FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION - CHAPTER XI

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Palme Dutt

TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA

Until the last few years Liberalism and Social Democracy denied the possibility of Fascism in the “civilised” countries of Western Europe and America.

As early as 1922, immediately after the victory of Fascism in Italy, while current discussion still  treated this as an “Italian” phenomenon, the Communist International at its Fourth Congress gave the warning for every country:

“The menace of Fascism lurks to-day in many countries-in Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary, in nearly all the Balkan countries, in Poland, in Germany (Bavaria), in Austria and America, and  even  in  countries  like  Norway.  Fascism  in  one  form  or  another  is  not  altogether impossible even in countries like France and England.”

But  even  as  late  as  1928  the  Second  International  still  clung  to  its  theory  of  “the  two Europes”   and   of   “dictatorship”   as   only   possible   in   “backward”   countries.   Vandervelde, Chairman of the Second International, declared at its Brussels Congress in 1928:

“A  great  captain  of  industry…  recently  said  to  us:  “If  without  taking  into  account political frontiers you trace an imaginary line from Kovno to Bilbao, passing through Cracow and  Florence,  you  will  find  before  you  two  Europes  –  the  one  in  which  horse-power dominates,  the  other  where it  is  the  living horse,  the  one  where  there  are  parliaments,  the other  where  there  are  dictators.”  It  is  in  reality  exclusively in  the  latter  economically  and politically backward Europe that dictatorships more or less brutal, more or less hypocritical, abound, whether veiled or no by a sham national representation.”

Three  years  later,  in  1931,  the  Second  International  had  to  admit  the  incorrectness  of  this theory. In its report to the Vienna Congress in 1931 the Executive declared:

“Fascism  has  overstepped  the  limits  which  but  a  few  years  previously  appeared  to  be drawn for it by the development of modern technique. Whereas it was believed at that time that  Fascism  was  confined  to  those  countries  in  which  “instead  of  horse-power  the  living horse dominates,” the Fascist danger has now also penetrated to countries in which industry is highly developed.”

The  three  further   years  since  1931  have  seen   the  establishment  of  complete  Fascist 

dictatorships in Germany and Austria, the growth of influentially supported Fascist movements in  

France  and  England,  the  development  of  the  Spanish  Revolution  to  the  point  of  extreme 

menace of Fascism,* and the establishment of the semi-Fascist Roosevelt emergency regime in

the United States.

* The question of Spain, which is basically different in type from the leading Western Imperialist countries, is not further dealt with in this chapter; any treatment would require a detailed separate analysis of the whole development of the Spanish Revolution since 1931, its strangling by the left-democratic Liberal-Socialist bloc at the time of the height of the mass revolutionary wave, and the consequent passing of power to the Right and rapid growth of Fascism, approaching the prospect of an intense struggle of Fascism and the mass movement in the coming period. (Since the publication of the first edition of this book, these issues have come to a head in the civil war which broke out in Spain in October, 1934.)

It is now clear to all that the theory of Fascism as a phenomenon only of “backward” “agrarian” countries is false, and that the Communist analysis of Fascism as the characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be brought into play in the most highly developed industrial countries when the stage of the crisis and of the class struggle requires it, has been proved correct by facts. Events daily and hourly reinforce the truth that the international working class throughout the world, in every capitalist country, has to fight the menace of Fascism.*

* The corresponding revision of Fascist expression, from the time when Mussolini declared that “Fascism is not an article for export” to the time when Mussolini declared (1930) that Fascism is “universal” and looks forward to “a Fascist Europe,” has accompanied, but has not caused, this development. Apart from the interchanges between Fascist movements, the attempts of Fascism at rudimentary forms of international propaganda are still-inevitably from the very nature of Fascism-feeble so far. A journal Antieuropa is issued from Rome with the subtitle “Rassegna del l’espansione fascista nel mondo” (“Review of fascist expansion throughout the world”), and, while mainly Italian, has printed contributions from Hitler, Mosley and others; there is also the similar journal Ottobre. The wording of the official announcement of Antieuropa (issue of September 30, 1933 containing article of Mosley on “Modern Dictatorship and British History”) is worth reproducing as a curiosity:

“Our organ is really the Worldcentrum of fascist intelligence, furthers extension, illustrates relationship and controls the fascist-intelligence development in the world.

Means of propaganda – Antieuropa, monthly review.

Ottobre – paper of the Universal Fascism. Documentate yourselves by means of Nuova Europa.”

The striking English of this effusion is sufficiently revealing of the very weak “international” basis of thisattempt of Italian Fascism to figure as a “Worldcentrum.”

1. The Basis for Fascism in Britain, the United States and France.

In  1890  William  Morris,  in  his  penetrating  imaginative  anticipation  of  the  process  of  the

social  revolution  in  Britain,  given  in  his  “News  from  Nowhere”  (Ch.  XVII,  How  the  Change Came) wrote:

“Whatever the Government might do, a great part of the upper and middle classes were determined to set on foot a counter-revolution: for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed  quite  unendurable  to  them.  Bands  of  young  men,  like  the  marauders  in  the  Great Strike  of  whom  I  told  you  just  now,  armed  themselves  and  drilled,  and  began  on  any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with the people in the streets. The Government neither helped them, nor put them down, but stood by, hoping that something might come of it.

These  “Friends  of  Order,”  as  they  were  called,  had  some  successes  at  first,  and  grew bolder; they got many officers of the regular army to help them, and by that means laid hold of munitions of war of all kinds.... A sort of irregular war was carried on with varied successall  over  the  country;  and  at  last  the  Government,  which  at  first  pretended  to  ignore  the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting, definitely declared for ‘the Friends of Order’.”

The  poet  of  late  nineteenth  century  Britain  –  whose  insight  was  strengthened  above  his contemporaries of literature by his acceptance of the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism and direct participation in the mass struggle-here comes remarkably close to a forecast of Fascism. This  passage  is  of  interest,  not  only  as  one  of  the  earliest  direct  anticipations  of  the  specific character  of  Fascism  (not  merely  of  counter-revolution  in  general)  in  revolutionary  socialist literature,  but  also  precisely  because  it  sprang  from  observation  of  British  conditions  and experience of the struggle in Britain. While the blind liberals and reformists three decades later, with   facts   staring   them   in   the   face,   were   still   to   be   proclaiming   Fascism   “alien”   and “unthinkable” in Britain, it was precisely the observation of British conditions that first awoke in a   keen   mind,   which   had   drawn   nourishment   from   Marxism,   one   of   the   earliest   direct anticipations of Fascism.

The  illusion  of  the  “alien”  character  of  Fascism  in  the  “democratic”  countries  of  Western Europe  and  America  is  commonly  presented  as  based  on  the  supposed  peculiarities  and uniqueness  of  the  “national  character”  and  “institutions”  in  these  countries.  “Britain”  (or alternatively,  according  to  the  speaker,  “the  United  States,”  or  “France”)  “will  never  tolerate Fascism; it is foreign to our whole traditions and outlook.” The same myth was also current in Germany, where up to the last the formula that “Germany is not Italy” was unweariedly repeated. 

What underlies the conception of the “different” character of Western Europe and America and  the  undoubted  fact  of  the  deeper  rooting of  parliamentary-democratic  institutions  in  these countries? In reality this situation, and the ideology accompanying it, is only the reflection of the wealthier,  more  powerful,  privileged  situation  of  Western  imperialism  with  its  vast  colonial possessions  and  world  domination.  The earlier  accession  to  power  of  the  bourgeoisie  in  these countries  brought  parliamentary  institutions,  the  instrument  of  their  fight  against  feudalism, earlier  to  the  front;  and  these  parliamentary  institutions  continued  to  be  maintained,  after  the fight against feudalism was fully completed and the serious meaning had fully gone out of them, for  the  deception  of  the  working  class  and  the  camouflage  of  the  real  rule  of  the  narrowing plutocracy.  The  strength  and  resources  of  capitalism  in  these  metropolitan  countries  made  it possible to pursue a liberal policy of concessions to the workers, and thus to draw the working class in the wake of capitalism and hinder the growth of independent class consciousness. Hence the long domination of liberal and social reformist politics in the working class in Britain, France and the United States right into the twentieth century, and the slow  growth of class-conscious Socialism, in contrast to Central and Eastern Europe. And hence the solid basis for the longer successful maintenance of parliamentary institutions of deception in these countries, when these same institutions, transferred to other countries, could find little root. The “democratic freedoms” of Western imperialism have been built on the foundation of colonial slavery; as was strikingly demonstrated when the Labour Government, the champion of “democracy,” brought in a reign of terror  to  maintain  despotism  in  India  and  jailed  sixty  thousand  for  the  crime  of  asking  fordemocratic rights.

