Nothing is cheaper, of course, than to call at the top of your voice for new things. Whether it is new worlds or merely new words one is clamouring for, it is usually because one has failed to master the old.
Yet we must insist on our demand for a new Sociology, of for new Words, at least, which would deliver us from the pressing evil of being utterly unable to describe the most trivial events of our time without implying precisely the opposite of what we intend to convey.
Take the term Revolution. In current Marxian Sociology it is strictly confined to sweeping changes in the economic system. This taboo makes it quite impossible to give anything like an adequate sociological description of an historical earthquake like, e.g., The National Socialist upheaval in Germany. Why?
For the simple reason that it is in the nature of a Fascist convulsion to leave the economic system unchanged. Indeed, it is the very raison d’être of Fascism that it keeps the present economic system going. Nevertheless, it is the most thoroughgoing and complete break in the social system since the great revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even those who regard Fascism as merely “Capitalism without the political smoke-screen of Democracy” ought to be clear in their minds that an economic system without a political façade of some kind or other is, to say the least, a starting sociological novelty. But how on earth can one expect clarity regarding the epochal implications of Fascism if one is not even allowed to call it revolution?
Then there is the “screen” itself. In pseudo-Marxian sociology Democracy is defined as the appropriate political superstructure of Capitalism. This definition implies that universal suffrage and representative institutions based upon it are the corollaries of the capitalist economic system. Democratic governments, old-fashioned Marxians assert, are thus but the Executive Board of capitalists as a class. Clearly the term Democracy used in this fashion is another stumbling-block in the way to an understanding of the Fascist phenomenon. Why?
For the simple reason that Fascism is merely the outcome of the mutual incompatibility of Democracy and Capitalism in our times.
If Democracy were really the appropriate political superstructure of Capitalism, Fascism would never have come into existence. But the opposite is the case. At an earlier stage democratic institutions in Politics, in fact, harmonize with capitalist leadership in Economics. But in a fully-developed industrial society a functional deadlock between Politics and Economics must inevitably arise: Democracy becomes an instrument of working-class influence, while Capitalism remains what it was, the domain of production, carried on under the exclusive responsibility of the capitalist. This incompatibility consists not merely in the fact that opposite principles reign in the one and in the other sphere. Ideological contradictions never actually matter unless they affect a vital part of social reality itself. But it is precisely material reality that is emphatically affected by this contradiction. The great majority of the population, which in Economics stands under the command of the property owners, are now actually or potentially the decisive factor in politics. But the class of the employed can defend themselves against the fateful effects of industrial vicissitudes upon their personal lives only by deliberate political interference with the automatic laws governing in Capitalist markets and currency-systems, interest and wage-rates. They are provoked to this interference as a reaction against the secret capitalist influences trying to pervert the natural functions of political democracy; they are almost invited to do so when, during acute economic depressions, Big Business itself calls on political Democracy to help it in its difficulties; they are literally constrained to do it under fear of destruction, when the actual cessation of industrial activity threatens them with starvation.
Political interference with Economics and economic interference with Politics become the rule. The property-owners endeavour to weaken, to discredit, and to disorganize the political apparatus of Democracy by every means in their power without the faintest regard for the most serious dangers arising for the community as a whole from the paralysis of the functions of regulation and legislation in Politics. Parliaments, consciously or unconsciously, weaken, discredit and disorganize the economic machinery of Capitalism in trying to prevent its self-regulating mechanism from restarting the cycle of production at the cost of hecatombs of human lives. The outcome is a signally defective working of Democracy and a clearly diminished Social Dividend in Capitalism. Their mutual incompatibility results in a very real loss both in terms of political safety and of economic standards for all.
A situation of this sort cannot be long endured by society as a whole. Society reacts against it with a vehemence as great as the peril itself. Nothing short of a total change-over in the basis of the social structure will suffice. The deathly interlocking of Democracy and Capitalism must be resolved if society is to survive. Fascism is that form of revolutionary solution which keeps Capitalism untouched.
Obviously, there is another solution. It is to retain Democracy and abolish Capitalism. This is the Socialist solution. For, just as Capitalism needs Fascist politics as its complement, so Democracy needs Socialist economics as its extension.
Socialism is democratic or it is nothing. It is functional only because it is democratic. For functionalism is but the highest form of Democracy in society as whole. The economics of a genuinely functional society are, therefore, necessarily Socialist. That functional sociology can also be used for Fascist purposes does not contradict this. Anatomy is no less a science of the whole human body because it can be made use of in the amputation of a leg. Nor is physiology any less a study of our normal functions because it may be used by eugenic fanatics in depriving human beings of some of them.
But here again we ought not to put up with the terms in use. In saying that Fascism leaves Capitalism untouched, we did not mean to stress the “untouched.” We ought, in fact, not to exclude wholly the possibility of a Capitalism “reformed,” so as to make it comply with some measure of planning in the process of production, and with some measure of security of tenure for those engaged in this process. In the current terminological jargon this would sound like so much unscientific fiction. For planning and security of employment are (and, in a manner, rightly) regarded as “Socialist” features in industry; it would seem almost a contradiction in terms to conceive of them as possible features of Capitalism under any circumstances whatever. But to think this is another dangerous scholastic fallacy.
