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Fascism and Social Revolution

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Students of fascism cannot understand the phenomena without reading R. Palme Dutt's classic, Fascism and Social Revolution. Dutt's genius was his ability apply the basic principles of Marxist political economy to the European economic and political crisis of the late 20s and early and mid-30s, when the book was written.

Dutt was prescient enough to understand the crisis of overproduction which propelled the growth of fascism in Europe, including Germany and Italy. He also understood that the resolution of the economic crisis would inevitably lead to war, and that war would not only lead to the destruction of the capital responsible for excess production, but also of "excess" population.

When the book was written, in 1936, he noted that the crisis of overproduction was responsible for the destruction of food, but would eventually escalate to the destruction of people. More precisely he noted that "Now they are burning food, soon they (capital) will be buring people."

His comment may actually be one of the earliest and most precise predictions of the Holocaust.

Dutt also must be seen in relationship to Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist leader who developed the concept of the popular front, in which working class parties ally with liberal bourgeois parties in opposition to fascism based on a common denominator of high-minded nationalism (e.g, Woody Guthrie's anthem, "This land is your land, this land is my land" is the best known example of the CPUSA translating the Dimitrov line into popular culture.)

In contrast, the Dutt line called for a united working class front, in which all working class parties would unite together to oppose fascism on an anti-capitalist, not liberal nationalist plank. The struggle between the Dutt line and Dimitrov line was resolved in the 1936 7th party conference which adopted Dimitrov's position. It has continued to dominate left-wing movements from then to the present, and signficantly contributed to such unanticipated outcomes as the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the intervening 60+ years Dutt's towering work has been largely forgotten, except by Marxist scholars and communist groups arising out of the new left. Although these groups tremendously respect Dutt's achievements in understanding fascism, they also acknowledge his weakness. He incorrectly subscribed to the dichotomy that capitalism neatly rules through either a liberal democratic facade or through a direct dictatorship in times of crisis. In retrospect we now know that most parts of the world have never had a serious democratic facade over direct capitalist rule and that dictatorship is probably the norm, with liberal democracy the aberration.

THe quality of this book's analysis became crystal clear to me when I realized that it answered one of the lingering questions regarding fascism that I had had despite three years worth of being a political science major; why was fascism murderous on the mass scale that it was in Germany but not in Italy?

Dutt reveals the economic function that fascism served for those in power in Germany and Italy at the time of its emergence; the economic crises that lead to the Great Depression and World War One resulted from the inability of capitalist social forms to manage the enormous productive power under its belt. The alternatives offered themselves: production for need rather than profit, or the forcible scaling back of capitalist production so that capitalist relations to the productive forces (which fascism maintained) could once again manage them.

Germany, and advanced industrial country, had much more productive power to reduce; hence industries had to be put into service of making more war material (i.e. products meant to be destroyed rather than consumed), soliders were put into the armies to die for the Fatherland at horrendous numbers, and entire cross sections of the productive populations were murdered en mass. The pathological antisemitism, it turns out, only justified the necessary extermination process to those who would never support it if it had been general rather than targeted.
Explainations that focus on Hitler's charisma or "innate" german racism cannot hinge on empiricle data like Dutt's does.

Fascism and Social Revolution may open your eyes to what you can see on the evening news or read in the newspapers everyday. Dutt's analysis of the economic, social and political events in Germany provides a wake up call. Reading this book can educate political activists. The movement to the political right in this country is running full speed ahead. Awareness is the first step towards action.

As another reviewer notes below, Dutt's case was made to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern. He was arguing the question that only the reds then really understood: What is fascism and what shall we do about it? He was met by competing ideas from Georgi Dimitrov, and, from a distance, Trotsky. Dutt's analysis, that fascism is a logical and necessary extension of the development of capitalism, was largely correct--or so I think. Dimitrov and Trotsky both failed to match Dutt's presentation, but Dimitrov met Stalin's social fascist needs and so the line of the Comintern suddenly changed, to building alliances with good capitalists. While the USSR was probably not salvagable by then, having adopted the New Economic Policy (capitalism led by a benevolent party) and implemented it with a vengence, fully restoring class rule while declaring class struggle at an end, the Dimitrov line finished off any pretense of real leftism in the USSR, and the Comintern. Today, we face an emergent form of fascism, world-wide, and Dutt's book serves as a challenge to anyone who wants to try to answer the question at the outset of this review.