Re: Why is fascism petty bourgeois?

#20

9th March 2013, 01:08

Fascism is the fasces, the shared class interest between the petite bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. Logically, the proletariat were targets of false consciousness, unlike the petite bourgeoisie who were actually fulfilling a class interest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hegel [U]

Let's not pretend workers haven't fallen foul to fascism either. Its entire ideology is based on divide and conquer tactics, eventually uniting the so called "good, hard workers of the nation" in hating immigrants. Fascists use an extreme form of right-wing populism, full of contradictions, that attracts all classes to vote for them, but is really just another love-child of the upper bourgeoisie's interests and the militarist ultra-nationalist retards.

Let's just get something out of the way: Proletarians compose some 80-90% of society, when there is talk of "hur dur proletarians also made up fascist parties in large sums" you aren't saying anything of worth. Part of the function of capitalism and the power of the class enemy is keeping the proletariat in a state of false consciousness. There is no "free will", the proletariat as a class didn't "choose" to join the fascists, the mechanisms to articulate their own consciousness as a class did not exist for such a choice to be made. The same goes for all other bourgeois ideology: The majority of any large movement will compose of proletarians but this does not change it's class nature. Part of what defines the proletarian class is it's social relation to other classes, namely, the bourgeousie.

The class nature of something isn't defined by the class background of adherents but the unconscious ideological dynamic of which it transmits, which sustains and exerts an actual class interest. Take any proletarian Joe off the street and force him to start a movement it will likely be liberalist, and therefore it will be bourgeois in nature without direct involvement by members of the bourgeois class.

Hegel [U], the point is that the petty bourgeois classes *were not* fooled into joining the fascists, they were following their own class interest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hegel [U]

Short term, yes, just like workers were given short-term benefits but in the long term they'd be swallowed by corporatist movements.

To say the petty bourgeois classes were aware of the dangers of fascism is pretty stretched. They were and still are as ignorant (and I don't mean that in an offensive way) as the working classes ie not class conscious, not aware of their powerlessness, blinded into believing that fascists will solve their problems. If you look at far right parties like FN in France that are now using immigration as their platform for some kind of fascist super-state, their policies are destructive to small businesses and petty bourgeois, but they still spout out enough false promises to get votes from them.

Corporatist movements? Corporation within the context of fascism is defined as a state corporate which mediates problems between labor and capital, not the corporations of neoliberalism. Nobody knew the dangers of fascism, not even the bourgeoisie itself, because there wasn't a danger in fascism, the real danger was the capitalist mode of production which birthed it. The Petite bourgeoisie gained long term benefits, the main goal being the destruction of proletarian power which threatened them as a class and their property. On the other hand, 'wild west' capitalism threatened them as a class as it entailed the construction of monopoly. The bulk of fascism was the petite bourgeoisie, the arm of fascism. The head was the bourgeoisie. The proletariat (and perhaps some of the rural petite bourgeoisie) were the only classes in a state of false consciousness.