I tried to (ostensibly) semi-ironically drop a "social democracy is the objectively the left-wing of fascism" the other day, and got roundly condemned by self-described 'comrades' for even making the joke. People sometimes really are blind when they want to be.
I was reading a book by Enrique Lister, the Spanish Communist and Marxist-Leninist on Leninism and Opportunism. The key target of the book is the reformism and opportunism seizing the ostensible 'communist' parties in Europe during the growth of ultra, reformist and opportunist groups during the 70s and 80s, i.e. when 'eurocommunism' was becoming a thing. The French Communist Party (the PCF, only communist in name now) is a stand-out case, cos they were at a point filled with Marxist-Leninists and are now defending the fascist police unions and have just declared their solidarity with Israel. Externally the soc dems will always support imperialist projects, and internally they will always side with the fascists against us. They will cry economistic tears over inflation, but would dare question too hard motives or costs of the war in Ukraine, rampant Sinophobia, will never really challenge fascistic relations with the Roma, and continue to see Europe as a become of the social-democratic achievement, while being ridden with cognitive dissonance as they have supported the dismantling of the welfare state, or have only been willing to complain occassionally loudly about it.
Betrayal, opportunism and imperialism are in their political genetics. Literally. The more astute ones are aware that Europe's economic resources necessary for their paltry services and welfare are possible because of imperialist exploitation. This is most obviously true in the case of France. And those who aren't would accept it or make excuses the day they get power, because they do not pose any challenge to the capitalist order. This is proof that they are idealists, because they do not understand that you cannot simply will the end of imperialism and its violence by decree, but that it requires a change in the material conditions of the society. They do not see that they themselves are an expression of this system attempting to patch-up its own decay, that they are the final legitimators of the imperialist order.
I mean I was semi-ironic in that while soc-democracy stabilizes capitalism from the 'left' while fascism does it from the right, and they have a kind of symbiotic relationship made evident in capitalist crises, there are too many differences in terms of ideology, behaviour and how they govern for me to feel at all really comfortable in literally identifying them. They are both pro-capitalist but they have different structures, functions and mechanisms within capitalism.
"social democracy is the objectively the left-wing of fascism"
What I don't get about this one is that we generally protest when liberals call Putin a fascist/Russia a fascist country (for example, there are other situations where we raise these protests) and say that "calling things that arent overt fascism fascism waters down the definition". But then we say this? It just seems to muddy the waters. Either all liberal democracies are fascist or liberal democracy is a separate but still bad thing. I would lean the later.
Like maybe I'm missing something here, but my objection to "social democracy is objectively the left-wing of fascism" has always been that it waters down the definition of fascism. Not that I disagree that socdems will cape for facism when it suits them, or that they will use fascists against us when it suits them. Just that its still separate from fascism definitionally.
Yeah frankly I mostly agree with you. Like social-democrats themselves are not fascists ideologically or really in how they govern if we're being really honest or empirically or historically precise, unless we do the post-modern logic move of expanding the definitions of our terms by association or connotation (which you see alot of people on this site do because it's literally culturally an anarcho-stalinist site), which is poor scientific method and when people do it I either think they are still embedded in liberal thought, have read too much post-structuralism for their own good. Social democrats have aligned with the right and used proto-fascists or fascists when necessary, but neither that, nor simply sharing some means of governance, makes them equivalent as political structures.
I say semi-ironically because the grain of truth, in what is otherwise an extremely simplistic and reductionist statement, is that social-democrats have always come to set the stage, at times support, or offer no serious political opposition to fascism. But when people say that this literally makes them fascist, this needs to be explained or it's just confused. Did the Soviet Union supporting the Guomingdang make them proto-fascist nationalists? Were the US Islamist once they funded the Mujahadeen? Obviously not. Some people say that because the US committed genocide against native Americans and used chattel slavery, that they are fascists. Well so have many societies previously in history. Was the Mongol Khanate fascist? No. Obviously not. That's not what those terms ever meant and using them in this way dilutes their meaning, their analytical usefulness and breeds confusion. Fascism, liberalism, social democracy as political structures (of ideologies, behaviour and organizations) are all compatible with capitalism. You see people here sometimes make extremely confused analogies saying things like 'well stage 1 cancer and stage 3 cancer are both cancer, therefore we can say that liberal capitalism and fascist capitalism are both the same thing, i.e fascism', which when you write it out explicitly makes clear why it's confused, because all that analogy establishes is a restatement of the obvious fact that both liberalism and fascism are coherent with capitalism. When the societies first identified as having similar properties and which were then grouped under the term 'fascist', it was done for a reason, i.e. to sharpen our understanding so that they could be better opposed. Marxism, as Lenin once put it, is the 'science of the party', it is scientific socialism and what distinguishes Marxism from the theoretical vagueness and lack of systematicity, and so lack of organizational adequacy, of, say, anarchism. Confusion is never revolutionary.
