Two Ways of Looking at Fascism
Posted on March 8, 2011
by Matthew Lyons
Introduction
Fascism is an important political category, but a confusing one. People use the word fascism in many different ways, and often without a clear sense of what it means.
Political events since the September 11, 2001, attacks have raised the issue of fascism in new ways. People on both the right and the left have described Islamic rightist forces such as al Qaeda and the Taliban as fascist -– but for very different reasons. Neoconservatives and Bush administration officials have denounced “Islamofascists” to help justify the so-called war on terrorism and the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, some leftists describe some of these same groups as fascist -– not to rationalize U.S. expansion, but to highlight the fact that there are major political forces today that are deadly enemies of both the left and U.S. imperialism.
At the same time, a number of liberals and leftists have warned that the United States itself is headed in a fascist direction. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the Bush administration’s authoritarian and militaristic policies are a serious threat, but they’re a world apart from fascism’s volatile mix of oppression and anti-elitism, order and insurgency. Fascism doesn’t just terrorize and repress; it uses twisted versions of radical politics in a bid to “take the game away from the left,” as neonazi leader Tom Metzger urged his followers in the 1980s. We need different strategies to fight these different forms of right-wing authoritarianism, and we need a political vocabulary that lets us tell them apart.1
Claims of impending fascism tend to reflect two underlying problems. The first is the idea that fascism is essentially a tool or strategy of big business to defend capitalist rule, and the second is vagueness about what delineates fascism from other forms of capitalist repression. We can see both of these problems in pronouncements from several different U.S. leftist organizations (such as the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Communist Party, and Socialist Labor Party), in leftist and left-liberal media organs such as CounterPunch and Common Dreams, and in numerous websites and online discussions among U.S. activists.2
A recent sophisticated example of both problems comes from Marxist academicians Gregory Meyerson and Michael Joseph Roberto. In an October 2006 Monthly Review article, “It Could Happen Here,” they argue that “fascism is a plausible response by the U.S. bourgeoisie to the general crisis of Pax Americana” and, although the outcome of the crisis remains unclear, “evidence is mounting for what we are calling a fascist trajectory.” Meyerson and Roberto see fascism as an intrinsic structural tendency of capitalism in crisis, a form of rule that is promoted strictly from the top down. “Only the ruling class can institute fascist processes,” they argue. Although they acknowledge the existence of fascist movements, “the Marxist view,” they claim, “does not focus primarily on fascist mass movements because they are not primary engines of fascism.”3
Even if we accept this concept of fascism (and of Marxism), Meyerson and Roberto never explain concretely what they mean by fascist rule. They emphasize that fascism needs to be understood in functional terms, as a form of capitalist rule in crisis, and they criticize descriptive definitions of fascism on the grounds that these obscure its changing historical character. A U.S. fascist trajectory “will look quite different from past fascist trajectories,” and will “unfold in a bipartisan context, liberals and conservatives acting in concert -– the whole ruling class.” But since Meyerson and Roberto don’t tell us what fascism will look like, how will we know it’s happening? The substance of their argument seems to be that the growing crisis may persuade most representatives of capital that they need to establish a much more repressive and authoritarian state. This is a serious and wholly justified concern, but it’s a simple point that doesn’t require elaborate arguments about functionalism and structural tendencies. And we gain nothing, but lose much, by calling the result fascism.
The concept of fascism is indeed highly relevant for analyzing current political threats, but not in the way that Meyerson and Roberto maintain. Fascism can help us understand a range of political phenomena that the U.S. ruling class didn’t initiate and does not control. These phenomena are part of a crisis that goes far beyond the decline of U.S. global hegemony and the American welfare state, to include the following:
- across eastern Europe and northern Asia, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, followed in many countries by a drastic decline of living standards and the rise of large-scale criminality and a host of right-wing nationalist movements
- in many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the cooptation or defeat of revolutionary leftist insurgencies and governments and the growth of diverse populist or religious-based oppositional forces
- in much of the world, the acceleration of capitalist globalization dynamics such as capital flight, international mass migration, commodification of women’s labor, the growth of international mass culture, and the erosion of traditional local institutions –- and the upsurge of ambivalent or hostile responses to all of these from various points on the political spectrum.
In this volatile mix, fascism is an important reference point -– not just as a developed political force but also as a tendency or potential within broader movements. It is both distinct from and at odds with top-down capitalist authoritarianism. In addition, while fascism takes shape in a capitalist context, it isn’t a functional consequence of capitalist development, analogous (as Meyerson and Roberto suggest) to imperialism. Rather, it is a political current, which -– like socialism, liberalism, or conservatism –- embodies its own set of ideas, policies, organizational forms, and bases of support. Like all major political currents, fascism exists in multiple variations and evolves dynamically to address new historical conditions. This means that no definition of fascism is the one true, final answer. But defining –- or at least describing –- fascism can help us to grasp fascism’s key features, delineate its relationship with other forces, and explore how it develops and how it can be fought.
Unlike many discussions among left activists in the United States today, this essay offers a concept of fascism that speaks to its double-edged reality –- bolstering oppression and tyranny but also tapping into real popular grievances and overturning old conventions and forms of rule. To do this, I bring together two distinct but complementary approaches. First, I draw on a current within Marxist thought that emphasizes fascism’s contradictory relationship with the capitalist class. As a movement or a regime, fascism attacks the left and defends class exploitation but also pursues an agenda that clashes with capitalist interests in important ways. Since the 1920s, several independent Marxists have analyzed fascism along these lines; I will look specifically at the work of August Thalheimer, Tim Mason, Mihaly Vajda, Don Hamerquist, and J. Sakai.
These writers are strong in analyzing fascism’s class politics –- its relationship with capital and other class forces, its roots in capitalist crisis, and its impact on the socioeconomic order. They are weaker in discussing fascist ideology, which is important for positioning fascism within the political right and for understanding why people -– sometimes millions of people –- are attracted to fascist movements. To address these issues, I draw on the work of Roger Griffin, a non-leftist scholar who has done pathbreaking work on fascist ideology over the past two decades. Griffin treats fascism as a form of revolutionary nationalism that attacks both the left and liberal capitalist values, an approach that resonates strongly with some of the most promising leftist discussions of fascism. Griffin’s focus on ideology neglects fascism’s structural dimensions but offers a helpful complement to a class-centered analysis.
The body of this essay is divided into three parts. First, I discuss the work of several independent Marxists who have grappled with fascism’s relationship with capitalism, from Thalheimer’s “Bonapartism” theory to Hamerquist and Sakai’s treatments of fascism as a right-wing revolutionary movement. Next I explore Griffin’s ideology-centered approach, particularly his argument that fascism represents a blend of populist ultranationalism and a myth of collective rebirth. Lastly, I offer a new draft definition of fascism that incorporates aspects of both approaches, and discuss how this stereoscopic vision can help us understand fascist movements and tendencies today.
