FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION - CHAPTER X
Palme Dutt
THE ESSENCE OF FASCISM-THE ORGANISATION OF SOCIAL DECAY
Fascism, developing since little over a decade, has no long past behind it, and in all probability-from the very nature of its reactionary role, from its violent inner contradictions, and from the whole character of its desperate attempt to throw up a darn against the advancing social revolution-is likely to have no long future before it. Fascism is likely to be remembered only as an episode in the long-drawn class-war advancing to the final victory of the socialist revolution.
But if Fascism were able to have the opportunity to continue over a longer period, were able to maintain its power and to dominate, as it dreams, a whole epoch of social history, then it is evident from the whole foregoing analysis what its historical role would be, and what kind of society it would produce.
The society of a “stabilised Fascism” – if such a contradiction in terms can be imagined, if, that is, for the sake of analysis we try to imagine the possibility of such a society and ignore for the moment the inner dialectics of break-up and revolutionary upsurge which would make such a stabilisation impossible – would be a society of organised decay. The essence of Fascism is the endeavour violently to suppress and overcome the ever-growing contradictions of capitalist society. As Goering stated in a speech to the Pomeranian Landbund on March 17, 1933:
“The regime of national concentration will with iron fist bring the opposing interests of the different strata of society into that harmony which is so essential to the pro sperity of the German people.”
Forcible (“iron fist”) suppression of the “opposing interests of the different strata of society” into “harmony,” that is to say, in short, “iron-fist harmony”-that is the essence of Fascism.
But what does this involve? For in fact just the contradictions and consequent conflicts are the mainspring and driving force of social development in class-society, that is to say, until society becomes a true collective by the liquidation of classes. Until then, the path of class- conflict is the path of social development. To attempt on the one band to maintain the contradictions -unresolved, and on the other to suppress forcibly their expression, would mean, if successful, that society would cease to develop and would pass, on the most favourable hypothesis, to a Byzantine or Old-Chinese hieratic ossification.
But such a society requires in fact an entirely different economy from modern capitalism. And to this outcome the deepest inner tendencies of Fascism – despite the fact that it is to-day used in practice as the instrument of finance-capital – would, if given free play, increasingly develop.
Just by its attempt to suppress forcibly, in place of resolving, the contradictions of modern society, Fascism reveals most profoundly its reactionary role. For by this it strangles social development.
First, Fascism seeks to suppress the class struggle, not by the abolition of classes, but by the violent permanent subjection of the exploited class to the exploiters and crushing of all resistance. This means, even if it could be successful, a condition of permanent inner war within society, with consequent extreme waste of social forces and increasing destruction of all possibility of collective achievement. Its stabilisation would mean the replacement of liberal capitalism by a caste or statutory servile system. As the nineteenth-century liberal capitalist system of formal “free contract” increasingly disappears under modern conditions of large-scale industry, its breakdown raises ever more sharply the two alternatives: either Socialism, or the common ownership of the means of production and common obligation of all citizens to labour and sharing of the fruits; or the Servile State (State Capitalism), that is, the statutory compulsion and regulation of the labour of the wage-earning class for the profit of the property-owning class under a general framework of State control, with the abolition of the right to strike. The Fascist State represents the second alternative, that is, the Servile State.
Second, Fascism seeks to suppress the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist economy brought about by the advance of technique and the development of mass-production and productive power. As before, it seeks, not to resolve the contradictions in the higher form of socialisation of the already social forms of production, but to suppress them by artificially restricting the productive forces, throttling down production to fixed limits suitable to monopolist capital, preventing new development, clamping on state bureaucratic control, and even, in extreme cases, artificially maintaining obsolete small-production forms, restricting machine-production and encouraging hand-labour (see Chapter 111, sections 1 and 2 for examples of this process). The reactionary, stagnating tendencies of monopoly capitalism receive their extreme expression in Fascism.
