Fascism/Antifascism (3)
ITALY & GERMANY |
In the forefront of the counter-truths, one finds a distorted account of the case where at least an important section of the proletariat struggled against fascism with its own methods and goals: Italy in 1918-1922. This struggle was not specifically antifascist: to struggle against Capital meant to struggle against fascism as well as against parliamentary democracy. This episode is significant because the movement in question was lead by communists, and not by reform socialists who had joined the Comintern, e.g. the P.C.F., or by Stalinists competing in nationalist demagoguery with the Nazis (like the K.P.D. with its talk of "national revolution" during the early thirties). Perversely, the proletarian character of the struggle has allowed the antifascists to reject everything revolutionary about the Italian experience: the P.C.I., lead by Bordiga and the left communists at the time, is charged with favouring the coming to power of Mussolini. Without romanticizing this episode, it is worth studying because it shows without the slightest ambiguity that the subsequent defeatism of the revolutionaries regarding the war of "democracy " vs. "fascism " (Spanish Civil War or World War II) is not an attitude of purists insisting only on "the revolution" and refusing to budge until the Great Day. This defeatism was based quite simply on the disappearance, during the twenties and thirties, of the proletariat as a historical force, following its defeat after it had partially constituted itself at the end of World War I. |
The fascist repression occurred only after the proletarian defeat. It did not destroy the revolutionary forces which only the traditional workers' movement could master by methods both direct and indirect. The revolutionaries were defeated by democracy, which did not shrink from recourse to all the means available, including military action. Fascism destroyed only lesser opponents, including the reformist workers' movement which had become an impediment to further development. It is a lie to depict the coming to power of fascism as the result of street fights in which the fascists defeated the workers. |
In Italy, as in many other countries, 1919 was the decisive year, when the proletarian struggle was defeated by the direct action of the State as well as by electoral politics. Up to 1922, the State granted the greatest freedom of action to the Fascists: lenience in judicial proceedings, unilateral disarmament of the workers, occasional armed support, not to mention the Bonomi memorandum of October 1921, which sent 60,000 officers into the Fascist assault groups to act as leaders. Before the armed fascist offensive, the State appealed... to the ballot box. During the workshop occupations of 1920, the State refrained from attacking the proletarians, allowing their struggle to exhaust itself with the help of the C.G.L., which broke the strikes. As for the "democrats", they did not hesitate to form a "national bloc" (liberals and rightists) including fascists, for the elections of May, 1921. During June-July, 1921, the P.S.I. concluded a useless and phoney "peace pact" with the fascists. |
One can hardly speak of a coup d'état in 1922: it was a transfer of power. The "March on Rome" of Mussolini (who preferred to take the train) was not a means of putting pressure on the legal government but rather a publicity stunt. The ultimatum which he delivered to the government on October 24 did not threaten civil war: it was a notice to the capitalist State (and understood as such by the State) that henceforth the P.N.F. was the force most capable of assuring the unity of the State. The State submitted very quickly. The martial law declared after the failure of the attempt at compromise was cancelled by the King, who then asked Mussolini to form the new government (which included liberals). Every party except the P.C.I. and P.S.I. came to terms with the P.N.F. and voted for Mussolini in parliament. The power of the dictator was ratified by democracy. The same scenario was reproduced in Germany. Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg (elected in 1932 with the support of the socialists who saw in him... a bulwark against Hitler), and the Nazis were a minority group in Hitler's first cabinet. After some hesitation, Capital supported Hitler since it saw in him the political force necessary to unify the State and hence society. (That Capital did not foresee certain subsequent forms of the Nazi State is a secondary matter.) |
In both countries, the "workers' movement" was far from being vanquished by fascism. Its organizations, totally independent of the proletarian social movement, functioned only to preserve their institutional existence and were ready to accept any political regime whatever, of the Right or of the Left, which would tolerate them. The Spanish P.S.O.E. and its labour federation (U.G.T.) collaborated between 1923 and 1930 with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In 1932, the German socialist unions, through the mouths of their leaders, declared themselves independent of any political party and indifferent to the form of the State, and tried to reach an understanding with Schleicher (Hitler's unfortunate predecessor), then with Hitler, who convinced them that National Socialism would permit their continued existence. After which the German unionists disappeared behind the swastikas at the same time that May 1, 1933, was transformed into the "Festival of German Labour." The Nazis proceeded to dispatch the union leaders into prisons and camps, which had the effect of bestowing on the survivors the reputation of being resolute "antifascists" from the first hour. |
In Italy, the union leaders wanted to reach an agreement of mutual tolerance with the fascists. They contacted the P.N.F. late in 1922 and in 1923. Shortly before Mussolini took power, they declared: |
