michael mann, fascists (2004)

Chapters 1 and 2

(1): study of rise of fascist movement, and not the regimes in power [obviously a place to push back, with paxton point about stages of development]

(1-4): seven reasons to take it seriously

1. a major political doctrine of 20th century
2. embraced nation-state
3. ideology must be taken seriously
4. 'core fascist constituencies' is a live problem
5. take seriously the movements behind them
6. seek to understand the evil in which they culminated
7. take seriously the chance that they might return--"some of the substance lives on"

(4): here Mann caricatures, as is his wont, the materialism-idealism "traditional polemic".

(5): four forms of social power [push back majorly, here]

1. ideological
   
2. economic
3. military
4. political

(13-17): a definition--"fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism", five key terms.

1. nationalism
2. statism--goal and organizational form
3. transcendence of class conflict (here he pushes back against Paxton)
4. cleansing
5. paramilitarism--key value and key organizational form

(18): key--here, again, Mann caricatures 'class'-based theories of fascism (which he thinks are limited to middle-class interest, and capitalist interest). he cannot acknolwedge that, in fact, these are much more complicated--and that, importantly, they don't rise and fall with the question of movement 'composition'. they are also, at the very least, meant to say something about the ideology/motivation that impelled these movements. [his argument, here, speaks also to his gross misunderstanding of the role of 'class' as structuring social life]

(21-22): classically bad!!!--because fascists weren't materialists, you can't use materialism to explain them (this is his argument at the bottom of this page, more or less--"fascists focused elsewhere")

(22): again, an impoverished understanding of materialism ('material interests') [plus, here, there's also the problem of foresight--people can pursue their material interests without the pursuit being in their long-term interest]

(25): the overreaction of the old regime [does this have to do with his understating the threat?]

(26-27): three core constituencies

1. favoring paramilitarism
2. favoring transcendence
3. favoring nation-statism

(32): state size 'explosion' in the 1700s

(34): organic vs. liberal conceptions of the nation-state (indivisible people, etc)

(36): complete excision of colonialism from his narrative of State expansion! (didn't Arendt say that Europe built fasicsm in the colonies before it built it at home?)

(38): 1920-1945 retreat of liberal democracy on the continent

(44): distinction between modern authoritarianism and those past--the former had to deal with the "organized political pressure from masses"

(45-47): four ascending degrees of authoritarianism

1. semi-authoritarian--"dual" state, but in mildest form
   
2. semi-reactionary authoritarian
3. corporatist regimes--integrated, hierarhchical
   
4. fascist regimes--corporatism plus paramilitarism

(48): here he starts his discussion of the four forms of power/crisis

(48-64): economic power, economic crisis

(49): first candidate--late-development theory (he will say this explains authoritarianism, partly)

(51): rise of authoritarianism mainly happened in the less developed countries (see his table on page 50)

(52): his critique of the Rueschemeyer et al. -- but why is it banal to state that the majority has an inherent interest in extending the franchise? it's critical.

(56-57): second candidate--the slump (but what about NW europe, he's saying?)

(58): third candidate--class conflict (see below)

(59): strength of left does not map onto the strength of reaction, either--their was an overreaction, from the right (he's stressing the weakness of the left, after 1920)

(62): important--claim that he will repeat, later, about capitalist interest in property vs. capitalist interest in profit. we ought to push back here, because he's neglecting their interdependence under capitalism. moreover, his counterfactual (that something less would have been in capitalists' long-term interests) is simply ahistorical, and not how 'capitalist interests' are typically calculated. though perhaps his formulation does let us say something interesting about 'old regime' interests.

(64): here is a key place where ideology takes on a life of its own, in his argument (the right in one-half of europe was more attracted to certain values). push back time.

(64): in sum, economic explanation is only partial.

(64-70): military power, military crisis

(67): importance of war dislocation--acquiring new territories, debts, etc., which was unique to the South, East, Center of Europe

(68): key--WWI made possible civic paramilitarism. this will be one of his key pegs.

(70-78): political power, political crisis

(71): important, as a place he's pushing back against RSS--participation vs. contestation (the NW didn't have the former, he agrees, but it did have the latter). it's unclear, though, that this is incompatible with what they were arguing.

(72): and, of course, his deployment of this fact is question-begging, completely, insofar as he's not discussing their causes.

