Edward Conze and Ellen Wilkinson 1935
‘Why did Fascism succeed?’ Why could this group of men unknown 10 years previously produce a movement that with apparent ease could wipe away with a gesture the great popular Socialist movements in Italy and Germany?
The hero-worshippers, always looking for a Man, may make Mussolini pass as a hero. He at least has a jaw. But the best that any admirer outside Germany has been able to say about Hitler as a Great Man is that there must be more in him than appears on the surface.
Even this comforting thought doesn’t explain why Mussolini and Hitler should turn up in the same decade, nor why in so many other countries Fascism is either victorious or regarded as a possible menace. Nor does it explain why these ‘great leaders’ should be Fascist and not Communist or Socialist, especially as Mussolini, Hitler, Pilsudski and Mosley began their careers on the left of politics.
With the causes of the weakness of the Marxist parties we deal later. We must first find an explanation of the strength of the Fascist parties. Only one theory will fit the facts, however unpalatable it may be to Liberals or Socialists or Pacifists – and that is despite the appalling barbarism of their actions, the crudity of their speeches and the nonsensical character of their ‘myths’, the Fascists have shown a better understanding of the immediate demands of present-day society than many of their more idealistic opponents. It is simple common sense to assert that if someone is regularly more successful in a certain environment, that he understands the situation better, is better attuned and adapted to it than someone who is generally unsuccessful. The fact that the unsuccessful one is superior in morals, in loving kindness, in intellect or in any other of the virtues, is entirely beside the point. The American pork-packing kings or oil-barons would hardly be represented as models of civilised men. But they succeeded within their environment. They were adapted to their period.
The Vagueness of the Fascist Programme: There are certain curious features about this Fascism. There has been no efficient fight against it, even when the danger has been understood long beforehand, and there is not yet even a satisfactory explanation of what Fascism is. The Fascists themselves have not been able to produce an intelligible definition. These difficulties are to a great extent due to the elusive character of Fascism itself. Fascism is not a clear-cut theory. It takes great pride in despising coherent theories and well-thought-out programmes.
Mussolini used to say: ‘What we need is not a programme but action.’ Mosley in his early days took this as his slogan, and becomes the less effective the more he departs from this attitude. The Italian Fascists have always stressed what they call ‘dynamics’. Quite cheerfully, even in 1924, the Fascist Govi in the Critica Fascista (one of the theoretical organs of the Italian Fascist Party) could say: ‘Fascism is clear in its negative programme, but it is not clear in the least what is its programme in positive innovations.’
In his early days, when he was preparing for his first bid for power, Hitler in a speech made in 1923 declared: ‘Let us first begin to rule, then the programme will come quite by itself.’ – a statement that would be received with roars of laughter in any Socialist or Liberal conference. But four years later he was saying significantly: ‘The people want no programmes. They want someone to rule them.’
True, even as far back as 1920 Hitler had had a string of 25 points. These were very vague; one of them advocated the ‘nationalisation of big industry unless it is founded by great German leaders of economics’, whatever that may mean! Another demanded the ‘breaking of the thraldom of interest’ without troubling to define what rate of interest constituted ‘thraldom’. But even these points, vague as they are, were always causing trouble. Dr Goebbels was moved to remark, amid great applause, after an attempt to sort out some of these dissensions: ‘If I had founded the party I should not have put out any programme at all.’ Goebbels could raise great meetings of 20,000 people to ecstatic enthusiasm by his declaration: ‘We are reproached that we have no programme, or that the one we have is full of contradictions. But just because of this we shall gain the victory.’ In that piece of cynical realism, Dr Goebbels came very near to an understanding of the essentials of Fascist success.
To earnest believers in the class-war theory a Fascist party is simply a monstrosity. So incompatible are the sections which compose it, so obviously in conflict are their economic interests, that such a collection ought not to exist as a party. But it does exist. More than that, it acts at a time when homogeneous parties constructed on the best Marxian models seem paralysed by the difficulties of the same situation which provides Fascists with the conditions of their success.
Of course there is continual internal conflict between the incompatible sections of Fascism. No other party could stand the open intrigues against each other, wars almost to the knife (in some cases literally to the bullet) in which both higher and lower ranks of the Nazi leaders have indulged.
The Main Contradictions in Fascism: This vague, ambiguous, elusive character of the party which has been regarded as a main argument against Fascism supplies, in fact, the key to the understanding of it.
