Re: Deleuze-Guattari

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, john gulick wrote:

> I thought recent reputable historical research has shown that a sizable
> percentage of the German working class (formally defined) supported the
> Nazis (although of course this percentage mushroomed when the Depression
> took hold) -- especially workers from certain regions, in certain trades and
> industries, with certain wartime experiences, from certain religious
> backgrounds, etc.

Could you possibly be referring to Michael Mann? He believes that 20th
century Marxism has made a mistake by describing fascism as a
petty-bourgeois mass movement in an article titled "Source of Variation in
Working-Class Movements in Twentieth-Century Movement" which appeared in
the New Left Review of July/August 1995.

If he is correct, then there is something basically wrong with the Marxist
approach, isn't there? If the Nazis attracted the working-class, then
wouldn't we have to reevaluate the revolutionary role of the
working-class? Perhaps it would be necessary to find some other class to
lead the struggle for socialism, if this struggle has any basis in reality
to begin with.

Mann relies heavily on statistical data, especially that which can be
found in M. Kater's "The Nazi Party" and D. Muhlberger "Hitler's
Followers". The data, Mann reports, shows that "Combined, the party and
paramilitaries had relatively as many workers as in the general
population, almost as many worker militants as the socialists and many
more than the communists".

Pretty scary stuff, if it's true. It is true, but, as it turns out, there
are workers and there are workers. More specifically, Mann acknowledges
that "Most fascist workers...came not from the main manufacturing
industries but from agriculture, the service and public sectors and from
handicrafts and small workshops." Let's consider the political
implications of the class composition of this fascist strata." He adds
that, "The proletarian macro-community was resisting fascism, but not the
entire working-class.." Translating this infelicitous expression into
ordinary language, Mann is saying that as a whole the workers were opposed
to fascism, but there were exceptions.

Let's consider who these fascist workers were. Agricultural workers in
Germany: were they like the followers of Caesar Chavez, one has to wonder?
Germany did not have large-scale agribusiness in the early 1920's. Most
farms produced for the internal market and were either family farms or
employed a relatively small number of workers. Generally, workers on
smaller farms tend to have a more filial relationship to the patron than
they do on massive enterprises. The politics of the patron will be
followed more closely by his workers. This is the culture of small,
private agriculture. It was no secret that many of the contra
foot-soldiers in Nicaragua came from this milieu.

Turning to "service" workers, this means that many fascists were
white-collar workers in banking and insurance. This layer has been going
through profound changes throughout the twentieth century, so a closer
examination is needed. In the chapter "Clerical Workers" in Harry
Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital", he notes that clerical work in
its earlier stages was like a craft. The clerk was a highly skilled
employee who kept current the records of the financial and operating
condition of the enterprise, as well as its relations with the external
world. The whole history of this job category in the twentieth century,
however, has been one of de-skilling. All sorts of machines, including the
modern-day, computer have taken over many of the decision-making
responsibilities of the clerk. Furthermore, "Taylorism" has been
introduced into the office, forcing clerks to function more like
assembly-line workers than elite professionals.

We must assume, however, that the white-collar worker in Germany in the
1920's was still relatively high up in the class hierarchy since his or
her work had not been mechanized or routinized to the extent it is today.
Therefore, a clerk in an insurance company or bank would tend to identify
more with management than with workers in a steel-mill. Even under today's
changed economic conditions, this tends to be true. A bank teller in NY
probably resents a striking transit worker, despite the fact that they
have much in common in class terms. This must have been an even more
pronounced tendency in the 1920's when white-collar workers occupied an
even more elite position in society.

Mann includes workers in the "public sector". This should come as no
surprise at all. Socialist revolutions were defeated throughout Europe in
the early 1920's and right-wing governments came to power everywhere.
These right-wing governments kept shifting to the right as the mass
working-class movements of the early 1920's recovered and began to
reassert themselves. Government workers, who are hired to work in offices
run by right-wingers, will tend to be right-wing themselves. There was no
civil-service and no unions in this sector in the 1920's. Today, this
sector is one of the major supporters of progressive politics
internationally. They, in fact, spearheaded the recent strikes in France.
In the United States, where their composition tends to be heavily Black or
Latino, also back progressive politics. But in Germany in the 1920's, it
should come as no major surprise that some public sector workers joined
Hitler or Mussolini's cause.

When Trotsky or E.J. Hobsbawm refer to the working-class resistance to
Hitler or Mussolini, they have something specific in mind. They are
referring to the traditional bastions of the industrial working-class:
steel, auto, transportation, mining, etc. Mann concurs that these blue-
collar workers backed the SP or CP.

There is a good reason why this was no accident. In Daniel Guerin's
"Fascism and Big Business", he makes the point that the capitalists from
heavy industry were the main backers of Hitler. The reason they backed
Hitler was that they had huge investments in fixed capital (machines,
plants, etc.) that were financed through huge debt. When capitalism
collapsed after the stock-market crash, the owners of heavy industry were
more pressed than those of light industry. The costs involved in making a
steel or chemical plant profitable during a depression are much heavier.
Steel has to be sold in dwindling markets to pay for the cost of leased
machinery or machinery that is financed by bank loans When the price of
steel has dropped on a world scale, it is all the more necessary to
enforce strict labor discipline.

Strikes are met by violence. When the boss calls for speed-up because of
increased competition, goons within a plant will attack workers who defend
decent working conditions. This explains blue-collar support for
socialism. It has a class basis.

These are the sorts of issues that Marxists should be exploring.  Michael
Mann is a "neo-Weberian" supposedly who also finds Marx useful. Max Weber
tried to explain the growth of capitalism as a consequence of the
"Protestant ethic". Now Mann tries to explain the growth of fascism as a
consequence of working-class support for "national identity". That is to
say, the workers backed Hitler because Hitler backed a strong Germany.
This is anti-Marxist. Being determines consciousness, not the other way
around. When you try to blend Marx with anti-Marxists like Weber or
Lyotard or A.J. Ayer, it is very easy to get in trouble. I prefer my Marx
straight, with no chaser.

> I don't think socialism (much less Bolshevism) appealed to the vast majority
> of peasants (and of course Russia was mostly peasants at the time) -- to the
> extent that they espoused any political philosophy it was one of communal
> self-reliance and resistance to the predations of the state (the draft) and
> state-backed landlords (rents). The Bolsheviks were best organized to
>

This is correct. The tens of millions of peasants who supported the
Bolshevik revolution were not socialists. They were supporters of the
SR's. The Bolsheviks said that if the SR's would not implement their
agrarian reform, then--goddamn it--they would. Which they did. Those
sneaky Bolsheviks. They divided up the big estates while the peasant
parties had told them to wait until the war was over. I love this sort of
flexibility, don't you?


Louis Proyect