MLM
Conception of Fascism
The First Principle in the MLM Conception of Fascism www.massline.org/Politics/ScottH/Fascism-MLM-Conception.doc
Introduction
For everyone in the world today, since at
least World War II, our various conceptions of what the word ‘fascism’ means
are strongly colored and partially determined by the historical experience of
previous regimes that have been called fascist. The first of these was
Mussolini’s Italy (1922-1945), but even more central to today’s conceptions of
fascism was the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler in Germany (1933-1945). The
term ‘fascism’ itself was first brought to public attention by Mussolini in
1919 when in the period after World War I he created a new authoritarian
nationalist movement under that name to combat revolutionary socialism.
But while the connotations of what fascism means derive from the murderous and
genocidal regimes of Hitler and Mussolini, the actual intellectual conceptions
and definitions of the term still vary rather widely.
In particular, for us revolutionary
Marxists (or Marxist-Leninist-Maoists) there is a rather different conception of what the word ‘fascism’ means than the
standard (if still quite vague and amorphous) conception of the bourgeois
ideologists.[ii]
Of course, their standard bourgeois conception forms the basis for the popular
understanding of the term ‘fascism’ among the people as well. (This is simply a
particular instance of the well-established principle of Marxist historical
materialism that the dominant ideas of any age are normally those of the ruling
class.)
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:
1.
That society is not to be understood in terms of social classes, but rather simply
in terms of “elites” and those ruled.
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:
1.
That
society is composed of social classes (based primarily on the differing
relationships of groups of people to the means of production[iii]),
and that society can only be properly understood and analyzed in terms of
classes.
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.[iv]
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.
The
Definition of ‘Fascism’
The standard brief definition of the word
‘fascism’ within the world communist movement is that stated at the 13th
meeting of the Enlarged Executive of the Communist International in Moscow in
late 1933: “Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary,
most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital.”
This is still a fairly good capsule
definition, but there are important aspects of fascism that are not brought out
in this definition, and also aspects of the definition as given here that may
not fully apply to fascism as it has developed in some countries other than
Italy and Germany. For example, if fascism is the dictatorship of the “most
imperialist elements of finance capital”, does that mean that fascism can only
exist in imperialist countries? Does it mean that there can be no fascism in a
country without a developed financial bourgeoisie?
No, it doesn’t really mean those things.
Those two specific things are characteristics only of fascism in an advanced
capitalist (imperialist) country. In 1933 there were two primary fascist
countries to focus on: Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. There were other
fascist or fascist-like regimes in Eastern Europe, Japan and elsewhere, but it
was German and Italian fascism that primarily served to represent the entire
phenomenon. So as might be expected, there tended to be a bit too much
generalization from the cases of Germany and Italy in defining what fascism is.
Instead
of just trying to refine and expand the Comintern definition of ‘fascism’, We may 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.
“MLM” in the title means,
of course, “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist”. We would like to thank some friends and correspondents for commenting on and
criticizing earlier drafts of this essay.
What constitutes what could
be properly characterized as a distinctive “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” conception
of fascism? A critic 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”. One may 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. The critic went on to say:
One 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.
We 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.
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.
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.]
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