I’m one of these snobs who has disliked the casual ease with which people have tossed off the “fascist” epithet. And I’ve turned my nose up to the various titles about the new “Fascist threat” which people like Madeleine Albright have alleged when Trump won the US Presidency (I grant that her family history clearly entitles her to its use).
But Paul Mason’s “How to Stop Fascism; ideology, history, resistance” (2021) has made me think again. The book throws a powerful historical light on to the growing right-wing presence in our political life – although reviews are fairly thin on the ground. Recent election results in Sweden and Italy suggest that this is not a time for us to relax our guard. Mason has a fairly unique blend of practical and theoretical experience which makes him an ideal guide to the subject.
If you’re a regular reader, you will know that I respect learning - but not academics whose ultra-specialisms make them a strange combination of the opinionated and narrow-minded. Somehow, operating inside a university department is bad for both your brain and your voice – and the only exceptions are those who have swapped countries or disciplines.
As a breed, I prefer journalists – who are “on the ground” but in a position to interpret the bookish expert for the general reader; the link gives my various posts on the subject including this one on the best “journalistic writing” which tries to give a sense of both the sources of income and the focus of the writing. There are more than 50 names in the table – spanning many countries and periods.
Paul Mason is one of them – he is not an academic although he is extraordinarily well-read by virtue of his time as a left-wing activist. His various books focus on trade unions, post-capitalism and, now, Fascism and have this knack of producing examples at the appropriate moment of relevant historical experience.
The book has three parts – the first looking at the “thought architecture” of modern fascism and the five forces which Mason considers to be driving the far-right – neoliberalism; digital technology; decaying democracy; climate warming; and the COVID pandemic.
The second part asks what were the potential turning points which might have averted Mussolini’s rise to power in 1920s’ Italy; and Hitler’s a decade later in Germany when the “left” failed so abysmally to come together to save the Weimar Republic. Coincidentally I had just finished reading The Gravediggers – the last winter of the Weimar Republic which devotes a few pages to every day from mid November to January 30th 1933 as Hitler tried to persuade the German President to make him Chancellor. The Nazi vote had actually dropped in 1932
Part III of Mason’s book consists of a chapter which offers Mason’s own attempt to construct a new theory of Fascism which takes account of the various threads which have dealt with the issue - from the immediate post-war use of the “totalitarian” concept and the various psychological efforts of people like Erich Fromm (“Fear of Freedom”) to the more recent, more academic analyses of the far-right. Here Mason’s own blend of practice and theory is a huge strength.
The final chapter sketches out how a new Popular Front might be established.
Sorry, Ronald, but I have to disagree on this one. I do so as someone who several years ago also looked to some of Paul's writings as a basis for discussion, who corresponded with him by e-mail, and I'm listed in the acknowledgements for his book Postcapitalism, as an influence on his ideas.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you read my critique of his "Postcapitalism" serialised on my blog, you will see that I came to realise that, in fact, despite his several years in a far left grouplet, his actual grasp of basic Marxist principles upon which he was expounding, was extremely limited, and fundamentally flawed.
Both of us worked in the world of IT, to which the the acronym GIGO applies, here - Garbage In, Garbage Out. Unfortunately, I have to say that in some of his later writings, where he has become an apologist for NATO imperialism - he extends his ideas about advocating a Popular Front with the bourgeoisie to fight fascism to the idea that we should form such an international Popular Front with NATO, to fight Putin and Xi, whose logic can only be, in the end, to lead to WWIII - he supplements that with outright distortion of history, whether intentional or not. He wants more countries to join NATO, and for NATO itself to be beefed up militarily, justifying that call with the insane notion that somehow NATO is, or could be a force for global peace and harmony, despite its actual imperialistic nature, which flows from what it is the military arm of US imperialism and its subordinates.
His arguments in favour of the Popular Front, fly in the face of what he must know to be false from his time in the Trotskyist movement. The Popular Front was the strategy initially of the liberal bourgeoisie in the Revolutions of 1848. The lessons Marx and Engels and their associates drew from that was that the bourgeoisie once they had achieved their aims would stab the workers in the back. That convinced them of the need certainly to have unity in action, but for the workers to maintain their own political and organisational independence. In 1848, the liberal betrayal led to the onset of reaction.
The same strategy was adopted by the Mensheviks and reformists in 1917. It led them to support their bourgeois partners in the provisional Government by continuing the war, and also by turning on the interests of Russian workers, the Bolsheviks and so on, to the extent of Kerensky making an alliance with Kornilov that would have led to a repeat of 1848, had not the Bolsheviks mobilised the red Guard to stop his advance.
Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev had wanted to adopt the same position as the Mensheviks, leading Lenin to threaten to split the party if it was adopted. But, after Lenin's death they returned to the same position when it came to the Chinese Revolution. They told the Chinese communists to join the Kuomintang, and even allowed the KMT to join the Comintern. The result was that in 1927, the KMT turned on the Chinese communists murdering thousands of them in Shanghai.
