Fascism

Lately there has been a lot of interest in fascism. It probably has to do with the mood and the circumstances of our times, what with the war in Iraq, the rise of fundamentalism, the concentration of power and the growing disparity between rich and poor.

I just read an article by Paul Bigioni entitled “Fascism then. Fascism Now?” The article is meant to be a warning because as the author says we seem to be repeating history. Bogioni writes about corporate monopolies, which he argues, are at the crux of contemporary fascism. He sees parallels between today’s monopolistic business practices and that of Mussolini and Hitler's fascistic practices, which led to W.W.II. He also sees Bush&Co’s pandering to the rich and its war on terrorism as signs of fascism. I agree with Bigioni that things aren’t as egalitarian, equal and open as they should be. However, I don’t think we are headed for the serious kind of fascism of the past, as Bigioni seems to think.

The word fascism is bandied around so freely as to sometime be meaningless. We often use it wrongly, such as when we feel alienated and put upon. I looked it up in wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, and it said, “there is little agreement among historians, political scientists, and other scholars concerning the exact nature of fascism.” However, it is generally associated with authoritarianism where citizens are dominated by a specific political ideology, something Bigioni sees occurring. It certainly is contradictory to democracy.

Someone asked, “ How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior”. I like the question because it acknowledges the fact that we are all capable of fascistic behavior in one way or another, like we are all capable of doing evil, unawares of course. Hence, I don't think you can truly ferret out fascism. It is an inherent trait. I also believe it is ingrained institutionally- a reflection of human nature, in the way we organize and govern ourselves. In democracy we have learned to contain and counter this ingrained behavior. We do it through perverse means, by encouraging competing fascisms. America is a good example of this. It is replete with competing fascisms. By cultivating competing fascisms in business and government, democracies keep the bigger fascism of the past in check. In democracies the fascism of the ‘state’ is kept in check by the fascism of the media, capitalism, special interests and an open, churning society. An example, Bush's Social Security fascistic reform was kept in check by the fascism and the special interest of Social Security’s beneficiaries.

I remember hearing somewhere that fascism meant justice. Somebody said that Mussolini might have coined the idea, as the combination of corporate and state power. Bigioni wrote something that perhaps supporting that idea: “Mussolini spoke of a ‘corporate’ society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The corporation would resolve all labour/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene.” Mussolini suggested that under fascism a class struggled would no longer exist. That may have been interpreted by some as a form of justice.

I learned that "fasces" was an ancient Roman symbol, a staff with a double-sided axe on top, which Mussolini appropriated in trying to recreate the grandeur and power of Rome's past. It may have become a symbol of justice, like a judge's gavel, I was told. Moreover, the fascist states of Mussolini and Hitler also used Roman type symbols and props profusely to portray their authority, like insignia's and emblems on marching staffs and event backdrops. As it happens, Bush&Co. uses such backdrops to convey its power and propagandize its messages, a behavior that mirrors past fascism behavior. Fascism also is about staged events like those Mussolini and Hitler held, events that don’t usually reflect reality, again, something that Bush&Co is guilty of. Fascism, then, is an 'ism ' that masks reality.

In his article Bigioni more than suggests that liberals are responsible for fascism. Conservatives tend to blame liberals for all sorts of societies ills. The argument goes that liberals are the ones who brought us socialism, which in turn spawned fascism. Today, Bigioni writes, neo-liberals are responsible for the rise in fascism. He writes, “Under the sway of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have decimated labour and exalted capital”, capital meaning big business.

I thought those people he mentioned are conservatives. I guess conservatives are also capable of fascism.

Existentialism

I was debating about what to write on next. Should it be about existentialism or natural law. Then I thought, perhaps I should combine the two. I have the habit of combining odd things. (One odd combination was Hegel and thermodynamics.) Do they have anything in common? I'm not quite sure but let’s give it a try.

I became intrigued in existentialism after I heard one of our public figures refer to himself as an existentialist. The idea stayed with me and I couldn’t shake it off because, as I discover, I am also one. However, it is only until recently that I started delving deeper into the subject. I was reminded of it again by the recent 100th birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, another self-professed existentialist.

There is a debate about whether Sartre coined the term existentialism. I was reading an article about existentialism and it said that it isn’t an easy philosophy to define or explain. There are all sorts of variables and varieties involved. One thing is certain, the individual is the central feature. I imagine existentialism comes from the idea of extension, the extension of oneself. Existentialism is about how one views oneself in the context of the world. In other words, the way I see the world is an extension of myself. If I imagine it to be flat and backwards, it is. If I imagine it to be round and progressive, it is. One conducts his/her life according to how they see it. Now, since everybody who is an existentialists is cognitively different, each extension of oneself is different. No wonder, then, the difficulty there is in defining what an existentialist is. I know that I am a different existentialist from the public figure I heard say he is. However, one thing that most existentialist believe is that the world is improvable.

One thing that is common to all existentialists is the idea of responsibility, that we are responsible for our lives and if we cause any wrong we should take responsibility for it. We are never victims. We are reflective but not to the point of undermining ourselves. Another thing I understand we have in common is that we are our own best friend. We have no heroes because we are our own hero.

