________________________________
Introduction,
Rise and Fall of Classic Fascism
excerpted from the book
Friendly Fascism
The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross
South End Press, 1980, paper
Introduction
pxi
Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and
other countries of the so-called "free world."
The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power
and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership. This
drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of
corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this
possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in
the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly
present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El
Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and
elsewhere.
The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups
to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others.
This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the
activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal
democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often
rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is
embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to
others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and
dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household,
workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of
private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and
for this reason is bitterly fought...
These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly
industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist
corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the
groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". Mind
management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be
oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into
reality. On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is
rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege"
and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to
concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".
A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the
first tendency.
But events soon began to change perceptions.
The Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis crept out of the woodwork. An immoral
minority of demagogues took to the airwaves. "Let me tell you something
about the character of God," orated Jim Robison at a televised meeting
personally endorsed by candidate Ronald Reagan. "If necessary, God would
raise up a tyrant, a man who may not have the best ethics, to protect the
freedom interests of the ethical and the godly." To protect Western oil
companies, candidate Jimmy Carter proclaimed presidential willingness to
send American troops into the Persian Gulf. Rosalyn Carter went further by
telling an lowa campaign audience: "Jimmy is not afraid to declare war."
Carter then proved himself unafraid to expand unemployment, presumably as an
inflation cure, thereby reneging on his party's past full employment
declarations.
Reaching the White House with this assist from Carter (as well as from the
Klan and the immoral minority of televangelicals), Reagan promptly served
the immediate interests of the most powerful and the wealthiest. The
Reaganites depressed real wages through the worst unemployment since the
1929-39 depression, promoted "give backs" by labor unions, cut social
programs for lower and middle income people, expanded tax giveaways for the
truly rich, boosted the military budget and warmed up the cold war. They
launched savage assaults on organized labor, civil rights and civil
liberties.
pxiii
economist Robert Lekachman
"Ronald Reagan must be the nicest president who ever destroyed a union,
tried to cut school lunch milk rations from six to four ounces, and
compelled families in need of public help to first dispose of household
goods in excess of $1,000...1f there is an authoritarian regime in the
American future, Ronald Reagan is tailored to the image of a friendly
fascist."
pxiii
The bad news is that evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in
American history.
"Like a good TV commercial, Reagan's image goes down easy," Mark Crispin
Miller has written, "calming his audience with sweet inversions of the
truth...He has learned to liven up his every televised appearance with
frequent shifts in expression, constant movements of the head, lots of warm
chuckles and ironic shrugs and sudden frowns of manly purpose. Reagan is
unfailingly attractive-'a nice guy, 'pure and simple." But what is really
there, he asks, behind the mask?
The President's critics have many answers. Some call him "an amiable dunce."
Some see him, reports Miller, as a devil "who takes from the poor to give to
the rich, has supported infanticide abroad, ravages his own countryside and
props up brutal dictatorships." Others regard him as a congenital falsifier
who surrounds any half-truth with a "bodyguard of lies." Miller himself has
still another answer: there is nothing behind the mask. "The best way to
keep his real self hidden" he suggests, "is not to have one...Reagan's mask
and face are as one." To this, one might add that the Reagan image is an
artfully designed blend of charisma and machismo, a combination that Kusum
Singh calls charismacho.
"Princes," wrote Machiavelli many centuries ago, "should delegate the ugly
jobs to other people, and reserve the attractive functions for themselves."
In keeping with this maxim, Reagan's less visible entourage has surrounded
the President with highly visible targets of disaffection: Volcker,
Stockman, Haig, Weinberger, Kirkpatrick, and Watt. In comparison, Reagan
looks truly wholesome. This makes it all the more difficult to focus
attention on the currents and forces behind the people behind the
President-or for that matter, other less visible leaders of the American
Establishment.
pxvii
beyond "nice guy" imagery. They establish America's symbolic environment.
The Reagan administration has triggered a great leap forward in the
mobilization and deployment of corporatist myths. Many billions of
tax-exempt funds from conservative foundations have gone into the funding of
such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise
Institute. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly three hundred
economists on the staffs of conservative think tanks are part of an informal
information network organized by the American Heritage Foundation alone.
(This contrasts with only about two dozen economists working for trade
unions, most of whom are pinned down in researching contract negotiations.)
pxvii
Expanded government intervention into \ the lives of ordinary people is
glorified under the slogan "getting the I government off our backs."
Decriminalization of corporate bribery, fraud and the dumping of
health-killing wastes is justified under the banner of "promoting free
enterprise" and countering "environmental extremists." Private greed,
gluttony and speculation are disguised in "free market" imagery. Business
corruption is hidden behind smokescreens of exaggerated attacks on the
public sector. Like Trojan horses, these ideas penetrate the defenses of
those opposed to any new corporatism. They establish strongholds of false
consciousness and treacherous terminology in the minds not only of
old-fashioned conservatives but also of the most dedicated liberals and
left-wingers.
Hence on many issues the left seems bereft, the middle muddled and the right
not always wrong. Other elements are thereby added to the new bill of
frights.
One is a frightening retreat by liberals and leftwingers on the key gut
issues of domestic policy: full employment, inflation and crime. "Deep
cynicism has been engendered in progressive circles by past experiences with
'full employment' legislation (as) the tail on the kite of an ever expanding
military economy." A movement for full employment without militarism or
inflation is seen as dangerous by old-time labor leaders, utopian by
liberals and by some Marxists as impossible under capitalism. Inflation is
seen as a conservative issue-or else one that requires the kind of price
controls that necessitate more far-reaching social controls over capital.
