Below are reposts from an older exchange between Stan Goff and Don Hamerquist. The original discussion was posted on a version of the Bring The Ruckus!(BtR) website that is no longer in use. For reasons of extending the discussion, or at least some concepts within, we are now putting the exchange up on 3WF. We have attempted to date the posts as they became public. These discussions predate the launch of this blog by just a few months and helped shape the basis for what we were aiming for in terms of movement debate and anlysis.
Below is the introduction from BtR, Goff's original article with subsequent exchange. We then include some related comments.
A New Fascism? A Dead Imperialism? An Exchange between Stan Goff and Don Hammerquist
...debate between veteran revolutionaries Stan Goff and Don Hammerquist on fascism and global capitalism is now available on the Bring the Ruckus web site. In it, Hammerquist more fully develops his definition of fascism and his argument for why Al Qaeda and other movements should be understood as posing a revolutionary fascist challenge to global capital. He also argues that the present capitalist system should not be considered "imperialist."
"The fact is that [American] neoconservative policies may well jeopardize economic and political stability in the metropolis. They are willing to risk, not only popular living and working conditions in the imperial center, but also the relative power and influence of the specifically U.S. sections of capitalism. This is why it is so problematic to identify neocon strategy with a resurgence of U.S. imperialism. They would risk the very basis of American global power to protect and advance what they call freedom.?
"Contemporary neo-fascism involves two elements. First there is a rapidly expanding social base. This base is composed of the declassed and marginalized, a huge population that has been permanently defined as non-productive and redundant by capitalist development... The second element is the assortment of reactionary groups, with no necessary connection to each other, that more or less consciously try to organize this social base against the established structure of power, a structure which they see as corrupt, decadent and fundamentally wrong."
Nov 10, 2004
There's No There There: Debating a Neocon
Dec 15, 2004
Responding to Stan Goff's, Debating a NeoCon
Jan 13, 2005
Continued discourse on article, Debating a NeoCon. Goff responds to Hamerquist
Feb 15, 2005
Hamerquist on dilemmas for Capital and further outlines of the content of the resistance movements.
March 1, 2005
Matthew Lyons comments on Hamerquist Goff exchange
March 31, 2005
Hamerquist Responds to Matthew Lyons
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Hamerquist Responds to Matthew Lyons
Hamerquist Responds to Matthew Lyons (3/31/05)
Matthew,
Sorry for the delay. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Let me start with the easiest point: I like the Juan Cole blog for Middle East information. I’m also taken with Thomas Barnett’s blog. If you can tolerate massive displays of ego, check it out. It illustrates what the leading edge of the ruling class should be thinking. How’s that for alternative ego. You can see the trouble with my analytic framework…shopping around for a favorite capitalist ideologue.
I’m going to go through your points in more or less the order they were raised but first I want to say that I appreciate your demand for evidence, however inconvenient, and recognize that my stuff is notable for its absence. However, I would point out that evidence is a slippery thing in political discussions. It is usually the case that a position is developed and then the proponents start looking for supporting evidence. That’s certainly how I do it…maybe it’s what Marx (and Hegel) meant by rising from the abstract to appropriate the concrete…maybe not. I also appreciate your reluctance to accept sloppy and inconsistent definitions and formulations and have no similarly pat way to minimize this criticism’s applicability to what I wrote.
As opposed to Goff, who says he believes the war in Iraq was “probably inevitable”, I initially saw it as an accident, a tactical mistake that would be reversed as the costs mounted. I admit it, I was sure Bush would lose well before he did the aircraft carrier victory routine. (It’s still hard to comprehend how the Dems. managed to blow it.)
I don’t know if I sent you what I was writing at the time, but the main point was that the likely reversal of this ruling class tactical error should not be interpreted as a big popular victory since it was likely to disguise a strategic shift in global capitalism, a shift embodied in the “war on terror”, that we were not at all prepared to counter.
The fact that the Iraq War continues and Bush carries on in a second term can only be testimony to the fact that the involvement in Iraq has more than tactical significance for capital and that a significant sector of the ruling class, here and abroad, recognize this. There is certainly no popular sentiment for it, here or elsewhere in the world. Nor is there any shortage of potential grounds for the development of a tame reformist opposition of an overwhelming magnitude… but it doesn’t happen and I know this cannot be accidental.
This gets to the neocons who argued for targeting Iraq before 9/11 and during the PNAC period well before the Bush election. Why did they argue this way and what, if not ‘oil’, made them persuasive, despite facts on the ground that didn’t support their position? Facts that made it clear, even to many in this country, that the “Iraq threat” was bogus.
First, I think it’s important to see that the Iraq focus evolved. While it was an element in the PNAC, it was contained within a larger perspective…the prevention of the emergence of any potential rival to U.S. power. There is no way that the Iraq War can be seen as a means to that end. In fact, there is a substantial body of evidence that this strategic goal is no longer the paramount concern of the neocons. I know that there is contrary evidence as well, but my argument is that this is one of the things that are “no longer the same after 9/11”.
On a narrower level, there was a substantial neocon sentiment to “reorganize the Middle East” beginning with Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, … see the Dore Gold book, and I think that Perle was also involved here. It’s clear that S.A. was a better fit for the Straussian ‘Wilsonian’ ideological arguments. After Khobar Towers and certainly after 9/11, it was also a much more plausible anti-terrorist anti salafist target. Also, any considerations that focused on oil would prioritize Saudi Arabia over Iraq. Not only does it have by far the most, but Saudi Arabia, in contrast to Iraq, had a domestic opposition that could conceivably break with the international oil cartel, if the regime collapsed. So Iraq was not the only target at the end of this particular vision tunnel.
Second, some major proponents of the invasion and the occupation were converts who had been initially opposed to it. The most notable is Cheney who was on record with a categorical and quite clear sighted opposition to the exact Iraq policy with which he is currently identified. (I think that I sent you a citation in this regard.) I would place him as someone that shifted emphasis from the single superpower framework towards a focus on non state threats. You might also say that Kerry went through a similar transformation, but it is likely that a poorly thought out opportunism was more of an operative factor in that case.
I’m searching for the specific reference, but I think it was Admiral Inman, the NSA guy, who advised the first Bush in 1988 that the country would not tolerate military actions that involved substantial costs. Thus following the Lebanon incident, a series of antisceptic wars - military engagements; that were more or less casualty free for ‘our side’: Grenada, Libya, Panama, Persian Gulf, Iraq I, Somalia (oops, bit of a glitch here), Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. Not to mention the various cruise missiles here and there. A lot of neocon ideologues objected to this approach. They believed that what was needed was a ‘real’ war that would toughen up the populace for the impending challenges of the post coldwar period. A war where this country would shed some blood… No more paper tiger, no more Vietnam syndrome. “Globalization needs a Policeman (Barnett)”, and the “policeman” needs a gun that can and will be used.
There was also an obvious internal military impetus to check out new doctrines, techniques and equipment, but the political, as always, is the most important. The political necessity, according to the neocons was the development of the organized will to intervene forcefully and globally with no squeamishness about costs; political, economic, or human. The well-known pragmatic Wolfowitz explanation for the emphasis on WMD in the build up to the Iraq war – it was the easiest selling point - demonstrates this mindset: To extend the parallel, active military intervention to reconstruct the Middle East was needed and Iraq was the easiest sell of the potential places where it could be initiated.
Finally on this point: Beyond fabricated and puffed up enemies that might be used to secure various advantages, there is the growing perception of a real danger from “fascism” in the salafi jihadist form, dictating that the military focus should be on the Arab Middle East, the area where the danger is most developed. You’re clearly right that Iraq was far from being the center of this danger in the Middle East, but the jihadists are a transnational movement with significant mobility. Mobility across national borders is central to the takfiri conception of the struggle. It may be a stretch, but isn’t it possible that some ruling class types might have had the resources to be able to predict…and to welcome…the lightning rod effect of this particular war?
When all of this is combined, I can’t agree with you that many other countries “would have made better targets.” In the short run at least, this was not true. In sum, I can see a range of factors that combined to result in this war, not as a necessity, but not as an arbitrary and wrongheaded mistake either.
I don’t think that the neocon perspective in Iraq is tightly tied to traditional conceptions of national success or failure. This situation is more than likely to lead to a relatively rapid disentanglement, notwithstanding all of the “we can’t afford to lose” rhetoric. A chaotic “failed state” situation in Iraq, and/or its Balkanization, wouldn’t be the neocon’s favored outcome, but neither would it be an intolerable outcome. It would be well within spin capacity, and could become a case study for the intractability and the seriousness of the problems in the ‘gap’. To say it another way, Iraq is not Vietnam. A defeat of capital here does not translate into a popular victory for anti-capital in the same ways as it did then. It will not unleash a similar wave of popular democratic struggle. “One, two, three, many Iraq’s will not have the same resonance when it can be embraced more fully by the fascist right than the radical left. This, I think, is understood by the neocons, but not by the left.
On the reading of the neocon’s strategy…I don’t quite understand where you see the contradiction on the main danger issue. I think the ruling class consensus is that the salafist danger is real and is different from the normal types of challenges and oppositions that it faces. The immediate differences within this consensus concern the proper response to the danger. There are other differences growing from alternative estimates of what it involves. You ask, “How exactly would neocons characterize the main danger…?” In the first place, the characterization wouldn’t be ‘exact’, but that is evasive. I think that the characterization increasingly will be that it is a fascist danger. Of course, this is a prediction, not evidence. We’ll see.
I know that you are also questioning my conception of fascism, so I hope you will let me slide close to tautology on this point for a while. Despite wide variations within the group, neocons are more likely than other ruling class factions to define the danger as something more than and different from religious fundamentalism, including Islamic fundamentalism. They are less likely to regard the danger as pre-modern; more likely to view the cultural challenge as directed at the capitalist “rule set” in general and not just particular features of it.
This leads to the issue of ‘unilateralism’. Part of my argument is that the neocon project is an attempt to develop functional political structures that better correspond to the needs of global capital. I think that this involves a frontal opposition to the international state structures and multi-state undertakings that developed in an earlier era. It involves paradoxes, Wolfowitz in the WTO and Bolton at the U.N. It involves private militaries rather than international peacekeepers. It involves an evasion of the strictures of domestic parliamentary democracy at home in the supposed interests of establishing them elsewhere in the world. So the apparent unilateralism is not so much a manifestation of nationalism, but is a reassertion of the ultimate dominance of the global economic over the political through a process in which economic determinism initially appears as that which is transcended. How’s that for a thought that begs to be rewritten.
My position on the social base for fascism comes from Marx’s arguments about the “crisis in the law of value” in the Grundrisse passages that I referenced in the earlier piece and from notions of the ‘common ruin of the contending classes” and “socialism or barbarism”, that show up in various places in the literature. A number of people have told me that this section of the fascism piece pushes them towards the persistent vegetative state, and suggested it for Goff’s “Dead Sea of meanings”. Nevertheless, I think that rather than a changed estimate of fascism, I’m guilty of a lousy writing style. I’ve been attempting to present the concept of a social base for fascism that is a consequence of late capitalism all along, just not doing it very well.
Your last points on the conception of neo-fascism, ‘explicit’ or not, get to where my position is particularly shaky. First, let me back away from the absurd: the conception of an ‘explicitly neo-fascist group that consciously and explicitly rejects fascism, does violence to language and meaning. I see that I said something close to that…please ignore it.
You are certainly right that my laundry list of characteristics is both too broad and too shallow to define neo-fascism as a definite political phenomenon. Even considering these characteristics as part of a totalitarian self sufficiency doesn’t make the divisions with other types of reaction clear cut and evident. Some sects do this as well.
However, although nationalism is bound to be a common form for the rejection of universalism, I don’t see “some kind of nationalism” as the missing essential ingredient in the conception of fascism, as you suggest. What I think is crucial to separate facist from reactionary is the element of radical rejection of the universalist pretensions of modern capitalism by a social strata that has an awareness that it is a product of modern capitalism. What’s difficult is that this feature of fascist differentiation from reaction blurs the line between neofascism and what passes for revolutionary anti capitalism (imperialism).
This gets to the point of whether we are actually dealing with a phenomenon that should be identified as fascism, given all the baggage that that entails, when what is really distinctive is how this phenomenon is impelled by the failures of our struggles as much or more than by the failures of capitalism, how much it is the repository for the warts on the revolutionary movement.
Matthew,
Sorry for the delay. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Let me start with the easiest point: I like the Juan Cole blog for Middle East information. I’m also taken with Thomas Barnett’s blog. If you can tolerate massive displays of ego, check it out. It illustrates what the leading edge of the ruling class should be thinking. How’s that for alternative ego. You can see the trouble with my analytic framework…shopping around for a favorite capitalist ideologue.
I’m going to go through your points in more or less the order they were raised but first I want to say that I appreciate your demand for evidence, however inconvenient, and recognize that my stuff is notable for its absence. However, I would point out that evidence is a slippery thing in political discussions. It is usually the case that a position is developed and then the proponents start looking for supporting evidence. That’s certainly how I do it…maybe it’s what Marx (and Hegel) meant by rising from the abstract to appropriate the concrete…maybe not. I also appreciate your reluctance to accept sloppy and inconsistent definitions and formulations and have no similarly pat way to minimize this criticism’s applicability to what I wrote.
As opposed to Goff, who says he believes the war in Iraq was “probably inevitable”, I initially saw it as an accident, a tactical mistake that would be reversed as the costs mounted. I admit it, I was sure Bush would lose well before he did the aircraft carrier victory routine. (It’s still hard to comprehend how the Dems. managed to blow it.)
I don’t know if I sent you what I was writing at the time, but the main point was that the likely reversal of this ruling class tactical error should not be interpreted as a big popular victory since it was likely to disguise a strategic shift in global capitalism, a shift embodied in the “war on terror”, that we were not at all prepared to counter.
The fact that the Iraq War continues and Bush carries on in a second term can only be testimony to the fact that the involvement in Iraq has more than tactical significance for capital and that a significant sector of the ruling class, here and abroad, recognize this. There is certainly no popular sentiment for it, here or elsewhere in the world. Nor is there any shortage of potential grounds for the development of a tame reformist opposition of an overwhelming magnitude… but it doesn’t happen and I know this cannot be accidental.
This gets to the neocons who argued for targeting Iraq before 9/11 and during the PNAC period well before the Bush election. Why did they argue this way and what, if not ‘oil’, made them persuasive, despite facts on the ground that didn’t support their position? Facts that made it clear, even to many in this country, that the “Iraq threat” was bogus.
