Vol. 71/No. 48      December 24, 2007

BY DANIEL GUERIN  
Revolutionaries have a perfectly natural tendency to see everything as it relates to themselves. They are under the impression that the bourgeoisie resorts to fascism only to smash the imminent threat of proletarian revolution. There is a certain grain of truth in this explanation, but it is oversimplified. The wealthy certainly fear revolution and finance bands of gangsters to teach the workers good manners. But it is not so much to stifle the revolution that they hand state power over to the fascists. Neither in Italy nor in Germany was revolution in the offing at the moment fascism took state power. The bourgeoisie resorts to fascism less in response to disturbances in the street than in response to disturbances in their own economic system. The sickness they aim to banish is within, not without.

The keystone of capitalism is profit. As long as capitalism was growing, the bourgeoisie was able to tap ever new sources of profit through the ceaseless development of production and the constant expansion of domestic and foreign markets. After World War I, capitalism as a whole began to decline. To the periodic economic crises of the past there has been added a chronic crisis, involving the whole system and threatening capitalist profit at its very source.

Up to the war, democracy suited capitalism perfectly. Everyone knows the old refrain: Democracy is the cheapest form of government … The spirit of free enterprise can flower only in the benign climate of liberty … The political rights which democracy grants to the masses act as a sort of safety valve and prevent violent clashes between rulers and ruled… Democracy enlarges the capitalist market by encouraging the masses to want more goods and by giving them, to some extent, the means of satisfying their needs. All true enough—when the feast is abundant, the people may safely be allowed to pick up the crumbs.

In the present period of capitalist decline, however, the ruling class is impelled to put democracy into the scales, carefully weighing its advantages against its drawbacks. Like Buridan’s ass, it eyes the two bundles of hay—and hesitates. Cruel dilemma! In certain countries and under certain conditions, the drawbacks seem to outweigh the advantages. Seem—for on this point, it is not yet certain that the bourgeoisie has correctly calculated its own interests. Time alone will tell.

When the economic crisis becomes acute, when the rate of profit sinks toward zero, the bourgeoisie can see only one way to restore its profits: it empties the pockets of the people down to the last centime. It resorts to what M. Caillaux, once finance minister of France, expressively calls “the great penance”: brutal slashing of wages and social expenditures, raising of tariff duties at the expense of the consumer, etc. The state, furthermore, rescues business enterprises on the brink of bankruptcy, forcing the masses to foot the bill. Such enterprises are kept alive with subsidies, tax exemptions, orders for public works and armaments. In short, the state thrusts itself into the breach left by the vanishing private customers.

But such maneuvers are difficult under a democratic regime. As long as democracy survives, the masses, though thoroughly deceived and plundered, have some means of defense against the “great penance”: freedom of the press, universal suffrage, the right to organize into unions and to strike, etc. Feeble defenses, it is true, but still capable of setting some limit to the insatiable demands of the money power. In particular, the resistance of the organized working class makes it rather difficult to simply lower wages.

And so, in certain countries and under certain conditions, the bourgeoisie throws its traditional democracy overboard and conjures up with its invocations—and its subsidies—that “strong state” which alone can strip the masses of all means of defense, tying their hands behind their backs, the better to empty their pockets.

The phrase “in certain countries under certain conditions” is important. These are those nations which have put in their claim for a place in the sun too late, and so find themselves lacking raw materials and markets. In richer, more fortunate countries, the bourgeoisie seems to have succeeded, not in escaping the crisis permanently, but at least in extricating itself for the time being from its difficulties. They have been able to start up again, after a fashion, the mechanism of profit, resorting to expedients which at least have not required the substitution of dictatorship for democracy. But they used basically the same methods in both cases: the state re-floated private capitalism, revived it with great public works and huge “defense contracts.” But thanks to the wealth accumulated by preceding generations, in the latter case there was no need for the fascist club to empty the workers’ pockets. In the U.S.A., Roosevelt’s New Deal sufficed.  
 
 
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