FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION- INTRODUCTION
Palme Dutt
A VERY sharp issue confronts present society. Events move with great speed. The traditional forms of thought still cling to the remnants of past periods. The victory and advance of Fascism over an extending area has come as a brutal shock to millions. Yet Fascism is no sudden growth. For a decade and a half the whole post-war social development has been incubating Fascism. To all those who have hitherto accepted as unquestioned the existing social forms and their continuity, and above all to those who have looked to the possibility of peaceful progressive advance within those existing social forms, and who have dismissed the revolutionary outlook as the fantasy of a minority, Fascism, and more especially the victory of Fascism in an advanced industrial country such as Germany, has come as a brutal shock. It may yet prove a salutary shock, if it can open their eyes to the real issues of our period. With every year, and with every month, that the long overdue social revolution in Western Europe and America, for which the world war of 1914 already gave the signal-that is, the ending of the private ownership of the means of production which inevitably produces the increasing contradictions, anarchy, destruction and barbarism of the present day-is delayed, denied and postponed, the world situation grows more desperate, and the whole future of society is brought into question. The world war of 1914, the opening of the world socialist revolution in 1917, the partial revolutions and civil struggles succeeding the war, the post-war chaos, the world economic crisis since 1929, and now the victory and advance of Fascism and approach to a second world war-these are the successive warnings of the real issues of the present stage. Fascism has already been the subject of an enormous discussion and literature over twelve years, and above all over the past two years. Yet the treatment of Fascism has hardly yet brought out its full significance.
INTRODUCTION
On the one side, Fascism has been widely treated as simply the expression of brutality and violence, of militarism and suppression, of national and racial egoism, of the revolt against culture, against the old slogans of liberty, equality and brotherhood.
On the other side, Fascism has been treated as the expression of Πnational rebirth, of the emergence of youth, of the end of decadent liberalism and intellectualism, of the advance to a balanced and organised social order.
In order to get closer to the true character of Fascism, it is necessary to go deeper, to see Fascism in relation to the whole character of modern social development, of which Fascism is an expression and reflection, and above all to get down to the basic movement and driving forces of economy and technique' of which the social and political forms, including Fascism, are only the reflection.
Such an examination will reveal beyond dispute that the modern development of technique and productive powers has reached a point at which the existing capitalist forms are more and more incompatible with the further development of production and utilisation of technique. There is war between them, increasingly violent and open since 1914, and entering into a new and extreme stage in the world economic crisis and its outcome. One must end the other. Either the advance of the productive forces must end capitalism. Or the maintenance of capitalism must end the advance of production and technique and begin a reverse movement. In fact the delay of the revolution has meant that the reverse movement has already begun throughout the world outside the Soviet Union.
Only two paths are therefore open before present society.
One is to endeavour to strangle the powers of production, to arrest development, to destroy material and human forces, to fetter international exchange, to check science and invention, to crush the development of ideas and thought, and to concentrate on the Organisation of limited, self-sufficient, nonprogressive hierarchic societies in a state of mutual war-in short, to force back society to a more primitive stage in order to maintain the existing class domination. This is the path of Fascism, the path to which the bourgeoisie in all modern countries where it rules is increasingly turning, the path of human decay.
The other alternative is to organise the new productive forces as social forces, as the common wealth of the entire existing society for the rapid and enormous raising of the material basis of society, the destruction of poverty, ignorance and disease and of class and national separations, the unlimited carrying forward of science and culture, and the Organisation of the world communist society in which all human beings will for the first time be able to reach full Πstature and play their part in the collective development of the future humanity. This is the path of Communism, the path to which the working masses who are the living representatives of the productive forces and whose victory over capitalist class domination can alone achieve the realisation of this path, are increasingly turning; the path which modern science and productive development makes both possible and necessary, and which opens up undreamt-of possibilities for the future development of the human race.
Which of these alternatives will conquer? This is the sharp question confronting human society to-day.
Revolutionary Marxism is confident that, because the productive forces are on the side of Communism, Communism will conquer; that the victory of Communism, which is expressed in the victory of the proletariat, is ultimately inevitable as the sole possible final outcome of the existing contradictions; that the nightmare of the other alternative, of the "Dark Ages" whose creeping shadow begins already to haunt the imagination of current thinkers, will yet be defeated, will be defeated by the organised forces of international Communism.
