-----Original Message----- From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: 27 October 1998 17:06 Subject: Working-class support for Hitler?
>Michael Mann believes that 20th century Marxism has made a mistake by
>describing fascism as a petty-bourgeois mass movement. He does not argue
>that the leaders were not bourgeois, or that the bourgeoisie behind the
>scenes was financing the fascists. He develops these points at some length
>in an article "Source of Variation in Working-Class Movements in
>Twentieth-Century Movement" which appeared in the New Left Review of
>July/August 1995.
>
>If he is correct, then there is something basically wrong with the Marxist
>approach, isn't there? If the Nazis attracted the working-class, then
>wouldn't we have to reevaluate the revolutionary role of the working-class?
>Perhaps it would be necessary to find some other class to lead the struggle
>for socialism, if this struggle has any basis in reality to begin with.
>
>Mann relies heavily on statistical data, especially that which can be found
>in M. Kater's "The Nazi Party" and D. Muhlberger "Hitler's Followers". The
>data, Mann reports, shows that "Combined, the party and paramilitaries had
>relatively as many workers as in the general population, almost as many
>worker militants as the socialists and many more than the communists".
>
>Pretty scary stuff, if it's true. It is true, but, as it turns out, there
>are workers and there are workers. More specifically, Mann acknowledges
>that "Most fascist workers...came not from the main manufacturing
>industries but from agriculture, the service and public sectors and from
>handicrafts and small workshops." Let's consider the political implications
>of the class composition of this fascist strata." He adds that, "The
>proletarian macro-community was resisting fascism, but not the entire
>working-class." Translating this infelicitous expression into ordinary
>language, Mann is saying that as a whole the workers were opposed to
>fascism, but there were exceptions.
>
>Let's consider who these fascist workers were. Agricultural workers in
>Germany: were they like the followers of Caesar Chavez, one has to wonder?
>Germany did not have large-scale agribusiness in the early 1920's. Most
>farms produced for the internal market and were either family farms or
>employed a relatively small number of workers. Generally, workers on
>smaller farms tend to have a more filial relationship to the patron than
>they do on massive enterprises. The politics of the patron will be followed
>more closely by his workers. This is the culture of small, private
>agriculture. It was no secret that many of the contra foot-soldiers in
>Nicaragua came from this milieu.
>
>Turning to "service" workers, this means that many fascists were
>white-collar workers in banking and insurance. This layer has been going
>through profound changes throughout the twentieth century, so a closer
>examination is needed. In the chapter "Clerical Workers" in Harry
>Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital", he notes that clerical work in
>its earlier stages was like a craft. The clerk was a highly skilled
>employee who kept current the records of the financial and operating
>condition of the enterprise, as well as its relations with the external
>world. The whole history of this job category in the twentieth century,
>however, has been one of de-skilling. All sorts of machines, including the
>modern-day, computer have taken over many of the decision-making
>responsibilities of the clerk. Furthermore, "Taylorism" has been introduced
>into the office, forcing clerks to function more like assembly-line workers
>than elite professionals.
>
>We must assume, however, that the white-collar worker in Germany in the
>1920's was still relatively high up in the class hierarchy since his or her
>work had not been mechanized or routinized to the extent it is today.
>Therefore, a clerk in an insurance company or bank would tend to identify
>more with management than with workers in a steel-mill. Even under today's
>changed economic conditions, this tends to be true. A bank teller in NY
>probably resents a striking transit worker, despite the fact that they have
>much in common in class terms. This must have been an even more pronounced
>tendency in the 1920's when white-collar workers occupied an even more
>elite position in society.
>
>Mann includes workers in the "public sector". This should come as no
>surprise at all. Socialist revolutions were defeated throughout Europe in
>the early 1920's and right-wing governments came to power everywhere. These
>right-wing governments kept shifting to the right as the mass working-class
>movements of the early 1920's recovered and began to reassert themselves.
>Government workers, who are hired to work in offices run by right-wingers,
>will tend to be right-wing themselves. There was no civil-service and no
>unions in this sector in the 1920's. Today, this sector is one of the major
>supporters of progressive politics internationally. They, in fact,
>spearheaded the recent strikes in France. In the United States, where their
>composition tends to be heavily Black or Latino, also back progressive
>politics. But in Germany in the 1920's, it should come as no major surprise
>that some public sector workers joined Hitler or Mussolini's cause.
>
>When Trotsky or E.J. Hobsbawm refer to the working-class resistance to
>Hitler or Mussolini, they have something specific in mind. They are
>referring to the traditional bastions of the industrial working-class:
>steel, auto, transportation, mining, etc. Mann concurs that these blue-
>collar workers backed the SP or CP.
