So the GOP convention has started and the smear attacks against Barack Obama continue. Add to the fodder this quote by former California governor Pete Wilson: "the audacity that he is offering us, quite frankly, is socialism" and mentions of "class warfare" and "socialized medicine." (This is quoted from the report in the San Francisco Chronicle). Let's be clear, just because you are presented as a Leftist (a position that is always relative) does not mean you are a Socialist or a Marxist. If anything, Obama's platform is politically conservative (even though this strangely puts him on the left in US politics). He acknowledges the existence of a social contract in which the government is there to protect the people from enemies (be it "terrorists" or "personal ruin") in exchange for taxes. There are no questioning of the nature of capitalism (rather, in this discourse, capitalism can be good).
And should we mention that "socialized medicine" was invented by a conservative named Otto von Bismarck?
And should we mention that "socialized medicine" was invented by a conservative named Otto von Bismarck?
Comments
According to a High School textbook I was issued in 1998, Fascism is Right Wing and Communism is decidedly Leftist. Given these polarities, doesn't the Communist mantra of 'all power to the workers councils' seem absurdly micro-political, or, rather 'states-rights'ish, for the Democratic agenda, which prides itself on ideals of centralized regulation?
Indeed, Fascism and its extraordinarily centralized government seems more akin to the Democratic platform than the Republican, which has long alleged its stance to be for States' rights. So here we have a reversal of the model of Right and Left wing - right wing being for decentralized governance and Left wing being for super-centralized Nation-State.
Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats have been touting neo-liberal Free Trade Agreements, landing squarely in the de-regulationist wonder-world of both centralized power and the arrogation of authority. In this sense, the politicians of the U.S. have gotten us into a fine muddle indeed, proving to be more like the actual mold of the U.S.S.R. and the German National Socialists.
What I mean here is that there must be a strict refinition of the power structures of government. The Soviet Union and Nazism have both been shown by Wolff/Reznick among others to have shared the quality of State Capitalist autocracy. Given the analysis of neo-liberal capitalism, it is my opinion that it is time to acknowledge the absence of leftist and rightist political theory from the governmental order - essentially, these platforms, Rep and Dem, are mirror games which hide the absurd realities of power-mongering, corrupt scoundrels.
D&G's fear that this was a natural psychological pathology was embodied in 'the fascist of the mind', devastating the boundaries of difference and bringing homogeneity. Here we return to their understanding of Artaud's Body Without Organs - the one who could control nature in order to determine a fate that otherwise seems determined towards totalitarianism.
If we are equating Stalinism, Maoism, and Nazism under this banner of pathological totalitarianism, we ought, as Adorno exclaimed, to first bring up capitalism. We cannot discuss Nazism without its partner in crime, capital. Similarly, under Stalinism, we can locate those State Capitalist tendencies which make the Party the appropriators of the surplus (i.e. the bourgeoisie).
Yet one must remember, aesthetically, as Fascism and Leninist Bolshevism were inchoate, they were the two paragons of Futurism and progressive ideology. Perhaps this is proof that Fascism and Bolshevism started out as seminal Leftist movements of the 20th Century until they cemented their powers.
Furthermore, Nazism and the SA waged street war against the Social Democrats. While their sloganeering exposed their pretense of Nationalism masquerading as Socialism, their racism and idealism was never separated, rather, they were understood as part of the same tradition. As pretenders to Socialist ideals, the Nazis used prejudice and violence to pronounce the will of a bruised public. Simply because they were prejudiced does not mean they were not Leftist - in fact, their idealist, Hegelian rhetoric and supra-nationalism prompts the question: were the Nazis not as radical for their time as, say, the seminal Leftist, Proudhon, whose proto-Nazi stance towards the Jews involved sending them to East Europe and/or exterminating them. I quote from the text: "One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it."
I agree with Marx, Zizek, et.al. on this matter: 'Leftism' seems all too often the bastion of bourgeois Liberal ideology. It is time to reflect on the historic failure of the Left to stay in power against Right Wing violence and coercion, and to define our terms on the basis of deconstructing the ideology of the political spectrum. Perhaps we might again look at schizophrenia and capital viz. D&G for answers in this regard - the rhizome does not know right or left, it does not care, but it grows in all directions. Left? Right? I just want Socialism, dammit!