What is Fascism's Connection to the Petty Bourgeoisie?

[e_e]

I have heard that fascism is petty bourgeois reaction at the decay of capitalism. What exactly is the petty bourgeoisie'is role in a society under a fascist system and how does it exactly fulfill their reactionary fantasies?

[Tim Cornelis]

Fascism parallels Bonapartism to a very large extent. Bonapartism drew support from all the socially uprooted elements of every social class. The same applies to fascism. The petty bourgeoisie was disproportionally socially uprooted compared to other social classes in this period. It was being crushed between the forces of organised labour and big capital, which gave rise to reactionary consciousness among the petty bourgeoisie. Reactionary, of course, because in previous social stages of capitalism, or perhaps more so, pre-capitalism, small-scale production, independent producers, were the norm. Appealing to the petty bourgeoisie. The proletariat, in this period, was relatively socially rooted, with the exception of the unemployed. As were Catholics, whom had Catholic civil infrastructure for support and social security. We therefore see that fascism drew mostly from these groups: the petty bourgeoisie, the unemployed, protestants, and unaffiliated workers (but also from other classes). This also gave fascism an almost opportunistic character, it had to manoeuvre between the various sectional and class interests of the various social classes it attracted. So fascism, in its initial stages, is said to be very 'radical' (radical used in mainstream or bourgeois scholarship is implicitly referring to petty bourgeois reaction). As fascism realises it needs to propel itself to power via existing conservative establishment, it begins courting the haute bourgeoisie, and 'moderates', or in fact annuls, its reactionary programme. Once they are in power, however, this reactionary programme resurfaces in the form of destructive reactionary romantic nationalist fantasies. For instance, lebensraum (I'll circle back to that after this sentence). The Nazis had this idea of corporatism, of class collaboration between capital and labour, of organising production on the basis of collaborative organs, very similar to guild organisations. In addition, it had the romantic nationalist fantasy that the Germanic people was a pure blooded people, volk, tied to its land, which expressed itself in the fantasy of establishing idyllic peasant colonies based on traditional Germanic values (woman as childbearer of course, man as head of the household, children being raised as 'soldiers' -- literally and/or figuratively -- or caretakers so to say, serving the Reich). This is strikingly similar to petty bourgeois socialism, a form of reactionary socialism described by Marx and Engels.

Petty bourgeois socialism:

"In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture."

Finally, reactionary ideology looks backward in time. This is central to fascism, and its palingenetic ultranationalist basis.

[Tjis]

Considering it's been about 70 years since the heyday of fascism in Europe, and there's still all this capitalism around, it's just wrong to consider fascism as something that happens with the decay of capitalism. This is a third period stalinist concept, when the comintern still believed capitalism was finally destroying itself during the 1930s and world communism was soon to come. This was the kind of mentality that led the comintern to advice the KPD to fight the SPD primarily, and not the nazis, because the nazis were just the final death throws of capitalism and would pass, after which either the KPD or SPD would be able to take over. As we all know, things didn't work out so well.

[Rafiq]

Considering it's been about 70 years since the heyday of fascism in Europe, and there's still all this capitalism around, it's just wrong to consider fascism as something that happens with the decay of capitalism. This is a third period stalinist concept, when the comintern still believed capitalism was finally destroying itself during the 1930s and world communism was soon to come. This was the kind of mentality that led the comintern to advice the KPD to fight the SPD primarily, and not the nazis, because the nazis were just the final death throws of capitalism and would pass, after which either the KPD or SPD would be able to take over. As we all know, things didn't work out so well.

What we Communists should pay more attention to is: Fascism might just be bourgeois democracy in decay, or what - I think Benjamin (could be someone else) calls alternative modernity.

We will have to see how things pan out in China. Presently I think that China's fate, or ability to withstand crisis, is pivotal to the fate of capitalism or bourgeois democracy in the west.

[RedMaterialist]

Marx on the relation of the petit-bourgeois to big capital and the working class:


...While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction — on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.

CM, German or "True Socialism"

It must be one of the great ironies of history that 75 yrs later it was in Germany that this "true socialism" came to its greatest power under the name of fascism and National Socialism.

[RedMaterialist]

Considering it's been about 70 years since the heyday of fascism in Europe, and there's still all this capitalism around, it's just wrong to consider fascism as something that happens with the decay of capitalism..

I think fascism happens not with the decay of capitalism, but with its enormous success and the resulting expansion of the working class. Fascism (or "True Socialism" as Marx described a similar phenomenon in 19th century Germany) is the reactionary attack on both international capital and the international working class by the petty-bourgeoisie who see both forces destroying its own existence.

The small business - middle class is now almost non-existent having been swallowed by world monopoly capital. Fascism now exists primarily in the minds of the Tea Party in the US who want to destroy both "crony" capitalism and socialism. But with Islamophobia and the "Bonapartist" style of Trump politics, a reemergence of fascism is easily possible. In order to preserve the true, pure, exceptional America, Trump (his paternal grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, was a German immigrant) is wiling to torture Muslims, imprison socialists and return economic power to the middle class.

I personally don't think its going to happen: Trump is the farce to Hitler's tragedy. But, who knows?

What should communists do? Show up at Trump rallies with "Communists Against the Fascist Trump" signs; donate to Bernie Sanders?

[Ricemilk]

Stretching the scope of teh thread perhaps, but IMO donating to Sanders will mostly help recuperate the Democratic Party and its central work of propaganda (the illusion of electoral choice). Even a tactical voter should probably fear to tread in waters to the right of Jill Stein at worst.

[Luís Henrique]

I have heard that fascism is petty bourgeois reaction at the decay of capitalism. What exactly is the petty bourgeoisie'is role in a society under a fascist system and how does it exactly fulfill their reactionary fantasies?

The petty bourgeoisie has not coherent program for society; its "reaction" consequently cannot be anything else but fantasies. For this reason, it makes no sence to suppose a petty bourgeois society as opposed to capitalism and socialism.

Consequently, if we stick with the (quite problematic) definition - fascism as "petty bourgeois reaction at the decay of capitalism" - then there can be no such thing as a fascist society. A "fascist society" is a capitalist society, managed by a particular kind of government, in which the bourgeoisie, not the petty bourgeoisie, is the ruling class. As such, it cannot fulfill the reactionary fantasies of the petty bourgeoisie.

It is more productive to think of the role of the petty bourgeoisie in a fascist movement, as opposed to a fascist government; and fascism changes a lot when it makes its Machtgreifung.

I would recommend Nikos Poulantzas' Fascism and Dictatorship, which makes a real good job of dissecting German and Italian brands of fascism, both as oppositionist movements and as established government.

Luís Henrique