But  just  this  basis  of  parliamentary-democratic  institutions  in  the  Western  imperialist countries  is  increasingly  undermined  by  the  crisis  of  capitalism.  The  monopoly  of  the  world market  breaks  down;  the  colonies  revolt;  the  world  tribute  diminishes;  the  bourgeoisie  in  the metropolitan  countries  is  compelled,  in  place  of  concessions  and  reforms,  to  withdraw  those already granted and launch ever-increasing attacks on the workers. 

But this inevitably brings a new intensity of the class struggle in these countries and a widening revolutionary awakening of the working class. For a period the apparatus of Labourism still serves to canalise the discontent of the workers and keep them attached to capitalism; but Labourism is compelled by the crisis increasingly  to  expose  itself  and  assist  the  capitalist  offensive  against  the  workers;  and disillusionment grows. As this situation develops, the bourgeoisie is compelled to look to new forms  to  maintain  its  rule.  The  movement  of  bourgeois  policy  begins  to  turn  away  from  the exhausted  and  discredited  parliamentarism  towards  open  dictatorship,  towards  Fascism.  This movement, after developing first in the more poverty-stricken and backward countries, reaches its first major imperialist state in Germany, the Power which has been stripped of its colonies and weakened in its world imperialist position , and only finally begins to develop in the dominant imperialist Powers, Britain, France and the United States, and their satellites (Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland).

But so soon as this situation develops, it becomes clear that Fascism, so far from being alien to the Western imperialist states, has an extremely strong potential basis in their whole social, economic and political structure.

What are the general conditions favouring the growth of Fascism? They maybe briefly enumerated: (I ) intensification of the economic crisis and of the class struggle; (2) widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism; (3) the existence of a wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat, and sections of the workers under capitalist influence; (4) the absence of an independent class- conscious leadership of the main body of the working class.

Are these conditions present in Britain, France and the United States? The answer must be given that they are all strongly present.

If we take Britain first, and ask the question whether there is a basis for Fascism in Britain, a consideration of the social forces and structure in the country will show that there is every basis.

In the first place, there is a very large proportion of intermediate strata of the population, of petit-bourgeois elements with very narrow and easily controlled political interests, and of a parasitic proletariat closely allied to their masters and virtually unorganisable to the working-class movement. This proportion is larger in Britain than in other countries. The 1921 census showed ten millions of the population engaged in direct productive industries and transport, and seven millions in “services” of very varying degrees of productive value, often of no productive value, but parasitic in character and tied up with the processes of exploitation. Of these seven millions over four millions are classified under Commerce, Finance and Personal Service. This classification, however, is to some extent misleading without further analysis. More important is the proportion of salaried workers to wage workers. In 1924, according to Bowley and Stamp (The National Income .1924, published in 192 7), the number of salaried workers was 2.8 millions against 15.4 million wage earners, or 15 per cent. of the employed population.* 

* It is noticeable that the proportions of the salariat have considerably increased in the period of the imperialist decline. The 1907 Census of production estimated the salaried at 7 per cent. and the wage-earners at 93 per cent. For 1911 Bowley and Stamp (op. cit.) estimate the numbers at 1.6 millions and 15.6 millions respectively, or over 9 per cent for the salariat. The 1924 figure gives over is per cent. The increase between 1911 and 1024 is by more .than 1.1 million or 68 per cent. In the same period, according to this estimate, the number of wage-earners decreased by 250,000.

Further, of the wage-workers, some two-thirds are unorganised; and these two-thirds are not an outside margin in all industries, but mainly represent the workers outside the big productive industries.

At the same time the Labour Party and trade union leadership, by their denial of the class struggle and preaching of the “community above classes,” by their alliance with the employers (Mondism) and capitalism, and by their ban on the united front, disorganize the independent class action of the workers and pave the way for Fascism.

An indication of the potential Fascist forces is provided by the monster circulations, approaching two millions, of journals of the type of the Daily Mail, circulating mainly among petit-bourgeois elements, and in its whole character since its inception a real forerunner of Fascism more than twenty years before the name existed (since 1934 openly Fascist).

If we turn to the policy and tactics of the bourgeoisie in Britain, it is obvious that these not only do not exclude Fascism, but are on the contrary most closely prepared and adapted for Fascism by all the developments of the imperialist period. On the one hand the State machine – with the famous “unwritten Constitution” which can be turned in any direction desired at a moment’s notice to suit the emergency needs of the bourgeois dictatorship – is far more exactly fitted than in any democratic republic for all the purposes of intensified dictatorship and Fascism. On the other hand, the British bourgeoisie is trained for generations on the basis of its rule of India, Ireland and the colonial empire to methods of violence and despotic domination, at the same time as on the basis of parliamentary and electioneering humbug in Britain to the technique of mass-deception- the two together constituting the perfect combination for Fascism. The words of the American Ambassador in London during the war years, W. Page, a shrewd and admiring observer, on the technique of the Diehards may be recalled:

“They call these old Tories “Diehards.” It’s a good name. They use military power, social power, financial power, eloquence, learning, boundless impudence, blackguardism – everything – to hold what they have; and they fight-fight like tigers, and tire not.’

Or as Lloyd George (the “Liberal” founder of the “Black and Tans”) declared in a speech in 19 2 5: “Scratch a Conservative, and you will find a Fascist.” For those who are still chloroformed by the sedulously instilled myths of law and order, it would be well to study a little the history of the British bourgeoisie for the past three centuries, which in bloody violence could hardly be equalled by any ruling class since the Roman Empire, as well as the action of this same bourgeoisie as a ruling class in the Empire outside Britain to-day. They would speedily learn the mailed fist basis which lies behind the velvet speeches of a Baldwin or a MacDonald. It is sufficient to recall the technique of the Boer War jingo agitation, the Ulster rebellion, the Amritsar massacre, the “Black and Tans” in Ireland, or the Organisation for countering the General Strike, to see the full basis for Fascism.

The Ulster movement, with its open defiance of Parliament, Organisation of private armies, and direct support by the Army chiefs, the Court and high society, and ignominious capitulation of the Liberal Government, is of especial interest as an embryonic precursor of Fascism. Lenin wrote of it at the time:

“The significance of this revolt of the landlords against the “all-powerful” (as the Liberal blockheads, especially the Liberal scholars, think and have said a million times) English Parliament is extraordinarily great. March2l, 1914, will mark a world-historical turning-point, when the noble landlords of England, smashing the English Constitution and English law to atoms, gave an excellent lesson in class struggle....

These aristocrats behaved like revolutionaries from the Right, and by that tore up all conventions, tore down all the veils that prevented the people from seeing the unpleasant, but undoubtedly real, class struggle.

That was revealed to all which was formerly concealed by the bourgeoisie and the Liberals (the Liberals are hypocritical everywhere, but it is doubtful whether their hypocrisy goes to such lengths and to such refinement as in England). Everybody realised that the conspiracy to break the will of Parliament had been long prepared. Real class-rule has always been and still lies outside of Parliament.... And the petit-bourgeois Liberals of England, and their speeches about reforms and about the power of Parliament, with which they lull the workers, proved to be in fact frauds, straw men put up in order to fool the people, who were quickly torn down by the aristocracy with power in their hands. (Lenin, The Constitutional Crisis in England, 1914.)

Indeed the Fascists in Britain to-day directly look to the Ulster movement as their predecessor:

Just before the war the widespread movement directed against Parliament, in sympathy with the Ulster loyalists, assumed formidable proportions within two years of its initiation. That movement, psychologically limited as it was, and directed only to the safeguarding of certain limited objectives, would-had not the war intervened-have developed into a formidable revolt against the whole theory and system of Democracy in Britain. The Ulster movement was in fact the first Fascist movement (W. E. D. Allen, Fascism in Relation to British History and Character, B.U.F., 1933.)

