Fascism then and
• April 13, 1992
FASCISM manoeuvre shrinks and finally vanishes.
The restoration of profits then implies the destruction of the organized workers' movement.
However the latter is too strong, too noW
IT was February 27, 1933. The news spread throughout
Germany; the Reichstag [the German parliament] was in flames. Many people, uninterested in politics, went about their daily round as if nothing was happening. But politics was interested in them. In the course of a few hours, the political regime and the social situation was to change profoundly.
ERNEST MANDEL*
HE morphine-addict Goering, a
T man corrupt to the core who was to accumulate an immense personal fortune under the
Third Reich through robbery, was chief of police as well as prime minister and interior minister of Prussia. As Hitler's righthand man he immediately gave his police the signal for action.
But not only the police. Alongside it were the Nazi paramilitary formations, the
SA and SS, which gained official status as auxiliary police forces.
Thousands of militants from workers organizations, anti-militarists, anti-fascists or simply humanists, including many parliamentary deputies, were arrested, held in concentration camps, tortured and murdered. Democratic freedoms were suspen-
Reign of terror against workers
Political parties and trade unions were outlawed, their premises occupied and their property seized. The Nazis launched a reign of terror in the working class neighbourhoods.
Millions of workers tried to respond.
Despite the terror, a series of cities saw the biggest worker mobilizations of their history, bigger even than during the revolu tion of 1918-19.
A succession of delegations went to the offices of the Social Democracy and unions on the morning after the coup to demand a general strike.
The Social Democratic leaders refused, saying that they did not want to see workers' blood flow.
The political dictatorship of the Nazi murderers however did not mean their economic dominance. It served to consolidate the power of big capital.
From now on the latter would be the
24 sole power in the factories.
International Viewpoint # 226
This is proved by incontestable facts: between 1928 (the year before the economic crisis) and 1938 (the last year before the war) the mass of wages remained the same, but capitalist profits had gone up three-fold. Thus the rate of exploitation
Such facts reveal the historic function of the fascist dictatorship, that of atomizing the working class, destroying the workers movement, preventing any organized defence by workers and getting rid of collective bargaining over wages.
This does not mean that all worker resistance became impossible, but it was reduced to punctual and fragmented actions.
It was neither through political blindness nor fear of revolution that big capital accepted the exercise of power by the fascists. It was forced into it by the very deep economic crisis it confronted.
Initial suspicion of Hitler
At the start, most of the big industrial and financial magnates were suspicious of Hitler, an all-or-nothing adventurer and nihilist demagogue.
Only a few, among them foreigners such as Henry Ford, gave him financial support at the end of the 1920s. Generally speaking, the bourgeoisie prefers a slowly decomposing bourgeois parliamentary state, with strengthening repressive powers, to the totalitarian rule of a fascist party that it cannot wholly control.
But the maintenance of a parliamentary regime, however empty of substance, exacts an economic and social price.
In such a situation the workers' movement retains institutions for the collective defence of its interests and can even do deals within the framework of a class collaborationist policy.
When there is a catastrophic fall in profits, then the bourgeoisie's room for well organized and too deeply implanted in society to be finally destroyed by the apparatus of the bourgeois state. The mass fascist party and its paramilitary terrorist formations are called on to perform this
The fascist dictatorship thus means the employment of a broad and well organized mass movement to destroy the workers movement, and terrorize and smash up the working class and other potentially anti-
This definition of the fascist dictatorship highlights a fundamental difference between a political regime in which the working class preserves its organizations and capacity for collective resistance and a regime under which all that disappears.
Such a definition thus rules out any belittling or denial of this difference. Even the most moderate workers' organizations are suppressed under fascism.
To this end it uses the frustration and despair of the impoverished middle classes and other declassed layers of society.
Fascism implies the transformation of this previously rather weak social mass into a strike force against the workers'
A catastrophe for civilization
The seizure and then consolidation of power by the Nazis was a catastrophe for the German and European working class, for the Soviet Union, for all of Europe's peoples and for human civilization. The world's second greatest industrial power fell under the control of a semi-barbarian
The people which had once given the world Bach and Beethoven, Hegel and Kant, Goethe and Schiller, Marx and Engels, now brought forth the Gestapo torturers, the racist legislation of Nuremburg the concentration and extermination camps and the Generalplan Ost which envisaged the murder of a hundred million human beings in central and eastern Europe.
The fascist mass movement, and the fascist seizure of power, were the product of an extremely deep social crisis. The petty bourgeoisie is by nature profoundly conservative. But in post-1914 Germany it was pauperized by inflation and the ruir of small businesses. It had nowhere to turn. Its basic nationalism was ideologically inflamed by the military defeat and the draconian clauses of the Versailles Treaty.
