A Short Introduction to the MLM Conception of Fascism
Introduction
Someone’s conception of the term ‘fascism’
depends on where they start from. If they start on the basis of bourgeois
biases and prejudices then they will end up with the bourgeois conception of
fascism. Two of these major assumptions and biases of bourgeois ideology in
this regard are:
2.
That
the “be-all and end-all” of democracy is the holding of regular elections. Thus
even if these elections are completely rigged by the virtually total ownership
and control by the capitalists of the media, and even if the dominant parties
all have more or less the same bourgeois ideas and programs, such elections are
still considered to be the “essence” of democracy.
We
don’t start from these false assumptions and biases. Our very different
presumptions in this regard are:
2.
That
the fundamental struggle and force of development in class society is the
struggle between social classes.
3.
That
states (“governments”) are dominated and controlled by one or another social
class, and—indeed—controlled to such an overwhelming extent that it is correct
to view every state in class society as the dictatorship
of one or another class. (I.e., the dictatorship
of that class over all the other classes.) Of course, under capitalism, that
means the dictatorship of the capitalists or bourgeoisie.
4.
That
real democracy means, in the words of Mao Zedong, people having control over their own lives.[iii]
This control will be exercised not only on an individual basis (as the
bourgeoisie primarily looks at it) but even more importantly, collectively. Elections are one of
numerous means for the people to express and implement that control, but only
if the elections are not rigged by an
enemy class (as they always are under bourgeois rule, often completely so,
occasionally only to a major degree). And organized mass action is generally a
much more effective means than elections for expressing and implementing the collective
control by the people over their own lives.
5.
Of
course in order for people to truly have control over their own lives, they
must also have genuine collective control over the state itself (while states
continue to exist), over the dominant political party, and over all aspects of
their society. This can only be completely
accomplished over time as human beings revolutionize their society, but a
substantial leap must be made in this direction before a society can be
properly called democratic at all.
Instead
of just trying to refine and expand the Comintern definition of ‘fascism’, I
propose simply to discuss in turn some of the key things about fascism, key
aspects of the concept that are sometimes forgotten even within the world
communist movement.
The
First Principle in the MLM Conception of Fascism:
Fascism
is one of the two major forms of bourgeois class rule.
Still, we do recognize secondary differences between fascism
and bourgeois democracy. And the primary secondary difference we recognize is
that for the proletariat, under
bourgeois democracy, there is qualitatively more freedom to express their
opinions, to protest, to organize themselves, and for their organizations and
political parties to operate openly without being suppressed, to publish and
distribute newspapers and other literature, etc.
We view these things as far more important
than whether or not the working class is allowed to vote or run candidates in
elections, or even on whether there actually
are any elections! We do certainly support having elections in bourgeois
society; we just don’t normally view them as being all that important as
compared with rights of free speech, free assembly, and the rights to organize
and demand changes in society. And we don’t view elections as normally being of
great importance because it is obvious to us that they are always rigged and
controlled via the dominant ruling-class mass media and “education” (i.e.,
indoctrination).
We must note here that the bourgeois-democratic
form of capitalist rule is never absolute or permanent. Whenever the ruling
bourgeoisie perceives a serious growing danger to itself from the rising
protests and organization of the proletariat and masses it will inevitably seek
to control or suppress that “dangerous development” by removing (temporarily or
permanently) those rights to free speech, a “free press”, to assemble, to
protest, to form organizations, and so forth. This is a major part of why even
bourgeois democracy is still a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
These democratic rights are only granted (and only to the degree) that they are
not perceived by the ruling capitalist class as a serious danger to itself.
Indeed, such rights are most often granted as a means of promoting the false
idea that they rule with the consent and approval of the people. Granting the
masses “rights”, but only when it seems to the rulers that they make no real
difference, is highly useful to them as part of fooling the masses about just
who is running society.
On the other hand, the partial freedoms of
speech, press, assembly and organization, etc., under bourgeois democracy are
still important to us in the revolutionary movement. We know (or should know!)
that these “rights” will one day be stripped away from us under new fascist
laws or policies, but in the meanwhile
we can make good use of them to begin
to build up the revolutionary movement of the workers and masses. It would be
foolish not to demand and fight for rights (even if quite limited) that help us
build struggle and organization that will take our class at least a part of the
way along the path toward revolution.
The Second Principle: Whether or
not a regime is fascist is primarily a question of how it goes about exercising its dictatorship over other classes—and especially over the
proletariat and the masses.
For bourgeois political theorists, the
primary question in determining whether a regime is fascist or not is simply
whether it holds so-called “free elections”. For us revolutionary Marxists, the
deciding factor is instead just how
the bourgeoisie exercises its dictatorship, and most essentially, whether or
not the working class is (for the time being) allowed some considerable freedoms
to openly and legally speak out, protest, and create organizations and parties
which champion its own collective interests, including its fundamental interest
in making social revolution.
For bourgeois political theorists, fascism
mostly means the prohibition of other
bourgeois parties, ending “pluralism”, and removing the right of other
bourgeois individuals to express and promote ideas contrary to the ruling
party. Thus the bourgeois conception of “fascism” is mostly an “intra-class”
issue, and is quite narrow and limited compared to ours.
This is a major point of difference for us
from bourgeois conceptions of fascism. We concentrate on the democratic rights
and freedoms of the working class; they focus almost entirely on the rights of
other sections of the bourgeoisie who wish to promote alternative ideas and
programs for the management of the society their
class controls.
The
Third Principle: How the regime treats revolutionaries
and revolutionary parties (along with
the militant mass movements they organize and lead) is especially key in
determining whether a regime is a fascist one or not.
