Re: NOISE: "Fascism is corporatism"

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Sat, 8 Jun 1996 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

> At 07:09 PM 6/7/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote:
> > you forget that I'm a
> > Certified Political Scientist. 
> > [...]
> > Once they got in power, then they started developing an economic ideology.
> 
> Untrue:
> 
> Fascism is of course a reasonably complete, coherent, and 
> philosophically consistent logical system, almost as coherent as 
> marxism, and far more logical than Mill's utilitarianism.  It was 
> published and thoroughly debated well before they pursued or took power.

Besides being unture, this is rather skew to the discussion of whether
fascism = corporatism = Clinton. Whether it is possible to construct a
coherent ideology is rarely relevant to historical processes; was Castro's
Moncada attack motivated by Marxist ideology, for example? But anyway...

> Rich Graves's lie is a lie I frequently hear from those who well 
> know the truth, 

I know you & Tim aren't impressed by Webster's, which Tim claimed as an
authority without bothering to check whether it agreed with him at all (it
doesn't; in fact, it directly contradicts him), but how about The
Encyclopedia Brittanica on "The Philosophical Bases of Fascism":

 In its beginnings fascism was not a doctrine and had no clearly elaborated
 program. It was a technique for gaining and retaining power by violence, 
 and with astonishing flexibility it subordinated all questions of program
 to this one aim. From the beginning it was dominated by a definite
 attitude of mind that exalted the fighting spirit, military discipline,
 ruthlessness, and action and rejected all ethical motives as weakening the
 resoluteness of will. 

It pleases me greatly that you do not presume to call me a fool.

I've cited Machiavelli, the historical progression of risorgimento, and Paul
Morrison, "The poetics of fascism :  Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Paul de Man," 
ISBN 0-19-508085-8. All you're doing is blathering on with some
anti-intellectual lumpenlibertarian claptrap that tries to smear anything
you disagree with as tantamount to fascism. You do libertarianism, with
whose precepts I wholeheartedly agree, a serious disservice. Go back to
Bastiat and leave history alone.

The Encyclopedia Brittanica says of Mussolini:

 He read widely and voraciously, if not deeply, plunging into the
 philosophers and theorists Immanuel Kant and Benedict de Spinoza, Peter
 Kropotkin and Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Kautsky, and Georges
 Sorel, picking out what appealed to him and discarding the rest, forming no
 coherent political philosophy of his own yet impressing his companions as a
 potential revolutionary of uncommon personality and striking presence. 

For a more nuanced view, try A. James Gregor's "Young Mussolini and the
Intellectual Origins of Fascism," ISBN 0-520-03799-5. I could mail you
photocopies of the relevant sections if you like. 

> Many of my readers will think I am excessively harsh, calling Rich
> Graves a liar rather than a fool, but I hear the above story 
> (that fascism is not a coherent ideology or philosophy) primarily from
> those whose interests this story serves, and if they genuinely 
> thought this story was true, they would not know that it is in their
> interests to push it.

[Boggle]

Huh? In English, please.

[much more content-free blather deleted]

Anyway, I never suggested that there was no such thing as fascist
philosophy; just that fascism was not rooted in a well-developed ECONOMIC
ideology, and that Tim's definition of corporatism is incorrect both in the
abstract and in the cases of Italian fascism and Nazism.

> Not only do such concepts as feminist science, phallocentric science, 
> etc, strongly resemble such concepts as aryan science, jewish science, 
> etc, but they are justified using the same arguments from the same 
> philosophers.  Indeed Heidegger was not only a philosopher of fascism, 
> but he personally participated in Hitler's terror, terrorizing his academic
> colleagues, and Paul De Man of Yale University worked directly for the 
> Nazis as a propagandist in occupied Belgium.

How did we get from economics to philosophy?

Here James demonstrates his absolute mastery of the subject.

Heidegger only really supported Nazism from 1933-34; in the 40's and
thereafter, he referred to Nazism as a disease. He is remembered as an
existentialist, not a Nazi, though he did join the party when he became the
rector of Freiburg. I don't believe that either Hitler or Goebbels were
familiar with Heidegger's philosophical work.

The fact that Paul de Man, in his early years in Nazi-occupied Belgium,
wrote antisemitic propaganda for a number of local collaborationist journals
was not discovered until four years after his death (by Ortwin de Graef). 
The statement "Paul de Man of Yale University worked directly for the Nazis" 
is not true in the sense that most readers might think. He collaborated,
left, and started a new life. He contributed absolutely nothing to Nazi
philosophy, because he did not become a philosopher until years after the
war -- probably as a way to cope with the horrors he saw, and the shame of
his cowardly collaboration.  I don't think anyone has suggested that de Man
was a serious Nazi -- just a fucking wimp.

Where are you getting this nonsense about Heidegger and de Man? I have no
sympathy for their views, but any attempt to smear them as a bunch of Nazis
is ludicrous. Give me a reference. This is sure to be amusing.

By the way, I voted for Bush, and no matter how many times you contradict
me, I know I don't support the government's actions at Ruby Ridge. Your
foaming-mouth projections on people who disagree with you are laughable.

James, I have a lot of respect for Tim and Bruce (anyone who thought I was
calling Bruce a Nazi for holding a common libertarian fallacy must be
oxygen-deprived), but you're really losing me here.

-rich