Fascism and fascists have been on the news quite a bit in Australia in the last few months. Which got me thinking:
1. Noam Chomsky, in an interview in the 1970s, said
[U]nder capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
Chomsky here draws a link between the political ideology of fascism and the economic ideology of capitalism; as in, the two are not that far from each other. They serve as complementary systems of control in two different but intertwined domains.Â
2. Which leads me to D&G and their work on microfascism, fascism, and capitalism in Capitalism and Schizophrenia. For D&G, desire is the driving impetus in humans and therefore the primary economic concept. Capitalism is but one manifestation of that human desire, one that is both political and psychological. Desire produces rules; it structures how we go about our daily lives. When you get that Xbox youâve wanted forever, you start playing games on it in your downtime. Your roommate gets earplugs if she or he wants to sleep at night as youâre playing on your Xbox. You start picking up new ways of saying things (e.g. teabagging) and even a few new friends you otherwise wouldnât have met. The object of your desire leads to new habits and social etiquettes.Â
Another driving human impetus, according to D&G, is the creation of these rules, or microstructures, in our lives. When I put on makeup, I first put on concealer, then eyeliner, then mascara, then blush, then lipstick. When these microstructures bump into the microstructures of other people, microfascism becomes a thing. Say youâre used to walking on the left side of the road, and some American (me) is walking on the right side. Why canât that American just get with the program and walk on the side of the road Iâm on so that everythingâs just simpler and more efficient and if I want to pass her and the person in front of her, itâs a simple jump and not a complicated zig zag? When you multiply this thought process of the necessity of homogeneity in habits and beliefs across larger populations, you get fascism.Â
D&G argue that previous social structures kept human desire in check. Think, for example, marriage: love is tucked away into a union that focuses on procreation. Love, as a desire, is messy; marriage discourages such messiness and love outside of marriage is discouraged. Capitalism, on the other hand, unleashes the full potential of desire by deterritorializing it and then reterritorializing it. (This ties into D&Gâs arguments about identity.) Fascism, as a political movement, with its emphasis on control and homogeneity rose in response to capitalismâs unleashing of desire.Â
3. However, that is not to say the two cannot be extremely similar. Capitalism can be fascist, as Chomsky notes, and fascism can be capitalistic. Fascism arose as a response to capitalism, which means it arose in the context of capitalism. To oppose capitalism is not the same as to subvert it. Fascism took on many of the base ideologies of capitalism, such as a hierarchical scheme of control (think to Marxâs analysis of the means of production). What Chomskyâs quote loses is historical precedence: capitalism precedes fascism, not the other way around.Â
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1983. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1987. Print.
interview with Noam Chomsky: (x)
news article about recent rallies in Australia: (x)