ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

International Socialism, Winter 1978/79

Colin Sparks

Fascism and the working class: Part 2

The National Front today

From International Socialism, 2 : 3, Winter 1978/79.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Introduction

Part one of this article (International Socialism 2:2, Autumn 1978) dealt with the extent of Nazi penetration into the working class. It was shown that, contrary to many arguments, it is not essential for the working class to suffer a ‘defeat’ before fascist parties can grow. It was also shown that the core of the NSDAP was based upon the classic petit-bourgeoisie of Germany, and that this class accounted for the dominant proportion of its membership.

However, it was also shown that the NSDAP gained both votes and members from the industrial proletariat. Many of these may have come from the unemployed, but there is evidence to suggest that the NSDAP also recruited among employed manual factory workers. However, despite the existence of this support, the Nazis were unable either to build any serious trade union machine or to have any serious impact upon the ‘shop steward’ elections.

The condition for this growth was partly the depth and intensity of the economic and social crisis in Germany and partly the total paralysis of the whole of the labour movement. The class structure of Germany was remarkably ‘archaic’ in that about half the population seems to have been made up of ‘petit bourgeois’ elements. Thus a strong basis for an anti-working class organisation existed independently of the weakness of working class organisations. Although politically stalemated, the organisations of the German proletariat were particularly ‘dense’ in that to be an organised worker implied participation in a wide range of activities. However, the extent of this organisation was limited to only about one in four workers, and among white collar workers, organisation was virtually non-existent.

Thus it seems that the core of the German working class effectively resisted NSDAP penetration, but was unable to extend its influence over the rest of the working class. Into this space the NSDAP, already possessing a mass base amongst the old middle class, was able to insert itself and to attract workers in areas and activities which cut across class lines.

Having already examined the nature and extent of the Nazi penetration into the German working class, in this part I intend to examine the same problem with regard to the National Front and other fascist groups in contemporary Britain.

The starting point is the fact that the National Front, or at least its most politically mature sections, are attempting to construct a mass party which will be modelled very closely upon the NSDAP; this case has been proved in numerous publications, and there is no need to waste space upon its repetition here. It is therefore necessary to confront a more general question: in what ways, and under what circumstances, is it possible to build a mass fascist party in modern Britain?

At the most general level, the conditions do of course exist for such a development. To an even greater extent than in the 1930’s the world is trapped in the contradiction of an international system of imperialism split into different and competing ‘national capitals’. [1] The consequences of a crisis in such a system are that those ‘national capitals’ which are at a disadvantage in the competitive struggle will under certain conditions, find an internal and external pressure to drive towards fascist methods of social organisation in order to improve their competitive positions.

However, it is one thing to say that such an abstract possibility exists but it is quite another to argue that the concrete situation in Britain is such that this possibility will be realised. Between the abstract theoretical possibility and the concrete practical reality of a mass fascist movement there are a complex of mediating factors, including the activities of other class forces inside British society, which can either block or aid such a development.

Indeed, despite the similarities in the world situation, there are obvious and important differences-most strikingly in the nature and depth of the economic crisis. We have seen how, in Germany in the early years of the 1930’s, the impact of the economic crisis was both very sharp and extremely intense, between 1929 and 1932 total national income in Germany fell by 40%. [2] In comparison, the drop in the British Gross Domestic Product over the worst years of the current slump has been in the region of 4%. [3] Up until now, at least, the character of modern slumps appear to be that they are protracted and shallow rather than short and catastrophic. It may, of course, be the case that this will change in the future, but there are powerful theoretical arguments, derived from the role of armaments production in modern capitalism, which suggest that this is unlikely. At the level of general economic and social climate, then, we are dealing with a very different situation.

On the other hand, the nature of this slump has led to the institutionalisation of class collaboration which bears striking similarities to that prevailing in Weimar Germany. In the first article, I quoted a description of the way in which the bureaucracy of the ADGB had become deeply enmeshed in the working of the capitalist state which had an uncomfortably familiar ring. The process of the integration of the leadership of the unions into state institutions has, of course, been a long-term trend in British society and it has undoubtedly intensified over the last few years. The consequences in terms of the increasing domination of the ‘expert’ and the exclusion of the rank-and-file from an active part in the running of their unions are also familiar. Thus Anderson’s historical judgement must strike us as ominously prophetic:

The decline of Trade Union strength and influence did not become really visible before the great depression and mass unemployment began. But it is important to remember that mass unemployment was not the only cause which eventually reduced the German Unions to a shadow of their former self The Unions’ growing dependence on the State, their submissiveness and self-emasculation, were, to say the least, very important contributory causes. [4]

It is clear that the imposing edifice of the British TUC conceals within itself very many of the same weaknesses that marked the ADGB and it is possible that these will be exposed equally cruelly as the crisis develops.

However, the mere existence of these possibilities does not necessarily imply that the growth of a mass fascist movement is possible. Given the undoubted dependence of fascism upon the ‘petit bourgeoisie’ for the core of its fighting troops then the size and social weight of these groups is clearly of considerable importance. Before we can make any estimate of the chances of the National Front, it is necessary to conduct some sort of examination of the class structure of modern Britain.
 

