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Threat to capitalism after all?

Submitted December 6, 2004 - 11:02 pm by Benjamin Melançon
It may be correct analysis or a comforting idea that, because there isn't a threat to capitalism here, the U.S. isn't becoming fascist.

But it points to something definitely weird about today's repression: it doesn't appear to be a reaction to anything.  The "non-fascist" repression cited in the article are most prominently the investigations, infiltrations, prosecution, and worse of any group left of liberal following both world wars.  Prior to these reactionary crackdowns was a strong and growing progressive movement that, in both cases, even won lots of concessionary reforms in labor laws and social welfare and more.

So what's this repression, which is getting there in magnitude, responding to if there really is no threat to capitalism, not even the 60s and 70s radicalism that brought COINTELPRO?

Either the threat that the neoconservatives behind the Bush administration see is capitalism in its present form failing all by itself, with no alternative threatening, or it is the global anticapitalism described in We Are Everywhere.  Or more probably, some combination of that and more.

Anyhow, I don't put much stock in the no threat to capitalism theory of 'no fascism'.  I think Marxist analysis would have capitalism due for another major self-imposed crisis by now anyway, wouldn't it?

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