[Rancid]

@Potemkin, what I mean by scale is basically the ability of the system to attract new participants and grow on its own without the participants even understanding that they are the vehicle for expansion.

That makes capitalism seem too natural and internal to humans rather than a product of a specific arrangement of conditions which developed enough to he reproduce itself and generalize across much of society.

Yes, I'm basically saying, it is internal to humans.

Markets and commodities existed for a long tome before capitalism began developing.

What I'm saying is that capitalism always was, we just didn't know it. When you say "capitalism began developing", I read that as "capitalism began to be understood". It has always existed.

Now, sacrifice yourself to the gear of capitalism.

BTW, this is mostly an idea I'm toying with, not like a foundational belief I hold.

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin, what I mean by scale is basically the ability of the system to attract new participants and grow on its own without the participants even understanding that they are the vehicle for expansion.



Yes, I'm basically saying, it is internal to humans.



What I'm saying is that capitalism always was, we just didn't know it. When you say "capitalism began developing", I read that as "capitalism began to be understood". It has always existed.

Now, sacrifice yourself to the gear of capitalism.

BTW, this is mostly an idea I'm toying with, not like a foundational belief I hold.

“Capitalism has always existed, except for the times it didn’t, which is all of human prehistory and most of human history.” Lol.

And if all you’re saying is that capitalism was latent in human society since the beginning of human existence, then this is trivially true. So was everything else which has come into existence in human society. Human history is simply the unfolding of human potentialities.

[Rancid]

“Capitalism has always existed, except for the times it didn’t, which is all of human prehistory and most of human history.” Lol.

And if all you’re saying is that capitalism was latent in human society since the beginning of human existence, then this is trivially true. So was everything else which has come into existence in human society. Human history is simply the unfolding of human potentialities.

caca

[Tainari88]

caca

Caca is as caca does.

Now Bellisimo said this (@Potemkin ;

Human history is simply the unfolding of human potentialities.

I would add that political human history is a study in fights for power.

Who do you want to be in the driver's seat in a society? Ideally, working class people who consume very little superficial artificial wants, who have their basic needs met, who are well educated and who have a balanced life. Hopefully have a majority of good habits and good values. A spirit of service and who are productive on every level.

The elite usually have a lot of power but are way too ego-driven and have low levels of being able to share power in any real sense.

Capitalism is good at inventing bullshit jobs...Bregman said that. He is right. The big robust capitalism is not robust. It is good at reinventing bad jobs that are not sustainable wage jobs and forces the average worker into busy work jobs full of bullshit. That is true.

The true caca Rancid. Bullshit jobs.

[Wellsy]

Things are only understood after the fact.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl_of_Athena

In affirmative contrast, the 19th-century German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously noted that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk"; philosophy comes to understand a historical condition just as it passes away.[18] Philosophy appears only in the "maturity of reality", because it understands in hindsight.

Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

This is why Marx waited for the events of the Paris Commune before revising the Communist Manifesto about the manner in which the workers would wield state power. He could not predict and needed as case study to attempt generalizations. Similarly we may make generalizations of what may be possible based in the current state of human struggles, to see what is embryonic and could be broadened.

Capitalism is no more internal or natural to humans than any other mode of production and communism should it ever arise. It is in fact in the stories about the development of capitalism that capitalist logic is presented as inherent to persons independent of capitalist production as they barter and trade and then haphazardly introduce money but consider exchange independent relations of production that are historically specific.

https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/law-of-value-8-subjectobject/
[url]college.holycross.edu/eej/Volume14/V14N4P299_318.pdf[/url]
There are all sorts of ideological thought experiments which abstract essential qualities to only emphasize things seen as common to past production to naturalize capitalism as universal, natural, just a more complex form of technical production of goods. But then we’re back to the point of losing sight of specific social relations and how they are different based on a mode of production and its not just a case of technological development but a restructuring of human ways of life. And so natural is such a process that one needs to force people of alternative means of subsistence so that they have only labor power to sell.
I could of course universalize the conditions of animals in a specific environment and say how they react is natural as this is how they act and develop within that environment. But the environment of humans has been radically different because we made it so. And there was much that had to be destroyed about different ways of life that don’t automatically reduce everything to a single qualitative value.
The utilitarianism of Bentham only arises exactly within the conditions of capitalist production developing and the expansion of such production into regular life.


Humans develop within a material culture and this is why we are so versatile because we change the world and thus change ourselves. What is natural is that we must reproduce our existence materially, but as we have done so we have changed our social relations and developed new needs, new ways of living. It is through the preexisting institutions and cultural artefacts that are already up and running prior to our individual existence what we learn how to live and are automatically accustom to our own culture because we experience little us but it.
The difficulty is in changing anything as its a macroscale of human habits and requires many to adapt.
Though there is a fervor in revolutions and the such that animates such a desire to find the new.

But if there is any oath to communism which is a regulative ideal and very abstract in the same way an end to sexism may be, it is to be found in the present conditions of how people develop solidarity and do not subjugate one another to their own ideas yet collaborate towards a shared end. A modern movement against capitalism will not be lead by fronts backed by parties.

Rather it be found in a solution to the problem of how to work together as strangers within modernity. At least this is what I draw from one of my favorite Marxists Andy Blunden. Communism is not to be a mere dream forced upon reality but found through struggles against present day problems. Just as many who created the conditions for the rise of the bourgeoisie were not animated by the vision of capitalism but the desire to overcome restrictions in feudalism thought to be corrected by liberal ideals, which in some sense are to be more concretely realized through socialism as they remain to abstract.

[Beren]

Capitalism probably could not have been created by any other culture than the Western one.

Which probably means it's Western culture rather than capitalism in and of itself that's so robust actually. Leftists may believe that the fall of the West, or Western culture, would result in the fall of capitalism too, although they'd get nothing else than worldwide Fascism then.

[Rich]

But then we’re back to the point of losing sight of specific social relations and how they are different based on a mode of production and its not just a case of technological development but a restructuring of human ways of life.

No the ways of ordering economic production have not fundamentally changed. This is just Marxist noise. The American South's use of slave labour didn't make it a fundamentally different system, any more than the Britain and France's use of German slave labour during and after World War 2 made it a fundamentally different system.

The system as you call it is robust because

1 People like being rewarded for their labour and the people who work more have more power than those that don't. The fact that people can inherit and be lazy doesn't mean people who haven't inherited don't want to be rewarded for useful work.

2 People like owning things. The slogan of Communism is "You will own nothing and be happy." Under Communism, you will own nothing and be happy or you will cease to be at all. Under Communism all property is held in trust by the Communist leaders. Generally these leaders have done very little in the way of useful work themselves.

Marx and Engels wanted a dictatorship led by Marx. Lenin wanted a dictatorship led by Lenin. Stalin wanted a dictatorship led by Lenin, later when Lenin became ill he wanted a dictatorship led by Stalin. Trotsky wanted a dictatorship led by Trotsky, but he failed to build up a party of followers to make that happen so he tried to settle for a dictatorship led by Lenin, with him as number 2.

Things changed after 1945 because you ended up with multiple competing Communist dictatorships. It wasn't too long before they started fighting each other, just like the Kings of old. This is Communism. You can spout all you want about about class struggles and class power, but that's what its really about and that's what it will always be about.

[annatar1914]

Which probably means it's Western culture rather than capitalism in and of itself that's so robust actually. Leftists may believe that the fall of the West, or Western culture, would result in the fall of capitalism too, although they'd get nothing else than worldwide Fascism then.

@Beren :

Worldwide Fascism is the final stage of Western Civilization and Capitalism. " Robust" being a relative term, when your " life" is death, and your " light" is darkness.

[Beren]

Worldwide Fascism is the final stage of Western Civilization and Capitalism.

Sure, if by final stage you mean death.

The final stage of Western civilization and capitalism:

[B0ycey]

It's a social construct like math is to physics. The absence of our understanding of math doesn't mean physics isn't real. In your scenario, I think capitalism will raise once again. So long as there are humans, there will be capitalism in some form. This is what I mean by capitalism is "natural".