That being said, as capitalist societies enter into crisis the social democrats attempt stabilize it from the left, while fascists attempt to stabilize it from the right.
Christ the PCF supported israel and the hog unions? Absolute shame on them. I hope they stay irrelevant in french politics just for their euro-centric supremacism, reading more into them they generally seem like the worst 'communist' party in the western hemisphere. Is there any actual alternatives to this opportunistic party?
Also about the fascism part? People seem to forget fascism is when the capitalist nations exhaust their traditional bourgeoise politics to control the populace, and revert to Nietzsche style government of total obedience to the reactionary state.
Liberal parties are purely economic, we count parties like the social democrats, and even the republicans as liberal, since they belong to the 'centrist' sphere of political and economical status quo. This doesn't discount the obviously trajectory towards far-right politics and tolerated fascism we're seeing now, but the term fascism will come again in the future, when the capitalist classes see their project of imperialism in jeopardy, their economies begin to disintegrate, and the rising consciousness of the working class, we will see the future regimes (primarily from the west) as fascist. All I can say really is organise as effectively as possible.
The PCF are not really considered a serious Communist party by most radicals and communists in France imo. There are several other communist groups which are basically Trotskyist in orientation. The PCF are recognized universally on the left reformist sic dems and their have long held a variety of very reactionary positions. They are a shadow of their former selves.
It’s doubly annoying because in Paris they still have a dope ass modernist building as their headquarters which literally looks like some Soviet shit. They really don’t deserve it.
I tried to (ostensibly) semi-ironically drop a "social democracy is the objectively the left-wing of fascism" the other day, and got roundly condemned by self-described 'comrades' for even making the joke. People sometimes really are blind when they want to be.
I was reading a book by Enrique Lister, the Spanish Communist and Marxist-Leninist on Leninism and Opportunism. The key target of the book is the reformism and opportunism seizing the ostensible 'communist' parties in Europe during the growth of ultra, reformist and opportunist groups during the 70s and 80s, i.e. when 'eurocommunism' was becoming a thing. The French Communist Party (the PCF, only communist in name now) is a stand-out case, cos they were at a point filled with Marxist-Leninists and are now defending the fascist police unions and have just declared their solidarity with Israel. Externally the soc dems will always support imperialist projects, and internally they will always side with the fascists against us. They will cry economistic tears over inflation, but would dare question too hard motives or costs of the war in Ukraine, rampant Sinophobia, will never really challenge fascistic relations with the Roma, and continue to see Europe as a become of the social-democratic achievement, while being ridden with cognitive dissonance as they have supported the dismantling of the welfare state, or have only been willing to complain occassionally loudly about it.
Betrayal, opportunism and imperialism are in their political genetics. Literally. The more astute ones are aware that Europe's economic resources necessary for their paltry services and welfare are possible because of imperialist exploitation. This is most obviously true in the case of France. And those who aren't would accept it or make excuses the day they get power, because they do not pose any challenge to the capitalist order. This is proof that they are idealists, because they do not understand that you cannot simply will the end of imperialism and its violence by decree, but that it requires a change in the material conditions of the society. They do not see that they themselves are an expression of this system attempting to patch-up its own decay, that they are the final legitimators of the imperialist order.
Absolutely right. It has never been more transparently clear than it is today that social democracy is just the left wing of fascism.
I mean I was semi-ironic in that while soc-democracy stabilizes capitalism from the 'left' while fascism does it from the right, and they have a kind of symbiotic relationship made evident in capitalist crises, there are too many differences in terms of ideology, behaviour and how they govern for me to feel at all really comfortable in literally identifying them. They are both pro-capitalist but they have different structures, functions and mechanisms within capitalism.