Class structure in modern Britain

Bourgeois statistics are notoriously unreliable and I am no expert in their manipulation. Fortunately, there exist summaries from which it is possible to draw at least tentative conclusions. In quoting this material, I am conscious that I am begging a number of important questions. However, hopefully the mistakes which I make will provoke comment directed at the overall drift of my analysis from which a more accurate picture can be drawn.

In 1976, the overall labour force of Great Britain was 26.1 million, of whom some 24.7 million were ‘active’ in that year. Of these the group ‘employers and self-employed’ (roughly corresponding to Geiger’s categories of ‘capitalists’, ‘old middle class’ and ‘quasi-proletarians’ taken together) amounted to some 1.9 millions. [5]

If we examine the older figures derived from the 1971 Census, it is possible to give a rather more refined figure. [6] It is likely that these figures will understate the real picture to some extent, given the extent to which these groups engage in systematic evasion of state control but on this basis it seems that the total of employers and self-employed together cannot be other than in the region of 7% to 8% of the working population.

No direct comparison is possible with the Weimar figures, but the two categories listed in table one do roughly correspond to those groups listed by Geiger above. Thus the ‘archaic’ social classes in modern Britain are extremely small compared with Weimar Germany. [7]

On the other hand, there has clearly been a major growth in what Geiger called the ‘new middle classes’—what we would today label as ‘white collar workers’. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of bourgeois statistics, it is difficult to arrive at an exact figure for these groups. The available ‘occupational classification’ makes no distinction between the self-employed and the salaried worker and thus we cannot derive the figures for the actual number of the ‘new middle class’. [8]

If we add together employers and self-employed, managers and administrators, and the upper professionals, taking no account of the substantial double counting of the self-employed in the last three categories we arrive at a rough figure of less than 20% of the population as members of the ‘middle class’ and ‘ruling class’.

The lower white-collar occupations constitute a further 30.3% of the working population. The nature of the work of these groups certainly demonstrate many similarities to their equivalents in Weimar Germany: they carry out routine and degraded work for wages not markedly greater than those of manual workers, from those families of them are recruited. [9] On the other hand, they have marked status differentiations from manual workers, enshrined in better working hours and conditions and marginal privileges. [10]

At this point, it is difficult to avoid an obvious if tentative conclusion: the objective basis for a classic fascist movement in Britain is very slender indeed. One could go further and argue that there simply are not enough bankrupt small shopkeepers to make it possible. [11]

It seems to me that, given the above figures, the classic petit bourgeois social base of fascism has been so far eroded by the development of capitalism as to make its independent activity possible only on condition of the absolute paralysis of any other social group. Even if we assume an identity between this social group and the upper echelons of the ‘new middle class’, then we still find ourselves with a social group which is so small as to make the possibility of it developing independent political action rather remote. In order to discover a social base of sufficient size and weight we are forced to postulate that the entire ‘old’ and ‘new’ middle classes, from top to bottom, are drawn behind the fascist party.

Now this outcome, while I believe it to be unlikely, is clearly possible. The chances of it occurring in the foreseeable future depend upon a number of subjective factors and crucially upon the nature and extent of class organisations, both trade unions and political parties. However, before we move on that question, there is a further aspect of the structure of British society which should be noted.

One of the major growth areas in all types of employment in the past period has been the various ramifications of the state; by 1974, it accounted for 27.4% of all employment, broken down as follows: [12]

This direct dependency upon the state is particularly high for those white collar jobs classified broadly as ‘professional’. Nursing, teaching, librarianship and Social Welfare are groups more or less total dependent upon the state. Thus, out of 2,721,970 ‘professionals’ something like 1,200,000 are state employees whose ‘profession’ is defined only in terms of the needs of the state. Of the remaining 1.5 million, I can only make the totally unsupported assumption that roughly the same proportion of these are employed by the state as the case for the overall working population. This gives approximately 50% of ‘professionals’ employed directly by the state. [13]

It should therefore be noted that a very high, and probably growing, proportion of those social groups which might be expected to form a close alliance with a developing fascist party are directly or indirectly dependent upon the state for their social position and that, for many of them, this dependence is such that it is not possible to consider their personal professional status independent of the state.
 

Class organisation and white collar workers

Other factors apart, it is clear the possibility of the growth of a mass fascist movement in Britain hinges upon the question of the ‘new middle class’. The position and status of this group in modern capitalism is clearly one of the greatest interest and importance, and it is a criticism of the tradition represented by this journal that very little serious analysis has been devoted to answering some of the problems. The remarks I make below are extremely sketchy and it seems to me that it would be valuable if some attention were devoted to filling in some of the obvious gaps..