Third, Fascism seeks to suppress the contradictions of international capitalist development, that is, the contradictions between the single unified world market and international specialisation of production, on the one hand, and the competing monopolist groups and state complexes, on the other, by forcibly shattering the basis of international economy and organising the retreat towards the limited closed-in isolationist economic basis-the line of so-called “national self-sufficiency” or “autarchy.” This openly retrograde line means the cutting down of international trade and communications, the raising of the costs of production, the lowering of the standard of living, and the increasing “Balkanisation” of the capitalist world.
Where would this whole line – if we continue for the purpose of our analysis to ignore the dialectics of struggle and development which would make its realisation impossible, and imagine a successful and increasing straight-line realisation of the tendencies of Fascism – lead the modern capitalist world in the twentieth century?
It is evident that this line would be a line of increasing stagnation and decay leading more and more away from the complex inter- dependent modern forms towards more primitive forms, and finally to barbarism.
The first stage of this process of the working out of Fascism would be the stage of an elaborately bureaucratic and non-progressive state capitalism – the bureaucratic regulation and restriction of the entire economy, while still maintaining capitalist forms. But while the capitalist forms would still be maintained, and surplus-value would continue to be extracted, the old free play of capitalist production and circulation could no longer be permitted. Accumulation and expansion would have to be strictly controlled, since the normal working of the capitalist process would otherwise rapidly burst the bonds of the attempted regulation and harmony. The capitalist class would tend to become a permanently fixed class or caste, with no room for new accessions to its ranks. The attempt would develop, by means of control of investments and similar measures, to stabilise on a basis approximating to simple reproduction of capital, and to avoid or minimise the inherent disturbances of expanded reproduction. This would mean a static non-progressive tendency, with regulated quotas of production, prices, levels of wages and profits. New inventions would be strictly regulated and checked, as is to-day widely recommended. Science and education would be discouraged, save so far as is indispensable for military purposes.
This stagnating, non-progressive parasitic character of monopoly capitalism has already been observed since the beginning of the imperialist era. Lenin, in his analysis of imperialism as the “Decay of Capitalism,” sharply brings out this tendency:
“Like all monopoly, this capitalist monopoly infallibly gives rise to a tendency to stagnation and decay. In proportion as the monopoly prices become fixed, even though it be temporarily, so the stimulus to all progress tends to disappear; and so also arises the economic possibility of slowing down technical progress.” (Lenin, Imperialism, Ch. 8.)
The post-war development of capitalism in the two decades since this was written, and especially the development of state capitalism and of Fascism, has enormously carried forward this process.
The “petrifaction” of modern capitalist industry under an “anonymous industrial bureaucracy” has been noted as an increasing tendency by the German economic historian, Schmalenbach:
“There is no longer a certain assurance that capable, competent men will make good. I am certainly not so sentimental as to believe that in the old private industry a capable man was assured of advancement under all circumstances. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that in the new type of fettered industry the assurance is considerably less. In these vast monopoly concerns the successful man is much more firmly seated in the saddle than he ever could formerly be under the system of private industry. Under free competition he had to earn his position continually....The chiefs of industry, at one time very vigorous leaders in the period of struggle and growth, are petrifying to Heads of Departments, to Chiefs of Industrial Boards, and, as industry turns from the vertical to the horizontal, they change from creative minds to managers of capital and price officials.”
But this is only the beginning of the process. This tendency to petrifaction, to a static non-progressive condition, which is the underlying tendency of all the dreams of “Planned Capitalism,” is only the first stage. For in fact the non-progressive tendency inevitably works itself out in a tendency to a decline, to a descent towards a lower technical and economic level. The next stage, the first signs of which can already be discerned, becomes the gradual break-up of the large combinations, the break-up of large-scale organisation, the reversion to more limited economic units. In place of the internationalisation, of economy develops the localised “self-sufficient economic unit.” In place of the international specialisation of production develops scattered production on a smaller scale for each unit, and the consequent decline of mass-production. The most advanced large-production plants, with their heavy overhead running costs and needs of an enormous worldwide market, begin to be found “uneconomic” in contrast to relatively more backward smaller plants. So begins the downward movement (if the proletariat does not conquer, if the advance to the necessary next stage of the world socialist order is not achieved), from the high-water mark of capitalist technique in the first quarter of the twentieth century to lower and more primitive forms. Such is the economic basis of the “decline to the Dark Ages,” which all can see ideologically expressed in Fascism.
