I need to read Gramsci. "As Gramsci noted, the capitalist ruling class much prefer to dominate society through a “democracy” under which they control the state and the consent of the people is manufactured through a cultural hegemony that both legitimizes their rule while obfuscating the nature of that rule. The tools of coercion (e.g. the need for people to work to support their families) and outright violence (e.g. incarceration) are always there to lend support to the cultural hegemony. Bourgeois democracy is an efficient way to manage a modern industrialized capitalist economy, given the required literacy and geographical mobility of the population."
There was a description of messaging about identifying with the plight of the workers while being backed by profiteers that made me think of Pierre Poiliviere here in Canada. He's gaining in popularity and so many do not want him to be our next Prime Minister.
Are the WEF-trained heads of the Liberals and NDP any better? Being a Canadian I share the sheer frustration at not being allowed the chance to vote for a true representative of the Canadian majority. The voting doesn't need to be fixed because the ruling class will be happy with any of the allowed outcomes. The sheer horribleness and vacuity of Trudeau and Singh will deliver Canada to Poilievre, just as the Liberals and NDP delivered Ontario to the horribleness of 8 years of Ford. Then rinse and repeat in the game of musical ruling-class friendly politicians.
I use "Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci" edited by Hoare and Smith, not that new (1971) but a good one and very reasonably priced for a used copy. In a future post I will summarize the work of Gramsci, as it is so central to the way I view the world.
I'll have to pick it up. I'm intrigued with Gramsci.
I agree, the situation in Canada is horrible. Look what happened as well to the Federal Green Party when Dimitri Lascaris and then Alex Tyrrell, the leader of the Quebec Greens, who are both EcoSocialists. He wasn't even allowed to run. And Elizabeth May publicly backed Annamie Paul over Dimitri.
Here in BC, Anjali Appadurai was disqualified from running for the BC NDP leadership.
It seems that any actual progressive candidates are disallowed from running.
Any attempt to define fascism that does not include etymology and usage is not entirely useful. That is the main point of my article 'Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism'
This attempt at defining the term failed in one respect - I was unable to produce an actual definition, succeeding only in demonstrating that the notion that fascism being an innovation of the 20th Century (I leave that to someone who's good at that sort of thing).
The point remains that fascism has its origins in the very first emergence of what could be called 'society,' some 100,000 years ago. It may very well have been the first 'political ideology,' transforming the love of one's community into a rationale for aggression against the group's neighbors.
The precursors to European fascism appear to have been French, most notably Bonapartism but more generally the reactionary response to revolution- de Maistre being the first. Though he saw himself as a disciple of Burke, the liberal and friend of the American Revolution. Clearly the relationship between liberalism (even in Burke's case heavily alloyed by the political economy rediscovered in neoliberalism) and fascism is that of step if not birth twins.
The Bonapartism is more a matter of style- bloody reaction in France is general to liberals, Cavaignac and Thiers being the most famous practitioners.
And then there was Action Francaise, Maurras etc.
I may be wrong I read Roger's piece hurriedly but I think that the role of Fascism as a rolling reaction against the 1917 Revolution could be emphasised more. The Italy in which Mussolini was escorted to power by the ruling class was also the Italy of the Factory Occupations, L'Ordine Nuovo and Gramsci as an organiser, agitator and revolutionary strategist. In many ways a more interesting and dynamic figure than the the iron willed prisoner refusing to submit to the power that feared him.
Fascism arose in the wake of defeated revolutions or near revolutions, in Munich, Budapest, Vienna and, of course, Berlin where the Freikorps murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg at the behest of old comrades like Gustav Noske.
None of which intended as a criticism of Roger's brief essay the latest in an invaluable series on his substack site.
And if you scratch Roger Tucker's article you will find insights such as this one:
"...The Weimar Republic was home to two opposing fascist groups, the Nazis and the Communists. [search on ´Weimar Germany street fighting´]. These antagonists were excellent examples of Right and Left wing fascism, respectively - the first based on ethnicity and nationalism, the latter on a political/economic theory. Hence the implacable enmity between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. War between them was inevitable, as war is always based on the inherent dynamic of fascism - Us vs Them - especially between two implacably opposed versions..."