If we turn to the United States, an examination of the social composition of the population would also show the basis for Fascism. Of the 49 million occupied persons returned in the census of 1930, 19 millions were classified under manufacturing industry, mining and transport, 10 millions under agriculture, 6 millions under trade, 3 millions under the professions, 4 millions under clerical occupations, and 5 millions under domestic and personal service. In addition to the urban petit-bourgeoisie and very wide expansion of the salaried, salesmen, etc., the farming population, with some six million separate farms, constitutes roughly one quarter of the total population. Extreme economic pressure has powerfully radicalised all the poorer farmers; but until a strong proletarian leadership succeeds to establish the alliance-all-powerful, once it is achieved-of the industrial workers and small farmers, there is every danger of demagogic Fascist movements winning their hold here. At the same time, the Organisation of the industrial workers is weak. Trade union organisation, even after the increases accompanying the present crisis and the Roosevelt Codes (which have mainly in fact encouraged company unions the initial basis for Fascist Organisation in industry), only reaches about one-fifth of the workers; it is mainly confined to the privileged, skilled workers on a craft basis, leaving out the unskilled workers; and, apart from railroads and to some extent mining, has won little hold yet in the basic productive industries. The class-collaboration policy of the American Federation of Labour leadership is more open and extreme than in Europe, and still so far opposes any form of political party of the workers, although the development of the crisis may compel a change in this respect. The reformist labour leaders have taken the role of direct allies and lieutenants of the Roosevelt emergency regime. Here again, therefore, a strong social basis exists for the development of full Fascism, if this should become necessary to the bourgeoisie.

The traditional tactics and methods of domination of the American bourgeoisie are equally adapted to Fascism, in proportion as occasion arises. If they have not had the same experience as the British bourgeoisie in the domination of colonial peoples, save more recently and on a smaller scale, they have had plenty of experience in their own domain in the suppression of the twelve million Negroes within the United States and of the heavily exploited immigrant populations. The combination of violence, lawlessness and corruption for the maintenance of capitalist domination has reached classic heights in the United States. It is only necessary to recall the Chicago hangings, Homestead or Dearborn, Sacco-Vanzetti or Scottsboro, the exploits of the Pinkerton gangs, the methods in the coalmining and steel areas, the private armies of the employers, the judicial murders, the lynchings and gangsters, the Anti-Red drive of the Department of justice after the war, or the waves of sudden expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organisations, to see the plentiful basis for Fascism in American bourgeois traditions.

If Britain and the United States are both classic lands of semi-Fascist methods of bourgeois domination long before Fascism, France has long been considered the classic land of “pure democracy.” Yet in fact just the overwhelming petit-bourgeois social basis (preponderant small industry and peasantry, with a layer of finance-capital at the top, but relatively less developed large industry or foreign trade) which underlay the “pure democracy” of formal social-radical republicanism and actual unlimited corruption and rule of the financial cliques, to-day, when the new stage develops, becomes equally the basis for Fascism.

Not only is the majority of the population in France still rural (the proportion of the population in towns of over 5,000 inhabitants was 44 per cent. in 1928, as against 54 Per cent. in Germany, 58 per cent. in the United States and 79 per cent. in Britain), but the preponderance of petty industry in the industrial field is still extreme. According to an investigation of de Ville-Chabrolle on the basis of official statistics (see Economist, September 30, 1933), out of a total of 6,167,647 establishments in 1926, 5,983,075 consisted of five persons or less (2,981,521 single-handed concerns). Out Of 17.8 million occupied persons, 11.8 millions were occupied in concerns of five persons or less, and only 1.5 million workers were employed in concerns of over 500 workers, that is, in large-scale industry. Trade union organisation, reaching to a few hundred thousands in each of the two rival Confederations, is extremely weak, although militant traditions and class-consciousness are strongly developed in the big industrial centres.

The parliamentary republic has maintained a sometimes precarious hold for two generations; but the open reactionary forces which seek to change the regime increase in strength. The experiences of Boulangism, of the anti-Dreyfus agitation, or of the Action Française movement have shown the ground that there is for Fascist agitation; and the offensive of the recent Fascist demonstrations of the beginning of 1934, leading to the hasty withdrawal of the “Left” Government and instalment of a Government of National Concentration, have shown how rapidly the advance to Fascism may develop in France.

All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop and conquer in these Western countries. Its success or failure, as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat. But it is folly to be blind to the reality of the danger, or to the many favouring factors that Fascism can marshal to its side in precisely these countries. Above all, it is worse than folly to place a blind confidence, as the liberal and reformist leaders preach, in the “democratic institutions” of these countries. The bourgeoisie will use any and every instrument of struggle as occasion arises. It is for the working class and its allies to be prepared for the fight in front.

2. The Significance of the National Government in Britain.

The development of the world economic crisis has brought a sharp break in the political development in the countries of Western Imperialism, and in so doing has brought the question of Fascism increasingly to the front also in these countries.

In England the break took place in the autumn of 1931 with the financial crisis and the establishment of the National Government.

In the United States the break took place in the spring of 1933 with the inauguration of the Roosevelt regime amid extreme financial crisis and the establishment of emergency powers.

In France, where the effects of the economic crisis have operated more slowly, the break came with the Paris revolutionary and counter-revolutionary demonstrations of February 1934, and the formation of the Government of National Concentration under Doumergue.

All these reveal a common process of concentration of the bourgeois forces in the crisis, establishment of intensified forms of dictatorship and emergency powers, diminution of the role of parliamentarism, and, in general, advance to types of the pre- Fascist stage which characterised the Brüning regime in Germany.

What was the significance of the formation of the National Government in Britain, and of the stage of the crisis which gave rise to it?

In the first place, it marked the heavy discrediting of the Labour Party. The Labour Government, which bad been placed in office by eight million votes on a programme of promises of socialism and of the solution of unemployment, had looked on impotently while unemployment rose under its rule from 1.1 millions to 2.7 millions, and bad proved itself only the ally of capitalist rationalisation against the workers. The hopes which had been preached throughout the post-war period of the peaceful democratic Labour path to socialism as the alternative to revolution, and which had won a steadily rising Labour vote from 2 millions in 1918 to 8 millions in 1929, received a heavy blow. Disillusionment in the masses was rising. But the Labour Party had in reality represented the safety-mechanism of bourgeois rule in the post-war period, like Social Democracy in Germany, the social-conservative force which, while seeming to voice the socialist aspirations of the masses, had served to attach them through parliamentarism. to the bourgeois regime. This was now in danger of collapsing and giving place to the rising process of revolutionisation. The bourgeoisie was quick to sense the danger. Already in the spring of 1930 Lloyd George voiced the menace to the traditional bourgeois institutions through the discrediting of the Labour Party. Describing how the workers had originally put their hopes in the Liberal Party and lost faith in it, he continued:

“Millions consequently threw in their lot with a new party. To them this party was the party of the last hope. It is now rapidly becoming the party of lost hope. Speakers and agents of all parties returning from the last by-election in a great industrial constituency had the same tale to tell. It was one of the gloom and despair which had fallen on this working class district owing to the failure of the Government they had helped at the last General Election to put into power to bring any amelioration into their conditions and prospects. If Labour fails this time, confidence in parliamentary institutions will for a period disappear in myriads of loyal British homes and hearts.”

(Lloyd George, article in the Daily Express, March 18, 1930.)

The bourgeoisie manoeuvred to meet this critical situation. The step, previously only attempted in wartime, was taken of creating a Coalition Government from all the parties, the National Government, under the nominal leadership of MacDonald and Snowden, and under the actual control of Conservatism, to win anew the confidence of the masses under this new cover. The manoeuvre succeeded for the moment, by playing on the very intensity of the disgust of the masses with the Labour Government. The Labour vote fell for the first time since the war, by the heavy fall of two millions. But this disillusionment did not go to the benefit of the small revolutionary vote, which only slightly increased. Many former Labour voters abstained. The benefit of the process of disillusionment went to the “National” vote, which swept the country with 14½ millions.

It is clear that we have here a special form of the same process which was demonstrated in Germany. The betrayal by Social Democracy thrusts millions of workers and former petit-bourgeois supporters into the reactionary camp, which is skilful to put forward a new flag in order to win them. This is the heart of the process of Fascism. It is revealed in its first rudimentary form in the “National” manoeuvre in Britain. The “National” vote of 1931 was the warning-signal of the danger of Fascism.

Second, the National Government marks the process of bourgeois concentration and intensified dictatorship for the carrying through of measures of an increasingly Fascist character. The consciousness of this role of the National Government, as directly analogous to that of Nazism or Fascism, was openly expressed by the Prime Minister, MacDonald, in his speech to the National Labour Committee on November 6, 1933:

“The secret of the success of dictatorships is that they have managed somehow or other to make the soul of a nation alive. We may be shocked at what they are doing, but they have certainly awakened something in the hearts of their people which has given them a new vision and a new energy to pursue national affairs.

In this country the three parties in co-operation are doing that, and our task must be to get the young men with imagination, hope and vision behind us.”

The National Government thus avowedly sets itself the task to achieve the same objects as those of Hitlerism in Germany, whose “dictatorship” it publicly praises as representing a “new vision” and a “new energy” to “make the soul of a nation alive.” This direct praise of Fascism comes from the man who was till 1931 the accepted Leader of the Labour Party, and who indeed gave similar praise to Italian Fascism, while still Leader of the Labour Party.