The Second Principle, just above, says
that whether or not a regime is fascist is primarily a question of how it goes
about exercising its dictatorship over the working class and its allies. But
the working class itself has different components, some more active and
advanced, and others less active or advanced. Thus the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie will inevitably come down much harder on the active and advanced
segments of the working class than it will on the rest of the class. And that
is true under both forms of bourgeois dictatorship, under both fascism and bourgeois democracy.
So when we say that the deciding factor
(between fascism and bourgeois democracy) is “just how the bourgeoisie exercises its dictatorship, and most
essentially, whether or not the working class is (for the time being) allowed
some considerable freedoms to openly and legally speak out, protest, and create
organizations and parties which champion its own collective interests”, we have
to especially look at just how the
bourgeois ruling class acts in relation to those who are more active and advanced, and who therefore are speaking out, protesting, forming
revolutionary groups, and so forth. After all, even the most vicious fascist
capitalist ruling class will normally not do much, if anything, to those
workers who themselves do nothing, do not protest or strike, do not complain
and try to organize themselves, and who have no militant or revolutionary
ideas! In that case the rulers don’t need
to do anything to these totally compliant and beaten down workers, since they
are already behaving the way the rulers want them to behave.
The real test of a bourgeois society (as
to whether it is fascist or bourgeois democratic) is in how it acts in relation
to those who are actually stirring up the masses, educating them in their own
interests, organizing them, and leading them in struggle against those rulers
and oppressors. And that means that how the state acts against revolutionaries and revolutionary parties, and the militant mass movements they
organize and lead, is a key indicator of whether it is a fascist state or not.
We could even say that for us
revolutionary Marxists the most important thing which distinguishes fascism
from bourgeois democracy is how the
bourgeois state treats revolutionaries and revolutionary mass movements, in
particular. Why revolutionaries, specifically, rather than just the working
class in general? Is this looking at things too narrowly? Not really.
Revolutionaries, and revolutionary
parties, concentrate and focus the interests and actions of the
working class and masses. That is the job of revolutionaries and their parties;
that is what they are there for. The Marxist conception of the revolutionary
party is that of an organized nucleus arising primarily from within the working
class itself, which seeks to lead the whole class and the broad masses forward
in struggle.
There is a tendency, frequently even among
revolutionaries themselves, to see revolutionaries and revolutionary parties as
separate from and outside the working class. Of course sometimes we talk that
way when we are focusing on how revolutionaries should relate to the rest of the class and the masses.
But no class party is really any good unless it is deeply a part of the class
it represents, i.e., unless it is its intellectual and leadership core. (New parties are necessarily small
and limited in their influence within their class, but they must still have
this solid determination to represent and lead their class if they are ever to
amount to anything in the future.)
If revolutionaries are mostly allowed to
openly express their ideas without being arrested, if they are allowed to have
meetings and demonstrations, form legal organizations, print and distribute
leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers and books, and are allowed to openly talk to
the rest of the masses and build mass struggles, then this is a qualitative
difference in the regime as compared to the situation where these actual
freedoms are suppressed or severely limited. If all these things are allowed
(or at least pretty much allowed) then we call the form of capitalist rule a
bourgeois democracy.
True, even in this case the democratic
aspects of society are severely curtailed; elections are still basically a
manipulated fraud; the bourgeoisie still massively dominates the press and
educational system; there is no democracy at all at the capitalist workplaces;
and so forth. But under bourgeois “democracy” we revolutionaries are allowed
(for a time, and to a limited degree) to openly organize and bring revolutionary
ideas to the masses, and that is very important to us. We revolutionaries are
able to operate in a qualitatively different way.
The
Fourth Principle: The role of terrorism.
As mentioned above, the traditional
Marxist definition of fascism is that it is the “open terrorist dictatorship”
of the bourgeoisie. But this “terrorist” aspect, while certainly true of fascism,
needs further discussion.
First of all, terrorism is an integral and
inherent part of all class rule; one
of the main goals of the ruling class is to enforce its dictatorship in part
through instilling considerable fear or terror in the subjected classes about
what will happen to them should they dare to attempt to overthrow that existing
class dictatorship.
And specifically, terrorism is an inherent
part of both of the two fundamental types of bourgeois class dictatorship, that
is, of both fascism and bourgeois democracy. Even if the
workers and masses are allowed some considerable level of freedom of speech,
organization, and the like, under bourgeois democracy, there will still be
plenty of things that it is illegal for them to do. It might be illegal for
them to assemble except in a few isolated and out-of-the-way places for
example, or to arm themselves, and it will certainly still be illegal for them
to try to defend their interests and welfare through any type of force or
violence. Should they be driven to do so, which will inevitably happen from
time to time, then the full terroristic violence of the state will come down on
their heads. Not only will the bourgeois state strive mightily to stop those directly
involved in these rebellions, it will attempt to make them an “object lesson”
for anyone else who might be tempted to rebel. In short, the goal is always to
terrorize all those whose actual class interests might lead them toward
rebellion or revolution.
So we must be very clear that it is not just the fascist form of bourgeois
rule that is terroristic, but bourgeois democracy as well.
On the other hand, fascism is typically much more terroristic than bourgeois
democracy. One of the reasons for this is simply that more things are illegal
under fascism, and the people have fewer “rights”. So when they do even such
things as peacefully assemble, peacefully protest, publish leaflets, newspapers
or other literature, or form organizations to represent their interests, these
things will be viciously and violently attacked by the state in the same way
that any form of violent protest or action would be. The scope and “necessity”
(from the viewpoint of the capitalist rulers) for state terrorism is much
broader.
