>KL:This really gets to the heart of our theoretical difference. Successful
>revolution is one of the possible outcomes. The other, which befell Europe, is
>"the common ruin of the contending classes." In my opinion, Alfred Sohn-
>Rethel's description of capitalist paralysis in Weimar Germany does inded
>explore one outer limit. I do not have his book today; if I did, I'd post the
>appropriate passages. (AS-R was a left communist, so Rakesh might be able to
>provide them.)
I am not sure what Ken Lawrence is looking for.
Jane Caplan makes the following points in her afterword to Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism.
"Sohn Rethel's case rests on the argument that in Germany the industrial rationalisation process of the 1920s threw industry into a structural crisis of valorisation, in tha tfixecd costs formed an increasingly larger proportion of capital than its variable component. The result, as he puts it, was that 'when demand, forcing prices down, then if production slowed according to diminishing demand the unit cost rose in geometrical progresion. Price and costs moved in inverse proportion instead of parallel to each other."
"Sohn Rehtel's use of the concepts [absolute and relative surplus value] implies that they are historically sequential, the long working day having preceded the intensification of productivity, even though this is not exactly what Marx argues. "Still S R analysis has a certain force: he argues that under fascism the extraction of absolute surplus value was the *dominant* form, and was the means by which German capital was rescued from its valorisation crisis. This was made possible only by the Nazi regime's terroristic disciplining of the working class, which broke the connection between increased productivity and reduction in the value of labor power. This was because the cost of wage goods did not fall, and there was little or no compensation paid for the increased owrking hours or intensity of labor. In other words, the price paid to labour fell below its value: wages did not rise sufficiently to cover the cost of reproducing labor power. This reversion to a more 'primitive' form of exploitation might perhaps be seen as evidence for Sohn Rethel's view that fascism is not the 'highest stage' of capitalism, but its 'weakest link'."
Also "Even before the economic crisis, many German industrialists were keen to recover more freedom of action both by expelling hte state from 'their' sphere and by disciplining the workers to accept lower wages and longer hours. When the depression hit, with its calamitous effect on profitability, division within the capitalist class were deepened, as S-R describes, and class struggle intensified. A deeply fractured and crisis ridden society sponsored both the sudden growth of the NSDAP as a protest party with a wide social appeal, and the political paralysis of the state that enabled the Nazis to take over in 1933>"
For a recent left communist critique of *anti fascism*, see www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379/gold62.htm "When Insurrections Die" by Gilles Dauve, formerly known as Jean Barrot
'The essence of anti fascism consists in resisting fascism by defending democracy; it no longer struggles against capitalism but seeks to pressure capitalism into renouncing the totalitarian option. Since socialism is identified with total democracy, and capitalism with an accelerating tendency to fascism, the antagonisms between proletariat and capital, communism and wage labor, proletariat and state, are rejected for a counterposition of democracy and fascism presented as the quintessential revolutionary perspective.'
or "Fascist repression was unleashed after a proletarian failure engineered mainly by *democracy and its main fallback options:the parties and unions, which alone can defeat the owrkers by employing direct and indirect methods in tandem.* (my emphasis) It is false to present fascism's arrival in power as the culmination of street battles in which it defeated the workers. In Germany, the proletarians had been crushed eleven or twelve years earlier. In Italy they were defeated by both ballots and bullets." From this perspective there follows a historical account of proletarian defeat in Italy, Germany and Spain.
The article may not yet be up on the web site.
yours, rakesh