A still more complete and conscious expression of the new policy has been provided in the more recent declarations of the Cabinet Minister, Elliot, Secretary for Agriculture, a former Fabian. Elliot, who came to the front as the most active exponent of the new economic policy in respect of the whole system of quotas, licences, subsidies, controlled and restricted production, etc., has increasingly underlined the political significance of the process. In his broadcast speech under the title “Whither Britain?” on March 27th, 1934, he spoke of the transition to the “New State,” of the necessity to “give up a certain amount of liberty,” of the need of “economic self-discipline,” “psychological self- discipline,” etc., and directly compared the role of the National Government to that of the Hitler Government in Germany. To- day Elliot stands out as the principal governmental representative of the new Fascist tendency.

The development to Fascism does not necessarily take the same form in every country. The general tendencies of the new economic and political policies which receive their most complete expression in Fascism are common in greater or less degree, as has been already pointed out, to all modern capitalism. But the first steps towards Fascism commonly develop in and through the decaying forms of the old bourgeois democracy. This is above all the significance of the National Government, which itself carries forward tendencies already visible in the whole post-war capitalist development.

On the one hand, the National Government carries forward the new lines of economic policy (increasing State regulation of production, tariffs, quotas, import boards, the striving towards empire economic unity) and the active increase of war preparations.

On the other hand, the National Government carries forward the process of the transformation of bourgeois democracy from within – the development of new forms of intensified capitalist dictatorship and increasing restriction of democratic rights.

This process is already visible in the whole post-war period, notably in such measures as the Emergency Powers Act and in the Trade Union Act of 1927. It is carried very markedly forward under the National Government. This is shown in such measures as:

1. The increasing separation of governmental action from parliamentary forms, and extension of government by administrative order or by Orders in Council (the Economy cuts and Means Test were put through by Orders in Council, and only referred to Parliament after they were already in operation);

2. The reorganisation of the police under increasingly centralised and military forms, and rapid increase of expenditure;

3. Increasing restriction of the rights of free speech and assembly, prohibitions of meetings (e.g., bannings of meetings of unemployed at labour exchanges), imprisonment without charge of any offence committed (Tom Mann case), etc.;

4. Active political repression against the workers (in the two and a half years of the National Government up to the spring of 1934 over 1900 arrests for political offences have taken place, over 600 sentences for a total of 1,613 months imprisonment, and some 850 fines for a total of £2,540, police interference with strikes, etc.;

5. Increasing police violence against the workers, baton charges, etc.

6. The Unemployment Bill, bringing the unemployed, who have outrun the short period of regular benefit, under the control of a centralised autocratic Board, not responsible to Parliament, with power to establish camps and “training centres” (“concentration camps” in the Home Secretary’s phrase), subjecting them to a semi-military regime and forced labour without pay or for purely nominal rates of pay-any worker who resists this slavery and smashing of trade union rates and conditions being liable to be sent to prison;

7.The Incitement to Disaffection Bill, nominally directed against anti-militarist propaganda, but in fact very much wider and so worded, in its original form as presented, as to make the mere possession of any revolutionary socialist or anti-war literature an offence punishable with two years imprisonment, and giving to the police unlimited powers of search and confiscation.

All this may be described as the process of “encroaching Fascism” within the old forms, which precedes and prepares the full Fascist attack. An examination of the experience of the Mining regime in Germany, or of the successive earlier stages of Dollfuss in Austria (when he was still loudly hailed as the “champion of democracy” by all the liberal and social democratic forces of the West), will abundantly show the significance of this process, which has definitely begun its first stages in Britain.

3. The Roosevelt Emergency Regime.

The Roosevelt emergency regime in the United States offers a still clearer demonstration of the whole process.

Here the move to a form of dictatorship of a war-type is open. From the moment of his inauguration the new President demands and is granted emergency powers “as in wartime.”

“I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis-broad executive power to wage war on the emergency as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

(President Roosevelt’s Inaugural, March, 1932.)

“We do not expect to have to resort to the drastic steps taken during the war. But we have the same kind of a situation.” (General H. S. Johnson, speech at Chicago.)

What is the essence of the “New Deal,” if we strip from it the sentimental philanthropic ballyhoo?

The “New Deal,” the policy of the Roosevelt regime expressed in the National Industrial Recovery Act and associated measures, represents the most comprehensive and ruthless attempt of finance- capital to consolidate its power with the entire strength of the State machine over the whole field of industry, to hold the workers in subjection under extreme and intensified exploitation with a universal lowering of standards, to conduct on this basis and on the basis of the depreciated dollar a world campaign for markets, and to prepare directly the consequent inevitable war.

The signal marks of the Roosevelt policy are:

1. State-Controlled Capitalism. – The process of trustification in the United States was previously still hampered by the remains of the old anti-trust legislation surviving from the pre-war epoch. The New York correspondent of the London Times (June 6, 1933) stated the first and principal reason for big business support of the Industrial Recovery Act: “What big business desires above all things is relief from the antiquated Anti-Trust Laws.” By one stroke all anti-trust legislation is swept away. The Preamble of the Industrial Recovery Act openly proclaims the aim “to remove obstructions to the free flow of inter-State commerce which tend to diminish the amount thereof, and to promote the Organisation of industry for the purpose of co-operative action among trade groups.” A gigantic process of consolidation of the big monopolies, and extermination of the small producers and independent firms in the leading industries (“Ten million retailers protest against the Blue Eagle: they maintain they cannot do business on a basis of shorter hours, more wages and practically the same prices” – Daily Telegraph, August 25, 1933), already begun by the effects of the crisis, the credit-smash and the operations of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, is now carried to its logical conclusion. Every leading industry is established under direct State Organisation, with regulation of labour conditions, price- fixing, restriction of production and guaranteed profits. This is the ideal of capitalist society in decay, seeking to chain the productive forces which have outgrown capitalism.

2. Inflation. – The ostensible purpose of inflation is proclaimed as to give a stimulus to recovery (a stimulus whose artificial character is rapidly revealed, as in the heavy decline in the autumn of 1933 following the short-lived summer boom), and to relieve and reduce the load of debts of agriculture and industry, which were threatening to bring the whole structure crashing. Its actual operation reveals it as one of the familiar weapons of finance-capitalist brigandage in periods of crisis. It means in the first place a direct robbery of all small owners and of all small savings, the partial expropriation of the petit-bourgeoisie. Second, it serves as the basis for colossal share speculations and manipulations, as well as processes of price-raising, for the profit of finance-capital. Third, it effects a universal reduction of the real wages of all workers, such as to make the guaranteed wage standards, already fixed at very low levels, in practice the cover for a general lowering of wage-standards, as even the American Federation of Labor has now begun to complain. Fourth, it opens the way in the international sphere to a price-cutting campaign on the basis of the depreciated dollar, to wipe out competitors and swamp the already depressed world markets.

3. Servitude and Intensified Exploitation of Labour. – The new Industrial Codes establish an authoritative regime of the subjection of the worker under the direct union of the employers and the State, with Government-fixed wages, hours and conditions of labour, virtually compulsory arbitration by the Government, and increasingly open offensive on the right to strike and on independent workers’ organisation. While the social fascist organs are drawn directly into the governmental apparatus, a full offensive is let loose on all independent militant unions. The inauguration of the new industrial regime is accompanied by the shooting of miners on strike in Western Pennsylvania and the proclamation of martial law against strikers in Utah and New Mexico. “The A. F. of L. has voluminous evidence,” declared its president, William Green, on January 15, 11934, at a hearing on the lumber code, “that drastic reduction has taken place in the wages of skilled workers since the adoption of the code, and that the minimum wages tended to become the maximum wages paid.” In the name of the N.R.A. the employers endeavour to proclaim all strikes and picketing illegal. At the same time in the Labour Camps some 350,000 young workers are placed under semi-military conditions.

4. War-Preparations. – The Industrial Recovery Act specifically provides for the building of “naval vessels, airplanes and mechanisation or motorisation of the army tactical units.” 235 million dollars of the special appropriations for Public Works are devoted to the Navy. The Secretary for the Navy, Swanson, states:

“I know of no more effective and praiseworthy way of giving our industrial life that country-wide stimulus which it so sorely needs than by devoting a portion of the money and energy which is to be used for public construction to this vital arm of our national defence.”

(New York Times, June 16, 1933.)

The war character of the whole system of State Organisation, mobilisation of industry and semi-conscription of labour, is obvious.