Both math and physics are not social constructs. They exist and have objective laws. Capitalism is a social construct like transgenderism is to women with penis's. Women can have penis's if people play along with such nonsense. Capitalism is the same. Money has value as long as we believe it has value. And while the system "works", we continue to play along. The problem will be if the system doesn't work or if people are no longer willing to play along. My 'solar flare' example is merely a thought experiment and I don't know how much you are aware of Kropotkin, but he does make a very good argument that humanity natural instinct is indeed mutual aid. I agree with him actually and I suspect if capitalism is ever lost, it won't be replaced. If we disagree so be it. But what you cannot claim is that Capitalism is somehow natural. There isn't another animal who uses it and Humanity hasn't used it within most of existence. It is about as natural as nylon. It can only be created if conditions are manipulated for it to exist.

[Tainari88]

Both math and physics are not social constructs. They exist and have objective laws. Capitalism is a social construct like transgenderism and women with penis's. Women can have penis's if people play along with such nonsense. Capitalism is the same. Money has value as long as we believe it has value. And while the system "works", we continue to play along. The problem will be if the system doesn't work or if people are no longer willing to play along. My 'solar flare' example is merely a thought experiment and I don't know how much you are aware of Kropotkin, but he does make a very good argument that humanity natural instinct is indeed mutual aid. I agree with him actually and I suspect if capitalism is ever lost, it won't be replaced. If we disagree so be it. But what you cannot claim is that Capitalism is somehow natural. There isn't another animal who uses it and Humanity hasn't used it within most of existence. It is about as natural as nylon. It can only be created if conditions are manipulated for it to exist.

I agree with this.

Additionally, pooling labor values over time? Is what makes it possible for people who no longer are in the labor market to live dignified lives. People pooling resources and being very efficient and thrifty and also compassionate and respectful of human needs across the board will make for a better society.

Hoarding all the wealth with the one percent crowd does not work. It brings violence. Guaranteed violence. And collapse.

Remember this video I posted for you @Rancid ? It is true.

American citizens have no idea really how inequality has become very acute. They know something is not right about their constant stress problems related to paying basics every month, but they fail to understand it is a deliberate policy that is involved. They won't find out till they are ready to burn it all down to the ground.

That is the reality of not being aware of the effects of too many people believing it is a natural system when it never was Rancid. @B0ycey is correct. Science is based on the laws of nature. Most of human history did not occur under capitalism at all. It is based on what the land is able to provide and how human societies distribute the wealth and the land's productive value. You need humans to make a human based economic system work. How that is organized is what varies from nation to nation, society to society. Capitalism does require constant growth and expansion. The planet is finite. Not infinite in resources. So? Capitalism has a big flaw. It needs to be controlled and scaling it to fit the needs of all humans. Not a tiny elite.

The old video I posted long ago about income inequality. A fallout of capitalism and capitalists always working to own more and more and take it away from the base of workers. The vast majority are workers. So they are killing themselves with that crap. No one else to blame.

https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?si=vpc4MmN0fFVsRKqW

https://youtu.be/9diZJks95Ko?si=K4pYtrCp-0LypVvq

[skinster]

At the question/title of this thread.

Kropotkin

This is better.

[Tainari88]

At the question/title of this thread.



This is better.

I really loved that article you posted skinster.

I wish I could raid your reading material where you live. You have great material choices. I read very fast.

You post a lot of Twitter. I do not have a twitter account and never had one. Facebook I never post either.

I love your academic and other long screeds and postings. They contain great information.

You know if I have differences with you I hope you post why you disagree. I will read it. And I will think about it deeply.

You have a fine mind. You always have had a fine mind Skinster.

[Tainari88]

Which probably means it's Western culture rather than capitalism in and of itself that's so robust actually. Leftists may believe that the fall of the West, or Western culture, would result in the fall of capitalism too, although they'd get nothing else than worldwide Fascism then.

Which cultures are Western based Beren? Greece, Rome, Spain, France? Latin-based stuff there. They have had both Left and Right thoughts fighting it out. It happens in China too. It is about political philosophies about power. As always.

[skinster]

I really loved that article you posted skinster.

Thanks for the kind words, Tainari. Also very glad to see you enjoyed Comrade Stalin's excellent piece on why to pick socialism, over anarchism. <3 More people should read Stalin. He has been thoroughly demonised throughout the Western world for what I believe to be obvious reasons, but when you read him and read of him, you understand why they wanted to keep him hidden.

I wish I could raid your reading material where you live. You have great material choices. I read very fast.

You post a lot of Twitter. I do not have a twitter account and never had one. Facebook I never post either.

