Exit polls have Meloni’s coalition to have 45% of the vote. The imperial core is falling to fascism left, right and centre. Well, right and centre anyway. If we want a revolution we must hurry - I fear it may soon be too late to hold our ground against the fascists.
The average Italian government lasts less than 2 years
I hope so. The average Italian government, however is not fascist and respects democracy. The present one is fascist and if we are to learn from history, it is clear that fascists do not care about popular consent nor popular support. The most likely outcome if you are right is that there will be a fascist couple in two years time. If there is a rise in instability as has been the case with other governments, Italian democracy - what little of it existed - will likely die in two years time. The fascist government will likely be here to stay.
‘respects democracy’ hey everyone! This guy believes in liberal democracy! Hahaaaaa
Nonsense. The democracy is a democracy - albeit one that listens only to the bourgeoisie. A thing is not in its entirety wholly bad nor wholly good. Such an outlook is a idealistic one. Bourgeois democracy is good in comparison to fascist authoritarianism. We support it against such an alternative. It is unacceptable next to a proletarian dictatorship. In such a contradiction we will always support the latter option. The present issue however is not between a proletarian dictatorship and a bourgeois democracy. It is between a bourgeois democracy and a fascist dictatorship. In such a contradiction as we have here I support the imperfect democracy.
I do disagree with this. The worst atrocities of imperialism and colonialism have occurred mostly under parliamentary bourgeois governments: the UK, US, france, netherlands, australia, etc. They have the german and italian fascists beat both in brutality and body count.
Fascism was a specific political form of capitalist-imperialism occurring from the 1920s-40s, and those countries collapsed into the far more stable form of the other euro countries, bourgeois democracy, after ww2.
Fascism is really only allowed to be demonized in popular discourse because it practiced colonialism against other europeans. They did nothing britain hadn’t done in the global south for hundreds of years.
Exactly, fascism brought the chickens home to roost, not to mention it tried to imitate, and thus rival the imperialist powers and that’s why it’s vilified.
Western liberals denounce fascism like how the British and Americans in the Colonial Era condemned Spanish colonialism, as if they themselves weren’t or aren’t just as brutal and power-hungry as those they criticize.
Yup, hitler was very explicit that he wanted to imitate in europe what the US did to its native population… nazis called it lebensraum, while the US called it manifest destiny.
The difference? The US succeeded at its genocide / continent theft, while the nazis failed. So really fascism as a form of government is much worse at doing what bourgeois democracies were capable of acheiving.
Not so. Fascism is bourgeois democracy’s response to the worker’s gaining power. It is a defence mechanism. What that means, however, is that it is tailored to suppressing the workers and the progressive cause. While capitalist-imperialism also does this, it is a secondary feature. Its primary role is to extract value. Fascism is made to kill progress. This is why it is so much more damaging - not measured in body count, brutality… but in its harmfulness to our cause.
Extracting value BY crushing worker movements is pretty par-for-the-course for bourgeois democracy also: just look at what the US did to latin america, or its own workers movements. They are one in the same, and bourgeois democracies have really proven themselves to be much better at it.
It can easily be argued that there has been no safer shell for capitalist rule / domination, than bourgeois democracy. Fascism was a different form that tried, and failed to do what bourgeois democracy does much better.
Would it be fair to say that fascism is a feature of liberal democracy? Or at least that liberal democracy isn’t exclusive of fascism?
I dunno, I honestly hate the term because its so heterodox: ask 10 communists to define fascism and you’ll get 10 different answers, and 99% of the time none of them are anything that some liberal democracies aren’t doing or haven’t done.
IMO as communists we should focus on the horrors of colonialism, and make sure people see US and british colonialism as even more evil than 20s-40s axis powers. “fascism”'s use as a term is borderline western-supremacist at this point, it lets europe and the US off the hook, and puts all the hate on these dead, temporary, and unstable political forms that are only allowed to be publicly demonized because they attacked white people, a big no-no in public discourse.
