Re: OT:OT:OT:NO MS:No Hurt US:NO RACIST:Fascism Then. Fascism Now?


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"abdi" <abdi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OjKif.77463$JQ.3614@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Published on Monday, November 28, 2005 by the Toronto Star (Canada)
> Fascism Then. Fascism Now?
> When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping
> storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the
> economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.
>
> by Paul Bigioni
>
> Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the
> 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative
> activity favors the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big
> business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments,
> of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for
> at least the past 25 years.
>
> Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of
> big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of
> government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries
> were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were
> borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served
> the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity.
>
> These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North
> America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even
> recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America's most brilliant and most
> corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism.
> "Yes," he replied, "but we will call it anti-fascism."
>
> By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the
> era of overt fascism, we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present,
> we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect us
> from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, North
> America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what
> it is, and we must change course.
>
> Consider the words of Thurman Arnold, head of the Antitrust Division
> of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939:
>
> "Germany, of course, has developed within 15 years from an
> industrial autocracy into a dictatorship. Most people are under the
> impression that the power of Hitler was the result of his demagogic
> blandishments and appeals to the mob... Actually, Hitler holds his power
> through the final and inevitable development of the uncontrolled tendency
> to combine in restraint of trade."
> Arnold made his point even more clearly in a 1939 address to the
> American Bar Association:
>
> "Germany presents the logical end of the process of cartelization.
> From 1923 to 1935, cartelization grew in Germany until finally that nation
> was so organized that everyone had to belong either to a squad, a regiment
> or a brigade in order to survive. The names given to these squads,
> regiments or brigades were cartels, trade associations, unions and trusts.
> Such a distribution system could not adjust its prices. It needed a
> general with quasi-military authority who could order the workers to work
> and the mills to produce. Hitler named himself that general. Had it not
> been Hitler it would have been someone else."
> I suspect that to most readers, Arnold's words are bewildering.
> People today are quite certain that they know what fascism is. When I ask
> people to define it, they typically tell me what it was, the assumption
> being that it no longer exists. Most people associate fascism with
> concentration camps and rows of storm troopers, yet they know nothing of
> the political and economic processes that led to these horrible end
> results.
>
> Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were, on paper, liberal
> democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from
> another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the result of
> political and economic changes these nations underwent while they were
> still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so
> utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the
> control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast,
> becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big
> business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.
>
> Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by
> means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These
> associations exercised a high degree of control over the businesses of
> their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the
> licensing of patented technology. These associations were private but were
> entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws,
> and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by
> government.
>
> This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and
> businessmen constantly clamored for self-regulation in business. By the
> mid 1920s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation.
> By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for
> themselves a "command and control" economy that replaced the free market.
> The business associations of Italy and Germany at this time are perhaps
> history's most perfect illustration of Adam Smith's famous dictum: "People
> of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,
> but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some
> contrivance to raise prices."
>
> How could the German government not be influenced by Fritz Thyssen,
> the man who controlled most of Germany's coal production? How could it
> ignore the demands of the great I.G. Farben industrial trust, controlling
> as it did most of that nation's chemical production? Indeed, the German
> nation was bent to the will of these powerful industrial interests. Hitler
> attended to the reduction of taxes applicable to large businesses while
> simultaneously increasing the same taxes as they related to small
> business. Previous decrees establishing price ceilings were repealed such
> that the cost of living for the average family was increased. Hitler's
> economic policies hastened the destruction of Germany's middle class by
> decimating small business.
>
> Ironically, Hitler pandered to the middle class, and they provided
> some of his most enthusiastically violent supporters. The fact that he did
> this while simultaneously destroying them was a terrible achievement of
> Nazi propaganda.
>
> Hitler also destroyed organized labor by making strikes illegal.
> Notwithstanding the socialist terms in which he appealed to the masses,
> Hitler's labor policy was the dream come true of the industrial cartels
> that supported him. Nazi law gave total control over wages and working
> conditions to the employer.
>
> Compulsory (slave) labor was the crowning achievement of Nazi labor
> relations. Along with millions of people, organized labor died in the
> concentration camps. The camps were not only the most depraved of all
> human achievements, they were a part and parcel of Nazi economic policy.