First, I think it’s important to see that the Iraq focus evolved. While it was an element in the PNAC, it was contained within a larger perspective…the prevention of the emergence of any potential rival to U.S. power. There is no way that the Iraq War can be seen as a means to that end. In fact, there is a substantial body of evidence that this strategic goal is no longer the paramount concern of the neocons. I know that there is contrary evidence as well, but my argument is that this is one of the things that are “no longer the same after 9/11”.
On a narrower level, there was a substantial neocon sentiment to “reorganize the Middle East” beginning with Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, … see the Dore Gold book, and I think that Perle was also involved here. It’s clear that S.A. was a better fit for the Straussian ‘Wilsonian’ ideological arguments. After Khobar Towers and certainly after 9/11, it was also a much more plausible anti-terrorist anti salafist target. Also, any considerations that focused on oil would prioritize Saudi Arabia over Iraq. Not only does it have by far the most, but Saudi Arabia, in contrast to Iraq, had a domestic opposition that could conceivably break with the international oil cartel, if the regime collapsed. So Iraq was not the only target at the end of this particular vision tunnel.
Second, some major proponents of the invasion and the occupation were converts who had been initially opposed to it. The most notable is Cheney who was on record with a categorical and quite clear sighted opposition to the exact Iraq policy with which he is currently identified. (I think that I sent you a citation in this regard.) I would place him as someone that shifted emphasis from the single superpower framework towards a focus on non state threats. You might also say that Kerry went through a similar transformation, but it is likely that a poorly thought out opportunism was more of an operative factor in that case.
I’m searching for the specific reference, but I think it was Admiral Inman, the NSA guy, who advised the first Bush in 1988 that the country would not tolerate military actions that involved substantial costs. Thus following the Lebanon incident, a series of antisceptic wars - military engagements; that were more or less casualty free for ‘our side’: Grenada, Libya, Panama, Persian Gulf, Iraq I, Somalia (oops, bit of a glitch here), Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. Not to mention the various cruise missiles here and there. A lot of neocon ideologues objected to this approach. They believed that what was needed was a ‘real’ war that would toughen up the populace for the impending challenges of the post coldwar period. A war where this country would shed some blood… No more paper tiger, no more Vietnam syndrome. “Globalization needs a Policeman (Barnett)”, and the “policeman” needs a gun that can and will be used.
There was also an obvious internal military impetus to check out new doctrines, techniques and equipment, but the political, as always, is the most important. The political necessity, according to the neocons was the development of the organized will to intervene forcefully and globally with no squeamishness about costs; political, economic, or human. The well-known pragmatic Wolfowitz explanation for the emphasis on WMD in the build up to the Iraq war – it was the easiest selling point - demonstrates this mindset: To extend the parallel, active military intervention to reconstruct the Middle East was needed and Iraq was the easiest sell of the potential places where it could be initiated.
Finally on this point: Beyond fabricated and puffed up enemies that might be used to secure various advantages, there is the growing perception of a real danger from “fascism” in the salafi jihadist form, dictating that the military focus should be on the Arab Middle East, the area where the danger is most developed. You’re clearly right that Iraq was far from being the center of this danger in the Middle East, but the jihadists are a transnational movement with significant mobility. Mobility across national borders is central to the takfiri conception of the struggle. It may be a stretch, but isn’t it possible that some ruling class types might have had the resources to be able to predict…and to welcome…the lightning rod effect of this particular war?
When all of this is combined, I can’t agree with you that many other countries “would have made better targets.” In the short run at least, this was not true. In sum, I can see a range of factors that combined to result in this war, not as a necessity, but not as an arbitrary and wrongheaded mistake either.
I don’t think that the neocon perspective in Iraq is tightly tied to traditional conceptions of national success or failure. This situation is more than likely to lead to a relatively rapid disentanglement, notwithstanding all of the “we can’t afford to lose” rhetoric. A chaotic “failed state” situation in Iraq, and/or its Balkanization, wouldn’t be the neocon’s favored outcome, but neither would it be an intolerable outcome. It would be well within spin capacity, and could become a case study for the intractability and the seriousness of the problems in the ‘gap’. To say it another way, Iraq is not Vietnam. A defeat of capital here does not translate into a popular victory for anti-capital in the same ways as it did then. It will not unleash a similar wave of popular democratic struggle. “One, two, three, many Iraq’s will not have the same resonance when it can be embraced more fully by the fascist right than the radical left. This, I think, is understood by the neocons, but not by the left.
On the reading of the neocon’s strategy…I don’t quite understand where you see the contradiction on the main danger issue. I think the ruling class consensus is that the salafist danger is real and is different from the normal types of challenges and oppositions that it faces. The immediate differences within this consensus concern the proper response to the danger. There are other differences growing from alternative estimates of what it involves. You ask, “How exactly would neocons characterize the main danger…?” In the first place, the characterization wouldn’t be ‘exact’, but that is evasive. I think that the characterization increasingly will be that it is a fascist danger. Of course, this is a prediction, not evidence. We’ll see.
I know that you are also questioning my conception of fascism, so I hope you will let me slide close to tautology on this point for a while. Despite wide variations within the group, neocons are more likely than other ruling class factions to define the danger as something more than and different from religious fundamentalism, including Islamic fundamentalism. They are less likely to regard the danger as pre-modern; more likely to view the cultural challenge as directed at the capitalist “rule set” in general and not just particular features of it.
This leads to the issue of ‘unilateralism’. Part of my argument is that the neocon project is an attempt to develop functional political structures that better correspond to the needs of global capital. I think that this involves a frontal opposition to the international state structures and multi-state undertakings that developed in an earlier era. It involves paradoxes, Wolfowitz in the WTO and Bolton at the U.N. It involves private militaries rather than international peacekeepers. It involves an evasion of the strictures of domestic parliamentary democracy at home in the supposed interests of establishing them elsewhere in the world. So the apparent unilateralism is not so much a manifestation of nationalism, but is a reassertion of the ultimate dominance of the global economic over the political through a process in which economic determinism initially appears as that which is transcended. How’s that for a thought that begs to be rewritten.
My position on the social base for fascism comes from Marx’s arguments about the “crisis in the law of value” in the Grundrisse passages that I referenced in the earlier piece and from notions of the ‘common ruin of the contending classes” and “socialism or barbarism”, that show up in various places in the literature. A number of people have told me that this section of the fascism piece pushes them towards the persistent vegetative state, and suggested it for Goff’s “Dead Sea of meanings”. Nevertheless, I think that rather than a changed estimate of fascism, I’m guilty of a lousy writing style. I’ve been attempting to present the concept of a social base for fascism that is a consequence of late capitalism all along, just not doing it very well.
Your last points on the conception of neo-fascism, ‘explicit’ or not, get to where my position is particularly shaky. First, let me back away from the absurd: the conception of an ‘explicitly neo-fascist group that consciously and explicitly rejects fascism, does violence to language and meaning. I see that I said something close to that…please ignore it.
You are certainly right that my laundry list of characteristics is both too broad and too shallow to define neo-fascism as a definite political phenomenon. Even considering these characteristics as part of a totalitarian self sufficiency doesn’t make the divisions with other types of reaction clear cut and evident. Some sects do this as well.
However, although nationalism is bound to be a common form for the rejection of universalism, I don’t see “some kind of nationalism” as the missing essential ingredient in the conception of fascism, as you suggest. What I think is crucial to separate facist from reactionary is the element of radical rejection of the universalist pretensions of modern capitalism by a social strata that has an awareness that it is a product of modern capitalism. What’s difficult is that this feature of fascist differentiation from reaction blurs the line between neofascism and what passes for revolutionary anti capitalism (imperialism).
This gets to the point of whether we are actually dealing with a phenomenon that should be identified as fascism, given all the baggage that that entails, when what is really distinctive is how this phenomenon is impelled by the failures of our struggles as much or more than by the failures of capitalism, how much it is the repository for the warts on the revolutionary movement.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Matthew Lyons comments on Hamerquist and Goff exchange
Don,
Your reply to Goff offered a lot of good food for thought, and left me wanting to hear more. I appreciate the way you discuss the
First, why did the
So why was
Second, I'm unclear on your reading of neocon geopolitical strategy. You say that "all factions of the global ruling class...see salafi jihadism, particularly its takfiri strand, as the current 'main danger.'" But elsewhere you seem to contradict this (or is it just a difference of emphasis?) with the statement "the neocons, more than other ruling class tendencies, believe that the real danger to capitalist hegemony and power cannot be reduced to 'political Islam.'" How exactly would neocons characterize the main danger, in your view? Again, I don't think you directly say.
Also, even though the neocons are generally identified with a unilateralist
So, do you see evidence of support for neocon strategy within the global ruling class anywhere outside the
Your discussion of fascism is, in large part, a good summary of themes from "Fascism & Anti-Fascism." I especially liked the way you presented the point about a three-sided struggle between global capitalism, fascism, and the left. A new theme, I believe, is your short discussion about fascism's social base among the "declassed and the marginalized." Does this represent a shift in your thinking since "Fascism & Anti Fascism"?
If I understand correctly, you argue that the Islamic Right has many fascistic features but isn't full-blown fascism in ideological terms. What exactly is the difference between them? All of the characteristics of fascism you list ("emphasis on hierarchy, order, discipline and sacrifice," anti-universalism, "forceful subordination of majorities to minorities," etc.) would, I think, fit many Islamic rightist movements (among others). So what do you see as the difference? Is it, as some people argue, that fascism is based on some kind of nationalism, which is different from a religiously defined ideology? Or something else? You talk about the potential that "Islamic radicalism might lead to an organized explicitly neo-fascist movement" Given that many (most?) current-day fascist groups don't call themselves fascists, what does "explicitly" neo-fascist" mean?
Lastly, what sources of information about
Okay, those are the main points. I hope these comments and questions are useful -- feel free to circulate them, or not, as you wish. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Best,
Matthew Lyons
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Continued discourse on article, Debating a Neocon. Hamerquist on dilemmas for Capital and further outlines of the content of the resistance movements.
The following is a response to Stan Goff from D. Hamerquist.
Excerpt: "There is a general assumption that recognizing a fascist danger... automatically subordinates the struggle against the capitalist system to an anti-fascist alliance with a sector of it (Capital). This assumption has some roots. This is what happened with the ‘united’ and ‘popular’ fronts against fascism in the 30’s and 40’s and with various reincarnations of them more recently. It’s predictable that reformists and right wing communists will resurrect these failed positions as the proper response to Islamic radicalism and I understand why this makes leftists wary of an exaggerated emphasis on the fascist potentials in the current situation. I also understand why leftists would worry that this perspective might direct us away from solidarity with movements that are fighting against ‘our’ ruling class. This also has happened before.
However, without ignoring the dangers, our overriding responsibility is to think clearly, pay attention, and organize based on our best understanding of the truth, not on what we wish were true. Unfortunately, following this course means that the job will not look so easy and the road ahead won’t seem so straight."
I’d never heard of Stan Goff before a friend asked me what I thought of the article in question. Not that this is a virtue, however, it is a fact. It’s also a fact that I used the Goff article as a convenient platform to present some of my own ideas without giving sufficient attention to his. After reading his response and checking what I wrote, I accept some of his criticism. I should not have categorized and dismissed his politics based on this brief article. I probably did misstate and caricature his positions. I apologize for this. It is already hard to generate serious discussions in the U.S. left and my sloppy, possibly misdirected, polemical generalizations can only contribute additional obstacles.
In particular, I apologize for minimizing my area of agreement with Goff: I agree with him that the official arguments for the war – the supposed threats from wmd, links with Al Qaeda, etc. were bogus from the outset and were never seriously held by those responsible for the policy. I agree with his criticism of the way the left commonly uses “oil” as an underlying explanation:
“…the United States does not have to take oil from anyone. Every oil producing nation, including Iraq, has been perfectly willing to sell oil to the United States. It is cheaper to buy oil than it is to steal it with military action.”
Finally, I agree with the thrust of his position on what is to be done and, particularly on the “fetish of elections”.
However, there are disagreements. Although the collected works of Goff may
be important and relevant, I’m going to limit myself to the specific exchange at this time. Hopefully this will get us to points that are at issue, but I’m sure that again, I will be guilty of using his positions in order to bring out some ideas of my own.
The very title of Goff’s article… “There’s no There There, Debating a Neocon” implies that neocon politics are a void set. This is reinforced when, reflecting on his debate, he states more fully;
“That’s when it occurred to me, there’s no there there. These people have no arguments they can state…We don’t need the heavy artillery of superbly crafted argument to face them down…The simplest facts…can shoot these guys down like sparrows lined up on a fence.”
Contrary to what Goff maintains, the neocons have many arguments that they can and do state - along with a few that they usually don’t. Their publicly advanced positions on the aggressive use of military power -“preemption”; on “nation-building”; on the significance of “transnational threats” and “non-state actors”, have contributed to important changes in policies and priorities for the global and national ruling class. Of course, neocon positions are contested within the ruling class and they do not always win. William Kristol, a neocon stalwart, recently called for firing Rumsfeld, a pretty good sign that even Iraq policy might not be going the neocon’s way.
I don’t mean to exaggerate the importance of the neocons or overstate their cohesion. They certainly aren’t a disciplined monolithic bloc with a ‘line’. The neocons are a more or less open ruling class faction, unified around certain issues and approaches and still debating other questions. Some ideologues that I regard as neocons, like T. Friedman and Thomas Barnett, would almost certainly maintain that they are not. Various self described neocons may reject the views that I attribute to their camp. The important point is not who is, or is not identified as a neocons, it is to understand this relatively distinct pole in ruling class debate about global strategy.
The left shouldn’t be preoccupied with conflicts in the ruling class, not even this one, but neither should they dismiss them as irrelevant or irrational. Such debates help set the political context in which we operate and, as I mentioned in my earlier piece, they will inevitably find reflections in tendencies within the movement.
Goff doesn’t offer a serious treatment of this issue and implies strongly that none is necessary by ridiculing supposed neocon positions. Consider, for example the passing reference to the “delusional thinking of the islamophobic clique advising the current presidential mediocrity”. (If the references to “delusional” and “islamophobic” aren’t directed at the neocons, Feith, Bolton, Libby, Hadley et al, I’m really confused.)
Perhaps “islamophobic” might describe some neocons. (I sense that Goff feels it might apply to me as well.) However, the neocons, more than other ruling class tendencies, believe that the real danger to capitalist hegemony and power cannot be reduced to “political Islam”. Other ruling class factions match the neocons in their antipathy for “political Islam”, but are completely opposed to the current Iraq policy. It is easy to see this on a world scale – consider the attitudes of the ruling elites in France and Russia. It is apparent inside this country as well – and goes far beyond the America Firsters like Buchanan.