Scott Nearing in his pamphlet on “Fascism” has given a vivid imaginative picture of this process. He writes:
“The search for a self-sufficient economic unit will lead the Fascists, as it led those of their predecessors who helped to liquidate the Roman Empire, to a splitting up of economy units until they reach the village, the manor and the local market town. Village economy is almost self-sufficient.... Short of this level, however, there is no unit which can pretend to economic self-sufficiency. The search for an area in which economic self-sufficiency is workable leads straight back to such forms of village economy as can be found to-day in portions of Central Europe, India and China.Autarchy implies the abandonment of national specialisation in production.... Mass-production will be drastically restricted.
The abandonment of national specialisation will go hand in hand with the decline of international trade. In proportion as each community becomes self-sufficient, it will cease to trade with its neighbours. Nation will cease to trade with nation; district with district; village with village, until a stage is reached like that of the Middle Ages, at which the trade of the world can be carried on the backs of camels, pack-horses and human beings, or in a few small merchant vessels. Each village, manor, market town, trader and merchant will be compelled to provide for his own self-defence and protect his own property. Localism and individualism will have once again replaced the efforts at social co-ordination....Automatic machinery will be abandoned with the abandonment of mass-production. The village will rely on hand-agriculture and hand- crafts. Railroads will disappear. Roads will be tracks through the mud. Automobiles will vanish. Bridges will be destroyed in the course of the constantly recurring wars and military expeditions and forays. Pack animals defended by private guards will ford the streams and make their way single-file over narrow winding tracks. If this picture seems fantastic to a modern American or European, let him compare Roman imperial economy in 50 A.D. with the economy of the same territory in 650 A.D….Mass wage-labour will disappear with the disappearance of specialised mass-production. The modern proletariat will be eliminated by war, disease, famine and the flight back to the land, quite as effectively as the proletariat and the slave masses of Imperial Rome were eliminated by the same means....The standard of living will be reduced to that of the villagers in present-day Mexico, China, Austria or Rumania, except that the villagers will no longer be able to secure the many trinkets, tools and utensils that now come to them from the centres of specialised industrial production. Each year they will sow their crops; will wait for the rain, and when the rain fails them, will die like flies of the resultant famine. Each year they will reap their harvests; hide them away from roaming bands of brigands and unemployed soldiers; huddle about their meagre fires, and use their spare time in making and repairing household tools and utensils.” (Scott Nearing, Fascism, pp. 48-51.)
This picture is an imaginative picture of a hypothetical process- deliberately leaving out of account the dialectics of the proletarian class struggle which will defeat its realisation. But -it is essentially a correct picture of what would happen if the innermost tendencies of Fascist economics and politics were worked out to their final conclusion. It is essentially a correct picture of the only final alternative to the socialist revolution. Those who hesitate at the issue of the socialist revolution will do well to ponder closely this inevitable final alternative which they are thereby choosing.
The sense of the decline of civilisation, the overpowering atmosphere of pessimism, even though accompanied by formal expressions of hope of revival through Fascism, overwhelmingly dominates all Fascist expression, and betrays its innermost essence.
“We have no belief in programmes or plans, in saints or apostles. Above all, we have no belief in happiness, in salvation or in the promised land.” (Mussolini, Popolo d’Italia, January 1, 1922.)
“Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a possibility.”(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.)
“In the gloom of to-day and the darkness of to-morrow the only faith that remains to us individualists destined to die is the at present absurd but ever-consoling religion of anarchy.”(Popolo d’Italia, April 6, 1920.)
“Hopeless we may be, yet we have the hope of doomed men.”(Blackshirt, September 16-22, 1933.)
“Fully aware of the decline of cultures and civilisations before us, we still demand the right of every proud warrior – to fight for a cause though that cause seem lost.”(Fascist Week, January 12-18, 1934.)
“But it is not a lost cause.” Such is the hasty addition appended, without attempt at grounds other than a mystic faith, to the last quotation, to save appearances and justify the Fascist fight. But the addition rather confirms than changes the basic outlook revealed. The basic tone and outlook remains that of a dying civilisation fighting against odds to continue defiantly in the face of all the evidence of the doom of history proclaimed against it.
Characteristic of this whole outlook is the dominating influence of Spengler on Fascism. The favourite, the most quoted and the dominating philosopher and teacher of the Fascist “theorists” remains Spengler, the shallow journalistic-smatterer philosopher of the inevitability of decline and of the collapse of civilisation, even though his conclusions are so downright black and hopeless in their pessimism that they are compelled formally to deny them, while accepting his premises. The recent official book of British Fascism (Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism) fills its pages with endless excerpts from Spengler, declaring:
“Spengler’s interpretation of world history is a colossal monument to the European mind.... His interpretation of past history remains valid, and constitutes a base from which modern man may begin to interpret his own present and to modify his own future.”
What is the teaching of this “colossal” prophet? He writes:
“Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice. We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on the last position, without hope, without rescue.... The honourable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.”
What is the comment of The Fascist Week on this commonplace maudlin posturing of all dying civilisations?
“His words are a magnificent example of dauntless nobility in the face of inevitable annihilation.” (Fascist Week, January 12-18, 1934.)
The Fascist organ thereafter endeavours to plead that perhaps man may be “in some ways free of natural laws” and thus escape the doom. But even the final conclusion of the Fascist organ runs:
“For those who make the choice, the very least of their destinies will be an honourable end.”
In the same way the official book on Mosley and British Fascism, already quoted, glories in the breakdown of civilisation and the return to the primitive:
“The powers of the blood, unbroken bodily forces, resume their ancient lordship” (p. 198).
“Out of the night of history, old shadows are appearing which menace their complacency.... Sir Herbert Samuel, a Liberal of singular perspicacity, believes that Europe is returning to the conditions of the twelfth century. Professor Laski wails against these new men who have “no inhibitions.”...
The figure of the leader... comes out into the stark day in the grim serenity of Mussolini, in the harsh force of Hitler. And behind them stride the eternal condottieri – the gallant, vivid Balbo, the ruthless Goering” (pp. 42-3).
(Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism.)
With this typical glorification of the “condottieri,” of the return of the brigand Balbo and the gorilla Goering, of the law of the jungle, we may leave the Fascists to their Neronian pleasures, until such time as the strong hand of the proletarian dictatorship shall end their blood-orgies and establish civilised order and progress throughout the world. What speaks here through the mouth of the Fascists is nothing but the typical decadent parasitic glorification of blood and the cave-man (already visible in its first signs in the invalids Nietzsche, Carlyle and other sick types, or later represented in the Ethel M. Dells and Hemingways of literature). Fascism in its ideology is nothing but the continuation of fin-de-siecle decadence into its necessary outcome in blood-lust and barbarism. All this is only the death-rattle of the dying bourgeois civilisation.
Against all this pessimism, decline, decay and filth, tragic destinies, self-heroisings, idolisation of death, returns to the primitive, mysticism, spiritualism and corruption, the revolutionary proletarian movement of Communism, of Marxism, the heir of the future, proclaims its unshakable certainty and confidence in life, in science, in the power of science, in the possibility of happiness, proclaims its unconquerable optimism for the whole future of humanity, and in this sign, armed with the weapons of scientific understanding, of dialectical materialism, of Marxism, will conquer and sweep from the earth the dregs of disease and decay which find their expression in Fascism.
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