[A much larger and politically challenging version has appeared in Economic and Political Weekly, 14 July, 2018]
Original fascism (revised)
The preceding uncharitable
exercise was needed to point out that, even with this rather gory record of
human political systems, the events between the two world wars stand out as
unique in human history. In particular, even though the notion of fascism was
first applied to the dictatorial rule of Benito Mussolini in Italy, what
transpired in Germany after the first world war continues to be the most
significant example of fascism in world history. Put differently, the concept
of fascism as a socio-political order gets its primary salience from its
original exemplar: the Nazi rule in Germany under the supreme command of Adolf
Hitler. Once the Nazi rule is taken to be the core phenomenon of fascism, certain
conceptual and political consequences follow.
There
were several distinguishing features to the Nazi rule. Germany was a leading
center of European thought and culture during the 19th and the early
decades of 20th century, what Martin Heidegger characterised as the
‘most metaphysical of nations’ (cited in Chomsky 2005). Its catastrophic defeat
in the first world war brought the entire nation to its knees. The humiliating
Treaty of Versailles compelled the German state to disarm and pay astronomical
reparations. The value of mark, the German currency, plummeted to several
million marks per american dollar, much of the famed German industry became non-functional
leading to widespread hunger and destitution of the people. With the defeat of Russian
monarchy and the emergence of Soviet Union almost next door, there was a real
possibility of either a disintegration or communist takeover of Germany which
no traditional bourgeois political forum was capable of preventing.
It was of utmost importance for the remnants of German
capital and aristocracy to find a popular alternative to the existing
political order for the rehabilitation of Germany. The charismatic,
working-class image of Adolf Hitler with his committed band of stormtroopers
fit the bill almost to the last detail. While the communist and the working
class movements were rapidly smashed, the major mainstream political parties
capitulated to Hitler. Eventually, after rousing electoral victories by
Hitler’s party, the parliament was shut down, and a single-party Nazi rule
under the supreme command of Hitler was installed.
The
entire big business vigorously supported Hitler’s agenda of not paying the
reparations, defying the Versaille treaty, and introducing large-scale forced
labour to gear Germany towards a war economy. In addition, massive forced
labour of Jews, followed by their mass extermination, helped sustain the most
aggressive form of German nationalism preparing itself for global war. The
resulting slaughter of millions of people across the world, and the scale of
destruction that turned much of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa into ruins,
were unprecedented even in the dismal political history of the world.
Needless to say, such a catastrophic historical phenomenon
carried a large number of distinguishing features, as listed above, which peaked
individually and then coalesced into one organic form after the collapse of the
Weimar republic. Many of the critical features—failed economy with mass
unemployment, collapse of the democratic order, and popularity of aggressive
cultural nationalism—were present in Italy as well, explaining the fascist rule
under Benito Mussolini. Thus, despite the difference in scale in these features
and the absence of some of the other features in Italy, such as nation-wide
racism and xenophobia, it is appropriate to use the generic notion of fascism
to cover both the German and the Italian cases, albeit somewhat tentatively in
the latter case as Umberto Eco (1995) also pointed out (see below).
For
the same reason, it is not advisable to use the notion beyond its unique
historical application unless most of the critical features cluster again in an
unlikely grim repeat of history. It is ‘unlikely’ because, with the
proliferation of nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass destruction, and
colossal and irreversible damage to the ecology of the planet already, the
species might well become extinct before fascism-inducing conditions get a
chance to mature (Mukherji 2016).
The
extreme specificity of the original fascism in Germany and Italy casts doubt on
Georgi Dimitrov’s well-known observation:
No general characterization of fascism, however correct in
itself, can relieve us of the need to study and take into account the special
features of the development of fascism and the various forms of fascist
dictatorship in the individual countries and at its various stages. It is
necessary in each country to investigate, study and ascertain the national
peculiar ties, the specific national features of fascism and to map out
accordingly effective methods and forms of struggle against fascism (Dimitrov
1935/1972).
Dimitrov is suggesting that fascism can take different forms
in different countries depending on ‘peculiar ties’ and ‘national features.’ In
a sense, the suggestion is valid for countries falling within a very specific
historical space and time such as Germany and Italy as we saw, but not beyond. It is hard to see the
original form of fascism reappearing in a distant space and time. However, to
be fair, Dimitrov’s concern seems eminently valid for the period under review
by him in the cited lecture. He was speaking to his comrades in 1935 when original
fascism had already manifested itself in parts of Western Europe, as noted. To
illustrate his thesis, Dimitrov reported on the situation in adjacent France in
some detail because, even without the glaring forms of German xenophobia and
Italian nationalism, a new menacing form of authoritarianism was rapidly
developing in France.
Recall the core features for the
rise of fascism: proximity of Russian revolution, economic collapse due to WW1
followed by the great global depression, massive social unrest and
fragmentation of democratic polity. Although the response to these core
features resulted in the most aggressive form of fascism in Germany and Italy,
its presence was clearly visible in the adjacent territories in that dark phase
in history. Thus, Dimitrov directed the attention of his colleagues to the
conditions in France where ‘the
economic crisis, which began later than in other capitalist countries,
continues to become deeper and more acute, and that this greatly encourages the
orgy of fascist demagogy.’ Moreover, ‘the development of fascism is furthered by the French
bourgeoisie's keen fear of losing its political and military hegemony in Europe.’
In this connection, he also mentioned the rise of fascistic features in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Finland.
However, in agreement with Rajani Palme Dutt, he warned
against ‘erroneously classifying all reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie as
fascism and going so far as calling the entire non-Communist camp fascist.’
I emphasise that Dimitrov strongly opposed the tendency of erroneous
classification even during the turbulent period in Europe when conditions were
ripe for fascism to spread like wildfire. In this important sense, even though
Dimitrov warned against restricting attention too narrowly only to the German
form of fascism, his caution about erroneous classification also sets a severe
limit to the historical boundary of fascism.
Ever since its origin in Europe in
the 1930s, the specter of fascism has haunted political thinking across the
world even though the original form of fascism was decisively defeated within a
decade. The mention of fascism has almost become routine political vocabulary
in recent years. In this light, let us consider
some recent remarks of some influential scholars.
(To be continued)
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