Sartre said that “existence precedes and rules essence”. That sounds existentialist; saying that the individual is not born with an essence but creates its own essence as it goes along. In other words, we are what we make ourselves. Our nature is our nature, not one the world has imprinted on us.

However, I think there is a kind of arrogance in thinking existentially. There is an enlightened conceit about it. There is the believe that one is the product of oneself. I find that hard to believe in its totality because a lot of it has to do with circumstance, mainly with what kind of environment one is brought up in and what opportunities one has. I think one’s essence also has to do a lot with what preceded one. For instance, whether one comes from a bourgeois background or not has a bearing on it.

Kierkergaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher, was the founder of the idea of existentialism. I think he developed it to counter Hegel’s universal outlook, that the essence and being of human existence is derived from the collective. Kierkergaard believed this essence initially and fundamentally is derived from the individual, that the individual is the starting point from which ideas and existence flows, just like an atom is the first principle of existence. I tend to agree but I also believe that neither institution, individual or collective, can exist without the other. They feed off and help define the other.

My connecting existentialism and natural law will have to wait because I am still pondering it. I have a feeling, though, that existentialists draw from natural law to form their world view.

Polemos

When I first started thinking about the way of the world - the workings of the world - the idea of conflict entered my mind. I am not talking about warfare or violence but the conflict of ideas, institutions and the human struggle, like a competitive conflict. I sensed this phenomenon to be as natural an occurrence as night and day. What is more, I felt that our society fosters and cultivates this conflict as though it is a life force. Let’s see if I can explain and convey this idea.

I prefer to use the word polemics rather than conflict because it doesn’t have the same negative connotation. As it happens, polemics comes from the Greek word polemos which means conflict. To my ear polemics sounds more constructive, like in electricity. Electricity is a good example of what I mean. It has two conflicting poles or forces like in polemos. I wonder if the two are related. They do sort of have the same spelling. Anyway, the poles in electricity polemically engage each other to produce a current of energy. Can you visualize the polemic activity and the creation that is going on between the two poles? This is how I see polemics in our society, as a mechanism and a dynamo that propels and energizes us.

Polemics is a corollary of contradiction. Everything has it contradictory, opposite number without which nothing would or could exist. Things define themselves through opposites. Heraclitus, who originated the dialectic, a process based on polemos and contradictory opposites engaging each other, said "if you do away with contradiction or polemics (I added polemics) you do away with reality". He intuited this phenomenon more than 2500 ago in ancient Greece. “Heraclitus asks us to imagine the polemos is common to all things”, like contradiction, like in night/day, up/down and male/female.
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Being argumentative comes to mind when polemics is mentioned. One is also being dialectic when one is being argumentative or polemic. When one is being any of these things one is usually electrifying and animating a situation. These type of exchanges are incremental and add to the proceedings of life. “Unity is found in the constant balancing of opposites”.

My last post was about liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a human governance that embodies the social polemics I am talking about. There the liberal ideal of human organization is pitted against the democratic ideal, two ideals I distinguished in my last easy. The clash of these opposing ideals makes for a dynamic and meaningful form of governance. Without that kind of engagement there wouldn’t be the ‘creative tension’ that has become so essential in maintaining modern society. This is one reason why this form of governance has ascended to the top, because of its unique sense of polemics and it application.

I believe that polemics and politics are related. They sort of sound the same and work on the same principle as opposites. However, I had no means of connecting them until I discover Karl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, who made the connection for me. Two hundred years ago he said this, that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”. In that utterance Clausewitz joined polemics - war in Greek, and politics, recognizing them to be the same, satisfying me that they are one in the same. At least Clausewitz has give credence to my idea.

Today, for the most part, the polemics of politics has replaced the polemics of war. Politics has essentially supplanted war. Good thing that it has because humankind can no longer afford to be as warlike as it once was. It needed another outlet and a better way to resolve its differences. The world of today can not endure the equivalence of a WW2 and its more sophisticated weapons. Whereas once the conflict of war defining humankind, the polemics of politics now does. Polemics, however, is still essential for driving humankind as Hegel knew when he said, “Humankind needs conflict, and its reflection, to remain alive and awake”, so it doesn't atrophy. Polemics stir and stimulate us. As Clausewitz might say today, politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics is certainly more pragmatic and less destructive than war.

I am fond of saying, “Litigation creates Civilization”. Litigation is typically polemic, as socially and politically polemic as you can get. The core of Civilization is about methods, procedures and how to conduct ourselves. Litigation is the polemic exchange in which, through the clash of opposing interests and ideas, such as in liberal democracy, we have devised our civil code and social policies. Civilization was born from nothing. Polemics is what has given it its definition and substance. Whereas once warring polemics did most of Civilizations bidding, today, for obvious reasons, polemic politics has become its chief bidder. In our politics we have the quintessential polemics, liberal vs conservative. The Constitution of the U.S., the most admired piece of legislation, was hammered out through the litigation of both liberal and conservative positions. Litigation is also what upholds and dispenses it.