Fascism is a social technology of control that is really the twin of liberal bourgeois democracy, it is a means for a ruling class to control the general population in a modern industrialized unitary state with general literacy and social mobility. Unencumbered private property, central to a capitalist ruling class is also a very recent phenomenon from the past 300 years or so.
In the Middle Ages of Europe there were competing claims of authority (King, Barons, Church etc.) that overlapped, there was no unitary state. That only came after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and didn't take full hold until the nineteenth century. Prior to that period populations were predominantly geographically immobile illiterate serfs that were controlled through coercion, violence and the Church. There was no mass media or mass society, the population was ruled by individual barons etc. who claimed their own authority.
In China a very different system to maintain control of a unitary state was developed, centralized authoritarian bureaucracy, about 3,000 years ago. Here, the state acquires legitimacy as it balances between the needs of the people and the needs of the merchants. It has a "Mandate of Heaven" but that is conditional on its performance, very different to the European "Mandate of Kings" which was unconditional.
You are mistaking general social dominance and the direction of aggression against others in general for fascism. Probably one of the best books on this is "The Sources Of Social Power Volume 1: A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760" by Michael Mann. This shows the very different styles of leadership/dominance through time.
is somewhat helpful in tracing the etymology of the word 'fasces.' "The fasces as a symbol of power likely originated in the area of ancient Etruria. The ancient Greek geographer Strabo states that the fasces was an early sign of Roman regal rule adopted from the Etruscans by early kings of Rome. Etruscan or not, the fasces became intimately tied to the exercise of magisterial authority during the course of the Roman Republic."
This is helpful but it doesn't reveal the earliest use of the word, at least as I understand it, which is the symbol of a bound sheaf of wheat. That, iconographically, quite innocently hearkens back to how the earliest agricultural communities saw themselves, as an extended family that shared the work and the fruits of their labor. This could be called proto-fascism, prior to the perversion of this sense of community into an antagonistic and aggressive posture vis a vis their neighbors.
It is then easy to see how resistance to this development within the community would lead to a modification of the iconography, adding an axe-head to the staff of authority.
This discussion begs some reference to the masculine and feminine principles but that is beyond the scope of this comment.
You are not focusing on political economy, but culture which is a bit of a dead end. Words change meaning over time and within socio-economic contexts. The Italian "fascio" means a bundle which was reused to refer to a group that had strength through unity, one of the core ideological paradigms of Fascism - the collective over the individual.
Generally human groups moved through stages (although they could of course revert, nothing is generally in a straight line):
- Rank Societies, where high rank-holders have status, make decisions, and use material resources on behalf of the whole group but they not possess coercive power and cannot turn group resources into their own private resources. e.g. a "chief"
- A limited state built around a "chief" who has converted temporary political authority into permanent political power, institutionalized and routinized.
- Stratification, as private property differentials and economic classes become evident and backed by permanent institutionalized power
- Civilization which combines the ceremonial centre, writing and the city (i.e. the beginnings of mass society) with humans collectively contained within fixed social and territorial boundaries.
Liberalism and Fascism are only relevant when the last development, "civilization", develops mass literacy, moves beyond the geographical fixing of the people (e.g. serfdom), and a central state develops uncontested power. Before then power was very much driven by coercion and violence, backed up by the mysticism of the Church. Individual groups may have shown some fascistic tendencies, but this was not a general way of managing society.
In Roman time the power that was represented with the fasces was backed up by coercion and violence (resistance was punished with severe violence), not an all encompassing ideology and extensive propaganda. Most of the society was made up of slaves, serfs and foreigners subjugated by the Romans. There were constant wars of plunder (its how Rome's economy actually worked, constant new plunder was required) and revolts by the masses (the reason for "Bread and Circuses" for the Roman masses).
This discussion has been interesting but I believe we have reached an impasse., so I'm going to drop it. Thank you for responding to my comments at such length.
On my site I will continue to link to your posts on geopolitics, which are quite good.
Thanks for this very thorough article, Roger.
I need to read Gramsci. "As Gramsci noted, the capitalist ruling class much prefer to dominate society through a “democracy” under which they control the state and the consent of the people is manufactured through a cultural hegemony that both legitimizes their rule while obfuscating the nature of that rule. The tools of coercion (e.g. the need for people to work to support their families) and outright violence (e.g. incarceration) are always there to lend support to the cultural hegemony. Bourgeois democracy is an efficient way to manage a modern industrialized capitalist economy, given the required literacy and geographical mobility of the population."