We live in an age of transition – and that does not necessarily imply that the transition period is a brief one. The transition from feudal to capitalist society lasted approximately 400 years. The changeover from a horse to a horsepower civilisation has been going on for over a hundred years with all the changes and stresses in social structure that intensified mass production brings. The big jump that has now to be made is the changeover from an individualistic to a collective, from an anarchic to a planned economy.
Fascism is the political form of one of the stages in this transition, that stage in which we now are. All the antagonistic and contradictory tendencies are somehow united in it. All the elements that feel the necessity of change, but want everybody to be changed except themselves and their own group, can project their wishes into the Fascist party, and find nothing there that is rigidly opposed to their wish phantasies. It is usual to reproach Hitler because he promised to everybody (except Jews) anything they wanted. Why reproach a leader for doing what his party exists to do? It is the strength of Fascism that it can take all the contradictory elements into itself. It is the weakness of Fascism, as of any other essentially reactionary system, that it attempts to solve these contradictions and can only do so on the basis of war preparation.
The Communists insist that Fascism is a dictatorship of finance-capital. Lenin had said that imperialism was the last stage of capitalism. He lived only to see the first stage of Fascism. So to the loyal Leninist Fascism is nothing new. It is the very last phase of the last phase of capitalist imperialism, the counter-stroke of capitalism against the workers’ world revolution.
There is obviously much truth in this contention, but it is not the whole truth. In the early days of his movement, Hitler was as vehement against the capitalists as any Communist. In Mein Kampf [1] he tells the German capitalists that they have ‘only one care, their personal life’, that they are ‘valueless for any solemn task of mankind’ because of ‘unbelievable indolence and all that follows from it’. Later in the book [2] he declared the German bourgeoisie to be at the end of its mission. However much Hitler’s later actions may be at variance with his earlier theories, it was declarations of this kind that were the basis of the appeal which brought masses of people into his party.
That the capitalist system as we have known it is in chaos is obvious. But despite the illusion that time somehow brings progress, there is nothing inevitable about the way out of this chaos. One way, the way of technical progress by means of Socialist reconstruction, has been taken in Russia. There are signs, particularly in Germany, that powerful interests would prefer the wrecking of technical progress. A planned capitalism which should somehow secure certain advantages of Socialism while allowing the capitalists freedom to make their profit is being tried out in part by President Roosevelt, and on a much smaller scale by Mr Elliott.
We discuss the future possibilities of the various ways out of chaos in Part III. Our point at the moment is that these conflicting tendencies exist, and that Fascism begins in each country as an attempt to harmonise them. To use a philosophic phrase, it is a unity of these contradictions. Fascism unites tendencies to preserve capitalism with tendencies to destroy capitalism... either by the introduction of a Socialism of sorts, by regulations and interference, or by the smashing of technical progress and the return to agrarianism.
This theory that Fascism owes its strength to being a loose combination of contradictory tendencies gives us the elastic conception of Fascism which fits the facts. For Fascism is not always the same thing. It differs in different countries because the three elements are blended together in different proportions. Sometimes one element is the stronger, sometimes another. The more highly industrialised the country, and therefore the greater the former power of the Socialist parties, the stronger is the anti-capitalist element in the Fascism of that country. It is greater therefore in Germany, less emphasised in Italy, and least in Hungary.
The Minor Contradictions in Fascism: Owing to the general contradictions within Fascism a number of minor contradictions exist. There is the inevitable struggle between the policy of preserving the ‘old’ middle classes, their local status and independence, and the desire for a plan which would make superfluous many functions that the old middle class performed. There is the contradiction between the attempt to lower the standard of the workers, dictated by the capitalist elements in Fascism, and the war preparations which need a reasonably contented working class. There is the incompatibility of autarchy and conquest of foreign markets: between the return to the village economy and war. The return to the village means the extinction of the heavy industry which is indispensable to the needs of the militarists. To see only one side of these contradictions as real, and to assume that the other is there for window-dressing purposes, makes it impossible to understand Fascism and the necessary zig-zaggery of Fascist policy.
It is the Leader who keeps together and maintains the equilibrium between the contradictory elements and groups. Therefore each Fascist party has one thing at least in common... a leader. Hence the fanatical loyalty to his person, and the theatrical over-advertisement of the man. A myth grows round him. The conviction spreads that whatever seems confusing or disappointing will somehow be solved when the Leader has time to give it his personal and magical attention. This belief in the magic powers of a leader, a hero-king, a warrior-Messiah, goes far back into the history of the race. Both Mussolini and Hitler have realised this. They tolerate no rivals to their divinity.
1. Mein Kampf, German edition, p 250.
2. Mein Kampf, German edition, p 774.