They endure over time while par-ticular individuals die and are replaced by others.

hey have, according to Durkheim, distinctive socialcharacteristics and determinants, which are not amenable to explanations onthe biological or psychological level

But it was only in his Paris years that he was converted to socialismthrough contact with some of its major protagonists and through a thoroughreading of their works—some of which he had already begun to peruse inGermany, having been guided in this respect by Hess and by Lorenz vonStein's Socialism and Communism in Contemporary France (1842)

Hegel had taught them to see how throughoutmankind's past, philosophical thought had always been critical of a givenstate of affairs, how the negative critique of philosophy had been a key instru-ment for destroying the complacency of the given and for preparing the wayfor the birth of new cultural possibilities.

Kant in particular, although holdingonto the belief in human progress, injected a more pessimistic note. For him,antagonism between men was the ultimate driving force in history.

the ideaof progress, whether peaceful or conflictive; the idea of alienation; the idea ofperfectibility; and the holistic view of society and of historical epochs.

Both his mother and father came fromlong lines of rabbis, Heinrich's in the Rhineland and Henrietta's in Holland.^

As societies emerge from originally un-differentiated hordes, the division of labor leads to the emergence of stratifica-tion, of classes of men distinguished by their differential access to the meansof production and their differential power

In the course of their history men increasinglytransform nature to make it better serve their own purposes. And, in theprocess of transforming nature, they transform themselves.

to the con-ditions of production and the producers of these ideas, and if we thus ignorethe individuals and the world conditions which are the source of these ideas.

his is the relationship of theworker to his own activitiy as something alien, not belonging to him, activityas suffering (passivity), strength as powerlessness, creation as emasculation,the personal physical and mental energy of the worker, his personal life . . .as an activity which is directed against himself, independent of him and notbelonging to him.

The object produced by labor, its product, now stands opposed to it as analien being, as a power independent of the producer.

Money is the alienated essence of man'swork and existence; the essence dominates him and he worships it.

It can evolvea consciousness, but it is always a "false consciousness," that is, a consciousnessthat does not transcend its being rooted in an economically competitive modeof production. Hence neither the bourgeoisie as a class, nor the bourgeois state,nor the bourgeois ideology can serve truly to transcend the self-interest en-joined by the bourgeoisie.

each man, working in his own interest, con-tributes both to the necessary functioning and to the final destruction of theregime."

because of the in-herent competitive relations between capitaHst producers, was incapable ofdeveloping an overall consciousness of its collective interests

But he considered it axiomatic that the potential forclass conflict is inherent in every differentiated society, since such a societysystematically generates conflicts of interest between persons and groups differ-entially located within the social structure, and, more particularly, in relationto the means of production.

In the world of capitalism, for example, the nuclearcell of the capitalist system, the factory, is the prime locus of antagonism be-tween classes—between exploiters and exploited, between buyers and sellers oflabor power—rather than of functional collaboration.

Marx's class theory rests on the premise that "the history of all hithertoexisting society is the history of class struggles

t a certainpoint the changed social relations of production come into conflict with exist-ing property relations, that is, with existing divisions between owners andnonowners.

Man is inevitably en-meshed in a network of social relations which constrain his actions; therefore,attempts to abolish such constraints altogether are bound to fail

These property relations inturn give rise to different social classes. Just as a man cannot choose who is tobe his father, so he has no choice as to his class

t is notthe consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary,their social being determines their consciousness.'

Marx considered such categories as typical only for specific historicalperiods, as products of an historically transient state of affairs

New needs evolve when means are found to allow the satis-faction of older ones.

strife was the father of allthings, and social conflict the core of historical process.

The fortunate absence among them of our stupid scholastic culture enablesthem

He resumed lecturing after his illness and again enjoyed a number ofeminent men in the audience, among them four members of the Academy ofSciences

When it finally became clear that he wouldnever attain the hoped-for institutionalized role, he resolved to create a newrole for himself, that of a prophet

From then on, Comte had hardly anyfriends with whom he could deal on the basis of intellectual equality. A fewmen, Hke the physiologist de Blainville, remained close to him for over aquarter of a century, but even that friendship broke in the end

We no longer haveeither hope or expectations, not even two little pieces of black wood beforewhich to wring our hands. . . . Everything that was is no more. All that willbe is not yet."

nd children became additional breadwinners.

This period of political revolutions and popular revolts was also theperiod of the Industrial Revolution which, in France, came into its own onlyduring the post-Napoleonic years.

Auguste Comte Hved through seven political regimes and an untold num-ber of insurrections, uprisings, and popular revolt

To cite only one, the aristocratic Saint-Simon never failed to putgreat stress on the ideal of individual self-realization in all his Utopian dreams.His followers would develop this notion and stress sexual liberation, the "re-habilitation of the flesh." In contrast, Comte, the son of a petty functionary,pictured the man of the future as an ascetic—a self-abnegating, self-denyingcreature totally devoted to the Whole.

the stress on the need to reconstitute spiritual power in the handsof an elite of scientists;

The time had nowcome for the emergence of a fully positive Science of Man that would revolu-tionize the institutions of Europe. At this point, "Morals will become a positivescience. Politics will become a positive science. Philosophy will become a posi-tive science. The religious system will be perfected.

The members tithed themselves to assure the livelihood of the masterand vowed to spread his message.

Comte now vowed to devote the rest of his life to the memory of "hisangel

Emile Littre

The sketches and essays that Comte wrote during the years of close as-sociation with Saint-Simon,

former Protestant pastor named DanielEncontre, a man of broad learning and catholic concerns.

Comte, especially in his later years, considered himself not only a socialscientist but also, and primarily, a prophet and founder of a new religion thatpromised salvation for all the ailments of mankind.

In thepositive sociocracy of the future, the scientist-priests of the rehgion of humanity,having acquired positive knowledge of what is good and evil, would sternlyhold men to their collective duty and would help suppress any subversive ideasof inherent rights.

He elaborateda complex blueprint of the good positive society of the future, a societydirected by the spiritual power of priests of the new positive religion andleaders of banking and industry.

To this extent, he mustsurely be regarded as one of the earliest functional analysts of society, for henot only considered the consequences social phenomena have on social systems,but he stressed the interconnectedness of all these phenomena.

The inconveniences of the division of functions increase with its charac-teristic advantages.

Language

he family is the most elementarysocial unit and the prototype of all other human associations, for these evolvefrom family and kinship groups. "The collective organism is essentially com-posed of families which are its true elements, of classes and castes which formits true tissue, and finally of cities and townships which are its true organs

There can be no scientific study of society either in its conditionsor its movements, if it is separated into portions, and its divisions are studiedapart,"

Henceastronomy, the most general and simple of all natural sciences, develops first.In time, it is followed by physics, chemistry, biology, and finally, sociology

such a division of employment ... as could not take place among smallernumbers: and ... the faculties of individuals are stimulated to find sub-sistence by more refined methods. ... By creating new wants and newdifficulties, this gradual concentration develops new means, not only of prog-ress but of order, by neutralizing physical inequalities, and affording agrowing ascendancy to those intellectual and moral forces which are suppressedamong a scanty population

Similarly, in the firststage the family is the prototypical social unit, in the second the state risesinto societal prominence, and in the third the whole human race becomes theoperative social unit.

In organic periods, social stability and intellectualharmony prevail, and the various parts of the body social are in equilibrium.In critical periods, in contrast, old certainties are upset, traditions are under-mined, and the body social is in fundamental disequilibrium.

the Theological orficticious; the Metaphysical or abstract; and the Scientific or positive. ... Inthe theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings,the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects . . . supposesall phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.In the metaphysical state . . . the mind supposes . . . abstract forces, veritableentities (that is, personified abstractions) . . . capable of producing all phe-nomena. ... In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vainsearch after Absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, andthe causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is,their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.

Historical com-parisons throughout the time in which humanity has evolved are at the verycore of sociological inquiry. Sociology is nothing if it is not informed by asense of historical evolution

as when social differences have been ascribed to the politicalinfluence of climate, instead of that inequality of evolution which is the realcause.

Though the human race as a whole has progressedin a single and uniform manner, various populations "have attained extremelyunequal degrees of development"

But "experimentation takes place whenever the regularcourse of the phenomenon is interfered with in any determinate manner.

Hence, ob-servation can come into its own only when it is subordinated to the staticaland dynamic laws of phenomena/* But within these limits it remains indis-pensable

They are,first of all, the same that have been used so successfully in the natural sciences:observation, experimentation, and comparison.

Theintellectual reorganization now dawning in the social sciences "requires therenunciation by the greater number of their right of individual inquiry onsubjects above their qualifications.

