{"id":1160,"date":"2008-05-21T23:38:52","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T13:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2008-05-22T02:31:29","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T16:31:29","slug":"michael-warby-fascism-and-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1160","title":{"rendered":"Michael Warby: Fascism and the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Warby’s essay on ‘Fascism and the Left’<\/a> (Quadrant<\/em>, May 2008, Volume LII, Number 5) addresses a long-standing pre-occupation of political ‘conservatives’: how to respond to the accusation ‘Fascist!’. This has found one of its most recent expressions in the form of a book by Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning<\/a><\/em> (Doubleday, 2008).<\/p>\n

At first glance, Liberal Fascism<\/em> sounds<\/em> like an extended remix of a Tory undergraduate response to the biting remarks of a Leninist cadre: “I know<\/em> you are, but what am I<\/em>?”. In a scathing review for The Nation<\/em> (Conservative Cannibalism<\/a>, February 21, 2008), Eric Alterman writes that “It’s a rare book, indeed, that can be fairly judged by its cover, but I really do think that a smiley face with a Hitler mustache tells you all you will ever need to know about Liberal Fascism<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

Naturally, the book became a No.1 bestseller.<\/p>\n

To his er, credit, Warby’s review tries very hard to take Goldberg’s thesis seriously. “But, a small voice asks, is it true? Is fascism really a \u201cleft-wing\u201d movement? Are modern US liberals \u201cnice\u201d fascists, as Goldberg alleges? No, no and no.”<\/p>\n

And ah, no<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Actually, the proposition that ‘Fascism’ is a ‘leftist’ ideology is hardly novel. Thus while Alterman notes that “I see from my own ten seconds of Googling that cult leader Lyndon LaRouche beat Goldberg to this argument by five years with an essay titled “How Liberalism Created Fascism,” published by his presidential committee”, 70 years ago the council communist Otto R\u00fchle argued that ‘The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism’<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and administrative terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and to change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s also worth keeping in mind Bakunin’s words of warning, written in 1866 (and expanded upon in subsequent writings on the intellectual class), regarding the potential impact of the Marxian conception of revolution. Noam Chomsky, in an interview with Robert Borofsky (Intellectuals and the Responsibilities of Public Life, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Robert Borofsky<\/a>, Public Anthropology<\/em>, May 27, 2001):<\/p>\n

RB<\/strong>: Ivan Illich<\/a> has talked about “disabling professions” – or really disabling professionals – who systematically disempower others through their claims to expertise. To what degree do you perceive elite experts, and more broadly academics, being a “new class” of apparatchiks who function to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo in America?<\/em><\/p>\n

NC<\/strong>: That intellectuals, including academics, would become a “new class” of technocrats, claiming the name of science while cooperating with the powerful, was predicted by Bakunin in the early days of the formation of the modern intelligentsia in the 19th century. His expectations were generally confirmed, including his prediction that some would seek to gain state power on the backs of popular revolution, then constructing a “Red bureaucracy” that would be one of the worst tyrannies in history, while others would recognize that power lies elsewhere and would serve as its apologists, becoming mystifiers, “disablers,” and managers while demanding the right to function in “technocratic isolation,” in World Bank lingo.<\/p>\n

I would, however, question the implication that there is some novelty in this beyond modalities, which naturally change as institutions change and develop. Isaiah Berlin described the intellectuals of Bakunin’s “Red bureaucracy” as a “secular priesthood,” not unlike the religious priesthood that performed similar functions in earlier times – functions described acidly by Pascal in his bitter rendition of the practices of the Jesuit intellectuals he despised, including their demonstration of “the utility of interpretation,” a device of manufacturing consent based on reinterpretation of sacred texts to serve wealth, power, and privilege. Berlin’s observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In any case, Warby’s principal aim, aside from responding to Goldberg’s argument and to more closely examine the relationship between ‘right’ and ‘left’, is to safeguard the virtue of what he calls ‘Anglo-American conservatism’, and to ensure that the “liberal-conservative alliance” remains a sticky relationship. This makes a great deal of sense considering the role of Quadrant<\/em> as a forum for the articulation of this ideology in the Australian context (although the alliance risks being permanently ruptured within the parliamentary wing by the eradication of its minority ‘liberal’ faction).<\/p>\n