What’s “delusional” with these Islamophobes? I hope Goff isn’t accepting the liberal nonsense about the neocons’ underestimations of the difficulties in Iraq – the charge that they expected to be greeted as liberators and believed that this war would ‘pay for itself’. No matter what Perle, Wolfowitz, or Cheney said publicly, I don’t believe for a moment that they actually held such views. This situation is no different than with the fake issues of wmd threats or “links to terrorism” that Goff notes. The public arguments that the war would be “easy” and that the thing they call “freedom” would be a hot commodity in Arabia, were public relations gambits, as transparently fraudulent as the related public arguments for the “Iraq threat” and the “necessity” of the war.
The neocons were confronted with a problem. The strategic course they thought was essential promised to be costly and massively unpopular. So they built a case for it that had no necessary connection with the facts and the truth. Certainly they would be happier, if the war and occupation were going more smoothly, but we can expect that they will find ways to make use of the difficulties incurred in Iraq to expedite their general strategy. For them, Iraq is only a first step, an episode, a place to begin – and they have begun.
In my first response I cited fragments of Goff’s thesis about the nature and cause of the current Iraq war. The entire passage clarifies some additional issues:
“Present-day imperialism is a real system, and it is currently directed by the American state. The war in Iraq was probably the inevitable action of this state in response to the impending and inexorable erosion of the very basis of American global power. The war in Iraq, while deeply morally repugnant, is not a failure of morality, but the action of a system that can’t help it, because like the scorpion, it is that system’s nature.”
There is a lot to comment on here. Let me begin with, “present-day imperialism”. Global capitalism is certainly ‘real’, and it still involves the national oppression, national competition, and national privilege that are central to radical conceptions of imperialism. However, contemporary capitalism also involves increasingly important elements of international and transnational oppression and exploitation, not to mention the resistance to these. I question the emphasis on its continuity with what we have called imperialism. (This emphasis on continuity is clearer in other analyses than it is in the Goff piece; e.g., Achcar’s theses on the War in Iraq (ZNet). However, I interpret his dismissal of my “capitalist internationalism” and his invocation of capitalist “nature” as an indication that it is also his position.)
Let me spell out my argument in more detail, particularly since some of my language, e.g., “capitalist internationalism”, might be confused with the “ultra-imperialism” predicted by some reformist social democrats a century ago. Globalization is a dramatic transformation and expansion of capitalism, but it does not make it a more stable system. The social costs of capitalist production - its devastation of human potentials and natural resources - are magnified, and the inherent tendencies towards uneven and unequal ‘development’ are heightened. The growing problems of administering and enforcing the global capitalist system expose limitations in the existing political structures and inadequacies of some long-established institutional and ideological tools of domination. From the perspective of global capital its political superstructure is increasingly unwieldy and archaic; too costly, both politically and economically, and of doubtful effectiveness looking towards the future.
In the capitalist center new, probably more explicitly authoritarian, forms of class domination are needed to supplement, and in some cases supplant, the ‘class compact’; the parliamentarianism, social democratic trade unionism and institutionalized white supremacy that underlay a relative stability in a simpler day. In this new matrix the nebulous privilege of ‘security’ will have to replace more tangible and significant concessions.
Since the mid-seventies, the global ruling class has relied on neocolonial political structures and the capitalist world market to enforce equilibrium on the periphery. What order remains depends on discredited elites, kleptocracies, and so-called ‘failed states’ that rest uneasily on top of rapidly growing masses of economically and politically marginalized people. The straightforward imposition of market economics on the periphery requires an increasing external military force. The patchwork arrangements of cooptation and class accommodation that may still have some utility in the center are too costly to be applied there.
This all presents real dilemmas for capital. Despite the increasingly global character of the capitalist system and the transnational character of some of the challenges to it, military power is still largely exercised through nations, and capitalist hegemony rests on nationally specific institutions and processes. The issues facing capital, including the differences over the war in Iraq, expose the growing gulf between its needs and the means it has available to achieve them. As I argued in the first piece, the existing multistate frameworks (U.N. etc) as well as the institutional framework that maintained domestic tranquility are increasingly dysfunctional.
These contradictions within the ruling class are only superficially and (probably) temporarily expressed in conflicts between competing national elites and competing national capitalisms. The old imperialist conflicts have not disappeared, but they are not at the heart of the matter. What is central is the interplay between sharply different conceptions of how the global ruling class should rule and what kind of institutional framework and which policies are required. Differences here do not align with national borders.
Hopefully this explains why I would never say, as Goff does, that it (imperialism) “is currently directed by the American state”. We disagree about the nature of the “it”. There is another reason. I believe in the relative autonomy of the state, but this is a situation where, if anything it is the actions of the “American state” that have been determined; first, by the competition between different estimates and strategies in the global ruling class and; second, by the resistance the adopted policies evoke.
Clearly, then, I don’t think Iraq policy was, or is, “probably inevitable” or that the war is the “action of a system that can’t help it”…(because) “it is that system’s nature.” The “system’s nature”, not to mention both concrete history and current political and economic interests, could just as well have put the 300 billion bucks and 300,000 boots into Venezuela. It hasn’t, and there are reasons why it hasn’t.
Goff argues that the occupation of Iraq was intended to demonstrate “U.S. military invincibility” and its failure will demonstrate the opposite. There’s truth here, but nothing that makes the Iraq war “inevitable”. If the danger to capitalism was that its military power would loose the sheen of invincibility, why not demonstrate this power where victory would be easier and cheaper; think, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo? Indeed, as Goff notes, the very predictable problems of the Iraq venture expose the limits of U.S. military power and further weaken it.
Finally, consider the “impending and inexorable erosion of the very basis of American global power”. While I agree with Goff that capitalism is facing severe crises that impel it into risky actions, I’m as hesitant to accept his inexorabilities as I am his inevitabilities. The future depends on human action which in turn depends on organization and consciousness, on collective will. Human action, by the rulers and by the ruled, may be limited and shaped by objective conditions, but it is never completely determined by them.
In short, the War in Iraq was not “probably inevitable”. Instead, a particular ruling class view of specific conditions, a rational view in my estimation, concluded that it was desirable. This conclusion was not significantly influenced by considerations of the impact on the Halliburton bottom line, nor was it really designed to strengthen that “very basis of American global power” to which Goff refers.
The initial article maintained that, “These people (neocons) have no arguments they can state.” Goff challenged my assertion that he raises the point but fails to take it into account. He apparently thinks that the neocons’ unstated arguments concern the fact that the U.S.’s military, political, and economic interests and objectives in Iraq have little or nothing to do with democracy, freedom, wmd, terror threats, real or fabricated, etc. It’s true that in certain situations (like a campus debate with a communist?) neocons might find honest arguments about real class interests uncomfortable and awkward to make. However, they can be quite open and candid about them in other forums. I grant both that these points might not have been raised by his debate opponent and that he, Goff, did take them into account.
However, I had in mind a narrower argument that, I think, the neocons “can’t state”, one that Goff also didn’t state and may not accept. The fact is that neocon policies may well jeopardize economic and political stability in the metropolis. The neocons are willing to risk, not only popular living and working conditions in the imperial center, but also the relative power and influence of the specifically U.S. sections of capitalism. This is why it is so problematic to identify neocon strategy with a resurgence of U.S. imperialism. They would risk the “very basis of American global power” to protect and advance what they call “freedom”. There are not many audiences in this country that are receptive to this message, not even in the ruling class. (We might note numerous situations where metropolitan leftists and trade unionists are just as reluctant to deal openly with national privilege, preferring to look for approaches where solidarity and internationalism don’t involve political risks and economic costs.)
What perceived dangers lead the neocons to such a risk-laden course? I’m interested in their estimates and positions that relate to this question, not for their intrinsic importance, but to help delineate forces and processes that the left must understand to develop its own politics.
When I attempt to understand this feature of the neocon position, it leads to the question of fascism. In many ways, I think this is the central point and that it will turn out to be the core of whatever disagreements exist between Goff and me.
In his response to my first piece, Goff objects to, “..this notion of Islamic fascism”, saying …“It is shortcut thinking by an Orientalist western metropolitan left”…(that) “has to broaden any operational definition of ‘fascism’ into a dead sea of meanings…” In fact; “…this notion of Islamic fascism…(is a) kind of simplified moral imperialism that has tainted the metropolitan left”.
Before getting to the “shortcut thinking” and the “taint” on the left, let’s look at the issue as it confronts the ruling class. Does a significant sector of the ruling class see “political Islam” as a real danger or is it a proxy for something else, possibly an inter-imperialist challenge? Is this purported danger a smokescreen behind which to advance other ruling class objectives – maybe an end run cutting off China’s future energy supplies, or a general attack on living and working conditions in the ‘homeland’? Then, if political Islam is actually regarded as a threat, is the challenge a fundamental one or a minor and temporary problem - perhaps a new manifestation of pan-Arab nationalism that can be handled as other nationalist movements have been? In short, when ruling class factions picture Islamist movements as a global threat and when they are called “fascist” by one or another of them, should this to be taken seriously or should it be discounted as a mixture of public relations propaganda and self delusion? Further, if the notion of a ‘fascist’ danger is advanced seriously, just what is it about Islamic radicalism that is seen as fascist?
I believe that all factions of the global ruling class and almost every national state see salafi jihadism, particularly its takfiri strand, as the current ‘main danger’. If the capitalist ruling class sees jihadism as the major current challenge to its overall hegemony, this is certainly a significant fact. Jihadism is far from the only possible candidate for this role. The class struggle; national liberation movements; emerging potential rivals like China; ‘rogue states’; ‘chaos’, ‘warlordism’, all might also be considered.
I think there is clear evidence of a consensus on this point, although it is one that has been reached quite recently. This consensus is embodied in the general ruling class acceptance of the so-called ‘war on terror’. Notwithstanding the fact that many of its elements might eventually have a broader usefulness, the political/military core of the war on terror is capitalism’s basic response to the jihadist threat.
The ruling class approach to jihadism includes points on which there is general agreement - specifically the magnitude and immediacy of the danger - and points where there are significant continuing differences. Such differences include, for example, the extent to which the threat is a military one, susceptible to a military/police response. It’s also not agreed whether the phenomenon is an atavistic “pre-modern” resistance to development that is unlikely to survive evolutionary changes in conditions, or an outgrowth of current contradictions …as ‘modern as the cell phone’. Finally, the balance between responding to the jihadi threat and maintaining stability in the ‘homeland’ is a matter of continuing debate.
Not that they completely agree among themselves, but the neocons have answers to these questions that shed light on why they advocated using military force in Iraq (and not only Iraq) and why they more and more frequently define the enemy as fascist. (As do nitwits like Ann Coulter,which somewhat shakes my confidence in my position.)
Before going to the substance of the issue of fascism, some stipulations may avoid unnecessary arguments. Since fascism emerged, the ruling class has regularly used it to demonize its opponent of the moment. (In this they are not so different from the left which also uses fascism and fascist as synonyms for ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.) In recent times, from Nassar through Khomeni, Khaddafi, Noreiga, Aidid, and Milosevich, to Saddam, the official line frequently describes the leader of the enemy du jour as “like Hitler”, and the enemy regime as “like Nazi Germany”.
It’s also true that the jihadi movement was substantially a creation of the global ruling class. The Muslim Brotherhood, the source of many jihadist tendencies was a counter to Nassar’s semi-socialist secular pan-Arabism. The Afghan mujahadeen, progenitors of al Qaeda, were recruited and supplied by the CIA to give the Soviets ‘their own Vietnam’. The Taliban was sponsored by the Pakistani security services, a close CIA adjunct, to stabilize Afghanistan. Israel promoted Hamas as a counterweight to the radical secular elements in the Palestinian movement. Parts of the jihadi movement are undoubtedly still penetrated and may actually be “black operations” of various security agencies, notwithstanding all the bleating about those agencies’ alleged lack of ‘human intelligence’ resources.
This underscores the fact that from time to time the capitalist ruling class has constructed its own fascist movements. The Cointelpro documents contain examples in this country and similar cases in Italy are well known. Typically, state sponsored fascism was used to launch extra-legal attacks on the left culminating in death squad activities, but another, more political, function was also involved and is increasingly important in my opinion.
For fifty years, the official doctrines of “asymmetric” and “low intensity” war have included the use of “pseudo gangs” to define opposition movements in ways that undermine and discredit them with their potential base. The tactic was initially directed against radical popular anti-imperialist movements, but it has been used in the state penetration of both communist and fascist groups in this country and is more than likely being used with the jihadists in the Middle East as well. Note the cartoonishly and conveniently ‘evil’ Zarqawi group. What an advantage to have an enemy that issues manifestos promoting its own caricature: an enemy so counterproductively “fascist” in its tactics and targets: an enemy that regularly supports the official U.S. propaganda line - remember the ‘we are losing’ plea of the alleged Zarqawi message to Osama last year: an enemy that disrupts popular anti-occupation unity when it begins to emerge, as in the initial Falluja situation where there was significant Shia support for a largely Sunni insurgency.
Clearly, all of these issues have some relevance to the nature of the jihadi movement as well as to the character of the war in Iraq. However, I think that the crucial features of the jihadi movement are not determined by its origins or by its manipulation, but by the social conditions within which it functions. Whether or not it is conceived as a form of fascism, this movement is a threat to established power more than it is an alternative form of it.
The radical transnational Islamic movements are based geographically and politically in the ‘gaps’ in global capitalist system. The most important of these movements are popular - I would say in spite of their authoritarian clandestine structure and reactionary social program rather than because of them. They have a political trajectory that increasingly challenges the rules and norms of global capitalism. The neocons, and some other ruling class factions as well, see this as a movement that could overthrow both compradorial regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and rotten neocolonial state structures in Egypt and Algeria. They see movements that might gain control of vital resources, intending, not just to redivide the profits, but to withdraw the resources from the global capitalist system. Finally, they see movements capable of moving beyond the Middle East to northern Africa, and Asia, and, through emigration, to Europe.
This is a multi-sided danger to the global capitalist system. It includes a threat to withdraw women’s labor, a source of massive profits, from the global labor force. It involves a rejection of consumerism, self-indulgent individualism and similar elements of the bourgeois worldview and lifestyle. It threatens to link political rebelliousness with the massive underground economies that flourish at the margins of the capitalist system.
For the neocons, the war in Iraq was one response to this perceived danger. Iraq was a place where they hoped to begin a counteroffensive, challenging the jihadists militarily while attempting to change some of the political and social conditions that provide them a popular base and operating room. Undoubtedly things have not gone exactly as they might have hoped, but can anyone seriously argue that they are not accomplishing some of what they intended?
