This modified capitalism, brought back to its origin, pre-supposes a return to the autarky of former times... From [the fascist] state, competition is banashed; the prices of all commodities are ffixed by public authority. There is no risk of overproduction or shortage; supply is assured of finding complementary demand, and vice versa.
[Guerin, Fascism and Big Business p.87, 1934]

Fascism & Demagoguery

In the previous post, I quoted passages from Guerin illustrating the violent, intimitating method by which fascism comes to power; the battles it wins are small, and nearly always under conditions that assure success. From this, I argued that the legalism of its rise to power was actually a myth; in reality, fascists have never come to power under conditions where they faced an opposition they could not terrorize. I also argued that the middle classes were not a vanguard of fascism, but rather, a group whose conquest signified fascism's success. Having conquered the middle classes, the fascists have the critical mass of the population they need for establishing a totalitarian state. That doesn't reflect much one way or the other: some of them will be tough to conquer, while others, falling readily, will help the fascists to conquer the rest.

However, there is one field in which the middle class are very helpful to the fascists: demagoguery.

Proletarian socialism aims straight at the heart of capitalism. It wishes to destroy its motive force-the exploitation of labor power and the theft of surplus value. Hence it attacks the capitalist system as a whole, and proposes as a goal the socialization of the means of production. But the middle classes are not the victims of the exploitation of labor power but chiefly of competition and the organization of credit. Hence, when left to themselves, when their anti-capitalism is not given direction by proletarian socialism, they tend to have reactionary aspirations. They do not demand that capitalist development be pushed to its ultimate conclusion, the socialization of the means of production. They want "to roll back the wheel of history. They call for an economy that is not dynamic or progressive but a routine economy. They want the state to regulate economic freedom and activity in order to restrict the competitive capacity of their rivals." They dream of a modified capitalism, freed from the abuses of concentration, credit, and speculation.
[Fascism and Big Business, Guerin, p.46]

This middle class contribution is twofold: first, it gives the fascist demagoguery an ideological foundation; the social agenda of the fascists is actually abandoned, however, once it comes to power, and talk of liquidating the bourgeoisie is replaced with talk of fortifying it with worthy recruits from the middle classes. Second, it comes into play as the fascist economy begins to implode. The efforts to balance the books of the fascist state capitalism become increasingly difficult, because the usual providentiality of the market is no longer in effect. Waste and incompetence are no longer weeded out, since the fascists have accommodated the bourgeoisie with total protection. In the fascist economy, Parkinson's Law runs wild, more so than even under Communist states. The middle class is the body that now has the armed power, since the proletarian is on the shop floor or at the front, and the bourgeoisie lacks the numbers or access to mercenary bands it once enjoyed. It therefore is the last bastion of fascism, and the enforcer in its final days.

Fascism & Lies

It is not terribly bold for either Guerin or me to say that fascism lies about everything, but it is central to understanding the organization. The need for fascist movements to lie springs from two things: one, the fact that it must be different things to different people, and three, the fact that the fascist requires the truth to be a scarce commodity—defended, as it were, by a bodyguard of lies. Access to the truth is the bureaucrat's first line of defense, and it is lost if the truth becomes common knowledge. The fascist movement lies about its own ideology; it characterizes itself as a revolution against capitalism, and a revolution against corruption. Instead, it is a reactive war of industrial managers and their clientele against both the market and anybody in an adversarial relationship. So the demagogues of fascism typically engage in diatribes against the "rotten" bourgeoisie, and "interest slavery." It appeals to Christian conservatives, and to those disgusted by the compassionate idealism of Christianity. It promises to endow the nation with beauty, but confines itself to token projects.¹ Fascism lies about its enemies, because it is driven by hatred of them and the imputation of absurd motives to them.

Fascism & Finance

Fascist regimes are chronically short of cash; they typically turn on banks, essentially taking them hostage. As a permanent outsider caste, the Chinese communities of Southeast Asia, the Indian communities of East Africa, and the Jewish communities of Europe were often consigned to banking activities since it was there that they could objectively appraise the ambitions of the industrial system. In contrast, Jews (for example) were traditionally excluded from industrial management because such enterprises partly or wholly reflected the national ambitions, which Jews were supposed to not share. Not surprisingly, the craving of "Aryan" industrial managers from freedom from accountability for their incompetence or lethargy meant an attack on Jews, and their purging from enterprise (where they had penetrated after 19th century emancipation) or banking, was IN PART a result of the totalitarian desire to evade objective evaluation.

