Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, by Ernesto Laclau, Verso paperback, London, 203 pp., £3.00.
Several new books on fascism have appeared during the past few years. The reasons for the new rise of interest in the subject are not difficult to find. The re-emergence of fascist groups in a number of European countries (and their international coordination) is one obvious cause. Another is that with the growth of Eurocommunism many communists feel it necessary to settle accounts for good and all not only with the ultra-leftism of Stalin's 'Third Period' but also with Trotsky, who had opposed the Communist International's theories of 'social fascism' when it mattered.
In the good old days, there was a standard method of dealing with Trotsky: simply denounce him as the agent of 'democratic' imperialism or of fascism itself, depending on the current line of the Soviet leadership. Nowadays, when such outright slander has fallen into disrepute as a result of Eurocommunism's 'reconsideration' of the past, a new technique has been discovered. Today's author handles the problem more or less this way: 'Let's be honest and face facts. Trotsky foresaw the events in Germany in the early thirties with astonishing clarity. But...' It is then discovered that the old prophet actually made a series of errors that vitiated his analysis of fascism at bottom and require its relegation to the museum — in an honoured room, of course. In his Fascism and Dictatorship, for example, Nicos Poulantzas has discovered that Trotsky shared the 'economism' of the Comintern, failing to understand that the imposition of a fascist regime comes after the working class has suffered serious defeats! According to Vajda (Fascism As a Mass Movement), Trotsky's error was to have counterposed the socialist revolution to fascism, failing to fight for the restoration of democracy.
The latest attempt at a new analysis of fascism has been produced by Ernesto Laclau in Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, a collection of essays on capitalism, fascism, and populism, originally published by New Left Books and now re-issued as a paperback by Verso. Laclau begins his argument by acknowledging that there has been a lack of theoretical development in the analysis of fascism since the Second World War, the reason being that the policy of the Popular Front 'led to the incorporation of broader and broader sections of the bourgeoisie into the anti-fascist struggle, with the result that fascism tended to be presented as the political expression of an increasingly reduced sector of interests'. Coming forward to take up the neglected task, Laclau rejects the view that fascist ideology consists in a series of heterogeneous elements whose function is to cement the varying social groups that make up the fascist bloc. He holds that it is not possible to decompose an ideology into component parts and then to label them as bourgeois or proletarian, for these elements can be understood only in terms of an overall ideology. Otherwise, for example, 'nationalism' will be described as bourgeois and 'socialist nationalism' will be seen as thoroughly contradictory. Writes Laclau: 'Ideological "elements" taken in isolation have no necessary class connotation, and... this connotation is only the result of those elements in a concrete ideological discourse.'
Once he has established this point, Laclau goes on to argue that not all contradictions in politics are class contradictions. It is possible, for example, to have alliances of the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, the working class and certain sections of the bourgeoisie against a ruling bloc, if contradictions exist at the level of the 'popular democratic' struggle and between the ruling bloc and the 'people'. Once this simple point is grasped, the arena of the class struggle is immensely broadened. Indeed, it becomes possible to integrate into revolutionary ideology 'a multitude of elements and interpellations which have up to now appeared constitutive of bourgeois ideological discourse'.
The failure of revolutionaries to grasp this broadened arena of class struggle, Laclau argues, has led to the domination of the workers' movement by a narrow class perspective and a consequent lack of will to establish hegemony over the exploited classes as a whole. This 'class reductionism' has led on the one hand to opportunism, as reformists have sought to use the bourgeois state to obtain increasing benefits, and on the other hand to sectarianism, as revolutionaries have attempted to make a proletarian revolution and establish a soviet regime. 'In both cases', Laclau maintains, 'exclusively class policies were pursued, which totally ignored the problem of popular democratic struggles'.
One prime example of 'class reductionism' cited by [illegible] is Trotsky's criticism of the 'national communist' line of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1931, when the party blocked with the Nazis in an attempt to bring down the Social Democratic government in Prussia through participation in the 'Red Referendum'. Trotsky's 'class reductionist' criticism ran as follows: 'It is understood that every great revolution is a people's or national revolution, in the sense that it unites around the revolutionary class all the virile and creative forces of the nation and reconstructs the nation around a new core...In order that the nation should indeed be able to reconstruct itself around a new class core, it must be reconstructed ideologically and this [illegible] be achieved only if the proletariat does not dissolve itself into the "people", into the "nation", but on the contrary develops a programme of its proletarian revolution and compels the petty bourgeoisie to choose between two regimes. The slogan of the people's revolution lulls the petty bourgeoisie as well as the broad mass of workers, reconciles them to the bourgeois hierarchical structure of the "people" and retards their liberation. But under present conditions in Germany, the slogan of a "people's revolution" wipes away the ideological demarcation between Marxism and fascism and reconciles part of the workers and petty bourgeoisie to the ideology of fascism, allowing them to think that they are not compelled to make a choice, because in both camps it is all a matter of people's revolution.'
