Leon Surette writes: >Bob Scheetz wrote: "probably the principal virtue of fascism its not being >bourgeois." > I wonder where Bob got that idea. Everything I have read about Fascism >and Nazism identifies both movements as entirely bourgeois--petit bourgeois, >to be sure, but certainly bourgeois. > The anti-bourgeois movement of the thirties was Communism or Bolshevism. setting aside the problem of false-consciousness (lotsa petty boojwa joined the CP, also, of course), it is classically true that historically within the capitalistimperium, when the bourgeois class of a client state defaulted to the popular classes, washington, as well as its own bourgeois rump, was at great pains to patronize the contending fascist form (typically hitler's as well as pinochet's friekorps death-squads got lavishly funded by brit, us, ...bourgeoisie), while maintaining a relentlessy hostile policy toward the communist ...to the pt even of holding a 6 yr old boy political hostage, eh! but clearly, the collapse of the world econ in the 30's signified a (as it turned out temporary) generalized displacement of the political ascendancy of the bourgeoisie; in almost all of europe, but especially in germany, spain, italy, austria and russia, the sansculottes, under popular forms, fascism/socialism, took power. the political-econ trajectory of modern germany, eg, had went from whiggery to weimar to nazism. ...that's to say, nobles to burghers to proles. each defeat ringing the devolution change of class succession, no? but each class within itself carries on a dialectic of governance: as the bourgeois form is realized thru an executive-parliamentary dialectic, the proletariat has the incessant cadre-rank'n'file, fuhrer/duce/chairman v party, ...or, if you will, fascism v sovietism. the characteristic forms are police(military) and shop floor. so national socialism and communism are class-cognate; in germany spartacism, the progressive form, was overpowered by nazism, the retrograde; in russia, bolshevism (ie trotsky), by stalinism. ... finally, just to remind, in this area itz always talking marginal effect, we are, no? every body politic always contains simultaneously living elements of all its historical evolutionary stages and, all organically cathected; so, the question of class ascendancy and forms is also a thing at the margin, underpinned and involved and circumscribed...etc, with manifold heteronomies... ...nso on bob bob -----Original Message----- From: Leon Surette <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 8:12 PM Subject: Bourgeois Fascism >Bob Scheetz wrote: "probably the principal virtue of fascism its not being >bourgeois." > I wonder where Bob got that idea. Everything I have read about Fascism >and Nazism identifies both movements as entirely bourgeois--petit bourgeois, >to be sure, but certainly bourgeois. > The anti-bourgeois movement of the thirties was Communism or Bolshevism. >Leon Surette >English Dept. >University of Western Ontario >London, Ont. >N6A 3K7