WALTER Benjamin, the German philosopher who was himself a victim of fascism, had linked the ascendancy of fascism to the failed proletarian revolutions that had preceded it. He had of course Germany in mind, where, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, there had been several attempts to effect a similar revolution. These attempts had failed, leaving the proletariat exhausted, and divided in its loyalty between the Communists and the Social Democrats, who in turn had been rendered irreconcilable by the spilling of the blood of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and many others under the latter’s rule. All this made it easier, when the economic crisis of the 1930s erupted, for the fascists to seize power on the basis of the support provided by monopoly capital, especially a new stratum of monopoly capital that had sprung up.

　　Benjamin’s theoretical proposition was important because it saw fascism as a response not to an advancing proletariat, but to a proletariat whose advance had been stalled; fascism was to prevent any revival of the proletarian advance that could occur in the context of the economic crisis which had caused large-scale unemployment and distress.

　　The current upsurge of neo-fascism that is visible in many countries of the world, from India to Hungary, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany and the United States, has not been preceded of course by any failed proletarian revolutions; nonetheless the condition for the ascendancy of fascism that Benjamin had mentioned, namely a weakening of the working class, is fulfilled in the present context as well, though it is brought about by an altogether different factor, namely, the operation of the neo-liberal regime.

　　Neo-liberalism adversely affects the strength of the working class in at least three different ways. First, while the working class still remains organised along national lines, capital has become globalised; we have in effect therefore the working class of a nation facing capital that is international, because of which the former suffers a loss in its striking power. Militancy on its part, countered with the threat by capital that it would relocate production elsewhere, necessarily remains circumscribed. The fact that in the United States the real wages of an average male labourer in 2011 was it only amounts to suggesting that such an economy is far more vulnerable to the onslaught of neo-fascism.

　　It is not just that fascism which Georgi Dimitrov had characterised at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most revanchist and reactionary sections of finance capital” crushes trade unions, and arrests and persecutes trade unionists, as Bishop Martin Niemoller’s famous remark had made clear; but the ascendancy of fascism, when other conditions for such ascendancy, such as the existence of an economic crisis, are present, is facilitated by the absence or enfeeblement of trade unions.

　　The struggle against a neo-fascist State requires therefore not just a political strategy of alliances, but also a strategy for the revival of working class strength; the coordination between workers and peasants, as is happening in India at present, becomes a crucial step towards such a revival.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  Wei Xiaoxue

　　From: https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2024/0331_pd/working-class-and-ascendancy-neo-fascism（2024-3-31）