Victoribus Spolia wrote:I know that was the subtitle of his work and that that the resource needs of the Bourgeois manufacturing class would lead to colonial expansionism under Lenin's thought, but I have also heard said that the Leninists viewed Fascism as a final stage or final blow-back from a dying capitalism; whereas, it seems imperialism was viewed as the "highest stage" in the sense of a "pinnacle" rather than a "final" stage in a life cycle.
Perhaps you can clarify for me?
The two main types of Leninists to come after Lenin were the Marxist-Leninists (Stalinists); and the Bolshevik-Leninists (Trotskyists).
They both have different views of the above, though the former ends up quietly reconciling with the latter in terms of fascism after its theories collapse.
In the Stalinist scheme of things, fascism was a general orientation that capitalism was going into. Thus a social-democrat, way further left than British Labour or the American Democratic Party, was a "social-fascist." Stalin explained as the Cold War began heating up and he reverted to the original theory (World War II having caused an alliance that had temporarily violated the general theory):
Stalin wrote:Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie.
This goes partially toward Stalin's conception that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were incorrect and that socialism could be created within one country. Because of this, alliances with the bourgeoisie of other countries were permissible leading to the
Popular Front strategy of foreign relations.
A Trotskyist, on the other hand, holds that socialism—being a dialectical concept—has to emerge as an antithesis to capitalism, which is a world country. Which is to say, one can have a workers' state in one country alone, but socialism itself can only be worldwide.
Because of this, there was no toleration of alliances with the bourgeoisie of other countries as they were impeding (not helping to protect) socialism to be grown in any area. This led to the formation of a more particular
United Front strategy in which only revolutionary elements should be fought alongside.
This is important in that, for Stalin, Social-Democrats were enemies that needed to be wiped out as they were competition for an already established socialist state that was in existence (as were some communist parties. Stalin ordered the Chinese communists to surrender to Kang-Khi-Chek to be killed; and lines of diverging communists in the Spanish Civil War were taken out and the ground conceded to Franco); while for the Trotskyists the Social-Democrats were a political orientation that could be organically liquidated by simple virtue of the communists being correct that would help to build socialism throughout the world if they were given the truth of the matter and convinced to see the correctness of Marx's line:
Trotsky wrote:But the truth is that what helped most of all to weld together social democracy was the wrong policy of the Communist Party, which found its highest generalization in the absurd theory of social fascism. To measure the real resistance of the social democratic ranks, a different measuring instrument is required, that is, a correct Communist tactic. With this condition -- and it is not a small condition -- the degree of internal unity of the social democracy can be revealed in a comparatively brief period.
...If the Communist Party, in spite of the exceptionally favorable circumstances, has proved powerless seriously to shake the structure of the social democracy with the aid of the formula of "social fascism", then real fascism now threatens this structure, no longer with wordy formulae of so-called radicalism, but with the chemical formulas of explosives. No matter how true it is that the social democracy by its whole policy prepared the blossoming of fascism, it is no less true that fascism comes forward as a deadly threat primarily to that same social democracy, all of whose magnificence is inextricably bound with parliamentary-democratic-pacifist forms and methods of government...
The policy of a united front of the workers against fascism flows from this situation. It opens up tremendous possibilities to the Communist Party. A condition for success, however, is the rejection of the theory and practice of "social fascism", the harm of which becomes a positive measure under the present circumstances.
The social crisis will inevitably produce deep cleavages within the social democracy. The radicalization of the masses will affect the social democrats. We will inevitably have to make agreements with various social-democratic organizations and factions against fascism, putting definite conditions in this connection to the leaders, before the eyes of the masses.... We must return from the empty official phrase about the united front to the policy of the united front as it was formulated by Lenin and always applied by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Victoribus Spolia wrote:This source seems to see Lenin as arguing that fascism was the final state of imperialism:
This appears to me to be in error. Perhaps it was merely an editing error where it should have read "Leninist" instead of "Lenin."
But Lenin had been dead for seven years before Mussolini published his
Doctrine of Fascism.
Though there was a fascist moment before that, I haven't seen anybody outside of Italy defining it.
Within Italy, the marxist Gramsci was bravely standing up to it. He defined it:
Gramsci wrote:Fascism is a spontaneous swarm of reactionary energies that coalesce, dissolve and then reassemble, following the official leaders only when their orders correspond to the inner nature of the movement. This is what it is, regardless of the speeches of Mussolini, the statements of Pasella, and the war cries of all the idealists in the world.