From 1930 onwards, the economic crisis made all this worse. The decomposing Weimar republic offered no perspective to
April 13, 1992 # 226 International Viewpoint these layers.
They thus gave themselves over body and soul to an unscrupulous adventurer, who was ready to promise to fulfil all their desires, however contradictory.
Big capital and then the army, at first reticent, were won over when Hitler promised the former that he would make them the sole power in the enterprises and the latter that he would carry through a crash programme of rearma-
At the same time the scourge of unemployment was to be eliminated even if this meant bankrupting the state. This was to be overcome by the pillaging of Europe and the Soviet Union. War for world domination was the final goal of the Nazi enterprise.
In this respect it represented a continuation of the policy of the conservative nationalist German elite since the end of the 19th century.
This latter thus bears full responsibility for the whole enterprise and for the fascist crimes, which they fully accepted until it became clear that the war was lost.
However, for the fascist dictatorship to be set up and consolidated it was necessary that the working class, more numerous than the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie together, should not be able to mount successful resistance.
Resistance was possible
Such resistance was perfectly possible. Millions of workers wanted it.
The absence of any such resistance was mainly due to the lack of understanding and incompetence of the leaderships of the Communist party and the Social Democracy.
Under orders from Stalin, the CP leaders claimed that there was a revolutionary situation in Germany, that in these conditions the main obstacle to be overcome was the Social Democracy and that it was thus necessary to put the fight against the Social Democrats before that with the Nazis.
They called the Social Democrats "social fascists". They criminally downplayed the disaster that the coming to power of the Nazis would mean for the CP and the entire workers' movement.
They insisted that Hitler would not remain in power long and that a Communist victory would rapidly succeed him.
This blind sectarian dogmatism made it all the more difficult to build a united front against the Nazis from top to bottom. The Stalinists furthermore refused even to call for this for a long time, counterposing an unrealizable "united front from below"
The legalist and electoralist idiocy of the Social Democrats was no less criminal than the sectarianism of the Stalinists.
The Social Democrat leaders continued to insist that "legality" must be respected at the very moment when the Nazis were brushing it aside. They continued to put all their faith in elections that the fascists had decided to do away with altogether.
They refused unity in action with the CP with the excuse that they were opposed to violence from wherever it came" They stifled efforts by workers to mount an insurrectional general strike against the Nazi coup.
They did not in this way succeed in avoiding civil war, a permanent state of emergency with the most unjust and inhumane conditions: simply, they ensured that only one side in the civil was armed and able to strike, while the other camp was disarmed, politically, militarily and morally.
Given the rise of the far right throughout Europe it is legitimate to ask the question: is there a parallel between the danger then and now?
A double confusion
The answer to this must be yes. We should not be deceived by the double confusion that exists as to the nature of formations such as the French Front National or the Belgian Vlaams Blok.
First of all there is a confusion between the political mask they wear in public and their fundamental objectives, which they are still keeping under wraps. To win votes, to get the traditional right to accept them as partners, and win a pseudo-democratic credibility they play the card of "traditional Christian values": fatherland. family, security, law and order and all the rest.
However when you look at the ideas of
FASCISM their ideological outriders you find unashamed nostalgics for fascism, racists, anti-semites, xenophobes, anti-feminists, fierce opponents of unionism and the workers movement and apologists for the worst crimes against humanity.
The second trick: the Vlaams Blok puts itself forward as a defender of the "small man". They claim that they are against immigrants so that Flemish workers can
They put the stress on anti-immigration because they feel that this argument strikes a chord in the widespread prejudices of the popular masses.
But this is another mask. In fact, the programme of the Vlaams Blok hardly mentions the issue of immigration, which is dealt with in a single paragraph.
Their so-called "popular nationalism" is in reality a nationalism of the rich, aimed at rendering the poor powerless. Le Pen is a multi-millionaire, while the Vlaams Blok leader Dillen has connections among Flanders' best known banking and indus-
The Vlaams Blok wants to ban strike pickets as "private armed militias". It is in favour of dismantling the unions. It wants a Mussolini-style corporatist regime which makes the boss the sole power in the workplace.
Of course, a distinction must be made between the ideology of the hard core of these parties and that of the mass of their voters. The latter are motivated by frustration and the sense of being left behind.
But the more they have the feeling that *This article first appeared in the March 18, 1992 issue of La Gauche, bi-monthly journal of the POS/SAP, the Belgian section of the Fourth Interna- 25 tional.
A tidal wave against
April 13, 1992
Fascism / Anti-racism: BELGIUM
"centre right" and "centre left" are six of one and half a dozen of the other, that they feel that the alternation of the traditional parties offers no real change, that parliamentary democracy is blocked, powerless the far right and corrupted, the more they are tempted to look elsewhere for a solution.