Since fascist regimes regularly rely on
terroristic violence to a much greater degree than bourgeois democratic
regimes, the police and other enforcers of the bourgeois dictatorship in that
form also become even more vicious and inhuman than they already usually are
even under bourgeois democracy. Torture, for example, typically becomes much
more common and much more extreme. The massacre of “innocents” (i.e., those who
are not even protesting against exploitation and injustice) becomes more
frequent and widespread.
Nevertheless, these things also do occur
from time to time under even the most “generous” forms of bourgeois democracy.
All forms of bourgeois dictatorship involve violence directed against the
people “as is needed” to keep them under control, and also terrorism, torture,
and so forth. In this regard, between fascism and bourgeois democracy, there is
a definite difference in degree, but not really a difference in kind.
The Fifth Principle: Fascism and
bourgeois democracy are theoretical extremes or archetypes; all actual regimes
have elements of both types of bourgeois rule.
In
reality no actual regime is an example of “pure fascism” or “pure bourgeois
democracy”. All real regimes lie in between these two theoretical archetypes.
However,
the Nazi regime did come pretty close to the “pure fascism” end of the
spectrum, and Hitler and his minions tried as hard as they could to achieve
that “perfection”. According to the “Führerprinzip”[iv]
(“leader principle”), for example, every single person in Germany was under the
absolute obligation to be uncritically loyal to Der Führer. However, there still were many private disagreements,
and even small circles of organized disagreements with Hitler, sometimes even
within the German army. Still, Nazi Germany did come grotesquely close to fascism
“uncorrupted” by bourgeois liberalism.
It
is much harder to find examples of regimes which even begin to approach the pure
ideals of bourgeois democracy. Some of the modern Scandinavian countries
perhaps come the closest, but they are still far from “pure”. All have many
laws to control and limit strikes and every other form of mass activity. I
think we can lay it down as a law of bourgeois society that there never has
been, and never will be, anything really closely approaching a pure form of
bourgeois democracy. (Moreover, as I mentioned above, if such a thing ever could
arise it would only be very temporary, until events “required” the rulers to
crack down on the working class in order to preserve capitalist rule.)
So all actual bourgeois regimes (with the
possible exception of Nazi Germany) are made up of a blend of bourgeois
democratic and fascist elements.
The
Sixth Principle: Regimes can be categorized as either fascist or bourgeois
democratic based on whether they more closely approximate the fascist
theoretical archetype or the bourgeois democratic theoretical archetype.
Just because there is a blend of elements
characteristic of both forms of bourgeois rule in every actual bourgeois
society, it does not follow that there is no way to characterize a particular
regime as being overall close to one or the other of the two basic types. Even
if Mussolini’s Italy was slightly
more liberal than Nazi Germany, it was still a clear case of a vicious fascist
regime.
There are also some regimes, such as
present-day capitalist China, which must be considered to be a relative “soft”
form of fascism as compared with Germany and Italy in the 1930s. There are of
course very tight laws restricting the democratic rights of the masses,
including the working class, as well as constant attempts to imbue them with
the ruling class’s ideology. But for the most part the workers and masses are
left pretty much alone to think as they wish until they actually protest
publicly or try to change society in their own interests. Nevertheless
contemporary China is a clear example
of fascism, as far as the basic Marxist conception is concerned. Revolutionaries
are arrested and imprisoned, and sometimes tortured or executed, and no
revolutionary organizations or publications are allowed. Moreover, it would still be fascism there even if the
bourgeois rulers were to allow contested elections (as they sometimes already
do on the local level), as long as the democratic rights of free speech, a free
press, assembly, protest, and organization among the workers and peasants to
advance their own interests were still prohibited.
It is true that there are bound to be some
regimes, at one time or another, whose fascist and bourgeois democratic
elements are roughly on a par. In those cases we might be hard pressed to say
whether the regime should be called a fascist country or not, and even well informed
opinions might differ. However, there
are intermediate cases between men who are bald or not bald too, but that does
not keep us from reasonably categorizing most men as one or the other.
One good thing to do in the intermediate
cases is to focus on which direction the new changes are being made. If a
country is roughly half-way between fascism and bourgeois democracy, but all
the recent changes are in the direction of more fascism, then it seems quite
reasonable to describe that country as at least undergoing “developing
fascism”. In general in politics, the direction
of development is often more important than where things actually stand at the
given moment.
The Seventh Principle: Individual
laws or actions by the bourgeois state can be categorized as fascist if they correspond to the sorts
of laws or actions typical of the fascist theoretical archetype, and whether or
not they occur in a regime which we overall categorize as fascist.
Strangely enough, there is a very common
tendency to resist calling laws which are characteristic of fascist countries
“fascist laws”, when applied to laws in a country which is overall correctly
called a bourgeois democracy. The idea seems to be that there can only be fascist laws in a totally fascist
regime! This is complete nonsense.
There are in fact many laws and government
policies characteristic of fascism in
even the most democratic bourgeois state, and it is by no means wrong to label
them as such. In fact it is very
important to label them as such, as part of the continuing struggle against
fascism.
As we said earlier, every actual bourgeois
regime has a mixture of fascist and bourgeois democratic elements. That means
that of necessity there are always
fascist laws, restrictions, policies, actions and the like on the part of the
state. And these fascist elements should be labeled for what they are, and
firmly opposed.
Are all
repressive laws properly viewed as fascist
laws even under a bourgeois democracy? This might depend to some degree on
what is meant by a “repressive law” in the first place. But if the term refers
to a law that actually restricts or prohibits what would otherwise be properly considered
some democratic rights of the working class and masses, then yes, it can and should just as well be
called a fascist law too. I see no reason to support the notion that there are
“two categories” of the suppression of democratic rights: “ordinary repression”,
and “fascist repression”. That would echo back to the old notion that something
should only be called “fascist” if it brings all the horrors of Nazi Germany to mind. If there are two distinct
categories, “repressive laws” and “fascist laws”, on just what grounds do we
decide that a particular law is one or the other? There would need to be some
principle which leads us to make the appropriate choice.
Moreover, if we arbitrarily decide to call
a law or policy a fascist one only if it
occurs in a fully fascist country, this would then force us to say that
identical laws, with identical results, are fascist in one country and merely
“repressive” in another country! Wouldn’t that amount to using a euphemism for
the law in the bourgeois democratic country? Wouldn’t it be sort of a cover-up
or implicit apology for the bourgeois democratic country? It seems much better
to simply say that if a law or policy is a fascist
one in a fascist country, then it is a fascist one anywhere else too.
The
Eighth Principle: Since fascism vs. bourgeois democracy is a matter of how the bourgeoisie rules, it is possible for it to rule in different
ways in different areas (as well as at different times), and therefore to be a
fascist regime in one area and a bourgeois democratic regime in another area.
Some people think in simplistic black and
white terms, and say that a country must either be entirely and completely
fascist, or else that it must be entirely
and completely a bourgeois democracy.
But why “must” it be? The world is
far more complex than simple conceptual schemes like that allow for.
Suppose, for example, that a state
declares martial law in a region and “suspends” all democratic rights,
including the right to assemble, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of
organization, perhaps to vote, and so forth. That is our definition of fascism.
Martial law is one common form that fascism takes.
In particular it is relatively common for imperialist
states to administer their internal colonies and territories in a more fascist
manner than they do the rest of their domain.
The
Ninth Principle: Bourgeois democracy is unstable and periods of fascism are virtually
inevitable—especially as the bourgeoisie faces a major crisis or nears its
overthrow.
This is a simple corollary of the basic
fact that even bourgeois democracy is a form of the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie. “The scientific term ‘dictatorship’”, says Lenin, “means nothing
more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted
by any rules whatsoever, and based directly on force.”[v]
The ruling class will certainly have
many laws in place, and will generally operate in accordance with those laws
most of the time. But when it needs to
ignore them it will almost always do so! No matter what the law books say,
no matter what the constitution says, the capitalist ruling class will always try
to protect its continued rule by whatever means it takes.
The United States, for example, has a
constitution that “guarantees” the rights of free assembly, free speech and
freedom of the press. But during World War I, and even more so during the “Red
Scare” after that war, the U.S. government arrested thousands of people
peacefully protesting the war or working for socialism (most of them naively via
the ballot box!), banned Socialist Party meetings and gatherings, and even
closed down the extensive Socialist press of the day. The fact that the “law of
the land” prohibited such actions in no way stopped the ruling class from
carrying them out when they felt the necessity of doing so.
The entire reformist German
Social-Democratic movement was caught off guard by the advent of fascism in
Germany in 1933. The socialists had assumed that their hard won rights to
belong to labor unions, form a political party to work for reforms, to publicly
gather and protest, to have a socialist press, and so forth, were all
permanently secure. They were fatally wrong. All such “rights” were suddenly
stripped away.
Those who do not understand that bourgeois
democracy is unstable in historical terms, and is extremely prone to being
replaced with fascism during times of serious crisis, can only mislead the
people and leave them totally unprepared to deal with full-scale fascism when
it arrives.
The
Tenth Principle: Struggling against fascist laws and policies of the government
in a bourgeois democracy is a struggle for reforms.
Yes it is! Even if you win the particular
struggle you are still stuck with basically the same system, the
capitalist-imperialist system and the class dictatorship of the ruling
bourgeoisie. We should never forget this fact, or start to confine our work mostly (let alone only) to the struggle for a purer form of bourgeois democracy. That
would turn us from communists into bourgeois democrats.
On the other hand, there are some
infantile “Leftists” who are totally against all struggles for reforms, and who
even think that by engaging in any struggle at all against fascist laws or in
favor of democratic rights under this system, we thereby automatically become
“reformists” or bourgeois democrats. That is just not the case. These “Lefts”
do not know how to reason, as Lenin remarked. (Participation in the struggles
for reforms is not necessarily reformism
in the Marxist sense, unless that is all
that you are doing, or the major part of what you are doing!)
First, we must struggle along with the
masses for aims which they see as important. Most people do see democratic
rights as important, and are willing to struggle for them. By being in the
midst of mass struggles, even those around reforms, we thereby win the ears of
the masses so that we can explain that while reforms are well and good, what we
really need most of all is socialist revolution and getting rid of capitalism
entirely. Second, the struggle for reforms around democratic rights (as opposed
to say wages and job conditions), puts people more directly up against the
state, and can be in itself a very useful education. And third, struggles
against fascist laws and policies, if won (for a time), can help give us a
freer hand to further explain the necessity of revolution to the masses. These
are all quite valuable things.
Comintern
and Revisionist Errors with Respect to Fascism in the 1930s and Later
This essay is meant to be focused on explicating
the concept of fascism from the MLM
point of view, and we cannot delve into the historical development of that
conception, let alone the various erroneous views about fascism and politics which
have developed in Marxist circles over the decades. However, any modern Marxist
work on fascism (even if fairly short) must condemn and divorce itself from the
theories and actions in this regard of the Comintern and many revisionist
parties during the 1930s and afterwards.
What happened, briefly, is that the
Communist Party of Germany, under the direction of Stalin and the Comintern,
did not seek to build a tactical united front to prevent the Nazis from coming
to power in Germany. They were right to see the Social Democrats (SPD) as also a
bourgeois party, to struggle against it generally, and so forth. But they were
wrong not to see the importance of a temporary, broad, tactical alliance in
1933 (including the SPD) as a means of keeping the Nazis from power. That was
already a major error, involving mechanical (undialectical) reasoning on their
part. But then, after the Nazis did come to power, Stalin and the Comintern and
(at their direction) the CP of Germany and most of the other CPs, overreacted
to their initial error and made an even greater, much more widespread and more
prolonged error in the opposite direction.
The “United Front Against Fascism” which they
promoted for years on end called on the masses and the CPs in all countries to closely
ally themselves with social democrats and reformists (pretty much regardless of
local conditions, negligible local fascist threats, etc.), and—in effect—to
become mere social democrats and reformists themselves. In most areas
independent communist revolutionary work was almost eliminated or totally
submerged into electoral “popular fronts” and the like. The entire thrust of
this new direction was to cut the revolutionary heart out of much of the world
communist movement and shift it strongly into reformism. Later as World War II
loomed and then began, the Comintern and CPs went even further, and called for
the people of the world to unite with and support the “democratic”
countries—such as the U.S. and Britain—which were actually, of course,
imperialist countries and also the
enemies of the people of the world. This line pretty much limited the world
struggle to simply defeating fascism and restoring
bourgeois democracy in the fascist countries.
This un-Marxist glorification of bourgeois
democracy corrupted the international communist movement from within, and
especially in Europe and the U.S. it led to the complete revisionist
degeneration of the various existing “Communist Parties”, which they never
recovered from. In the immediate post-WWII world the possibilities of socialist
revolution in countries such as France, Italy and Greece were tossed away. (The
excessive fear by Stalin and the CPSU of a new war with the West was also a
major factor here.)
It was only in Asia, and especially in the
case of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong, that a proper Marxist
course of turning an anti-imperialist/anti-fascist war into an outright
revolutionary war was seriously attempted and successfully carried out. That
put to shame the pathetic performance by the so-called “Communist Parties” in
Western Europe and the U.S. during the 1930s and 1940s.
Revisionism
in Power is “Social-Fascism” (i.e., Plain Old Fascism)
After the overthrow of socialism in the
USSR by Khrushchev and his fellow revisionists, Mao labeled that country as
“social-imperialist” and “social-fascist”. He explained that these terms meant
that while the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was still “socialist” in name, in reality it had become an
imperialist and fascist country.
For many decades, however, many Marxists
(including many dedicated followers of Mao) have been curiously shy about
outright calling the revisionist Soviet Union as an imperialist or fascist
country. They have sometimes used Mao’s terms (“social-imperialist” and
“social-fascist”) as if they meant something less severe than “imperialism” and
“fascism”. The fact is that the revisionist Soviet Union was a fascist and imperialist country, and we should not only admit
this, we should insist on it. On our
MLM conception of fascism, for example, there is just no doubt whatsoever about
it.[vi]
Some
Additional Comments about Fascism and How the Term has been Used
It is sometimes argued that Leftists are
too free and easy with the word ‘fascist’, to the point where it has become
little more than a term of abuse for any person or government action or law
that they don’t like. Supposedly communists in particular are guilty of terrible
sins such as calling people “fascists” even if they are not actually members of
any recognized fascist party (such as the Nazis).
Personally I think these complaints are
mostly off base. It is true that ‘left’-liberals, especially, have often used
the term ‘fascist’ in exaggerated ways in light
of the common bourgeois conception of what fascism is. But there is also
this revolutionary Marxist conception of the term which I have been trying to
explicate here. And on that conception, I really don’t see that most of the
uses of the term which people complain about are really that far off the mark.
To start with, doesn’t it seem rather reasonable
to call someone a “fascist” if they systematically or frequently promote fascist
laws and actions, even if they are not actually a member of an organization
that might be correctly called “fascist”? What reason is there for restricting
the term only to members of certain organizations?
However, if someone’s promotion of some
particular fascist law or action is instead deemed an aberration, then it would
seem to be at least “impolitic” to label that person as an outright fascist,
though it would certainly still be correct to label the law or action itself
for what it is, a fascist one, and to strongly argue with or condemn the person
for supporting it. “Do you really want to be promoting laws of the sort that
Hitler and Mussolini implemented against the working class?”
We do have to remember that a country
which has some fascist laws is not necessarily correctly called a fascist
country (overall), and in the same way a person who favors a particular law or
action which is appropriately termed fascist, may not systemically approve of
fascist laws in general. In that case it would be wrong to call the person a
fascist. But such a person must still be strenuously struggled with, and/or
condemned!
If we don’t view fascism as something
which must necessarily parallel Nazi Germany in every respect, but rather just as
a regime where the basic democratic rights of the working class are grossly
restricted or almost entirely absent, then the scope for the very proper and
appropriate labeling of such a regime as fascist
greatly increases.
Thus to argue that the term ‘fascism’ is
being grossly overused on the left often is strongly suggestive that the person
claiming this has a bourgeois
conception of what fascism is, and not a proletarian revolutionary conception.
They might well still be a Marxist or revolutionary in general! After all, even
we individual Marxists virtually always have some bourgeois ideas too, mixed in with our more genuinely Marxist
ideas. Nobody’s worldview is absolutely pure and perfect. So when I suggest
that those who think that the term ‘fascism’ is being grossly overused likely
have a bourgeois conception of fascism, that by no means implies that I view
them as bourgeois ideologists, let alone the enemy! It is merely a way of
strongly criticizing that one element of their conceptions.
