How Much Fascism
How Much Fascism
How Much Fascism
Articles 1994-1995
Book in Slovene: Ljubljana, 1995
Book in Croatian: Zagreb, 1998/99
This was a set of polemical texts, written in rage and perplexity over the war,
ethnic cleansing, brutality against refugees ... The texts were meant to engage
against the explosion of racist hatred, state-fetishism, authoritarianism, against an
unbelievable violence in public discourse. The book was mostly concerned with the
ideological dimension, it wanted to be a political intervention, and attempted to
explain why such an ideology could have “seized the masses”.
“Masses have lost their faith […] in socialism as a whole.” (Clara Zetkin, 1923) Also,
a certain general similarity of historical situation: contained-fragmented workers’ resistance
and fragmented ruling coalition.
General situation
Economic crisis of the 80-ies. Foreign debt – IMF intervention. Inflation.
Falling living standard. Growing unemployment (combined effect of the
transformations in the core countries that ceased to import weakly qualified labour
power from the South; and of the domestic crisis). – Workers’ strikes: limited to single
enterprises (fragmentation of the working class by the self-management in
enterprises), unable to mobilise horizontal support.
The end of the economic cycle which had been launched in late-50ies, early
60-ies, based on professionally qualified labour, “Fordist” industrialism; self-
management as a way to keep managers on the side of the labour, enterprise-culture
oriented towards the well-being of workers’ collectives; wages increasing with the
increase of productivity of labour. (Cf. Drenovec.)
The end of the specific Yugoslav form of socialism: strong socially managed
public services (free education on all the levels, high quality health system, solid
public pension system), increasing freedom of expression, strong public support to
cultural, theoretic, ideological production, including oppositional and alternative
cultures.
The new regime imposed by IMF: while ignoring the forces of production side
(no historical transformation of productive forces), IMF required radical
transformation of the relations of production (privatisation of the means of
production), thus undermining the socialist project (itself in severe crisis).
IMF imposed “austerity measures” to pay the foreign debt; required
centralisation of economy (to concentrate the value that was to be exported towards
the creditors), strengthening of labour discipline, and the introduction of profit seeking
as the main entrepreneurial objective. (Implication: increase of exploitation.)
Parallels
Final crisis of an economic cycle. Crisis and delegitimation of the existing
state form. Massive severe fall of living standard. Everyday insecurity. Fragmented
workers’ unrest.
Against this …
More discrepancies
Contrary to the 1930-ies, the process was not one of “salvation of capitalism”
(Dimitrov), it was a process of its restoration. However, in most general terms, the
more abstract Zetkin’s formula may adequately describe the process: “the general
offensive undertaken by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat”. In the world-
system perspective, restoration of capitalism in post-socialist countries was achieved
by the “neo-liberal” offensive launched in the core countries of the system, and then
successfully proceeding to the conquest of historical socialisms.
What were the social forces that relayed this offensive within those countries
themselves?
The forces that supported neo-liberal world offensive within the socialist
countries imposed the capitalist “primitive accumulation” by legal constraint and
provided its ideological legitimation. These forces succeeded to destroy the socialist
state and to substitute it with the “bourgeois state” even before the dominating
capitalist class would have historically composed itself.
Organised political forces were competing upon the background of the
consensus that socialist project was to be abandoned and capitalism restored.
However, within the basic consensus, the competition reflected a complex
conjuncture of social contradictions.
At this point, we can draw yet another structural parallel with historical
fascisms. According to Sohn-Rethel’s analysis, support to the Nazi party was, sit
venia verbo, a forced move performed by the weaker fraction of the German capital
under the conditions of what they perceived as a potentially final crisis of capitalism.
In the decisive moment of the crisis of historical socialisms and of the global
offensive of neo-liberal capitalism, the social forces that seized state power and
established ideological hegemony were composed of two groups: political (state-
party) bureaucracy and the bureaucracy of the ideological state apparatuses
(“cultural” bureaucracy).