To what outcome does the new American system lead? Its economic outcome can be no more successful in solving the crisis than the similar methods of Fascism elsewhere. The emptiness of all the promises of renewed prosperity, of the solution of unemployment and of the achievement of higher standards all round, has been already demonstrated. The speculative production boom of the summer of 1933 only led to a small increase in employment, and yet was followed by a rapid collapse, showing the impossibility of absorbing the present increased productive power under existing conditions, save through the final “solution” of war. The Federal Reserve Board index of industrial production (reduced to the base of 1928 as 100) which rose from 54.1 in March 1933, to 90.1 in July, fell to 65.8 in November, and had only risen to 68.5 by January 1934. The “stagger” system of reducing the nominal figure of unemployment, as in Germany, by spreading the existing employment means no real increase in the volume of employment.

The Civil Works schemes, while pouring out colossal sums of money to give temporary employment and thus assisting the process of inflation, only intensify the problem when, owing to the enormous rising volume of debt, they have to be diminished and come to an end, throwing millions again into the unemployed, while no permanent channels of employment have been found. The level of real wages has been lowered owing to the rapid rise in prices. The American Federation of Labor is compelled to report in its official organ in January 1934:

“Since the bank crisis, the average worker’s weekly income has risen 7.4 per cent. (to October), but prices the worker has to pay for his living expenses have risen much more than this. Food prices are up 118 per cent. (to November 21), prices of clothing and furnishings are Up 26.3 per cent. (to November).

Thus the worker who had a job right along is worse off than he was when the year began. His pay envelope may be larger, but it buys less. His real wage is smaller.”

(The American Federationist, January, 1934.)

In January 1934, the President of the American Federation of Labor, William Green, complained that there were still nearly twelve million workers not absorbed into normal employment, and that “workers are steadily losing by price increases”:

“Our estimate shows that there are 11,690,000 persons wanting work, but unable to find employment in our normal industrial production services.... Unemployment is still above the 1932 level by 1,500,000.... Workers are steadily losing by price increases, and we must expect their living standards to be further reduced as prices go on upward.”

But while all the social-reformist “progressive” camouflage of the Roosevelt “New Deal” thus rapidly fades away, the reality of the new Fascist type of system of concentrated state capitalism and industrial servitude remains. As Roosevelt declared in his Message to Congress in January 1934:

“We have created a permanent feature of our modernised industrial structure, and it will continue under the supervision, but not the arbitrary dictation, of the Government itself.”

Roosevelt’s Secretary for Agriculture, Wallace, still further brought out the implications of this process in his pamphlet entitled “America Must Choose”, issued in the spring of 1934. in this pamphlet, in the course of which he advocates that America must “annually and permanently retract of our good agricultural land some 25,000,000 acres”, he states:

“The new types of social control that we have now in operation are here to stay, and to grow on a world or national scale....

As yet, we have applied in this country only the barest beginnings of the sort of social discipline which a completely determined nationalism requires.... We must be ready to make sacrifices to a known end.”

The significance of the Roosevelt regime is above all the significance of the transition to Fascist forms, especially in the economic and industrial field. As the Associate Editor of the Current History Magazine of the New York Times, E. F. Brown, writes:

“The new America will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor will it be Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards Fascism, it will be an American Fascism, embodying the experience, the traditions and the hopes of a great middle-class nation.”

(Current History Magazine, July, 1933.)

But in fact this stage is still a transition. As the failure of the plans of economic recovery becomes manifest and gives place to new forms of crisis and widespread mass discontent, and above all as the advance to war implicit in the whole Roosevelt policy develops, the demand for corresponding political forms of Fascism will inevitably come to the front in the United States.

4. The February Days and the National Concentration Government in France.

In France the development of the effects of the economic crisis appeared at first more slowly. But in the latest period the situation has gone forward with extreme rapidity, and the question of Fascism has become a burning issue.

The events of February 6-12, 1934, and the fall of the Daladier Government, leading to the formation of the transitional Doumergue Government of National Concentration, have brought to the front the whole question of Fascism and the increasing signs of advance to a direct armed struggle.

These events are of vital importance for the Western “democratic” countries, because in these events are set out with crystal clearness the two alternative paths, the path of the “left bloc” or bourgeois- liberal democracy, leading in fact to Fascism, or the path of the united working-class front of struggle, which can alone defeat Fascism.

What was the situation on the eve of the events of February 6-12? The national-chauvinist, Fascist and Royalist forces in France-at all times active beneath the democratic-republican exterior--developed extreme activity in the gathering crisis, and especially since the advent of Hitlerism, with the open alliance and assistance of the police authorities in Paris and of the big press, that is, of the State and finance-capital. At the same time the governmental forms were showing the same increase of executive powers and repression of the workers common to all capitalist governments in the present period. Even The Times on February 5, that is, before the decisive events, was compelled to note:

“A contrast has been drawn between the severe repression of Communist manifestations and the comparative immunity from punishment of Royalist demonstrators and the Royalist newspaper which directly incites its readers to riot in the streets.”

This was under a “Left” bourgeois Government, maintained in office in practice by the support of the Socialist Party. The majority in Parliament was a “Left Cartel” majority, consisting of the Socialist Party and of the “Left” bourgeois groupings.

This “Left” bourgeois Government (previously under Chautemps, then under Daladier) was heavily discredited by one of the typical recurrent financial and police scandals, the Stavisky scandal, which was being utilised by the reactionary forces to raise agitation against the parliamentary regime and to prepare a Government of National Concentration, just as the crisis of the franc was similarly used in 1926. After the dismissal of the police chief, Chiappe, who was notoriously hand-in-glove with the Royalist and Fascist elements, preparations were openly made – without interference – and proclaimed in the big press for a jingo riot on February 6, which was to serve as a preliminary trial of strength and spear-head for the Fascist advance.

What was the line of the Daladier Government and of “left democracy” in the face of this challenge? The Socialist Party voted its confidence in the Daladier Government, in the “Left” bourgeois Government, as the defender of “democracy” against Fascism. On the basis of their support the Daladier Government received a substantial parliamentary majority of 360 to 220 on the critical evening of February 6. As against this line the Communist Party, which had approached the Socialist Party for the united front against Fascism in March 1933, and been refused, called for the united front from below, called the workers to the streets against the Fascist attack, and through the unions began to make agitation for a general strike against the Fascist menace. The two lines were now to receive their practical demonstration in the events that followed.

The Daladier Government massed heavy military forces in Paris in the days preceding February 6. But did it act against Fascism? The leaders of the Fascists and Royalists were allowed to carry on their preparations in complete freedom. Previously, on the eve of a Communist May Day demonstration, three thousand Communist leaders had been arrested in Paris in order to cripple the organisation of the demonstration. On the eve of this reactionary demonstration not a single Fascist or Royalist leader was touched. The organisers of the reaction were given freedom of the streets to burn, destroy, set fire to Government buildings, and advance on the Chamber of Deputies; no adequate forces were placed against them; the police were inactive; the “Gardes Republicaines” and “Gardes Mobiles” were steadily commanded to retreat and give way before the bourgeois mob; only at the last moment, when the Chamber was nearly reached and the bourgeois demonstrators began to fire with their revolvers, the “Gardes Mobiles,” not on the order of their officers, but in instinctive self-defence, fired back, and about a dozen of the dupes of the reaction and onlookers were killed. The subsequent Commission of Enquiry established that the shooting was begun by the Fascist demonstrators and maintained for half an hour before any answering fire took place on the side of the Government forces; and that even so no order to fire was given by any officer, but that the rank and file of the “Gardes, Mobiles” began spontaneously to fire in self-defence and were immediately ordered to stop by their officers.

The sequel to this incident is instructive for the whole future of parliamentary democracy. Immediately following this incident, on the very next day, on February 7, the Daladier Government, which bad just received an overwhelming parliamentary majority, resigned; and there was installed, amid the plaudits of the millionaire press, the Doumergue Government of National Concentration, with the semi-fascist-Tardieu in a strategic position in its midst.

How did this happen? Why this sudden surrender of the legal Government with a parliamentary majority before the first Fascist street-offensive? This question is of crucial importance for all the Western “democratic” countries, where confidence in “democratic institutions” as the defence against Fascism is still preached.

Why did Daladier, “champion of democracy” and chosen representative of French Socialism, immediately resign before the Fascist extra-parliamentary offensive? Where, then, was the “sovereignty of Parliament,” “law and order,” the “will of the electors,” and all the paper paraphernalia of bourgeois democracy? Flown to the winds, as soon as finance-capital gave the order in the opposite direction. The parliamentary majority might vote one thing; but finance- capital ordered another, and finance-capital was obeyed, including by the representatives of that parliamentary majority.