Liberal Democracy II

I made the claim that our society under liberal democracy is the most successful ever. I was challenged on that statement. The challenger said that our society and liberal democracy have not been around long enough for us to judge whether it is the most successful or not. She wrote that “The longevity of Chinese society appears to have a pretty good claim for ‘most successful ever’ and they don't appear to have needed capitalism nor democracy to achieve this”.

I have to define what I mean by successful.

I see liberal democracy as the most successful form of human governance ever because it is the only one left standing. Its last major rival was communism whose reign and influence ended in the 1980s. No new alternatives have appeared since to challenge it, which means to me there is nowhere else for human governance to go. Liberal democracy is the culmination of centuries of experimentations on how to ideally govern humankind. From its beginning humankind has steadily grown closer and more connected. In its connectedness humankind has needed a uniform type of governance. Liberal democracy is with us because it is the only one up to that task. The fact that liberal democracy has not been fully implemented around the world is another matter. That is not a reflection on its viability or legitimacy. However, liberal democracy will always be a work in progress. That is the beauty of this system, that it is always growing and redefining itself so as to reflect the changing needs and aspirations of society, like no other system before. It is not a perfect system but considering the disposition and idiosyncrasies of humankind it is the best that can be had.

Another reason why it is the most successful is because it has empowered the most people. Liberal democracy has empowered more people with the bestowing of freedom and the right to purse self-interests than any system before. China may be a successful civilization but it rarely empowered anybody, until now. In embracing capitalism, China today is slowly empowering its citizens with the right to pursue their own self-interests, to be materialistic and property owners. With private property will follow democratic reforms, as it has in the West. It is already happening. The Chinese constitution was changed recently to guarantee some property rights. The Chinese are also becoming more vocal and demanding in their materialism. Many with means are now traveling freely and seeing the world, unlike before. That is success.

Liberal democracy is slowly imposing itself on China and making a difference. With the recent outbreaks of SARS and bird flue China has been forced to be more open to the world because it is no longer an isolated state. If it wants to continue to trade with the rest of the world and maintain its economy it has to be transparent on such matters as health. Ironically, with this new and necessary transparency its people are slowly gaining democracy because it opens a dialog between the Chinese government and its people. In such matters the government has to get the cooperation of its people and that procedure in itself is democratizing. Admittedly it is happening in baby steps. Nevertheless, it is happening.

Ironically, as China develops it will become more polluted and its citizens will gain more control over their lives. Citizens will demand more pollution controls, better health care and truthful answers. Those demands will translate into their having a greater voice in the running the country and their gaining a more accountable, transparent government.

Some people will ask, what is so great about empowering people? It’s a recipe for a more dysfunctional society, they’ll say. That’s an old argument. Instead, empowerment is one way of discouraging dictatorships. Moreover, from an economic stand point it is a win-win situation. For instance, it is from the empowerment of people to pursue self-interests that society finds the solutions to its needs and problems. (It is empowered individuals who discover the technologies and techniques that keep humanity alive and healthy, not governments.) In the past, China, under its total dictatorship, relied on committee rule to find and develop the solutions it needed to continue. In the long run that was a disaster. In time, though, some insightful Chinese leaders realized that the state alone could not meet the needs of its people and solve the problems the modern world imposed on them. They turned to capitalism to do that job, a first step towards liberal democracy.

Liberal Democracy

A political philosophy forum asked the question "How should society he organized, if at all?"

The last part of question is redundant because society needs organization. There would be no society if it wasn't organized.

It was during the Enlightenment that the question of how our society should be organized was first seriously posed. Today I think that question has been answered. Through the process of elimination the world has come to the realization that liberal democracy is the only alternative for organizing society in the modern world. The fact that it hasn't been fully implementation is another matter.

I don't think it is an accident that liberal democracy has percolated to the top.

Liberal democracy is the combination of two governing ideals. 'Liberal' comes from the idea of people being free to pursue their own self-interests. It is also associated with the free market system - capitalism. Democracy comes from the idea of the collective, that society should function as one and organize for the collective good.

It is easy to see how these two ideals may oppose each other and can be incompatible. However, this kind of opposition within organic, living systems is replete throughout the natural and physical world. Every system has its binary system in order to remain vital and reproductive. The human race has its male/female. A Day has day/night. The space we live in has up/down. Computing has the binary code of 1 and 0. The human brain has two hemispheres and electricity, the most famous binary system of all, has its two opposite poles of -/+. All those systems are alive and successful because of their bipolar nature. Everything that exists has two dimensions of itself. If this kind of makeup is essential for success in the natural, physical world why would it not also be true for human governance. The reason why we have evolved into a dualistic system of governance is because it is the only way, as nature has shown, to keep it alive and continuous.

A Russian philosopher by the name of Berdyaev, during the birth of the communist regime, foresaw that if you build a governing system based on a single theory it will inevitably end up in a dictatorship. As we see, he was right.

Communism and liberal democracy were the last of the governing rivals. The outcome of their rivalry determined how society should ultimately be organized. Today the ascendency of liberal democracy is filling the void left by the collapse of communism, a sign that there is no other alternative to what transpired.