> Hitler's Untermenschen, largely Jews, Poles and Russians, supplied slave
> labor to German industry. Surely this was a capitalist bonanza. In another
> bitter irony, the gates over many of the camps bore a sign that read
> Arbeit Macht Frei - "Work shall set you free." I do not know if this was
> black humour or propaganda, but it is emblematic of the deception that
> lies at the heart of fascism.
>
> The same economic reality existed in Italy between the two world
> wars. In that country, nearly all industrial activity was owned or
> controlled by a few corporate giants, Fiat and the Ansaldo shipping
> concern being the chief examples of this.
>
> Land ownership in Italy was also highly concentrated and jealously
> guarded. Vast tracts of farmland were owned by a few latifundisti. The
> actual farming was carried out by a landless peasantry who were locked
> into a role essentially the same as that of the sharecropper of the U.S.
> Deep South.
>
> As in Germany, the few owners of the nation's capital assets had
> immense influence over government. As a young man, Mussolini had been a
> strident socialist, and he, like Hitler, used socialist language to lure
> the people to fascism. Mussolini spoke of a "corporate" society wherein
> the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The entire
> economy was to be divided into industry specific corporazioni, bodies
> composed of both labor and management representatives. The corporazioni
> would resolve all labor/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the
> fascist state would intervene.
>
> Unfortunately, as in Germany, there laid at the heart of this plan a
> swindle. The corporazioni, to the extent that they were actually put in
> place, were controlled by the employers. Together with Mussolini's ban on
> strikes, these measures reduced the Italian laborer to the status of
> peasant.
>
> Mussolini, the one-time socialist, went on to abolish the inheritance
> tax, a measure that favored the wealthy. He decreed a series of massive
> subsidies to Italy's largest industrial businesses and repeatedly ordered
> wage reductions. Italy's poor were forced to subsidize the wealthy. In
> real terms, wages and living standards for the average Italian dropped
> precipitously under fascism.
>
> Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect
> democracy
>
> Even this brief historical sketch shows how fascism did the bidding
> of big business. The fact that Hitler called his party the "National
> Socialist Party" did not change the reactionary nature of his policies.
> The connection between the fascist dictatorships and monopoly capital was
> obvious to the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939. As of 2005, however, it
> is all but forgotten.
>
> It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is
> particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in
> our modern era of deregulation. Most Western liberal democracies are
> currently in the thrall of what some call market fundamentalism. Few
> nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the
> marketplace is inherently bad.
>
> As in Italy and Germany in the '20s and '30s, business associations
> clamour for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of
> antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged
> consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and
> acquisitions. The North American economy has become more monopolistic than
> at any time in the post-WWII period.
>
> U.S. census data from 1997 shows that the largest four companies in
> the food, motor vehicle and aerospace industries control 53.4, 87.3 and
> 55.6 per cent of their respective markets. Over 20 per cent of commercial
> banking in the U.S. is controlled by the four largest financial
> institutions, with the largest 50 controlling over 60 per cent. Even these
> numbers underestimate the scope of concentration, since they do not
> account for the myriad interconnections between firms by means of debt
> instruments and multiple directorships, which further reduce the extent of
> competition.
>
> Actual levels of U.S. commercial concentration have been difficult to
> measure since the 1970s, when strong corporate opposition put an end to
> the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to collect the necessary
> information.
>
> Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their
> political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend
> lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing
> institutes that now limit public discourse to the question of how best to
> serve the interests of business.
>
> The consolidation of the economy and the resulting perversion of
> public policy are themselves fascistic. I am certain, however, that former
> president Bill Clinton was not worried about fascism when he repealed
> federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930s.
>
> The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is similarly unworried about
> fascism as it lobbies the Canadian government to water down proposed
> amendments to our federal Competition Act. (The Competition Act, last
> amended in 1986, regulates monopolies, among other things, and itself
> represents a watering down of Canada's previous antitrust laws. It was
> essentially rewritten by industry and handed to the Mulroney government to
> be enacted.)
>
> At present, monopolies are regulated on purely economic grounds to
> ensure the efficient allocation of goods.
>
> If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence
> of big business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way that
> recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions.
>
> Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect
> democracy.
>
> It might be argued that North America's democratic political systems
> are so entrenched that we needn't fear fascism's return. The democracies
> of Italy and Germany in the 1920s were in many respects fledgling and
> weak. Our systems will surely react at the first whiff of dictatorship.