(80): fascism as 'reactionary modernism'

(91): overdetermined outcomes--and total spectre, in this conclusion, of a descriptive analysis

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Chapter 3, Italy

(94): three preconditions, for union between nationalists and Left

1. distinction between nation and state, in Italy
2. Italian labor movement
3. nationalism had leftist elements.
   

(95): this was the "leftist nationalist interventionism" that turned into fascism (from 20,000 in late 1920 to 320,00 in Nov 1921)

(96-97): the class-based interpretation of Italian fascism -- as a 'petty-bourgeois' nationalism, that promised the world but that would likely have to sell out to the capitalists [Salvatorelli]. Mann's rejoinder is classically weak, even barbaric (consists, again, of asserting that materialism cannot take 'ideology' seriously)

(97-100): and Mussolini's own account of what explains fascism (!) -- some kind of transcendent, imperial, nationalist project, valuing action over ideology.

(102-103): extraordinary statistics about military veterans in the fascist movement, attracted by 'paramilitarism'

(105): three bursts of violence (quite tame while in power, until Ethiopia)

(106): this is an important point, that needs to be responded to carefully --in Italy, fascism spread in those places where "civil society" was most dense (both in rural areas with varied relations of production, and in urban areas)

(107-109): beginning to discuss the class composition of Italian fascism--in short, more middle-class than the figures reveal, especially in the cities, but not so much in the rural areas

(110): key point--"fascism could not penetrate the organized working class", but had an easier time (see also 116)

(112): this is his central critique of the 'middle-class' theories, i think -- those that were attracted to fascism, within the middle-class, can't be distinguished on the basis of their social position, but rather perhaps simply on their attachment to 'nation-statist values' and 'paramilitary means' [but then, doesn't this become, simply, a non-explanation?]

(113-115): PNF popularity in rural areas -- split the socialists by offering an attractive program

(116-117): BUT, again--where the working classes were dense and organized in rural areas, they were rarely fascist. he's making quite an important point, here, about "organization" [the 'organized working class' is not the same as the 'working class']

(117): a key point, that's obscured in his presetntation--"rural fascism became increasingly conservative," an alliance between landlords and the middling to lower-middling peasants.

(119): his take-home point, if we're being charitable, is to focus our attention on the important question of 'violence' as means of organization (and, thus, question of why the fascists could become so popular) (see also 122)

(120): key--here, quite clearly, the distinction between 'fascism-as-movement' and 'fascism-as-power'; Mussolini is coming around to appease big capital.

(121): fascism didn't attack the state; attacked those who said they were attacking the state (i.e. Leftists)

(123): 'propertied classes' in Italy were afraid because of biennio rosso (1919-1920)(self-styled soviets, general strike in April in Turin, 500,000 workers occupying their factories at its height, etc.)--but, Mann, is arguing, their fears weren't commensurate to the facts. "fascism as preventative counterrevolution."

(125): and this, really, is the clincher--HE QUOTES MUSSOLINI TO PROVE THAT THE COMMUNISTS WERE DONE FOR.

(119-126): in sum, he has given us three economic reasons for elite support of fascism, all of which he finds useful, but incomplete. we can push back, here.

1. propertied classes' fear of pervasive and growing violence
2. fear of political revolution
3. repression of labor in order to protect profits (what was wrong with gilotti, he is saying?)
   

(127): defection of the state apparatus to the fascists (hollow monopoly of armed force)

(128): speaking of a 'class crisis' intertwined with a 'political crisis' -- but maybe this calls for some theorizing? he seems distinctly uninterested in the possibility.

(131): high recruitment in the Northern border regions.

(132): useful summary of his claims, thus far

(134): fascism in power as a "loose corporatism" -- conceding power to elites, etc. all this seems critical, but it is distinctly underemphasized (3 pages!) ('fascism as a movement' represented a very small fraction of the time we ought to be concerned with, surely)

(135): wow--only nine political executions, from 1927 to 1940. low level of repression, more generally.

(136-137): summary of his claims, re: Italian fascism. he calls his explanation "multifaceted", but it seems to me, rather, overdetermined and disorganized.