To launch, or join, a movement of popular resistance – while setting in advance limits to its expansion – is the gravest tactical error one could commit in this moment.
It is vital not to create illusions among the popular masses, who suffer cruelly. Their miserable living conditions incline them to delusions – to the belief that they can alleviate their pain simply by shifting their position. They must not be encouraged to believe that a little effort will be enough to save them from the dangers that hang over all working people today.
They must understand – they must be compelled to understand – that today the proletariat does not only confront private associations, but it confronts the entire state apparatus: with its police force, its courts, and its newspapers that manipulate public opinion according to the desires of the government and the capitalists.
Gramsci correctly characterized fascism as coming from class tensions; largely from the middle classes of the petite-bourgousie having conflicting interests with the haute-bourgousie; and able to make an alliance with rural working people that felt that the urban proletariat were cafe-drinking elitists.
Tragically, for himself if nothing else, he mistakenly thought that these two groups could not reconcile themselves and fascism would collapse upon its birth.
Gramsci wrote:The ruthless offensive against the class organs of the proletariat has served the capitalists well. In the course of a year they've seen all the apparatus of the socialist unions smashed and rendered impotent.
However, this offensive has also had another effect. It is clear that the escalating violence has provoked a widespread hostility towards fascism among the middle and working classes.
...In reality the ‘crisis’ of fascism is not new. It has always existed. Once the contingent reasons that maintained the unity of these anti-proletarian groups ceased, it was inevitable that their latent disagreements would quickly flare up. The crisis, therefore, is nothing other than the clarification of pre-existing tendencies.
Ten years later, Trotsky explained how this alliance between antagonistic classes were held together:
Trotsky wrote:The petty bourgeois is hostile to the idea of development, for development goes immutably against him; progress has brought him nothing except irredeemable debts. National Socialism rejects not only Marxism but Darwinism. The Nazis curse materialism because the victories of technology over nature have signified the triumph of large capital over small. The leaders of the movement are liquidating “intellectualism” because they themselves possess second- and third-rate intellects, and above all because their historic role does not permit them to pursue a single thought to its conclusion. The petty bourgeois needs a higher authority, which stands above matter and above history, and which is safeguarded from competition, inflation, crisis, and the auction block. To evolution, materialist thought, and rationalism – of the twentieth, nineteenth, and eighteenth centuries – is counterposed in his mind national idealism as the source of heroic inspiration. Hitler’s nation is the mythological shadow of the petty bourgeoisie itself, a pathetic delirium of a thousand-year Reich.
In order to raise it above history, the nation is given the support of the race. History is viewed as the emanation of the race. The qualities of the race are construed without relation to changing social conditions. Rejecting “economic thought” as base, National Socialism descends a stage lower: from economic materialism it appeals to zoologic materialism.
The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas. In order to create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to borrow at second hand the ideas of racism from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4], a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had borrowed largely from the Marxist theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of union among German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of racism standing.
The immense poverty of National Socialist philosophy did not, of course, hinder the academic sciences from entering Hitler’s wake with all sails unfurled, once his victory was sufficiently plain. For the majority of the professorial rabble, the years of the Weimar regime were periods of riot and alarm. Historians, economists, jurists, and philosophers were lost in guesswork as to which of the contending criteria of truth was right that is, which of the camps would turn out in the end the master of the situation. The fascist dictatorship eliminates the doubts of the Fausts and the vacillations of the Hamlets of the university rostrums. Coming out of the twilight of parliamentary relativity, knowledge once again enters into the kingdom of absolutes. Einstein has been obliged to pitch his tent outside the boundaries of Germany.
On the plane of politics, racism is a vapid and bombastic variety of chauvinism in alliance with phrenology. As the ruined nobility sought solace in the gentility of its blood, so the pauperized petty bourgeoisie befuddles itself with fairy tales concerning the special superiorities of its race. Worthy of attention is the fact that the leaders of National Socialism are not native Germans but interlopers from Austria, like Hitler himself, from the former Baltic provinces of the Czar’s empire, like Rosenberg; and from colonial countries, like Hess, who is Hitler’s present alternate for the party leadership. [5] A barbarous din of nationalisms on the frontiers of civilization was required in order to instill into its “leaders” those ideas which later found response in the hearts of the most barbarous classes in Germany.
Personality and class – liberalism and Marxism – are evil. The nation – is good.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!