What is the communist position on the definition of fascism?
What is the communist position on the definition of fascism?
Of course, there will be many interpretations, but what are the defining Marxist ideas on the definition?
I ask, because you see a lot of libs and liblefts calling America fascist, but then being asked how, and not being able to respond. It makes them (and us, because we always get lumped in with them) look bad. I'd like to be able to step in if I ever witness such a thing.
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I would argue that calling Imperial America fascist is an exaggeration, but that hardly makes it less worthy of our opposition. In Fascist Italy, there was a systematic crackdown on the trade unions, a gradual elimination of opposition parties (starting with socialist ones, which were to be smashed rather than absorbed), a gradual deprecation of the pseudodemocracy, and the ruling class promoted a predominantly petty bourgeois and violently anticommunist movement (Fascism) into an institutional power without even pretending to consult the masses. Imperial America’s suppression of the lower classes has not become that intense (at least not yet).
Michael Parenti laid down a good explanation of Fascism, and he derived much of his theory from Daniel Guerin’s excellent Fascism and Big Business. If you want to study Fascism seriously, that is the book that you want to start out with.
Briefer, communist explanations for Fascism include Clara Zetkin’s The Struggle Against Fascism and Leon Trotsky’s pamplet Fascism: What it is and how to fight it. (I know that you’ll all roll your eyes at me for recommending one of Trotsky’s works—and I do agree that this one is imperfect, to put it succinctly—but I doubt that you’ll strongly disagree with his summary of Fascism either.) For a moderner explanation, I recommend Bes D. Marx’s ‘Why Did Mussolini Move From Marxism To Fascism?’
My own summary is that Fascism was the militant and predominantly petty bourgeois movement that the haute‐bourgeoisie promoted to institutional power to preserve and strengthen capitalism at all costs.