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Chapter 4, Nazis

(129): a 'slower' rise to power

(141): Jews made up 0.76% of the German population (only 2 percent of Germany's bankers/stockbrokers)

(142): early Nazis' socialism, and then the retreat from it in the late 1920s -- primacy of worker over exploiter, livelihood/welfard for citizens, take action against big finance, and radical land reform program (abandoned in 1928) [again, this is something that needs to be foregrounded]

(143): goal, again, was transcendence, and an 'organic community of the people'

(144): 63% of entry essays saw Marxists/socialits as principal enemies.

(146): fascism as regime, fascism as movement--alluding to the sidelining of the SA as the regime calcified, but is not making this systematic, at all. (see also 167)

(151): Nazis and military veterans (84% had served in the war, somewhat overrepresented; but later cohorts would be needed to replenish the movement--see 361)--and the importance of the military as a right/left faultline (German left had been antimilitarist). Two main explanations for why this is: (1) economic, demobilized soldiers, etc.; (2) translation of military into paramilitary values

(157): key--many Nazis were workers; alternatively, workers were slightly underrepresented in the Nazis (this disappears if we include the paramilitaries). but I don't think this is an empirical challenge to the Marxist thesis, at all. (see 160, also--where he says that the Nazis were 'multiclass'. the descriptor 'petty-bourgeois' is an adjective that is meant to describe the leading element, the ideological orientation. it has some claim on membership, certainly, and should be roughly correct--but not at all hard-and-fast.)

(159): the SPD and the KPD really were proletarian parties, he's acknowledging.

(163): key membership from the civil service and professionals, and white-collar workers (civil servants were most overrepresented occupational group--four times as likely)

(165): an 'antimaterialist' explanation of the way in which they were attracted to the Nazis ('blood and soil' nationalism) that is crying out for--in fact--a materialist explanation to save it from its being question-begging.

(167): SA was proletarian

(170): again, here what's critical, again, is a dense "civil society" -- the Nazis were at the heart of it. very important.

(171-172): critical, six points about class and the Nazis (again, this is where we stress that 'petty-bourgeoisie' is not a claim about composition, but about character; nor does this obviate materialism, at all)

1. all classes well represented
2. rural classes moved from under- to over-representation
3. nation-statist, educated bourgeoisie was overrepresented; business bourgeoisie underrepresented
4. difficult penetrating organized working-class communities
5. not marginals and economic losers that joined the fascists (heart of civil society)
6. distant from the main arenas of modern class conflict. indirect observers of the most pronounced class struggle.
   

(175): the nation congeals in violence--they managed to convince elite s that violence was needed to solve the country's anarchy.

Chapter 5, German Sympathizers

(177): three reasons that the Nazis could seize power

1. activism of militants
2. votes of the electorate
3. ambivalence about Weimar/assistance of the elites

(178): "strong nationalism" characterized Nazi propaganda.

(179): claim, here, he's making about how the Nazi program of transcendence mirrored the 'classless' composition of their movement.

(182): EXTRAORDINARY--the Nazis didn't believe in the "laws of the capitalist economy," hence they didn't apply to them!!!

(182): socialists believed the class/nation were opposed; Nazis saw that, for most Germans, they were not [interesting, though not unproblematic (effect or cause?)--does open to the question of revolutionary internationalism]

(183): important--discussion of Strasser, Hitler and the Left--but there's not enough chronology, here. this, if anything, cannot be treated as static across time.

(185): the election figures (from 3% in 1928 to 33 percent in November 1932).

(189): core voting areas were primarily Protestant and secondarily rural.

(190); artisans as workers, not petty-bourgeois?

(190-191): many fascist workers voted for it, but they weren't at the heart of the class struggle (again, though, there's a real problem about taking a snapshot at their high-point in 1932 and then running with it to disprove theories about the movement and the regime)

(191): Nazis took votes from the bourgeois parties--they radicalized the conservatives, in essence.

(194): elites began to gravitate towards authoritarianism after the gov't started to creak, following the Great Depression. first they had turned to the semi-authoritarians; then they turned to the fascists.

(197): relationship between business and the Nazis (Mann's very confused paragraph, here)--but business had no choice, in a sense.

(199): the complicity of the army and state apparatus in the rise to power, quite critical.

(200): key--Nazi accession to power--no coup, and uneven elite support. but complicity of state apparatus. and Schmitt, in the background (the fear of 'mass politics' diluting integrity of elite debate).