The Stalinists adopted the same position globally, cosying up to the TUC leaders before and during the 1926 General Strike, at the very moment when they were preparing to betray it, for example. Then on the back of these disasters of Popular Frontism, they swung 180 degrees in the other direction into the Third period sectarianism, calling everyone a fascist. But, let's also be clear, in the 1930's in Germany, the German social-democrats also refused to join in actions on the streets with the German Communists too, because they feared the growing strength of the communist masses. It was left to the Trotskyists to point to the difference between this unity in action by workers of different persuasions (a United Front) with a political parliamentary alliance of workers and bourgeois parties, (the Popular Front).
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ReplyDeleteThe Stalinists continued the Third Period until 1934, when the disaster of it in Germany could not be denied, and seeing the alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan (the Anti-Comintern Pact), and the potential for any attack by it on the USSR to be supported by Britain, France and the US (the bourgeoise of whom had all welcomed the rise to power of both Mussolini and Hitler, as opponents of Bolshevism), Stalin, on the basis of building Socialism In One Country, subordinated all Communist Parties to acting as defenders of the USSR, by trying to persuade their own bourgeoisie that fascism was a bigger danger. The Popular Front position was restored, and the Stalinists went out of their way to convince the bourgeoisie that their aim was only to stop fascism not to carry through to socialist revolutions. I have set that out in my writings on the Spanish Civil War, and George Orwell covers this same role played in Spain by the Stalinists.
Yet, Paul, in his writings on fascism, avoids any assessment of all this past history of the PF, and tells us that the classic "Marxist" position on fascism and fighting it was given by those very same Stalinists at the 7th Congress of the Communist International! It was there that the fate of the Spanish revolution was sealed, and also of the French Revolution, as the workers were demobilised and subordinated to the interests of the bourgeoisie, in both cases leading to the victory of fascism one directly, the other indirectly, as France was overwhelmed by Germany in 1940.
Paul's argument is based on the myth purveyed by Stalinists and liberals alike that WWII was a "people's war" against fascism, fought by democratic imperialism. Nonsense, as the presence of the fascist regime of Vargas in Brazil, in that alliance testifies. Nor was there much democratic about the continued colonialist policies pursued by Britain and France across the globe, the appearance of which to the people who lived in those colonies, was little distinguished from that of fascism. Churchill certainly was not fighting the war for the greater glory of democracy, but for the greater glory of British imperialism.
At every stage in practical politics, Paul's adoption of this line has been disastrous. He wanted the Left in Britain to liquidate itself, drop any independent critical political stance, and subordinate itself to Stamer, effectively a PF inside the LP which itself is already a PF, though its leadership, currently is less liberal bourgeois, and more petty-bourgeois nationalist, similar, in fact to that of people like Pilsudski, Mussolini and Mosely, but without the left veneer that they had. But, contrary to Paul's utopian dreams, Starmer had no desire to form an alliance with even the soft Left, let alone the Left, but pushed on to crush them, expel them (at least not yet to execute them) as he aligned instead with the Right! Not only was that predictable, but I actually predicted it, in detail at the time Paul was advocating it three years ago.
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ReplyDeleteThe trouble with journalists is that they deal with immediate superficialities, and in today's world, particularly sensationalist superficialities. I guess that if you now make your living from such journalism and media presentation that necessarily colours your political analysis and approach. Paul sensationalised the coup attempt by Trump's supporters on January 6th, whilst in line with his international, pro-NATO approach, he minimises the role of fascists and reactionaries in Ukraine. As I described it in a series of posts, he chokes on a gnat, whilst swallowing a camel.
He fails to analyse the actual nature of fascism as a movement of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, but which is used by and can only be successful when it is supported by the ruling class and its state. hence the success of Mussolini, but defeat of Hitler's Bier Hall Pusch, followed by his later coming to power. Hence, the farcical nature of January 6th. The ruling class do not give up bourgeois democracy willingly. They only do so in desperation when it looks like their rule is threatened by a revolutionary proletariat, as in Italy in the 1920's, and Germany in the 1930's. Otherwise, they use their state to suppress both the working-class, and to suppress the fascists.
The fascists in building their movement always represent the interests of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and those interests - for example Brexit - are contrary to the interests of the ruling class. The ruling class currently has no reason to fear a revolutionary proletariat, but they do have reason to oppose the actions of the fascists and the petty-bourgeois interests they represent. There is no reason for the ruling class to look to fascism, and its state is more than powerful enough to defeat the fascists, whose forces are generally heterogeneous and divided, which is why they always require a strong, charismatic leader to hold them together.
So, yes, workers should oppose the fascists on the streets, as revolutionaries have always done, and if reformists, or liberals want to join in that action, all the better - though generally, liberals have disdained such direct action to stop fascists. But, history tells us that joining Popular Fronts, to fight fascists by parliamentary means, which always requires the left to abandon its politics are a disaster. In fact, the Popular Fronts that are the Labour Party, the US Democrats, the French Socialists, and the Italian Democratic Party, are testament to that fact, as even when they manage to cobble together a parliamentary majority, the consequence is to pursue bourgeois policies that alienate the working class, and drive it in despair into the hands of the far right, or at best into apathy.