Dandelion Salad
By Dmitry Orlov
Speaking Truth to Power
Monday, 12 January 2009
[In his own inimitable brilliant and witty manner, Dmitry Orlov argues that the recent "emergency nationalization" of business and industry is not socialism at all, but rather, blatant fascism.--CB]
Reprinted from ENERGY BULLETIN
Over the past few months the American mainstream chatter has experienced a sudden spike in the gratuitous use of the term “Socialist.” It was prompted by the attempts of the federal government to resuscitate insolvent financial institutions. These attempts included offers of guarantees to their clients, injections of large sums of borrowed public money, and granting them access to almost-free credit that was magically summoned ex nihilo by the Federal Reserve. To some observers, these attempts looked like an emergency nationalization of the finance sector was underway, prompting them to cry “Socialism!” Their cries were not as strident as one would expect, bereft of the usual disdain that normally accompanies the use of this term. Rather, it was proffered with a wan smile, because the commentators could find nothing better to say – nothing that would actually make sense of the situation.
Not a single comment on this matter could be heard from any of the numerous socialist parties, either opposition or government, from around the globe, who correctly surmised that this had nothing to do with their political discipline, because in the US “socialism” is commonly used as a pejorative term, with willful ignorance and breathtaking inaccuracy, to foolishly dismiss any number of alternative notions of how society might be organized. What this new, untraditional use of the term lacks in venom, it more than makes up for in malapropism, for there is nothing remotely socialist to Henry Paulson’s “no banker left behind” bail-out strategy, or to Ben Bernanke’s “buy one – get one free” deal on the US Dollar (offered only to well-connected friends) or to any of the other measures, either attempted or considered, to slow the collapse of the US economy.
A nationalization of the private sector can indeed be called socialist, but only when it is carried out by a socialist government. In absence of this key ingredient, a perfect melding of government and private business is, in fact, the gold standard of fascism. But nobody is crying “Fascism!” over what has been happening in the US. Not only would this seem ridiculously theatrical, but, the trouble is, we here in the US have traditionally liked fascists. We had liked Mussolini well enough, until he allied with Hitler, whom we only eventually grew to dislike once he started hindering transatlantic trade. We liked Spain’s Franco well enough too. We liked Chile’s Pinochet after having a hand in bumping off his Socialist predecessor Allende (on September 11, 1972; on the same date some years later, I was very briefly seized with the odd notion that the Chileans had finally exacted their revenge). In general, a business-friendly fascist generalissimo or president-for-life with no ties to Hitler is someone we could almost always work with. So much for political honesty.
[...]
via Carolyn Baker – THAT BASTION OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM, By Dmitry Orlov.
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