(201): his four objections to empirical theories

1. economic crisis is important, but only partial
2. Nazi constituencies were least affected by economic crisis
3. capitalists did not actively support Nazis (though they didn't support the Weimar republic, either)
4. crisis period was too short to explain a break with democracy

(202): Eley's important re-working of the class thesis, where it is protracted class fonrontation which produces the political stalemate that allows the Nazis in. this seems critical, insofar as the appeal of 'transcendence' needs to be explained. (see also 205 -- what was the Nazis' appeal, why did they emerge in the way they did at the time they did; all this needs to be explained, not wished away)

(203): here, the second of the two claims that seem worth pursuing/tackling

1. paramilitarism
2. the fact that the core support was 'away from the front lines'

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Chapter 10, Conclusion

(353): important--his is a two-part explanation--first, explaining the rise of authoritarianism (353-358); second, the turn to fascist in some of the countries that went authoritarian (358-363)

(353-354): economic crisis--very underdeveloped claims, here

(354): his presentation of the political crisis, that produced authoritarianism and then fascism--the phenomenon of 'dual states', attempting to undercut democracy, find alternative ways of mobilizing masses. [this is compelling, but we need to, in general, account for the 'bedrock' -- what does the explaining, here? i.e., a Barrington Moore or RSS account, which would engage material explanations quite obviously--see also 365]

(355): ideological crisis--"civilization needed rescuing"

(356): five reasons for the elite overreaction

1. revolution seemed a real possiblity, after 1917
2. agrarian landlords were particularly vulnerable, because radical land reform was on cards
3. military officer corps were perturbed
4. churches, too
5. geopolitical disorder, which made some territorial issues particularly prominent
   

(357): key passage, to unpack--claims about instrumental and value-rationality, which seem muddled. better solutions available to elites, etc.

(359-360): another key point--he is arguing that fascists were outside of the class struggle because they sought to transcend it. this is nonsensical, even conceptually. and empirically, as his stuff on the next page, shows, it was too--this posturing served the interests of the status quo.

(363): Franco as authoritarian rightist

(364): only weakened old regimes let in fascism

(365): merger of Enlightenment and Romanticism

(368): the new right mobilizes a different kind of racism

(369): a lot of the supoprt is 'protest voting'

(370): stability of institutionalized liberal democracy

what is fascism?, jim wolfreys

KEY: "To identify fascist ideology as a projection onto another plane of fears and anxieties deriving from social turmoil is not to dismiss its role, but to begin to explain why so many took it so seriously. Studies within the Marxist tradition which have situated ideological, programmatic and organisational features of fascist parties in the context of their relationship to broader social, political and economic questions have been able to provide rich and detailed analyses of the phenomenon, and to distinguish it from other forms of reaction in a way that makes it possible to identify contemporary variants of fascism."

(...) [KEY, this is precisely what Mann fails to do -- temporal aspect to analysis] According to Paxton it is not the themes taken up by fascism that define the phenomenon, but their function. Since fascism is based on a rejection of universal values, it is more disparate than other political movements, and must be understood not ‘as the expression of the same fixed essence’, but within specific historical contexts. He rejects the way some historians have offered separate definitions of fascism and Nazism, arguing that this leads to the study of fascism in isolation from other factors. Analyses which reduce fascism to a tool of a particular interest group, meanwhile, ignore the fact that the movement won independent popular backing. Instead Paxton proposes to examine the development of fascism through five stages: the creation of a movement; its rooting in the political system; the seizure of power; the exercise of power; its fate in the long term (radicalisation or entropy).

(...) Fascism emerged as a response to the development of mass democracy, seeking out, ‘in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification and purity’, and directing it against liberal individualism, constitutionalism and the left.16 Here the distinction between function and themes becomes clearer. Action, not doctrine or philosophy, is what drove the major fascist movements of the inter-war period. In a new era of mass politics, ‘emotions…carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric’ counted for more than ‘the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name’. In place of rational debate, fascism substituted the immediacy of sensual experience, turning politics into aesthetics.

