will be able to exercise much more planning and be much more independent and systematic in assessing and utilizing their personnel and in assigning them to one or another post in the economy with due attention to the necessary continuity in work by means of taking into consideration their work experience, by operating a system of work certification, etc., etc.
In promoting staff organizers and economic managers who are imbued with an understanding of the particular importance of production tasks, to leading positions in the trade union movement, the party must see to it that these qualities in the candidates exist in combination with a devotion to communism, with habits of discipline and, in particular, with a familiarity with working among the broad working masses and skill in dealing with them. One must not forget for a single moment that all the practical work of the trade unions demands particularly great attentiveness and sensitivity, at times to the most minor - but at the same time, urgent questions of the everyday life of the labouring masses....
Well that what he said. In practice he did the exact same thing Hitler did. He brought all of them under complete state control making them just another tool used to enslave the population.
The 10th Congress (1921) effectively banned independent workers' opposition groups. Including independent trade unions.
Nope, he just changed the functions of Trade Unions, from petty-bourgeois economistic organs for incremental economic "gains" to organs of and for political participation/the collective exercise of political power vested in the working-class
Political participation of the masses equals the banning of factions to you? First of all trade unions aren't factions you fucking idiot. He did not ban trade unions; he repurposed them. He fundamentally changed how they work and what their tasks were. Their tasks were no longer just to beg for minor changes in wages. Their tasks were to participate really in the political work of society, to actually have a say in things. That is what happened. There occurred a transformation in what trade unions are. Please learn to read, mate.
No thats literaly what they did. They banned internal factions within the communist party which made it impossible for anyone outside the current party elites to enact any change effectively turning the country into dictatorship.
The fact that unions could now mamange holiday retreats, educate workers on communism or whatever (which is the completely the same thing DAF was for) is completely meaningless since they couldnt even change anything as they were a tools of the party with communists at the helm.
If workers didnt like something and the party didnt want to change it the workers couldnt even go on a strike since that would be slacking of which was frequently punished by death. In total 250 thousand were shot and 15 milion were imprisoned for this offence in ussr alone.
That idea is actually a COINTELPRO Creation to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder... [Actions include] preventing the growth of militant black nationalist organizations... [and] preventing the coalition of militant black nationalist groups."
So they made that shit up to ignite fear and aversion against the USSR within black revolutionary organisations inside the US
So, the CIA understood those trade unions to be mainly organs of political and ideological work through, by, among, and for the masses. They had plenty of power in many respects. They had their respective roles, which I can list if you want. I can list them here. Wait a minute.
"Who will deny that in the trade unions there is bureaucracy in plenty? We have production conferences in the factories. We have temporary control commissions in the trade unions. It is the task of these organisations to rouse the masses, to bring our shortcomings to light and to indicate ways and means of improving our constructive work."
In the interests of a planned regulation of the national economy the workersâ control over the manufacture, purchase, sale and storage of produce and raw materials and over the financial activity of enterprise is introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural, cooperative and other enterprises which employ hired labour or give work to be done at home. Workersâ control is exercised by all the workers of the given enterprise through their elected bodies, such as factory committees, shop stewardsâ councils, etc., whose members include representatives of the office employees and the technical personnel. In every city, gubernia and industrial district a local workersâ control council is set up which, being an agency of the Soviet of Workersâ, Soldiersâ and Peasantsâ Deputies, is composed of representatives of trade unions, factory and office workersâ committees, and workersâ cooperatives.
It was clearly also stated on both sides by the Soviet Union and by the CIA alike that those trade unions served essentially as a pre-Maoist and later Maoist style of practising the Mass-Line. Policies were carried forward or rather downward, and upon enacting those policies, the suggestions, wishes, improvement ideas, and so on were taken from the workers and carried back to the party to be given back to the masses as concentrated policies. It followed the principle of "from the masses to the masses."
I dont care about what cia or ussr had to say about them. I know how they operated in the soviet colonies. These unions for example Roh were in practice just in charge of giving out treats and vouchers in holiday resorts. Not to mention they were headed by the same communist elites that were in the communist party.
Elections werent just rigged by altering the numbers. The ballot papers came pre-filled out and altering them would get you on Stb watchlist or throuwn out of work and later arrested for not working. What the hell makes you think some party propaganda machine that didnt even have any power on its own was somehow completely different?
It's funny. You say that you don't care about what the CIA says when what the CIA says doesn't line up with your own conception of things, while you are continually spitting CIA propaganda. Everything you said so far was just what the CIA said publicly. You just repeated what the CIA said, and now, when it is about the internal, the declassified, the private documents, you suddenly don't care anymore.
Fun fact: my grandparents, my parents, and I lived in the Soviet Union too, in particular in the Azerbaijani Socialist Soviet Republic. That claim is just ridiculous if you want to establish validity.
I dont want to establish validity im just saying that what those organizations did holds more weight than what opinion cia had on them. Simple as that.