In Fascism, Democracy goes and Capitalism remains. Planning and security of tenure could be in principle introduced under Fascism by property-owners as a whole, distributing the risks amongst themselves. The same group of persons own here the factories, plan production, and share the costs of equalized employment among themselves, collectively. Fascism is not, in its nature, incompatible with some sham-reform of Capitalism. Indeed, herein lies perhaps its greatest danger. For it can promise and attempt that “reform” only because the abolition of Democracy opens up the way to an absolute and complete centralization of power in the hands of a small self-interested group, collectively. No amount of camouflage by means of soi-disant functional representation can do away with the fact that even the partial “reform” of the capitalist system in Fascism merely reveals the intrinsic impossibility of introducing any kind of genuine functionalism into a form of society which makes private property-owners into a class of demi-gods – above their fellows. No adherent of the Threefold State1 will doubt for an instant that a human agglomeration in which not only industrial and political but, finally, also intellectual, cultural and spiritual life is short-circuited in a minute group of vested interests is doomed to ruin and ignominy.
But most misleading of all is the terminology under which class-interests and power-issue are often introduced into the discussion of Fascism. With these we will deal next week.2
Last week we tried to define Fascism in a revised Marxian terminology.3 This resulted in the following theses:
Fascism arises out of the mutual incompatibility of Democracy and Capitalism in a fully developed industrial society.
Democracy tends to become the instrument of working-class influence. Capitalism remains the domain in which production is under the sole authority of property-owners. A deadlock is inevitable.
Suddenly society is threatened by a fateful interlocking of its political and its economic functions.
Political interference with Economies, economic interference with Politics becomes the rule. This perversion of functions results in a real loss both of political safety and of economic standards for all.
Either Democracy or Capitalism must go. Fascism is that solution of the deadlock which leaves Capitalism untouched.
The other solution is Socialism. Capitalism goes, Democracy remains.
Socialism is the extension of Democracy to the economic sphere. It is, therefore, essentially functional, Fascism is the opposite. Fascism means the short-circuiting of political, economic, and cultural functions in a minute ruling group of self-interested owners. Such a society cannot in the long run continue to exist.
Current Marxian criticism would, probably, object that this formulation does not do full justice to the theory of class-interests and class-war. Why the fictitious battle between Democracy and Capitalism, since the issue itself is simple and clear? It is not the spectres of Democracy and Capitalism that are fighting each other, but the actual concrete forces of Capital and Labour, or, to put it quite plainly, the property-owning class and the working class. Capitalists are afraid that the workers will introduce Socialism and so they want to do away with the political power of the workers’ parties. The class-war between capitalists and workers is disrupting society. Only one of two solutions is possible. Either the working class rules or the capitalist class. The one means Socialism, the other Capitalism. It is a question of power. Why all this talk about a functional perversion of Democracy and Capitalism, and the establishing of a functional Democracy based on Socialist economics?
Thus the hypothetical Marxian commentator. He might even quote the chapter and verse of Karl Marx himself as a bludgeon. Yet he would be wrong. For his forms of expression indicate a misconstruction of some essential sociological facts and, most probably, also an inadequate understanding of the fundamental philosophic background of Marxism itself.
This philosophical background is well known. It is dialectical. It consists in making use of the thoroughly idealistic Hegelian method in terms of sociological realism. How could this be done? Especially, how in terms of an originally idealistic method could class-war be declared the central fact, and material interests the ultimate driving force in human history? For Marx had not merely discovered the existence of class-war and class-interest. Linguet, Saint-Simon, Lorenz von Stein, and others had done that before him. What he maintained was something quite different. Of all the innumerable facts in society, he asserted that class-war was the central fact. Of all the warring forces in the historical life of mankind, he declared that class-interest was the decisive factor. And, infinitely more important than these statements, he insisted that the future of human society was bound up with the material interests of the industrial working class. He definitely proclaimed the poorest and least educated stratum of society to be the chosen leaders of mankind. This most astounding assertion is the great contribution of Karl Marx to human thought and philosophy. How could Hegel's dialectical method, outside of which his spirit consistently refused to move, lead to this sociological appraisal of the interests of the working-class men? Emphatically it is the answer to this question which must supply us with the right definition of the full content of the Marxian idea of class war as well as of its intrinsic limitations.
Let us re-state the mental background of Marx's social theory in language as little technical as possible.
Human society as a whole stands under the law of development. In this process of development society proceeds to higher and higher forms of its total organization. If society is prevented from following out this law of growth it perishes. But no society actually passes away before it has fully developed all its potentialities. First and foremost amongst these is its faculty of increasing its total production. In production, if anywhere, progress serves the interests of society as a whole. At this point the purely ideal necessity of dialectical progress definitely links up with reality. For the greatest possible development of productive capacity implies the fullest use of the instruments of production actually in existence in society. Every change in the structure of society which either by technical or by organizational methods tend to increase the sum total of the goods produced is, thus, dialectically inevitable. But although “inevitable”, how does it actually come to pass? How are the lifeless means of production caused to move towards higher perfection? Here again an essential link in the Marxian system supervenes. The human element enters. Tools are used, handled, and organized by men. It is the “Ruse of History” to make human beings into the conscious or unconscious instruments of the ultimate ends of mankind. It is class war which makes the inevitable actually happen.
