{"id":3733,"date":"2024-04-02T22:51:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T22:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/?p=3733"},"modified":"2025-01-23T20:55:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T20:55:37","slug":"samir-amin-return-of-fascism-in-contemporary-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/?p=3733&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Samir Amin:\u00a0Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Samir Amin:\u00a0Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Samir Amin<\/strong> is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His books published by Monthly Review Press include The Liberal Virus<\/em>, The World We Wish to See<\/em>, The Law of Worldwide Value<\/em>, and, most recently, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism<\/em>. This article was translated from the French by James Membrez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not by chance that the title of this contribution links the return of fascism on the political scene with the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Fascism is not synonymous with an authoritarian police regime that rejects the uncertainties of parliamentary electoral democracy. Fascism is a particular political response to the challenges with which the management of capitalist society may be confronted in specific circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unity and Diversity of Fascism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political movements that can rightly be called fascist were in the forefront and exercised power in a number of European countries, particularly during the 1930s up to 1945. These included Italy\u2019s Benito Mussolini, Germany\u2019s Adolf Hitler, Spain\u2019s Francisco Franco, Portugal\u2019s Ant\u00f3nio de Oliveira Salazar, France\u2019s Philippe P\u00e9tain, Hungary\u2019s Mikl\u00f3s Horthy, Romania\u2019s Ion Antonescu, and Croatia\u2019s Ante Pavelic. The diversity of societies that were the victims of fascism\u2014both major developed capitalist societies and minor dominated capitalist societies, some connected with a victorious war, others the product of defeat\u2014should prevent us from lumping them all together. I shall thus specify the different effects that this diversity of structures and conjunctures produced in these societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, beyond this diversity, all these fascist regimes had two characteristics in common:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) In the circumstances, they were all willing to manage the government and society in such a way as not to call the fundamental principles of capitalism into question, specifically private capitalist property, including that of modern monopoly capitalism. That is why I call these different forms of fascism as particular ways of managing capitalism and not political forms that challenge the legitimacy of capitalism, even if \u201ccapitalism\u201d or \u201cplutocracies\u201d were subject to long diatribes in the rhetoric of fascist speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The lie that hides the true nature of these speeches appears as soon as one examines the \u201calternative\u201d proposed by these various forms of fascism, which are always silent concerning the main point\u2014private capitalist property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It remains the case that the fascist choice is not the only response to the challenges confronting the political management of a capitalist society. It is only in certain conjunctures of violent and deep crisis that the fascist solution appears to be the best one for dominant capital, or sometimes even the only possible one. The analysis must, then, focus on these crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2)\u00a0The fascist choice for managing a capitalist society in crisis is always based\u2014by definition even\u2014on the categorical rejection of \u201cdemocracy.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Fascism always replaces the general principles on which the theories and practices of modern democracies are based\u2014recognition of a diversity of opinions, recourse to electoral procedures to determine a majority, guarantee of the rights of the minority, etc.\u2014with the opposed values of submission to the requirements of collective discipline and the authority of the supreme leader and his main agents. This reversal of values is then always accompanied by a return of backward-looking ideas, which are able to provide an apparent legitimacy to the procedures of submission that are implemented. The proclamation of the supposed necessity of returning to the (\u201cmedieval\u201d) past, of submitting to the state religion or to some supposed characteristic of the \u201crace\u201d or the (ethnic) \u201cnation\u201d make up the panoply of ideological discourses deployed by the fascist powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please Download for Full Text<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samir-Amin<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samir Amin:\u00a0Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His books published by Monthly Review Press include The Liberal Virus, The World We Wish to See, The Law of Worldwide Value, and, most recently, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. This article was translated from the French by James Membrez. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,33,30,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-en","category-history-en","category-socialism-en","category-world-en"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3854,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions\/3854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksizm.org.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}