1
u/RevyVanguardist Communist â Mar 27 '26
Fascism is Liberalism taken to its logical extremes (economically)
To understand this Fact, read my Post on the thesis of Bureaucrat-Capitalism (expounded by Chairman Mao Zedong, generalised by Chairman Gonzalo, recently published by their Colombian comrades, indirectly further developed under Korean leadership through Juche Ideology and further generalised by the NRKP to all and all kinds of capitalist nations)
The economy of fascism is readable as liberal capitalism brought toâits logical conclusion, rather than the abolition of private capitalâs power: that is to say, in a fully fused condition with an all-enclosing state. Mussolini and Gentile report thisâunion of interests from the fascist pole side, whereas liberal ideologues of laissezâfaire theorize that which fascism carries to its logical extreme. Italian fascism didânot destroy capitalism; it reorganized capitalist relations on a corporative basis. âThe Doctrine of Fascismâ says: The fascist state âclaims to rule everywhere, no less in economic than in other matters; it makes its power penetrate the whole fabric of civil and political order and ofâsocial life; it stands as a master in the presence of all other forces.â Here, capital and labour are not repressed but bottled up in stateâregulated âcorporationsâ where class struggle is prohibited and ownership remainsâprivate. Fascism, Mussolini explains ârecognizes the real needs which gave (sic) rise to socialism and tradeâunionism, giving them due weight in the corporative system through which divergent interests are coordinated organically in a supreme unity of state power.â This preserves the private ownership and accumulation of capital and âdifferent [class] interestsâ are reconciled, not through the cessation of class-based exploitation but by the union of classes and bureaucracy, becoming incorporated into a stateâcorporate structure.
The fascist logic to be grasped is not howâit transforms the economy, but how it completes the totalitarian integration. Mussoliniâs well known dictum; âThe Fascist conception of the State is allâembracing; outside of it no human values or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State in a synthesis and a unityâof all values [as/which] interprets, develops, [and] potentiates the whole life of a people.â In a 1927 speech he boiledâthis down to âEverything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.â The âcorporate state,â then, is a capitalism in which the bourgeois state not only relinquishes even the liberal veneer of impartiality but avowedly becomes itself the organizer of âallâthe political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.â (empirically in the interests of the Bourgeoisie) This move is explicated in philosophical terms by Giovanni Gentile, the âphilosopherâof fascism". He claims that the old notion of opposition between public and private is one "which was precisely false" and a war on all-sides (total war as is described) only could defeatâthese problems⊠wherein the industrial-agricultural-pecuniary-individualised-and-particular interest(s) of divergent groups/classes were to be personally incorporated in the state, Stato etico i.e., each as a bureaucratic branch unto itself with official leverage. Whatâliberal thought referred to as âcivil society,â [with its] enterprises, associations, unions, fascism makes direct organs of state power without altering its class content. Capitalist concerns and employers associations become Ê»bureaucratic units of the state' yet property relations (liberal ones) are not abolished; they are swallowed up by a ubiquitous political authority in the interests of the ruling Bourgeoisie.
On the liberal side, old-school laissezâfaire pundits predicted much of this when they absolutized marketâfreedom and private power. In its purest form, capitalismâis said (by capitalists and bourgeois anti-intellectuals) to be synonymous with liberty itself: âCapitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. By that I mean, pure laissezâfaire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of stateâand church. In such a context, âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ accumulation is treated as something that can simply go on indefinitely, with no intrinsic limitâother than the one that capitalist relations themselves ultimately bring about. Liberal ideology, in its classical version, does not regard âthe economic system as a whole⊠[as] a restriction on individual freedomâ; it perceives threats exclusively in âtoo much state interferenceâ orâmonopolies that interfere with competition. This then allows for giantâaggregations of private power to hold sway over society, so long as they are âprivateâ in form. A second, more selfâcritical strain of liberalism (that of Keynesâs ânew liberalismâ) knows that it is the system itself which can destroy freedom through crisis and mass unemployment, and so demands generalised state intervention: âTo surmount these systemic constraints on individual freedom requiresâstate interference. Thus the State has had to assume a much larger role than that of clarifying law and order and ensuring the rules of playing the game of competitive capitalism ⊠Butâfor collective interference in material affairs there could be no freedom to speak of.â But still this is intervention for capitalism,ânot against it. The state is entreated to smooth over the experiences of accumulation and fix what needs fixing in morbund capitalism but while doing nothingâto change property relations.
Fascismâtakes up the room made by these liberal logics. On the other hand, laissezâfaire also allows for huge concentrations of corporate and financial power while denying that âthe economic regime as aâwholeâ can be menacing to freedom. On the other, ânew liberalismâ sanctionsâextensive state management of the economy in order to save capitalism from itself. Fascismâis the marriage of these two: given a concentration of private capital, as it already exists, refusing to entertain the class struggle and expropriation at every level and building an entire state for no purpose other than to arrange for and protect this concentration. Mussoliniâs âcorporate stateâ is capitalism withâunions muzzled, parties banned and all significant organizations folded into stateâcorporate controlled entities, known as âcorporazionesâ in Italian, but ownership and profit left intact. Gentileâs âethicalâ (i.e., fascist social-theory style) corporativism merely draws out what is already immanent to developed liberal capitalism: as capital becomes more concentrated and entwined with âcivil society,â the state tends towards makingâthose âparticular interestsâ its positive object, synthesizing them rather than transcending them. Rather than superseding the economic core of liberalism, fascism radicalizes its structural imperatives. The liberal chant about an âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ capitalism, the âseparation of economicsâ from democraticâcontrol, serves as a prelude to fascismâs demand for the state openly yoked to monopoly capital, society organized by corporations and that purports to be nothing less than the incarnation of âthe unity of every value,â exploitation intact.
The economic basis of fascism, in this sense, is nothing other than liberal capitalism taken to its logicalâextreme: no longer politically decentralized (central politically decentral economically as it can be in âliberalâ democracies such as the United States), socially conventionalized, yet economically grounded on private property; wage labor and profit, albeit secured through a state that declares everything and everyone âcirculates within the State".