More and more frequently, neocons characterize the jihadi challenge as a new form of fascism. This analysis may not carry the day in the ruling class and even if it does, its full implementation will be constrained by the narrowing objective limits on capitalist flexibility, just as is the case for the alternatives to it. The invocation of a fascist danger is more than a political and propaganda tactic to disorient left oppositions, although some neocons certainly understand that ruling class ‘anti fascism’ poses problems for leftists that have yet to come to grips with the strategic dilemmas of WWII and the united fronts against fascism. However, the possible disruption of the domestic left is just a minor side benefit – at least for the time being. There are bigger fish to fry.
Of course, beyond the issue of what this or that ruling class faction thinks, the validity of their analysis and their estimates is what is important. Are they right? Specifically, if the neocons are right to locate a real danger in the jihadi movement, are they also right to see it as an emerging fascist threat to capitalism? I think that they are, Goff apparently does not. This brings us back to the “operational definition of fascism”.
There’s no doubt that the left applies the term fascism widely and loosely. There is no doubt that this is a problem. My initial response to Goff shared in the problem. It was too casual and superficial on this question. In the first place, I didn’t clarify my own conception of fascism even though it is not self evident. In fact, it is definitely a minority view in the left. In the second place, I can hardly criticize Goff for using the categories of imperialism and anti-imperialism without adequate regard for changed historical conditions, and then do something similar with fascism. I will attempt to present the issues more carefully here.
Fascism emerged in a particular historical context – the combination of the very sharp, but localized, capitalist crises following WWI. with the shock of the Bolshevik revolution. At the time, most revolutionaries felt that the final stage of capitalist development had been reached. The emergence of fascism was seen as a manifestation of, as well as evidence for, capital’s terminal crisis. The left believed that the world revolution had only been temporarily sidetracked and that, whatever the limitations of the USSR, the momentum would quickly return, especially when popular anti-imperialist insurgencies among the “Peoples of the East” merged with the international class struggle.
The concepts and analysis of a left that viewed capitalism as “moribund” a century ago must be employed with serious reservations on every issue. This is certainly true when the issue is fascism. From its beginning, fascism eluded the popular left understanding of it. The various movements and states that were (and still are) lumped together as fascist had obvious differences with each other. It was always questionable to use the same label for anti-imperialist Peronism in Argentina, clerical reaction in Spain, and National Socialism in Germany.
To further complicate things, German fascism, the usual archetype, contained contradictory elements indicated by its name, National Socialism. To this day, very different conceptions of German fascism compete depending on whether it is defined by its nationalist-corporative or its anti-bourgeois/anti international capitalist elements. In my opinion, the left analysis of the past, possibly excepting Reich and the early Guerin, always underestimated the significance of the popular ‘socialist’ elements contained in the so-called “Third Position” tendency in German fascism. The advocates of a “second socialist revolution” might have been crushed by Hitler at the time but their influence was substantial and continues to the present day. (These elements were much less significant in Italy and, even less so in Spain.)
The problem goes beyond the faulty estimates and inadequate terminology of previous generations of revolutionaries. Not only have we lived nearly another century within a supposedly terminal capitalism, we have also lived through the implosion of the supposed anti capitalist alternative, the “World Socialist System”, not to mention the neocolonial/neoliberal containment of the anti-imperialist upsurge of the “Peoples’s of the East”. The political terrain is drastically changed. Rather than a decrepit and frail capitalism confronted by an increasingly strong and determined international working class movement, we have a triumphant global capitalist system that, at least on the surface, has demonstrated the capacity to defeat or absorb its main challengers.
In 1922, Klara Zetkin described fascism as the price the working class had to pay for the failure of the social revolution. The price paid would be commensurate with the magnitude of the failure. For Zetkin, the failures probably appeared to be limited and local, the defeats of the revolutionary upsurges in Germany and Italy after WWI. –setbacks that she almost certainly thought were temporary - so the price would be limited. It’s likely she would have felt that failure on the scale that we have experienced it was quite out of the question.
However, what Zetkin said then is even more applicable now. Fascism still grows out of a dual crisis, a crisis of the capitalist order and a crisis of the movements against that order. Our political reality is dominated by two shaken faiths and two failed gods. First, there is the faith that capitalism is the necessary structure of modern progress - that allowing everyone to ‘Be All They Can Be’ will lead to the “end of history”. It isn’t selling well in much of the world. Second, unfortunately there is another commodity that isn’t selling - the faith that a fundamental emancipatory alternative to capitalism is both necessary and possible and, indeed, is already well under construction. Capitalism will pay a price for the first failure. We will be paying for the second and the reemergence of fascism will be a part of the price in each case.
We had better expect a fascism that won’t fit in the old definitions. It will be a neo-fascism growing from social conditions that are different from those that existed when fascism originally appeared. It will be a neo-fascism that incorporates a critique of the corporative tendency that was important in early fascism, particularly its Italian and Spanish variants. Most important, it will be a neo-fascism that grows out of and is decisively marked by the social consequences of the contemporary failures of liberatory revolutionary movements.
If the conditions now are so markedly different from when fascism originally developed, why continue to use a term that will necessarily be confusing? I could be convinced to make this change, but only if there was an alternative language that signified one important truth, a truth that the term fascism brings into focus…there are three players on the stage. The struggle won’t reduce to the simple ‘two classes’ dualism, the workers versus the bosses, labor versus capital; good versus evil. The black and white world that so many very different left politics hunger for is not going to happen.
The concept of a three sided struggle has the potential to introduce a dose of reality into simplistic complacent left thinking. Recognizing the existence of a reactionary, but radical and ‘modern’, opposition to global capitalism, an opposition that competes with us on ‘our’ ground and for ‘our’ base, can be an antidote to the “imbecilic optimism” which Gramsci warned against. At least it can be, when it is also understood that of the three sides, it is our side, the radical left, that is the least defined and the most poorly organized.
Clearly, if the conventional notion of fascism as a reactionary form or policy of capitalism is the point of reference, my position amounts to so much nonsense,. So let me begin a definition of neo-fascism by tossing some common left notions about fascism into the “Dead Sea of Meaning”. If Goff wants to fish them out, he may try.
As I said earlier, neo-fascism cannot be reduced to an optional form of the rule of capital. It is not just a tool, a ‘hammer against the working class’. It is not, and fascism never was, just the ‘…dictatorship of the most reactionary section of capital’ or any other version of the old Third International formula.
Neo-fascism is most definitely repressive, but so is capitalism. Neo-fascism is neither the logical end point nor the goal of capitalist repression.
Neo-fascist ideology is not necessarily based on racial or ethnic supremacy, on “blood”, although I know of no instance where it does not involve male supremacy.
Neo-fascism is not a “white privilege”. No nationality, race, or ethnicity is innoculated against it.
Neo-fascism is not conservative and not “pre-modern”, no matter what utopian descriptions of a mythologized past, Roman Empire or Islamic Kaliphate, are incorporated in its ideology.
Contemporary neo-fascism involves two elements. First there is a rapidly expanding social base This base is composed of the declassed and marginalized, a huge population, particularly in the ‘gap’, that has been permanently devalued – defined as non-productive and rendered redundant - by capitalist development. This is a feature of contemporary global capitalism. It is not the same as earlier capitalist enforced displacements of rural populations or petty bourgeois elements into the working classes. This is a post-proletariat, demoralized and demobilized by the failures of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, alienated from capital and anti-capital as well. It is a social layer that for a variety of economic, social, and military reasons, is commonly deeply segregated by gender.
The second element is the assortment of reactionary groups, with no necessary connection to each other, that more or less consciously try to organize this social base against the established structure of power, a structure which they see as corrupt, decadent and fundamentally wrong. These groups have no shortage of cracked messiahs and thugs, not to mention opportunists, but it is a big mistake to focus on these element at the expense of considering the operative ideas and values, particularly those involved in the critique of western capitalist ‘civilization’. (For an example of this critique focused on the opposition between “Atlantism” and “EurAsianism” look at national Bolshevik, Alexander Dugin’s essay on the “New World Order” on the Arctogaia website.)
From the classic fascist worldview neo-fascism takes the emphasis on hierarchy, order, discipline and sacrifice as contrasted with creativity, autonomy and fulfillment. Neo-fascism is anti-universalist. Its social vision is anti-humanist, legitimating the forceful subordination of majorities to minorities - of “low cultures” to “high cultures. The subordinated majorities are ‘untermenshen’, not fully human, a lesser status that is sometimes expressed as being ‘feminine’, rather than ‘masculine’. The alleged superiority of the privileged group may be defined in different ways, by gender as above, by religion, ‘culture’, as well as by the more familiar race, nation, and ethnicity. This all opens possibilities for competing neo-fascisms, complicating the overall challenge to global capitalism, not to mention confusing the hell out of the left.
Currently, Islamic radicalism is the most advanced outpost of neo-fascist politics in the organizational sense. This is where an animating ideology links with a mass base at a weak spot in the global capitalist structure. However, the overall jihadist ideology, combining religious reaction with neo-fascist themes, is not the clearest ideological expression of neo-fascism, even in the Middle East. In Syria, there are communist fragments which have adopted an explicitly National Bolshevik orientation. More important, in a trend that has been evident since the Iranian revolt against the Shah and can certainly be seen in the Palestinian conflict, the radical elements of national liberation movements are moving away from democratic and secular politics in this direction. Break offs from collapsing neocolonial structures, perhaps including some of the mysterious “Baathist Dead-enders”, also have the potential of embracing neo-fascism.
We must assess whether these organizing thrusts and ideological tendencies are likely to continue on a fascist trajectory in the Middle East, perhaps merging, and whether they have the potential to coalesce a popular bloc, a mass fascist movement. The assessment has to begin with a real appreciation of what already exists in the area. When multiple suicide bombers are mobilized every day for weeks…months…years, something significant is happening. When an insurgent movement operates with impunity in urban terrain, lacking its Sierra Madre or equivalent liberated zone, and it does this against an overwhelmingly superior military force, it means something about its popular base. When a movement can cripple the infrastructure that a population depends on for months or years, it must have support, a sea in which to swim. Give me a break about pro-Saddam Sunni sentiment; Give me a break about sectarian fanaticism; Give me a break about generic nationalist resistance to occupation; these exist, but they don’t explain this level of struggle, generated this rapidly, persisting for this amount of time; surviving against such overwhelming military force.
So what will be the eventual outcome? Let’s consider three basic possibilities which are not necessarily completely exclusive. First, Islamic radicalism might stay confined within an apocalyptic irrational religious shell which cannot deliver any basic changes for its constituency in this world and probably cannot achieve anything looking like a conclusive military victory. Second, Islamic radicalism may polarize into a new pro-capitalist authoritarianism and a popular anti-imperialist/anti capitalist anti-occupation movement. Finally, Islamic radicalism might lead to an organized explicitly neo-fascist movement.
The first option would lead to a gradual weakening of the substantive challenges to global capitalist power, but without resolving any of the social issues that have created the base for the movement. If it happens, the social base will inevitably find some other form of political expression unless the more sanguine of the neo-cons are correct and this area of ‘gap’ can develop ‘connectivity’ with the ‘core’. Of course, that would mean that I, and presumably Goff also, are wrong in seeing this potentially intractable base as a necessary consequence of capitalist ‘development’ - as being constantly regenerated.
This leads to the second option which contains the perspective – or should I say the hope – of most of the left. There may be a polarization, but it is unlikely that it will look like this, a division into poles which are each known and, I must say, known as failures, by both the social base of the movement and by the factions contending for its leadership.
There already are pro-capitalist authoritarianisms of every conceivable type. The problems with their viability have led to the current situation. Replacing the House of Saud with the House of bin Laden will not change much. Nor would the Allawi, Chalabi, or Jaafari options be substantially different from that of Saddam. The other side of the polarization is equally problematic. A successful polarization to the left must result in something new. This can’t be based on politics that have led to disaster in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and, prepare for it, Palestine. This leads to the last option. Remember, we are not talking about our preferences here, the issue is not what we would like the most, it is what we think is likely. Which do you think is most likely?
There are many neo-fascist organizing ventures that are more ideological, if less successful, than the Islamist groups. Some of them, particularly those of the National Bolshevik’ inclination also don’t define themselves as ‘fascists’. When Dugin is asked, “Are you a fascist?”, his answer is, “…not exactly, which means exactly not.” They see their politics as having transcended both fascism and bolshevism, merging the fascist ‘Third Position’ and ‘communism’ of the Stalin variant. Again, I don’t point this out because I like it, but because the potential for this sort of insurgent reactionary fascist movement extends far beyond any variant of religious fundamentalism. The real danger is that the “Islam” will become less significant in this movement and the ‘fascism’ more so. Isn’t it more likely that the polarization in the Middle East will take this path, not the convenient division into a comfortable ‘us’ and a comfortable ‘them’?
One final point: There is a general assumption that recognizing a fascist danger more or less automatically subordinates the struggle against the capitalist system to an anti-fascist alliance with a sector of it. This assumption has some roots. This is what happened with the ‘united’ and ‘popular’ fronts against fascism in the 30’s and 40’s and with various reincarnations of them more recently. It’s predictable that reformists and right wing communists will resurrect these failed positions as the proper response to Islamic radicalism and I understand why this makes leftists wary of an exaggerated emphasis on the fascist potentials in the current situation. I also understand why leftists would worry that this perspective might direct us away from solidarity with movements that are fighting against ‘our’ ruling class. This also has happened before.
However, without ignoring the dangers, our overriding responsibility is to think clearly, pay attention, and organize based on our best understanding of the truth, not on what we wish were true. Unfortunately, following this course means that the job will not look so easy and the road ahead won’t seem so straight.
Excerpt: "There is a general assumption that recognizing a fascist danger... automatically subordinates the struggle against the capitalist system to an anti-fascist alliance with a sector of it (Capital). This assumption has some roots. This is what happened with the ‘united’ and ‘popular’ fronts against fascism in the 30’s and 40’s and with various reincarnations of them more recently. It’s predictable that reformists and right wing communists will resurrect these failed positions as the proper response to Islamic radicalism and I understand why this makes leftists wary of an exaggerated emphasis on the fascist potentials in the current situation. I also understand why leftists would worry that this perspective might direct us away from solidarity with movements that are fighting against ‘our’ ruling class. This also has happened before.
However, without ignoring the dangers, our overriding responsibility is to think clearly, pay attention, and organize based on our best understanding of the truth, not on what we wish were true. Unfortunately, following this course means that the job will not look so easy and the road ahead won’t seem so straight."
I’d never heard of Stan Goff before a friend asked me what I thought of the article in question. Not that this is a virtue, however, it is a fact. It’s also a fact that I used the Goff article as a convenient platform to present some of my own ideas without giving sufficient attention to his. After reading his response and checking what I wrote, I accept some of his criticism. I should not have categorized and dismissed his politics based on this brief article. I probably did misstate and caricature his positions. I apologize for this. It is already hard to generate serious discussions in the U.S. left and my sloppy, possibly misdirected, polemical generalizations can only contribute additional obstacles.