Once men recognizethe overriding authority of science in the guidance of human affairs, they willalso abandon the illusory quest for an unfettered "right of free inquiry, or thedogma of unbounded liberty of conscience."

All investigationinto the nature of beings, and their first and final causes, must always beabsolute; whereas the study of the laws of phenomena must be relative, sinceit supposes a continuous progress of speculation subject to the gradual im-provement of observation, without the precise reality ever being fully disclosed.. . . The relative character of scientific conceptions is inseparable from the trueidea of natural laws.

The new positive science dethroned the authority of perennial tradition.Comte's oft-repeated insistence that nothing is absolute but the relative lies atthe very core of his teaching.

But at the same time, men will also be enabled to act deliberatelywithin given limits by curbing the operation of societal laws to their ownpurposes.

The discovery of the basic laws of society will cure men of overweeningambition; they will learn that at any historical moment the margin of societalaction is limited by the exigencies of the proper functioning of the socialorganism.

When this was the case, a Hobbesian model of society,in which only power and the willing acceptance of power permit a semblanceof order, seemed appropriate and plausible. But things are different oncesociology can teach men to recognize the invariable laws of development andorder in human affairs.

sociology

Every scientific theory must be based on observed facts,but it is equally true that "facts cannot be observed without the guidance ofsome theory."

Its field of action is therefore notlimited by the absolute growth of social wealth, or in other wordsby the absolute limits of accumulation. Capital grows to a hugemass in a single hand in one place, because it has been lost bymany in another place. This is centralization proper, as distinctfrom accumulation and concentration

It is concentration of capitals already formed, destructionof their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist b

Over-taxation is not an accidental occurrence,but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system ·was first inaugurated, the great patriot, De Witt, extolled it in hisMaxims* as the best system for making the wage-labourer sub-missive, frugal, industrious ... and overburdened with work.

The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of pri-mitive accumulation

oday, industrial supremacy brings with it commercial suprem-acy. In the period of manufacture it is the reverse: commercialsupremacy produces industrial predominanc

As late as the first half of theeighteenth century, complaint is made if the cottage of the agri-cultural labourer does not possess an adjunct of one or twoacres of land. Nowadays the labourer is lucky if it is furnished witha small garden, or if he may rent a few roods of land at a greatdistance from his cottage.

They took a course to take awaydepopulating inclosures, and depopulating pasturage

Legislation shrunk back in the face of this immense change. Itdid not yet stand at that high level of civilization where the 'wealthof the nation' (i.e. the formation of capital and the reckless ex-ploitation and impoverishment of the mass of the people) figures asthe ultima Thule+ of all statecraft. In his history of Henry VIIBacon says this: 'Inclosures at that time' (1489) 'began to be morefrequent, whereby arable land, which could not be manured§ with-out people·and families, was turned into pasture, which was easilyrid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will,whereupon much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into de-mesnes.

The latter werealso in practice peasants, farming independently for themselves,since, in addition to their wages, they were provided with arableland to the extent of four or more acres, together with their cot-tages.

It was ratherthat the great feudal lords, in their defiant opposition to the kingand Parliament, created an incomparably larger proletariat byforcibly driving the peasantry from the land, to which the latterhad the same feudal title as the lords themselves, and by usurpa- .tion of the common lands

The prelude to the revolution that laid the foundation of thecapitalist mode of production was played out in the last third ofthe fifteenth century and the first few decades of the sixteenth. Amass of 'free' and unattached proletarians was hurled onto thelabour-market by the dissolution of the bands of feudal retainers,who, as Sir James Steuart correctly remarked, 'everywhere use-lessly filled house and castle'

Capital can grow into powerful masses in asingle hand in one place, because in other places it has been with-drawn from many individual hands.