>
>There is a good reason why this was no accident. In Daniel Guerin's
>"Fascism and Big Business", he makes the point that the capitalists from
>heavy industry were the main backers of Hitler. The reason they backed
>Hitler was that they had huge investments in fixed capital (machines,
>plants, etc.) that were financed through huge debt. When capitalism
>collapsed after the stock-market crash, the owners of heavy industry were
>more pressed than those of light industry. The costs involved in making a
>steel or chemical plant profitable during a depression are much heavier.
>Steel has to be sold in dwindling markets to pay for the cost of leased
>machinery or machinery that is financed by bank loans When the price of
>steel has dropped on a world scale, it is all the more necessary to enforce
>strict labor discipline..
>
>Strikes are met by violence. When the boss calls for speed-up because of
>increased competition, goons within a plant will attack workers who defend
>decent working conditions. This explains blue-collar support for socialism.
>It has a class basis.
>
>These are the sorts of issues that Marxists should be exploring. Michael
>Mann is a "neo-Weberian" supposedly who also finds Marx useful. Max Weber
>tried to explain the growth of capitalism as a consequence of the
>"Protestant ethic". Now Mann tries to explain the growth of fascism as a
>consequence of working-class support for "national identity". That is to
>say, the workers backed Hitler because Hitler backed a strong Germany. This
>is anti-Marxist. Being determines consciousness, not the other way around.
>When you try to blend Marx with anti-Marxists like Weber or Lyotard or A.J.
>Ayer, it is very easy to get in trouble. I prefer my Marx straight, with no
>chaser.
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>Working Class Support for Fascism ?
An aspect of the issue which hasn't been dealt with in the debate so far is the political one. By this I mean the fact that the period after the First World War in Germany was not just one of economic turmoil, but also of political crises, in which the working class organisations were posed with the question of taking power. In 1918-9 and again in the so called "German October" of 1923, the SPD and trade union leaderships prevented the mass of their members from doing so.
In addition there was a complicated interplay of events acting on the KPD leadership. Henirich Brandler got some of the blame for the failure of 1923, although he was actually made a scapegoat for it. It is ironic that the reputation of Ernst Thaelmann in the German KPD resulted from the failure of the Hamburg uprising to be called off in time ! (Thaelmann who was later promoted into leadership of the KPD by the Stalinist Comintern was infamous for his denunciation of Socialists as "Social-Fascists")
With the growth of the Nazis and particularly their "plebeian" wing the SA, there were those in the KPD leadership who sought to undercut their appeal by openly debating with them and making political concessions to their arguments about the Versailles Treaty and the Ruhr occupation. The most notorious case of this was the infamous "Schlageter speech" by Karl Radek after the shooting of a Ruhrland nationalist called Leo Schlageter by the French. This led the KPD to try to debate with Nazi supporters and to make concessions to Nationalist arguments.
Later on in the period leading up to 1933, the positions of the KPD became even more crucial to the situation. It had been obvious ever since 1918 that the SPD leadership were incapable of standing up to reaction and at the highest levels of the party were actively colluding with it. This was a party in which half of the working class were organised. These were more likely to be the employed workers in unions. The KPD tended to have more unemployed in their ranks and this layer had a tendency toward ultra-left politics.
The influence of the Stalinised Comintern on the KPD reinforced, rather than rectified this problem. A related political fault was the KPD's failure to distinguish between fascism and bourgeois democracy and thus, to downplay the importance of the fascist seizure of power. The necessity of building a working class united-front from below was ignored for a crucial period prior to Hitler taking power. It should be remembered that in the election before this happened, the Nazi vote actually fell. The KPD's line was "after Hitler us ". Many disillusioned Red Front fighters joined the SA when this mad perspective was not borne out. The SPD unions were naive enough to believe that they would be allowed to operate legally under Hitler. Once in power of course, Hitler brutally purged his "plebeian" supporters in the interests of big-business. He totally crushed the KPD, the SPD and the unions.
As Trotsky put it rather succintly :-
" German fascism, like Italian fascism, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organisations of the working class and the institutions of democracy. But fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petit bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital."
(What is National Socialism ? June 1933 )
Once a fascist state has been consolidated, the working class is effectively atomised and resistance becomes isolated or individualised. There will of course, be many cases of individual collaboration and even of atrocities committed by former members of working class organisations. The situation is not unlike that after a defeated strike, when people that have stood side by side on the picket line, must knuckle under to company discipline and can no longer trust one another.
However, the important fact to bear in mind, is that fascism always and everywhere, has only ever come to power by destroying the organisations of the working class. There might be one of two reasons for this. Either to maintain capitalist profitablity in the case of a severe recession, or to prevent the organisations of the working class from assuming power themselves.