This brings us to the centre of Laclau's thesis. According to him, fascism rose and triumphed in Germany by virtue of two factors: the crisis of the ruling power bloc, which rendered it unable to absorb discontent through the traditional channels; and the failure of the working class to win hegemony over popular struggles and to fuse popular democratic ideology into its programme. The working class should have appealed to all popular sectors 'to fight for a national renaissance which could have condensed in common ideological symbols; Nationalism, Socialism and Democracy'. It was here, Laclau maintains, that Trotsky came to grief, as evidenced in the quotation above. Trotsky's contribution was limited to the formulation of a correct defensive line, when in all essentials, fascism had already won the battle for the allegiance of the petty bourgeoisie: 'The idea that in Germany any advance towards socialism was dependent on the alliance between the working class and the middle class, and that such an alliance required the ideological fusion of Nationalism, Socialism, and Democracy, is not only alien but antagonistic to the basis of Trotsky's feeling.'
Laclau argues that a Trotskyist leadership of the KPD would have been impotent, due to a lack of understanding of the importance of the popular-democratic struggle in halting the Nazi advance. He also maintains, however, that the KPD had occasionally glimpsed aspects of the correct strategy. In 1923, for example, during the period of the 'Schlageter line' — 'one of the few moments in which the German Communist movement sensed the necessity to carry out national and democratic agitation'. There were opportunist elements in this line, Laclau acknowledges, but only because it was not deepened and carried to its logical conclusion: the abandonment of class reductionism. A second occasion when the KPD was on the right track was the 'nationalism' of 1931 against which Trotsky polemicized. Here Laclau assures us that he is not at all uncritical of KPD policy, which was 'doubtless mistaken, in so far as it reduced a fundamental long-term strategic line, such as the fusion between socialism and popular-democratic ideology, to a mere circumstantial tactic to win the electoral support of the petty bourgeoisie'. The third occasion came in 1935, when the Seventh Congress of the Comintern adopted the Popular Front position. Again, Laclau notes sadly that this attempt to overcome class reductionism was imperfect, marred by zigzags. There is no reason to dwell on this third occasion, for its results are well known. The most perfect fruit of the Popular Front policy was the victory of fascism in Spain, as the attempt to separate the struggle for a proletarian victory from the struggle against fascism led first to a strangulation of workers' democracy and then to the defeat of bourgeois democracy. Here it is sufficient to note that Laclau criticizes the policy of the Popular Front from the right, since he alleges that it still asserted that democracy was bourgeois and to that extent was still class reductionist. More central to Laclau's argument, however, and far less familiar to today's militants, are the two other instances he cites, the Schlageter line and national communism. In fact, Laclau fails to explain in any real detail just what the KPD did on these two occasions. His theses on how the workers' movement should fight fascism can be better evaluated in the light of a brief discussion of what was actually entailed in these two episodes.
The 'Schlageter Line'
In January 1923 the French army occupied the Ruhr, thus triggering a deep crisis in Germany. The nationalist and fascist groups immediately began agitating against the French intervention, which was also denounced, quite correctly, by the KPD. But Ernst Thalheimer, the central leader of the Communist Party at the time, went beyond mere denunciation, arguing that the French and German bourgeoisies could no longer be placed on the same footing, since the German bourgeoisie had played 'an objectively revolutionary role...in spite of itself ever since its defeat in 1918. Hence, although 'the defeat of French imperialism in the World War was not a communist aim, its defeat in the war in the Ruhr is a communist aim'. Other sections of the Communist International, the Czechoslovak Communist Party, for example, denounced the new line as a repetition of 'national Bolshevism', the term coined to describe the views of some Hamburg communists in 1919 who had proposed an alliance with anti-French nationalists in order to exploit the differences between the German and Entente bourgeoisies. Lenin attacked national Bolshevism bitterly, describing as 'philistine nationalism' any attempt to lend liberation from the Versailles Treaty priority over liberation of the countries oppressed by imperialism.
In February 1923, Die Internationale, the organ of the KPD, described both fascism and national Bolshevism as movements against German and foreign capital. It rejected them both, but argued for a new type of propaganda to overcome them. Later, the KPD began to argue that there were two kinds of fascists, those directly sold to capital and those merely misled petty-bourgeois nationalists who had to be convinced that Germany could be defended only through an alliance with the proletariat.