>
> Or will they? This argument denies the reality that the fascist
> dictatorships were preceded by years of reactionary politics, the kind of
> politics that are playing out today. Further, it is based on the conceit
> that whatever our own governments do is democracy. Canada still clings to
> a quaint, 19th-century "first past the post" electoral system in which a
> minority of the popular vote can and has resulted in majority control of
> Parliament.
>
> In the U.S., millions still question the legality of the sitting
> president's first election victory, and the power to declare war has
> effectively become his personal prerogative. Assuming that we have enough
> democracy to protect us is exactly the kind of complacency that allows our
> systems to be quietly and slowly perverted. On paper, Italy and Germany
> had constitutional, democratic systems. What they lacked was the eternal
> vigilance necessary to sustain them. That vigilance is also lacking today.
>
> Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is
> also dangerous at a philosophical level. As contradictory as it may seem,
> fascist dictatorship was made possible because of the flawed notion of
> freedom that held sway during the era of laissez-faire capitalism in the
> early 20th century.
>
> It was the liberals of that era who clamoured for unfettered personal
> and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such
> untrammelled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the
> freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the
> weak. It is a notion of freedom that is inherently violent, because it is
> enjoyed at the expense of others. Such a notion of freedom legitimizes
> each and every increase in the wealth and power of those who are already
> powerful, regardless of the misery that will be suffered by others as a
> result. The use of the state to limit such "freedom" was denounced by the
> laissez-faire liberals of the early 20th century. The use of the state to
> protect such "freedom" was fascism. Just as monopoly is the ruin of the
> free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.
>
> In the post-war period, this flawed notion of freedom has been
> perpetuated by the neo-liberal school of thought. The neo-liberals
> denounce any regulation of the marketplace. In so doing, they mimic the
> posture of big business in the pre-fascist period. Under the sway of
> neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have
> decimated labor and exalted capital. (At present, only 7.8 per cent of
> workers in the U.S. private sector are unionized - about the same
> percentage as in the early 1900s.)
>
> Neo-liberals call relentlessly for tax cuts, which, in a previously
> progressive system, disproportionately favor the wealthy. Regarding the
> distribution of wealth, the neo-liberals have nothing to say. In the end,
> the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As in Weimar Germany, the
> function of the state is being reduced to that of a steward for the
> interests of the moneyed elite. All that would be required now for a more
> rapid descent into fascism are a few reasons for the average person to
> forget he is being ripped off. Hatred of Arabs, fundamentalist
> Christianity or an illusory sense of perpetual war may well be taking the
> place of Hitler's hatred for communists and Jews.
>
> Neo-liberal intellectuals often recognize the need for violence to
> protect what they regard as freedom. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times
> has written enthusiastically that "the hidden hand of the market will
> never work without a hidden fist," and that "McDonald's cannot flourish
> without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15." As in
> pre-fascist Germany and Italy, the laissez-faire businessmen call for the
> state to do their bidding even as they insist that the state should stay
> out of the marketplace. Put plainly, neo-liberals advocate the use of the
> state's military force for the sake of private gain. Their view of the
> state's role in society is identical to that of the businessmen and
> intellectuals who supported Hitler and Mussolini. There is no fear of the
> big state here. There is only the desire to wield its power.
> Neo-liberalism is thus fertile soil for fascism to grow again into an
> outright threat to our democracy.
>
> Having said that fascism is the result of a flawed notion of freedom,
> we need to re-examine what we mean when we throw around the word. We must
> conceive of freedom in a more enlightened way.
>
> Indeed, it was the thinkers of the Enlightenment who imagined a
> balanced and civilized freedom that did not impinge upon the freedom of
> one's neighbor Put in the simplest terms, my right to life means that you
> must give up your freedom to kill me. This may seem terribly obvious to
> decent people. Unfortunately, in our neo-liberal era, this civilized sense
> of freedom has, like the dangers of fascism, been all but forgotten.
>
> Paul Bigioni is a lawyer practicing in Markham. This article is drawn
> from his work on a book about the persistence of fascism.
>
> © 2005 Toronto Star
>
> ###
>
>
>
> --
> Quaecomque sunt vera ----
>
>


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