At the same time the progress of accumulation increases thematerial amenable to centralization, i.e. the individual capitals,while the expansion of capitalist production creates, on the onehand, the social need, and on the other hand, the technical means,for those immense industrial undertakings which require a pre-vious centralization of capital for their accomplishmen

namelyco-operation and the possession in common of the land and themeans of production produced by labour itself

Along with the constant decrease in the number ofcapitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantagesof this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression,slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this therealso grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantlyincreasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by thevery mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The mono-poly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of productionwhich has flourished alongside and under it

as soon as the capitalist mode of productionstands on its own feet

At a certain stage of develop-ment, it brings into the world the material means of its own de-struction. From that moment, new forces and new passions springup in the bosom of society, forces and passions which feel them-selves to be fettered by that society. It has to be annihilated; it isannihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the indivi-dualized and scattered means of production into socially concen-trated means of production, the transformation, therefore, of thedwarf-like property of the many into the giant property of the few,and the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil,from the means of subsistence and from the instruments of labour,this terrible and arduously accomplished expropriation of the massof the people forms the pre-history of capita

In so far as it is not the direct trans-formation of slaves and serfs into wage-labourers, and therefore amere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the im-mediate producers, i.e. the dissolution of private property based onthe labour of its owner.

With the development of capitalist production during the periodof manufacture, the public opinion of Europe lost its last remnantof shame and conscience. The nations bragged cynically of everyinfamy that served them as a means to the accumulation of capital.Read, for example, the naive commercial annals of the worthyA. Anderson.

The loans enable the government to meet extra-ordinary expenses without the taxpayers feeling it immediately,but they still make increased taxes necessary as a consequence.

It wasnot long before this credit-money, created by the bank itself,became the coin in which the latter made its loans to the state,and paid, on behalf of the state, the interest on the public debt

to dealings in negoti-able effects of all kinds, and to speculation: in a word, it has givenrise to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.

According to one of the lists laid beforeParliament, the Company and its officials obtained £6,000,000 be-tween 1757 and 1766 from the Indians in the form of gifts.Between 1769 and 1770, the English created a famine by buyingup all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulousprices.

The barbarities and desperate out-rages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region ofthe world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue,are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce,however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame,in any age of the earth.' 4

Hardon their heels follows the commercial war of the European nations,which has the globe as its battlefield. It begins with the revolt of theNetherlands from Spain, assumes gigantic dimensions in England'sAnti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the shape of the OpiumWars against China, etc

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous popu-lation of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunderof India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the com-mercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterizethe dawn of the era of capitalist production.

These fetters vanished with the dissolution of the feudalbands of retainers, and the expropriation and partial eviction ofthe rural population

The money capital formed by means of usury and commercewas prevented from turning into industrial capital by the feudalorganization of the countryside and the guild organization of thetowns.

Thedemand for wage-labour therefore grew rapidly with everyaccumulation of capital, while the supply only followed slowlybehind

Thisis an: essential aspect of so-called primitive accumulation.

hus were the agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated fromthe soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, andthen whipped, branded and tortured by grotesquely terroristiclaws into accepting the discipline necessary for the system ofwage-labour

Even at the beginning ofthe reign of Louis XVI, the Ordinance of 13 July 1777 providedthat every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, ifwithout means of subsistence and not practising a trade, shouldbe sent to the galleys.

The spoliation of the Church's property, the fraudulent aliena-tion of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, theusurpation of feudal and clan property and its transformationinto modem private property under circumstances of ruthlessterrorism, all these things were just so many idyllic methods ofprimitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistagriculture, incorporated the soil into capital, and created for theurban industries the necessary supplies of free and rightlessproletarians

hese estates were given away, sold at ridiculousprices, or even annexed to private estates by direct seizure

he poor-ratewas declared perpetual by 16 Charles I, c. 4, and in fact only in1834 did it take a new and severer form.

he device of King Henry VII,' says Bacon, in thetwenty-ninth of his Essays, Civil and Moral, 'was profound andadmirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard;that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them asmay breed a subject to live in convenient plenty and no servilecondition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners andnot mere hirelings.

And this is what distinguishes centralizationfrom concentration, the latter being only another name for repro-duction on an extended scale

Moreover, all progress in capitalist agricul-ture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but ofrobbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soilfor a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility.

Thus it destroys at thesame time the physical health of the urban worker, and the in-tellectual life of the rural worker

Bythe destruction of small-scale and domestic industries it destroysthe last resorts of the 'redundant population', thereby removingwhat was previously a safety-valve for the whole social mechan-ism.

Thechildren and young persons, therefore, in all such cases mayjustifiably claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that anexemption should be secured to them, from what destroysprematurely their physical strength, and lowers them in the scaleof intellectual and moral beings.'