It was in that setting, in May 1923, that an ex-Freikorps member named Schlageter tried to blow up a railway line and was shot by French soldiers. The nationalists and fascists proclaimed him a martyr and made a major political event of his funeral. In June, at a meeting of the Comintern, Radek announced that he no longer rejected the label national Bolshevik, which now meant, he claimed, 'that everyone is imbued with the feeling that salvation can be found only with the communists. We are today the only way out. The strong emphasis on the nation in Germany is a revolutionary act, like the emphasis on the nation in the colonies'. These remarks, not surprisingly, stirred some criticism. Radek's reply was the so-called Schlageter speech, in which he said: 'Schlageter, a courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves to be sincerely honoured by us, the soldiers of the revolution... If those German Fascisti who honestly thought to serve the German people fail to understand the significance of Schlageter's fate, then he will have died in vain'.[1]
Soon after, the KPD launched a campaign against the French occupation of the Ruhr with the clear aim of splitting the far right. This campaign amounted to a de facto united front with nationalists and fascists, understanding united front in the sense of a combination of unity and struggle. The Communist Party, for example, produced a pamphlet consisting of three essays: one by Radek, one by a German nationalist, and one by a Nazi. Joint meetings were held with the nationalists and Nazis to denounce the Entente powers and the Versailles Treaty. One KPD release even contained this ringing 'anti-capitalist' assertion: 'Jewish capitalists grow fat on the exploitation of the German people'.[2] Ruth Fischer, a leader of the KPD identified with its left wing, declared: 'he who denounces Jewish capital... is already a warrior in the class war, even though he does not know it.'[3] This campaign abruptly ceased in August 1923 when what was later to be called the Autumn Crisis broke out, a crisis that ended with a significant defeat for the working class.
The balance-sheet of the 'Schlageter line' was clearly negative. It failed to attract the petty bourgeoisie, which could not be convinced that support to the Communist Party was the best way to foster German nationalism, despite the KPD's best efforts. It alienated sections of the workers under reformist leadership, and did nothing to prepare the ranks for the Autumn Crisis. It must be admitted, however, that the party press at the time did combine these joint efforts with nationalists and Nazis with a steady barrage of anti-fascist propaganda, and that even Radek reiterated many times that the centre of the strategy was the workers' united front and that only a workers' state could resolve the problems of Germany. It is perhaps this 'struggle' aspect of the line that Laclau has in mind when he complains that the KPD was not entirely free of 'class reductionism' even during the period of the 'Schlageter line'.[4]
National Communism
[illegible] turn of 1930 [illegible] features whatever. [illegible] 'fascisization' [illegible] government. The KPD was said to be the 'accomplices' of this process the conservatives and Social Democrats [illegible] indication that he grasps that the failure to weld the unity of the [illegible] reformist [illegible] was the crucial factor [illegible] failing to [illegible] over sections of the middle class. Trotsky continually [illegible] out the middle class would be won to the side [illegible] imposing its own solution to the country's crisis. The central requirement was to unify the divided working class: that alone would have been sufficient to begin to roll back the Nazi tide, which in turn would erode the support of the desperate petty bourgeoisie for the Nazis.
The line of the KPD, however, pointed in a completely different direction. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the trade unions led by it were characterized as moving more and more rapidly towards fascism by virtue of their increasing integration into the bourgeois state, allegedly in process of 'fascisization'. Red unions were set up by the KPD, and demands were inserted into the platforms of union [illegible] to keep out left reformist workers. The Communist Party denounced [illegible] socialists as agents of French [illegible] Polish imperialism, which was precisely [illegible] the SPD [illegible].
The other side of this [illegible] was the KPD line on 'national [illegible] and social liberation'. It is this that Laclau considers fundamentally correct in its strategic aspect. Its aim was to wage a vigorous campaign against the Young Plan (the war reparations scheme that also prevented [illegible] from having colonies) and, more generally, to 'expose' the German nationalism of the Nazis as fraudulent by appearing as more consistently nationalist than the Nazis. The Communist International [illegible] and for the social emancipation of the German people, and in countering their empty demagogy with a real revolutionary programme of salvation for the toiling masses of Germany.
[illegible] and Gregor Strasser were invited to write for the party press. A KPD pamphlet against the Young Plan illustrated the patriotism of the party by boasting that not a single member of the Central Committee was Jewish.' The KPD joined with the Nazis in the 'Red Referendum', the aim of which was to destroy the Prussian 'social-fascist' coalition and, in Thälmann's words, to expose 'Nazi and German nationalist office [illegible] referendum, the more deeply we shall force a breach in the ranks of the Nazis' followers'. The breach, however, was forced not among the Nazis but in the ranks of the working class. One of the worst examples of this 'socialist' nationalism was evinced in the KPD bulletin Fasfaren, when a KPD member wrote: 'Whoever opposes the people's revolution and the revolutionary war of liberation betrays the cause of the fallen who gave their lives in the last war for a free Germany.'
The simple fact is that in these two cases cited by Laclau as representing instances of the KPD's ability to free itself partially of 'class reductionism', the Communist Party gravely compromised itself by trying to appropriate important aspects of fascist ideology itself. The reason these tactics were unsuccessful was not that they were badly applied, but that the working class has no objective interest in championing them. Contrary to Laclau, aspects of ideologies do have class characters, and the proletariat cannot successfully make itself the herald of ideas that are better expressed by another class. There was no way for the German proletariat to win over the rank-and-file and mass base of Nazism by appearing as more consistently nationalist than Hitler. Similarly, the main reason the most powerful workers' movement in Western Europe was annihilated so disastrously by the Nazis was that it was hopelessly divided, the Communist and Socialist party leaderships concentrating their fire on each other rather than on the fascist threat. A united workers' movement could have dealt crippling blows to the Nazis, and this in turn would have undermined a good part of the Nazis' appeal for petty bourgeois, who were attracted, more than anything else, by the very success and audacity of Hitler's storm troopers.[5] This was the heart of Trotsky's message at the time, and no amount of high-sounding rhetoric about 'class reductionism' and 'democratic interpellations' can obscure the truth of the matter.
In practice, the analysis of fascism presented by Laclau accords with the needs of Eurocommunism in its most right-wing form. Implicit in his approach is the notion that the workers should not try to do 'too much too fast' and thereby alarm the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. In the last instance, Laclau's concern to combat 'class reductionism' fails to note what is perhaps the most striking feature of fascism: that it represents a final, and desperate, defence of the capitalist order. A fascist regime is not a comfortable one for the capitalist class, which finds itself to a large extent politically expropriated by a gang of thugs and adventurers. The capitalists therefore opt for such a state form only to avert the even more serious danger of economic expropriation. Laclau argues that a precondition for the rise of fascism is the failure of the working class to win [illegible] demonstrate that the real precondition for the success of fascism is the persistent failure of the working class to unite, defend itself, and [illegible] democratic demands, [illegible] more general defence of democratic rights is a major component of such an effort at the proletarian seizure of power (and not only when there is an imminent danger of fascism). On this Trotsky, for example, was quite [illegible] political crisis reaches a certain pitch, it is only the working class that can effectively defend democracy, and it can do so only by stepping beyond the confines of bourgeois democracy and challenging the state institutions upon which it rests. No amount of appeal to such ideologies as nationalism is of avail in such a struggle in an advanced capitalist [illegible].
1. Inprecorr, Volume III, No. 47, 1923.
2. [illegible]
3. Ibid. There is some controversy over the Fischer quote. It was reported in the 22 August 1923 edition of Vorwärts, which also quoted her as saying: 'Yes, hang the Jewish capitalists from the street lamps, (but)...what do you think of the big capitalists like Stinnes?'. Some twenty-five years later, Fischer claimed to have been traduced by the Social Democratic editors of Vorwärts, declaring that she had merely said that both Jewish and non-Jewish capitalists had to be attacked. (Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1948, p. [illegible].) [illegible] convincing, however, since she had commented on the Vorwärts report at the time, in Die Rote Fahne of 30 August 1923. There she complained of a minor point, saying that Vorwärts got some words out of place; but she made no political attack on the report. For a discussion of this incident, see Pierre Broué, Révolution en Allemagne, Paris, 1971, p. 695.
4. Another effect of the 'Schlageter line' that bears mentioning is that it undermined the campaign against the occupation of the Ruhr among the French working class. The French Socialist Party used the [illegible] nationalist [illegible] of the KPD to propagate the myth that [illegible] had been struck between the German Communists and fascists. This isolated the French Communist Party in its attempts to organize a campaign of solidarity with the German workers and even caused [illegible] in the French party itself. In Lenin's Moscow (London, 1971, p. 198), Alfred Rosmer wrote: 'Radek's unbelievable declaration was not designed to ease the task of worker militants who had given their activity a carefully judged orientation. On the other hand, it was of great value to the Social Democratic leaders, who were remaining [illegible] a pretext — which seemed excellent — to denounce the collusion of the communist and fascist leaders'. This, of course, is an aspect of the problem that is consistently overlooked by such theorists as Laclau. Quite apart from the effects in Germany of the KPD's adaptation to German nationalism, this sort of line makes it absolutely impossible to engage in any real internationalist activity. [illegible] class reductionism by appropriating aspects of [illegible] nationalism, that could appeal [illegible] base of [illegible]. Having [illegible] opted for the bourgeois ideology of nationalism, Laclau looks at the problem in purely national terms, forgetting that French nationalism among the French workers and German nationalism among the German workers rules out proletarian internationalism. The workers had [illegible] this sort of effort to avoid 'class reductionism' between 1914 and 1918.
5. Robert Black, Fascism in Germany, London, 1975, p. 766.