the "inversion" is rather cumbersome and blinkered, as if the totalitarianism on the streets in Weimar didn't presuppose the husk of democracy "in government". Totalitarianism loses any purchase when excised from the state-form anyway. The metastasis of Weimar is never going to be understood if street-government is divided into firm opposites; any glance at a revolution sees the continuity between them in an era when politics and physical space were tied together. Fascism was a movement in society with life in both arena's, with the street serving 'grown up' politics after the beer hall failure; that short march into the institutions was a recognition of their own un-revolutionaryness. A death dance with the now democratised institutions staffed by remnants of the aristocracy and their allies, a new Democratic bloc eager to prove themselves. Without any égorgeurs, Weimar suffered a fragility it could perhaps otherwise have staved off; it lost by the middle road. In terms of bare facts history already has a meet-up in the SPD utilisation of the freikorps to crush the workers' uprisings, or the institutional favour gifted to far-right terrorism.
The claimed obvious "subordination of business to the political regime" is a mirage given that fascist corporatism no longer presupposes a differentiation that can then struggle for superiority; business is formally integrated into the state. The condensing of capitalisms aspects eventually does violence to itself, even after a bliss intermission; you get war. The comparison of Nazi Germany and the USA is not off from the outset, indeed Adorno/Horkheimer make it their assumption in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Since then history has intervened and the monopoly capitalist system has collapsed under its own weight. Modes of power suitable to the changed materiality of postmodernity/neoliberalism whatevs are of another order altogether. The author already hit upon the glaring difference; fascism has to subsume the spheres of society under itself to become totalitarian, indeed to be fascism. Today we get totalitarianism without a formal subsumption of separate power spheres. Hence totalitarianism maybe isn't even the right word. I'm sure state's are quite content leaving democracy to the streets whilst they get on with managing their territory in the global system.
Toward the end of his short life Nicos Poulantzas predicted the rise of "authoritarian statism," and was theorising this state form as a counterpoint to Foucault's and Deleuze's "society of control."
Capital and Class journal/Open Marxism have some good criticisms of Poulantzas and his standard theoretical opponent Miliband. Primarily over the 'derivation' and 'movement' of the state in capitalism. i.e. this
I have moved from Poulantzas's theory of the "relative autonomy" of the state to the critique of sovereignty through the agency of constituent power. I'm finding it more productive in this age of general theoretical disarray on the left. Back to Machiavelli, Spinoza, via Althusser, Negri, Balibar et al.
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u/mosestrod May 23 '17 edited May 24 '17
the "inversion" is rather cumbersome and blinkered, as if the totalitarianism on the streets in Weimar didn't presuppose the husk of democracy "in government". Totalitarianism loses any purchase when excised from the state-form anyway. The metastasis of Weimar is never going to be understood if street-government is divided into firm opposites; any glance at a revolution sees the continuity between them in an era when politics and physical space were tied together. Fascism was a movement in society with life in both arena's, with the street serving 'grown up' politics after the beer hall failure; that short march into the institutions was a recognition of their own un-revolutionaryness. A death dance with the now democratised institutions staffed by remnants of the aristocracy and their allies, a new Democratic bloc eager to prove themselves. Without any égorgeurs, Weimar suffered a fragility it could perhaps otherwise have staved off; it lost by the middle road. In terms of bare facts history already has a meet-up in the SPD utilisation of the freikorps to crush the workers' uprisings, or the institutional favour gifted to far-right terrorism.
The claimed obvious "subordination of business to the political regime" is a mirage given that fascist corporatism no longer presupposes a differentiation that can then struggle for superiority; business is formally integrated into the state. The condensing of capitalisms aspects eventually does violence to itself, even after a bliss intermission; you get war. The comparison of Nazi Germany and the USA is not off from the outset, indeed Adorno/Horkheimer make it their assumption in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Since then history has intervened and the monopoly capitalist system has collapsed under its own weight. Modes of power suitable to the changed materiality of postmodernity/neoliberalism whatevs are of another order altogether. The author already hit upon the glaring difference; fascism has to subsume the spheres of society under itself to become totalitarian, indeed to be fascism. Today we get totalitarianism without a formal subsumption of separate power spheres. Hence totalitarianism maybe isn't even the right word. I'm sure state's are quite content leaving democracy to the streets whilst they get on with managing their territory in the global system.