That monstrosity, the disposableworking population held in reserve, in misery, for the changingrequirements of capitalist exploitation, must be replaced by theindividual man who is absolutely available for the different kindsof labour required of him; the partially developed individual, whois merely the bearer of one specialized social function, must bereplaced by the totally developed individual, for whom thedifferent social functions are different modes of activity he takesup in turn

At thesame time, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labourwithin society, and incessantly throws masses of capital and ofworkers from one branch of production to another.

As soon as they get too old for such children's work, that is atabout 17 years old, at the latest, they are discharged from theprinting establishments. They become recruits for crime. Attemptsto procure them employment elsewhere come to grief owing totheir ignorance and brutality, their mental and bodily degrada-tion.

It appears, for example, in the frightfulfact that a great part of the children employed in modern fac:.tori es and manufactures are from their earliest years riveted to themost simple manipulations, and exploited for years, without be-ing taught a single kind of skill that would afterwards make themof use, even in the same factory.

As RobertOwen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of thefuture is present in the factory system; this education will, in thecase of every child over a given age, combine productive labourwith instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods ofadding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method ofproducing fully developed human being

They are, inreality, declaring that consumption and the other pulmonary dis-eases of the workers are conditions necessary to the existence ofcapital.1

What could be more characteristic of the capitalist mode ofproduction than the fact that it is necessary, by Act of Parliament,to force upon the capitalists the simplest appliances for maintain-ing cleanliness and health?

Here is yet another dazzling vindication of the free-tradedogma that, in a society of mutually antagonistic interests, eachindividual furthers the common welfare by seeking his own per-sonal advantage!

here also comes atime in every industrial cycle when a forcible reduction of wagesbeneath the value of labour-power is attempted so as to cheapencommodities.

feverish production, aconsequent glut on the market, then a contraction of the market,which causes production to be crippled

A new and international division of labour

By constantly turning workers into'supernumeraries', large-scale industry, in all countries where ithas taken root, spurs on rapid increases in emigration and thecolonization of foreign lands, which are thereby converted intosettlements for growing the raw material of the mother country,just as Australia, for example, was converted into a colony forgrowing wool. ss A

All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, takentogether, number 1,208,442; those employed in textile factories andmetal industries, taken together, number 1,039,605; in both casesless than the number of modern domestic slaves.

The number of workers they employ is directly pro-portional to the demand created by these industries for the crudestform of manual labour.

Machine produc-tion drives the social division of labour immeasurably furtherthan manufacture does, because it increases the productive powerof the industries it seizes upon to a much greater degree

The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist application of machinery do not exist, they say, be-cause they do not arise out of machinery as such, but out of its capitalist application!

Hence, after the introduction of machinery, society possesses as much of the necessaries of life as before, if not more, for the workers who have been displaced, not to mention the enormous share of the annual product wasted by non-workers.

Crippled as they are by the division oflabour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade that they cannot find ad-mission into any industries except a few inferior and therefore over-supplied and under-paid branches

But in any case, since machinery is continually seizing on new fields of production, its 'temporary' effect is really permanent

The whole system of capitalist production is based on the worker's sale of his labour-power as a commodity. The division of labour develops this labour-power in a one-sided way, by reducing it to the highly particularized skill of handling a special tool

He is in revolt against this particular form of the means of production because it is the material foundation of the capitalist mode of production.

Factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost; at the same time, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity

They reason that since Communism promotes militant atheism, what noblercause could there be than to fight those who deny God? And, since Communistatheists hate America and plot its destruction, what more patriotic cause isthere than to thwart those who would wreck this nation? For such Catholics,the Birch Society provides an opportunity to combine piety and patriotism ina single endeavor.

The large majority of the Catholic hierarchy may have been clearly disturbed by this behavior.

De Gaulle was perceived as anagent of the Bilderberger-Communist conspiracy whose “betrayal” ofFrench Algeria “fit in very well with Bilderberger plans

The linkage of William Morgan, Dr. William Wirt, and Joe McCarthy, asthree Americans who were killed for trying to expose the conspiracy, pointsup the continuity of the opposition with which Welch historically identifies

The Illuminati are credited with founding the Communist conspiracy inthe nineteenth century and with being behind it ever since.