There was a description of messaging about identifying with the plight of the workers while being backed by profiteers that made me think of Pierre Poiliviere here in Canada. He's gaining in popularity and so many do not want him to be our next Prime Minister.
Are the WEF-trained heads of the Liberals and NDP any better? Being a Canadian I share the sheer frustration at not being allowed the chance to vote for a true representative of the Canadian majority. The voting doesn't need to be fixed because the ruling class will be happy with any of the allowed outcomes. The sheer horribleness and vacuity of Trudeau and Singh will deliver Canada to Poilievre, just as the Liberals and NDP delivered Ontario to the horribleness of 8 years of Ford. Then rinse and repeat in the game of musical ruling-class friendly politicians.
I use "Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci" edited by Hoare and Smith, not that new (1971) but a good one and very reasonably priced for a used copy. In a future post I will summarize the work of Gramsci, as it is so central to the way I view the world.
I'll have to pick it up. I'm intrigued with Gramsci.
I agree, the situation in Canada is horrible. Look what happened as well to the Federal Green Party when Dimitri Lascaris and then Alex Tyrrell, the leader of the Quebec Greens, who are both EcoSocialists. He wasn't even allowed to run. And Elizabeth May publicly backed Annamie Paul over Dimitri.
Here in BC, Anjali Appadurai was disqualified from running for the BC NDP leadership.
It seems that any actual progressive candidates are disallowed from running.
Used to be part of the Green Party, left in disgust after Queen May decided that she was more important than party democracy.
Confirming my much less informed analysis. Thanks for this Roger! Good stuff!
Any attempt to define fascism that does not include etymology and usage is not entirely useful. That is the main point of my article 'Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism'
https://legacy.sitrepworld.info/Home/today-s-headlines/us-vs-them-on-the-meaning-of-fasci-72ff24c77caeb8c.html
This attempt at defining the term failed in one respect - I was unable to produce an actual definition, succeeding only in demonstrating that the notion that fascism being an innovation of the 20th Century (I leave that to someone who's good at that sort of thing).
The point remains that fascism has its origins in the very first emergence of what could be called 'society,' some 100,000 years ago. It may very well have been the first 'political ideology,' transforming the love of one's community into a rationale for aggression against the group's neighbors.
Please read it and let me know what you think.
Roger Tucker
sitrepworld.info
The precursors to European fascism appear to have been French, most notably Bonapartism but more generally the reactionary response to revolution- de Maistre being the first. Though he saw himself as a disciple of Burke, the liberal and friend of the American Revolution. Clearly the relationship between liberalism (even in Burke's case heavily alloyed by the political economy rediscovered in neoliberalism) and fascism is that of step if not birth twins.
The Bonapartism is more a matter of style- bloody reaction in France is general to liberals, Cavaignac and Thiers being the most famous practitioners.
And then there was Action Francaise, Maurras etc.
I may be wrong I read Roger's piece hurriedly but I think that the role of Fascism as a rolling reaction against the 1917 Revolution could be emphasised more. The Italy in which Mussolini was escorted to power by the ruling class was also the Italy of the Factory Occupations, L'Ordine Nuovo and Gramsci as an organiser, agitator and revolutionary strategist. In many ways a more interesting and dynamic figure than the the iron willed prisoner refusing to submit to the power that feared him.
Fascism arose in the wake of defeated revolutions or near revolutions, in Munich, Budapest, Vienna and, of course, Berlin where the Freikorps murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg at the behest of old comrades like Gustav Noske.
None of which intended as a criticism of Roger's brief essay the latest in an invaluable series on his substack site.
"If you scratch a liberal you find a fascist underneath", as the saying goes.
And if you scratch Roger Tucker's article you will find insights such as this one:
"...The Weimar Republic was home to two opposing fascist groups, the Nazis and the Communists. [search on ´Weimar Germany street fighting´]. These antagonists were excellent examples of Right and Left wing fascism, respectively - the first based on ethnicity and nationalism, the latter on a political/economic theory. Hence the implacable enmity between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. War between them was inevitable, as war is always based on the inherent dynamic of fascism - Us vs Them - especially between two implacably opposed versions..."