There are clearly a number of ways in which the problem of white collar workers can be approached. Following Marx, most attention has usually been given to the question of who exactly are ‘productive’ workers. This seems to me, for these purposes at least, a debate of secondary importance. Much more significant is the question of how far the evident fact that the dominant section of this group exchanges its labour power for a money wage relates to its perception of its position in the class structure. In other words, how far a group made up largely of wage workers identifies its historic interests with the remainder of the working class.

I have already remarked how the ‘new middle class’ receives a number of, objectively trivial, privileges from its masters. In the past, at least, these have been very significant in terms of aiding the white-collar worker to identify with the capitalists rather than the manual worker. It is also the case that the ‘white-collar’ occupations are usually characterised by a hierarchical job structure. The differences within the white collar working class can thus be very considerable, with those at the top earning a wage which is an actual multiple of the wages of those at the bottom. Progress up this hierarchy is conditional upon conforming to the ideas and social habits of the capitalist class. Thus, even within the white collar working class, there are powerful factors which make for a differentiation from the idea of collective class-based action: by definition, a hierarchy, however broad, is open only to individual self-advancement.

Against this, however, should be set the tendency for the development of capitalism to reduce the nature and rewards of white-collar work to a nature very similar to that of manual work. The extent and pace of this development is not at all clear, but it is a process which is undoubtedly taking place. [14]

One indicator of the way in which this process is developing is the extent of trade union organisation amongst white-collar workers. Out of a 1971 total of some 10,405,000 such workers of all grades, 3 592,000 were members of trade unions, giving a ‘union density’ of 35.2%. By 1974, this had risen to 4,263,000 – a density of 39.4%. This growth is not so dramatic as is sometimes supposed, as the density in 1948 was 30.2%. However, the pace of recruitment up to 1974 was clearly increasing rapidly, and it is fair to assume that, at least at the most elementary level of trade union membership, the tendency is for white collar workers to identify themselves as ‘workers’. [15] This level of identification is, of course, often very minimal and almost submerged within a mass of reactionary notions about ‘professional associations’ etc., but it is my impression that these factors are being eroded. One indication of that is the increasing tendency for large white collar unions to affiliate to the TUC.

In another sense, however, the overall picture is rather misleading in that it aggregates some very well-organised sectors with some very badly organised ones. Overall, the impact of trade unionism is as follows: [16]

A closer examination shows that the level of organisation is even more patchy. In the heavily white-collar ‘Insurance, Banking and Finance’ sector, overall density is 44.8%. In ‘Other Professional Services’ it is 3.7%. In the miscellaneous group which contains some manual occupations plus ‘property owning, advertising and market research, other business services and central offices not allocable elsewhere’, the level under 3%. [17]

The general conclusions which can be drawn from the above two-fold. First, compared with the working class in pre-war Germany, the level of union membership is, overall, very much higher. This is also true with regard to the white-collar sector and the level of trade union organisation, here as elsewhere, continues to grow. Secondly, although some groups of white-collar workers, particularly in the state sector, are relatively heavily organised, at least in terms of union membership, there are very considerable areas in which trade union organisation has hardly begun to penetrate and where the elementary principles of collective bargaining are completely unknown and probably considered to represent rampant Bolshevism. [18]

From this, we can draw some conclusions: the conditions do not yet exist for the mass of the ‘white-collar workers’ to be drawn behind an explicitly anti-working class organisation dedicated to the destruction of the trade union movement. In practice, the contrary appears to be happening as the level of union organisation among these groups is increasing quite rapidly.

It seems that the prospects for building a mass fascist movement capable of physically destroying the labour movement are, today, very remote. In order to reach a contrary conclusion we would have to hypothesise that the classic petit bourgeoisie would be entirely unified behind such a programme, that it could win over the upper echelons of the white-collar workers in their entirety; and that these two groups together could reverse the trend towards trade union membership among the lower strata of the white collar workers and convert at least a substantial proportion of them into dedicated opponents of the unions. All of these developments are possible, but they not only suppose a major economic and social catastrophe but also the complete paralysis of all sections of the labour movement.

However, it remains a fact that the National Front and other groups do exist, and have managed to establish a national presence. It is therefore necessary to ask just how far their actual practice measures up to the deep-rooted fascism of their leadership and official programme.
 

The fascists today

The history and evolution of the major fascist groups operating today is well recorded elsewhere. [19] What is considerably less well-known is the nature and extent of their membership and influence. The only way to obtain detailed information on this would be by way of the co-operation of the leaders of fascism, which avenue I did not pursue in writing this article. Failing that, we are forced to rely on estimates, or rather guesses. Of course, some guesses are better informed than others and to attempt to overcome the limitations of personal experience the SWP sent a circular requesting information on fascist groups to all its branches during August 1978.

Before coming to the results of this exercise, it is necessary to issue a number of warnings as to the nature of the material gathered:

1. I am not an expert in the design of questionnaires, and the one used has been criticised both by ‘social scientists’ and by Party members trying to make sense of it.
    
2. The replies to the circular are based upon impressions rather than hard knowledge, although in many cases these impressions are remarkably detailed.
    