But this inevitability is not independent of the human factor. On the contrary, it can only be realised through the human factor. Hence the urgency of the fight against Fascism, and for the victory of the proletariat, on which the whole future of human society depends. The time grows shorter; the sands are running through the glass.
To many, the alternative of Fascism or Communism is no welcome alternative, and they would prefer to deny it and to regard both as rival, and in their view even parallel, forms of extremism. They dream of a third alternative which shall be neither, and shall realise a peaceful harmonious progress without class struggle, through the forms of capitalist "democracy," "planned capitalism," etc. 18. INTRODUCTION
This dream of a third alternative is in fact illusory. On the one side, it is the echo of the conceptions of a past period, of the period of liberal capitalism, which was already perishing with the advent of imperialism, and which cannot be revived when the conditions that gave rise to it have passed away, in the stage of the extreme decay of capitalism and of the extreme intensification of the class struggle. Even the caricature of democratic forms which is still precariously maintained in the imperialist states of Western Europe and America is increasingly supplemented and displaced by more and more open dictatorial and repressive methods (increase of executive powers, diminution of the role of Parliament, growth of emergency powers, extension of police action and violence, restriction of the rights of speech and meeting, restriction of the right to strike, violent suppression of demonstrations and strikes, combined with the typical methods of social demagogy of the millionaire Press, stampede Πelections, etc.). The trend of capitalism in all countries towards fascist forms is unmistakable, and is wider than the question of a Mussolini or a Hitler.
On the other side, the dream of a "planned capitalism" is already an unconscious groping after Fascism without facing its logical implications. For in practice the endeavour to realise the self- contradictory aim of a "planned capitalism" can only be pursued along the path of Fascism, of repression of the productive forces and of the working class.
Thus the myth of a third alternative is in fact no alternative, but in reality a part of the advance towards Fascism.
Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary stage of capitalist development through which all countries must pass. The social revolution can forestall Fascism, as it has done in Russia. But if the social revolution is delayed, then Fascism becomes inevitable.
Fascism can be fought. Fascism can be fought and defeated. But Fascism can only be fought and defeated if it is fought without illusions and with clear understanding of the issues. The causes of Fascism lie deep-rooted in existing society. Capitalism in its decay breeds Fascism. Capitalist democracy in decay breeds Fascism. The only final guarantee against Fascism, the only final wiping out of the causes of Fascism, is the victory of the proletarian dictatorship.
Fascism offers no solution of a possible stable social organisation to replace the existing society in dissolution. On the contrary, Fascism carries forward all the contradictions of existing class society, because Fascism is only a form, a means of capitalist class rule in conditions of extreme decay. Not only that, but Fascism carries forward the contradictions of existing class society to their most extreme point, when the contradictions are laid bare in open civil war and the organisation of the entire capitalist state upon the basis of permanent civil war. Fascism is thus society at war within itself. On this basis, Fascism, so far from being a solution of existing social problems, represents their extreme intensification to the point of final disruption. The only final outcome can be the victory of Communism, because Communism alone contains within itself the solution of the contradictions.
But in the interim period of struggle and transition, if it is Πprolonged, if Fascism succeeds for a period in organising its basis of civil war and violent reactionary dictatorship, an enormous consequent destruction of material wealth, of human lives and of culture, can take place, and increasingly threatens. Therein is the desperate urgency of the fight, not only for the ultimately inevitable victory of Communism, but for the rapid victory of Communism.
The urgency of the present issues needs no emphasis. All sense the gathering storms. A host of issues, of war, of armaments, of Fascism, of the economic chaos, are taken up. But none of these issues can be taken in abstraction. It is necessary to see them in relation to the whole social development, to the basic issue underlying all these forms, the issue of the rule of the bourgoisie or of the proletariat, of capitalism or socialism, on which the future of the human race depends.
Present society is ripe, is rotten-ripe for the social revolution Delay does not mean pacific waiting on the issue. The dialectic of reality knows no standing still. Delay means ever-extending destruction, decay, barbarism. The words of Lenin on the eve of October apply with gathering force to the present world situation: "Delay means death."
May, 1934. R. P. D.
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