The ideological bureaucracy was nationalist during the whole history of
Yugoslavia (both during the monarchy and the socialist federation), and was more or
less successfully sabotaging anything resembling a multicultural Yugoslav space.
The only “Yugoslav” cultures were the pop industry (ideologically devalued by the
“high” national cultures), the rock-punk subculture (limited to the younger generations
and mostly depending on the self-organisation of culturally and politically
disappropriated young people) and theoretical production (the best known of which
was the Praxis group). The main thrust of my book was to analyse and to oppose the
shift of important parts of ideological or “cultural” bureaucracy towards fascist-like
politics. Cultural bureaucracy ruled over the most important ideological state
apparatuses (the educational system, most of the media, the most important
publishing houses), and dominated the most prestigious apparatuses (national
academies of sciences and arts, writers’ associations). The bureaucracy of
ideological apparatuses in most of Yugoslav federal republics created the ideological
hegemony that framed the destruction of the federation. However, ideological
bureaucracy was the junior partner in the ruling coalition: the senior partner was the
political bureaucracy.
The political bureaucracy was fragmented along two main fault lines. One
was obvious during the whole existence of the federation: the antagonism among the
republics, mostly controlled by the top historical cadres of the League of communists,
and occasionally repressed by purges hitting, in quite a balanced way, once
“nationalists” and the next time “centralists”. (We should keep in mind that these
conflicts were politically overdetermined and articulated as such: the purge of
internationalists in 1947-48 was a side effect of the resistance to Soviet domination;
the purge of “centralists” in 1966 the eliminated “étatist” political forces; the purge of
nationalists in 1971 was a fight against “techno-liberals”.) Fragmentation of “reformed
communists” along the “national” lines (actually opposing one republican political
space against the others) was strengthened by their more or less uncritical
acceptance of neo-liberal ideology. Within the perspective of the neo-liberal ideology,
the objective socio-economic situation pushed the Serbian “post-communists” to
favour the centralisation of the federation, while it inclined Slovene post-communists
first towards decentralisation, and later to secession, which was the aim of the
Croatian post-communists already from a very early stage.
The second line of fragmentation of the political bureaucracy was obvious
already during the state-transformation process. However, at that time, only its
political articulation was explicit. Its social-structural background was not apparent.
Even the political antagonism was quite rudimentary: the reformed post-communist
liberal-social line was confronting a heterogeneous, but vociferous anti-communist
coalition. The deeper structural meaning of this conflict is now visible only in the
retrospect. The antagonistic forces were, on one side, the groups who, at the time of
the transformation of the state form, intended the establishment of a national
bourgeoisie. On the other side were the groups whose practices, regardless of their
self-perception, were pushing them towards the position of a comprador bourgeoisie.
The first group (the national bourgeoisie to-be) was composed of the leading
management in large and strong (mostly exporting) firms and of the top party-state
bureaucracy. The second group was a composite of lower level bureaucrats,
repatriated émigrés, and adventurous entrepreneurs. They were supported by the
ideological bureaucracy.
The second group, politically weaker at the beginning of the process, while
ideologically already hegemonic, introduced the political practices that I perceived as
“fascist”.
Fascisoid practices were promoted by the weaker political fraction of the new
ruling class in the process of its composition (the comprador bourgeoisie in the
making), supported by the subaltern partner of the previous ruling coalition (the
ideological or “cultural” “socialist” bureaucracy). Their political aim was the
transformation of the state form that would establish a new class domination within
which they intended to assume the leading position.
This formulation presents both the parallels and the differences between
historical fascisms and the post-socialist fascisoid practices.
The new fascisoid politics parallels historical fascisms in the following features:
- transformation of the state form;
- promoted by the weaker fraction of the bourgeoisie;
- ideological hegemony over the masses disappointed in the socialist project.
Provisional conclusion
When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of
government are changed […] – it means first of all for the most part that the workers'
organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that
a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which
serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat.
Some actualisations: