Fascism and Social Revolution

311 Pages·2020·17.045 MB·English

by  R. Palme Dutt

FASCISM
AND SOCIAL
REVOLUTION
“ We say to the workers : 6 You will have to go through fifteen,
twenty, fifty years of civil wars and international wars, not only
in order to change existing conditions, but also in order to change
yourselves and fit yourselves for the exercise of political power* ”
MARX (On the Communist Trial at Cologne, 1851).
“ The bourgeoisie sees in Bolshevism only one side . . . insur-
rection, violence, terror ; it endeavours, therefore, to prepare itself
especially for resistance and opposition in that direction alone. It
is possible that in single cases, in single countries, for more or less
short periods, they will succeed. We must reckon with such a
possibility, and there is absolutely nothing dreadful to us in the
fact that the bourgeoisie might succeed in this. Communism e springs
up ’ from positively all sides of social life, its sprouts are everywhere,
without exception—the ‘ contagion 3 (to use the favourite and
‘ pleasantest ’ comparison of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois police)
has very thoroughly penetrated into the organism and has totally
impregnated it. If one of the ( vents * were to be stopped up with
special care, i contagion 3 would find another, sometimes most un-
expected vent. Life will assert itself. Let the bourgeoisie rave, let
it work itself into a frenzy, commit stupidities, take vengeance in
advance on the Bolsheviks, and endeavour to exterminate in India,
Hungary, Germany, etc., more hundreds, thousands, and hundreds
of thousands of the Bolsheviks of yesterday or those of to-morrow.
Acting thus, the bourgeoisie acts as did all classes condemned to
death by history. The Communists must know that the future at
any rate is theirs ; therefore we can and must unite the intensest
passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the coolest and
soberest calculations of the mad ravings of the bourgeoisie. . . . In
all cases and in all countries Communism grows ; its roots are so
deep that persecution neither weakens, nor debilitates, but rather
strengthens it. 33
LENIN (Left Communism, 1921).
F A S C I S M
AND SOCIAL
REVOLUTION
by
R. PALME DUTT
LONDON
MARTIN LAWRENCE LTD.
First Printed June 1934
Reprinted September 1934
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
1934
Published by Martin Lawrence, 33 Great James Street, London, W.C.l.
and printed in Great Britain by
Western Printing Services Ltd., Bristol
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction vii
CHAPTER
I Technique and Revolution 1
1. The Growth of the Productive Forces
3
2. The Conflict of the Productive Forces
against Existing Society 9
3- Productivity and Unemployment J 5
4. The Alternative— Social Revolution or
Destruction 24
II The End of Stabilisation 26
1. The Last Attempt to Restore Pre-War
Capitalism 27
2. The Collapse of the Illusions of the
Stabilisation Period 32
3- After the Collapse 37
III The New Economics and Politics 42
1. The Destruction of the Productive Forces 43
2. The Revolt Against the Machine 48
3- The Revolt against Science 54
4- The Revolt against <c Democracy ” and
Parliament 5 8
5- “ National Self-Sufficiency ” 62
6. War as the Final “ Solution ” 68
IV What is Fascism? 72
1. The Class-Content of Fascism 73
2. Middle-Class Revolution or Dictator-
ship of Finance-Capital? 77
3- The Middle Class and the Proletariat 83
4. The Definition of Fascism 87
V How Fascism Came in Italy 9 1
1. The Priority of Italian Fascism 9 1
2. Socialism in Italy 93
3- Was Revolution Possible in Italy? 97
4. The Growth and Victory of Fascism 100
VI How Fascism Came in Germany 107
1. The Strangling of the 1918 Revolution 108
2. The Growth of National Socialism IX 5
3- The Crucial Question of the United Front 120
4- The Causes of the Victory of Fascism 123
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
VII How Fascism Came in Austria . 133
1 . The Significance of the Austrian Ex-
perience . 133
2. The Betrayal of the Central-European
Revolution . . . 137
3 . The F ascist Dictatorship and the F ebruary
Rising . 142
VIII Social Democracy and Fascism 149
1 . The Capitalist View of Social Democracy
and Fascism . 150
2. The Germs of Fascism in Social Democracy 156
3. How Social Democracy Assists Fascism
to Power . . . 163
4. The Question of the Split in the Working
Class ... 166
5. The Adaptation of Social Democracy to
Fascism . . 171
IX The Theory and Practice of Fascism 177
1. Is there a “ Theory ” of Fascism? 177
2. Demagogy as a Science . 184
3. Capitalism, Socialism and the Corporate
State . .192
4. The Outcome of Fascism in the Economic
Sphere 205
5. Fascism and War . . . 212
6. Fascism and the Women’s Question 218
X The Essence of Fascism—The Organisation
of Social Decay . 223
XI Tendencies to Fascism in Western Europe
and America . . 232
1. The Basis for Fascism in Britain, the
United States and France . 234
2. The Significance of the National Govern-
ment in Britain . 242
3. The Roosevelt Emergency Regime . 247
4. The February Days and the National
Concentration Government in France 252
5. The Beginnings of Fascist Movements 258
XII Fascism and Social Revolution . 270
1. The Dialectics ofFascism and Revolution . 271
2. The Fight Against Fascism 276
Index 291
INTRODUCTION
A very sharp issue confronts present society.
Events move with great speed. The traditional forms of
thought still cling to the remnants of past periods.
The victory and advance of Fascism over an extending area
has come as a brutal shock to millions. Yet Fascism is no sud-
den growth. For a decade and a half the whole post-war social
development has been incubating Fascism.
To all those who have hitherto accepted as unquestioned the
existing social forms and their continuity, and above all to
those who have looked to the possibility of peaceful progressive
advance within those existing social forms, and who have dis-
missed the revolutionary outlook as the fantasy of a minority,
Fascism, and more especially the victory of Fascism in an
advanced industrial country such as Germany, has come as a
brutal shock. It may yet prove a salutary shock, if it can open
their eyes to the real issues of our period.
With every year, and with every month, that the long over-
due social revolution in Western Europe and America, for
which the world war of 1914 already gave the signal—that is,
the ending of the private ownership of the means of production
which inevitably produces the increasing contradictions,
anarchy, destruction and barbarism of the present day—is
delayed, denied and postponed, the world situation grows more
desperate, and the whole future of society is brought into
question.
The world war of 1914, the opening of the world socialist
revolution in 1917, the partial revolutions and civil struggles
succeeding the war, the post-war chaos, the world economic
crisis since 1929, and now the victory and advance of Fascism
and approach to a second world war—these are the successive
warnings of the real issues of the present stage.
Fascism has already been the subject of an enormous dis-
cussion and literature over twelve years, and above all over the
past two years. Yet the treatment of Fascism has hardly yet
brought out its full significance.
viii INTRODUCTION
On the one side, Fascism has been widely treated as simply
the expression of brutality and violence, of militarism and sup-
pression, of national and racial egoism, of the revolt against
culture, against the old slogans of liberty, equality and brother-
hood.
On the other side, Fascism has been treated as the expression
of national rebirth, of the emergence of youth, of the end of
decadent liberalism and intellectualism, of the advance to a
balanced and organised social order.
In order to get closer to the true character of Fascism, it is
necessary to go deeper, to see Fascism in relation to the whole
character of modern social development, of which Fascism is an
expression and reflection, and above all to get down to the
basic movement and driving forces of economy and technique,
of which the social and political forms, including Fascism, are
only the reflection.
Such an examination will reveal beyond dispute that the
modern development of technique and productive power has
reached a point at which the existing capitalist forms are more
and more incompatible with the further development of pro-
duction and utilisation of technique. There is war between
them, increasingly violent and open since 1914, and entering
into a new and extreme stage in the world economic crisis and
its outcome. One must end the other. Either the advance of
the productive forces must end capitalism. Of the maintenance
of capitalism must end the advance of production and tech-
nique and begin a reverse movement. In fact the delay of the
revolution has meant that the reverse movement has already
begun throughout the world outside the Soviet Union.
Only two paths are therefore open before present society.
One is to endeavour to strangle the powers of production, to
arrest development, to destroy material and human forces, to
fetter international exchange, to check science and invention,
to crush the development of ideas and thought, and to con-
centrate on the organisation of limited, self-sufficient, non-
progressive hierarchic societies in a state of mutual war—in
short, to force back society to a more primitive stage in order
to maintain the existing class domination. This is the path of
Fascism, the path to which the bourgeoisie in all modern
countries where it rules is increasingly turning, the path of
human decay.
INTRODUCTION ix
The other alternative is to organise the new productive
forces as social forces, as the common wealth of the entire
existing society for the rapid and enormous raising of the
material basis of society, the destruction of poverty, ignorance
and disease and of class and national separations, the unlimited
carrying forward of science and culture, and the organisation
of the world communist society in which all human beings will
for the first time be able to reach full stature and play their
part in the collective development of the future humanity.
This is the path of Communism, the path to which the working
masses who are the living representatives of the productive
forces and whose victory over capitalist class domination can
alone achieve the realisation of this path, are increasingly turn-
ing; the path which modern science and productive develop-
ment makes both possible and necessary, and which opens up
undreamt-of possibilities for the future development of the
human race.
Which of these alternatives will conquer? This is the sharp
question confronting human society to-day.
Revolutionary Marxism is confident that, because the pro-
ductive forces are on the side of Communism, Communism will
conquer ; that the victory of Communism, which is expressed in
the victory of the proletariat, is ultimately inevitable as the
sole possible final outcome of the existing contradictions ; that
the nightmare of the other alternative, of the “ Dark Ages ”
whose creeping shadow begins already to haunt the imagination
of current thinkers, will yet be defeated, will be defeated by the
organised forces of international Communism.
But this inevitability is not independent of the human ±actor.
On the contrary, it can only be realised through the human
factor. Hence the urgency of the fight against Fascism, and for
the victory of the proletariat, on which the whole future of
human society depends. The time grows shorter; the sands
are running through the glass.
To many, the alternative of Fascism or Communism is no
welcome alternative, and they would prefer to deny it and to
regard both as rival, and in their view even parallel, forms of
extremism. They dream of a third alternative which shall be
neither, and shall realise a peaceful harmonious progress with-
out class struggle, through the forms of capitalist “ democ-
racy,” cc planned capitalism,” etc.