3. The distribution of the circular was subject to the accidents of an SWP presence in particular areas.
    
4. The replies were subject to even more accidents. Some areas have local ‘Front watchers’ who have amassed considerable information upon local fascists. Others have only the most general knowledge of such activities. In many cases, for example Birmingham, the local leadership seems to have been too idle to bother to reply to the circular. A slightly different case may apply to Scotland and Wales, from which very few replies were received; this may be due to the lack of any serious fascist penetration into these areas, perhaps due to some [other] difficulty.
    
5. The replies have been standardised and I have added some material based on my own observations.

The main information in the replies is presented as follows:

The first observation to be drawn from the study of the fascists in about 40 parts of Britain is that they appear to be made up overwhelmingly of males. Only a minority of replies even cited women members and only in two (Cheltenham and Waltham Forest) was a branch reported as having an equal sexual distribution. Bedford was the only district reporting that the leading local fascist was a woman, with the branch secretary as a ‘middle-class housewife’. In the majority of cases the fascists are dominated by men.

Secondly, the National Front is by far the dominant fascist organisation. Only in Paisley is there some doubt as to its presence. The British Movement is the next contender and there appears to be substantial dual membership in some areas. Only in Birkenhead, North Wales and Leamington are the British Movement the major force (though falling credibility in the Front’s ‘constitutional’ image throughout 1978 means that it has probably gained at the latter’s expense more recently). No other group appears to have any national impact.

Thirdly, the common assumption that the National Front consists of a fascist ‘hard core’ together with a periphery of ‘naive racialists’ appears to be borne out nationally. This was, after all, the strategy upon which the National Front was founded and it does seem to have met with some success. In the majority of cases, there is more than one definite fascist in the locality. They have succeeded in picking up some youth in a high proportion of areas, and there is a high correlation between such recruitment and attempts at terrorist activity against the left.

Fourthly, the reported composition of the membership is remarkable. I, for one, have in the past assumed that the National Front was ‘abnormal’ for a fascist organisation in that its membership was largely working class; this is not confirmed by the reports. I was disposed to doubt the replies which specified fascists in petit bourgeois occupation on the grounds that the people reporting in general are aware that fascism is ‘supposed’ to be a petit bourgeois movement and would thus have been influenced in their estimates. However, as the replies which made such claims tended to be the most detailed, and on occasion specified the nature of the small shops that the fascists ran, it seems to me that they must be relied upon. The membership of the fascists was reported to contain manual workers in 34 cases; to contain white collar workers in 23 cases and to contain the classic petit bourgeois in 26 cases. In terms of the local leadership, there are ten cases of it containing manual workers, 9 of it containing white-collar workers, and 13 of it containing the classic petit bourgeois. (In only two cases are ‘capitalists’ reported as members.)

In absolute terms, it seems that the largest single section of the fascist membership is made up of manual workers but, when we consider the tiny absolute size of the archaic classes in Britain the extent of their involvement in the fascists is quite out of proportion. This striking tendency is reinforced when we consider their role in the local leaderships.

The level of workplace activity of the manual working class is in general low. Although they are known to exist in many factories etc., with the GPO the most frequent contributor, their activity there, even on the minimal definition of putting around leaflets, is very slight. Only in Leeds, Lowestoft, Leicester and Central London were they reported as having any trade union work. In the case of Leeds (which set an example to everybody by sending in two, contradictory, replies) they exist in a number of workplaces, but there is no

evidence of consistent work; one of their members is a steward in the GMWU while the others are inactive. In Lowestoft and Bolton, their trade union base has diminished, with their activists either leaving the movement or losing their trade union positions. In Central London, they are known to have some trade union positions in the GPO – a situation which is also true of other areas of London which did not report. In reality the major form of their workplace activity seems to be confined to scrawling slogans in the lavatories and, as the reply from St. Albans put it: ‘shooting off their big mouths and as a result alienating their fellow workers.’

Much the most significant area of their work is concentrated in the ‘community’ and most areas reported at least an electoral intervention. Beyond that, they seem to have some impact upon local self-employed organisations and to command personal support on a community basis in a number of areas. In general, there is little evidence of state support for the fascists, although there is quite widespread ‘freelance’ support for the fascists amongst the police, up to quite a high level on occasions. Where this has got out of hand, as in South East Manchester, there seems to have been collusion between the local reformist leaders and the police chiefs to lean on the more obvious culprits.

It seems clear, on the basis of the above estimates, that the fascists in Britain are still in the ‘incubation’ period rather than entering the stage of building a mass movement. In fact, they have not yet managed to make much progress in the major tasks which face a fascist organisation in this period. There is little evidence that their military machine is capable of a direct assault upon the labour movement, although they are undoubtedly capable of terrorising and demoralising individuals. On the other hand, it seems likely that the National Front is emerging as the dominant organisation on the far right, although the British Movement must remain a serious challenger.

However, it is clear that the mass of the right in Britain remains solidly wedded to the Conservative Party, and the fascists have not, as yet, made any serious inroads into this, despite some local gains. With regard to their penetration of their ‘appropriate’ social base it is clear that they have emerged in some areas as the leading force amongst the classic petit bourgeoisie, but as this group is so small in Britain, their weak penetration of the middle classes must be set against this.

There is, however, the obvious fact that the fascists in Britain have had far greater success in penetrating the working class than the NSDAP. This is reinforced if we examine the voting support of the National Front, which is clearly concentrated in inner city working class areas rather than in the middle class suburbs. [20] These factors force us to ask the painful question of whether the classic marxist theory of fascism is wrong, or whether we are confronting a new social phenomenon.
 

Proletarian fascism?

In the case of Germany, we saw how the NSDAP was able to draw behind it some working class support. This support was conditional upon the fascist hegemony over the old middle classes and the characteristic ideology of the fascists fitted very closely the reactionary anti-capitalism of these layers. It is, therefore, clearly possible to transform workers, even manual workers, into dedicated fascists.

The prospects for doing this in modern Britain seem to me to be governed by two factors. First of all, as we have seen, the ‘natural’ social base of the fascists is very attenuated and does not provide the sort of social and political pulling power that it did in Germany. Secondly, the level of class organisation in the working class itself and in the ‘new middle class’ is quantitatively at least, very much higher than in Weimar Germany.

However, if we look more closely at this question, then it is clear that, qualitatively, the core of the British working class is much less well organised. The Labour Party has nothing to compare with the range of social organisations of the SPD. Many of the cultural functions performed by the working class parties in the past are today performed by the state or by private capital. Even the seemingly massive influence of the TUC cannot really be compared in terms of its grip upon the members of the ADGB. At the same time, of course, the revolutionary tradition in the British working class movement is incomparably weaker than it was in Weimar Germany: the KPD may have made a string of mistakes, but it was a mass party.

If we adopt the fashionable terminology of ‘hegemony’, it is clear that in Germany the working class was massively under the hegemony of what were, at root, workers’ parties and that in modern Britain they are massively under the hegemony of the state and private capital.

Thus it can be argued that the forces capable of penetrating the working class and winning it to fascism proper are very weak, but that the organised tradition of resistance is also very weak. It is thus quite likely that any large scale fascist movement in Britain would contain a proportion of working class members at least equal to that of the NSDAP.

However, it is one thing to argue that a fascist movement can contain workers and quite another to argue that it can be built around workers as the main fighting force. It is necessary to be quite clear as to what we are discussing: if we wish to use the term ‘fascism’ in any understandable sense, then we have to speak of a mass movement which is openly committed to smashing all vestiges of independent working class organisations. In other words, if it is to be argued that the fascist movement is to be built around workers, then it follows that what is being argued is that it is possible to mobilise millions of workers for a direct physical assault upon working class organisations. Now, I am not arguing that this is impossible but it does seem to me to require a great deal of evidence and argument to support such a view, and I am not aware of any such case having been made.

The nearest that anyone has come to this is in developing arguments based upon the extent of racialism in Britain. [21] This is undoubtedly a powerful argument, and accounts for a great deal of the support of the National Front, particularly in elections. However, it is a commonplace that fascism does not depend upon racialism, and while it is true that the existence of racialism obviously provides a good breeding ground for fascism, it does not follow that one automatically leads to another.

It is possible to argue that the material we have produced above can be explained not as the development of fascism, pure and simple, but as the conjunctural link between two different social reactions to the developing crisis: on the one hand, petit bourgeois fascism, on the other proletarian racialism.

Historically, the two are distinct moments deriving from different class positions. The history of proleterian racialism in Britain is far longer than that of fascism, although the two have been united before. [22] Proletarian racialism is a response proper to a weak and divided working class experiencing the effects of a capitalist crisis and it feeds upon unemployment, poverty and bad conditions. Although, like fascism, it has elements of a response to pressure from ‘above’ and ‘below’, it is difficult to see how, on its own, it could develop into an aggressive movement aiming at state power and the crushing of working-class organisations. Fascism not only appeals to the sense of hierarchy present in the middle classes but also systematically seeks to replace the organising category of ‘class’ with that of ‘nation’. In this, it corresponds to some extent with the experience of the fascist masses. Proleterian racism, on the other hand, is constantly attempting to cut across the very real experience of class exploitation and class struggle which is the consequence of the structural position of the working class in capitalism.

Thus proletarian racism, although capable of taking very extreme and vicious forms, stands in a constant tension with the reality of the class struggle. It is thus an exceptionally fragile movement and one which it is difficult to develop into a serious contender for the task of running the state. In sum, it seems to me as a result of the above analysis that here, too, the prospects for the building of a mass fascist movement are highly dubious.

The conclusion of the above can only be that the internal social conditions in Britain are such that the growth of a mass fascist movement which can mount a serious assault upon state power is a remote possibility. The conditions under which such a situation could develop are so strict that a whole chain of failures would have to occur before the classic petit bourgeoisie could appear as a serious contender for the state. Most of these factors are beyond the control of the revolutionary left, but one clearly is not: given the difficulties faced by the fascists, even the activities of a relatively small revolutionary left can have a decisive impact.
 