Short
Case Study #1: The United States and Fascism
The United States is not a fascist
country, though there have been periods when it has moved in that direction and
at least one brief period when it came quite close. (I’m referring to the “Red
Scare” period after World War I, when the government suppressed the Socialist and
Communist parties and their press.) The fact that bourgeois elections continued
during that period is not the main thing for us; the real point is that the
freedoms to speak, assemble, publish and organize were severely restricted for
the working class and the revolutionary movement during that period. However,
even during the “Red Scare” most unions were not suppressed, not all workers’
political organizations were suppressed, not all speech was suppressed, and so
forth. Moreover, the period was rather short, and what might be considered a
close brush with fascism was not consolidated and made permanent. A somewhat
less serious flirtation with fascism occurred during the McCarthy Era in the
late 1940s and early 1950s.
But the U.S. today does have many fascist
laws, and they have been tightened up in recent years. For example, while the
“freedom to assemble” is officially still on the books, it is often so
restricted as to become close to meaningless. You may still gather to protest
“at” a Republican or Democratic national convention, for example, but you
probably won’t be allowed to do so within actual sight or sound of it, no matter
how peaceful you are. Existing rights and freedoms are generally being more and
more circumscribed, though there has not yet been any wholesale extinction of
them.
In addition to this, there have been some major
new fascist laws and policies instituted in the U.S., most notably the “Patriot
Act” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Some of the aspects of that
law have so far been directed at ethnic Arabs and Muslims mostly, but they
could be extended to anybody the government doesn’t like and gets concerned
about. We revolutionary Marxists, for example, might at some point be labeled
as “terrorists” and be rounded up, even though we strenuously oppose terrorist
tactics and actions, and condemn them as counter-productive.
It is fair to say that while the U.S. is
still a bourgeois democracy overall, it nevertheless has numerous fascist laws
and policies, and the trend certainly seems to be gradually in the direction of
having more such fascist laws and policies. If there is another major 9/11 type
event, the capitalist state may well take the opportunity to take another significant
step in the direction of fascism.
A brief word about the fears of many that
we are on the verge of some sort of spontaneous “Christian fascism” in the U.S.:
This is a notion that has also been strongly promoted by the Bob Avakian Cultists
(the RCP), who seemed to be predicting that it would come down while George W.
Bush was still in office. Avakian now talks about the Republican Party in the
U.S. as having a “fascist social base”, which I guess must on that theory make
the Republican Party a fascist party or about to become one.[vii]
While the country has in fact become much more polarized over the past decade,
and a rabid ultra-rightwing trend has become more prominent, outright Christian
fascism is only one fairly small part of that. If and when outright fascism is
instituted someday in this country, it will no doubt have a significant
Christian-fascist coloration. But I don’t see either the necessity or the panic
on the part of the ruling class that would possibly make them take such a major
and very risky overall leap at this time. It would be politically foolish on
their part to do so, and I think the vast majority of those in control understand
this.
It is much more likely that the ruling
class will someday take it into its heads to round up a few of us revolutionary
Marxists who are sticking our necks out (even though we are certainly no real imminent
threat to them at this point), and/or close down our websites, and such, than
that they will go for any full-blown fascism at this point—“Christian” or
otherwise. But if revolutionaries are systematically
arrested (even without having committed any overt illegal actions of any kind),
if all real revolutionary literature is banned, and if all revolutionary
organizations are proscribed, that would from our perspective surely count as fascism.
This is almost inevitable someday,
but I see no reason to expect it soon in this country.
Short
Case Study #2: Growing Fascism in Contemporary India
What about a country like India, which is
still part of what is loosely termed the “Third World”? India is often called
(especially by the ruling class in India itself) “the world’s largest
democracy”—for the usual superficial reason that there are many political
parties, most of which are allowed to participate in periodic elections,
elections which—there as elsewhere—are manipulated and largely controlled by
the bourgeois media and the general indoctrination of the people.
But in India, as in any other country, for
us the key question is how the state treats revolutionaries and militant mass
movements working in the people’s interests. And when you look at the situation
in India today it is easy to see that many revolutionaries are being hounded
and arrested, and even frequently murdered in cold blood in what are known as
“fake encounters”. (These are cases where the police arrest some
revolutionaries, torture and murder them while in custody, and then claim that
those people were killed in shoot-outs or “encounters” with the police.) The
foremost revolutionary party in India, the Communist Party of India (Maoist),
has been proscribed, its publications are illegal, and people have even been
arrested for simply possessing magazines sympathetic to the CPI(Maoist) or to mass
struggles such as those of the adivasis (“tribals”)
in which the CPI(Maoist) has been playing a leading and organizing role. For
the CPI (Maoist) itself, there is no question but that they are operating in a
completely fascist environment.
It is true, of course, that the Maoists
have themselves been killing police officers who have been sent to arrest or
kill them. But the illegal actions they have been taking would not have been
necessary and would not have happened if there were any effective legal and
peaceful means for them to continue to organize and support the masses in their
struggles for their own interests. It is the reactionary bourgeois/feudal
authorities who are fully responsible for the revolutionary war that has broken
out, and for the necessity for such a war.
There are many other at least nominally
revolutionary parties and organizations in India, most of which have not been
proscribed. As long as they do not actually join with the masses to interfere
in any major way with the continued exploitation and oppression of the Indian people
which are promoted and protected by the laws and the police, these
organizations are still allowed to exist, distribute literature and so forth.