In particular, I apologize for minimizing my area of agreement with Goff: I agree with him that the official arguments for the war – the supposed threats from wmd, links with Al Qaeda, etc. were bogus from the outset and were never seriously held by those responsible for the policy. I agree with his criticism of the way the left commonly uses “oil” as an underlying explanation:
“…the United States does not have to take oil from anyone. Every oil producing nation, including Iraq, has been perfectly willing to sell oil to the United States. It is cheaper to buy oil than it is to steal it with military action.”
Finally, I agree with the thrust of his position on what is to be done and, particularly on the “fetish of elections”.
However, there are disagreements. Although the collected works of Goff may
be important and relevant, I’m going to limit myself to the specific exchange at this time. Hopefully this will get us to points that are at issue, but I’m sure that again, I will be guilty of using his positions in order to bring out some ideas of my own.
The very title of Goff’s article… “There’s no There There, Debating a Neocon” implies that neocon politics are a void set. This is reinforced when, reflecting on his debate, he states more fully;
“That’s when it occurred to me, there’s no there there. These people have no arguments they can state…We don’t need the heavy artillery of superbly crafted argument to face them down…The simplest facts…can shoot these guys down like sparrows lined up on a fence.”
Contrary to what Goff maintains, the neocons have many arguments that they can and do state - along with a few that they usually don’t. Their publicly advanced positions on the aggressive use of military power -“preemption”; on “nation-building”; on the significance of “transnational threats” and “non-state actors”, have contributed to important changes in policies and priorities for the global and national ruling class. Of course, neocon positions are contested within the ruling class and they do not always win. William Kristol, a neocon stalwart, recently called for firing Rumsfeld, a pretty good sign that even Iraq policy might not be going the neocon’s way.
I don’t mean to exaggerate the importance of the neocons or overstate their cohesion. They certainly aren’t a disciplined monolithic bloc with a ‘line’. The neocons are a more or less open ruling class faction, unified around certain issues and approaches and still debating other questions. Some ideologues that I regard as neocons, like T. Friedman and Thomas Barnett, would almost certainly maintain that they are not. Various self described neocons may reject the views that I attribute to their camp. The important point is not who is, or is not identified as a neocons, it is to understand this relatively distinct pole in ruling class debate about global strategy.
The left shouldn’t be preoccupied with conflicts in the ruling class, not even this one, but neither should they dismiss them as irrelevant or irrational. Such debates help set the political context in which we operate and, as I mentioned in my earlier piece, they will inevitably find reflections in tendencies within the movement.
Goff doesn’t offer a serious treatment of this issue and implies strongly that none is necessary by ridiculing supposed neocon positions. Consider, for example the passing reference to the “delusional thinking of the islamophobic clique advising the current presidential mediocrity”. (If the references to “delusional” and “islamophobic” aren’t directed at the neocons, Feith, Bolton, Libby, Hadley et al, I’m really confused.)
Perhaps “islamophobic” might describe some neocons. (I sense that Goff feels it might apply to me as well.) However, the neocons, more than other ruling class tendencies, believe that the real danger to capitalist hegemony and power cannot be reduced to “political Islam”. Other ruling class factions match the neocons in their antipathy for “political Islam”, but are completely opposed to the current Iraq policy. It is easy to see this on a world scale – consider the attitudes of the ruling elites in France and Russia. It is apparent inside this country as well – and goes far beyond the America Firsters like Buchanan.
What’s “delusional” with these Islamophobes? I hope Goff isn’t accepting the liberal nonsense about the neocons’ underestimations of the difficulties in Iraq – the charge that they expected to be greeted as liberators and believed that this war would ‘pay for itself’. No matter what Perle, Wolfowitz, or Cheney said publicly, I don’t believe for a moment that they actually held such views. This situation is no different than with the fake issues of wmd threats or “links to terrorism” that Goff notes. The public arguments that the war would be “easy” and that the thing they call “freedom” would be a hot commodity in Arabia, were public relations gambits, as transparently fraudulent as the related public arguments for the “Iraq threat” and the “necessity” of the war.
The neocons were confronted with a problem. The strategic course they thought was essential promised to be costly and massively unpopular. So they built a case for it that had no necessary connection with the facts and the truth. Certainly they would be happier, if the war and occupation were going more smoothly, but we can expect that they will find ways to make use of the difficulties incurred in Iraq to expedite their general strategy. For them, Iraq is only a first step, an episode, a place to begin – and they have begun.
In my first response I cited fragments of Goff’s thesis about the nature and cause of the current Iraq war. The entire passage clarifies some additional issues:
“Present-day imperialism is a real system, and it is currently directed by the American state. The war in Iraq was probably the inevitable action of this state in response to the impending and inexorable erosion of the very basis of American global power. The war in Iraq, while deeply morally repugnant, is not a failure of morality, but the action of a system that can’t help it, because like the scorpion, it is that system’s nature.”
There is a lot to comment on here. Let me begin with, “present-day imperialism”. Global capitalism is certainly ‘real’, and it still involves the national oppression, national competition, and national privilege that are central to radical conceptions of imperialism. However, contemporary capitalism also involves increasingly important elements of international and transnational oppression and exploitation, not to mention the resistance to these. I question the emphasis on its continuity with what we have called imperialism. (This emphasis on continuity is clearer in other analyses than it is in the Goff piece; e.g., Achcar’s theses on the War in Iraq (ZNet). However, I interpret his dismissal of my “capitalist internationalism” and his invocation of capitalist “nature” as an indication that it is also his position.)
Let me spell out my argument in more detail, particularly since some of my language, e.g., “capitalist internationalism”, might be confused with the “ultra-imperialism” predicted by some reformist social democrats a century ago. Globalization is a dramatic transformation and expansion of capitalism, but it does not make it a more stable system. The social costs of capitalist production - its devastation of human potentials and natural resources - are magnified, and the inherent tendencies towards uneven and unequal ‘development’ are heightened. The growing problems of administering and enforcing the global capitalist system expose limitations in the existing political structures and inadequacies of some long-established institutional and ideological tools of domination. From the perspective of global capital its political superstructure is increasingly unwieldy and archaic; too costly, both politically and economically, and of doubtful effectiveness looking towards the future.
In the capitalist center new, probably more explicitly authoritarian, forms of class domination are needed to supplement, and in some cases supplant, the ‘class compact’; the parliamentarianism, social democratic trade unionism and institutionalized white supremacy that underlay a relative stability in a simpler day. In this new matrix the nebulous privilege of ‘security’ will have to replace more tangible and significant concessions.
Since the mid-seventies, the global ruling class has relied on neocolonial political structures and the capitalist world market to enforce equilibrium on the periphery. What order remains depends on discredited elites, kleptocracies, and so-called ‘failed states’ that rest uneasily on top of rapidly growing masses of economically and politically marginalized people. The straightforward imposition of market economics on the periphery requires an increasing external military force. The patchwork arrangements of cooptation and class accommodation that may still have some utility in the center are too costly to be applied there.
This all presents real dilemmas for capital. Despite the increasingly global character of the capitalist system and the transnational character of some of the challenges to it, military power is still largely exercised through nations, and capitalist hegemony rests on nationally specific institutions and processes. The issues facing capital, including the differences over the war in Iraq, expose the growing gulf between its needs and the means it has available to achieve them. As I argued in the first piece, the existing multistate frameworks (U.N. etc) as well as the institutional framework that maintained domestic tranquility are increasingly dysfunctional.
These contradictions within the ruling class are only superficially and (probably) temporarily expressed in conflicts between competing national elites and competing national capitalisms. The old imperialist conflicts have not disappeared, but they are not at the heart of the matter. What is central is the interplay between sharply different conceptions of how the global ruling class should rule and what kind of institutional framework and which policies are required. Differences here do not align with national borders.
Hopefully this explains why I would never say, as Goff does, that it (imperialism) “is currently directed by the American state”. We disagree about the nature of the “it”. There is another reason. I believe in the relative autonomy of the state, but this is a situation where, if anything it is the actions of the “American state” that have been determined; first, by the competition between different estimates and strategies in the global ruling class and; second, by the resistance the adopted policies evoke.
Clearly, then, I don’t think Iraq policy was, or is, “probably inevitable” or that the war is the “action of a system that can’t help it”…(because) “it is that system’s nature.” The “system’s nature”, not to mention both concrete history and current political and economic interests, could just as well have put the 300 billion bucks and 300,000 boots into Venezuela. It hasn’t, and there are reasons why it hasn’t.
Goff argues that the occupation of Iraq was intended to demonstrate “U.S. military invincibility” and its failure will demonstrate the opposite. There’s truth here, but nothing that makes the Iraq war “inevitable”. If the danger to capitalism was that its military power would loose the sheen of invincibility, why not demonstrate this power where victory would be easier and cheaper; think, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo? Indeed, as Goff notes, the very predictable problems of the Iraq venture expose the limits of U.S. military power and further weaken it.
Finally, consider the “impending and inexorable erosion of the very basis of American global power”. While I agree with Goff that capitalism is facing severe crises that impel it into risky actions, I’m as hesitant to accept his inexorabilities as I am his inevitabilities. The future depends on human action which in turn depends on organization and consciousness, on collective will. Human action, by the rulers and by the ruled, may be limited and shaped by objective conditions, but it is never completely determined by them.
In short, the War in Iraq was not “probably inevitable”. Instead, a particular ruling class view of specific conditions, a rational view in my estimation, concluded that it was desirable. This conclusion was not significantly influenced by considerations of the impact on the Halliburton bottom line, nor was it really designed to strengthen that “very basis of American global power” to which Goff refers.
The initial article maintained that, “These people (neocons) have no arguments they can state.” Goff challenged my assertion that he raises the point but fails to take it into account. He apparently thinks that the neocons’ unstated arguments concern the fact that the U.S.’s military, political, and economic interests and objectives in Iraq have little or nothing to do with democracy, freedom, wmd, terror threats, real or fabricated, etc. It’s true that in certain situations (like a campus debate with a communist?) neocons might find honest arguments about real class interests uncomfortable and awkward to make. However, they can be quite open and candid about them in other forums. I grant both that these points might not have been raised by his debate opponent and that he, Goff, did take them into account.
However, I had in mind a narrower argument that, I think, the neocons “can’t state”, one that Goff also didn’t state and may not accept. The fact is that neocon policies may well jeopardize economic and political stability in the metropolis. The neocons are willing to risk, not only popular living and working conditions in the imperial center, but also the relative power and influence of the specifically U.S. sections of capitalism. This is why it is so problematic to identify neocon strategy with a resurgence of U.S. imperialism. They would risk the “very basis of American global power” to protect and advance what they call “freedom”. There are not many audiences in this country that are receptive to this message, not even in the ruling class. (We might note numerous situations where metropolitan leftists and trade unionists are just as reluctant to deal openly with national privilege, preferring to look for approaches where solidarity and internationalism don’t involve political risks and economic costs.)
What perceived dangers lead the neocons to such a risk-laden course? I’m interested in their estimates and positions that relate to this question, not for their intrinsic importance, but to help delineate forces and processes that the left must understand to develop its own politics.
When I attempt to understand this feature of the neocon position, it leads to the question of fascism. In many ways, I think this is the central point and that it will turn out to be the core of whatever disagreements exist between Goff and me.
In his response to my first piece, Goff objects to, “..this notion of Islamic fascism”, saying …“It is shortcut thinking by an Orientalist western metropolitan left”…(that) “has to broaden any operational definition of ‘fascism’ into a dead sea of meanings…” In fact; “…this notion of Islamic fascism…(is a) kind of simplified moral imperialism that has tainted the metropolitan left”.
Before getting to the “shortcut thinking” and the “taint” on the left, let’s look at the issue as it confronts the ruling class. Does a significant sector of the ruling class see “political Islam” as a real danger or is it a proxy for something else, possibly an inter-imperialist challenge? Is this purported danger a smokescreen behind which to advance other ruling class objectives – maybe an end run cutting off China’s future energy supplies, or a general attack on living and working conditions in the ‘homeland’? Then, if political Islam is actually regarded as a threat, is the challenge a fundamental one or a minor and temporary problem - perhaps a new manifestation of pan-Arab nationalism that can be handled as other nationalist movements have been? In short, when ruling class factions picture Islamist movements as a global threat and when they are called “fascist” by one or another of them, should this to be taken seriously or should it be discounted as a mixture of public relations propaganda and self delusion? Further, if the notion of a ‘fascist’ danger is advanced seriously, just what is it about Islamic radicalism that is seen as fascist?
I believe that all factions of the global ruling class and almost every national state see salafi jihadism, particularly its takfiri strand, as the current ‘main danger’. If the capitalist ruling class sees jihadism as the major current challenge to its overall hegemony, this is certainly a significant fact. Jihadism is far from the only possible candidate for this role. The class struggle; national liberation movements; emerging potential rivals like China; ‘rogue states’; ‘chaos’, ‘warlordism’, all might also be considered.
I think there is clear evidence of a consensus on this point, although it is one that has been reached quite recently. This consensus is embodied in the general ruling class acceptance of the so-called ‘war on terror’. Notwithstanding the fact that many of its elements might eventually have a broader usefulness, the political/military core of the war on terror is capitalism’s basic response to the jihadist threat.
The ruling class approach to jihadism includes points on which there is general agreement - specifically the magnitude and immediacy of the danger - and points where there are significant continuing differences. Such differences include, for example, the extent to which the threat is a military one, susceptible to a military/police response. It’s also not agreed whether the phenomenon is an atavistic “pre-modern” resistance to development that is unlikely to survive evolutionary changes in conditions, or an outgrowth of current contradictions …as ‘modern as the cell phone’. Finally, the balance between responding to the jihadi threat and maintaining stability in the ‘homeland’ is a matter of continuing debate.
Not that they completely agree among themselves, but the neocons have answers to these questions that shed light on why they advocated using military force in Iraq (and not only Iraq) and why they more and more frequently define the enemy as fascist. (As do nitwits like Ann Coulter,which somewhat shakes my confidence in my position.)
Before going to the substance of the issue of fascism, some stipulations may avoid unnecessary arguments. Since fascism emerged, the ruling class has regularly used it to demonize its opponent of the moment. (In this they are not so different from the left which also uses fascism and fascist as synonyms for ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.) In recent times, from Nassar through Khomeni, Khaddafi, Noreiga, Aidid, and Milosevich, to Saddam, the official line frequently describes the leader of the enemy du jour as “like Hitler”, and the enemy regime as “like Nazi Germany”.