Fascism is a social technology of control that is really the twin of liberal bourgeois democracy, it is a means for a ruling class to control the general population in a modern industrialized unitary state with general literacy and social mobility. Unencumbered private property, central to a capitalist ruling class is also a very recent phenomenon from the past 300 years or so.
In the Middle Ages of Europe there were competing claims of authority (King, Barons, Church etc.) that overlapped, there was no unitary state. That only came after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and didn't take full hold until the nineteenth century. Prior to that period populations were predominantly geographically immobile illiterate serfs that were controlled through coercion, violence and the Church. There was no mass media or mass society, the population was ruled by individual barons etc. who claimed their own authority.
In China a very different system to maintain control of a unitary state was developed, centralized authoritarian bureaucracy, about 3,000 years ago. Here, the state acquires legitimacy as it balances between the needs of the people and the needs of the merchants. It has a "Mandate of Heaven" but that is conditional on its performance, very different to the European "Mandate of Kings" which was unconditional.
You are mistaking general social dominance and the direction of aggression against others in general for fascism. Probably one of the best books on this is "The Sources Of Social Power Volume 1: A history of power from the beginning to AD 1760" by Michael Mann. This shows the very different styles of leadership/dominance through time.
This article
https://hyperallergic.com/459504/fasces-fascism-and-how-the-alt-right-continues-to-appropriate-ancient-roman-symbols/
is somewhat helpful in tracing the etymology of the word 'fasces.' "The fasces as a symbol of power likely originated in the area of ancient Etruria. The ancient Greek geographer Strabo states that the fasces was an early sign of Roman regal rule adopted from the Etruscans by early kings of Rome. Etruscan or not, the fasces became intimately tied to the exercise of magisterial authority during the course of the Roman Republic."
This is helpful but it doesn't reveal the earliest use of the word, at least as I understand it, which is the symbol of a bound sheaf of wheat. That, iconographically, quite innocently hearkens back to how the earliest agricultural communities saw themselves, as an extended family that shared the work and the fruits of their labor. This could be called proto-fascism, prior to the perversion of this sense of community into an antagonistic and aggressive posture vis a vis their neighbors.
It is then easy to see how resistance to this development within the community would lead to a modification of the iconography, adding an axe-head to the staff of authority.
This discussion begs some reference to the masculine and feminine principles but that is beyond the scope of this comment.
You are not focusing on political economy, but culture which is a bit of a dead end. Words change meaning over time and within socio-economic contexts. The Italian "fascio" means a bundle which was reused to refer to a group that had strength through unity, one of the core ideological paradigms of Fascism - the collective over the individual.
Generally human groups moved through stages (although they could of course revert, nothing is generally in a straight line):
- Egalitarian Societies (e.g hunter gatherer groups)
- Rank Societies, where high rank-holders have status, make decisions, and use material resources on behalf of the whole group but they not possess coercive power and cannot turn group resources into their own private resources. e.g. a "chief"
- A limited state built around a "chief" who has converted temporary political authority into permanent political power, institutionalized and routinized.
- Stratification, as private property differentials and economic classes become evident and backed by permanent institutionalized power
- Civilization which combines the ceremonial centre, writing and the city (i.e. the beginnings of mass society) with humans collectively contained within fixed social and territorial boundaries.
Liberalism and Fascism are only relevant when the last development, "civilization", develops mass literacy, moves beyond the geographical fixing of the people (e.g. serfdom), and a central state develops uncontested power. Before then power was very much driven by coercion and violence, backed up by the mysticism of the Church. Individual groups may have shown some fascistic tendencies, but this was not a general way of managing society.
In Roman time the power that was represented with the fasces was backed up by coercion and violence (resistance was punished with severe violence), not an all encompassing ideology and extensive propaganda. Most of the society was made up of slaves, serfs and foreigners subjugated by the Romans. There were constant wars of plunder (its how Rome's economy actually worked, constant new plunder was required) and revolts by the masses (the reason for "Bread and Circuses" for the Roman masses).
This discussion has been interesting but I believe we have reached an impasse., so I'm going to drop it. Thank you for responding to my comments at such length.
On my site I will continue to link to your posts on geopolitics, which are quite good.
Sayonara..
Roger
You are welcome, it was an interesting discussion.