To illustrate this: I would love to go to a job interview in which the personnel manager has a crush on me. She hires me and puts me in a department where it's difficult to evaluate my performance, then contrives to assign all the work I won't do, or can't do, to coworkers. I would like for this process to continue to where I am assigned a managerial position where I sit in a corner office, write in my weblog, and sign reports I don't have the technical proficiency to read. Periodically, vendors take me out to lunch. That would be a nice job, especially if I could take the wife on frequent vacations to Europe and Japan. But that's impossible because employers evaluate me objectively, or even with a measure of hostility. If I could sack all those, and leave behind women who think I look like Michael J Fox, then I might have a shot at paying off the mortgage prematurely, and buying a cabin in the Olympic Peninsula.

Totalitarian economic management plays at capitalism in this way, just as my fantasy allows me to play at being an industrial manager while goofing off. The fascists take over the banks and Aryanize them, destroying in the process the talent and judgment required for productive oversight. Notice in my little daydream, the real work is done by others; presumably, they will demand something in exchange for working, and I cannot be the only man goofing off in the corner office. So the real work is done in Bangalore while the office building (built by guest workers from Mexico) is occupied by idle men scheming against each other. Why men? What sort of fascism releases women from being playthings? Come on here, people! I'm a dirty old man, not Robespierre. And the bank is not going to audit me or review my loan application; under my daydream, the state gives orders which we fill by slapping our nameplate on stuff produced by suppliers. The bank's "job" is to buy our commercial paper, or buy our stocks and sell them back to us at prices we dictate.

That's how fascism "works," and incidentally, a detailed account of this little daydream is outlined on p.227-230. While Guerin is loathe to admit this, however, this does put the industrial manager on a collision course with the bourgeoisie; for one thing, the latter is effectively denied power over its pool of capital, and that power is entrusted to a cozy association of industrial managers. On 230-232, he describes the capital flight that took place after the industrial policies of the fascists became known (1934); in Japan, this tight relationship between banks, bourgeoisie, and industrial management meant a unified body of people, which could never be separated. Not to worry; the Japanese zaibatsu had long before achieved "reforms" of the postal banking system that turned it into a conveyor belt for deposits. The design was different, and the zaibatsu had its own house-system of discipline for managers-bourgeoisie, but the outcome was the same.

Fascism & the Plebians

In fascist societies, the fascist addiction to lies translates to seduction: seduction of the clergy, and seduction of the masses (Guerin uses the term "plebians," to mean, all of the non-influential supporters of the movement). The plebians were the shock troops that imposed fascism by force. They absorbed, and sometimes propagated, anti-capitalist demagoguery. They gladly filled the jobs of the old bourgeois political staff, the civil servants who had to be Nazis in good standing. To them, the fascists promise everything. In power, however, these plebians become restive. The fascist leaders must use shrewd dealings to purge those who express their impatience. Indeed, this is the dangerous phase of the regime. In Italy, this process deviled Mussolini from 1925-1932 (p.139), while in Germany, the Nazis and their tentative allies in the Reichswehr consciously imitated (and telescoped) the process of purging and lurching back and forth across the political spectrum. From week to week the story changed: Nazism is socialism, it is steadfastly opposed to socialism, it favors worker control of enterprise, those who call for worker control are dangerous and will be dealt with. The purges in Germany climaxed, but did not end, on 30 July 1934. The party meanwhile was eliminating a fragment of opposition with each jarring line wobble.

Guerin deals with this in excruciating detail, and it's been treated by other writers. But what is the denouement?

In power, the fascists initially deny they want to touch the right of labor to organize. But this is a lie, and the trade unions were forceably taken over by Nazi officials, then made to join the labor front. Presently, the industrial workforce is transformed into a regimented, underpaid, driven army. It has the same hours as the army (i.e., whatever the superior requires), it serves whereever the superior requires, and all wages are "efficiency wages": rejection of the employer's wage offer, in Nazi Germany, was grounds for inprisonment, and workers were effectively bound to their job at the good pleasure of the employer. Guerin enumerates the conditions of labor under fascism (pp.183-186):

1. wages formerly fixed by union contracts have been replaced by wages fixed by the company
2. wages can be cut without the slightest oppostion
3. rates are subject to change at any moment
4. unions become a compulsory venue for fascist indoctrination
5. workers are subject to compulsory employer indoctrination

[Fascism] | [Totalitarianism] | [Communism]