It’s also true that the jihadi movement was substantially a creation of the global ruling class. The Muslim Brotherhood, the source of many jihadist tendencies was a counter to Nassar’s semi-socialist secular pan-Arabism. The Afghan mujahadeen, progenitors of al Qaeda, were recruited and supplied by the CIA to give the Soviets ‘their own Vietnam’. The Taliban was sponsored by the Pakistani security services, a close CIA adjunct, to stabilize Afghanistan. Israel promoted Hamas as a counterweight to the radical secular elements in the Palestinian movement. Parts of the jihadi movement are undoubtedly still penetrated and may actually be “black operations” of various security agencies, notwithstanding all the bleating about those agencies’ alleged lack of ‘human intelligence’ resources.
This underscores the fact that from time to time the capitalist ruling class has constructed its own fascist movements. The Cointelpro documents contain examples in this country and similar cases in Italy are well known. Typically, state sponsored fascism was used to launch extra-legal attacks on the left culminating in death squad activities, but another, more political, function was also involved and is increasingly important in my opinion.
For fifty years, the official doctrines of “asymmetric” and “low intensity” war have included the use of “pseudo gangs” to define opposition movements in ways that undermine and discredit them with their potential base. The tactic was initially directed against radical popular anti-imperialist movements, but it has been used in the state penetration of both communist and fascist groups in this country and is more than likely being used with the jihadists in the Middle East as well. Note the cartoonishly and conveniently ‘evil’ Zarqawi group. What an advantage to have an enemy that issues manifestos promoting its own caricature: an enemy so counterproductively “fascist” in its tactics and targets: an enemy that regularly supports the official U.S. propaganda line - remember the ‘we are losing’ plea of the alleged Zarqawi message to Osama last year: an enemy that disrupts popular anti-occupation unity when it begins to emerge, as in the initial Falluja situation where there was significant Shia support for a largely Sunni insurgency.
Clearly, all of these issues have some relevance to the nature of the jihadi movement as well as to the character of the war in Iraq. However, I think that the crucial features of the jihadi movement are not determined by its origins or by its manipulation, but by the social conditions within which it functions. Whether or not it is conceived as a form of fascism, this movement is a threat to established power more than it is an alternative form of it.
The radical transnational Islamic movements are based geographically and politically in the ‘gaps’ in global capitalist system. The most important of these movements are popular - I would say in spite of their authoritarian clandestine structure and reactionary social program rather than because of them. They have a political trajectory that increasingly challenges the rules and norms of global capitalism. The neocons, and some other ruling class factions as well, see this as a movement that could overthrow both compradorial regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and rotten neocolonial state structures in Egypt and Algeria. They see movements that might gain control of vital resources, intending, not just to redivide the profits, but to withdraw the resources from the global capitalist system. Finally, they see movements capable of moving beyond the Middle East to northern Africa, and Asia, and, through emigration, to Europe.
This is a multi-sided danger to the global capitalist system. It includes a threat to withdraw women’s labor, a source of massive profits, from the global labor force. It involves a rejection of consumerism, self-indulgent individualism and similar elements of the bourgeois worldview and lifestyle. It threatens to link political rebelliousness with the massive underground economies that flourish at the margins of the capitalist system.
For the neocons, the war in Iraq was one response to this perceived danger. Iraq was a place where they hoped to begin a counteroffensive, challenging the jihadists militarily while attempting to change some of the political and social conditions that provide them a popular base and operating room. Undoubtedly things have not gone exactly as they might have hoped, but can anyone seriously argue that they are not accomplishing some of what they intended?
More and more frequently, neocons characterize the jihadi challenge as a new form of fascism. This analysis may not carry the day in the ruling class and even if it does, its full implementation will be constrained by the narrowing objective limits on capitalist flexibility, just as is the case for the alternatives to it. The invocation of a fascist danger is more than a political and propaganda tactic to disorient left oppositions, although some neocons certainly understand that ruling class ‘anti fascism’ poses problems for leftists that have yet to come to grips with the strategic dilemmas of WWII and the united fronts against fascism. However, the possible disruption of the domestic left is just a minor side benefit – at least for the time being. There are bigger fish to fry.
Of course, beyond the issue of what this or that ruling class faction thinks, the validity of their analysis and their estimates is what is important. Are they right? Specifically, if the neocons are right to locate a real danger in the jihadi movement, are they also right to see it as an emerging fascist threat to capitalism? I think that they are, Goff apparently does not. This brings us back to the “operational definition of fascism”.
There’s no doubt that the left applies the term fascism widely and loosely. There is no doubt that this is a problem. My initial response to Goff shared in the problem. It was too casual and superficial on this question. In the first place, I didn’t clarify my own conception of fascism even though it is not self evident. In fact, it is definitely a minority view in the left. In the second place, I can hardly criticize Goff for using the categories of imperialism and anti-imperialism without adequate regard for changed historical conditions, and then do something similar with fascism. I will attempt to present the issues more carefully here.
Fascism emerged in a particular historical context – the combination of the very sharp, but localized, capitalist crises following WWI. with the shock of the Bolshevik revolution. At the time, most revolutionaries felt that the final stage of capitalist development had been reached. The emergence of fascism was seen as a manifestation of, as well as evidence for, capital’s terminal crisis. The left believed that the world revolution had only been temporarily sidetracked and that, whatever the limitations of the USSR, the momentum would quickly return, especially when popular anti-imperialist insurgencies among the “Peoples of the East” merged with the international class struggle.
The concepts and analysis of a left that viewed capitalism as “moribund” a century ago must be employed with serious reservations on every issue. This is certainly true when the issue is fascism. From its beginning, fascism eluded the popular left understanding of it. The various movements and states that were (and still are) lumped together as fascist had obvious differences with each other. It was always questionable to use the same label for anti-imperialist Peronism in Argentina, clerical reaction in Spain, and National Socialism in Germany.
To further complicate things, German fascism, the usual archetype, contained contradictory elements indicated by its name, National Socialism. To this day, very different conceptions of German fascism compete depending on whether it is defined by its nationalist-corporative or its anti-bourgeois/anti international capitalist elements. In my opinion, the left analysis of the past, possibly excepting Reich and the early Guerin, always underestimated the significance of the popular ‘socialist’ elements contained in the so-called “Third Position” tendency in German fascism. The advocates of a “second socialist revolution” might have been crushed by Hitler at the time but their influence was substantial and continues to the present day. (These elements were much less significant in Italy and, even less so in Spain.)
The problem goes beyond the faulty estimates and inadequate terminology of previous generations of revolutionaries. Not only have we lived nearly another century within a supposedly terminal capitalism, we have also lived through the implosion of the supposed anti capitalist alternative, the “World Socialist System”, not to mention the neocolonial/neoliberal containment of the anti-imperialist upsurge of the “Peoples’s of the East”. The political terrain is drastically changed. Rather than a decrepit and frail capitalism confronted by an increasingly strong and determined international working class movement, we have a triumphant global capitalist system that, at least on the surface, has demonstrated the capacity to defeat or absorb its main challengers.
In 1922, Klara Zetkin described fascism as the price the working class had to pay for the failure of the social revolution. The price paid would be commensurate with the magnitude of the failure. For Zetkin, the failures probably appeared to be limited and local, the defeats of the revolutionary upsurges in Germany and Italy after WWI. –setbacks that she almost certainly thought were temporary - so the price would be limited. It’s likely she would have felt that failure on the scale that we have experienced it was quite out of the question.
However, what Zetkin said then is even more applicable now. Fascism still grows out of a dual crisis, a crisis of the capitalist order and a crisis of the movements against that order. Our political reality is dominated by two shaken faiths and two failed gods. First, there is the faith that capitalism is the necessary structure of modern progress - that allowing everyone to ‘Be All They Can Be’ will lead to the “end of history”. It isn’t selling well in much of the world. Second, unfortunately there is another commodity that isn’t selling - the faith that a fundamental emancipatory alternative to capitalism is both necessary and possible and, indeed, is already well under construction. Capitalism will pay a price for the first failure. We will be paying for the second and the reemergence of fascism will be a part of the price in each case.
We had better expect a fascism that won’t fit in the old definitions. It will be a neo-fascism growing from social conditions that are different from those that existed when fascism originally appeared. It will be a neo-fascism that incorporates a critique of the corporative tendency that was important in early fascism, particularly its Italian and Spanish variants. Most important, it will be a neo-fascism that grows out of and is decisively marked by the social consequences of the contemporary failures of liberatory revolutionary movements.
If the conditions now are so markedly different from when fascism originally developed, why continue to use a term that will necessarily be confusing? I could be convinced to make this change, but only if there was an alternative language that signified one important truth, a truth that the term fascism brings into focus…there are three players on the stage. The struggle won’t reduce to the simple ‘two classes’ dualism, the workers versus the bosses, labor versus capital; good versus evil. The black and white world that so many very different left politics hunger for is not going to happen.
The concept of a three sided struggle has the potential to introduce a dose of reality into simplistic complacent left thinking. Recognizing the existence of a reactionary, but radical and ‘modern’, opposition to global capitalism, an opposition that competes with us on ‘our’ ground and for ‘our’ base, can be an antidote to the “imbecilic optimism” which Gramsci warned against. At least it can be, when it is also understood that of the three sides, it is our side, the radical left, that is the least defined and the most poorly organized.
Clearly, if the conventional notion of fascism as a reactionary form or policy of capitalism is the point of reference, my position amounts to so much nonsense,. So let me begin a definition of neo-fascism by tossing some common left notions about fascism into the “Dead Sea of Meaning”. If Goff wants to fish them out, he may try.
As I said earlier, neo-fascism cannot be reduced to an optional form of the rule of capital. It is not just a tool, a ‘hammer against the working class’. It is not, and fascism never was, just the ‘…dictatorship of the most reactionary section of capital’ or any other version of the old Third International formula.
Neo-fascism is most definitely repressive, but so is capitalism. Neo-fascism is neither the logical end point nor the goal of capitalist repression.
Neo-fascist ideology is not necessarily based on racial or ethnic supremacy, on “blood”, although I know of no instance where it does not involve male supremacy.
Neo-fascism is not a “white privilege”. No nationality, race, or ethnicity is innoculated against it.
Neo-fascism is not conservative and not “pre-modern”, no matter what utopian descriptions of a mythologized past, Roman Empire or Islamic Kaliphate, are incorporated in its ideology.
Contemporary neo-fascism involves two elements. First there is a rapidly expanding social base This base is composed of the declassed and marginalized, a huge population, particularly in the ‘gap’, that has been permanently devalued – defined as non-productive and rendered redundant - by capitalist development. This is a feature of contemporary global capitalism. It is not the same as earlier capitalist enforced displacements of rural populations or petty bourgeois elements into the working classes. This is a post-proletariat, demoralized and demobilized by the failures of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, alienated from capital and anti-capital as well. It is a social layer that for a variety of economic, social, and military reasons, is commonly deeply segregated by gender.
The second element is the assortment of reactionary groups, with no necessary connection to each other, that more or less consciously try to organize this social base against the established structure of power, a structure which they see as corrupt, decadent and fundamentally wrong. These groups have no shortage of cracked messiahs and thugs, not to mention opportunists, but it is a big mistake to focus on these element at the expense of considering the operative ideas and values, particularly those involved in the critique of western capitalist ‘civilization’. (For an example of this critique focused on the opposition between “Atlantism” and “EurAsianism” look at national Bolshevik, Alexander Dugin’s essay on the “New World Order” on the Arctogaia website.)
From the classic fascist worldview neo-fascism takes the emphasis on hierarchy, order, discipline and sacrifice as contrasted with creativity, autonomy and fulfillment. Neo-fascism is anti-universalist. Its social vision is anti-humanist, legitimating the forceful subordination of majorities to minorities - of “low cultures” to “high cultures. The subordinated majorities are ‘untermenshen’, not fully human, a lesser status that is sometimes expressed as being ‘feminine’, rather than ‘masculine’. The alleged superiority of the privileged group may be defined in different ways, by gender as above, by religion, ‘culture’, as well as by the more familiar race, nation, and ethnicity. This all opens possibilities for competing neo-fascisms, complicating the overall challenge to global capitalism, not to mention confusing the hell out of the left.
Currently, Islamic radicalism is the most advanced outpost of neo-fascist politics in the organizational sense. This is where an animating ideology links with a mass base at a weak spot in the global capitalist structure. However, the overall jihadist ideology, combining religious reaction with neo-fascist themes, is not the clearest ideological expression of neo-fascism, even in the Middle East. In Syria, there are communist fragments which have adopted an explicitly National Bolshevik orientation. More important, in a trend that has been evident since the Iranian revolt against the Shah and can certainly be seen in the Palestinian conflict, the radical elements of national liberation movements are moving away from democratic and secular politics in this direction. Break offs from collapsing neocolonial structures, perhaps including some of the mysterious “Baathist Dead-enders”, also have the potential of embracing neo-fascism.
We must assess whether these organizing thrusts and ideological tendencies are likely to continue on a fascist trajectory in the Middle East, perhaps merging, and whether they have the potential to coalesce a popular bloc, a mass fascist movement. The assessment has to begin with a real appreciation of what already exists in the area. When multiple suicide bombers are mobilized every day for weeks…months…years, something significant is happening. When an insurgent movement operates with impunity in urban terrain, lacking its Sierra Madre or equivalent liberated zone, and it does this against an overwhelmingly superior military force, it means something about its popular base. When a movement can cripple the infrastructure that a population depends on for months or years, it must have support, a sea in which to swim. Give me a break about pro-Saddam Sunni sentiment; Give me a break about sectarian fanaticism; Give me a break about generic nationalist resistance to occupation; these exist, but they don’t explain this level of struggle, generated this rapidly, persisting for this amount of time; surviving against such overwhelming military force.
So what will be the eventual outcome? Let’s consider three basic possibilities which are not necessarily completely exclusive. First, Islamic radicalism might stay confined within an apocalyptic irrational religious shell which cannot deliver any basic changes for its constituency in this world and probably cannot achieve anything looking like a conclusive military victory. Second, Islamic radicalism may polarize into a new pro-capitalist authoritarianism and a popular anti-imperialist/anti capitalist anti-occupation movement. Finally, Islamic radicalism might lead to an organized explicitly neo-fascist movement.
The first option would lead to a gradual weakening of the substantive challenges to global capitalist power, but without resolving any of the social issues that have created the base for the movement. If it happens, the social base will inevitably find some other form of political expression unless the more sanguine of the neo-cons are correct and this area of ‘gap’ can develop ‘connectivity’ with the ‘core’. Of course, that would mean that I, and presumably Goff also, are wrong in seeing this potentially intractable base as a necessary consequence of capitalist ‘development’ - as being constantly regenerated.
