Blackcap Blog

Published at 02:10 on 15 April 2022

And this most recent post basically says it all as to why.

This is totally a crisis of bourgeois politics. The radical left is a tiny and insignificant part of US politics. One bourgeois party went fascist, largely because fascism is compatible with, and is in fact a natural outgrowth of, the authoritarianism of the capitalist corporation. The other bourgeois party failed to do much of significance to oppose the fascists, because doing little of consequence (while soaking up political energy that might do more of it) is the political niche that party evolved to fill.

When the authoritarian transition completes, the USA will hardly be the first capitalist society to have gone fascist. The fascist form is merely one of capitalism’s natural forms. To be shocked at it all is to be shocked that some deserts contain cacti.

Really now, just what does one think the natural consequence of an authoritarian economic system, one contrary to the material interests of the vast majority, might be in an otherwise open and free society? That freedom is obviously a danger to capitalism, because freedom implies the freedom to pursue alternatives to capitalism.

The way to deal with that, without just throwing freedom away right off the bat, is to somehow create a culture of lies and indoctrination so as to snow the majority, or alternately to nurture anti-freedom attitudes in that majority (so that they perceive themselves to be better off if there are bosses in their midst). And once one does that, political freedom is always at risk because of the beliefs that make economic domination safe; it only takes a relatively modest additional amount of propagandizing to get to the point where full fascism becomes politically feasible.

I worked the above out decades ago, and when I worked it out, was the moment I consistently began self-identifying as an anarchist, because I knew that, if allowed to stand, bourgeois society would inevitably bring us to basically just the sort of place that it has now brought us. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons, the movement that I was part of failed in its historic task (at least for now).

And here, as they say, we are.

That I will, and have, when the time came, made alliance with those who are pro-capitalist but anti-fascist, does not mean I have ceased to believe any of the above.