I'm less on these platforms these days because of the shadow-banning/censorship, unless I want to share news from them. I mainly use Telegram. Do you use it? I made a channel there that includes the kind of content you seem to like that I share, so I can add you if so.

I love your academic and other long screeds and postings. They contain great information.

I would never associate the word 'academic' to myself but some of the people I read and share most definitely are. Glad you enjoy them!

You know if I have differences with you I hope you post why you disagree. I will read it. And I will think about it deeply.

Thanks, likewise. I think we're not far off politically, although I think the difference between us is you're a social democrat and I'm a marxist-leninist, your politics suggests you're okay with a friendlier capitalism with more social benefits like, I guess, what some of the Scandinavian countries have, while mine seeks to abolish it in favour of socialism (and then communism ), but that's okay. Some of my friends are Trots, Tories and Zionists, after all.

[Wellsy]

No the ways of ordering economic production have not fundamentally changed. This is just Marxist noise. The American South's use of slave labour didn't make it a fundamentally different system, any more than the Britain and France's use of German slave labour during and after World War 2 made it a fundamentally different system.

I don’t quite follow this point and can only speculate some sort of weberian pure ideal conception of capitalism rather a point about how we distinguish between one thing and another. Apparently they’re all the same in some way despite differences. Though the difference you wish to emphasize is the use of slavery.
But I still get the impression one follows an arbitrary selection of traits to emphasize continuity and misses the point of a dominant point which structures a society so that having peasants alone doesn’t contradict capitalist elements existing in the broader society. Like with Russia being late to capitalist development having urban centers with factories but the majority were still peasants.

I don’t know how you analyse things but to be able to mark distinct based essential differences are necessary or you end up missing essentially different things with obsolete concepts.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling1.htm

For Marx, new concepts arise in science because, penetrating ever more deeply into the world of phenomena, man reveals new aspects of these phenomena which simply cannot be fitted into the existing categories of thought. New concepts are demanded if these new aspects are to be adequately expressed and established. And they in turn become necessary only when the material and social conditions for the new concepts exist or are coming into being. Engels’ example from the history of chemistry is worth repeating in this connection:


We know that late in the past century, the phlogistic theory still prevailed. It assumed that combustion consisted essentially in this: that a certain hypothetical substance, an absolute combustible named phlogiston, separated from the burning body. This theory sufficed to explain most chemical phenomena then known, although it had to be considerably strained in some cases. But in 1774 Priestley produced a certain kind of air ‘which he found to be so pure, so free from phlogiston, that common air seemed adulterated in comparison with it’. He called it ‘dephlogisticated air’. Shortly after him Scheele obtained the same kind of air in Sweden and demonstrated its existence in the atmosphere. He also found that this kind of air disappeared whenever some body was burned in it or in ordinary air and therefore he called it ‘fireair’. From these facts he drew the conclusion that the combination arising from the union of phlogiston with one of the components of the atmosphere (that is to say from combustion) ‘was nothing but fire or heat which escaped through glass’. (Preface by Engels to Capital II)

As Engels remarks, Priestley and Scheele ‘had produced oxygen without knowing what they had laid their hands on’ (Preface to II). They remained prisoners of the conventional categories of chemistry. It fell to Lavoisier (to whom Priestley had communicated his findings) to analyse the entire phlogistic chemistry in the light of this discovery. It was Lavoisier who came to the conclusion that this new kind of air was a new chemical element and that combustion was not the result of this mysterious phlogiston leaving a burning body, but of this new element combining with that body. Priestley and Scheele, although they had produced oxygen prior to Lavoisier, because they remained trapped in the old concepts, were unable to grasp what they had done. Thus although Lavoisier ‘did not produce oxygen simultaneously and independently of the other two, as he claimed later on, he nevertheless is the real discoverer of oxygen vis-a-vis the others, who had only produced it without knowing what they had produced’ (Preface to Capital II).

We are not human but apes according to this logic because we both have thumbs. Or maybe we’re all featherless bipedal chickens.

The system as you call it is robust because

1 People like being rewarded for their labour and the people who work more have more power than those that don't. The fact that people can inherit and be lazy doesn't mean people who haven't inherited don't want to be rewarded for useful work.

2 People like owning things. The slogan of Communism is "You will own nothing and be happy." Under Communism, you will own nothing and be happy or you will cease to be at all. Under Communism all property is held in trust by the Communist leaders. Generally these leaders have done very little in the way of useful work themselves.