This leads to the second option which contains the perspective – or should I say the hope – of most of the left. There may be a polarization, but it is unlikely that it will look like this, a division into poles which are each known and, I must say, known as failures, by both the social base of the movement and by the factions contending for its leadership.
There already are pro-capitalist authoritarianisms of every conceivable type. The problems with their viability have led to the current situation. Replacing the House of Saud with the House of bin Laden will not change much. Nor would the Allawi, Chalabi, or Jaafari options be substantially different from that of Saddam. The other side of the polarization is equally problematic. A successful polarization to the left must result in something new. This can’t be based on politics that have led to disaster in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and, prepare for it, Palestine. This leads to the last option. Remember, we are not talking about our preferences here, the issue is not what we would like the most, it is what we think is likely. Which do you think is most likely?
There are many neo-fascist organizing ventures that are more ideological, if less successful, than the Islamist groups. Some of them, particularly those of the National Bolshevik’ inclination also don’t define themselves as ‘fascists’. When Dugin is asked, “Are you a fascist?”, his answer is, “…not exactly, which means exactly not.” They see their politics as having transcended both fascism and bolshevism, merging the fascist ‘Third Position’ and ‘communism’ of the Stalin variant. Again, I don’t point this out because I like it, but because the potential for this sort of insurgent reactionary fascist movement extends far beyond any variant of religious fundamentalism. The real danger is that the “Islam” will become less significant in this movement and the ‘fascism’ more so. Isn’t it more likely that the polarization in the Middle East will take this path, not the convenient division into a comfortable ‘us’ and a comfortable ‘them’?
One final point: There is a general assumption that recognizing a fascist danger more or less automatically subordinates the struggle against the capitalist system to an anti-fascist alliance with a sector of it. This assumption has some roots. This is what happened with the ‘united’ and ‘popular’ fronts against fascism in the 30’s and 40’s and with various reincarnations of them more recently. It’s predictable that reformists and right wing communists will resurrect these failed positions as the proper response to Islamic radicalism and I understand why this makes leftists wary of an exaggerated emphasis on the fascist potentials in the current situation. I also understand why leftists would worry that this perspective might direct us away from solidarity with movements that are fighting against ‘our’ ruling class. This also has happened before.
However, without ignoring the dangers, our overriding responsibility is to think clearly, pay attention, and organize based on our best understanding of the truth, not on what we wish were true. Unfortunately, following this course means that the job will not look so easy and the road ahead won’t seem so straight.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Continued discourse on article, Debating a Neocon. Goff responds to Hamerquist
by Stan Goff
I don't mind being a straight man in effigy as long as the star acknowledges that it is just the effigy's role. Don Hammerquist goes all the way around the stage, using the straw-Goff as his prop, to deliver his final conclusion - that political Islam is fascism. So before I set the record straight on what are my own positions of record, as opposed to the Hammerquist scarecrow with my name lettered across its hollow chest, let me address his concluding point first - because it is important.
"Islamic fascism," he says, "is not some figment of ruling class propaganda." I agree. It is shortcut thinking by an Orientalist western metropolitan left. One has to broaden any operational definition of "fascism" into a
I am not surprised that Mr. Hammerquist hasn't bothered to see what else I might have written on any of these subjects, because his comments on the Counterpunch piece he ostensibly critiques indicate he didn't even read that. This is the most generous interpretation I can render, because the alternative is to believe that he intentionally misrepresented me, where he begins by saying, "Goff is wrong - the position of the so-called neocons and their opponents in the ruling class is about something."
If anyone cares to read the Counterpunch piece they will see that I spent the lion's share of my time at the podium during this debate explaining precisely and in some detail not only that their position was about something, but that it was about something very momentous, and that this is exactly why they have such thin arguments to justify their actions to the public. Mr. Hammerquist says that I "note [the process] accurately but fail to take it into account." How exactly does one note a thing, and note it accurately, yet somehow sidestep "taking it into account?"
He further states that I have claimed "there is nothing particularly new about the current political scene." In fact, and I refer readers to the original piece again, the changes that are driving the whole political conjuncture are the central feature of my opening remarks during the debate. These assertions made by Mr. Hammerquist are nothing short of bizarre in their near total disconnection from anything I actually said or wrote.
He can not find one single reference in the entire piece where I call present-day imperialism synonymous with its 19th Century variant. On the contrary, my entire opening presentation was spent describing exactly why I have here, and elsewhere, rejected the Lenin-Hobson-Hilferding theses about imperialism as applicable to present-day
l) So exactly what are the "tired first principles" to which he makes reference? And where have I ever "held up the flag?'
He takes a swipe at "apocalyptic fossil fuel determinism," a very neat put-down-style dismissal of a position he is welcome to critique in my more comprehensive treatment of it in the essay at http://counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html. I can only hope he bothers to read it more carefully than he did the piece under review.
This whole "critique," it turns out, is just a set-up to insert his thesis - a erroneous one in my view - about "capitalist internationalism," and this notion of Islamic fascism.
I have written a whole book on this kind of simplified moral imperialism that has tainted the metropolitan left, Full Spectrum Disorder, but I doubt he's read that either. I am always open to critique, as anyone who knows me will tell you. But I bristle a bit when I am misrepresented, partly because I have worked very hard to explain what I actually do mean when I write.
The invitation remains open to all - read what I actually said, and if you disagree with what I actually said, explain your disagreements with what I actually said, and we can have a conversation.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Responding to Stan Goff's, Debating a NeoCon
Goff’s positions are refreshing given what is often presented as radical. I agree with him that the war in Iraq is “…symptomatic of a much deeper global crisis”. I agree that the difficulties facing capital will not be automatically transformed into possibilities for a “more sensible” alternative. But that’s about as far as my agreement goes.
Of course the ruling class isn’t completely organized and self conscious, but it is a mistake to treat it as dumb and blind. Notwithstanding the polemical limitations of his particular debate partner, Goff is wrong – the position of the so-called neocons and their opponents in the ruling class is about something.
Ruling class policy is the end product of competing ruling class estimates and strategies. This process, as Goff notes accurately but fails to take into account, is far from transparent because many of the players don’t have “arguments that they can state”. Sometimes the process can end in policies that don’t advance ruling class interests. But whatever the specific policy direction, and whether or not it turns out to be a strategic error, it is the resultant of arguments and positions of different ruling class factions that “matter”. There is a “there there”- and it is, or should be, important to us.
I take Goff’s version of the parable of the scorpion and the frog to mean that there is nothing particularly new about the current political scene. It is just more of capitalism (or imperialism) doing what its nature requires it to do.
“The war in Iraq, while deeply morally repugnant, is not a failure of morality, but the action of a system that can’t help it, because like the scorpion, it is that system’s nature.”
For Goff, our tired first principles supplemented with a dose of apocalyptic fossil fuel determinism (something to be dealt with elsewhere) can explain what’s going on – both to ourselves and to a potential popular base. All we have to do is hold up the flag. I don’t think so…in fact, positions like this make me fear that it is our side that suffers from having no “there there”.
The global capitalist system is not, as Goff maintains, a simple expansion of late 19th century imperialism - “currently directed by the American state”. As opposed to the past, the defining element in the current situation is not competition between national capitalisms to “redivide the world”. As opposed to a slightly more recent past, the defining element is not a challenge to the capitalist metropolis by a wave of progressive and popular national liberation movements in the periphery with the so-called ‘socialist’ bloc constraining options on both sides.
Capitalism is a triumphant world system exactly because it has dealt with these past points of contradiction more or less successfully. But this triumph exposes a new reality with new problems.
When the “socialist bloc” collapsed, its rotting process had taken most of the momentum out of popular anti-capitalism. Ideologues were again able to argue that capitalism was the only possible form of modern social organization - that history was over. Capitalist labor, capital, and commodity markets, now functioning on a genuinely global scale, would automatically adjust and adapt, solving all foreseeable problems and creating the best of all possible worlds.
It took a few years for this hidden hand to develop severe arthritis. On the economic side: the end of the Asian ‘boom’; the stagnation of the EU; the collapse of the equities bubble, and the exposure of generalized corporate corruption, could not be ignored. On the political side; the problem of “failed states”; the proliferation of genocidal conflicts; the intractability of public health issues; the problem of Palestine, the persistence of underclasses in the core, undermined any notion of long term self regulating equilibrium and stability.
The neocons express a particular ruling class view of these new problems and a tentative political response to them. Their positions have problems, both internal and external, and they are not the only possible ruling class views. Nevertheless, the neocon position should be looked at carefully because, I think, it is winning the ruling class debate and, even if it doesn’t, it marks some changes in the political terrain that are important to the left.
Neocon politics gained momentum as an activist ruling class approach to power, challenging the laissez faire reliance on market economics. The neocons see the vulnerabilities in global capital. Old problems foretold in the Grundrisse are creating new centrifugal social forces. Capital must either expand or decline, and it can only expand, according to the neocons and to some other ruling class ideologues, through the active and efficient exercise of power.
Thomas Friedman probably doesn’t see himself as a neocon. After initially supporting the Iraq war he has moved to a weak opposition to the Middle East and Iraq policies associated with the embedded neocons. However, not so long ago, just before Seattle, and two years before 9/11, he put out the basic argument embraced by every variant of neocon. This is contained in the well known passage from his early 1999 article in the New York Times Magazine:
“For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas…the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” T. Friedman, NY Times Magazine, 3/28, 1999.
Friedman’s point of reference is what will make globalization “work”. This is extremely important, in my opinion. For the neocons and allied views, the current and projected use of U.S. power is not meant to advance a specifically U.S. national capitalism. Both Friedman and the neocons hold that U.S. power should serve global capitalism, not the reverse. Consider the similar view of T. Barnett, author of the Pentagon’s New Map and definitely an important voice from within the ruling class policy-making establishment:
“When I talk about globalization growing, I'm not talking about the enforcement of US interests on the rest of the world. I'm talking about places with rules replacing chaotic places. Globalization comes with rules, not a ruler.” Dec. 21, 2004, Interview of Barnett by Alex Steffan. This is available on Barnett’s website, thomaspmbarnett.com.
The neocon’s first commandment, the active use of U.S. power to advance “freedom” and “liberty” or “connectivity”, can require national sacrifices and might not lead to national aggrandizement. Many of the policies advanced by the neocons arguably will weaken U.S. capitalism in both the short run and the long run. This is exactly why these policies have stimulated significant opposition within the capitalist ruling class from both the official right and the official ‘left’, an opposition which in either case is essentially conservative. A paradoxical combination of traditional capitalist liberalism with traditional capitalist reaction was clear in the hapless Kerry campaign. In fact, the political bankruptcy of that campaign is itself testimony to the viability of the neo-con view - to the fact that something is “there”.
I think that the crucial feature of the current situation is not the emergence of a militarized and newly aggressive imperialistic U.S nationalism. It is the development of a militarized and aggressive capitalist internationalism that is militarily centered in the U.S. This ruling class internationalism, as advanced by the neocons, finds the existing nation/state institutional framework - the very framework which has contained popular reform movements, including both the economic class struggle and the national liberation movement – to be a source of dangerous inertia, not to mention an expense that might be politically unnecessary.
They question whether the existing state and multi-state institutions and policies are capable of the active exercise of power. For the most part they answer in the negative and propose shifts from traditional methods of rule in both the center and the periphery. These shifts are important, involving a lot more than scrapping the U.N. They bring into question the strategy of neocolonialism and the continuing centrality of white supremacy to capitalist power in the center. This is both much more than, and very different from, a reversion to Mark Twain’s imperialism. (Apologies to Tariq Ali.)
To some leftists like Anatol Liewan this all looks ‘irrational’:
“…the United States, which of all states today should feel like a satisfied power, is instead behaving like a revolutionary one, kicking to pieces the hill of which it is king …just as U.S. imperialism, emboldened by a strong shot of nationalism, is busy undermining the world political order of which the United States is hegemon, so dominant sections of the U.S. capitalist elite are suicidally gobbling up the fiscal foundations of American economic stability and the American capitalist system” Nation, July 7/ 03
Many such commentators undoubtedly expected that a more “rational” conservative ruling class policy, a la John Kerry, would supplant the temporary aberration instigated by the neocons. The fact that it didn’t happen should make them reconsider if it was so irrational. In fact, there is nothing particularly irrational about the neocon position, notwithstanding some mistakes in its implementation. The neocons begin from the premise that capitalism must be universal, as a global economy and political system and as a “civilization”, or it will become moribund. Given the premise, they are concerned with potential and actual sources of instability. Using Friedman as a point of reference again, the general conception is that a zone of ‘anarchy” or “chaos” is counterposed to a zone of “order” where global capitalism is hegemonic. The zone of chaos is dominated by social forces that will not accept the “rule sets” of market capitalism and bourgeois democracy and thus cannot be reliably controlled by traditional coercive and cooptive methods. The worldview of T. Barnett which divides the world between the interconnected “core” and the “non-integrated gap” is quite similar, notwithstanding significant differences concerning the extent to which the “gap” is pre-capitalist rather than anti (or post) capitalist.
In this conception, the opposition between zones, or between “gap” and “core” is ideological and cultural as much or more than ethnic and national. Rather than being embodied in particular states or movements aspiring to statehood, it tends to be expressed in transnational social movements.
In short, the neocons recognize, better than many radicals do, that global capitalism creates enemies with the potential to screw things up seriously, perhaps disastrously, and they are attempting to develop working responses to these threats all of which can be subsumed under the heading of the “War on Terror”. One of the distressing features of Goff’s piece is that he pictures all of this as essentially meaningless. I certainly have no problems with what Goff and others say about the absurdity and hypocrisy of a U.S. led “War” on terror. However, we must take into account the fact that virtually every state formation, every ruling class faction, and a substantial segment of the “people” and the “movement” have accepted essential elements of this “War”. This signals that the concept is much more substantial than the cartoon, good versus evil, version presented for public relations purposes. We waste effort dealing with this scarecrow.
Friedman is an important reference in this regard as well. Alone with more explicit neocons like William Kristol and James Woolsey, he regularly ridicules the notion of a war on a tactic – terrorism. He and the other neocons specify that the immediate object of the war on terror is not a tactic but a social movement, modern Islamic fundamentalism or, as many of them prefer, “Islamic Fascism”. It is not only a few intellectuals that take this position, it is widely accepted, e.g., it is an argument made in the text of the report of the 9/11 Commission.