So these groups are mostly operating in what could be called a bourgeois
democratic environment. The question here, however, is whether most of these
groups are really genuine revolutionary organizations in the first place! They
do generally work in the interests of the masses, but mostly around low-level
reformist issues, labor strikes, and so forth, most of which are legal only because
they are largely ineffective in advancing the major interests of the masses.
There have been a whole series of special
fascist laws enacted in India which are directed against those the government
calls “terrorists”, and especially the Maoists, as well as against the mass
movements led by the Maoists. At present, the most draconian of these laws is
the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 2008 (UAPA). Under this law anyone
arrested can be kept in jail for 180 days without any trial and can undergo as
much police interrogation as the authorities wish. It is virtually impossible
to be released on bail if you are arrested under the provisions of this act.
Instead of being presumed innocent until proven guilty, those arrested are
assumed to be guilty and must instead prove their own innocence! If those
arrested under the UAPA are unwilling to become police informers, they are
considered guilty of a further crime; there is no right to remain silent. Under
this act every person is a “terrorist” suspect, and the police are routinely
and almost automatically granted the right to search anyone’s home at any time
of the day or night. Any article, essay, report, documentary film, or public
speech may be judged by the police as “intending to aid terrorism”, and the writers,
speakers, artists or even media persons who write or present them may be
arrested for this reason alone. In other words, free speech in support of
anything the government labels as “terrorism” (and that can be anything at all!)
no longer exists. Those arrested can be tried in secret courts, with the names
of the accusers and witnesses not being made public (presumably even to the
accused!).[viii]
Some people are even being arrested—not for publishing literature supporting adivasi
struggles and/or the CPI (Maoist), but even for possessing literature which supports these struggles. Even
protesting the arrest of others under
this law makes those who protest subject to arrest! If the UAPA is not a
fascist law, I don’t know what is!
That’s the legal part of the UAPA. In addition there is the widespread torture
and murder that police and paramilitary forces routinely inflict under the de
facto protection of this law. As draconian as the UAPA itself is, the extremely
limited legal restrictions on the police that this and other laws provide are
ignored pretty much whenever the police and the government wish to ignore them.
Torture and extra-judicial killings (murders) are now common by the police in
India.
The UAPA is now also the formal cover for
full-scale wars being waged against the Indian masses by the government. The
latest of these is what is known as “Operation Green Hunt”, directed against
the adivasi people in the hilly forested areas of central India so that giant
mining corporations and others can steal their land, and especially against the
Maoists who are leading the adivasis in the resistance struggle against this
theft and oppression.[ix]
The ruling class in India has also set up
numerous private armies in the rural areas to suppress the masses. One of the
most notorious of these is the Salwa Judum in
Chhattisgarh state, which functions as a right-wing death squad. The state and
national governments participated in building the Salwa Judum, and train and
elevate many of its members to the status of “Special Police Officers”.[x]
There are similar paramilitary death squad groups in other areas, such as the Ranvir Sena in
Bihar state, which enforces the dictates of the landlord Bhumihar caste.
As if all this were not bad enough, there
are regions of India which are under martial law, most notably the
Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, but also parts of the minority
nationality areas in the northeast corner of the country (Nagalim, Manipur,
Asom, etc.). Operation Green Hunt is turning much of the adivasi areas in
central India into regions of martial law as well. As we mentioned above,
martial law is one form of openly fascist rule, and can’t count as bourgeois
democracy on anybody’s definition.
So, how then should we sum up the overall
situation in India? Certainly there are many large regions under outright,
full-scale fascist rule today. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is
operating under what can only be described as fascist conditions throughout the
entire country. However, in the cities, there still remains some considerable
degree of freedoms of association, protest, freedoms of speech and of the press,
and so forth, for the proletariat—as long as they submit to all the bourgeois
laws and regulations. So in these areas the situation is closer to bourgeois
democracy for now, except of course for the CPI(Maoist) or for anybody else who
has the audacity to support mass uprisings such as those of the adivasis in the
Jangalmahal.
Consequently, as a rough estimate, we
might say that India today is still mostly a bourgeois democracy in the urban
areas, but mostly a fascist country in large parts (and ever growing parts) of
the rural areas and in some entire regions (such as Kashmir and the Jangalmahal).
The country as a whole should perhaps be considered a semi-fascist country at the present time, but with the trend toward
more and more fascism over more and more areas. If it is overall “only” a
semi-fascist country now, it is nevertheless rapidly developing in the direction of more complete fascism.[xi]
Conclusion
Large areas of the world are already
appropriately called fascist from the
proletarian revolutionary point of view. Even in countries and areas where
bourgeois democracy still exists, there are often new fascist laws and policies
being implemented, and frequently there is at least a slow trend in the
direction of fascism. As the world capitalist economic crisis continues to
intensify over the next decade and beyond there will almost certainly be a
further impetus toward fascism in a growing number of countries. This is something
we need to recognize, prepare for, and resist with all our might.
If something really is fascist on our own
definition, then we should not shrink from calling it fascist. That’s my
opinion.
—Scott
H.
(Dec. 1, 2009; with revisions on 12/11/09, 12/12/09
and 12/13/09.)
[i]
What constitutes what could
be properly characterized as a distinctive “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” conception
of fascism? My friend “Ted” said that the CP of China didn’t devote much
attention to the question of fascism and that therefore “a distinctive Maoist
analysis of fascism hasn’t emerged as of yet”. I don’t quite see it that way. I
think the conception of fascism put forth in this essay incorporates not only
the views of Marx and Lenin but also those of Mao, such as his conception of
what democracy is (i.e., control by the masses over their own lives). Thus it
utterly rejects the notion that having elections is the “be all and end all” of
bourgeois democracy, especially when those elections are manipulated and controlled
by the ruling class. Ted went on to say:
I
would argue that the key elements in such an analysis are that it contains a
deep analysis of the nature of bourgeois democracy and fascism as forms of
state power; how these two prototypical forms of capitalist rule interpenetrate
with each other, and how the struggle against fascism and [to] protect
democratic rights must be closely linked to and serve the revolutionary
struggle. In brief, the struggle against fascism requires a struggle against
bourgeois democratic illusions among the masses and against revisionism among
leftists.
