This meit be a bit confusing, because it was late at neit, but it is something that pops up constantly with supporters of Liberals (not just the politicians themselves): the Rule Of Law.
All the time, I see that Rule Of Law is cast as something that is the best thing ever, as if Fascism is a criminal phenomenon.
I originally thoht this was Liberals trying to get courts to fight Fascism due to fears about having Fascists being in kahoots with the legal system, but lately it seems that this “rule of law” idea is pushed as a sort of anti-Fascist panacea. It is really ahistorical, considering how the law and police force are not simply there, but evolve and expand as Capitalism does: instead of simply catching criminals, there is an entire network of copaganda to convince people that they need the police due to fear of crime, then there are private prisons which inherently need more prisoners due to the logic of the market, then there are the politicians who do nothing as police get more and more funding, then there is the mistreatment of criminals which seeps into the mistreatment of prisoners, then mistreatment of people near cops, then mistreatment of people that the cops dislike. All because there the needs of the Law were put above the needs of the human being.
I need to really research this, and find out why this line is being pushed, in detail.
Liberals fear fascism for a different reason then socialists, they are worried that the government will lie, seize and walk away with their investments however they see fit to pursue their nationalistic/monopolistic aims, hence the obsession with “Rule of Law”. They want their guarantees that they are included and protected in the capitalist umbrella, working class suffering is a non-factor.
Capitalist societies are ruled by the bourgeoisie. Under the class rule of the bourgeoisie, the law is created to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie. Because liberals buy into bourgeois ideology, they support the rule of law over them. Essentially, they believe that the growth of obvious facism in the US, which has been present for over a hundred years as a major element of the United States, is an attempted coup by a minority of the bourgeoisie. In actually, the shift to naked facism is produced by a change in the material basis, namely the declining rate if profit and decline of the American Empire.
Therefore, the bourgeois law cannot stop facism, because bourgeois law will change to represent the interests of the increasingly facist bourgeoisie - liberals have an idealistic conception of law, where it is this ideal or holy thing imposing “democracy, freedom and human rights” on society, while in actuality it is just a tool for bourgeois class rule, which can be altered, replaced, or discarded whenever useful. They have this conception because they do not understand the material basis of laws, and because they are propagandized to believe in the ideals of the bourgeoisie. US facist also support the rule of facist laws, for the ideals of “order and supremacy”.
The fundamental flaw apart from not understanding the material basis of law, is that they do not understand the class character of facism, viewing it instead through a purely ideological lens as something evil and irrational for all segmens of the population (despite facism only occuring to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie). When this is understood, it is clear that the only way to prevent facism is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the class rule of the proletariat, something the bourgeois liberal idealogues will never advocate for - instead they advocate for peaceful protests, voting, and the rule of law, i.e. obeying the class rule of the bourgeoisie as a way to “oppose” the bourgeoisie
The Rule of Law is a core pillar of liberal ideology and the most important method of legitimizing the fascist state when it comes into being.
If the law is unquestionable, and the law is fascist, then fascism is unquestionable and dissent is treason.
This is one of the many contradictions of a liberal system.
I’ve been kind of exhausted lately so I’m sorry if my reply comes off as shallow, but I appreciate your enthusiasm I’d just recommend to try to get through as much of Das Kapital as you can, at least the 1st Tome.
The rule of law serves one function (To Protect Capital), but it has two modes. Good cop and Bad cop.
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Good cop: will sweet talk you, tell you you will be fine as long as you follow the law.
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Bad cop will threaten you, tell you you’re getting a life sentence your life is over, there’s nothing you can do.
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Good cop comes back in, tell you if you fess up, you’ll get a sweeter deal.
And so on.
What is the primary goal of Capitalism and what are the Cops protecting? The accumulation of wealth.
What’s the main obvious issue with that? Well, you need to extract that wealth from somewhere and for you to be rich, others have to be poor.
The poorer the people, the more they will resist. You can keep them entertained with bread and circuses, you can use credit and austerity, the latest most advanced stage of capitalism has been Imperialism. Problem with that, besides the human exploitation, is that it will hit a wall, it won’t have anywhere else to expand and then it’s going inwards.
Once it goes inwards they will either have to turn to Socialism or use more wealth to protect their wealth and as they do that the people’s lives will become shittier and shittier until it raptures catastrophically and start a war.
This is extremely oversimplified btw.
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