Marx and Engels wanted a dictatorship led by Marx. Lenin wanted a dictatorship led by Lenin. Stalin wanted a dictatorship led by Lenin, later when Lenin became ill he wanted a dictatorship led by Stalin. Trotsky wanted a dictatorship led by Trotsky, but he failed to build up a party of followers to make that happen so he tried to settle for a dictatorship led by Lenin, with him as number 2.

Things changed after 1945 because you ended up with multiple competing Communist dictatorships. It wasn't too long before they started fighting each other, just like the Kings of old. This is Communism. You can spout all you want about about class struggles and class power, but that's what its really about and that's what it will always be about.

There is a lot to be said about what perpetuates and sustains the current economic system. But not so simply put i’d say. There is much to legitimize the status quo , as well as constrain even thinking of alternatives if displeased. It’s not some rational consensus that maintains it. In fact a strength of liberalism has been its lack of an over riding social good or consensus much of the time, the idea that no good is privileged against the pursuit of individual desires, that is personal consumption and thus the conditions of capitalism.

[Tainari88]

Thanks for the kind words, Tainari. Also very glad to see you enjoyed Comrade Stalin's excellent piece on why to pick socialism, over anarchism. <3 More people should read Stalin. He has been thoroughly demonised throughout the Western world for what I believe to be obvious reasons, but when you read him and read of him, you understand why they wanted to keep him hidden.



I'm less on these platforms these days because of the shadow-banning/censorship, unless I want to share news from them. I mainly use Telegram. Do you use it? I made a channel there that includes the kind of content you seem to like that I share, so I can add you if so.



I would never associate the word 'academic' to myself but some of the people I read and share most definitely are. Glad you enjoy them!



Thanks, likewise. I think we're not far off politically, although I think the difference between us is you're a social democrat and I'm a marxist-leninist, your politics suggests you're okay with a friendlier capitalism with more social benefits like, I guess, what some of the Scandinavian countries have, while mine seeks to abolish it in favour of socialism (and then communism ), but that's okay. Some of my friends are Trots, Tories and Zionists, after all.

Who I am is in my political score. I am a very Marxist person with a negative -10. Social score -7. When I took the political compass quiz (it is not perfect but it gives you an idea of who you are in terms of philosophy. My match was Nelson Mandela and Michael Harrington. I am an international socialist. My mother was a Marxist Existentialist and also a socialist. The PIP which my mother was an active member for many years in Puerto Rico and whom she was the president of for three years Skins during 1970-1973 in NYC (NYC chapter). The Puerto Rican Independence Party was and is an international socialist party. The prez of el PIP for years was Rubén Berrios Martinez and he was the president of all International Socialists worldwide for years. Social Democrats they are not Skins. Marxist influenced yes. The reality is that the early days of el PIP was very radical. But there was a splintering. Puerto Rico had the PSP, and the FALN, the Macheteros, and other more radical groups. Also the nacionalistas. Or nationalists. Now, the PIP calls itself social democrats but in the island they are known as socialists. International socialists. It is of a bigger umbrella. I think PR is going to do a strategy similar to MORENA in Mexico where a lot of parties whom are on the far left and the more moderate left all come together to bust the neoliberals off the power seats. Puerto Rico has two independence parties. El PIP Is more socialist. The MVC is interesting. It is anti colonial. The leader is a woman. Alexandra Lugaro. She is an atheist. She wants to legalize marijuana. And she wants a mixed economy. Some things left capitalistic and others socialist like medicine and education. They are between them 28% of the electorate. For now. It is growing a lot. Mostly young people skins. If you talk to them like Rene Perez Joglar (Residente), he is your typical member. The socialists are growing. IN all of Latin America after a long winter of persecution.

My family studied psychology for years. So who I am politically is mainly a mixture of these three people skins. Marx, Erich Fromm (who taught for years in the UNAM in Mexico City). And the humanist socialists of the sixties. I never liked capitalism and never will.

Violent revolution? I hate violence. Gandhi went for national liberation without advocating it. He wound up getting shot in the head. And violence broke out anyway after his assassination. MLK Jr also got shot. Malcolm X was more radical but was a Muslim and not a Marxist. He was a type of nationalist from the old Marcus Garvey school.

