Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Apropos of your conversation about fascism, I refer you to "What Was Fascism?" by Adrian Lyttleton in the Oct. 21, 2004 issue of the New York Review of Books (on-line version for subscribers only, alas), a review of The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. It starts:
An interesting review, and it sounds like a good book. Buy it from Amazon through lawtalkers' link, and let me know whether it's worth reading.
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Turns out this guy is on my shelf, and its a source for a good part of my basis of understanding. He wrote "Europe in the Twentieth Centure", and I have the third edition which I read circa 1999. Its sorta like a textbook. Chapter 10 has a section on Depression Politics in the Authoritarian States (as compared to a section on Depresion Politics in the Liberal States... Liberal as in DS's oldskool understanding of the term). Chapter 11 is The Authoritarian 1930's and the Spread of Fascism.
Anyhoo, Mussolini started out with Corporatism (Cartels for entire state-sanctioned industries), based on Syndicalism. Chief proponent? An ex-syndicalist IWW organizer (Rossoni) who organized Italian immigrants in New Joisey. By 1928 he was gone, as management hated the idea of giving a voice to worker associations. As S_A_M correctly noed, "[t]he Fascist regime talked less and less of corporatism while quietly shifting economic influence from Fascist idealogues like Rossoni and from state agencies to the Italian businessmen's association, the General Confederation of Italian Industry".
The National Council of Corporations was set up in 1930, and divided twenty-two branches of industry and trade into "corporations". Workers were deprived by 1930 of the right to even strike.
It sounds nothing like classic Liberalism or Marxist theory and, in fact, sounds very close to what the Soviets actually ended up doing (thus, the cylinder meeting of extremes in real life). Instead of nominally placing all power in the hands of State branches, the State deputized the corporations and gave it to them. Calling this "conservative" or "right-wing" is no more accurate than calling Bush a conservative. At best, my guy is a nationalist, which is certainly preferable to your beret-bearing Internationalist.
In any case, the book is a pretty interesting background on what was happening in Europe before WWII. Also, one could always read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia for an explanation of the various left-wing ideologies.
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