We like to say that they’re the same, but there seems to be some kind of difference. In the USA, a liberal will usually prefer wine, foreign cars and food and media, basketball, CNN and The New York Times. A fascist will prefer beer, American cars and food and media, football, and Fox News. One votes for Democrats, the other votes for Republicans. One is obsessed with Russia, the other with China. One at least pays lip service to LGBTQ+ folks, the other wants them in concentration camps. One is happy to have people of color in positions of power, so long as they toe the capitalist line, while the other rages against this. One tends to have a college education, the other doesn’t (although plenty of chuds work in tech or are engineers of some sort). One tends to work in offices, the other tends to be a business owner and/or landlord, although American labor unions are full of liberals and conservatives (it’s the same for non-unionized blue collar workers). Liberal business owners tend to be in the service industry (especially restaurant owners, in my experience), while conservative business owners are more concerned with resource extraction or anything related to fossil fuels. Liberals tend to be more articulate (with notable exceptions), while conservatives can barely form sentences, even when they’re just speaking.
What makes a person a liberal or conservative? I’m defining these people here as anyone who participates in federal elections in the USA, roughly half of the people trapped in the USA. They tend to have at least have some money and property. I guess a white male cis born in the countryside is likelier to become a fascist, while a similar person born and raised in cities will probably be more liberal. But there are plenty of exceptions. Epstein and most of his friends are kind of difficult to classify here. It seems that it’s easier to tell these people apart when they’re in the labor aristocracy / petite bourgeoisie, not in the haute bourgeoisie.
We determined awhile ago on Hexbear that most of the posters here come from liberal backgrounds, so what pushed us out of liberalism into communism? (We’ve also had this discussion several times, sorry for reviving it.) Dialectically, the contradiction of the individual versus society determines this, along with subjective factors. I remember noticing homeless people when I was five; I was drifting toward communism in high school because I was so unhappy with the pointlessness of my education, but in college I was much happier and veered back toward liberalism again, and stayed that way for years. As an adult I taught overseas, used universal health care many times, then made the mistake of returning to the USA, got involved in politics, and discovered that I was playing for the wrong team, because liberals (especially the richest and most powerful liberals) are so rabidly against universal health care, despite the fact that it costs them so much more money and so many more years of their lives to be this way. This basically radicalized me permanently. But even now, so many liberals are planning to vote for the blue genocide pedophile party over the red genocide pedophile party, it seems like nothing except years of re-education (+ the total destruction of the USA) will ever change their minds. The same for conservatives, of course.
Just some thoughts I’ve been meaning to post here for awhile, I’m posting for critique.
There is no fundamental difference between liberals and fascists, when their capital is in danger even the most of well-meaning liberal will turn into a fascist.
I think you are more focused on the abyssmal contradiction between countryside and city. The republican/liberal dynamic is pretty much built on playing with this contradiction,
The core component of all fascist states that have existed has been the desire for autarky. That is, a state which is entirely self-reliant with no imports, only exports or none at all. To achieve this, they either expand their borders to get the resources they need or they cull the population at home or both.
This is capitalism in decay and colonialism turned inwards. The bourgeois can no longer extract profits from what they have, but capitalism still demands line goes up. Once there’s no more labor they can exploit, no monopolies to build, and no corners to cut, the contradictions become impossible to deal with materially.
The difference is liberalism does not wish to establish an autarky. Liberalism demands class solidarity among the bourgeois at an international level. For example, you have American electronics built in Japan using raw materials from the Congo being sold in France. This requires the bourgeois in each of those countries to not become conflicted with one another. All of their violence is directed towards the proletariat while they conspire together in mutually beneficial trade.
A fascist breaks solidarity. An American fascist, using our above example, would prefer to occupy Japan to use as slave labor, destroy the Congolese population so resources could be completely strip mined and stolen, and sell the finished products exclusively in the US. The bourgeois of those nations would resist, assembling their own armies to eliminate the class traitor.
This is what we saw happen in WWII. Italy, Germany, and Japan all tried expanding their borders to enslave and steal against the interests of liberal capitalists who continued adhering to laissez-faire trade, going so far as to cooperate with communists. Other fascist projects, such as Spain and Portugal or South Korea and Chile post-WWII, tried similar tactics but were left weak from their initial power grabs so they were unable to invade anyone else. They went with the other option of internal culling of their populations, starting with leftist opposition.