Middle-of-the-roaders try to deal with crime by fussing too much with the
details of the police-courthouse jail-parole complex and too little with the
sources of low-income crime, racketeering, political corruption and crime in
the executive suites. Thus the demagogues among the Reaganites and their
frenetic fringes have been able to seize and keep initiatives on these
issues.
pxxiii
Samuel Johnson
"Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because
the few are more vigilant and consistent."
*****
The Rise and Fall of Friendly Fascsim
p1
Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism
creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a
corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many
decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are
willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of
their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences
include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden
unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more
important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences
include widespread intervention in international politics through economic
manipulation, covert action, or military invasion...
I see at present members of the Establishment or people on its fringes who,
in the name of Americanism, betray the interests of most Americans by
fomenting militarism, applauding rat-race individualism, protecting
undeserved privilege, or stirring up nationalistic and ethnic hatreds. I see
pretended patriots who desecrate the American flag by waving it while
waiving the law.
In this present, many highly intelligent people look with but one eye and
see only one part of the emerging Leviathan. From the right, we are warned
against the danger of state capitalism or state socialism, in which Big
Business is dominated by Big Government. From the left, we hear that the
future danger (or present reality) is monopoly capitalism, with finance
capitalists dominating the state. I am prepared to offer a cheer and a half
for each view; together, they make enough sense for a full three cheers. Big
Business and Big Government have been learning how to live in bed together
and despite arguments between them, enjoy the cohabitation. Who may be on
top at any particular moment is a minor matter-and in any case can be
determined only by those with privileged access to a well-positioned
keyhole.
I am uneasy with those who still adhere strictly to President Eisenhower's
warning in his farewell address against the potential for the disastrous
rise of power in the hands of the military-industrial complex. Nearly two
decades later, it should be clear to the opponents of militarism that the
military-industrial complex does not walk alone. It has many partners: the
nuclear-power complex, the technology-science complex, the
energy-auto-highway complex, the banking-investment-housing complex, the
city-planning-development-land-speculation complex, the agribusiness
complex, the communications complex, and the enormous tangle of public
bureaucracies and universities whose overt and secret services provide the
foregoing with financial sustenance and a nurturing environment. Equally
important, the emerging Big Business-Big Government partnership has a global
reach. It is rooted in colossal transnational corporations and complexes
that help knit together a "Free World" on which the sun never sets. These
are elements of the new despotism.
A few years ago a fine political scientist, Kenneth Dolbeare, conducted a
series of in-depth interviews totaling twenty to twenty-five hours per
person. He found that most respondents were deeply afraid of some future
despotism. "The most striking thing about inquiring into expectations for
the future," he reported, "is the rapidity with which the concept of fascism
(with or without the label) enters the conversation." But not all knowledge
serves the cause of freedom... the tendency is to suppress fears of the
future, just as most people have learned to repress fears of a nuclear
holocaust. It is easier to repress well-justified fears than to control the
dangers giving rise to them.
p3
In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote a popular novel in which a racist,
anti-Semitic, flag-waving, army-backed demagogue wins the 1936 presidential
election and proceeds to establish an Americanized version of Nazi Germany.
The title, It Can't Happen Here, was a tongue-in-cheek warning that it
might. But the "it" Lewis referred to is unlikely to happen again any place.
Even in today's Germany, Italy or Japan, a modern-style corporate state or
society would be far different from the old regimes of Hitler, Mussolini,
and the Japanese oligarchs. Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties,
or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism. In any
First World country of advanced capitalism, the new fascism will be colored
by national and cultural heritage, ethnic and religious composition, formal
political structure, and geopolitical environment. The Japanese or German
versions would be quite different from the Italian variety-and still more
different from the British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Australian, Canadian, or
Israeli versions. In America, it would be supermodern and multi-ethnic-as
American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple
pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic
facade, subtle manipulation, and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism.
What scares me most is its subtle appeal.
I am worried by those who fail to remember-or have never learned -that Big
Business-Big Government partnerships, backed up by other elements, were the
central facts behind the power structures of old fascism in the days of
Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese empire builders.
I am worried by those who quibble about labels. Some of my friends seem
transfixed by the idea that if it is fascism, it must appear in the classic,
unfriendly form of their youth. "Why, oh why," they retrospectively moan,
"didn't people see what was happening during the 1920s and the 1930s?" But
in their own blindness they are willing to use the terms invented by the
fascist ideologists, "corporate state" or "corporatism," but not fascism.
I am upset with those who prefer to remain spectators until it may be too
late. I am shocked by those who seem to believe in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's
words of 1940-that "there is no fighting the wave of the future" and all you
can do is "leap with it." I am appalled by those who stiffly maintain that
nothing can be done until things get worse or the system has been changed.
I am afraid of inaction. I am afraid of those who will heed no warnings and
who wait for some revelation, research, or technology to offer a perfect
solution. I am afraid of those who do not see that some of the best in
America has been the product of promises and that the promises of the past
are not enough for the future. I am dismayed by those who will not hope, who
will not commit themselves to something larger than themselves, of those who
are afraid of true democracy or even its pursuit.
p5
I suspect that many people underestimate both the dangers that lie ahead and
the potential strength of those who seem weak and powerless. Either
underestimation stems, I think, from fear of bucking the Establishment ... a
deep and well-hidden fear ...
p5
...the fanfare of elections and "participatory" democracy usually disguises
business- government control.
THE RISE AND FALL OF CLASSIC FASCISM
p11
Between the two world wars fascist movements developed in many parts of the
world.