Classes are groups of human beings whose position in relation to the productive process is similar. A change in society as a whole will necessarily affect the position of every group. The material standards of each group depending upon their position in production, any change in the system of production will naturally benefit one or another of them. The group, the interests of which are adversely affected by the change, will try to oppose it. But there will be other groups in society whose interests will be served by the change or who have nothing to lose by it. It is a group of this latter kind which will make the inevitable actually happen. It makes society move in the direction in which the objective historical situation allows it to move. A fuller use of newly discovered possibilities of organizing production in manufacture, and of organizing distribution for ever-widening markets, made bourgeois revolutions irresistible in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was in the general interest of mankind that the owners of machinery should be free to use it just as they wished. Today it is the rationally planned and co-ordinated use of machinery by society as a whole which would most increase production. There is one group in society which has nothing to lose by this change, and that group is the working classes. If the workers wish for this change, their will must prove irresistible. And they must desire it, for society as a whole must decay and perish unless they do so. The human part of the mechanism bringing this about is psychological. When society as a whole suffers, the working class, being under command, must suffer most. They have only their chains to lose; but a world to save. For “The world the proletariat has to win” is but our world saved from destruction.
Thus, the answer to our question is:
Class struggle is a central fact because the development of the means of production lies in the interests of the whole of society and the mechanism of class war assures this development.
Class interests are the ultimate driving force because they are that part of social reality which make the inevitable actually happen.
Only the working class can lead society actually to Socialism, because they are the only group in the productive process who have nothing to lose by this change.
To anybody who reads these statements carefully, one thing must become plain. That is, that Marx never thought of class war or class interest as the ultimate realities. For him the truth of his system depended on the reasons making class war a central fact in history, and on the reasons owing to which class interests actually become an ultimate driving force. Just as Marx refused to join in the view that the dominant position of the medieval church was merely due to self-interested trickery and to the humbugging of the people by the clergy, he also refused to put down economic class-rule to the fiendish egotism of the persons benefiting by it. There is no magic quality in the interests of a group of persons that would cause masses of other people with opposing interests to follow the lead of that group. To postulate such a quality would imply the utterly unscientific attempt to explain history by a miraculously successful fraud. Neither the interests of the ruling classes nor the interests of those whom they rule have anything of this quality of cheap magic. It is not the force of their own interests that makes a group successful. Indeed, the secret of success lies rather in the measure in which the groups are able to represent – by including in their own – the interests of others than themselves. To achieve this inclusion they will, in effect, often have to adapt their own interest to those of the wider groups which they aspire to lead. This is very greatly facilitated by the fact that the greatest part of society has commonly no “interests” in happenings at all. The mass of the smaller middle class and peasantry are more or less uninterested in whether society is Socialist or Capitalist. The one thing they are, and most emphatically, interested in, is that it should be either one or the other. They are inclined to follow the working class if the working class leads toward Socialism and adapts its own interests to theirs in order actually to be able to lead. But the indifferent masses are also prepared to follow the lead of the capitalists if they feel that there is no other way out of the fatal deadlock.
Then Fascism comes in.
The limitations of the theory of class war in Marx are, therefore, the following:
Class war is not an ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is the interest of society as a whole. This interest is served by the maximum development of the means of production. Class interest is effective only in so far as it tends in an objective situation towards a definite solution of the problem of organizing the means of production.
Class interest is a motive power in society only in so far as, in an objective situation, it represents the interests of the whole of society. A class is capable of leadership only as far as its own interests coincide, in a concrete situation, with the interests of the whole, or, as far as it is able to adapt its interests so as to include in them the interests of the others to a sufficient degree.
Class war and class interest enter, more or less, into every historic situation by which the whole of society is affected. But they are only a part or factor of this situation. The essential thing is to understand how and why they enter into the situation.
At present the immediate interests of society as a whole are affected thus:
Democracy and Capitalism, i.e., the existing political and economic system, have reached a deadlock, because they have become the instruments of two different classes of opposing interests. But the threat of disruption comes not from these opposing interests. It comes from the deadlock. The distinction is vital. The forces springing into action in order to avoid the deadlock are infinitely stronger than the forces of the opposing interests which cause the deadlock. Incidentally, this accounts for the cataclysmic vehemence of the social upheavals of our times.
Yet beyond and above these limitations of the idea of class interest one thing emerges with the utmost clarity. This is the real meaning of leadership.
Mankind has come to an impasse. Fascism resolves it at the cost of a moral and material retrogression. Socialism is the way out by an advance towards a Functional Democracy.
A great initiative is needed. Failure or success depends upon the recognition of the central truth that it is not by following their own immediate material interests that the working classes can prove their capacity for leadership, but by adapting their own interests to the interests of the indifferent masses in order to be able to lead society as a whole.
The fullest understanding of the nature of the present crisis is of paramount importance. If a revision of Marxism is necessary for this purpose, the task should neither be shirked nor delayed.