The far-right populist Alternative for Germany party rejects a values-based foreign policy, just as much as it rejects NATO and the US. That approach has attracted the attention of Beijing.
It’s closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
This also has to do with the fact that Russia’s ruling bourgeois class’s interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.
That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here
Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren’t metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn’t make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.
Fascism is partly characterized by it’s ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.
I’m obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn’t wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don’t think we’re passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO’s political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank.
The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it’s own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.
We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with.
Would you prefer “liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism”? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.
Except that that is a completely logically confused example.
By this reasoning feudalism is the same thing as capitalism. Nonsense.
What is common between historically existing fascism and liberalism as political regimes, is the capitalist economic structure that they have existed upon. But this does not uniquely determine the form of the society or the political regime, even if it restricts the range of political regimes which are possible or likely. Otherwise we are engaging in economism and economic determinism and fatalism, which are not Marxist. The difference consists in the real differences in how those political regimes govern, how they organize the economic surplus, how they conduct social policy, how they legislate, and what kind of power relations the executive, legislature and judiciary have to each other. Republican Rome and modern America are both dictatorships of certain classes, but they still had a type of internal hierarchy within the socio-economic and political elite that aimed ensured certain balances of power within their class. Put it this way for example: Israel is highly fascicized society. It is deeply socially and culturally conservative and reactionary. It has been taking steps away from the internal domestic remnants of liberal political structures in order to allow the executive to take control over the legislature. This is a further step towards even more full on fascism.
What is common between 1st and 4th stage cancer is the cancer.
What is common between liberal capitalism and historically existing fascism is capitalism (private property, wage labor, commodity production, attendant social relations, etc.), the existence of a state, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism. In the sense fascism continues and intensifies this, but this does not make them the same. It’s honestly insane to me that this point has to be made: different things are not the same, same things are not different. We use the term fascist to distinguish changes
The Third Reich’s governance was different in a variety of ways to the Weimar’s Republic’s.
I’d agree that in, say, neoliberalism, there is a particularly strong pull towards fascism, and that you already see these tendencies emerging strongly in neoliberal societies’ politics and social relations, ideology and foreign policy. But saying that because the tendencies that lead to a future society are present in an earlier type of society, makes them the same, would again reduce capitalism to feudalism.
Otherwise this is just obfuscation and mystification that gets in the way of properly analyzing things politically and makes Marxists look ridiculous.
that’s a lot of text for someone who’s wrong. neoliberal governments worship their leaders, capitalism captures the state apparatus, and minorities are violently suppressed. Fascism.
Are you trying to imply that all those things aren’t 100% true?
Well, Russia isn’t fantastic
It is a modern liberal democracy. Of course it is awful
It’s closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
This also has to do with the fact that Russia’s ruling bourgeois class’s interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.
Ofc it remains a capitalist shithole.
That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here
Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren’t metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn’t make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.
Fascism is partly characterized by it’s ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.
I’m obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn’t wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don’t think we’re passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they’re the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO’s political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank. The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it’s own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.
We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.
Would you prefer “liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism”? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.
Except that that is a completely logically confused example. By this reasoning feudalism is the same thing as capitalism. Nonsense.
What is common between historically existing fascism and liberalism as political regimes, is the capitalist economic structure that they have existed upon. But this does not uniquely determine the form of the society or the political regime, even if it restricts the range of political regimes which are possible or likely. Otherwise we are engaging in economism and economic determinism and fatalism, which are not Marxist. The difference consists in the real differences in how those political regimes govern, how they organize the economic surplus, how they conduct social policy, how they legislate, and what kind of power relations the executive, legislature and judiciary have to each other. Republican Rome and modern America are both dictatorships of certain classes, but they still had a type of internal hierarchy within the socio-economic and political elite that aimed ensured certain balances of power within their class. Put it this way for example: Israel is highly fascicized society. It is deeply socially and culturally conservative and reactionary. It has been taking steps away from the internal domestic remnants of liberal political structures in order to allow the executive to take control over the legislature. This is a further step towards even more full on fascism.
What is common between 1st and 4th stage cancer is the cancer. What is common between liberal capitalism and historically existing fascism is capitalism (private property, wage labor, commodity production, attendant social relations, etc.), the existence of a state, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism. In the sense fascism continues and intensifies this, but this does not make them the same. It’s honestly insane to me that this point has to be made: different things are not the same, same things are not different. We use the term fascist to distinguish changes The Third Reich’s governance was different in a variety of ways to the Weimar’s Republic’s.
I’d agree that in, say, neoliberalism, there is a particularly strong pull towards fascism, and that you already see these tendencies emerging strongly in neoliberal societies’ politics and social relations, ideology and foreign policy. But saying that because the tendencies that lead to a future society are present in an earlier type of society, makes them the same, would again reduce capitalism to feudalism.
Otherwise this is just obfuscation and mystification that gets in the way of properly analyzing things politically and makes Marxists look ridiculous.