I
would certainly agree with that excellent statement! But it seems to me that
for the most part this simply means a return to Lenin’s conception of the
state, a conception that got ignored during the 1930s when the Comintern and
many revisionist-leaning Communist Parties promoted various forms of class
collaboration (such as “the Popular Front”) under the name of combating
fascism.
[ii]
For Lenin’s fuller
definition of ‘class’, see the entry for ‘CLASS’ at http://www.massline.org/Dictionary/C.htm#class
or LCW 29:421.
[iii]
Citation to be added. In
another place Mao says: “Democracy means allowing the masses to manage their
own affairs.” [“Notes on the Report of the Investigation of the Peking
Teachers’ Training College” (July 3, 1965), in Jerome Ch’en, Mao Papers, (Bombay: Oxford Univ. Press,
1971), p. 102.]
[iv] For a bit more on the Führerprinzip and other aspects of
bourgeois “leadership”, see “Leadership of the Masses: Bourgeois and
Proletarian”, Chapter 12 in my book The
Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement, on the Internet at: http://www.massline.info/mlms/mlch12.htm
[v]
Lenin, “The Victory of the
Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party” (1906), LCW 10:246.
[vi]
What about countries such
as post-Mao China, and contemporary Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba? In my own
view (though I’m sure not all my comrades will agree on this) all of these countries are also fascist
countries, to one degree or another. They are not socialist countries, so they are
capitalist countries. They are not bourgeois democracies, so they are fascist
countries. Straightforward logic.
In
each of these countries the working class and masses have no or very limited
rights of speech, press, assembly, protest, independent organization, and all
the other things that serve to distinguish bourgeois democracy from fascism. No
revolutionaries are permitted to speak or to organize the masses to change
society.
Of
course these countries differ tremendously in how the masses are treated. The
worst by far is North Korea which cannot sensibly be described as a socialist
country by any stretch of the imagination. It is not even “barracks socialism”,
the sort of nightmare that Marx mentioned in passing. It is state capitalism of
perhaps the most extreme type in history, with an exceedingly tiny privileged
elite and a country of totally impoverished, virtually enslaved masses. It
gives me the shivers when I hear fellow revolutionaries refer to it as a
socialist country. It is definitely not what Marx meant by socialism, or what I
mean.
Contemporary
China and Vietnam have largely shifted away from state capitalism to
Western-style monopoly capitalism. The material life of tens of millions of
people has much improved in these two countries, though it has worsened for
probably many hundreds of millions more. It is a very soft form of fascism, but
it is still fascism. Democratic rights hardly exist at all for the masses.
Cuba
is the most interesting case, because it is a strongly paternalistic country
run by the national bourgeoisie still mostly
for the benefit of the masses (though quite ineptly). There is the somewhat
privileged ruling class, but as long as Fidel Castro is alive they are
constrained in their growing desires to enrich themselves. Once Castro is gone,
the regime will either fall apart completely or else the national bourgeoisie
will transform it gradually from a mostly state capitalist economy into yet
another Western-style capitalist country, once again firmly under the U.S.
imperialist thumb. People are misled by the impressive health and educational
facilities for the masses. The real issues are who is running the country?, and is the country being transformed from state capitalism into socialism
and then communism? (It isn’t
being thus transformed.) So Cuba too is a soft form of fascism. Perhaps the
most gentle form there has ever been. But it’s not socialism, and the masses do
not even have the limited democratic rights that exist under U.S. bourgeois
democracy.
[vii]
In his recent talk,
“Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution”, Fall 2009, online
at http://www.rwor.org/avakian/driving/index.html#toc08
, Avakian says (emphasis added):
These
right-wing politicians (generally grouped within the Republican Party) can,
will, and do actively mobilize this
essentially fascist social base (and, even while they keep it on something
of a leash, it's a long leash) yet, on the other side, the sections of the
ruling class that are more generally represented by the Democratic Party are
very reluctant to, and in fact resistant to, mobilizing their social base…
So
you have on the one side (the "left" side, to use that term) a
significant amount of paralysis, whereby the objective of the ruling class
politicians is in fact to pacify and demobilize the people whom they
appeal to to vote for them (their "social base" in that sense),
whereas on the other side there is a very active orientation toward unleashing,
revving up and mobilizing, in a very passionate and active way, the fascist social base that the
Republican, right-wing part of the ruling class sees as its social base, or
sees as a force it relies on among the population.
[viii] See: Prof. Amit Bhattacharyya,
“Democracy and Ban Cannot Go Together”, November 2009. Online at:
[ix]
For much more about
“Operation Green Hunt” see the articles and news reports listed on http://www.bannedthought.net/India/MilitaryCampaigns/index.htm
[x] For an extensive exposure of the
Salwa Judum written the Chhattisgarh State Committee of the CPI(Maoist), see:
[xi]
My friend “Ted” prefers to
put it this way: “I would hesitate to call India ‘semi-fascist.’ I think it’s
better to describe it as an unstable mix of bourgeois democracy and military
rule/fascism which is moving in the direction of more openly fascist/military
rule.” However, I’m not clear on what the real difference is here between that
and what I call “semi-fascism”!
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