The Daladier Government issued an explanation that it resigned “to avoid further bloodshed”:

“The Government, while responsible for the maintenance of order, declined to ensure it by the employment of exceptional means, which might result in severer repressive action and further bloodshed. The Government bad no wish to use soldiers against the demonstrators, and for that reason bad laid down office.”

The transparent hypocrisy of this “explanation” is manifest. As if any French bourgeois Government bad ever hesitated to use the utmost violence against working-class demonstrators, not merely using soldiers against them, but organising complete military operations against them, as was done on the night of the far more serious fighting of February 9, amid the applause of the entire bourgeois press.

Daladier resigned, not because be was a pacifist, but because he was a puppet of finance-capital and could do no other. Daladier resigned because he was compelled by the real ruling forces of the State, in relation to which a parliamentary majority was mere stage-play. What else could he do? Even had he had the will to fight, be bad no forces. The police belonged to the reaction; the General Staff belonged to the reaction; it was reported that the old Marshal Lyautey threatened to lead the army on Paris if there should be any attempt at resistance by the parliamentary majority. He was as contemptible a helpless puppet as Asquith over Ulster.

Had he wished to fight, he could only have done one thing, to have publicly exposed the whole plot, and to have called on the proletarian masses, on the rank and file of the soldiers, to resist. But this would have meant to unloose the proletarian revolution, which he feared as much as any of the Bloc National or the Fascists. At bottom he was one with these; all the liberal-democratic pretence was no more than electoral humbug. He knew his duty. He went quietly.

Therewith the whole card-castle of bourgeois democracy, of the “democratic” defence against Fascism, of “democracy versus dictatorship,” of the whole Social Democratic line, came tumbling down. The line of the “Left Cartel,” of the French Socialist Party, of the parliamentary-democratic “defence” against Fascism, was proved once again only to have smoothed the way for the advance of Fascism, for a Government of the Right, for intensified dictatorship against the workers – so much so that the Socialist Party, after the damning exposure of February 6, was compelled to make a show in words of calling for the united front and supporting the general strike against Fascism, when it was no longer possible to hold back the workers with the “democratic” deception.

In his speech of apologia to his constituents on April 8 Daladier admitted that he was aware that a full counterrevolutionary coup was being prepared for February 6:

“The Fascist organisations were mobilised to force an entry into the Chamber, to proclaim the fall of parliament and to impose a dictatorship. Authentic documents proving this, direct appeals to insurrection, have been placed in the hands of the Commission of Enquiry.”

Why, then, did the Left-Democratic Government, with this information in its hands, take no action? Why did these “democrats,” so merciless and rigorous against the slightest sign of Communist activity, making arrests and suppression right and left, not lay a finger on the Fascist press which was openly calling to insurrection? He has no answer. On the contrary, he is anxious to show that no serious measure of defence was taken:

“It has been established that at no point was any order to fire given by the Government. Not a single machine-gun, not a single repeating-rifle was in the hands of the “Gardes Mobiles” or of the police.’

Why did the Government, chosen by the parliamentary majority, take no steps to maintain itself against Fascism, but instead resign at once, despite its parliamentary majority? He admits that this question is perplexing “republican opinion”:

“Republican opinion is amazed that the Government should have resigned on February 7 instead of maintaining itself in power, since it had the majority in parliament.”

He has no answer. He fumbles and stumbles over the question. He accuses fellow-ministers of having wanted to give way. He accuses the President of having insisted on his resignation. He hints at legal difficulties in the way of taking any effective measures, of making arrests, of proclaiming martial law: would the President have signed the decrees, or would parliament have supported him? As if there should have been a moment’s difficulty or hesitation to carry through any steps whatever, if it had been workers, and not Fascists, who had advanced in armed formation to burn down Government buildings, invade the Chamber and proclaim a dictatorship. Finally he ends with the old lame excuse:

“It seemed better to resign than to risk any further spilling of blood.”

Thus the swan song of parliamentary democracy, the regime of blood against the workers, of bloodshed unlimited in imperialist war, but toothless and helpless against Fascism and reaction. On February 6-7, 1934, parliamentary democracy in France signed its death-warrant.

The Fascist-Royalist demonstrations of February 6 were in reality only the preliminary offensive of the reaction to conceal and defeat the real rising movement of mass-discontent, the rising movement of the working class, against which a Government of intensified dictatorship was required. Hence the peculiar character of the manoeuvre which installed the Government of National Concentration.

The full significance of this process – first, the preliminary preparations under cover of the “Left” Daladier Government, and the military massing of artillery and troops by this Government with the support of the Socialists, and then, at the critical moment, the replacement of this Government by a Right Government of National Concentration-was laid bare in the days following February 6, as the working class came increasingly into action.

The battles of Friday, February 9, when the Communist demonstration had been banned by the Government, and the workers fought for possession of the streets, enormously exceeded in their range February 6, and were turned into a full military operation by the Government, 23,000 troops and 14,000 Police were called into action against the workers.

“In contrast to Tuesday night (February 6), when the police offered only half-hearted resistance to the Fascist and Royalist rioters till it was too late, the city was turned into an armed camp.” (Daily Herald, February 10, 1934.)

The capitalist dictatorship had no scruples now to “employ exceptional means” or “use soldiers against the demonstrators.” But the strength of the working-class resistance was such that it was successful to give pause to the first wave of the Fascist attack.

This was still further shown in the country-wide General Strike of February 12. The Communist slogan for the 24 hours general strike received such wide mass support that the reformist unions were compelled formally to take it up, even though they tried to sabotage its execution, going so far as to turn it in their actual instructions (the railwaymen) into a “fifteen minutes” or even “one minute” strike. But the strike and the accompanying united front demonstrations won overwhelming support throughout the country. The true path of the struggle against Fascism was thus shown. The rising strength of the united working-class front of struggle in France was laid bare as the sole power of the fight against the rising Fascist offensive of French finance-capital.

The Government of National Concentration in France is thus revealed as a typical transition Government of the advance to Fascism. Its functions may be summed up: first, by the concentration of all forces to counter and defeat the rising wave of working-class discontent; second, in view of the strength of the working-class resistance, to cover the too open Fascist designs with a show of “appeasement” and “safeguarding” of parliamentary democratic institutions; third, to carry through the heavy offensive against the working class required by finance-capital, as shown in the cuts campaign; and fourth, to provide the cover under which the Fascist forces can carry forward their preparations for a further assault.

To-day the Fascist and Royalist forces are actively carrying forward their armed preparations, and speak openly of a future coup. The signs point to critical conflicts in the near future in France.

5. The Beginnings of Fascist Movements.

In 1905 Milner, one of the more far-seeing leaders of the older British imperialism, described in a private letter the only hope that he could see for the salvation of bourgeois rule:

“Perhaps a great Charlatan-political scallywag, buffoon, liar, stump orator, and in other respects popular favourite-may some day arise who is nevertheless a statesman-the combination is not impossible- and who, having attained power by popular acts may use it for national ends. It is an off-chance, but I do not see any other.”

(Milner, letter to Lady Edward Cecil, The Milner Papers, Vol. II, 1899-1905.)

Here we see the bourgeoisie consciously groping for the forms of Fascism long before Fascism existed. The fact that so lifelike a description of Hitler or Mussolini could have been penned a decade before these began to play their role is a striking confirmation of how little it is personality that creates history, and bow much rather history calls forth the personality that it requires at a given stage. Fascism does not come into existence because a “leader” arises. On the contrary, because the bourgeoisie requires Fascism, a “leader” is created from such materials as can be found.

This is particularly important with regard to the development of Fascist movements in Britain, France and the United States, where there is still some difficulty in finding a suitable “leader” with sufficient popular qualifications (in Britain, a definite candidate exists, but drawn from the plutocracy). The development of a specific Fascist movement is a complicated process, involving a considerable “trial and error” of rival movements, before the successful technique is found. Only fools will laugh at the awkwardnesses of these embryonic stages, and not realise the character of the serpent that is being incubated. The crystallisation of Fascism into a single main movement has taken over ten years in Britain, and may not have yet reached its final form; the process is still uncertain in France, owing to the special complication of the existence of the older Royalist “Action Française,” which is stronger so far than the nascent pure Fascist movements and may still dominate them; in the United States the situation is still that of the early stages of confusion.

More important in this initial stage than the specific Fascist movements are the direct tendencies within leading circles of the bourgeoisie towards open Fascism, and therefore towards the creation of a Fascist movement or towards the support of the most effective Fascist movement already existing. These direct expressions of support for Fascism are to be found in abundance among the leaders of the bourgeoisie in Britain, France and the United States.

