Another book for tbr.
Not heard of the other one, honestly. How well does it cover fascism and in what ways? Part of why I like Blackshirts and Reds, in spite of its drawbacks, is that I’d say it’s sort of an easing in to “AES states did some good actually” for people who were raised thinking they were terrible and evil, while also covering the anti-communist argument of “commies were opportunists” in its way, by talking about actual rightist opportunists (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy) who took advantage of working class energy as a contrast to actually existing socialism. So it’s got some good entry-level material in there for deprogramming from anti-communism.
But there is probably better if someone is not working from anti-communist upbringing. I could do with knowing more about what all material is best for what audience.
I think if I were to describe Black Shirts and Reds in a phrase, it would a reversal of the common liberal falsehood “Capitlism may have problems, but it’s better than everything else/Communism”, so:
“Communism may have it’s problems, but it’s better than Capitlism.”
Which, is a refreshing step up from the inverse statement.
Solid way to sum it up, I like it.
I’ve heard the critique that Dutt’s thesis (fascism is the “death rattle” of “capitalism in decay”) is mistaken and dated. This was from a very interesting essay on redsails that noted primitive accumulation is basis for capital, not capitalism, therefore making it an ongoing process.1 With this understanding:
Overall I find this conclusion more much sound than ideas like fascism being just a particular petty bourgeois movement emerging from the conditions of interwar Europe. The history of the west is deeply fascist.
- Indigenous land displacement, debt traps, and data harvesting, for instance
P.S. I haven’t gone deeply into the book and apologize if there’s some misunderstandings on my part.
Fascism is a type of imperialist government. Pre-imperialist capitalism, liberal/social democracies had some of the characteristics of fascism but not enough to warrant the term.
The thesis of the Redsails essay (Really Existing Fascism) is that capitalist/imperialist core relations vis a vis the periphery and often vis a vis the marginalised groups within the core and semi-periphery itself are fascist in nature (the capital accumulation stage, which having “used up” one group to accumulate capital from must move on to the next).
What we colloquially call fascism is simply this capital accumulation phase being reapplied to the previously privileged working people of the core.
Fascism is as co-constitutive of capitalism as liberalism is. Liberalism corresponds to the operational aspect of surplus value exploitation in the core, whereas fascism corresponds to the operational aspect of primitive accumulation at its temporal and spatial boundaries.
The core of the issue being, as Aime Cesare also pointed out, that it’s only considered fascism when Europeans start suffering under it.