Part of the glue of the liberal-conservative alliance is an overlapping belief that there are real limits to what one can expect politics to do and that it is dangerous to go beyond those limits\u2014on the grounds that the state is potentially dangerous; that political mechanisms are of limited effectiveness; that salvation is entirely a religious matter, not a political one. To accuse people whose politics is grounded in a sense of the limitations of politics as being \u201cfascist\u201d is to show either that you do not understand fascism, or that you do not understand liberal-conservatives, or that you do not care whether there is any truth to your rhetoric.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On this basis, one can view the Thatcher (1979–1990) and Reagan (1981–1989) governments as ‘conservative’, not ‘fascist’, even if they embraced ‘change’ in the name of ‘freedom’: “Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were proponents of change, but proponents who wished to decrease, rather than increase, reliance on political mechanisms in support of a strong commitment to freedom. Merely advocating change does not place you on the Left.”<\/p>\n

This is correct, insofar as the changes being proposed and carried out do not concern institutions considered as being fundamental to contemporary capitalist society (‘Western Civilization’). The references to ‘political mechanisms’ and ‘freedom’ can of course be read, in practice<\/a>, as constituting the dismantling of the welfare state and the “political mechanisms” via<\/em> which the general population are theoretically able to hold corporate power, and capital generally, to some form of public account. In short, the death of ‘social democracy’.<\/p>\n

In Warby’s view, Goldberg has in fact written two books, one silly, one sensible: “The sensible and useful book shows how much fascism (including Nazism) had Left roots and how much more overlap modern progressivism (such as contemporary US liberalism) has with fascism than fascism has with Anglo-American conservatism… The silly and distracting book is the one trying to show US liberalism as largely of the same broad political movement as the various fascisms and therefore a form of fascism and the heir of fascism.”<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Left, What\u2019s Right<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE MATTER TURNS on what fascism is and what makes something \u201cof the Left\u201d. Goldberg\u2019s answer is based on fascism as a manifestation of the broad (and Left) movement of politics as a secular religion seeking unity by remaking society. As part of this, Goldberg has ultimately a simple categorisation of politics. Fascism is collectivist (true), the Left is collectivist (true), therefore fascism is of the Left… Goldberg wraps this in a larger argument about politics-as-secular-salvation involving deification of the state being inherently leftist, and a characteristic of fascism, hence fascism is leftist…<\/p>\n

How do we define the Left? Being Left involves a commitment to change\u2014that is, a rejection of the past: the more complete the rejection, the more Left you are. It involves a commitment that this change be delivered politically: the more encompassing the use of political mechanisms (and the political mechanisms one is willing to use) the more Left you are. It also involves a commitment to equality: the more complete the commitment to equality, the more Left you are. So a revolutionary socialist engages in a near total rejection of the past, is willing to use any political mechanism, if judged to be effective, to politicise all aspects of society, and is committed to as complete equality as is practicable…<\/p>\n

So, can we envisage a collectivism that is not Left? Easily. One that is not based on rejection of the past and does not have equality as its prime public value. That would be fascism, then. So is fascism clearly \u201cright-wing\u201d?<\/p>\n

If \u201cRight\u201d is the political opposite of \u201cLeft\u201d then to be Right is to have no particular commitment to change\u2014that is, not reject the past: the less you reject the past, the more Right you are. It involves some level of scepticism, or even hostility to political mechanisms: the more sceptical, the more Right you are. It involves rejecting the primacy of equality: the more you reject the primacy of equality, the more Right you are.<\/p>\n

So an extreme right-winger wants as little change as possible, is highly sceptical about political mechanisms and is committed to something other than the primacy of equality. The last being the problem with talking about \u201cthe Right\u201d since a range of values can be held to be not trumped by equality\u2014such as liberty, authority, order, religion\u2014and in almost any arrangement (such as including serious commitment to equality)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Warby’s essay on ‘Fascism and the Left’ (Quadrant, May 2008, Volume LII, Number 5) addresses a long-standing pre-occupation of political ‘conservatives’: how to respond to the accusation ‘Fascist!’. This has found one of its most recent expressions in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-fascism","category-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-iI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}