I came here looking for a different post, you know which one. Changed things, a little
We're constantly hearing why things 'round here look like 1930s Germany, but not why
I wrote long ago (you may recall) how it is statistically impossible to keep doing what we're doing. I in fact take solace in how all this is accelerated. How Trump and the Traitors have done in ten years what took Hitler twenty. Yes, the field was plowed and prepped for planting (thank you Dick Cheney), but everything is happening much faster, and it is statistically impossible to keep it up. What they are doing by hurrying is ensuring their inevitable failure
That's the other thing that gets missed. I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed but while we don't know exactly what happened to Hitler Mussolini was lynched with his face in the sewer
I was actually kinda' proud of that dishonorable ...
It's gonna be like bankruptcy, and a lot of people are going to be very suprised and unhappy when it happens because ir wasn't supposed to happen to them.
The chaos is intentional on Trump's part, and inevitable as long as Trump remains at the top. It is an environment he is comfortable in as long as he is driving it, setting subordinates against each other in an Apprentice-like battle in the Marketplace of ideas while he watches the show. Once these people have actual power... be there, will be Wild!
"Corporatism" in terms of "every social activity must happen within the supervision of an organized body under the supervision of the State." Or Party, in the case of the Stalinist and Maoist models. That's what "totalitarianism" is supposed to mean: ruling authority that arrogates to itself the right to monitor and control literally every human activity. No two kids can form a butterfly-collecting club, unless there is also a commissar to keep track of what they're doing. The club has to be corporate, visible to the State. Or Party.
Where is this quote from? Google doesn't find it. I can't see a relation to the thing I'm writing about. There are many nontotalitarian corporatist models of political economy, from Plato to Durkheim, while Stalinism and Maoism are not corporatist at all. One of my favorite American socialist sects was the very explicitly corporatist Socialist Labor party of Daniel DeLeon in the 1890s-1920s. The New Deal was also corporatist. Please look at the Wikipedia article.
You know, I'm reminded that I just recently looked up something about Mussolini's definition of fascism...
found it. "The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State." Which I guess is not the point of contact with what you were saying that I thought it was. But it could be offered as evidence that Mussolini was saying what I claimed, that all groups have a relation with the State, and are inferiors in that relation.
But anyway:
> all the sectors of society, industrial labor, agricultural labor, the military, the churches, the aristocracy, the academy, and the capitalists, which could be organized into "corporate groups" participating in governance, in a peaceful alternative to the class struggle described by Marx as inevitable.
Most of those "sectors" are *already* "organized," except maybe the labor (if you count firms as organizations of capital), so what the State needs for practical purposes is just to bring those existing organizations under its supervision. And the part about their "participating in governance" turns out to be like the Marxist withering-away of the State, that's never ready to happen yet.
"Most of those "sectors" are *already* "organized,""
Correct. That's why they're referred to as corporate groups (from Latin "corpus", body). They can participate in government in one way and another, like the AMA or National Chamber of Commerce or Federalist Society or various trade unions making representations to Congress, and that became a big thing during the Great Depression, but still with us. De Leon (who was kind of a crank) thought Congress with its territorial representation should be totally replaced by an organization that would represent the various economic functions, and Mussolini's design of government was meant to look like that (he borrowed it from French socialists when he was a socialist himself, before the party kicked him out for warmongering in World War I). Of course you're right that he didn't intend for any democracy to take place, but I'm also right to say he listened to the hopes and aspirations of the capitalists and tried to keep them happy, as did Hitler.
In USSR the closest thing to "corporate bodies" were more vertically integrated in huge enterprises directly run by the state, I think, while corporate groups of the traditional type are explicitly horizontal. Soviet trade unions were vertically integrated too, under direct government and party control, like company unions. In China specifically I read that under Mao they imitated the Soviet system, but since changes with the introduction of private enterprises after Mao's death, in the period of Reform and Opening Up, the system has changed to "authoritarian corporatism" https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jbwg-2022-0020/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOor_qalwzzivJTiS9DbQdaakdCorY-ha3cVPmZ6KNn3Uy-T2Mlak
It's not a quote from anything. It's something I just then said. The quote marks are philosopher's quotes to set off the phrase from the sentence it's in.
And yes, Stalinism and Maoism both emphasized the notion that only bodies organized under Party supervision were legitimate venues for social activity. "Corporations" not in any sense related to Western legal concepts, but just "organized bodies supervised by central authority."
I always thought that the very essesnce of totalitarianism was precisely that, the assertion that the central authority must monitor and police all social interactions. And central authority does that by requiring all social activity to happen in the context of properly-constituted organizations.
If I'm riffing off in a direction 90° away from where you're headed, never mind me.
Fascism has private enterprises, which are expected to serve the state, but the government doesn't try to manage them economically (compare Soviet management, with its endless industrial quotas). Managing social interactions is another matter, obviously, but note how much comparative freedom the economic elite had in lifestyle matters in Germany or Italy or Spain.