In the most industrially advanced capitalist countries-the United States,
Britain, France, Holland and Belgium-they made waves but did not engulf the
constitutional regimes. In the most backward capitalist countries-Albania,
Austria, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Spain, and
Yugoslavia-there came to power authoritarian or dictatorial regimes that
boastfully called themselves "fascist" or, as the term soon came to be an
all-purpose nasty word, were branded "fascist" by their opponents. The most
genuine and vigorous fascist movements arose in three countries-Italy,
Germany and Japan-which, while trailing behind the capitalist leaders in
industrialization and empire, were well ahead of the laggards.
ITALY, GERMANY, JAPAN
In Milan on March 23, 1919, in a hall offered by a businessmen's club,
former socialist Benito Mussolini transformed a collection of blackshirted
roughnecks into the Italian Fascist party. His word "fascism" came from the
Latin fasces for a bundle of rods with an axe, the symbol of State power
carried ahead of the consuls in ancient Rome. Mussolini and his comrades
censured old-fashioned conservatives for not being more militant in opposing
the socialist and communist movements that arose, in response to the
depression, after World War I. At the same time, they borrowed rhetorical
slogans from their socialist and communist foes, and strengthened their
support among workers and peasants.
In their early days these groups had tough going. The more respectable
elements in the Establishment tended to be shocked by their rowdy,
untrustworthy nature. Campaign contributions from businessmen came in slowly
and sporadically. When they entered electoral contests, the Fascists did
badly. Thus, in their very first year of life the Italian Fascists suffered
a staggering defeat by the Socialists.
In 1920 the left-wing power seemed to grow. Hundreds of factories were
seized by striking workers in Milan, Turin, and other industrial areas.
Peasant unrest became stronger, and many large estates were seized. The
Socialists campaigned under the slogan of "all power to the proletariat."
For Mussolini, this situation was an opportunity to be exploited. He
countered with a nationwide wave of terror that went far beyond ordinary
strikebreaking. Mussolini directed his forces at destroying all sources of
proletarian or peasant leadership. The Fascist squadristi raided the offices
of Socialist or Communist mayors, trade unions, cooperatives and leftwing
newspapers, beating up their occupants and burning down the buildings. They
rounded up outspoken anti-Fascists, clubbed them, and forced them to drink
large doses of castor oil. They enjoyed the passive acquiescence-and at
times the direct support-of the police, the army, and the church. Above all,
business groups supplied Mussolini with an increasing amount of funds. In
turn, Mussolini responded by toning down the syndicalism and radical
rhetoric of his followers, and, while still promising to "do something for
the workers," began to extol the merits of private enterprise.
On October 26, 1922, as his Fascist columns started their so-called March on
Rome, Mussolini met with a group of industrial leaders to assure them that
"the aim of the impending Fascist movement was to reestablish discipline
within the factories and that no outlandish experiments . . . would be
carried out." l On October 28 and 29 he convinced the leaders of the Italian
Association of Manufacturers "to use their influence to get him appointed
premier." 2 In the evening of October 29 he received a telegram from the
king inviting him to become premier. He took the sleeping train to Rome and
by the end of the next day formed a coalition cabinet. In 1924, in an
election characterized by open violence and intimidation, the Fascist-led
coalition won a clear majority.
If Mussolini did not actually march on Rome in 1922, during the next seven
years he did march into the hearts of important leaders in other countries.
He won the friendship, support, or qualified approval of Richard Childs (the
American ambassador), Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Lamont, many newspaper
and magazine publishers, the majority of business journals, and quite a
sprinkling of liberals, including some associated with both The Nation and
The New Republic. "Whatever the dangers of fascism," wrote Herbert Croly, in
1927, "it has at any rate substituted movement for stagnation, purposive
behavior for drifting, and visions of great future for collective pettiness
and discouragements." ~ these same years, as paeans of praise for Mussolini
arose throughout Western capitalism, Mussolini consolidated his rule,
purging anti-Fascists from the government service, winning decree power from
the legislature, and passing election laws favorable to himself and his
conservative, liberal, and Catholic allies.
Only a few days after the march on Rome, a close associate of Hitler, Herman
Esser, proclaimed in Munich among tumultuous applause: "What has been done
in Italy by a handful of courageous men is not impossible here. In Bavaria
too we have Italy's Mussolini. His name is Adolf Hitler...." F. L. CARSTEN
In January, 1919, in Munich, a small group of anti-Semitic crackpot
extremists founded the German Workers Party. Later that year the German
Army's district commander ordered one of his agents, a demobilized corporal,
to investigate it. The Army's agent, Adolf Hitler, instead joined the party
and became its most powerful orator against Slavs, Jews, Marxism,
liberalism, and the Versailles treaty. A few months later, under Hitler's
leadership, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German
Workers' Party and organized a bunch of dislocated war veterans into
brown-shirted strong-arm squads or storm troopers (in German, S.A. for
Sturmabteilung). The party's symbol, designed by Hitler himself, became a
black swastika in a white circle on a flag with a red background.
On November 8, 1923, in the garden of a large Munich beer hall, Adolf Hitler
and his storm troopers started what he thought would be a quick march to
Berlin. With the support of General Erich Ludendorff, he tried to take over
the Bavarian government. But neither the police nor the army supported the
Putsch. Instead of winning power in Munich, Hitler was arrested, tried for
treason, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but confined in
luxurious quarters and paroled after only nine months, the gestational
period needed to produce the first volume of Mein Kampf. His release from
prison coincided with an upward turn ~n the fortunes of the Weimar Republic,
as the postwar inflation abated and an influx of British and American
capital sparked a wave of prosperity from 1925 to 1929. "These, the
relatively fat years of the Weimar Republic, were correspondingly lean years
for the Nazis."
Weimar's "fat years" ended in 1929. If postwar disruption and class conflict
brought the Fascists to power in Italy and nurtured similar movements in
Germany, Japan, and other nations, the Great Depression opened the second
stage in the rise of the fascist powers.
In Germany, where all classes were demoralized by the crash, Hitler
recruited jobless youth into the S.A., renewed his earlier promises to
rebuild the German army, and expanded his attacks on Jews, Bolshevism, the
Versailles treaty, liberalism, and constitutional government. In September
1930, to the surprise of most observers (and probably Hitler himself), the
Nazis made an unprecedented electoral breakthrough, becoming the second
largest party in the country. A coalition of conservative parties, without
the Nazis, then took over under General Kurt von Schleicher, guiding genius
of the army. With aged Field Marshal von Hindenberg serving as figurehead
president, three successive cabinets- headed by Heinrich Bruening, Franz von
Papen, and then von Schleicher himself-cemented greater unity between big
business and big government (both civilian and military), while stripping
the Reichstag of considerable power. They nonetheless failed miserably in
their efforts to liquidate the Depression. Meanwhile Adolf Hitler, the only
right-wing nationalist with a mass following, was publicly promising full
employment and prosperity. Privately meeting with the largest industrialists
he warned, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy." On
January 30, 1933, he was invited to serve as chancellor of a coalition
cabinet. "We've hired Hitler!" a conservative leader reported to a business
magnate.
A few weeks later, using the S.A. to terrorize left-wing opposition and the
Reichstag fire to conjure up the specter of conspiratorial bolshevism,
Hitler won 44 percent of the total vote in a national election. With the
Support of the Conservative and Center parties, he then pushed through
legislation that abolished the independent functioning of both the Reichstag
and the German states, liquidated all parties other than the Nazis, and
established concentrated power in his own hands. He also purged the S.A. of
its semi-socialist leadership and vastly expanded the size and power of his
personal army of blackshirts.
Through this rapid process of streamlining, Hitler was able to make
immediate payments on his debts to big business by wiping out independent
trade unions. abolishing overtime pay, decreasing compulsory cartelization
decrees (like similar regulations promulgated earlier in Japan and Italy),
and giving fat contracts for public works and fatter contracts for arms
production. By initiating an official pogrom against the Jews, he gave Nazi
activists a chance to loot Jewish shops and family possessions, take over
Jewish enterprises, or occupy jobs previously held by German Jews.
Above all, he kept his promise to the unemployed; he put them back to work,
while at the same time using price control to prevent a recurrence of
inflation. As Shirer demonstrates in his masterful The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich, Hitler also won considerable support among German workers, who
did not seem desperately concerned with the loss of political freedom and
even of their trade unions as long as they were employed full time. "In the
past, for so many, for as many as six million men and their families, such
rights of free men in Germany had been overshadowed as he [Hitler] said, by
the freedom to starve. In taking away that last freedom," Shirer reports,
"Hitler assured himself of the support of the working class, probably the
most skillful and industrious and disciplined in the Western world."
Also in 1919, Kita Ikki, later known as "the ideological father of Japanese
fascism," set up the "Society of Those Who Yet Remain."
His General Outline of Measures for the Reconstruction of Japan, the Mein
Kampf of this association, set forth a program for the construction of a
revolutionized Japan, the coordination of reform movements, and the
emancipation of the Asian peoples under Japanese leadership.
In Japan, where organized labor and proletarian movements had been smashed
many years earlier and where an oligarchic structure was already firmly in
control, the transition to full-fledged fascism was- paradoxically-both
simpler than in Italy and Germany and stretched out over a longer period. In
the mid-1920s hired bullies smashed labor unions and liberal newspapers as
the government campaigned against "dangerous thoughts" and used a Peace
Preservation Law to incarcerate anyone who joined any organization that
tried to limit private property rights. The worldwide depression struck hard
in Japan, particularly at the small landholders whose sons had tried to
escape rural poverty through military careers. The secret military societies
expanded their activities to establish a Japanese "Monroe Doctrine for
Asia." In 1931 they provoked an incident, quickly seized all of Manchuria,
and early in 1932 established the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.
At home, the Japanese premier was assassinated and replaced by an admiral,
as the armed forces pressed forward for still more rapid expansion on the
continent and support for armament industries. As the frontiers of Manchukuo
were extended, a split developed between two rival military factions. In
February 1936, the Imperial Way faction attempted a fascist coup from below.
Crushing the rebels, the Control faction of higher-ranking officers ushered
in fascism from above. "The interests of business groups and the military
drew nearer, and a 'close embrace' structure of Japanese fascism came to
completion," writes Masao Maruyama. "The fascist movement from below was
completely absorbed into totalitarian transformation from above." Into this
respectable embrace came both the bureaucracy and the established political
parties, absorbed into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. And
although there was no charismatic dictator or party leader, the Emperor was
the supercharismatic symbol of Japanese society as a nation of families. By
1937, with well-shaped support at home, the Japanese army c seized Nanking
and started its long war with China.
BREEDING GROUNDS OF FASCISM
Before fascism, the establishments in Italy, Japan and Germany each
consisted of a loose working alliance between big-business, the military,
the older landed aristocracy, and various political leaders. The origin of
these alliances could be traced to the consolidation of government and
industry during World War I.