This is also why liberals become fascists, scratched or not. The contradictions of capitalism become too overwhelming as the ways to generate profit go extinct. The only way to end those contradictions is socialism. Liberals would rather the system continue, so the contradictions are swept under the rug with fascism as they start trying to decide who among them should be expelled.
This focus on autarky as the essential factor is a bit idealist, no offense. But you also laid out the correct material basis for the historical (accidental) tendency toward autarky in fascist states.
Autarky is not an end in itself for fascism. It is only a means for the consolidation of power to one section of the capitalist class. It is not a question of bourgeois ideological struggle nor of solidarity.
The distinct functions of capital laid out in Capital show the necessary division of the bourgeoisie into distinct sub-classes, corresponding to the various forms of surplus-value (rent, profit, interest, … others?). At all times there is a divergence in the particular interests of each of these sub-classes. This contradiction manifests itself in a crisis due to any number of reasons, one of which could be a general fall in the rate of profit. But absent a crisis, what you described as “class solidarity” is not class consciousness in any meaningful sense, but merely the automatic result of their mutual self-interest in appropriating a portion of the total surplus-value. There is no necessity that any sub-class of capital believes in bourgeois solidarity.
This is what we saw happen in WWII. Italy, Germany, and Japan all tried expanding their borders to enslave and steal against the interests of liberal capitalists who continued adhering to laissez-faire trade, going so far as to cooperate with communists.
They tried to enslave people outside their borders because the Allies minus the Soviet Union and China had already been enslaving people outside their borders for centuries. The inter-imperialist rivalry part of WWII was just imperialists fighting who gets the privilege of enslaving the rest of the world.
I don’t disagree with your point here but Nazis wanted to turn such parts of the world into very literal slave plantations - with forced labourers in chains and all white overseers - whereas the Allies were content with owning the means of production, having low wage labourers work on it, and even collaborating with foreign upper classes.
i’ve noticed the same things you have, so it’s nice at least to have some confirmation. the professional-managerial class tends to vote more liberal, and the petty bourgeoisie tends to be more conservative. obviously the lines there are far from firm. i would think it has something to do with how democrats are more concerned with giving concessions to workers, especially wealthy ones, and republicans are concerned with taking things from workers. democrats make it slightly easier to unionize (if your union doesn’t rock the boat too much) and republicans make it harder. the pmc benefits from unions or at least doesn’t care, and the petty bourgeoisie is scared shitless of unions.
same for other policy. the petty bourgeoisie, as we know, forms the material base for fascism, because any change in existing property relations would completely destroy their already precarious class position. the pmc is similar in that they also benefit from the current state of things, but they don’t need to be nearly so wary of property in particular.
the petty bourgeoisie sees someone shoplifting from walgreens and their stomach drops out of their ass. the pmc sees shoppers prevented from accessing their treats by cages or guards or whatever, and they get upset. or maybe they have more sympathy for the shoplifter. accordingly, democrat-run states tend to be more lenient on petty property crimes, and republican-run states tend to be incredibly harsh.
the petty bourgeoisie sees in immigrants an easy scapegoat for why they haven’t become patrick bateman yet, whereas the pmc sees their housekeeper or the line cook who works at their local restaurant. both love ice, the petty bourgeoisie because they love deportations, and the pmc because they love the threat of deportations, which keeps their housekeeper and line cook from unionizing. although as you mentioned, some industries have different relations to immigrants than others, which certainly affects both subclasses.
in terms of less-material stuff, the dems love their smarmy harvard graduates with big credentials, and the gop loves their plain-talking klan members. this makes sense to me because education is a bar to entry into the pmc and not the petty bourgeoisie. dems love shit-talking people with no college education, and the gop loves shit-talking these self-important douchebags. the pmc loves the cerebral masturbation of The West Wing, and the petty bourgeoisie loves the brutal fascist violence of whatever police procedural slop they have on right now.
i had to think about this for a bit and i’m not completely satisfied with my analysis. i’d love someone else to point out my mistakes, because i suspect i made a few.
The difference between them lies in their respective tactical philosophies toward class collaborationism and working class submission
Liberals have a totemic fetishistic belief that civil governance and credentialized proceduralism are enough to discipline the critical mass of the working class, leaving the rest to be policed piecemeal
Fascists believe a codified racial regime of exterminationism is necessary to keep capitalism viable and view civil governance and proceduralism as obstacles to realizing that goal
Liberals don’t have an innate opposition to concentration camps and genocide; they simply believe they are unnecessary…until they don’t
That’s why it’s always important to view fascism as a mutated form of liberalism, the Hulk to liberalism’s Bruce Banner
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Racism. Liberals are systemically racist, but do not openly view nonwhite people as racially inferior. This is not true of chuds.