Communism is sometimes used as anothergeneric term for the total conspiracy; but as a specific phenomenon relatedto Moscow or Peking, it can only serve as a related subplot

Of this low-educated group, those who were pro-McCarthy more often mentioned Jews as being Communist than did thosewho were anti-McCarthy.

those who were favorable to Jewishcandidates— were much more likely to be pro-McCarthy than those whowere against Jewish congressional candidate

But McCarthy did not; tothe contrary, he relied heavily and publicly on several Jewish advisers,such as Roy Cohn and David Schine. The evidence of surveys furtherindicates that McCarthy’s supporters were not any more anti-Semitic thanhis opponents.

McCarthy’s main targets were never the North Korean or Chinese orRussian Communists— not even seriously, Communist spies in America—but rather the American establishment

Clearly, many who approved the Senator forhis anti-Communist activities were not prepared to back him or candidateshe favored in elections.

In pursuance of this discovery, he publicly humiliated a Generaland demeaned the Secretary of the Army

It is simply that insofar as thismidwestern political tradition was laced with such tendencies as oppositionto the effete eastern elite, and attraction to the concept of direct democracy,it affected the nature of McCarthyism.

“To many Americans, especially those in the lower classes who were not actively in touch with eventsin the political world, McCarthy was simply fighting Communism. Supportfor McCarthy meant opposition to Communism.”3

Nonmanual occupations thatrequire the highest education—that is, professional and executive or managerial positions—were the most anti-McCarthy

Libraries around the country wereunder pressure, to which they did or did not give in, to remove arbitrarilysuspect books and magazines from their shelves

n Washington, McCarthy conducted a lengthy and public investigationof the personnel of the Voice of America, which resulted in the discoveryof no Communists, but the discharge or resignation of some thirty employees

Partly,McCarthy and his associates were able to do this because there weretraitors, there were spies, there were some significantly placed Communistcells in America.

Indeed, McCarthyism was more conspiracy style than conspiracy theory,more technique than theory of any kind.

It was in this sense that McCarthy’s enemy, and that of many of hiscohorts, was Communism itself rather than any singular group of conspirators.

His traitors were pure: leaders who had sold outto a foreign power on an individual basis

Likewise, conspiracy theories, by their nature, are anti-intellectual andinvariably focus on some overeducated secret elite

Did not populism allege to protect the people and their government from conspiracies, from cells of conspirators, who, contrary to the people’s will andthrough the complacency or collusion of their rulers, were enabled to gaincontrol of society?

enator Taft, though privately contemptuous of McCarthy’s methods, stated publicly that “the pro-Communist policies of the State Department fully justified Joe McCarthy in his demand for an investigation.”9

How can we account for our present situation unlesswe believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us todisaster

But, more than that, hewas in the position to matchmake the classic manage de convenancebetween the preservatist political elements and the less privileged mass basewhich any right-wing political movement in America require

The Communists, before 1934, argued that all non-Commu-nist parties, including the Socialists, were “Social Fascists” ; that is, theyobjectively were paving the way for fascism. The principal organ of thepostwar ultraright, The Freeman, contended that all welfare states andplanning measures were “objectively” steps toward the development of atotalitarian Communist state

It is not that McCarthy invented this device

It was Senator Joseph McCarthy who presumably put together a singlepackage to attract these disparate elements in the population by personifying their fears in the name of anti-Communism.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

he Communists,by concealing their real objectives, by acting positively for liberal causes,by being the best organizers of the left, were able to penetrate deeply intovarious liberal organizations and into the labor movement

The depression emphasized the need forsocioeconomic reforms and helped to undermine the legitimacy of conservative and business institutions. It was followed immediately by a warwhich was defined as a struggle against Fascism

Historically,this ideological conflict developed just as the Catholic populations in mostof these countries were producing sizable upper and middle classes of theirown, which in economic terms were under pressure to abandon their traditional identification with the lower-class party.

The identification of Catholicism with the left in the English-speakingcountries, as compared with its linkages with the right in westernEurope, is related to the fact that the Catholic church is a minority churchin the English-speaking countries and has been the church of the minorityethnic immigrants who have been largely lower-class. As a lower-statusgroup, Catholics have been successfully appealed to by the out-party, bythe party of the lower class

The apparent decline of American power in the face of a pattern ofworld-wide Communist thrusts created a common anxiety in the nation

of the fundamentalist Protestant churches

The former isolationist group, especially its German base,was under a need to justify its past and to a certain extent to gain revenge.The opportunity now to identify internationalist forces in American societywith Communism would obviously have an appeal to this submergedcurrent in American society.

strongest common characteristic of the isolationist-voting counties is theresidence there of ethnic groups with a pro-German or anti-British bias

Most Americans saw themselves asinvolved helplessly in a series of expensive and extensive counterreactionsto these activities, which became a massive commitment in 1950 when wefound ourselves engaged in a formal, costly, and frustrating war withNorth Korea

Russia’s influence had been established swiftly across easternEurope, where necessary by military coups and fabricated revolutions.The Chinese Communists had seized power in 1949

“race question” which was to erupt a decade later. But the uneasy shadowof this change was already beginning to hang over the new status of theurban working class.