In this sense their is a real threat that the far right, becoming increasingly open about its objectives, can reach for power.
UNDER the slogans "With You" (Wallonia) and "Hand in
This is, of course, not an immediate dan-
Hand" (Flanders) some 120,000 people filled the streets of ger, but if the economic depression leads the Belgium capital Brussels on Sunday March 22. This to a big increase in unemployment and the tidal wave of people had arrived for the most part by number of those marginalized increases, then it becomes a realistic prospect.
special trains from every corner of the country. They stood for "tolerance, against social exclusion and democracy" in
Differences in situation reaction to the gains made by the extreme right in the
There are, however, substantial differences between the present situation and that of the 1930s. First of all, this is the second time that the danger of fascist dictatorship has presented itself. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Secondly, in no country of Europe has unemployment and marginalization reached anything like the 40 to 50% of the population affected in Germany at that time. Thus the social base of a fascist movement remains relatively restricted.
This is all the more true in that at present unemployment and marginalization are mainly striking the working class, which can be more easily won over by the workers' movement and the anti-fascist united front than petty bourgeois layers — provided that there is a correct and adequate orientation.
In this respect we should not forget a fundamental truth; no anti-fascist struggle can be effective without the long-term elimination of unemployment. This is why the acceptance of austerity policies by the
European Social Democracies and by the union leaderships has such serious implications, preparing the ground for the far right. The anti-fascist struggle requires a firm criticism of this policy, as well as concrete proposals for an alternative economic policy.
Finally, human beings do not live by bread alone. Behind the attraction of racism and xenophobia for some people lies the fall-out from the crisis of the credibility of socialism as a project for an alternative to capitalism. The fascist plague can only be fought if no concession is made to narrow egoism or to racism.
It can only be fought in a context of a clear defence of the socialist and humanist values of solidarity, and through the practical demonstration that these serve the real interests of the wage earners better than prejudices, and that they give a meaning to life that is infinitely more valuable than that provided by barbaric myths. Fascism can only be fought if the aspiration
26 for happiness for all i reborn. *
International Viewpoint # 226
November 24, 1991 elections. VINCENT SCHELTIENS
T HE initiative for the march came
from the Flemish pacifist movement which, in the 1980s, was the moving force behind the massive anti-nuclear demonstrations. On the basis of a broad appeal, the initiators succeeded in gaining support from all Hugo Ongena, spokesperson for the Flemish Coordination for Peace, the VAKAOCV, and one of the demonstration's organizers, declared: "It is as if an old dream has come true: the traditional social movements and the new social movements have come together on the same programme of action".
The organizers want to continue on these lines, to get ready for 1994 when there will be a number of electoral tests and when the far right may find itself holding the balance of power in many local authorities, particularly in Antwerp, which is, from a socio-economic point of view, the country's most important city.
The start of a new movement
According to Ongena: "March 22 was a turning point and the start of a new movement".
This show of strength was the biggest so far of the current series of anti-racist demonstrations in Europe, putting Brussels in the "100,000+ Club" alongside Paris, Milan and Amsterdam (see box on opposite page).
The goal of the organizers was to get 100,000 out, an aim that seemed possible from December 1991 onwards after discussions between the different social movements led to broad unity of the unions, the pacifist movement, ecological, women's and youth movements and immigrant organizations.
Following the recipe devised for the anti-missiles movement of the 80s, a multitude of local initiatives were formed. The first reactions to the November 24 ballot came from students, who organized demonstrations several thousand strong in Louvain, Gand and Brussels.
Other activities followed, from neighbourhood or town committees to the setting up of a citizens movement (Charter 91) which was then replicated in the French-speaking part of the country.!
Criticisms made of demonstration
Some long-standing anti-racist and antifascist forces were critical of two aspects of the March 22 demonstration.
First of all they were unhappy with the way in which the "hand in hand" initiative had been decided on, from the top with no involvement of significant parts of the anti-racist movement and the far left, and secondly with the platform, which was felt to be too superficial and which omitted some crucial demands.
Despite this however, the broad unity was the main factor and the necessary condition to reply to the racists and open up new perspectives, in particular owing to the participation of the two unions.
Despite what was (or what was not) in the platform, the demonstration was clearly aimed against racism, for equal rights and against the fascist parties, above all the 1. The founding meeting of Charter 91, which took place on February 8, 1991 in Antwerp, brought together 1,000 people including well-known figures from the political, social and cultural worlds. Charter 91 considers the rise of the far right as being due to the overall crisis of society, and consequently will try to involve citizens on the basis of alternatives concerning the various social problems.