"Manufacturing and finance," writes Roland Sarti about World War I in Italy
(but in terms applicable to many other countries also), "drew even closer
than they had been before the war to form the giant combines necessary to
sustain the war effort. Industrialists and government officials sat side by
side in the same planning agencies, where they learned to appreciate the
advantages of economic planning and cooperation. Never before had the
industrialists been so close to the center of political power, so deeply
involved in the decision-making process " 0
United in the desire to renew the campaigns of conquest that had been dashed
by the war and its aftermath, the establishments in these countries were
nonetheless seriously divided by conflicting interests and divergent views
on national policy. As Sarti points out, big-business leaders were
confronted by "economically conservative and politically influential
agricultural interests, aggressive labor unions, strong political parties
ideologically committed to the liquidation of capitalism, and governments
responsive to a variety of pressures." Despite the development of capitalist
planning, coping with inflation and depression demanded more operations
through the Nation-State than many banking and industrial leaders could
easily- accept, more government planning than most governments were capable
of undertaking, and more international cooperation among imperial interests
than was conceivable in that period
The establishment faced other grave difficulties in the form of widespread
social discontent amidst the uncertain and eventually catastrophic economic
conditions of the postwar world. One of the challenges came from the
fascists, who seemed to attack every element in the existing regimes. They
criticized businessmen for putting profits above patriotism and for lacking
the dynamism needed for imperial expansion. They tore at those elements in
the military forces who were reluctant to break with constitutional
government. They vilified the aristocracy as snobbish remnants of a decadent
past. They branded liberals as socialists, socialists as communists,
communists as traitors to the country, and parliamentary operations in
general as an outmoded system run by degenerate babblers. They criticized
the bureaucrats for sloth and branded intellectuals as self-proclaimed
"great minds" (in Hitler's phrasing) who knew nothing about the real world.
They damned the Old Order as an oligarchy of tired old men, demanding a New
Order of young people and new faces. In Japan, the young blood was
represented mainly by junior officers in the armed forces. In Italy and
Germany the hoped-for infusion of new dynamism was to come from the "little
men," the "common people," the "lost generation," the "outsiders," and the
"uprooted" or the "rootless." Although some of these were gangsters, thugs,
and pimps, most were white-collar workers, lower-level civil servants, or
declassed artisans and small-businessmen.
But the fascist challenge did not threaten the jugular vein. Unlike the
communists, the fascists were not out to destroy the old power structure or
to create an entirely new one. Rather, they were heretics seeking to revive
the old faith by concentrating on the fundamentals of ;imperial expansion
militarism, repression, and racism. They had the courage of the old-time
establishment's convictions. If they at times sounded like violent
revolutionaries, the purpose was not merely to pick up popular support from
among the discontented and alienated, but to mobilize and channel the
violence-prone. If at the outset they tolerated anti-capitalist currents
among their followers, the effect was to enlarge the following for policies
that strengthened capitalism. Above all, the fascists "wanted in."
In turn, at a time of crisis, leaders in the old establishment wanted them
in as junior partners. These leaders operated on the principle that "If we
want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." Ultimately,
the marriage of the fascist elements with the old order was one of
convenience. In Italy and Japan, the fascists won substantial control of
international and domestic politics, were the dominant ideological force,
and controlled the police. The old upper-class structure remained in control
of the armed forces and the economy. In Japan, the upper-class military was
successfully converted to fascism, but there were difficulties in winning
over Japan's family conglomerates, the zaibatsu.
Thus, while much of the old order was done away with, the genuinely
anti-capitalist and socialist elements that provided much of the strength in
the fascist rise to power were suppressed. The existing social system in
each country was actually preserved, although in a changed form.
THE AXIS
>From the start fascism had been nationalist and militarist, exploiting the
bitterness felt in Italy, Germany, and Japan over the postwar settlements.
Italians, denied territories secretly promised them as enticement for
entering the war, felt cheated of the fruits of victory. Japanese leaders
chafed at the rise of American and British resistance to Japanese expansion
in China, and resented the Allies' refusal to include a statement of racial
equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Germans were outraged by
the Versailles treaty; in addition to depriving Germany of 13 percent of its
European territories and population, the treaty split wide open two of
Germany's three major industrial areas and gave French and Polish
industrialists 19 percent of Germany's coke, 17 percent of its blast
furnaces, 60 percent of its zinc foundries, and 75 percent of its iron ore.
Furthermore, each of the fascist nations could ground their expansion in
national tradition. As far back as 1898, Ito Hirobumi, one of the founders
of the "new" Japan after the Meiji restoration of 1868, had gone into great
detail on Japan's opportunities for exploiting China's vast resources. While
the late-nineteenth-century Italians and Germans were pushing into Africa,
the Japanese had seized Korea as a stepping-stone to China and started
eyeing Manchuria for the same purpose. Mussolini's imperial expansion in
Africa was rooted, if not in the Roman empire, then in late
nineteenth-century experience and, more specifically, in the "ignominy" of
the 1896 Italian defeat by ill-armed Ethiopian forces in Aduwa. Hitler's
expansionism harked back to an imperialist drive nearly a century old-at
least.
Now, while Japan was seizing Manchuria, Mussolini responded to the crash by
moving toward armaments and war. He used foreign aid to establish economic
control over Albania, consolidating this position through naval action in
1934. In 1935 he launched a larger military thrust into Ethiopia and
Eritrea.
By that time, the Nazi-led establishment in Germany was ready to plunge into
the European heartland itself. In 1935, Hitler took over the Saarland
through a peaceful plebiscite, formally repudiating the Versailles treaty.
In 1936 he occupied the Rhineland and announced the formation of a
Berlin-Rome Axis and the signing of a German-Japanese Pact. Hitler and
Mussolini then actively intervened in the Spanish Civil War, sending
"volunteers" and equipment to support General Franco's rebellion against
Spain's democratically-elected left-wing republic.