(...) [yup] ...strong subtext to this book, which clearly exercises Mann at least as much as its actual subject, is what he refers to as ‘class theory’, by which he means explanations of fascism which focus either on its relationship to capitalist elites or on its middle class base. Mann claims that Marxists simply reduce ideas ‘to their supposed socio-economic base’.20 His argument is that most ‘class theorists’ do not take enough account of fascists’ own beliefs, which reject both class theories and materialism of any kind. Leaving aside the question as to whether fascists must believe they are pursuing class interests for that to be the case, ‘class theory’ appears, in Mann’s hands, as something of a straw man. This is unfortunate because his determination to portray class as just one sociological descriptor among many diminishes his own attempt to provide an adequate explanation of what makes fascism tick.

(...) As a consequence—and this is also true of Paxton’s book—there is no satisfactory explanatory framework for the conflict between radicals and opportunists at the heart of fascist movements and regimes. Mann refuses to accept that fascism represented one side of the class struggle, ‘or indeed any single class at all’.23 As others have pointed out this does rather beg the question as to what the paramilitaries were engaged in, if not a ruthless class struggle against the organisations of the labour movement.24 Despite acknowledging that once they neared power fascist movements ‘became biased on questions of class struggle’ and ‘tilted toward the capitalist class’, he offers little explanation as to why this should be the case and overall his analysis lacks sufficient feel for the texture of the motivations exercising fascist activists.

lecture 18, "the dark years: vichy france"
john merriman

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the fall of France, and collaboration

1936, again, possibly a time when Hitler could have been stopped in the Rhineland.

all of this has to be seen, in France, in the context of World War I and its legacy--there was a strong feeling, Wilson, etc., that wars were bad things done by evil people (and this was implicit in the resolution of the Treaty of Versailles, of course)

no one wanted another war, but Hitler had been agitating for one from the outset.

there was a feeling that another war would be unthinkable, in France. have to remember the tremendously traumatizing effects of WWI.

-------------

Hitler had of course been building military capacity in Germany, re-arming the nation, etc. Hitler's advisors had been expecting a war to begin, though, in 1940/1941--as we all know, the war actually begins on the 1st of September, 1939, when Hitler invades Poland (he takes power in 1933).

militarily, why does France fall so rapidly?

their respective troop strengths were relatively equal at the time of the invasion of France in May 1940. in tanks, the allies actually had superiority, though German tanks were lighter and faster (and they were used in divisions, which gave them an advantage).

Germans had a clear superiority in fighter power (and they had tried them out in Spain, don't forget)

how had the British and French been planning? they believed that it would be another war of attrition--a long, drawn-out battle in which a strong, defensive line would be critical.

the Germans, by contrast, believed in rapid attack--the "blitzkrieg"

the French are assuming that the forests in N. France and E. Belgium will be physical impediments to the German invasion, but did not prove to be this. 10 tank divisions pour through the forests and they simply waste these French tanks. in four days they're way inside France. the German High Command thought it would take 9 days--and it took 4!

Hitler does make one mistake, prof argues, which is he refuels, allowing the evacuation of French and British troops at Dunkirk.

you have refugees, and German fighter planes picking them off as they fled.

------------------

a new French government, then, collaborates with the Germans--Vichy France is born. (France is divided in two zones; the "collaborationist" government has its capital in Vichy.)

involves people who actively assist the Nazis in achieving their goals, acting on their aspirations. by the end of 1943/1944, if you were a French collaborator and you find graffiti with the word "K" on your door, you were toast--because it meant that the Maquis (or the resistance) was confident enough to make that kind of threat.

again, it's not only France--in Belgium, for example, the right-wing Flemish were more likely to collaborate, and it remains a tension. in Budapest, way you see a goulish shoe-memorial to Jews and Communists gunned down by Hungarian collaborators.

----------------

the historiography and history of collaboration is fascinating, prof is saying.

there's a myth of universal resistance, perpetuated by people who had actively collaborated and also by Charles De Gaulle (he needed people to forget the Communist resistance, and lead the French people to identify with his person and leadership--part of the mantle he'd assume.)

there was a movie from 1953-1954 about the Jews arrested in Paris in 1942--taken away, put in a transit camp north of Paris. in the film you see French guards--so what they do is they photoshop it, effectively.

three series of crucial events have jolted this myth, prof is arguing:

(1) the film called "the sorrow and the pity", which is 4.5 hrs long. what the producer does is he goes to one single town and he looked at what happened there in collaboration--some of the best documentary scenes about intentional forgetting, etc,--where teachers forget about their Jewish friends/colleagues. it was only shown in one theatre. made for French TV, but not shown until 1981/1982. why? because it told the awful truth, which was that lots of people believed better Hitler than Blum.

