Fascism, as Trotsky explained, was not the result of blind forces, fate or mass hysteria. Nor was it a local phenomenon, restricted in place and time to a certain part of the early 20th century. Rather it was a product of ideological, political and economic relations between the classes, as capitalism was precipitated into a very deep structural crisis. Fascism is something which can be analysed, mobilised against and beaten. To do that the left needs a very precise analysis; one of the problems on the left is that there is no real understanding of what fascism actually is, and the term 'fascist' is used as a catch-all phrase to describe all kinds of reactionaries. This dissolves and undermines any precise analysis.
Fascism is not just reaction; it means civil war, mass slaughter and the physical elimination of whole social groups. 'Midnight of the century' was not really a strong enough phrase to describe the period unleashed by the 1933 victory of German fascism.
In the depths of profound crisis, big capital cannot afford to accommodate the workers' movement, democratic rights and parliamentary democracy. But at the same time it cannot impose its will arbitrarily - it is a small class and it needs support.
Fascism is a movement financed by big capital, but which is rooted in the impoverished and enraged middle class, the petty bourgeoisie - richer peasants, small business people, artisans, civil servants, bureaucrats, managers and sections of the officer caste. This layer of society is numerically very large, and gives the fascist movement its core activist base.
However, the example of the German SA - the Brownshirt storm troopers - shows that the petty bourgeois core of the movement mobilises demoralised and downtrodden sections of the working class, especially the unemployed.
The fascist movement often uses demagogic anti-capitalist phrases
to build itself a base in these poorer layers of society; it is therefore essentially a plebeian movement in its social base: but when it comes to power, despite its rhetoric and plebeian origins, its leadership forms a specific form of capitalist rule.
Right from the beginning it was the industrial capitalists who first backed the fascists - not the banks or light industry. Rather it was the owners of the steel industry, heavy engineering, armaments, chemicals and so on who were the core of the fascist backers in the bourgeoisie. It was these elements who had to destroy working class power in their factories in periods of deep crisis.
From the 1920s these big capitalist funded goon squads -embryonic fascist bands - to intimidate the workers. However the employers never imagined that these people would take over control of society; they had nothing but contempt for the roughnecks and hooligans whose fists and boots they used against union activists and shop-floor militants. So in the first instance, as the crisis deepened, the bourgeoisie turned towards a political centralisation and strengthening of the existing state apparatus - in other words a move towards a 'strong state'. This involved laws against trade unions, attacks on democratic rights, using the police to contain the mass movement - the fascist bands were only an auxiliary at this stage.
When this failed they moved towards a more authoritarian type of government, which Trotsky describes as Bonapartism. This is a government which appears to stand 'above society', and rules by decree. In Germany, Brüning, von Papen and von Schleicher were the leaders of Bonapartist governments.
It's only when even this fails that the capitalists realise they can no longer rely on the existing state apparatus and turn towards fascism as a solution. Hitler, for his part, understood very well the importance of gaining support among sections of big capital. He stated "You have to understand what it means to have a 1000 agitators, with 1000 new cars, capable of roving all over Germany and doing 100,000 meetings a year. You have to understand what it means to produce millions of newspapers and leaflets each year."
Of course it is no secret where the Nazis got the material resources to do all this. The bourgeoisie and big business finance it and use it for their purposes, but do not create fascism; eventually however they see it as a God-send to resolve the crisis of their system. One of the difficulties for Hitler in his dealings with the 'captains of industry' on whom he was financially dependent was that in order to mobilise his plebeian base in a period of crisis, he was compelled to use anti-capitalist demagogy. It took a lot of skill in private meetings on Hitler's
part to reassure his capitalist backers that they could take this demagogy with a pinch of salt.
Once the Nazis were in power Hitler had to deal with those in the Nazi movement, especially in the SA storm troopers, who had taken the anti-capitalist side of Nazi demagogy seriously. That was what the huge 1934 purge of the SA - the 'Night of the Long Knives' - when key SA leaders like Roehm and Strasser were assassinated - was all about. This was part of the whole process of demobilising the Nazi mass movement, especially the street fighters, who were only useful for seizing power, but superfluous, even dangerous, after power had been achieved. It was part of the process of normalisation of fascism towards becoming a straightforward military dictatorship, albeit of a very brutal kind.
How was the fascist movement constructed? How could they build such a big movement from such diverse forces?
One can say that the fascists were brilliant at populist demagogy. But they rarely wrote down an overall programme. They swivelled and adjusted their propaganda, depending on who they were addressing. It is thus very difficult to find a systematic ideology in fascist movements. Generally the fascists utilise the most reactionary common ideas to be found in any society. Thus for example in Germany anti-semitic racism was widespread, so Hitler utilised anti-Jewish demagogy. However in Italy this kind of racism was not widespread, and anti-semitism played no part in Mussolini's movement. In some countries clericalism and monarchism are used; in others fascism can be anti-clerical and anti-monarchist.
Most fascist movements are of course nationalist, xenophobic, racist, militarist - and of course virulently anti-Marxist and anti-Communist. Their social programme combines the bourgeois 'traditional values' of social order and the nuclear family, mixed up with extreme anti-woman patriarchal attitudes. The main slogan advanced by Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels was Honour, work, blood and the flag' - the most reactionary feelings of people looking round for fundamental answers in a period of profound social crisis and upheaval.
On sexuality, the attitude of the fascists was not distinct from many ideas current in all reactionary trends: on homosexuality, for example, the Nazi attitude was fundamentally no different to many in today's Tory Party - except that the Nazis were serious about taking action to repress it.
There is a lot of confusion on the left about the relationship of
fascism to other right-wing military dictatorships, or other right-wing and reactionary movements which use nationalism and racism. The distinctive thing about fascism is the building of a plebeian alliance, a mass movement, to crush the organisations of the working class. This was not fundamentally what General Pinochet did in Chile in the 1970s. Although of course he got support from sections of the middle class, he did not build a mass movement, but carried out a military coup.
So fascism is a very specific type of movement. Equally, the military coup in 1965 in Indonesia, despite slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people, was not fascism. If we put the label 'fascist' on every military dictatorship, then the word starts to lose any specific meaning. Fascism is fundamentally a social movement which culminates in a civil war against the organisations of the working class; it utilises every trick of spurious demagogy and every reactionary theme it can to build its base: once in power it consolidates a capitalist military dictatorship. But in fighting fascism today we have not only the lessons of the 1920s and 1930s to draw upon - in particular the lessons of the failure of the Popular Front and the importance of the tactic of the united front; we also have a much better understanding of the importance of oppressed minorities in society, and the need for the working class to to take the lead in building alliances and uniting the oppressed behind its banner.
As a result of the work and discussions carried forward by the Fourth International since the War, we now have a more precise programme on the struggle of oppressed minorities against fascism than even the best revolutionary militants did in the 1920s and 1930s.