The timetable accelerated: in 1938, the occupation of Austria in March and
of Czechoslovakia in September; in 1939, the swallowing up of more parts of
Czechoslovakia and, after conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August, the
invasion of Poland. At this point, England and France declared war on
Germany and World War II began. Japan joined Italy and Germany in a ten-year
pact "for the creation of conditions which would promote the prosperity of
their peoples." As a signal of its good intentions, Japan began to occupy
Indochina as well as China. Germany did even better. By 1941 the Germans had
conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
They had thrown the British army into the sea at Dunkirk and had invaded
Rumania, Greece, and Yugoslavia. A new world order seemed to be in the
making.
For Japan, it was the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," and for
Italy a new Roman Empire to include "the Mediterranean for the
Mediterraneans." And, for Germany, the new order was the "Thousand Year
Reich" bestriding the Euro-Slavic-Asian land mass.
p21
FASCIST EXPLOITS
The essence of the new fascist order was an exploitative combination of
imperial expansion, domestic repression, militarism, and racism. Each of
these elements had a logic of its own and a clear relation to the others.
Imperial expansion brought in the raw materials and markets needed for more
profitable economic activity. By absorbing surplus energies as well as
surplus capital, it diverted attention from domestic problems and brought in
a flood of consumer goods that could at least for a while- provide greater
satisfactions for the masses.
Domestic repression in each of the three countries was essential to
eliminate any serious opposition to imperialism, militarism, or racism. It
was used to destroy the bargaining power of unions and the political power
not only of communists, socialists, and liberals but of smaller enterprises.
It helped hold down wages and social benefits and channel more money and
power into the hands of big business and its political allies
Militarism, in turn, helped each of the Axis countries escape from the
depression, while also providing the indispensable power needed for both
imperial ventures and domestic pacification.
All of the other elements were invigorated by racism, which served as a
substitute for class struggle and a justification of any and all brutalities
committed by members of the Master Race (whether Japanese, German, or
Italian) against "inferior" beings. This may not have been the most
efficient of all possible formulae for exploitation, but it was theirs.
No one of these elements, of course, was either new or unique. None of the
"haves" among the capitalist powers, as the fascists pointed out again and
again, had built their positions without imperialism, militarism,
repression, and racism. The new leaders of the three "have nots," as the
fascists pointed out, were merely expanding on the same methods. "Let these
'well-bred' gentry learn," proclaimed Hitler, "that we do with a clear
conscience the things they secretly do with a guilty one." There was nothing
particularly new in Mussolini's imperialism and militarism.
His critics at the League of Nations in 1935, when a weak anti-Italian
embargo was voted on, may have seemed shocked by his use of poison gas
against Ethiopian troops, but he did nothing that French, British, English,
and Dutch forces had not done earlier in many other countries. The Japanese
and Germans, however, were a little more original. In China and other parts
of Asia, the Japanese invaders used against Koreans, Chinese, Burmese,
Malayans, and other Asians even harsher methods than those previously used
by white invaders. Similarly, up to a certain point, the Nazi war crimes
consisted largely of inflicting on white Europeans levels of brutality that
had previously been reserved only for Asians, Africans, and the native
populations of North, Central, and South America.
In open violation of the so-called "laws of war," German, Japanese, and
Italian officials-to the consternation of old-style officers from the upper
class "gentry"-ordered the massacre of prisoners. All three regimes engaged
in large-scale plunder and looting.
Since German-occupied Europe was richer than any of the areas invaded by the
Japanese or Italians, the Nazi record of exploitation is more impressive.
"Whenever you come across anything that may be needed by the German people,"
ordered Reichsmarshall Goering, "you must be after it like a bloodhound...."
The Nazi bloodhounds snatched all gold and foreign holdings from the
national banks of seized countries, levied huge occupation costs, fines and
forced loans, and snatched away tons of raw materials, finished goods, art
treasures, machines, and factory installations.
In addition to this unprecedented volume of looting, the Nazis revived the
ancient practice of using conquered people as slaves. In doing so, they went
far beyond most previous practices of imperial exploitation. By 1944, "some
seven and a half million civilian foreigners were toiling for the Third
Reich.... In addition, two million prisoners of war were added to the
foreign labor force." Under these conditions German industrialists competed
for their fair share of slaves. As key contributors to the "Hitler Fund,"
the Krupps did very well. "Besides obtaining thousands of slave laborers,
both civilians and prisoners of war, for its factories in Germany, the Krupp
firm also built a large fuse factory at the extermination camp at Auschwitz,
where Jews were worked to exhaustion and then gassed to death."
Domestic repression by the fascists was directed at both working-class
movements and any other sources of potential opposition. In all three
countries the fascists destroyed the very liberties which industrialization
had brought into being; if more was destroyed in Germany than in Italy and
more in Italy than in Japan, it was because there was more there to destroy.
All three regimes succeeded in reducing real wages (except for the
significant increments which the unemployed attained when put to work by the
armaments boom), shifting resources from private consumption to private and
public investment and from smaller enterprises to organized big business and
channeling income from wages to profits. As these activities tended to
"de-class" small entrepreneurs and small landowners, this added to the pool
of uprooted people available for repressive activities, if not for the armed
services directly. Moreover, each of the three regimes attained substantial
control over education at all levels, cultural and scientific activities,
and the media of communication.