Reactionary alternatives

If the prospects for orthodox fascism are remote, this does not mean that there are no prospects for the development of reactionary forces in Britain. The pressures of international competition are not likely to diminish in the near future and the consequences are both that the ruling class will seek to improve its competitive position and that there will be sharp internal strains in British society.

In considering what form other reactionary movements might take in the future, it is necessary to make a number of clarifications. First of all it is necessary to ask: what was the ‘function’ of classic fascism? From the point of view of at least a section of its mass social base, fascism provided a form of ‘job creation scheme’. From the point of view of the ruling class it provides a social base by means of which ‘national energies’ can be concentrated for the struggle against rival imperialisms. From the point of view of the working class, fascism paralyses and atomises class organisation and renders the conduct of the class struggle difficult and clandestine. In the conditions of catastrophic slump and intense imperialist rivalry these tasks could only be accomplished by means of intense violence against the working class. It seems to me that it may be the case that in the less severe crisis of the present it may be possible for these tasks to be achieved without the use of fascist violence.

Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish between a fascist movement which is capable of coming to power and one which is large enough to provide a base either for a ‘semi-democratic’ parliamentary combination of an anti-working-class type or for traditional reactionary groups (for example, the military elite) to carry through an anti-democratic ‘solution’. While the first of these alternatives may be unlikely, the conditions for the growth of a less substantial movement are clearly much greater.

Under these conditions, the role of fascist groups in Britain could be quite significant. Any examination of such possible future developments undoubtedly runs into the area of speculation, but even so it is possible to hypothesise at least the typologies of reactionary movements which could develop out of the present situation.

First of all, there is the possibility of a fairly substantial fascist movement, probably led by the classic petit bourgeoisie but drawing behind it substantial support from other social groups. This, of course, would be the logical extension of the present development of the current National Front. Obviously, such a movement would be extremely vulnerable to the conflicting class forces within it, but if it could hold together it would provide a base which would be useful in driving the political spectrum to the right.

The second alternative would be some sort of fascism based upon the ‘new middle class’. This would be something rather different from classic fascism, in that it would have to find an ideology which could attempt to raise the economic level of the new middle class while avoiding, rather than confronting, the question of the trade unions. It seems to me that the question of racialism, undoubtedly the mainstay of the present fascist groups, would not be a significant item in the programme of such a movement. This suggests that the organising force for such a movement would have to come from an entirely new location and would further depend upon a reversal of the trend towards union organisation amongst the new middle class. It therefore seems that this option is entirely hypothetical.

The third possibility is the development of a ‘proletarian racist’ force, or more exactly a right-wing populist force with a very substantial working class base. It seems to me that the possibilities of such a development are very real and very disturbing. From the point of view

of the ruling class, the racism of such a movement would be of marginal significance. [23] However, the function of such a racist movement within the working class would be of very considerable importance in that it could seriously weaken the chances of any unified working-class counter attack in defence of living standards or for socialism. It would thus provide a useful weapon in the ruling class armoury. It is also clear that the current National Front has a good chance of developing in this direction, except in so far as its ‘cadre’ are trapped within classic fascist ideology.

The possibility of such a movement are increased if we consider the chances of the development of a different reactionary force. I have already seen how significant sections of the ‘new middle class’ are directly dependent upon the state for their social role. It is possible that the reactionary pressures would find a home in this layer under a dynamic rather different from that of classic fascism.

Consider the following proposition: the continued atrophy of independent working class organisation and the stifling of the struggle mean that the strategic demands of the ruling class are not for the smashing of the working-class organisations but for an increase in their degree of bureaucratisation and their definite commitment to the policies of class collaboration. In terms of industrial re-organisation too, theirs is a need to expand the planned and state directed sector economy in order to ensure that the limited amounts of surplus available to the British ruling class are directed into economic ‘rational’ directions, like microprocessors, rather than the Cayman Islands. Both of these goals are difficult to achieve as they meet resistance, on the one hand from the working class and, on the other, the ‘irrationality’ of private capital in a world increasingly dominated by state capitals. In order to realise such a solution, it is necessary to have a social force of some weight.

The ideological contours of such a force are as follows: it must be nationalistic although it does not need to be racialist; it must be opposed to class struggle and in favour of ‘planning’ within capitalist determinants; it must strongly identify with the expansion of the state sector. It is clear that such a force could find its ideological basis in the right, but none of the current contenders from this direction really fit such a project. On the other hand, the description of such a force I have just given clearly fits very closely some of the forces on the non-revolutionary left.

The objectives of such a movement do not include the ‘smashing’ of the labour movement and it is therefore very different from anything that we can properly describe as fascism. The problem for such a movement is not to ship the leaders of the TUC off to Dachau and to obliterate the unions. Rather, it is a case of isolating militants within the unions, both socially and politically. Any repression against difficult groups, like revolutionary socialists, can easily be left to the orthodox forces of the state. Such a movement does not, therefore, propose a sharp break with the traditional practices of class-collaboration and thus can come from within the labour movement.