Nazis encouraged the development of the auto industry, for instance, like neoliberals, through tax breaks--not commands. Then put out Republican-style propaganda to persuade the Volk that the Führer had given them their Wagen. https://hist1049-20.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/25
I came here looking for a different post, you know which one. Changed things, a little
We're constantly hearing why things 'round here look like 1930s Germany, but not why
I wrote long ago (you may recall) how it is statistically impossible to keep doing what we're doing. I in fact take solace in how all this is accelerated. How Trump and the Traitors have done in ten years what took Hitler twenty. Yes, the field was plowed and prepped for planting (thank you Dick Cheney), but everything is happening much faster, and it is statistically impossible to keep it up. What they are doing by hurrying is ensuring their inevitable failure
That's the other thing that gets missed. I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed but while we don't know exactly what happened to Hitler Mussolini was lynched with his face in the sewer
I was actually kinda' proud of that dishonorable ...
It's gonna be like bankruptcy, and a lot of people are going to be very suprised and unhappy when it happens because ir wasn't supposed to happen to them.
Happy New Year!
That ain't no lady...
This is not my beautiful wife.
My GOD! What have I DONE??!!
The chaos is intentional on Trump's part, and inevitable as long as Trump remains at the top. It is an environment he is comfortable in as long as he is driving it, setting subordinates against each other in an Apprentice-like battle in the Marketplace of ideas while he watches the show. Once these people have actual power... be there, will be Wild!
"Corporatism" in terms of "every social activity must happen within the supervision of an organized body under the supervision of the State." Or Party, in the case of the Stalinist and Maoist models. That's what "totalitarianism" is supposed to mean: ruling authority that arrogates to itself the right to monitor and control literally every human activity. No two kids can form a butterfly-collecting club, unless there is also a commissar to keep track of what they're doing. The club has to be corporate, visible to the State. Or Party.
Where is this quote from? Google doesn't find it. I can't see a relation to the thing I'm writing about. There are many nontotalitarian corporatist models of political economy, from Plato to Durkheim, while Stalinism and Maoism are not corporatist at all. One of my favorite American socialist sects was the very explicitly corporatist Socialist Labor party of Daniel DeLeon in the 1890s-1920s. The New Deal was also corporatist. Please look at the Wikipedia article.
You know, I'm reminded that I just recently looked up something about Mussolini's definition of fascism...
found it. "The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State." Which I guess is not the point of contact with what you were saying that I thought it was. But it could be offered as evidence that Mussolini was saying what I claimed, that all groups have a relation with the State, and are inferiors in that relation.
But anyway:
> all the sectors of society, industrial labor, agricultural labor, the military, the churches, the aristocracy, the academy, and the capitalists, which could be organized into "corporate groups" participating in governance, in a peaceful alternative to the class struggle described by Marx as inevitable.
Most of those "sectors" are *already* "organized," except maybe the labor (if you count firms as organizations of capital), so what the State needs for practical purposes is just to bring those existing organizations under its supervision. And the part about their "participating in governance" turns out to be like the Marxist withering-away of the State, that's never ready to happen yet.
"Most of those "sectors" are *already* "organized,""
Correct. That's why they're referred to as corporate groups (from Latin "corpus", body). They can participate in government in one way and another, like the AMA or National Chamber of Commerce or Federalist Society or various trade unions making representations to Congress, and that became a big thing during the Great Depression, but still with us. De Leon (who was kind of a crank) thought Congress with its territorial representation should be totally replaced by an organization that would represent the various economic functions, and Mussolini's design of government was meant to look like that (he borrowed it from French socialists when he was a socialist himself, before the party kicked him out for warmongering in World War I). Of course you're right that he didn't intend for any democracy to take place, but I'm also right to say he listened to the hopes and aspirations of the capitalists and tried to keep them happy, as did Hitler.
In USSR the closest thing to "corporate bodies" were more vertically integrated in huge enterprises directly run by the state, I think, while corporate groups of the traditional type are explicitly horizontal. Soviet trade unions were vertically integrated too, under direct government and party control, like company unions. In China specifically I read that under Mao they imitated the Soviet system, but since changes with the introduction of private enterprises after Mao's death, in the period of Reform and Opening Up, the system has changed to "authoritarian corporatism" https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jbwg-2022-0020/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOor_qalwzzivJTiS9DbQdaakdCorY-ha3cVPmZ6KNn3Uy-T2Mlak
It's not a quote from anything. It's something I just then said. The quote marks are philosopher's quotes to set off the phrase from the sentence it's in.
And yes, Stalinism and Maoism both emphasized the notion that only bodies organized under Party supervision were legitimate venues for social activity. "Corporations" not in any sense related to Western legal concepts, but just "organized bodies supervised by central authority."
I always thought that the very essesnce of totalitarianism was precisely that, the assertion that the central authority must monitor and police all social interactions. And central authority does that by requiring all social activity to happen in the context of properly-constituted organizations.
If I'm riffing off in a direction 90° away from where you're headed, never mind me.
Fascism has private enterprises, which are expected to serve the state, but the government doesn't try to manage them economically (compare Soviet management, with its endless industrial quotas). Managing social interactions is another matter, obviously, but note how much comparative freedom the economic elite had in lifestyle matters in Germany or Italy or Spain.
Nazis encouraged the development of the auto industry, for instance, like neoliberals, through tax breaks--not commands. Then put out Republican-style propaganda to persuade the Volk that the Führer had given them their Wagen. https://hist1049-20.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/25