In Germany, however. domestic repression probably exceeded that of any other
dictatorial regime in world history. An interesting, although little known,
example is provided by Aktion t 4. In this personally signed decree, Hitler
ordered mercy killing for hospital patients judged incurable, insane or
otherwise useless to the war effort, thereby freeing hospital beds for
wounded soldiers. At first the patients were "herded into prisons and
abandoned castles and allowed to die of starvation." Since this was too
slow, the Nazis then used "a primitive gas chamber fed by exhaust fumes from
internal combustion engines." Later they used larger gas chambers where
"ducts shaped like shower nozzles fed coal gas through the ceiling . . .
Afterward the gold teeth were torn out and the bodies cremated." Two years
later, after about ten thousand Germans were killed in this manner, a
Catholic bishop made a public protest and the extermination campaign was
called off.
By this time, however, Aktion t 4 had been replaced by Aktion f 14, "an
adaptation of the same principles to the concentration camps, where the
secret police kept their prisoners-socialists, communists, Jews and
antistate elements." By the time he declared war on the United States in
December 1941, Hitler extended Aktion f 14 to all conquered territories in
his "Night and Fog" (Nacht und Nebel) decree, through which millions of
people were spirited away with no information given their families or
friends. This was an expansion of the lettres de cachet system previously
used by French monarchs and the tsar's police against important state
prisoners. Under this method untold thousands vanished into the night and
fog never to be heard of again.
Each of the three regimes, moreover, developed an extra-virulent form of
racism to justify its aggressive drive for more and more "living space" (in
German, the infamous Lebensraum). Italian racism was directed mainly against
the Africans-although by the time Italy became a virtual satellite of Nazi
Germany, Mussolini started a massive anti-Jewish campaign. Japanese racism
was directed mainly against the Chinese, the Indochinese, and in fact, all
other Asiatic people and served to justify, in Japanese eyes, the arrogance
and brutality of the Japanese troops. The largest target of Nazi racism was
the Slavs, who inhabited all of the Eastern regions destined to provide
Lebensraum for the Master Race.
And during World War II more Slavs were killed than an' other group of war
victims in previous history.
But Nazi racism went still deeper in its fanatic al anti-Semitism. Hitler,
of course, did not invent anti-Semitism, which ran as a strand through most
significant ideologies of the previous century. While a strong strain of
anti-Semitism has usually characterized the Catholic church, Martin Luther,
the founder of Protestantism, went further in urging that Jewish "synagogues
or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed." 18
Nazi anti-Semitism brought all these strands together into a concentrated
form of racism that started with looting, deprived the German Jews (about a
quarter of a million at that time) of their citizenship and economic rights
under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and then-following Martin Luther's advice
with a vengeance-led to the arson, widespread looting, and violence of the
Kristolnacht ("The Night of the Broken Glass") of November 1938. Early in
1939 Hitler declared, in a Reichstag speech, that if a world war should
ensue, "the result will be . . . the annihilation of the Jewish race
throughout Europe," a threat and near-prophecy that he kept on repeating in
his public statements. A few weeks after the Nazi invasion of Russia he
started to make it a reality with a decree calling for a "total solution"
(Gesamtlosung) or "final solution" (Endlosung) of the Jewish question in all
the territories of Europe which were under German influence. The "final
solution" went through various stages: at first simply working Jews to
death, then gassing them in the old-style chambers used under Aktion t 4,
then using still larger gas chambers capable of gassing six thousand
prisoners a day- to the lilting music of The Merry Widow-through the use of
hydrogen cyanide.
While business firms competed for the privilege of building the gas chambers
and crematoria and supplying the cyanide, recycling enterprises also
developed. The gold teeth were "melted down and shipped along with other
valuables snatched from the condemned Jews to the Reichsbank.... With its
vaults filled to overflowing as early as 1942, the bank's profit-minded
directors sought to turn the holdings into cold cash by disposing of them
through the municipal pawnshops." Other recycling operations included using
the hair for furniture stuffing, human fat for making soap, and ashes from
the crematoria for fertilizer. While a small number of cadavers were used
for anatomical research or skeleton collections, a much larger number of
live persons-including Slavs as well as Jews-were used in experimental
medical research for the German Air Force on the effects on the human body
of simulated high-altitude conditions and immersion in freezing water. All
in all, of an estimated 11 million Jews in Europe, between 5 and 6 million
were killed in the destruction chambers (and work gangs or medical
laboratories) at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, Sibibor and Chelmna, as well
as minor camps that used such old-fashioned methods as mere shooting.'.
p25
FASCIST IDEOLOGIES
Centrally controlled propaganda was a major instrument for winning the
hearts of the German, Japanese, and Italian people. The growth of the
control apparatus coincided with the flowering during the 1920s and 1930s of
new instruments of propagandistic technology particularly the radio and the
cinema, with major forward steps in the arts of capitalist advertising.
"Hitler's dictatorship." according to Albert Speer, "was the first
dictatorship of an industrial state in this age of technology, a
dictatorship which employed to perfection the instruments of technology to
dominate its own people." Apart from technology, each of the Axis powers
used marching as an instrument of dominating minds. In discussing this
method of domination, one of Hitler's early colleagues, Hermann Rauschning,
has given us this explanation: "Marching diverts men's thoughts. Marching
kills thought. Marching makes an end of individuality. Marching is the
indispensable magic stroke performed in order to accustom the people to a
mechanic, quasi-ritualistic activity until it becomes second nature."
