Fascism and Dictatorship

Nicos Poulantzas

Description

A compelling analysis of fascism, replete with insights into the authoritarian movements and states of our time
The resurgence of the far right across Europe and the emergence of the "alt-right" in the US have put the question of fascism urgently back on the agenda. For those trying to understand these forms of politics, there is no better place to start than Fascism and Dictatorship, the unrivalled Marxist study of German and Italian fascism. It carefully distinguishes between fascism as a mass movement before the seizure of power and what it becomes as an entrenched machinery of dictatorship. It compares the distinct class components of the counterrevolutionary blocs mobilised by fascism in Germany and Italy; analyses the changing relations between the petty bourgeoisie and big capital in the evolution of fascism; discusses the structures of the fascist state itself, as an emergency regime for the defence of capital; and provides a sustained and documented criticism of official Comintern attitudes and policies towards fascism in the fateful years after the Versailles settlement. Fascism and Dictatorship represents a challenging synthesis of factual evidence and conceptual analysis, a standard bearer of what Marxist political theory should be.

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Critical Theory
• Movements
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Comparative politics
• Nazi Germany
• History of Europe
• Fascism
• Dictatorship

Informations

• Publié par: Verso
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786635822
• Langue: English

Extrait

Fascism and Dictatorship
Fascism and Dictatorship
The Third International and the Problem of Fascism
Nicos Poulantzas
Foreword by Dylan Riley
Translated from the French by Judith White Translation editors Jennifer and Timothy O’Hagan
This edition published by Verso 2018
New Left Books edition first published 1974
First published as Fascisme et dictature by François Maspero 1970
© François Maspero 1970
© New Left Books 1974
© Verso 1979, 2018
Foreword © Dylan Riley 2018
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-581-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-582-2 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-583-9 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Foreword by Dylan Riley
Introduction
PART ONE: THE PERIOD OF FASCISM
1. Imperialism and Fascism. Monopoly Capitalism and the Imperialist Chain
2. The German and Italian Links of the Chain
I. Germany
II. Italy
3. The Period of Fascism and the Third International
I. The Comintern’s general view and its changes of course: the problem of the period and steps in the class struggle
II. Immediate effects on the Comintern’s analysis of fascism
4. Conclusion: the Transition to Monopoly Capitalism, and ‘Economic Crisis’
PART TWO: FASCISM AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE
1. The Political Crisis: Fascism and the Exceptional State
I. The problem and the Comintern
II. Thalheimer, Gramsci, Trotsky
III. The analytical framework: political crisis, class struggle and the institutional system
2. The Growth of Fascism
PART THREE: FASCISM AND THE DOMINANT CLASSES
1. General Propositions
I. Contradictions between dominant classes and dominant fractions of classes
II. The crisis of hegemony
III. Modifications in hegemony
IV. The breaking of representational ties, and the political parties
V. The ideological crisis
VI. The offensive by big capital and the power bloc
a. On attack and defence
b. The steps in the process
VII. The fascist parties, fascism and the dominant classes and class fractions; domination, hegemony and the ruling class: the relative autonomy of fascism
2. Germany
I. The economic contradictions
II. Big and medium capital: was fascism ‘economically retrograde’?
III. The crisis and the politico-ideological process
IV. The Nazi Party, Nazism and the dominant classes and class fractions; hegemony and the ruling class
3. Italy
I. The economic contradictions
II. Big capital and landowners
III. The crisis and the politico-ideological process
IV. The fascist party, fascism and the dominant classes and class fractions; hegemony and the ruling class
PART FOUR: FASCISM AND THE WORKING CLASS
1. General Propositions
I. Steps and characteristics of the ‘process of defeat’ and the working-class defensive
II. Forms of the ideological crisis: the crisis of the revolutionary organizations
III. Social Democracy: class nature and function, policy, and the thesis of ‘social fascism’
IV. The Communist Parties and their policy: the turns of the Comintern and the strategy of alliances
V. The fascist organizations, fascism and the working class; the condition of the working class under fascism
2. Germany
I. The process of defeat, the defensive and the politico-ideological crisis
II. German social democracy
III. The German Communist Party (KPD)
IV. National Socialism and the working class
a. The Nazi organizations and the working class
b. The condition of the working class under Nazism; the questions of the fascist trade unions