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Christianity. Evangelical Christians in particular lean heavily republican and are willing to use the power of the state to enforce their religious beliefs.
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Guns. Chuds value the ability to maintain their own personal arsenals over the well being of their communities.
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Institutional trust. Liberals put greater trust in experts and academics, and believe in science. Chuds are more likely to question institutions (except the church) and so will adopt viewpoints of fringe cranks more readily.
That said most Americans have no coherent political beliefs, so you could easily find someone who meets all criteria one way or another and they vote the other way, because more than anything, Americans are profoundly and proudly ignorant people
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In the most extreme form, contrast social democracy with fascism. European socialized healthcare and so on was made possible by imperial profits.
Liberalism at home, fascism abroad.
When countries have a lot of socialized infrastructure - good schools, hospitals, job schemes, and so on - they tend towards liberalism. They tend toward a belief in social welfare, because they all benefit from it - and when society is structured in this egalitarian way, people’s views become more egalitarian overall.
However, they are also happy to live in false consciousness, espousing liberal views while turning a blind eye to the horrors abroad - and often the government and private media help to make them ignorant of it. The racial hierarchy is present, but it’s much more present abroad.
If this state was fascist, it’s guns blazing abroad - white makes might makes right - but this fascist hierarchy is also present at home. Let the strongest man win, so the strongest in society subjugate the rest beneath them. It always requires and outgroup - and in the most extreme case this outgroup is not only enslaved, it is externinated. There still might even be some social programs (as was the case in Nazi Germany), but again, people turn a blind eye to the horrors because they are living happily.
So there you have it. There is a clear difference, but also no difference at all.
They’re both just different flavours of false consciousness - and it’s hard to say whose consciousness is more false.
The only difference is that the Liberal pretends they’re not a fascist while the fascist doesn’t.
Since we’re spitballing it could be tied to: relationship/hierarchy with regards to the means of production (as one axis) and how they view maintenance/enforcement of that relationship/hierarchy (as the other axis).
Examples
- textile factory owner (owns production of textile, but not of raw material); therefore must discipline local labor to maintain profit (with or against state approval) as well as discipline labor upstream (raw material) and downstream (purchasers of textiles/manufacturers of finished products) to ensure there’s no weak link in the chain (eg workers in downstream getting health care, results in owners maintaining margins by purchasing upstream textile at a lower price- cutting into margins.) Also other workers might start asking for health care following that example. So ownership needs to break up/discipline labor via sowing division, state violence. I think some lib/fash differentiation comes with how they believe this discipline is to be carried out. Eg should states be allowed to have chattel slavery or an intricate system of means-tested wage extraction? Should violent deportations occur in plain sight or quietly? Should business owners be allowed to shoot strikers themselves or should they deploy the state?
- General contractor manager (veteran, doesn’t own business nor tools). How do they view the legitimacy of the state? A tool for imperialism and resource extraction? The “world police”? Does this affect how they view their occupation? How do they view their occupation? Building things in a vacuum or do they understand how things go from raw materials to finished projects? If the price of lumber increases due to climate impacts - should the state intervene and how so? Mitigating climate impacts? Expansion of extraction via deregulation, imperialism, etc? Suppressing labor costs?
- government worker (non supervisory). Do not own means of production, nor have disciplinary authority. Essentially acting as a cog in the state machine. How do they view the legitimacy of the state? How do they view its role in maintaining structures (either of uplift or oppression)? As they’re not inherently involved in production- do they view themselves as a consumer? How do they believe their consumer products are produced? Do they believe there should be state controls to maintain this production/cost?
Lmao. As I was writing this all out, I realized it’s way more thought than most would give their own views. So to quote the other poster
That said most Americans have no coherent political beliefs, so you could easily find someone who meets all criteria one way or another and they vote the other way, because more than anything, Americans are profoundly and proudly ignorant people
And I think in that final quote comes to another heart of the matter. Conservatives are proudly ignorant, whereas liberals are unaware of how ignorant they are - which in the grand scheme of things almost makes them more ignorant than conservatives.
It really is something. One realization I’ve had now that I’m a few decades into life is that i previously assumed everyone kind of constantly accumulated knowledge. But it seems like a significant amount of people are either beaten down or just comfortably content without intellectual curiosity. Sad really.