Neither of these two forces exist in more than embryonic form at the present. Each considered separately would be extremely vulnerable. However, considered in their relationship to each other they produce a very much more frightening picture. It is precisely because the two forces would be antagonistic that together they represent a viable proposition. Consider, for example, the development of a right-wing populist force with a strong ideological commitment to racialism. One of the ways in which this could be undercut would be by means of an intensification of the class struggle. However, it is precisely such a development against which a ‘statist’ movement would be implacably opposed. The same process is true in reverse, with regard to the more extreme proposals of the populist right.

In essence, the relationship between the two forces is a continuation of the present dynamic of official politics raised to a higher level and in a different social climate. We are all too familiar with the power of the argument which runs: ‘Do what Jim tells you or you will end up with Margaret Thatcher’. It seems to me that the version which runs: ‘Do what Jim tells you or you will end up with Martin Webster’ would have the same type of impact, but that it would be immeasurably more powerful.

It is of course, easy to point to the ways in which both of these political options are non-viable in terms of realising their ends, but that, of course, does not mean that they cannot convince large numbers of people that they are viable – after all, the Labour Party has been non-viable from its foundation and it is still very much with us. From the point of view of the ruling class, such a development would be very useful in that the opposition between the two forces would render each unable to interfere with capital’s vital interests and would allow considerable room for it to realise its own ends.
 

Conclusions

All of the above is history, sociology and speculation, but it does have practical consequences. It seems to me, for the reasons I have outlined above, that it is unlikely that we are about to live through a repeat of the German catastrophe. It therefore follows that we need to adopt a critical attitude to the notions of ‘fighting fascism’ which we have derived from the 1930’s.

At the most elementary level, the orthodoxy which argues that, in order to win over the old middle classes to socialism by means of a set of programmatic demands designed to show them that the victory of the working class provides a better solution to their problems than does the victory of the fascists, is almost entirely outdated. The development of capitalism has reduced such forces, which were always made up substantially of peasants, to a very marginal role in modern Britain. It therefore follows that the reformist version of this argument, known as the ‘Popular Front’, loses even the apparent credibility that it may have possessed in the past.

Against these outdated concepts, we have to set the recognition that any reactionary movement, whether fascist or populist, will, in today’s conditions, be made up largely of wage workers. The question of which group could provide the main social base for such a movement is conjunctural and cannot be answered other than by speculation, but such considerations are of a secondary importance. The major question is: How to prevent a group of wage workers being won to a position which directly threatens their class interests?

In this context, both the experience of the struggle in Germany and what is known about fascism in Britain today suggest that such a development is possible. However, it is further the case that fascist recruitment amongst wage workers is rarely translated into any serious challenge for leadership in the class. The NSDAP was unable to mount any serious challenge to SPD control of the factory level trade union organisation. The National Front today seems unable to sustain any serious penetration into workplace organisation; although they are probably numerically much larger than the revolutionary left, this support has not been evident in interventions in the workplaces or unions. This, of course, follows from the fact that for both fascist and racist ideology, class is at best a secondary factor compared with race and nation. Thus their support is concentrated at the level of general ideas and classically located in the ‘community’ rather than the work-place.

It therefore follows that the primary condition for a successful fight against fascism must be conducted on two fronts. In the first place, it is a question of deepening and extending the degree of class organisation and class consciousness amongst new layers of wage workers. This problem is particularly obvious with regard to white collar workers but it also applies to considerable layers of the ‘traditional’ working class as well. Secondly, there is a need to counter reactionary developments in other areas outside the direct purview of the workplace and to engage in a mass of activities which are foreign to the hitherto narrow concerns of revolutionaries in Britain.

However, it is questionable whether these tasks can be conducted simply on the basis of ‘anti-fascism’. It is, of course, essential to distinguish between conjunctural factors operating over short periods of time and longer term perspectives, but even given these qualifications the necessary constrictions of ‘anti-fascism’ impose a straight-jacket upon attempts to solve problems which, in reality, require revolutionary propaganda and agitation.

In the longer term, the possibility of the development of a ‘statist’ political force would render this problem, already evident, that much more severe. It is necessary to recall that the principle of the united front, which is one of the lessons which we can take from the past implies neither a long term unification between revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries nor a suspension of independent activity on the part of revolutionaries during the course of any united front.

It is clear that all of the above applies much more strongly to the question of the fight against proletarian racism. This movement has a dynamic which can be traced very precisely to the impact of the crisis upon the working class and does not presuppose any ‘influence of alien forces’. Although the specific propaganda struggle against such a movement has an obvious importance, it can have only a marginal effect so long as the problems which give rise to the movement continue to exist and are not subject to any effective challenge. Thus it is here crucial that the struggle against racism is conducted at the same time as the struggle against capital more generally.

Both the above analysis and the conclusions are offered tentatively and more as the basis for discussion rather than as an argument for the shifts in policy which they imply. In particular, the arguments about the present position of the ‘new middle class’ are crucial to the whole thesis and, if they are wrong, then so too are the general overall conclusions. The same would be the case if it could be shown that there was no necessary correspondence between classic fascist politics and the class character of a fascist movement. The same would be the case if it could be shown that the alleged dialectic between ‘statism’ and ‘populism’ was wrongly conceived. However the evidence advanced here does at least suggest that it is true. If I am right, then the conclusions follow.

Notes

1. There is considerable debate as to the exact balance between the national and multinational aspects of modern capitalism, on which see the debate in International Socialism 1 : 100. Irrespective of this, it is clear that the general contradiction still remains.

2. Cited in A. Schweitzer, Big Business in the Third Reich (Eyre and Spottiswood 1964), p. 71.

3. Financial Times, 25/8/78.

4. Hammer or Anvil (Oriel 1973), p. 207.

5. Social Trends 1977 (HMSO 1977), pp. 81–84.

6. Cited in Abrams (ed.), Work, Urbanisation and Inequality (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1978), p. 68.

7. There is an uneven spread of these archaic occupations. In manufacturing as a whole, the proportion is 1.5%. It is highest, at 63%, in agriculture, forestry and fishing and stands at 26% in construction. (Figures from Ibid., p. 83)

8. Ibid., p. 74.

9. There is a marked differential earnings structure, but it runs as follows: male non-manual; male manual; female non-manual; female manual. The 1976 differential between male manual and non-manual was, at the median, £12 per week (Ibid., p. 95).

10. See Ibid., pp. 95–129.

11. Of the classic small-shopkeeper type, the grocer, there are, today, some 73,000. This number has dropped by 3,000 in the last year, so the group is certainly under some pressure, and the rate of turnover is undoubtedly higher, but this does not amount to the sort of catastrophe that took place in Germany. (Financial Times, 22/8/78)

12. Abrams, op. cit., p. 71.

13. This is very much a rough figure, but it is my feeling that it probably overstates the case. Apart from direct dependence upon the state, there are a host of ways in which other groups are indirectly dependent upon the state – for example in the case of various elements in the ‘artistic’ area. With regard to the largest single area, engineering (804,300) it seems reasonable to assume that the professional division follows roughly the overall pattern. The figures are derived from Ibid., pp. 72–73.

14. The classic exponent of this argument was H. Braverman, in Labour and Monopoly Capital (New York, Monthly Review 1974) and he argued largely from American material. Although there is much evidence that a similar process is taking place in Britain, it is difficult to find any detailed treatment of the theoretical and practical problems involved. It is possible, if Braverman’s general argument is right, that a sharp division will emerge inside the white-collar working class with a small elite section having very considerable privileges while the remainder of this group are either thrown out of the productive process altogether or reduced to a position more less identical to that of manual labour.

15. Figures from Abrams, op. cit., pp. 130–31. Since then the upward trend, particularly rapid among white collar workers, has continued. According to the TUC, quoted in the Financial Times of 28/8/78, TUC membership rose by 350,000 in the year 1977–78, to a total of 11,865,000 members – almost 50% of the workforce. ‘The most notable areas of increase are in clerical, technical and managerial spheres.’

16. From Abrams, op. cit., p. 134.

17. Ibid., pp. 133–34. Some heavily manual occupations, like catering, display a similarly low level of union membership.

18. In general, both the level of union organisation and the degree of militancy seem to be related to the size of the enterprise. On average, the number of administrative workers in a given enterprise is 37%, so that one would expect that these tend to be concentrated in smaller units and thus to be less well organised.

19. For details, see M. Walker The National Front (Fontana 1977) and the magazine Searchlight.

20. In his paper Racism and the Electorate (for the PSA Workshop on Contemporary British Politics, January 1977), M. Steed argues that this growth been less spectacular than has usually been supposed and shows how this is particularly concentrated in a wide area of East London.

21. One of the few attempts to theorise the role of the National Front in British politics, D. Edgar’s Racism, Fascism and the National Front (Race and Class pamphlet 4, 1977) argues precisely this. One crucial argument is clearly wrong; Weimar Germany restricted the inflow of foreign workers and the state machine maintained many informal racist practises as well.

22. There seems to have been a distinction in this respect between different areas of BUF support. Benewick’s useless and mindless book provides little help on this. However, if one compares the accounts in Kibblewhite and Rigby, Fascism in Aberdeen (Aberdeen People’s Press 1978) with the East London situation reported in P. Piratin Our Flag Stays Red (Lawrence and Wishart 1978) and J. Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto (Simon 1978), it is clear that there was a sharp distinction between the provinces and East London, in which the BUF undoubtedly had a substantial support amongst workers.

23. It is probably the case, as argued by A. Sivanandan in Race, Class and the State (IRR 1976), that the ruling class wishes to move towards a system of migratory labour on the German model. Thus, while they welcome a political movement large enough to terrorise resident immigrant workers into becoming migrants, it does not follow that they would wish to see the expulsion of all foreign workers from the country.

 
Top of page

ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

Last updated on 14 June 2018