Clearly, although the current focus is on Islamic Fascism, the basic conceptions of Friedman and the rest of the neocons, not to exclude Barnett, would apply equally as well to any potential liberatory anticapitalist movement. They are certainly not upset that some features of the War on Terror involve techniques and policies that could be used against a revolutionary left as well as against Islamic radicals. However, it would be a serious mistake, if we thought that the current left was the real target of “homeland security” etc. The more control tools available to the ruling class the better it likes it, but generalized repression is not the best ruling class method to use on us.
This is the segue into my final point. It’s not the smoothest, but I don’t have the energy to do better.
For a period of time after Seattle, it appeared that an anticapitalist mass movement was rapidly developing. Certainly many participants believed that this was the case. Of course, internal weaknesses were obvious. While reformist tendencies were initially on the defensive, the fetishizing of street tactics opened the more militant sections of the movement to state manipulation, rebuilding the credentials of reformist strands. These problems had reached a crisis point by the G-8 demo in Genoa, and, with no resolution and not even serious discussion, subsequent actions began to look more like posturing and street theatre than the first stages of a revolution. An internal examination and reorientation might have gotten the movement back on track, but 9/11 happened.
Bush, Cheney, et al are constantly saying that 9/11 “changed everything”. It’s debatable what was changed for the ruling class, but it is not debatable that it changed a hell of a lot for the movement .
In the first place, it made it clear that there were more than two players on the scene. Islamic fascism is not some figment of ruling class propaganda. We must realize that there are serious and committed enemies of global capitalism that are not our friends in any shape or form. Despite its 7th century mythology and its historic roots in imperialist policies, Islamic fascism is a modern social movement with revolutionary implications that are certainly anti-imperialist, certainly anti-bourgeois; certainly anti global capitalism, and, maybe, even anti-capitalist.
We shouldn’t need the pictures of mass struggles where women are totally absent, to grasp that Islamic Fascism is completely counter to human liberation. Most important, we shouldn’t think that it is a unique development. To the contrary, we should expect the development of other neofascist movements, though possibly without the religious shell, in all of the areas where capitalist development is crushing human potentials and where no liberatory challenge is present.
Not so coincidentally, 9/11 propelled Islamic neofascism onto the scene in a way that helped fragment the antiglobal movement and push many of its remaining elements into reformist postures – looking for alliances with sectors of one’s own ruling class or with fundamentally opposed social forces. This gets to another reason the neocons should not be dismissed. This is a ruling class strategy that will develop a movement face, a left wing version that argues for a movement towards a united front with “liberal” capitalists to fight the “fascism” of Al Qaida, Hamas, Hesbollah, the Taliban et al. This may seem laughable when it is just Christopher Hitchens making his WWII parallels, but would it be so easily dismissed if it came from a grouping with movement credentials like RAWA? – not at all an implausible scenario. And what about the equally problematic alternative to a neocons inspired united front against fascism – this might be a united front against “imperialism” where we link up with movements that actively suppress women, that deify leadership and revealed truths, that function through internal coercion and substitute discipline for open debate and democratic decision-making - because they are enemies of our enemy.
Don H.
Of course the ruling class isn’t completely organized and self conscious, but it is a mistake to treat it as dumb and blind. Notwithstanding the polemical limitations of his particular debate partner, Goff is wrong – the position of the so-called neocons and their opponents in the ruling class is about something.
Ruling class policy is the end product of competing ruling class estimates and strategies. This process, as Goff notes accurately but fails to take into account, is far from transparent because many of the players don’t have “arguments that they can state”. Sometimes the process can end in policies that don’t advance ruling class interests. But whatever the specific policy direction, and whether or not it turns out to be a strategic error, it is the resultant of arguments and positions of different ruling class factions that “matter”. There is a “there there”- and it is, or should be, important to us.
I take Goff’s version of the parable of the scorpion and the frog to mean that there is nothing particularly new about the current political scene. It is just more of capitalism (or imperialism) doing what its nature requires it to do.
“The war in Iraq, while deeply morally repugnant, is not a failure of morality, but the action of a system that can’t help it, because like the scorpion, it is that system’s nature.”
For Goff, our tired first principles supplemented with a dose of apocalyptic fossil fuel determinism (something to be dealt with elsewhere) can explain what’s going on – both to ourselves and to a potential popular base. All we have to do is hold up the flag. I don’t think so…in fact, positions like this make me fear that it is our side that suffers from having no “there there”.
The global capitalist system is not, as Goff maintains, a simple expansion of late 19th century imperialism - “currently directed by the American state”. As opposed to the past, the defining element in the current situation is not competition between national capitalisms to “redivide the world”. As opposed to a slightly more recent past, the defining element is not a challenge to the capitalist metropolis by a wave of progressive and popular national liberation movements in the periphery with the so-called ‘socialist’ bloc constraining options on both sides.
Capitalism is a triumphant world system exactly because it has dealt with these past points of contradiction more or less successfully. But this triumph exposes a new reality with new problems.
When the “socialist bloc” collapsed, its rotting process had taken most of the momentum out of popular anti-capitalism. Ideologues were again able to argue that capitalism was the only possible form of modern social organization - that history was over. Capitalist labor, capital, and commodity markets, now functioning on a genuinely global scale, would automatically adjust and adapt, solving all foreseeable problems and creating the best of all possible worlds.
It took a few years for this hidden hand to develop severe arthritis. On the economic side: the end of the Asian ‘boom’; the stagnation of the EU; the collapse of the equities bubble, and the exposure of generalized corporate corruption, could not be ignored. On the political side; the problem of “failed states”; the proliferation of genocidal conflicts; the intractability of public health issues; the problem of Palestine, the persistence of underclasses in the core, undermined any notion of long term self regulating equilibrium and stability.
The neocons express a particular ruling class view of these new problems and a tentative political response to them. Their positions have problems, both internal and external, and they are not the only possible ruling class views. Nevertheless, the neocon position should be looked at carefully because, I think, it is winning the ruling class debate and, even if it doesn’t, it marks some changes in the political terrain that are important to the left.
Neocon politics gained momentum as an activist ruling class approach to power, challenging the laissez faire reliance on market economics. The neocons see the vulnerabilities in global capital. Old problems foretold in the Grundrisse are creating new centrifugal social forces. Capital must either expand or decline, and it can only expand, according to the neocons and to some other ruling class ideologues, through the active and efficient exercise of power.
Thomas Friedman probably doesn’t see himself as a neocon. After initially supporting the Iraq war he has moved to a weak opposition to the Middle East and Iraq policies associated with the embedded neocons. However, not so long ago, just before Seattle, and two years before 9/11, he put out the basic argument embraced by every variant of neocon. This is contained in the well known passage from his early 1999 article in the New York Times Magazine:
“For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas…the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” T. Friedman, NY Times Magazine, 3/28, 1999.
Friedman’s point of reference is what will make globalization “work”. This is extremely important, in my opinion. For the neocons and allied views, the current and projected use of U.S. power is not meant to advance a specifically U.S. national capitalism. Both Friedman and the neocons hold that U.S. power should serve global capitalism, not the reverse. Consider the similar view of T. Barnett, author of the Pentagon’s New Map and definitely an important voice from within the ruling class policy-making establishment:
“When I talk about globalization growing, I'm not talking about the enforcement of US interests on the rest of the world. I'm talking about places with rules replacing chaotic places. Globalization comes with rules, not a ruler.” Dec. 21, 2004, Interview of Barnett by Alex Steffan. This is available on Barnett’s website, thomaspmbarnett.com.
The neocon’s first commandment, the active use of U.S. power to advance “freedom” and “liberty” or “connectivity”, can require national sacrifices and might not lead to national aggrandizement. Many of the policies advanced by the neocons arguably will weaken U.S. capitalism in both the short run and the long run. This is exactly why these policies have stimulated significant opposition within the capitalist ruling class from both the official right and the official ‘left’, an opposition which in either case is essentially conservative. A paradoxical combination of traditional capitalist liberalism with traditional capitalist reaction was clear in the hapless Kerry campaign. In fact, the political bankruptcy of that campaign is itself testimony to the viability of the neo-con view - to the fact that something is “there”.
I think that the crucial feature of the current situation is not the emergence of a militarized and newly aggressive imperialistic U.S nationalism. It is the development of a militarized and aggressive capitalist internationalism that is militarily centered in the U.S. This ruling class internationalism, as advanced by the neocons, finds the existing nation/state institutional framework - the very framework which has contained popular reform movements, including both the economic class struggle and the national liberation movement – to be a source of dangerous inertia, not to mention an expense that might be politically unnecessary.
They question whether the existing state and multi-state institutions and policies are capable of the active exercise of power. For the most part they answer in the negative and propose shifts from traditional methods of rule in both the center and the periphery. These shifts are important, involving a lot more than scrapping the U.N. They bring into question the strategy of neocolonialism and the continuing centrality of white supremacy to capitalist power in the center. This is both much more than, and very different from, a reversion to Mark Twain’s imperialism. (Apologies to Tariq Ali.)
To some leftists like Anatol Liewan this all looks ‘irrational’:
“…the United States, which of all states today should feel like a satisfied power, is instead behaving like a revolutionary one, kicking to pieces the hill of which it is king …just as U.S. imperialism, emboldened by a strong shot of nationalism, is busy undermining the world political order of which the United States is hegemon, so dominant sections of the U.S. capitalist elite are suicidally gobbling up the fiscal foundations of American economic stability and the American capitalist system” Nation, July 7/ 03
Many such commentators undoubtedly expected that a more “rational” conservative ruling class policy, a la John Kerry, would supplant the temporary aberration instigated by the neocons. The fact that it didn’t happen should make them reconsider if it was so irrational. In fact, there is nothing particularly irrational about the neocon position, notwithstanding some mistakes in its implementation. The neocons begin from the premise that capitalism must be universal, as a global economy and political system and as a “civilization”, or it will become moribund. Given the premise, they are concerned with potential and actual sources of instability. Using Friedman as a point of reference again, the general conception is that a zone of ‘anarchy” or “chaos” is counterposed to a zone of “order” where global capitalism is hegemonic. The zone of chaos is dominated by social forces that will not accept the “rule sets” of market capitalism and bourgeois democracy and thus cannot be reliably controlled by traditional coercive and cooptive methods. The worldview of T. Barnett which divides the world between the interconnected “core” and the “non-integrated gap” is quite similar, notwithstanding significant differences concerning the extent to which the “gap” is pre-capitalist rather than anti (or post) capitalist.
In this conception, the opposition between zones, or between “gap” and “core” is ideological and cultural as much or more than ethnic and national. Rather than being embodied in particular states or movements aspiring to statehood, it tends to be expressed in transnational social movements.
In short, the neocons recognize, better than many radicals do, that global capitalism creates enemies with the potential to screw things up seriously, perhaps disastrously, and they are attempting to develop working responses to these threats all of which can be subsumed under the heading of the “War on Terror”. One of the distressing features of Goff’s piece is that he pictures all of this as essentially meaningless. I certainly have no problems with what Goff and others say about the absurdity and hypocrisy of a U.S. led “War” on terror. However, we must take into account the fact that virtually every state formation, every ruling class faction, and a substantial segment of the “people” and the “movement” have accepted essential elements of this “War”. This signals that the concept is much more substantial than the cartoon, good versus evil, version presented for public relations purposes. We waste effort dealing with this scarecrow.
Friedman is an important reference in this regard as well. Alone with more explicit neocons like William Kristol and James Woolsey, he regularly ridicules the notion of a war on a tactic – terrorism. He and the other neocons specify that the immediate object of the war on terror is not a tactic but a social movement, modern Islamic fundamentalism or, as many of them prefer, “Islamic Fascism”. It is not only a few intellectuals that take this position, it is widely accepted, e.g., it is an argument made in the text of the report of the 9/11 Commission.
Clearly, although the current focus is on Islamic Fascism, the basic conceptions of Friedman and the rest of the neocons, not to exclude Barnett, would apply equally as well to any potential liberatory anticapitalist movement. They are certainly not upset that some features of the War on Terror involve techniques and policies that could be used against a revolutionary left as well as against Islamic radicals. However, it would be a serious mistake, if we thought that the current left was the real target of “homeland security” etc. The more control tools available to the ruling class the better it likes it, but generalized repression is not the best ruling class method to use on us.
This is the segue into my final point. It’s not the smoothest, but I don’t have the energy to do better.
For a period of time after Seattle, it appeared that an anticapitalist mass movement was rapidly developing. Certainly many participants believed that this was the case. Of course, internal weaknesses were obvious. While reformist tendencies were initially on the defensive, the fetishizing of street tactics opened the more militant sections of the movement to state manipulation, rebuilding the credentials of reformist strands. These problems had reached a crisis point by the G-8 demo in Genoa, and, with no resolution and not even serious discussion, subsequent actions began to look more like posturing and street theatre than the first stages of a revolution. An internal examination and reorientation might have gotten the movement back on track, but 9/11 happened.
Bush, Cheney, et al are constantly saying that 9/11 “changed everything”. It’s debatable what was changed for the ruling class, but it is not debatable that it changed a hell of a lot for the movement .
In the first place, it made it clear that there were more than two players on the scene. Islamic fascism is not some figment of ruling class propaganda. We must realize that there are serious and committed enemies of global capitalism that are not our friends in any shape or form. Despite its 7th century mythology and its historic roots in imperialist policies, Islamic fascism is a modern social movement with revolutionary implications that are certainly anti-imperialist, certainly anti-bourgeois; certainly anti global capitalism, and, maybe, even anti-capitalist.
We shouldn’t need the pictures of mass struggles where women are totally absent, to grasp that Islamic Fascism is completely counter to human liberation. Most important, we shouldn’t think that it is a unique development. To the contrary, we should expect the development of other neofascist movements, though possibly without the religious shell, in all of the areas where capitalist development is crushing human potentials and where no liberatory challenge is present.
Not so coincidentally, 9/11 propelled Islamic neofascism onto the scene in a way that helped fragment the antiglobal movement and push many of its remaining elements into reformist postures – looking for alliances with sectors of one’s own ruling class or with fundamentally opposed social forces. This gets to another reason the neocons should not be dismissed. This is a ruling class strategy that will develop a movement face, a left wing version that argues for a movement towards a united front with “liberal” capitalists to fight the “fascism” of Al Qaida, Hamas, Hesbollah, the Taliban et al. This may seem laughable when it is just Christopher Hitchens making his WWII parallels, but would it be so easily dismissed if it came from a grouping with movement credentials like RAWA? – not at all an implausible scenario. And what about the equally problematic alternative to a neocons inspired united front against fascism – this might be a united front against “imperialism” where we link up with movements that actively suppress women, that deify leadership and revealed truths, that function through internal coercion and substitute discipline for open debate and democratic decision-making - because they are enemies of our enemy.
Don H.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
