What is a "leftist"? A fascist? A cultural Marxist?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, July 27, 2025 20:01
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SGG veered in that direction in this thread http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62644 but I think it might deserve it's own discussion. People throw these terms out without, IMHO, knowing that they mean.

There are many different flavors of "leftist" just as there are different flavors of "authoritarianism", and they are NOT opposites of each other, just as DNC/RNC and RINO/DINO aren't opposites of each other either.

Perhaps these terms deserves a discussion.

*****
I'll start first with the easier terms: Nazi and fascist.

"Nazi" and "fascist" DON'T mean "any group that I don't like" or "racist/genocidal" or even "authoritarian". They have specific historical meanings, and they are political-economic approaches that were responding to the economic distresses of the day.

BOTH of them imply a melding an authoritarian state with corporations/the economy.

*****

"NAZI" is a contraction of "national socialist". We can parse the term from its historic counterparts: NATIONAL socialism versus INTERNATIONAL socialism (commonly called "communism" here, but so such political/economic form has ever existed) and SOCIALISM versus CAPITALISM (but no such form has ever existed in its pure state either, altho early Colonial America came close). Nazism and "communism" were fierce enemies of that day, since national socialists rejected the concept of class warfare.

Nazism developed in Germany because Germany was in extremis (in its death-throes) because of hyperinflation/ reparations payments from WWI. I didn't know anyone personally who lived in that era, but hubby worked for a Hungarian who was a young boy in Germany at that time, and they were boiling and eating shoe leather because they were starving. And then there are (true) stories of people needing wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread, and the man who went to the bank to withdraw his life-savings and then went to a coffee shop, bought a cup of coffee with those life-savings, drank it, and blew his brains out.

Hitler promised to make things right: He stabilized the mark by backing it with gold, and created German firms like "Volkswagen" ("people's car") to re-engage the industrial process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen Unfortunately, his hyper-nationalism also included a giant dollop of racism and war-mongering.

But if you were to encapsulate its defining economic meme it would be corporations in service to the state.

*****

FASCISM was the political-economic form in Italy as practiced by Benito Mussolini. It comes from the word

Quote:

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fascio meaning a bundle of rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates.

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Fascism ALSO requires a blending of state and corporations, but in its case the defining economic meme is the state in service to corporations

*****

So, just to clarify, its inaccurate to called racist groups "fascist" or nazi" unless they also propose an economic component which melds the state and corporations. For the sake of making a clean argument, you should just call them "racists" or "racial supremacists" or "authoritarians" or "proto-tyrants" or whatever applies.

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One aspect of "leftism". I think this song would be called "cultural Marxism"

IMAGINE: JOHN LENNON

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You...

[Chorus]
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

[Verse 2]
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

[Chorus]
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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"Cultural Marxism" isn't a meaningless phrase. It refers to Marx's description of capitalism's driving force to reduce most people to INTERCHANGEABLE WIDGETS ... to destroy all distinctions based on religion, nation, language, gender, "born" class, natural talents or acquired skills ... even family relations ... to money. I can see that today in the relentless reduction to the lowest common denominator of skill ... the use of brainless Microsoft software and braindead technicians instead of proficient and knowledgeable programmers, for example; and the substitution of bureaucracy for skillful management.

Marx says it best ...

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The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade.

... The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

... Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations be

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