The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Faid:
| Quote | Oh, and about syndicalism: Do you even know what it means, Ghost? Do you know in what spirit syndicalist ideas influenced the birth of Fascism? (Do you even know that the very first emergence of fascism was in opposition to Marxism?) Do you think that Hitler would consider himself a 'syndicalist'? What do you think the leaders of the trade unions would say, if they learned that they were being prosecuted by a syndicalist?
Here's a hint, Ghost. Don't parrot words you can't understand, and read a book or two. |
I guess you're right; I've just been parroting words that I don't really understand, so I decided to do a Google search on the word "syndicalism". This Wikipedia entry was the first hit. Here's what the editors had to say:
| Quote | Syndicalism refers to a set of ideas, movements, and tendencies which share the avowed aim of transforming capitalist society through action by the working class on the industrial front. This idea was founded by Georges Sorel. This emphasis on industrial organisation was a distinguishing feature of syndicalism when it began to be identified as a distinct current at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most socialist organisations of that period emphasised the importance of political action through party organisations as a means of bringing about socialism. Although all syndicalists emphasize industrial organisation, not all reject political action altogether. For example, De Leonists and other Industrial Unionists advocate parallel organisation both politically and industrially. For syndicalists, labor unions are the potential means both of overcoming capitalism and of running society in the interests of the majority. Industry and government in a syndicalist society would be run by labor union federations.
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Uh-oh, Hitler closed down the trade unions, therefore he can't be a syndicalist I guess. But wait.......
| Quote | Starting shortly before World War I, especially in latin countries of Europe and the Americas, several former theorists and militants of syndicalism moved to nationalism and authoritarianism giving birth to a nationalist-syndicalist tendency who strongly influenced fascism and corporatism. Georges Sorel and Robert Michels are the most prominent among them.
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What does "strongly influenced fascism" mean, Faid? Since this book larnin' stuff is new ta me, could you define these big words? Thanks.
Anyway, shaken and confused, I decided to pursue this idea further. I typed in "National syndicalism" and clicked on the first link. Hmmmmm...."Wikipedia" must be Greek for "Wingnut", however, because this source seemed to reinforce the completely baseless contentions on the previous site. For example:
| Quote | National Syndicalism is typically associated with the right-wing labor movement in Italy which would later become the basis for Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party.
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Wsssheeew, they used the term "right-wing", so no wingnuts they. Problem is, they talk about a guy named "Mussolini". Who's he, Faid?
Well, let's read a little more:
| Quote | National syndicalists imagined that the liberal democratic political system would be destroyed in a massive general strike, at which point the nation’s economy would be transformed into a corporatist model based on class collaboration (see the Nazi model of Volksgemeinschaft).
Some famous advocates of National Syndicalism are the Italian Alceste De Ambris, British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, and Italian Fascist Party member Sergio Panunzio.
[<spit-take>whaaaat? I, for one, am outraged at these lies!] |
Volksgemeinschaft
| Quote | | Volksgemeinschaft is a Nazi term for "people's community". It was an attempt by the German Nazi Party to establish a national community of unified mind, will and spirit. It could only be achieved by gaining control of all aspects of cultural and social life (Gleichschaltung). Theatre, literature, the press and children's activities were all controlled by the Nazis. The people's community was visioned by Nazis are purely German, classless national community that was dedicated to the state and war. |
Oh &%^$. Did they just use the word "classless"?
Let's try once more:
| Quote | Although the broadest definitions of fascism may include every authoritarian state that has ever existed, most theorists see important distinctions to be made. Fascism in Italy arose in the 1920s as a mixture of syndicalist notions with an anti-materialist theory of the state; the latter had already been linked to an extreme nationalism. Fascism in many ways seems to have been clearly developed as a reaction against Communism and Marxism, both in a philosophic and political sense, although it opposed democratic capitalist economics along with socialism, Marxism, and liberal democracy. It viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution designed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be held in check. It tended to reject the Marxist notion of social classes and universally dismissed the concept of class conflict, replacing it instead with the struggle between races, and the struggle of the youth versus their elders. This meant embracing nationalism and mysticism, and advancing ideals of strength and power as means of legitimacy, glorifying war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness. An affinity to these ideas can be found in Social Darwinism. These ideas are in direct opposition to the ideals of humanism and rationalism characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment, from which liberalism and, later, Marxism would emerge.
Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.
Fascism attracted political support from diverse sectors of the population, including big business, farmers and landowners, nationalists, and reactionaries, disaffected World War I veterans, intellectuals such as Gabriele D'Annunzio, Curzio Malaparte, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger to name a few, conservatives and small businessmen, and the poor to whom they promised work and bread. In some countries, like Romania and Hungary (and to a lesser extent in other states), Fascism had a strong base of support among the working classes and extremely poor peasants. The broad appeal of support for Fascism makes it different from other totalitarian states.
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Let's compare this passage to my first source:
| Quote | Syndicalism is one of the three most common ideologies of egalitarian, pre-managed economic and labor structure, together with socialism and communism. It states, on an ethical basis, that all participants in an organized trade internally share equal ownership of its production and therefore deserve equal earnings and benefits within that trade, regardless of position or duty. By contrast, socialism emphasises distributing output among trades as required by each trade, not necessarily considering how trades organize internally. Both syndicalism and socialism are compatible with privatism, unlike communism. Communism rejects government-sanctioned private ownership and private earnings in favor of making all property legally public, and therefore directly and solely managed by the people themselves.
Syndicalists often form alliances with other workers' movements, including socialism, communism, and anarchism.
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Wow, this "reading" is harder than I thought. No matter how I try, I can't shake my earlier assertions. Let's try once more:
| Quote | Historically, corporatism or corporativism (Italian corporativismo) is a political system in which legislative power is given to civic assemblies that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, and professional groups. Unlike pluralism, in which many groups must compete for control of the state, in corporatism, certain unelected bodies take a critical role in the decision-making process. These corporatist assemblies are not the same as contemporary business corporations or incorporated groups.[You don't say! Paley]
[....]
Political scientists may also use the term corporatism to describe a practice whereby an authoritarian state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy. This usage is particularly common in the area of East Asia studies, and is sometimes also referred to as state corporatism.
In Italian Fascism, this non-elected form of state 'officializing' of every interest into the state was professed to better circumvent the marginalization of singular interests as would happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in the democractic voting process. Which would better instead recognize or 'incorporate' every divergent interest as it stands alone into the state "organically", thus being the inspiration behind their use of the term Totalitarian, perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus;
"…(The state) is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual…" & "…Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State…" but rather clearly connoting "…Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers…"
This prospect in Italian Fascist Corporativism claimed to be the direct heir of Georges Sorel's Anarcho-syndicalism.[Hey! that's Lenny's party! Paley] Wherein each interest was to form as its own entity with separate organizing parameters according to their own standards, only however within the corporative model of Italian Fascism each was supposed to be incorporated through the auspices & organizing ability of a statist construct. This was by their reasoning the only possible way to achieve such a function, i.e. when resolved in the capability of an indissolvable state.
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I give up.
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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