"At this moment when political passions are exacerbated and two forces alien to the union movement (the P.C.I. and P.N.F.) are bitterly vying for power, the C.G.L. feels its duty is to warn the workers about the interventions of parties or political regroupments aiming to involve the proletariat in a struggle from which it must remain absolutely aloof if it does not want to compromise its independence." |
On the other hand, there was in February, 1934, in Austria, armed resistance by the left of the Social Democratic Party against the forces of a State which showed itself increasingly dictatorial and conciliatory towards the fascists. This struggle was not revolutionary in character, but arose from the fact that there had been practically no street battles in Austria after 1918. The most pugnacious proletarians (although not communists) had not been beaten, and had remained within social democracy which thus preserved some revolutionary tendencies. Of course this resistance broke out spontaneously, and did not succeed in coordinating itself. |
The revolutionary critique of these events does not arrive at an "all or nothing" conclusion, as if one insisted on fighting only for "the revolution" and only at the side of the purest and toughest communists. One must struggle, we are told, for reforms when it is not possible to make the revolution; a well-led struggle for reforms prepares the way for the revolution: who can do more, can do less; but who cannot do less, cannot do more; who does not know how to defend himself, will not know how to attack, etc. All these generalities are missing the point. The polemic among Marxists, since the Second International, is not concerned with the necessity or worthlessness of communist participation in reformist struggles, which are in any case a reality. It is a matter of knowing if a given struggle places the workers under the control (direct or indirect) of Capital and in particular of its State, and what position the revolutionaries must adopt in this case. For a revolutionary, a "struggle" (a word leftists delight in) has no value in itself; the most violent actions have often ended in constituting parties and unions which have subsequently proved to be enemies of communism. Any struggle, no matter how spontaneous in origin or how energetic, which puts the workers under the dependence of the capitalist State, can have only a counter-revolutionary function. The antifascist struggle, which claims to search for a lesser evil (better to have capitalist democracy than capitalist fascism), is like abandoning the frying pan for the fire. Moreover, in placing oneself under the direction of a State, one must accept all the consequences including the repression which it will exercise, if required, against the workers and revolutionaries who want to go beyond antifascism. |
Rather than holding Bordiga and the P.C.I. of 1921-1922 responsible for the triumph of Mussolini, one would be better advised to question the perpetual feebleness of antifascism, whose record is overwhelmingly negative: when did antifascism ever prevent or even slow down totalitarianism? World War II was supposed to safeguard the existence of democratic States, but parliamentary democracies are today the exception. In the so-called socialist countries, the disappearance of the traditional bourgeoisie and the demands of State capitalism have resulted in dictatorships which are in no way preferable to those of the former Axis countries. There are those who cherished illusions about China, but little by little the information available confirms the Marxist analyses already published [8] and reveals the existence of camps, the reality of which is still denied by the Maoists... just as the Stalinists have denied the existence of the Soviet camps for the last 30 years. Africa, Asia, and Latin America live under one party systems or military dictatorships. One is horrified by the Brazilian tortures, but Mexican democracy did not shrink from firing on demonstrators in 1968, killing 300. At least the defeat of the Axis powers brought peace... but only for Europeans, not for the millions who have died since in incessant wars and chronic famines. In short, the war to end all wars and totalitarianism was a failure. |
The reply of the antifascists is automatic: it's the fault of American or Soviet imperialism, or both; in any case, say the most radical, it's because of the survival of capitalism and its attendant misdeeds. Agreed. But the problem remains. How could a war created by capitalist States have any other effect than the strengthening of Capital? |
The antifascists (especially the "revolutionaries") conclude exactly the opposite, calling for a new surge of antifascism, which must continually be radicalized so it progresses as far as possible. They never desist from denouncing fascist "revivals" or "methods," but they never deduce from this the necessity to destroy the root of the evil: Capital. Rather they draw the reverse conclusion that it is necessary to return to "true " antifascism, to proletarianize it, to recommence the work of Sisyphus consisting of democratizing capitalism. Now one may hate fascism and love humanitarianism, but nothing will change the crucial point : |
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Leftists are quite capable of endlessly repeating the classic Marxist analysis of the State as an instrument of class domination and at the same time proposing to "use" this same State. Similarly, leftists will study Marx's writings on the abolition of wage labour and exchange, and then turn around and depict the revolution as an ultra-democratization of wage labour. |
There are those who go further. They adopt part of the revolutionary thesis in announcing that since Capital is synonymous with "fascism" the struggle for democracy against fascism implies the struggle against Capital itself. But on what terrain do they fight? To fight under the leadership of one or more capitalist States--because they have and retain control of the struggle--is to ensure defeat in the struggle against Capital. The struggle for democracy is not a short cut allowing the workers to make the revolution without realizing it. The proletariat will destroy totalitarianism only by destroying democracy and all political forms at the same time. Until then there will be a succession of "fascist" and "democratic" systems in time and in space; dictatorial regimes transforming themselves willy nilly into democratic regimes and vice versa; dictatorships coexisting with democracies, the one type serving as a contrast and self-justification for the other type. |
Thus it is absurd to say that democracy furnishes a social system more favourable than dictatorship to revolutionary activity, since the former turns immediately to dictatorial means when menaced by revolution; all the more so when the "workers' parties" are in power. If one wished to pursue antifascism to its logical conclusion, one would have to imitate certain left liberals who tell us: since the revolutionary movement pushes Capital towards dictatorship, let us renounce all revolution and content ourselves with going as far as possible along the path of reforms long as we don't frighten Capital. But this prudence is itself utopian, because the "fascisization " it tries to avoid is a product not only of revolutionary action, but of capitalist concentration. We can argue about the timing and the practical results of the participation of revolutionaries in democratic movements up to the beginning of the 20th century, but this option is excluded once Capital achieves total domination over society, for then only one type of politics is possible: democracy becomes a mystification and a trap for the unwary. Every time the proletarians depend on democracy as a weapon against Capital, it escapes from their control or is transformed into its opposite .... Revolutionaries reject antifascism because one cannot fight exclusively against ONE political form without supporting the others, which is what antifascism is about strictly speaking, the error of antifascism is not in struggling against fascism but in giving precedence to this struggle, which renders it ineffective. The revolutionaries do not denounce antifascism for not "making the revolution," but for being powerless to stop totalitarianism, and for reinforcing, voluntarily or not, Capital and the State. |
Not only does democracy always surrender itself to fascism, practically without a fight, but fascism also re-generates democracy from itself as required by the state of socio-political forces. For example, in 1943, Italy was obliged to join the camp of the victors, and thus its leader, the "dictator" Mussolini, found himself in a minority on the Fascist Grand Council and submitted to the democratic verdict of this organ. One of the top Fascist officials, Marshal Badoglio, summoned the democratic opposition and formed a coalition government. Mussolini was arrested. This is known in Italy as the "revolution of August 25, 1943." The democrats hesitated, but pressure from the Russians and the P.C.I. forced them to accept a government of national unity in April, 1944, directed by Badoglio, to which Togliatti and Benedetto Croce belonged. In June, 1944, the socialist Bonomi formed a ministry which excluded the fascists. This established the tripartite formula (P.C.I.--P.S.I.--Christian Democracy) which dominated the first years of the post-war period. Thus we see a transition desired and partly orchestrated by the fascists. In the same way as democracy understood in 1922 that the best means of preserving the State was to entrust it to the dictatorship of the fascist party, so it was that fascism in 1943 understood that the only way of protecting the integrity of the nation and the continuity of the State was to return the latter to the control of the democratic parties. Democracy metamorphoses itself into fascism, and vice versa, according to the circumstances: what is involved is a succession or combination of political forms assuring the preservation of the State as the guarantor of capitalism. Let us note that the "return" to democracy is far from producing in itself a renewal of class struggle. In fact the workers' parties coming to power are the first to fight in the name of national Capital. Thus the material sacrifices and the renunciation of class struggle, justified by the necessity of "defeating fascism first," were imposed after the defeat of the Axis, always in the name of the ideal of the Resistance. The fascist and antifascist ideologies are each adaptable to the momentary and fundamental interests of Capital, according to the circumstances. |
From the beginning, whenever the cry goes up "fascism will not pass "--not only does it always pass, but in such a grotesque manner that the demarcation between fascism and non-fascism follows a line in constant motion. For example, the French Left denounced the "fascist" danger after May 13, 1958, but the secretary-general of the S.F.I.O. collaborated in writing the constitution of the Fifth Republic. |
Portugal and Greece have offered new examples of the auto- transformation of dictatorships into democracies. Under the shock of external circumstances (colonial question for Portugal, Cyprus conflict for Greece), a section of the military preferred to dump the regime in order to save the State; the democrats reason and act exactly the same when the "fascists" bid for power. The current Spanish Communist Party expresses precisely this view (it remains to be seen whether Spanish Capital wants and needs the P.C.E.) : |
"Spanish society desires that everything be transformed in such a way that the normal functioning of the State is assured, without jolts or social convulsions. The continuity of the State demands the non-continuity of the regime. " |
There is a transition from one form to the other, a transition from which the proletariat is excluded and over which it exercises no control. If the proletariat tries to intervene, it ends up integrated into the State and its subsequent struggles are all the more difficult, as the Portuguese case clearly demonstrates. |
[8] Simon Leys, The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, London (1977). |