What I don't get about this one is that we generally protest when liberals call Putin a fascist/Russia a fascist country (for example, there are other situations where we raise these protests) and say that "calling things that arent overt fascism fascism waters down the definition". But then we say this? It just seems to muddy the waters. Either all liberal democracies are fascist or liberal democracy is a separate but still bad thing. I would lean the later.
Like maybe I'm missing something here, but my objection to "social democracy is objectively the left-wing of fascism" has always been that it waters down the definition of fascism. Not that I disagree that socdems will cape for facism when it suits them, or that they will use fascists against us when it suits them. Just that its still separate from fascism definitionally.
Yeah frankly I mostly agree with you. Like social-democrats themselves are not fascists ideologically or really in how they govern if we're being really honest or empirically or historically precise, unless we do the post-modern logic move of expanding the definitions of our terms by association or connotation (which you see alot of people on this site do because it's literally culturally an anarcho-stalinist site), which is poor scientific method and when people do it I either think they are still embedded in liberal thought, have read too much post-structuralism for their own good. Social democrats have aligned with the right and used proto-fascists or fascists when necessary, but neither that, nor simply sharing some means of governance, makes them equivalent as political structures.
I say semi-ironically because the grain of truth, in what is otherwise an extremely simplistic and reductionist statement, is that social-democrats have always come to set the stage, at times support, or offer no serious political opposition to fascism. But when people say that this literally makes them fascist, this needs to be explained or it's just confused. Did the Soviet Union supporting the Guomingdang make them proto-fascist nationalists? Were the US Islamist once they funded the Mujahadeen? Obviously not. Some people say that because the US committed genocide against native Americans and used chattel slavery, that they are fascists. Well so have many societies previously in history. Was the Mongol Khanate fascist? No. Obviously not. That's not what those terms ever meant and using them in this way dilutes their meaning, their analytical usefulness and breeds confusion. Fascism, liberalism, social democracy as political structures (of ideologies, behaviour and organizations) are all compatible with capitalism. You see people here sometimes make extremely confused analogies saying things like 'well stage 1 cancer and stage 3 cancer are both cancer, therefore we can say that liberal capitalism and fascist capitalism are both the same thing, i.e fascism', which when you write it out explicitly makes clear why it's confused, because all that analogy establishes is a restatement of the obvious fact that both liberalism and fascism are coherent with capitalism. When the societies first identified as having similar properties and which were then grouped under the term 'fascist', it was done for a reason, i.e. to sharpen our understanding so that they could be better opposed. Marxism, as Lenin once put it, is the 'science of the party', it is scientific socialism and what distinguishes Marxism from the theoretical vagueness and lack of systematicity, and so lack of organizational adequacy, of, say, anarchism. Confusion is never revolutionary.
That being said, as capitalist societies enter into crisis the social democrats attempt stabilize it from the left, while fascists attempt to stabilize it from the right.
Christ the PCF supported israel and the hog unions? Absolute shame on them. I hope they stay irrelevant in french politics just for their euro-centric supremacism, reading more into them they generally seem like the worst 'communist' party in the western hemisphere. Is there any actual alternatives to this opportunistic party?
Also about the fascism part? People seem to forget fascism is when the capitalist nations exhaust their traditional bourgeoise politics to control the populace, and revert to Nietzsche style government of total obedience to the reactionary state.
Liberal parties are purely economic, we count parties like the social democrats, and even the republicans as liberal, since they belong to the 'centrist' sphere of political and economical status quo. This doesn't discount the obviously trajectory towards far-right politics and tolerated fascism we're seeing now, but the term fascism will come again in the future, when the capitalist classes see their project of imperialism in jeopardy, their economies begin to disintegrate, and the rising consciousness of the working class, we will see the future regimes (primarily from the west) as fascist. All I can say really is organise as effectively as possible.
The PCF are not really considered a serious Communist party by most radicals and communists in France imo. There are several other communist groups which are basically Trotskyist in orientation. The PCF are recognized universally on the left reformist sic dems and their have long held a variety of very reactionary positions. They are a shadow of their former selves.
It’s doubly annoying because in Paris they still have a dope ass modernist building as their headquarters which literally looks like some Soviet shit. They really don’t deserve it.