3. Italy
I. The process of defeat and the defensive
II. The politico-ideological crisis: Sorel and revolutionary syndicalism
III. Italian social democracy and the Maximalists
IV. The Italian Communist Party (PCI)
a. The Bordiga tendency and party policy
b. Gramsci and the workers’ councils: the Comintern, the trade-union question and the problem of the ‘union-party’ relation
V. Fascism and the working class
a. Fascist organizations and the working class
b. The condition of the working class under fascism: the CGL and the fascist trade unionists
Appendix: The USSR and the Comintern
PART FIVE: FASCISM AND THE PETTY BOURGEOISIE
1. The Class Nature of the Petty Bourgeoisie and Petty-bourgeois Ideology
2. General Propositions
I. Monopoly Capitalism and the petty bourgeoisie: its economic situation
II. The political crisis and the petty bourgeoisie as a social force; the fascist parties and the interests of the petty bourgeoisie
III. The ideological crisis and ‘fascist ideology’: Imperialist ideology and petty-bourgeois ideology
IV. The condition of the petty bourgeoisie under fascism
3. Germany
4. Italy
PART SIX: FASCISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE
1. Classes in the Countryside
2. General Propositions
I. The economic situation in the countryside
II. The politico-ideological crisis
III. The fascist parties, fascism and the peasant classes: town and countryside
IV. Monopoly capitalism and the countryside: the condition of the peasant classes under fascism
3. Germany
4. Italy
PART SEVEN: THE FASCIST STATE
1. The State Apparatus and the Ideological Apparatuses
I. Gramsci
II. Ideological apparatuses as State apparatuses
III. Branches of the repressive State apparatus; characteristics of the ideological State apparatuses
2. The Exceptional State and the Fascist State: Type of State, Form of State and Form of Regime
3. General Propositions on the Exceptional State
I. Forms of State Intervention
II. Modification in the relations between the repressive apparatus and the ideological apparatuses
III. The displacement of the dominant branch or apparatus
IV. Modifications in the juridical system: regulation and limits
V. Significance of modifications in the electoral principle; on the single-party system
VI. The extent of bureaucratization
VII. Centralism and internal contradictions: parallel networks and transmission belts
4. General Propositions on the Fascist State as a Form of Exceptional Regime
I. The established system
II. The rise of fascism within the state apparatuses
5. Germany
I. The rise of fascism
II. The established system
6. Italy
I. The rise of fascism
II. The established system
Notes
Conclusion
Index
Foreword
Dylan Riley
FASCISM AND DICTATORSHIP IN CONTEXT
Why would a Greek Communist (Poulantzas had joined the KKE as a student in Paris) write a long and difficult book about inter-war fascism in the heady days of the late sixties? 1 To answer this question requires placing the work at the intersection of two major ‘external’ historical events, and Poulantzas’s own intellectual development. Fascism and Dictatorship was written in the aftermath of the 1967 military coup in Greece, and the student uprising of May 1968 in Paris. While the coup prompted him to carefully specify a typology of authoritarian regimes in reaction to what he saw as the erroneous but widely held view on the Greek Left that the regime was fascist, the May events brought home the urgency of an explicit treatment of revolutionary strategy. 2
Fascism and Dictatorship , in addition to its connection to the conjuncture of the late sixties, must also be understood in relationship to its author’s intellectual biography. Following his legal training, Poulantzas’s initial project was to blend existentialism with the philosophy of law. It was only in the later sixties that he emerged as a theorist of the State, with the publication of Political Power and Social Classes . In this text, Poulantzas dealt with fascism in the context of some extremely interesting, but highly abstract, remarks on the concept of ‘totalitarianism’. However, its main thrust was to establish the ‘Fundamental Characteristics of the Capitalist State’, which Poulantzas treated in an openly functionalist way, arguing that all capitalist States had the dual task of preventing the political organization of the dominated classes, and of organizing the dominant class. 3 In part because of his ambition to identify the common features of all these States, Poulantzas neglected the problem of explaining their different forms. In particular, he never posed the question of the conditions under which capitalist societies might be ruled through dictatorship or democracy, to paraphrase Barrington Moore. Fascism and Dictatorship attempted to address part of this problem: to explain the conditions under which capitalist classes might abandon parliamentary procedures and embrace dictatorship.
FASCISM AND DICTATORSHIP: THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND THE PROBLEM OF FASCISM (THE ARGUMENT)
Poulantzas’s book ha