There has been written much about the history of fascist movements; indeed, libraries and archives bilge-out studies about fascism. Here I will concentrate on bringing to the fore a notion of fascism as a typical phenomenon for capitalist society in crisis: specifically, as a means for the ruling classes to reproduce capitalist society and overcome problems of valorization. This notion about fascism is firmly embedded in the thoughts of the Italian-German Marxist Johannes Agnoli. Furthermore, I will consider this notion of fascism in connection with Raya Dunayevskaya’s notion of what is needed to counter the intolerable conditions for human beings in capitalist society and her critique of the despotic form in capitalist society.

Regarding the interwovenness of fascism with capitalism Max Horkheimer, a clear (and for us relevant) statement in his September 1939 article “Jews and Europe”: “Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.”

It is no exaggeration to say that in fascism we meet the most intolerable and dehumanized conditions for human beings. Dunayevskaya stated that “The question is what to do about it, and that ‘doing’ is not limited to actions but extends to thought, to a strategy flowing from a philosophy which recognizes the social system which has brought these intolerable conditions about.” This is in the spirit of what Marx formulated in the eleventh Feuerbach thesis: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, the point, however, is to change it.”

The essence of this notion of philosophy is that thought and doing are dialectically so connected that they form a methodological tool in theory and practice, as a philosophy of revolution for getting grip on capitalist society in order to build up and strengthen collective resistance to exploitation, alienation, and all other forms of dehumanization, especially the destruction of the living conditions for humanity.

This methodological tool we need even more when we look to present-day capitalist society, where we do not see only rising fascism but also already the consolidated fascism of the Trump government.

In this context it is useful to take notice of notions as to fascism brought to the fore by Agnoli (1925-2003). He was a member of a publishing collective which wrote an introduction to the publication of Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s “Economics and Class Structure of German Fascism”. In this Introduction we read that “What remains fundamental to fascism is what applies to every form of capitalist-organized reproduction of society as a whole: that the requirements of capital valorization prevail.” And pointing to Nazism in Germany it continues, “The inability to pave an alternative path for capital valorization led to the failure of the bourgeois-parliamentary politics of the final phase of the Weimar republic in Germany [1918/1933], as well as all attempts at a bourgeois opposition to fascism.” (In: Johannes Agnoli, Collected Works 4, Faschismus ohne Revision [Fascism without Revision], p. 103. Freiburg: Ça ira Verlag 1997)

In this Introduction we read further (p. 111) that,

Overall, the social function of fascism can be summarized as imperialist expansion by military means on the basis of a double guarantee for the capitalist system: the guarantee of its economic reproduction under optimal conditions for capital, insofar as fascism prevents the working class even from engaging in reformist struggles over the wage and socio-political conditions of its exploitation; and the guarantee of its political reproduction, which is endangered by economic development, insofar as fascism destroys the workers’ movement as a whole and thus preemptively makes its revolutionary struggle against the entire system of surplus-value production impossible through terrorist means.

These notions, already written some time ago in the 1960s and 1970s, include important points which can contribute to our understanding of fascism in our time, as phenomenon of capitalist society in crisis.

In the first place, when Agnoli is writing about “capitalist-organized reproduction of society as a whole”, this means that such a reproduction of society as a whole comprises more as pure economic relations. That is why Agnoli rejects strongly the so-called Dimitroff thesis, the central theoretical notion of fascism laid down by the Third International and the orthodox communist parties which conceived of fascism in pure economic terms because of holding that “The fascist state power is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialistic elements of finance capital”. (See Faschismus ohne Revision, p. 8)

So, we take issue with this notion of fascism which explains it as a phenomenon derived only out of economic causes.

Secondly, with reference to the failure of “all attempts at a bourgeois opposition to fascism”, can trace this failure as emanating from practical and theoretical conformism to capitalism. Besides the capitalists and their apologetic ideologists, we see nowadays a strong growing tendency within social democratic and green parties to this conformism. An alarming example is the going along with the crazy arms race in the countries of the European Union and Great Britain. This increasingly strengthens the political and ideological domains which were already creating a breeding ground for rising right wing populism, authoritarian states and fascism.

Thirdly, regarding the reference to imperialist expansion by military means by fascism, we can see that in the contemporary world this is a question of the day. Above all in Europe we see a hysterically ideological bombardment by the ruling classes, calling for us to be military strong and “to be prepared for war”.

Fourthly, the reference to terrorist means. Fascism is not only an open terrorist, imperialistic dictatorship directed to the outside but also physically and ideologically directed against the working class and social movements which are engaged in a struggle for the improvement of human conditions in capitalist society and are struggling for a humanistic alternative for barbaric capitalism.

Agnoli and his co-editors suggest that a comprehensive theory of fascism “is therefore faced with the major problem that, depending on the historical state of accumulation on the one hand and class struggles on the other, the connection between capital movement and class movement must first be concretely identified.” (p. 112)

For us, Marxist-Humanists, it is interesting in this context to look closer to Dunayevskaya’s notion of the despotic form in capitalist society.

In Marxism and Freedom, p.92, she writes that “The attempt to control cooperative labor within capitalist confines must of necessity assume a despotic form. Planned despotism arises out of the antagonistic relationship between the workers, on the one hand, and the capitalist and his bureaucracy on the other hand.” She continues: that “The opposition is between the nature of the cooperative form of labor and the capitalistic form of value production.” The fragmentation of man by the machine in capitalist society dehumanizes man “just when the technical needs of the machine itself demand variation in labor, fluidity, and mobility—all rounded, fully developed human beings using all of their human talents, both natural and acquired”.

Dunayevskaya, in her time, was writing about the potential danger of fascism in the right-wing populism of Goldwater and his supporters “…that fascism can arise in ‘democratic’ America, that such a phenomenon must be fought at its root— its state-capitalist root with its concomitant administrative mentality— and this can be done only by uniting white labor and Negro freedom fighters with the need to construct a new social order.” (RD Archives p.3581) Importantly, she conceives of the fundamental resistance to fascism as more than class-based opposition. I think that this notion is essential and basic when we try concretely to identify the connection between capital movement and class movement within the process of analyzing fascism as a specific answer to reproduction problems of capitalist society as a whole.

We have to be aware and to see that this “specific answer” takes place within historical conditions (see, for understanding this present-day process, Kevin Anderson’s article “The Trumpist Coup, Fascism U.S.-Style in an Era of Capitalist Decline, and Some Loci of Resistance”, also accepted as statement of IMHO. This article substantiates by pointing to the rising tendencies to and realization of fascism in the USA the notion “Fascism U.S.-Style”).

The Statement of the Steering Committee of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization, April 17, 2016, “Theoretical and Practical Perspectives for Overcoming Capitalism,” declares:

“For Marxist-Humanists, any new phenomenon, no matter how regressive or progressive, must be grasped by returning to, and remaining firmly rooted in, the body of ideas of Marxist-Humanism. This body of ideas is neither mere ‘background’ nor merely of historical interest. It is instead the determinant for developing our political, philosophical, and organizational perspectives for today”.