Re: Fascism, National Socialism, Communism [Was: Re: Something new about the last Pope]

On Jul 26, 2:14 am, Pēteris Cedriņš (Peteris Cedrins)
<cedr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Some scattered musings on the multiplying topics, in response to V.K.
Arlamov --

As Robert D. Kaplan wrote in _Balkan Ghosts_ re his conversations with
Djilas, "to judge by what Milosevic was turning into by early 1989,
Communism would exit the world stage revealed for what it truly was:
fascism, without fascism's ability to make the trains run on time."

I quoted and linked to Hayek to provide the perspective that Martin
was alluding to. I think the view of the Austrian School is important
to the topic. Von Mises observed that "if the State takes the power of
disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over
production; if its power to determine what direction production shall
take and what kind of production there shall be, is increased, then
the owner is left with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and
property has passed into the hands of the State."

If you put it the way you put it -- "anybody who really thinks that
Hitler was a marxist [sic] and took property from capitalsits [sic]
and gave it to workers, should get his head examined" -- then I'd
agree, of course, as Black Monk did... but that _wasn't_ what I was
saying. I was pointing out that Fascism was/is also anti-capitalistic
and collectivist.

But -- do you seriously claim that Soviet Communism gave property to
the workers? Both Fascist and capital-S Socialist societies were/are
totalitarian -- and etatist, despite the "internationalist"
pretensions of the latter. I bring up Djilas for a reason -- he saw
that the "new class" "by virtue of their political control,
exercise[s] the rights of owners while not actually being the owners."
That nomenklatura became capitalistic with (surprising?) ease.

The big problem, in the end, was that the Communist "everybody owns
everything" became "nobody owns anything." Even in East Berlin, where
Socialism was influenced by the Teutonic efficiency, I saw birch trees
growing from roofs.

Many political scientists, historians, and writers will tell you that
calling Nazism "right-wing" isn't very valuable towards understanding
it. In the case of Ulmanis' right-wing dictatorship -- even less so.
In many ways it was indeed right-wing, but it was also socialistic.
The term "national socialist" tends to evoke a simplistic response
these days, obviously -- but that's often a case of letting one
manifestation retroactively overshadow others (and one should also
bear in mind that economics weren't at the forefront of Fascism, by
the way -- if I recall correctly, Hitler said something about the
economy never creating a great society, but often bringing a society
down). But again -- Valters, formerly an SR, was very close to
Ulmanis. The major contradictions I see in the evolution of his
thinking aren't economic but political (i.e., he turned against
democracy).

After the First World War, Latvia became primarily agricultural -- of
necessity (most industry had been evacuated to Russia ahead of the
German advance -- in 1913, what is now Latvia was as urbanized as
Britain). You want redistribution of wealth -- that was _radical_, and
originally pushed by the left as well as the (more rightist?) farmers;
the agrarian reform was far-reaching, the large estates broken up and
redistributed. The "real" right -- the "conservatives" -- opposed
this.

Ulmanis continued to pursue those policies, and planned for yet
another land reform that would have broken up more farms. Much
industry was nationalized or at least co-opted. It wasn't given to the
workers, no -- but what I am arguing is that there is an aspect in
which this really does not matter much.

Bolshevism, which was very popular here and briefly put into practice
in a Soviet Latvia, failed, in part, because peasants didn't see much
of a difference between working for the State and working for a baron.
What they wanted was land -- property, and property rights. Even
Social Democracy declined, in part because it was a victim of its own
success -- once you get land, you might be less interested in pursuing
some vague, nightmarish class struggle. Many of the newly established
smallholders voted for a breakaway faction of the Social Democrats
that ended up becoming a sort of smallholders' party, its leader also
supporting Ulmanis' dictatorship.

The Social Democrats, who of course split and swirled, were
principally guided by dogmatic Marxism (the Erfurt Programme) -- and
didn't really have an agrarian policy.

To get back to the inception of this thread -- I don't see how
"Communism was still necessary to combat unbridled Capitalism," as the
late Pope apparently said it was, at least not in Eastern Europe. In
many significant ways, Fascism was also anti-Capitalistic. So were
nationalist -- national socialist -- regimes like that of Ulmanis. And
when all is said and done -- Eastern Europe got totally screwed. The
spirit of Fascism survived to a far greater extent in the Soviet bloc
-- it was the DDR that preserved Hitler's legacy best, for instance,
not the BRD. The extreme right has traction nearly everywhere in the
former East, with the exception of Estonia.

Tellingly, the "eSStonians" get called "Fascists" most often of late,
demonstrating both the emptiness of the epithet and the Fascism of
Russia. Demonstrating the fact that "internationalism," from the
1930s, was essentially little more than a convenient costume for
Russian imperialism -- Russians have appropriated the myths of the
Great Patriotic War, the antennae of many of my neighbors' fresh new
Western cars sporting the ribbons of St. George for Stalin's Victory
Day.


This is surreal. I never imagined that people over the age of 12 would
really not be able to understand the difference between the extreme
right wing ("fascism", "nazism") and the extreme left wing
("communism").

Both being authoritarian/dictratorial, they share much in terms of
their political methods.

However, Marxism is based on 2 main pillars:

1. Expropriation of private property and making society/government the
owner.

2. International brotherhood of working people of all races,
nationalities and ethnicities.

Nazism is based on:

1. Private property remaining in the hands of big capitalists and
petty bourgeois.

2. Hate for people of other races, nationalities and ethnicities

Thus, while the communists and the fascists/nazis employ similar
tactics in the fight for power and in preserving gained power, they
always were and still are each other's biggest enemies.

This is, of course, in line with the main law of nature as viewed by
Marxists: Law of Unity and Struggle of Opposites. See, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_philosophy_of_nature
.

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