The close connections of leading British bourgeois circles with Italian Fascism and with Hitlerism are notorious. Mussolini had scarcely completed his coup d’état before he was ostentatiously honoured by the British King in 1923 with the Order of the Grand Commander of the Bath as a reward for his services to the counter- revolution (corresponding to the similar title of a lower grade conferred on the unsuccessful Denikin). The intimate relations of Chamberlain and Mussolini were repeatedly expressed with a fervour which was not solely dictated by the requirements of foreign policy. The connections of envoys of Hitlerism with British Conservative headquarters were reported already before its advent to power. Churchill openly declared, speaking in the Mecca of Rome in 1927, his support for Fascism:

“If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”

(Churchill, Address to the Roman Fascists, January 1927, quoted in Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, p. 20.)

Mond, the patron saint of the Trades Union Congress and joint author of the Mond-Turner Reports for class-co-operation, was no less open in his recognition of Fascism and explicit avowal that his purpose in the industrial peace negotiations with the Trades Union Congress was directed towards the same aim as Fascism. His avowal, made also in Rome (the shrine where the hearts of British Conservative statesmen are to-day opened) in 1928, was indeed so explicit, as reported in the British Press, that he subsequently endeavoured to disavow it and allege an “abridged” and “incorrect version” of his remarks; “my references to Fascism,” he wrote, “were entirely restricted to its application to Italy.” The report, as printed in the Daily Herald, ran:

“I admire Fascism because it is successful in bringing about social peace,” said Sir Alfred Mond in an interview in Rome yesterday, reported by the Exchange. “I have been working for years towards the same peace in the industrial field in England.... Fascism is tending towards the realisation of my political ideals, namely, to make all classes collaborate loyally.” (Daily Herald, May 12, 1928.)*

The Rothermere and Beaverbrook press support of Hitler and Mussolini, and demands for “a British Hitler,” are notorious, culminating in the direct support accorded by the Rothermere press to the British Fascist movement.

Of especial importance are the recent developments of the Diehard and right-wing revolt within the Conservative Party, represented by Churchill, Lloyd and others, and also, in varying forms by Rothermere and Beaverbrook. Under the form of the battle against Baldwin, and especially over the issue of India, is fought the battle of more and more open opposition to parliamentary democratic institutions; and the Conservative headquarters is hard pressed to maintain control within the party for the present more cautious stage of official bourgeois policy (it may be noted that between 1933 and 1934 the Diehard or opposition vote on the Indian issue at the Central Council of Conservative Associations rose from below one-third to over three-fifths). Churchill, speaking before the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform in October 1933, and opposing the extension of even the farcical sham “democratic” institutions proposed for India, seizes the opportunity to refer to democratic institutions as “now falling into general disrepute in the Western world.” The Times, writing of the revolt against Baldwin in the Conservative Party, notes both its anti-democratic line and the possibility of its victory:

“That “Baldwinism” would be followed by some form of “Diehardism”-whether dictatorial or bureaucratic or purely commercial -is hardly open to question if these malcontents were to have their way. They may have it yet.” (Times, October 17, 1930.)

This development is of especial importance to note because, when the issue comes to a bead, it is far from certain that a Churchill or a Lloyd will allow the leadership to pass to a Mosley.†

Similar tendencies and expressions looking more or less openly towards Fascism may be observed among the statesmen and industrialists in the United States and France. Thus Gary, the United States Steel King, declared at the International Chamber of Commerce Congress in 1923 (Observer, April 1, 1923):

“We should be the better for a man like Mussolini here too.”

And the former United States Ambassador to Berlin, J. W. Gerard, declared in praise of Hitler:

“Hitler is doing much for Germany; his unification of the Germans, his destruction of Communism, his training of the young, his creation of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his curbing of parliamentary government, so unsuited to the German character, his protection of the right of private property are all good; and, after all, what the Germans do in their own territory is their own business, except for one thing – the persecution and practical expulsion of the Jews.” (New York Times, October 15, 1933.)

Abundant examples could also be quoted from the right wing press in France of an envious admiration of Hitlerism.

If we turn from these gathering tendencies to the specific and organised Fascist movements, it is to be noted that in the recent period direct Fascist movements have rapidly developed to prominence in Britain and France, as well as in the smaller countries, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. In the United States the process of the Roosevelt development is still preparing the ground of Fascism; and the question of direct fascist Organisation is still at the time of writing mainly a question of confused tendencies and beginnings, such as the “Silver Shirts,” “Khaki Shirts,” Ku Klux Klan revival, the Fascist movement of Dennis, etc.; from these tendencies more developed fascist organisation may be expected rapidly to emerge. But the situation in Britain and France is already considerably more advanced; and at the present stage the situation in Britain and France is of crucial importance for the future development of Fascism in the Western imperialist countries.

In France we have already seen how the events of February 1934, leading to the fall of the Daladier Government and the establishment of the Government of National Concentration, have brought the question of Fascism sharply to the front and led to a rapid growth of the Fascist organisations. The situation is complicated in France by the parallel existence of the Royalist “Action Française” and of the newer directly Fascist organisations.

The older “Action Française,” with its subsidiary hooligan bands, the “Camelots du Roy,” was originally founded in 1898 as a nationalist and anti-Semitic Organisation, and later became Royalist. With its close connections with right-wing Conservatism and semi-official protection for its violent and unrestrained agitation, it has considerable strength among the forces of the Right; but it is a rigidly doctrinaire reactionary Royalist body, explicitly separating itself from the principles of Fascism, although closely similar in general outlook and practice, and not accepting its typical social-demagogic technique.

The numerous directly Fascist organisations have not yet coalesced into a single party. The previous attempt to found such a party, the “Faisceau,” established by Georges Valois in 1925, was not successful. To-day the principal more or less explicitly Fascist organisations are the “Jeunesses Patriotes,” founded by Taittinger in 1924, and the semi- military “Croix de Feu” (nominally an ex-servicemen’s Organisation, but in fact recruited from all sources), under Colonel de la Roque, founded in 1927 with subsidies from Coty, in its early years numbering only a few thousands, but since the February days claiming 150,000 members. There are also a number of minor organisations and groups, such as the “Mouvement National Populaire” around the “Action Nouvelle.” Of the fighting strength of these organisations the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports:

“The Croix de Feu, the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Action Française and other reactionary organisations have probably not more than 25,000 to 30,000 “fighting members” in Paris. Nevertheless, if this force were armed, it would be sufficiently impressive, though even then it could do little if it had the police and the army against it. But there is just a danger that at the critical moment both the police and the army might be on their side, or at any rate neutral.” (Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 23, 1934.)

At the same time from the “Socialist” side has developed an organisation, the “Neo-Socialists,” or, as they have termed themselves, the “Socialist Party of France,” led by Marquet. This group was until the autumn of 1933 a right wing within the Socialist Party; under the influence of the victory of Hitlerism it came forward with a new programme, attacking the old conceptions of internationalism and of the proletarian basis of socialism, insisting on the need to build on the basis of “the nation,” and to appeal to the middle class and to “youth,” and stressing the necessity of “authority,” of the “strong State,” of “order,” of “discipline,” of “action,” etc. Its outlook was thus, although in fact only developing and stating more explicitly the basic social democratic outlook, marked by strong fascist influence; and the development of this tendency was universally recognised as a development towards Fascism. In the autumn of 1933 this group broke away from the French Socialist Party to found the Socialist Party of France; its leader, Marquet, joined the Government of National Concentration on its formation.

In Britain the situation has not yet reached the same degree of intensity as in France; but a fully formed Fascist Party and Organisation, even though not yet strong, has been constituted since 1932 in the British Union of Fascists under Mosley. The rival smaller organisations are to-day of minor importance; note may be taken of the markedly anti-semitic Imperial Fascist League, and of the “Greenshirts,” originally a currency movement of more or less fascist character, though denying Fascism.

The British Union of Fascists, although not yet necessarily the final form, has to-day established its position for two reasons: firstly and mainly, because of its overwhelming financial support from influential sources, support by the million-tentacled Rothermere Press, etc.; and secondly, because of its historical origin from the heart of the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, whereas the previous attempts had remained movements purely of retired generals and suburban reactionaries.

The earlier movement of the “British Fascisti” originated in 1923, from the circles around the Duke of Northumberland’s journal The Patriot, and received its legal recognition from the first Labour Government:

“The legality of their organisation was officially recognised by the late Labour Government by the granting to them of their Articles of Association as ‘The British Fascisti, Ltd.’”

