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Russian warships will arrive in Havana next week, say Cuban officials citing ‘friendly relations’
(www.denverpost.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Do you know of any examples of capitalists having a genuine conflict with Pinochet and winning? I don't, because I don't think there were many conflicts between those two parties to begin with.
I suppose you could look at Chile, the ROC, and the ROK as neocolonies instead of relatively weak fascist states, but then you could describe a colony as a weaker fascist client of the metropole, too.
I'd say it's capitalist (it would be a lot easier for Jeff Bezos to get rid of Joe Biden than the other way around, so it fails condition 1) but imperialist (comfortable doing fascism abroad). As bad as its internal repressive institutions are, they're still far from the scale and severity of governments most would label fascist. Would fascist police bother with body cams and similar reforms?
Looking at this the other way: what definition of fascism includes Russia, but doesn't also include almost every capitalist country?
I mean his attempt to stay in power? He lost enough influence that he lost his role and was not only unable to maintain the military rule, but was unable to maintain any official role within the state despite his attempt to. Isn't that pretty explicitly him losing a conflict with his bourgeois backers?
Or would that not qualify (And if so what specifically would qualify?)
I don't have a totally cogent and empirical definition, but I tend to agree with Franz Neumann (Well, the Chavismo reading of Neumann) that fascism is a conspiracy by big business and government. Where the interests of capital and the interests of the state in the face of crisis blend together and form a united front that rather than face the crisis begin to oppose their "common enemy" the proletariat and the "proletariatized", through a call to action that seeks to rally the population under a reactionary banner that still remains elitist even if the movement is supposedly a popular one.
Which is a fairly broad definition and you could include many capitalist regimes in that (If you can call a group of people "Oligarchs" without irony you're halfway there). The US would certainly qualify, as would Israel and the UK. On the other hand states like China, Venezuela, Cuba, et al obviously don't. Most states that still have vestiges of Keynesianism or developmental capitalism at least try to address their crises and so may escape, and others give no pretext to a popular movement and are essentially despotic or aristocratic without necessarily being fascist (But are certainly fascist adjacent. Like I'm not gonna complain if someone calls Saudi Arabia fascist, even if I don't think it technically qualifies)
Edit: also of course this definition imo does include the RoC with the KMT (Who at least tried to become a popular nationalist movement, and who did respond to crisis by blending together capital and state and going after anyone but the problem), Pinochet's Chile, and I'm not entirely sure about worst korea but it would at least be fascist adjacent.
With a definition this broad the only states that currently exist are either fascist or fascist collaborators. How this useful to anyone?
pretty specifically said I think a lot of countries don't fit this definition of fascism. I also don't think I meaningfully agree with your definition of collaborator.
I think working with Russia is lamentable. Hence, cringe. I think if Cuba gets anything from it, that's their decision to make but I would be cautious and pessimistic about the affair, bearing in mind that they are cooperating with a fascist power that is only not a full collaborator with the western hegemony because the US decided to exclude them, and who has not been able to stop the US from interfering with other Latin American countries. I don't think engaging with this makes them meaningfully supportive of fascism as an ideology. But I think forging closer connections to other powers would have been better news.
Its so strange that you can understand most basic Russia material reasons for supporting Cuba yet you somehow think the Cubans shouldn't trust in those reasons. Also what in the world is your definiton of collaborator if it somehow doesn't include things like being in BRICS? Im curious to see if it actually means something and is not just and excuse to avoid calling every AES state fascist for thinking Russia is a reliable friend.
The soviets got what they could from the Germans before the war started, and got as much industrial support as they could from western powers to set up their own manufacturing and industrial base and I view this in and BRICS in similar terms. Calling the Soviet Union under Stalin "Fascist collaborators" would be ridiculous, but arguing that the nazis were not fascists would be equally ridiculous.
Although I don't find Russia to be quite as virulent as the nazis, the point of "Get what you can and ditch the fascists as soon as you can" to be about the same, and I wish they found another way.
Pinochet wasn't the sole ruler, but the leader of a junta. In 1980, the junta announced a referendum would be held in 1988. He lost, and from my understanding it was other members of the junta -- military and police officials -- who frustrated his attempts to ignore the result. I think this was a result of international pressure (the regime kept killing or disappearing foreign citizens, plus the pope condemned the government), the neutering of the socialist movement around the world (the Cold War was ending), and Pinochet getting old (the term he wanted from the '88 referendum would have had him rule well into his 80s).
Pinochet did maintain a role in government, too. He was commander in chief of the army until '98 and a senator "for life" until '02.
This makes it unworkable for me -- what capitalist regimes wouldn't fit? There is no capitalist state where the interests of capital and the interests of the state aren't closely aligned, because capitalism is characterized by the state controlling the working class on behalf of capital. There's occasional state pushback (liberalism), but it's all very gentle and inevitably rolled back.