Fascism

The Star · #1 Sunday, April 04, 2010

FASCISM

INTRODUCTION
The project of Enlightenment in Europe posed a serious challenge to the older order of society and state based on the notion of divine sanction. By the 18th century, the idea of representation and a state organized around elected representatives had taken roots. This marked the inauguration of modern politics or mobilization of people around some specific idea or policy to achieve a specific political aim. The institutional forms of this modern politics were elections, parties and modern newspapers with all the political insignia and trappings of modern political culture, which created a public space. This led to a whole range of political choices available and competing with each other for occupying this public space. By the end of the 19th century, this had crystallized in the triple ideological division of Europe into the Left, the Right and the Center. It is important to bear this in mind in order to understand the processes of political mobilization that brought extreme right wing organizations or fascists to power in a number of European countries during the inter-war period. The growth of monopoly capitalism and resultant intense imperialist rivalries fuelled extreme nationalist ideologies and militarism after the 1870s. In the new political context, appeal for political support was made on the basis of new, seemingly non-class identities, especially, outside the workplace. As a result, unique mass-constituencies such as “war-veterans”, “tax-payers”, “sport-fans”, or simply “national-citizens” were created. The transformation of these latent social-cleavages into open conflict must also be seen as the necessary background for the growth of right-wing fascist dictatorship in Europe after World War I.

GENERAL EXPLANATIONS

Fascism has been interpreted in multiple ways:

A favorite Marxist position is to explain it as a violent, dictatorial instrument of monopoly finance capital, which emerged in the form of brutal attack on worker’s rights in a period of intensification of class struggle and acute crisis in the capitalist economy.
Another interpretation views fascism as the product of cultural and moral breakdown in the aftermath of brutality and savagery of World War I. According to Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, World War I destroyed the foundations of 19th century Europe and unleashed a long period of crisis marked by war-mobilization, privation and dislocation.
Oswald Spengler wrote his Decline of the West in 1918 and argued that Western civilization, characterized by industrialism had reached a period of decline in the 20th century. Spengler attacked the rational strains of modernity in order to celebrate the’ Philosophy of Life’ as an alternative.
Wilhelm Reich, a neo-psycho analyst, in his Mass Psychology of Fascism explains Fascism as a result of extreme neurotic or pathological impulses that lay dormant in the patriarchal family set-up.
Another liberal interpretation traces fascism as a product of mass society where traditional solid identities based on kinship, religion, craft and guild and residence break down and a new amorphous mass-society is created.
Some others relate it to a unique expression of middle-class radicalism against monopoly business houses’ profit-motive.
Lastly, it has been seen as a form of Bonapartism or an autonomous authoritarian state led by a charismatic leader independent of any specific class-interests or class-domination.

FEATURES OF FASCISM

Fascism emerged as a radical movement based on the rejection of liberalism, democracy and Marxist socialism. However, it differed from the conservative authoritarian groups.

The conservative right invoked traditional legitimacies based on the church, the monarchy, kinship etc. whereas the Fascists wanted a radical institutional change and mobilized people in the name of Organic Nationalism, a belief in the harmonious collectivity of nation privileged over all other forms of human-identification. As in the human body, the structural relationship of the various organs or parts of the body to each other only serves to define and delimit their roles; so in the organic view of the fascist state, the state as the embodiment of national will takes precedence over the identities and rights of the individuals. This view also accounts for the deep-rooted hostility of fascism to inter-nationalism and to organizations and movements based on inter-nationalism such as communism, freemasonry, the League of Nations and to the multi-national Jewish community. In general, Fascism symbolized the rejection of political culture inherited from Enlightenment and its ideas such as rationalist materialism, the philosophy of individualism and pluralism. The fascist opposition to the democratic-bourgeois institutions and values did not rule out their use of mass, constitutional and plebiscite forms of politics, but they made use of these democratic institutions only to wreck them from inside and in order to undermine their value. Fascism was opposed, in all its forms, to the notion of democracy based on respect for pluralism, individual autonomy and the existence of civil and political liberties.

The mass- mobilization of fascists was based on the pattern of militarization of politics. They made use of military insignia and terminology in their mobilization. As military-organizations are based on unity of command and order and perfect subordination of rank and file to the higher command, so the fascist organizations had their quasi-sacred figure of the leader-the Duce in Italy and the Fuhrer in Germany-whose will was supreme in all matters.

A party militia was often used to reinforce the sense of nationalism and wipe out opposition to their dictatorships. The extreme stress on the masculine principle or male-dominance in the fascist ideology and the exaltation of youth were also related to this militarization of politics.