(General Blakeney, President of the British Fascisti, in The Nineteenth Century, January 1925.)

Brigadier-General R. B. D. Blakeney, its President, had been general manager of the Egyptian State Railways. Its Commander for the London area was Brigadier- General Sir Ormonde Winter, K.B.E., and its Vice-President was Rear-Admiral J. C. Armstrong. (The subsequently attempted United Empire Party, launched with the support of the Rothermere and Beaverbrook Press in 1930, was equally over-weighted with generals: “the Council is almost entirely composed of military officers, and their experience of political matters or organisation is, with two exceptions, negligible, Morning Post, September 13, 1930). These earlier would-be fascist organisations had no understanding of the necessary Labour connections and social-demagogic technique of Fascism. The British Fascisti proclaimed in all simplicity the objective “to render practical, and, if necessary, militant defence of His Majesty the King and the Empire.” A further circular explaining the role of its two branches, Men’s Units and Women’s Units, stated:

“In times of peace both branches carry on propaganda, recruiting and counter-revolutionary organisation. Should Revolution or a General Strike be threatened, Men’s Units would form the Active Force, and the Women’s Units the Auxiliary Force.”

It is obvious that on this basis of ingenuous “counter-revolutionary,” honesty no mass Fascist movement could be built up. The movement won a certain degree of attention in the period preceding the General Strike, mainly owing to its semi-official police recognition, its members being accepted in certain areas for recruitment into the special constabulary in a body under their own officers. It achieved no political influence, and after the General Strike fell into obscurity.

The first significance of the Mosley movement was its direct origin from within the Labour Party. Mosley, after having been a Conservative Member of Parliament, entered the Labour Party in 1924. On the basis of his great wealth and influential connections, he advanced with an extreme rapidity unattainable to ordinary working- class members of the Labour Party, to a commanding position in that party, which is always notoriously open to the power of money and of bourgeois connections, and where seats are often offered as at an auction to the highest bidder (no less than fifty seats were offered to Mosley in the same year that he joined). Within three years he was elected to the Labour Party Executive in 192 7 with a higher vote than Herbert, Morrison, and in 1928 was re-elected, polling 2,153,000 votes. He was appointed a Minister of the Labour Government of 1929, and in 1930 resigned on the grounds of inactivity to deal with unemployment. As a Minister he had produced the Mosley Memorandum, which was the first outline towards a Fascist policy, that is, an active, openly non-socialist, far-reaching policy of capitalist reconstruction. This policy, not because of its non-socialist character, but because of its active character, was unwelcome to the conservative do-nothing line of the Labour Government, which accordingly sat on it and endeavoured to bury it. Mosley appealed to the Labour Party Conference in 1930 and won 1,046,000 votes against 1,251,000 for the Executive. He was re- elected to the Labour Party Executive, and thus in fact passed straight from the Labour Party Executive to the organisation of his New Party or Fascist Party in 1931.

For the original wider political basis and influence of Mosley (in contrast to the unsuccessful generals of the previous Fascist attempts), and his launching into the front ranks of politics, it is thus necessary to thank the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, which in this way characteristically performed the role of Social Fascism. While the Communist Party alone from the outset correctly gave warning of the Fascist tendencies implicit in Mosley (which he at first endeavoured to deny), the Left Labour politicians rallied to his support and assisted his campaign. The New Leader, the organ of the Independent Labour Party, wrote of the Mosley Memorandum:

“In the main, as is known, his scheme followed I.L.P. lines.”

(New Leader, October 10, 1930.)

Brockway wrote:

“In the ideas of the I.L.P. Group and the smaller Mosley Group there is a good deal in common....

Before long we may expect to see a revolt by the younger members of all three parties against the methods and spirit of the older generation.”

(Brockway, “The Ferment of Ideas,” New Leader, November 7, 1930.)

The Mosley Manifesto of December 1930, which already formally disclaimed Socialism (“the immediate question is not a question of the ownership, but of the survival of British industry”) and demanded a Dictatorship of Five to carry out an aggressive capitalist programme, was signed by seventeen Labour M.P.s, including five I.L.P. M.P.s, together with A. J. Cook.* When the New Party, the first definite step towards the formation of a Fascist Party, was formed in the spring of 1931, it was formed of six Labour M.P.s and one Conservative M.P., and made its appeal to “the mass of patriotic men and women who are determined upon action.”

The final evolution from the womb of Social Fascism to open Fascism developed in 193 1. After the unsuccessful Ashton by- election fight of the New Party in April 1931, writes Strachey (Menace of Fascism, p. 161), “Mosley began more and more to use the word Fascism in private.” In May 1931, according to the Daily Express (May 18, 1931), Mosley at a meeting at the headquarters of the New Party “spoke of the need for discipline: it was generally agreed that there were many lessons to be learned by the New Party from Hitlerism.” Major Baker, political secretary of Mosley, in an interview to the same journal declared:

“It is true that the young men who are gathering round us are Oxford students and graduates. They are mostly athletes….

The men around us are in many instances the owners of motorcars. They will form themselves into flying squads to descend suddenly on a place.”

According to the Daily Herald (June 6, 1931), a mission, consisting of Major Thompson, D.S.O., and L. J. Cumming (formerly propaganda secretary of the West London Federation of the I.L.P.) was sent to Germany to study the methods of the Nazis. Mosley, The Times (March 2, 1931) reported, “has, it is understood, collected a considerable fund-not, of course, from Socialists.”

The details of this development are only important as showing in a classically clear form the close connection of Social Fascism and Fascism. The last step in the process took place in 1932 when the Fascist name was openly adopted, and the New Party (as the Communists bad prophesied from the outset) was transformed into the British Union of Fascists. The statement of policy, Mosley’s Greater Britain was issued, which repeats in very summary form the familiar features of Fascist economics and politics discussed in previous chapters, with the main stress on the economic policy (“Corporate State,” compulsory arbitration, “scientific protection,” regulation of production, trade, wages, prices and investments-the old illusions of “planned capitalism”), and with the necessarily unpopular political features of repression smoothed over under vague phrases or even omitted from mention.*

In the autumn of 1932 the Fascist Defence Force was established, and in 1933 Fascist barracks-headquarters, of the type of the Brown Houses in Germany, began to be set up. The growth of violence in 1933 in connection with the “wearing of political uniforms” (i.e., of the Fascists-no Workers’ Defence Force as yet exists) was reported as follows by the Home Secretary in Parliament on February 20, 1934:

“The growing danger of public disturbances which the police attribute to the wearing of what may conveniently be called political uniforms is shown by the fact that the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis reports that for the first six months of 1933 there were in the Metropolitan police district 11 disturbances of a political character attributed to this cause, while in the last six months of the year there have been no less than 22 such disturbances.”

In the beginning of 1934 Fascism was endowed with a large-scale Press organisation by the resources of the millionaire Rothermere Press being placed at the service of the British Union of Fascists in order that it might represent

“a well-organised party of the Right ready to take over responsibility for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed.” (Rothermere in the Daily Mail, January 15, 1934.)

The situation by the spring of 1934 was reported as follows by the Government (Lord Feversham’s reply on behalf of the Government in the House of Lords on February 28, 1934):

“The membership of the British Union of Fascists was difficult to obtain, but the movement was gaining ground.... An article which had appeared in the Daily Mail, written by the owner, had undoubtedly given it considerable impetus. The exact source from which income was derived to finance these activities was unknown, but it was obvious that substantial financial backing was forthcoming from various sources other than that of the private wealth of the leader and the dues or subscriptions from members.”

 The policy of the Government was stated to be not to interfere to restrict the growth of Fascism:

“As long as a majority were able, with the assistance or lack of assistance of a Government, to maintain peace and order in this country, it was unnecessary for any great action to be taken to restrict such parties.”

It is possible that in the near future, as a result of the widespread mass opposition and indignation over the unchecked growth of Fascism and Fascist violence, a show of measures may be taken by the authorities (as in other countries, as in Germany, as in Italy) - purporting to restrict the “private armies” of Fascism. The experience of other countries has shown abundantly that such legal and administrative restrictive measures are always in practice exercised heavily against any working-class self-defence, and only lightly, if at all, against Fascism (e.g., in Germany, rigorous dissolution and disarming of the workers’ Red Front, alongside a short nominal ban on the Storm Troops by Brüning, the latter ban being officially raised soon after by von Papen on “patriotic” grounds). Fascism in every country grows by the direct support and connivance of the State authorities, of the higher police authorities and of the bourgeoisie. The battle against Fascism can only be fought, not by illusory trust in legalism, but by the power of the working-class movement