The novelty of their new style of life madethem more sensitive to the impingement of remote events

They are squeezed harder than large business, since their competitiveposition does not allow them to pay increases in wages as readily as canbig firms

with individuals, still wealthy, who have grown up in an old traditionalistbackground, with the values of tolerance associated with upper-class aristocratic conservatism

new wealth led to a rise of status insecurity

contingent, subjective natureof identity and membership

may not be objectively real,

Whereas earlier social divisions were grounded in differences ofreligious sect or White ethnicity (native nationals, along with people of Irish,Jewish, Levantine, Southern and Eastern European origin), decolonizationand civil rights laws opened the way for immigrants from Africa, Asia, andLatin America

rendered advantage relative to Blacks—a sort of consolation prize

valuable asset

Tea Party

Thepolitical reaction to such change is often an “all out crusade” to stop theforces of progress (Hofstadter, 1967).

In America, the transi-tion of the Roosevelt-Johnson Democratic Party to its modern coalition ofurban liberals, minority groups, and what remains of labor organizations hasbeen understood as a matter of rights and identity politics (Edsall, 1989), therise of Wall Street’s influence (Greider, 1992), and the rapid decline in unionpower (Hacker & Pierson, 2010). In Britain, since Tony Blair and NewLabour turned away from the party’s socialist roots, it has been decimated bythe loss of White working-class support and internal debates over immigra-tion, identity politics, and foreign interventionism.

Fascism aims todestroy this distinction or to fuse the distinction between public and private. Youare a fascist at home and at work; your identity exists in the State.

at fascism was a his-torical moment tied to a historical moment

but no feature of the pastwill produce the same legacy across a given national space

separates fascism from other mobilizing ideologies

This shift suggests that he might be moving in the direc-tion of a mechanism-based, narrative understanding of fascism

nativism and nationalism, rather than on the fascist movement of the 1930s, is abetter way to understand the different political legacies that pose challenges todemocracy today, not only in the U.S. and europe but globally.

In these qualities, he is essentially American.

Nationalism can be benign or toxic depending upon the historicalmoment (berezin 2021a). but fascism in its ideal form demands obliteration ofthe self—a demand that leads to failed aspirations, extremism, and a tendency toviolence.

The major fascist articulation of the relation between work and social integra-tion appeared in the 1927 Labor Charter, which described a way of workingbased upon principles of hierarchy and order. Instead of joining labor unions,workers were expected to join occupational corporations or groups that definedtheir place in a productive universe.

[If] one is truly Catholic, andhas a religious sense, one remembers always in the highest part of one’s mind, towork and think and pray and meditate” (berezin 1997, 51).

As Gentile (1928) described it, fascism aspired to community and coherence—to eliminating the boundary between the state and the individual. Liberalism,with its soulless individualism, was as much fascism’s enemy as Marxism was. Nomatter what form it takes, Trumpism, with its affinity for isolationism, oppositionto free trade (Mutz 2021), and antipathy to government regulation, makes nocommon cause with collectivism.

Although Mussolini (1932) coined the term fascism to denote a collectivistsystem of government in his Italian Encyclopedia article, he did not do the theo-retical thinking around the concept. In fact, most of the Encyclopedia entry waswritten by Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher and Mussolini’s minister ofeducation. He had laid out the details for this new political philosophy in an aca-demic article in Foreign Affairs (Gentile 1928), one of many legal and philosophyjournals that thrived in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s wherein professors ofvarious disciplines aimed to convey the meaning of fascism to a general and aca-demic public. 2

scholars have not tended to focus upon critical exegesis of fas-cist texts and ideas. And since they never considered fascism seriously as a sys-tem of thought, why would they? It lacked coherence, and its contributions tosocial and political life were, as noted above, seen as metaphors for evil anddestruction.