The content of fascist propaganda. however, was more significant than its
forms or methodology. In essence, this content was a justification of
imperial conquest, rampant militarism, brutal repression, and unmitigated
racism. Many fascist theorists and intellectuals spun high-flown ideologies
to present each of these elements in fascist exploitation in the garb of
glory, honor, justice, and scientific necessity. The mass propagandists,
however (including not only Hitler, Mussolini, and their closest associates,
but also the flaming "radicals" of the Japanese ultra-right), wove all these
glittering abstractions into the super-pageantry of a cosmic struggle
between Good and Evil, between the Master Race which is the fount of all
culture, art, beauty, and genius and the inferior beings (non-Aryans,
non-Romans, non-Japanese) who were the enemies of all civilization. As the
stars and the planets gazed down upon this apocalyptic struggle, the true
defenders of civilization against bolshevism and racial impurity must
descend to the level of the enemies of culture and for the sake of mankind's
future, do whatever may be necessary in the grim struggle for survival.
Thus, bloodletting and blood sacrifice became a spiritual imperative for the
people, an imperative transcending mere materialism.
This holy-war psychology was backed up by the indiscriminate use of any
concept, any idea, theory, or antitheory that was useful at a particular
time or place. Liberalism and monarchism, individualism and collectivism,
hierarchic leadership and egalitarianism, scientific management and organic
spontaneity, private enterprise and socialism, religion and atheism-all were
drawn upon as the condition warranted- to polish the image of the nation's
leader and play upon the emotions of both establishment and masses. No human
interest, drive, or aspiration was safe from exploitation. To help in
organizing support of specific groups, promises were made to workers as well
as businessmen, peasants as well as landowners, rural folk as well as
urbanites, the old nobility as well as the "common man," the old as well as
the young, women as well as men.
p28
On of the great successes of the classic fascists was to concoct was to
concoct misleading pronouncements on their purposes and practices.
Anti-fascists have often accepted some of these self-descriptions or added
part-truths of their own. The result has been a vast structure of apparently
indestructible myths. Today, these myths still obscure the nature of classic
fascism and of present tendencies toward new forms of the o d horror.
Although the classic fascists openly subverted constitutional democracy and
flaunted their militarism, they took great pains to conceal Big Capital-Big
Government partnership. One device for doing this was the myth of
"corporatism" or the 'corporate state." In place of geographically elected
parliaments, the Italians and the Germans set up elaborate systems whereby
every interest in the country-including labor -was to be "functionally"
represented. In fact, the main function was to provide facades behind which
the decisions were made by intricate networks of business cartels working
closely with military officers and their own people in civilian government.
p29
There is no doubt that in all three countries the consolidation of the
fascist establishment was supported by a psychological malaise that had hit
the lower middle classes harder than anyone else. But if one examines the
support base of classic fascism, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
fascists had multi-class support. Many workers joined the fascist ranks-even
former socialist and communist leaders. To the unemployed workers not
represented by trade unions or the socialist movement, fascism offered jobs
and security and delivered on this promise. Although the older aristocrats
were somewhat divided on the subject, many highly respectable members of the
landed aristocracy and nobility joined the fascist ranks. The great bulk of
civil service bureaucrats was won over. Most leaders of organized religion
(despite some heroic exceptions in Germany and some foot-dragging in
Italy)either tacitly or openly supported the new regimes. Leading
academicians, intellectuals, writers, and artists toed the line; the
dissident minority who broke away or left the country made the articulation
of support by the majority all the more important. Hitler enjoyed
intellectual support, if not adulation, from the leading academicians in
German universities. In Japan, the Showa Research Association brought many
of the country's leading intellectuals together to help the imperial leaders
formulate the
p30
... instead of operating directly, big capital under fascism operated
indirectly through an uneasy partnership with the fascist politicos, the
military leaders, and the large landowners. If the privileged classes won
many advantages as a result of the indispensable support they gave to the
fascist regimes in Italy, Japan, and Germany, they also paid a high price.
In addition to being subjected to various forms of political plunder, they
lost control of many essential elements of policy, particularly the
direction and tempo of imperial expansion. Second, the shift from
constitutional to fascist capitalism meant structural changes, not merely
the removal of a fig leaf. The fascists suppressed independent trade unions
and working-class parties and consolidated big capital at the expense of
small business. They destroyed the democratic institutions that capitalism
had itself brought into being. They wiped out pro-capitalist liberation and
old-fashioned conservatism as vital political forces. Third, while classic
fascism was terroristic, it was also beneficent. The fascists provided jobs
for the unemployed and upward mobility for large numbers of lower and middle
class people. Although real wage rates were held down, these two factors
alone-in addition to domestic political plunder and war booty-improved the
material standard of living for a substantial number, until the whole
picture was changed by wartime losses. roughshod over his or her students
may be called a "fascist pig."
p31
... for thousands of years hundreds of governments have been fiercely
brutal-sometimes on conquered people only, often on their own people also.
If we stick by this terminology, then many of the ancient Greeks and
Hebrews, the old Roman, Persian, Byzantine, Indian, and Chinese empires, the
Huns, the Aztecs, and the tsars who ruled Russia were also fascist. Some of
these, let me add, also exercised total control over almost all aspects of
human life. Indeed, "force, fraud and violence," as Carl Friedrich and
Zbigniew Brzezinski have pointed out, "have always been features of
organized government and they do not constitute by themselves the
distinctively totalitarian operation." 28 But concentrated capital,
modern-style government, and constitutional democracy are relatively new
features of human history-as is also the kind of Big Business- - Government
alliance that subverts constitutional democracy. Anyone has the
constitutional right to pin the label "fascist" or "fascistic" on the
brutalities of a Stalin or his heirs in various "Marxist-Leninist"
countries, or on the bloodbath inflicted by American firepower on Indochina
for a full decade, or even on the latest case of police brutality in a black
or Latin ghetto of New York City. This may be a forceful way of protesting
brutality. It is much less than a serious examination of the realities of
classic fascism or the accumulating tendencies toward new forms of fascism
toward the end of the twentieth century.
_
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