Not really the former. In a true sense fascism was a thing in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. People, including on the left like to toss about the word “fascist” as a descriptor for extreme reactionary politics because it’s easily and instantly understand and has a demonizing characteristic and it’s not untrue (and indeed your average reactionary person often admires part or whole the fascist experiment and often consciously or unconsciously tries to replicate it and there are even elements of the bourgeoisie who likely lust after openly reviving it) but it’s not entirely academically accurate either.
What we have now is not fascism but fascism was unstable (look how long it lasted and the internal problems it had) compared to something like neo-liberalism and the current global NATO led order of barbarity, exploitation, and violence; in a real sense the US carried on the Nazis work but in a smarter way.
We may never see the exact creature fascism again rise to power. Which isn’t to say we won’t potentially see extreme, violent reactionary-ism rise to power and tear off the kind mask of liberal bourgeois ‘democracy’, just that it will likely be different even if it has similarities.
Fascism was capitalism in crisis and distress in the 20th century Europe. IF capitalism enters another state of extreme distress and pressure by proletarian movements it is possible elements of the bourgeoisie may dust off fascism or something like it in a desperate, ultimately self-defeating move to defend themselves.
However you’ll notice despite being the inheritor of the European empires, the grand defender of capitalism, the chosen knight of capital against communism, and overall a very reactionary, racist, sexist, anti-worker, imperialist murder machine, the US has in the decades since WW2 not once dusted off fascism and toyed with going that way and abandoning their well-worn puppet show of liberal democracy.
Because to some degree it works better. It’s stable. It allows genocide, brutalizing, imperialism, and neo-colonialism of the global south with buy-in from the national-level workers whose lifestyle is maintained off this system.
So the thing to say is liberalism is reactionary. Fascism was extreme reaction. Liberalism though it likes to pretend to be the nice form of bourgeois domination is not at all averse to embracing extreme reaction. Look no further than liberals and their support for open nazis in Ukraine, downplaying their crimes, accusing the Russians with projection of the very same, frothing at the mouth in a racist rage against Russians that would make Hitler proud.
Certainly in my opinion it is very much the former. It is a defense mechanism to destroy progressive movements when they threaten bourgeois rule. It is bourgeois dictatorship in its most dangerous and poisonous form.
Not at all. Fascism has a specific goal as an extension of bourgeois democracy. It is self destructing but with it used as an immediate last resort “cure” to kill off worker’s movements when they grow too powerful. Bourgeois democracy does so over time coincidentally in its drive to extract resources. Fascism does so targetedly, more quickly. It is designed as soon as it has done so to destroy itself again to make room for the reinstatement of bourgeois democracy. But it remains still a method by which to destroy the left in the most effective manner possible, more so than bourgeois democracy which does not destroy the left but merely suppresses it. Between suppression and destriction especially in this early nascent period for the western left I would choose suppression. Even Stalin deigned to fight with bourgeois democracy against fascism. To do anything else is pure ideology with little regard for possible material outcomes.
Smedley butler:
“We support the imperfect democracy” what trot group are you with that you’re speaking for with “we”?
I do not support the imperfect democracy because they are not democracy, they are the political entertainment sold to the workers as choice under a dictatorship of the rich. “We” don’t have support what you support. Use “I” when you mean “I”.
That does not stand. You have completely ignored my previous point. Muad’dibbers is the only point that bears any wait and that is because he actually engages in the comparative at hand, that is between fascism and bourgeois dictatorship. If you object to the we, then I will tell this account expresses my own opinions, and sometimes - as in the case above - the opinions of myself and a group of friends in accordance with democratic centralism. If it should help you, I have changed it back to “I”.
deleted by creator
They have never had a majority government to my knowledge. They have all been unstable coalitions and fell to infighting or were immobilised during times of crisis and so had to resign. Italy is case in point for the necessity of democratic centralism.