Another significant feature of fascism was the organization of some kind of regulated, Class-collaborationist, integrated national-economic structure. The idea of corporatism as a community of people free from class-conflict emerged in reaction to the growth of individualism and the new centralizing states. It was a residue of the feudal ideology of mystical ‘community’ of personal ties. But gradually it acquired a modern, class-collaborationist form. The ideology of societal corporatism believed in giving full autonomy to the corporations, but fascist ideology emphasized state corporatism or the complete subordination of corporations to the needs and requirement of the fascist state.

IDEOLOGICAL STRANDS OF FASCISM

At the ideological level, there was no single unifying idea that guided the fascist movement and state. Fascism emerged from heterogeneous borrowings from various ideas. The basic ingredient of fascism, as we have noted above, was a kind of synthesis of organic nationalism and anti-Marxist ideas. The influence of Sorel’s philosophy of action based on intuition, energy and élan was also discernible in the pattern of fascist mass-mobilization.

The fascists also tried to apply Darwin’s ideas to the development of society. They believed that people in any society compete for survival and only superior individuals, groups and races succeed. This belief directly fed into the anti-Jewish politics or anti semitism practiced mainly under German fascism, but also elsewhere. Such application of Darwin’s ideas in the realm of society came to be known as ‘Social Darwinism’. Adolph Hitler’s autobiographical statement in Mein Kampf (1924) made out an explicit case for the application of such Social-Darwinist racial ideas. In this book, Hitler characterized parliamentary democracy as a sin against ‘the basic aristocratic principle of nature’ and depicted all human culture as the exclusive product of the creative Aryan race and condemned the Jewish community as inferior and lacking in creativity. The mass–extermination of millions of Jews grew out of this insanity of Nazi ideology in Germany where completely impersonal bureaucratic ‘extermination’ of a people classified as a species of inferior inhuman was put into practice. The political theorist Carl Schmitt wrote his critiques of parliamentary democracy in the 1920s arguing for a plebiscitary dictatorship. The Philosopher Martin Heidegger attacked Western modernity for its technological violence and for a contempt of being. In various ways, these philosophies of the right were to become justifications for the Fascist and Nazi regimes in the 1930s.

Fascism in Italy emerged as the convergence of three different trends. The radical Syndicalist Confederation of Trade Unions split in 1914 over the issue of Italian participation in war (World War-I). The Syndicalists had believed in the ‘self–emancipation’ of the ‘producers’ through regulation at factory level. The workers associations or syndicates would replace the state at an appropriate time and these would act as the instruments of self–government. Now the right wing syndicalists moved towards extreme nationalism. They described nations in class terms, i.e., as ‘plutocratic’ or having colonies or ‘proletarians’ or ‘have not’ nations without colonies.

Italy was described as a proletarian nation. The Futurists who rejected traditional norms and existing institutions and exalted ‘violence’, and who were fascinated by speed, power, motors and machines or all the modern technological possibilities, contributed a second major ideological factor. Mussolini’s ‘socialistic’ views and ideas on ‘national revolution’ was the third major ideological strand of Italian fascism. This heterogeneity of ideas along with local political exigencies was responsible for variations in the form of the fascist movement and state.

SOCIAL BASES OF FASCISM

War, Diplomacy and Nationalism
World War I provided the sociological and psychological conditions for the crystallization of the fascist state. It revealed the capacity of nationalism in the mobilization of masses and economic resources. It further demonstrated the importance of unity of command, of authority, and moral mobilization and propaganda in the service of the modern state. After the war, fascism emerged as a vision of a coherent and reunited people, mobilized on the basis of a whole communal liturgy of songs and torch- light procession, highlighting the cult of physical force, violence and brutality.

At the Versailles, the victorious Allied powers tried to extract the terms of defeat from Germany. Severe reparations were imposed on Germany. Germany’s military might was reduced to 100,000 men. Germany also suffered in terms of territorial possessions including loss of its colonies. Discontent over the severity of the Allies’ peace terms and conflicts and squabbles over the newly drawn frontiers contained seeds of future conflicts. There was no mechanism to adjudicate rival claims and resolve conflicts. The League of Nations lacked the executive powers to impose peaceful solutions. Hitler was ready to use military force to achieve union with Austria and to get sufficient ‘living space’ (Lebensraum) for the German people. Italian fascism claimed colonies for a ‘proletarian’ Italy. Japanese militarists demanded an ‘equitable distribution of world resources’ and were willing to favor a military action to achieve their aim. Nationalism, war and diplomacy forced individuals and groups within national boundaries to take sides. It also made it possible to restrict the public democratic space. Any person or group could be identified as the ‘national enemy’ or ‘traitors’ and wiped out for not owing allegiance or loyalty to the fascist ‘national’ state. Earlier defeat was attributed to the betrayal of these elements in the fascist propaganda.

The Economic Crisis of 1929
World War I resulted in mass destruction, of resources both physical and human, and hence, productive capacities of societies involved in it. Reconstruction and ‘recovery’ in Europe after the war was financed by US loans. The process went on smoothly till a crisis began in the US over the rapid drop in agriculture prices. As the world agriculture production began to rise with ‘recovery’ in Europe, North American agriculture was hit by a rapid drop in the prices and many faced bankruptcies. Soon the stock markets in America were affected in October 1929. As a result of the global integration of the markets, the crash affected all the economies. Plantations, farms and factories closed down throwing millions out of jobs and restricting output. The Industrialists who had taken advances and loans from banks and financial institutions found it difficult to repay. Many banks and financial institutions started facing bankruptcies. With millions out of jobs and factories, there was no demand for goods and services as the purchasing power of the people deteriorated. The economies showed no sign of recovery. In such circumstances, re-militarization advocated by fascist leaders created jobs not only in the armies, but also in the armament industries. As this stimulated a demand for goods and services, the fascist programme appealed to people in crises-ridden times-especially when it also satisfied their ‘national pride’.

The Political Mobilization for Fascism
The initial programme of fascists in Italy, launched as ‘Fasci Di Combattimento’
(1919) called for the installation of a republic and reflected demands for radical democratic and socialistic reforms including confiscation of huge war- time profits of capitalists, the suppression of big joint-stock companies and land for landless peasants.These leftist elements of the programme were dropped in 1920 and only an emotive mixture of strident patriotism, justification of war, a concern for national greatness and aversion to the socialist party were retained. The growth of fascist squads, with the support and connivance of state officials and army was directly linked to actual or perceived threats of the left. The support of the traditional conservative elites such as army officers, bureaucrats, and businessmen was utilized and left its imprint on the fascist party and state. In order to achieve a broader mobilization of people, the military type militia, semi-military propaganda type organizations and regimented fascist trade unions were also created. The Party and its grand Council controlled all these organizations.

Similarly, chauvinist sentiment and popular radical demands in Germany were used by Hitler’s fascist organization, the German National Socialist Worker’s Party (NSDAP) in order to gain mass political support. It called for a greater Germany with land and colonies, the annulment of the treaty of Versailles, nationalization of big monopoly business, profit sharing in big enterprises, the abolition of unearned incomes and agrarian reforms. German fascism capitalized on the growing unease created by the Great Depression of 1929 and its impact on the German economy. They made use of the political instability of the Weimer republic, whose own constitution was used as an instrument to subvert it from within. All these factors created conditions for the rise of the Nazi Party, the organization of German fascism. It had a particular appeal for those patriotic Germans whose national pride had been hurt by the defeat of Germany in World War I and its subsequent humiliation at Versailles.

The Question of Hegemony and Coercion
The German fascist state associated with the Fuhrer Adolph Hitler earned for itself the distinction of being the most barbaric and destructive regime that used industrial techniques for the execution of planned mass murder and genocide. The secret state police office or ‘Gestapo’ as it came to be known in Germany was created in 1933 under the Prussian Interior Ministry, and rapidly attained autonomy from the provincial government. From 1934, Heinrich Himmler became the head of this nation-wide fascist organ of terror. Its Prussian section was headed by Reinhard Heydrich, who was also in charge of the SD, a party intelligence organization affiliated to the dreaded SS, with a nation-wide network of informers. It became the internal disciplinary executive of the German fascist state. Such organizations of terror acquired the complete power of life and death over every German. Any opposition to the fascist state was ruthlessly suppressed. Absolute power was concentrated in the hands of the Fuhrer. The use of a rational bureaucratic mechanism in order to exterminate the gypsies, Jews and political opponents through concentration camps is a well-known aspect of the fascist state. All this points towards overwhelming dependence of the fascist state on the coercive machinery of state power. Similarly, in Italy, Spain and other fascist regimes, every attempt was made to dismantle democratic institutions of the civil society and replace them with institutionalized dictatorships based on the personal command of the dictators. All this necessitated more and more regimentation of the civil society. Some scholars even characterize fascism as a ‘totalitarian state’ or a state, which acquires day-to-day control over the life of its citizens. But despite the dictatorial rule, fascism made use of certain consent-building experiments. At the ideological level, use of nationalist sentiments and even anti-Semitism had a popular sanction behind it.

Apart from this, some new methods were also tried. The fascist state in Italy created the Opera Nazinale Dopolavoro in 1925. Its main concern was the organization of leisure time for the working people. It ran a huge network of local clubs and recreational facilities with libraries, bars, billiard halls and sport grounds. The Dopolavoro circles arranged concerts, plays, films shows, and organized picnics and provided cheap summer holidays for children. By the 1930s, there were about 20,000 such circles in Italy. Moreover, although the Syndical Law of 1926 brought labour under the control of the state in the interest of production and confirmed the fascist trade unions in their monopoly of negotiations with employers and banned strikes, the fascist state also introduced some welfare schemes for the workers in the 1930s. Family allowances were given in 1934, largely to compensate for the loss of income resulting from the imposition of a forty-hour week. Insurance against sickness and accident was incorporated into wage agreements, and later in the 1930s, Christmas bonus and holiday pay were introduced. All such measures were meant to establish legitimacy of the state that had abolished civil liberties and democratic rights. Compared to Italy, German labour was more tightly regimented under the Nazi regime.

STATE AND SOCIETY UNDER FASCISM

The fascist state emerged as the institutionalization of personal dictatorship. In Italy, all opposition parties and organizations were banned in October 1926. The Public Safety Law (1926) made the security of the state take precedence over personal liberties. The Fascist Party itself was bureaucratized and syndicalist ideas were suppressed within the party. Many industrialists from North Italy including the owner of Fiat Company, Giovanni Oienyale, had financed Mussolini’s fascist organization. Private capital was a beneficiary of the fascist control of labour. The “Corporate State” was formally created in 1934 with 22 combined corporations of employers and employees, but they lacked the real power to take economic decisions. State intervention in the economic life of the Italian nation was marginal in the early part of fascist regime. The Great Depression and the need to fulfill imperialist ambitions, especially in the Mediterranean Sea and Africa for its aggressive nationalist-militarist project led to an increased state intervention in the economic life. The foundation of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) and Instituto Mobiliare Italiano (IMI) in the 1930s reflected this trend of economic regulation in the service of modern warfare. However, even in 1940, IRI possessed only about 17.8% of the total capital assets of Italian industry. The state, in particular, focused on the growth of chemical, electrical and machine industries and gave impetus to modernization through electrification of railways and telephone and radio industry. However, compared to Germany, investments in military-production were low despite the regime’s rhetoric of Italy “being in a permanent state of war”. Moreover, despite early radical denouncements of the monopoly capitalist class, the fascist state helped in cartelization and trusticisation i.e. creation of large industrial federations.

Mussolini also tried to appease the Church. Large grants were made for the repair of war-damaged churches. In 1923, religious education was made compulsory in all secondary schools. The Roman question was finally settled in 1929. The Lateran Pacts were signed with the Church, giving virtual control of religious-education to the Church and the Pope’s right to govern the Vatican was recognized. The Church’s main lay organization, Catholic Action, was guaranteed freedom provided it stayed out of politics.

The personal absolutism and party’s control of social life was more stringent in
Germany. In Italy, big business, industry, finance, army and professional bureaucracy retained a large degree of autonomy and fascism came to power on the basis of a tacit compromise with these established institutions and elites. In Germany, the Enabling Act (March 1933) became the legal basis for Hitler’s dictatorship. Legislative power was transferred to the executive. The bureaucracy was purged of politically undesirable and ‘non-Aryan’ elements. The federal character of the state was destroyed. The basic constitutional rights were suppressed. The “rule of law” was transformed into the ‘rule of leader’. The extra-legal notion of the Fuhrer, to whom bureaucracy and the army swore ‘unconditional obedience’, assumed crucial importance in the administrative functioning and signified burial of constitutionalism. The will of the leader became the basis for the legitimacy of law. The independence of the judiciary was completely destroyed. Furthermore, the press was completely controlled. Liberal and Jewish-owned newspapers and the Socialist Press were forced to close down. Any type of literature, and art that was found anti-thetical to the fascist perception was banned. The control of cultural life of citizens through propaganda and education became one of the chief goals of the Nazi regime. All education was transformed in accordance with fascist ideals. Text- books were re-written. Jews were forbidden to teach and racial theories of ‘Aryan- German’ master race supremacy became a part of the curricula.

The fascist state in Germany also attempted to achieve a complete regimentation of labour. “Trustees” appointed by the owners fixed wages. A labour front was created in October 1934. It operated not as a trade union, but as a propaganda machine, and included employers and professionals as members. Its stated aim was the maximization of work, and the fascists controlled it. The fascist state’s attitude to women was based on ultra-conservative patriarchal sentiments. The social role of women was defined by the slogan of “Kids, Kitchen and Church”.

The most oppressive aspect of fascism in Germany was a systematic persecution of Jews. The ideology of Nazi party in Germany was informed by a strong hatred of the Jews and an intense obsession with the maintenance of the Aryan purity of the German Master race. The Jews were stereotyped as inferior, racially impure and a source of all ills of Germany. They were deprived of citizenship, places in the universities and administration. Their businesses were attacked. They were subjected to all sorts of unprecedented discrimination. Later on, millions of them were sent to concentration camps and massacred during World War II. Italian fascism in contrast, lacked any systematic policy of racial anti-semitism, at least, up to 1937. However, in November 1938, under the influence of the Nazis, racial anti-Jews laws were also passed in Italy.

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