No, Skins, I hate violence. Too much work to be done on civil disobedience to think killing people is going to get you to the goal. Protesting nonstop and in a very insistent manner is effective. But violence is often used when all avenues have been exhausted. Many people fail to use every means necessary to solve an issue. Once there is no other way? Violence is often used, the more powerful group then says...see, they are violent. They are dangerous. To cover their own crimes up.

Don't give them the moral high ground.

Ever.

I asked my mother once Skins what she would have done if the Nazis came for her and her children for the gas chambers or because she was an enemy....forcing her to choose between her children....like that movie Sophie's Choice from 1982. She was very clear. She said in Spanish to me, [IF that Nazi pig came with his request to have me choose between my children? Would have ripped his balls off. Violence is appropriate. But I would not have waited for that. Sophie was not intelligent. You need to take a stand way before they position themselves into power. And you need to know how to fight. When it is your family and your life against their oppressive shit. I would never have been caught waiting for them to take my kids. Sometimes your dignity and that of your family is more important than anything else. And being intelligent enough to realize the lack of options left. Always choose peace first. Humane and Human Rights first. But every being has a right to defend themselves from predators. Always.

That was my mother skins.

I think she was upset with the Meryl Streep character for a while. I knew she was. She was a very strong willed person.

I am Latin American in many ways. And for the FBI all us independentistas are a threat. Anything that makes them worry about losing control of their little toy in the Caribbean that does their bidding is cause for concern. But in the end they all have to clap and bow down to the ones who really are true leaders with principles Skins. Principles that they all lacked.

That Condi Rice had to admit Mandela was a great world leader for his nation was embarrassing when they had him on a terror watch list up until 2008.

It is all about who loves capitalism and who does not.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-g ... 2d11708787

[Rancid]

Both math and physics are not social constructs. They exist and have objective laws. Capitalism is a social construct like transgenderism is to women with penis's. Women can have penis's if people play along with such nonsense. Capitalism is the same. Money has value as long as we believe it has value. And while the system "works", we continue to play along. The problem will be if the system doesn't work or if people are no longer willing to play along. My 'solar flare' example is merely a thought experiment and I don't know how much you are aware of Kropotkin, but he does make a very good argument that humanity natural instinct is indeed mutual aid. I agree with him actually and I suspect if capitalism is ever lost, it won't be replaced. If we disagree so be it. But what you cannot claim is that Capitalism is somehow natural. There isn't another animal who uses it and Humanity hasn't used it within most of existence. It is about as natural as nylon. It can only be created if conditions are manipulated for it to exist.

Caca to you too bro.

Fine.... I accept your argument.

[Potemkin]

Which probably means it's Western culture rather than capitalism in and of itself that's so robust actually. Leftists may believe that the fall of the West, or Western culture, would result in the fall of capitalism too, although they'd get nothing else than worldwide Fascism then.

In other words, business as usual. European Fascism of the early 20th century was nothing more or less than an attempt to revert to a pre-Enlightenment mode of governance. The Nazis had this weird anti-semitism thing going on, but apart from that there was nothing the Nazis were doing which the ancient Assyrians or even the ancient Romans weren’t doing. Before the 17th or 18th centuries, almost everybody was what we would now call a ‘fascist’. In fact, before 1945 almost everybody behaved like ‘fascists’, even Churchill or Truman. The Nazis spoilt it for everybody else, that’s all. Lol.

[annatar1914]

In other words, business as usual. European Fascism of the early 20th century was nothing more or less than an attempt to revert to a pre-Enlightenment mode of governance. The Nazis had this weird anti-semitism thing going on, but apart from that there was nothing the Nazis were doing which the ancient Assyrians or even the ancient Romans weren’t doing. Before the 17th or 18th centuries, almost everybody was what we would now call a ‘fascist’. In fact, before 1945 almost everybody behaved like ‘fascists’, even Churchill or Truman. The Nazis spoilt it for everybody else, that’s all. Lol.

@Potemkin :

I personally would say that you are right because a certain amount of what results in fascism is hardwired into fallen human nature. This revulsion against it was limited and brief, and as we write today is being forgotten. That doesn't mean I'm pessimistic, it just seems like a realistic starting point for the anti fascist struggle to begin.