(2) "vichy france," by bob paxton in 1972. it cut through the intentional forgetting to look squarely at collaboration--bob paxton, actually, didn't have the right to french archival documents (the 50 year rule, and a "troublemaker"). but when this book came out, it had a very powerful effect. here was a great historian saying it "wasn't like what you learned in school."

(3) the trials--as collaboration came to be something that people wanted to know about--then people with bad histories were tracked down. one of the first was Touvier, who was involved in the torture of resisters, deportations of jews/communists. he was hidden by right-wing groups (bounced from monastery to monastery). but finally tracked down and tried. at this trial, Paxton became an "expert witness." and there was a trial of Barbi, as well, who had tortured people in Lyons. and then there was Maurice Papon, a functionary who signed the death-certificates of hundreds and hundreds of Jews. he went on to a very successful career in the fourth and fifth republic. and they caught up with this very very old man, and there was the question of whether he ought to be tried (in 1998, 1999 -- at one point he escapes, and they find him at a fine restraunt in Switzerland; he insists, "I was a good bureaucrat.") he used the "shield argument"--that if it wasn't for me(/we), thing would have been even worse. he was found guilty, and sent to jail.

"the Vichy syndrome."

so, from having no official memory of Vichy--only bits that had to do with the resistance--France underwent this re-evaluation of its relationship to the regime. and that was important for people who had lost their family members, for Jews (some 75,000 Jews never returned to France after Vichy). the big round-up in June 1942, for example, was not done by the Germans, but by the French police. one of the worst institutions of all was the milice (the militia), created in January 1943, to get tough on the Jews, the communists, the resistance.

remember, the militia's tactics required very personal forms of betrayal--people sending letters to the police, etc. (in the days after war, almost 10,000 collaborators were executed)

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voting left superimposed on a map of de-christianization and there would be remarkable similarities, as prof said before. that is not true of collaborationists--this is not regional, or from one social class (this is the case in Belgium, though.) of course you're more apt to have people from the middle-classes collaborate, but it's difficult to generalize (you have working-class collaboration).

what about religion? the role of the Pope in all of this, professor is saying, is nauseating. the Pope knew, but did nothing. zero. the Catholic Church hierarchy was generally very collaborationist.
Roosevelt and these people knew (they knew before they did anything, prof reminds us), but their dilemma is trickier (can you bomb death camps? train tracks?)

the Church got what it wanted, during Vichy France--no divorce, two people executed for abortion. (though he is also insisting that it is not this open and shut)

-----------------

now, what did the people who collaborated want? a couple of themes

(1) argument made by Petain after the war. by collaborating with the Germans, you were saving the French State. but, as Paxton says, "they may have been saving the French state, but they were destroying the French nation."

(2) the xenophobia that characterized the French right, before the occupation, was obviously a prevalent theme during the collaborationists. no Italians, no Spanish (especially no Marxists).

(3) anti-semitism--the French Vichy regime (it's only in November of 1942 that the Germans occupy the Vichy zone, because the resistance is mobilizing) puts in laws depriving Jews of rights that the Germans didn't even ask them to do. in some ways even harsher than the infamous Nuremberg laws of the Reich.

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Petain, for the fascists, will be an answer for:

(1) the "decadence" and "feuding France" of pre-Vichy France

(2) the restoration of the earthly power of the Church. restoration of the soul of France; the old, Catholic/Christian values. a return to the "moral order"--when things are passed down from the "moral orders."

(3) nationalism, of a new sort--away from the legacy of the French revolution, towards a nationalism of patriotism and values. and, of course, with this comes an exclusionary ethic.

(4) authority--not the dirtiness of "democracy"; authority flows from the top, down.

(5) peasantism. "true France," not the France of Jews, striking workers, communism, etc., virtue is found in the soil (Joan of Arc is a peasant girl, remember--she becomes a symbol of all this). cities are places where Jews and workers hang out. the true France is the France of peasants on the soil.

(6) corporatism--they've read about Mussolini and Italian fascism, making the argument that workers and bosses have the same interests. and you can resolve these conflicts in the idea of the Nation--strong, marching, plutonic warriors