[lbo-talk] anti-fascist agitation

[Jon Johanning]

On Sep 1, 2004, at 4:54 AM, Mike Ballard wrote:

> ********
> On 30 January 1933 Hitler became the prime minister of
> Germany. This was not inevitable at all. Two months
> earlier, in November 1932, the Social Democratic Party
> (SPD) won 7.2 million votes and the Communist Party
> (KPD) 6 million. So the two organisations between them
> got 13.2 million votes, while the Nazi vote was 11.7
> million, i.e. 1.5 million votes less.
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap08.htm

That's quite true. Still, the Nazi Party was the largest party in the 
Reichstag at that point, which set it up for the Hindenberg maneuver. 
Why couldn't the parties which claimed to be the voice of the workers, 
which each claimed to be armed with the brilliant, nearly infallible 
insights and wisdom of the great Marx, prevent this situation from 
occurring? Why couldn't they bury their differences and cooperate to 
stop the Nazi advance (temporarily and slightly depressed in the 
results of the 1932 election, but their real leap forward had occurred 
in 1930)?

I don't think the answer is any secret, but it is rather embarrassing 
to Marxist-Leninists, I think.

> The Nazis crushed the opposition because they had
> State power given to them by conservatives like
> Hindenberg AND because  rank and file lefties were not
> sufficiently free of the authoritarian personality
> character structures which they had been brought up
> with, their resistance to the Nazi domination lacked
> the capacity for self-organization which could have
> effectively challenged State authority.
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1969/human.htm

I'm not sure how good an explanation Fromm's "authoritarian 
personality" theory provides (perhaps it is partially true, but there 
was a lot more to it, I think). But of course President Hindenberg did 
appoint Hitler Chancellor. Again, the question is, how did the 
situation get to this point? Where was the leadership on the left that 
would have headed it off? If the Communists were so prescient about the 
Nazi threat as Charles claims, why were they so ineffective against it?

One thing that has to be kept in mind is that the Weimar constitution 
in fact had built into it its own suicide pill, in the form of Article 
48, which gave the president the ability to decree emergency 
legislation and use the armed forces to "restore order," in addition to 
his other powers of dissolving parliament and nominating chancellors. 
These presidential powers were fundamental to the process of Hitler 
becoming Chancellor.

All of this was very different from the U.S. Constitution, of course, 
and needs to be taken into account if one wants to compare the course 
of events in Weimar Germany with the U.S. situation.


Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
__________________________________
A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was 
equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is 
the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to 
John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt