In my experience, contemporary marxists across the various tendencies tend to draw heavily on Trotsky’s analysis, which is an impressive feat considering all the theoretical disagreements and historical bad blood between leftists ranging from anarchists to Maoists. What is an historian’s take on the piece?
Personally, I think the analysis of the class basis of fascism and its function in protecting capital and private property rights when capital feels threatened by crisis and a labor movement presented in Trotsky’s essay and also in Clara Zetkin’s piece on fascism presented to the Comintern is a concrete Marxist analysis of an often hard to categorize phenomenon in my experience as a Marxist activist. It would be interesting for me to see what an historian’s opinion on the piece is, as I find it interesting I didn’t see either Trotsky’s or Zetkin’s works referenced in the larger thread on fascism.
The mainstream (often non-academic, Im not swinging at historians with this remark) understanding of fascism as some abstract thing about infringing on rights, genocide, nationalism, and military parades is woefully inadequate and can frankly be used to describe almost any capitalist government at one time or another without any distinction between the status quo and actual fascism. In fact the top comment of the other thread even alluded to the fact that some historians think it’s a useless word without any concrete definition, a claim that I disagree with. That’s why I think the class basis of Trotsky and Zetkin’s analyses is an important one that the mainstream understanding of fascism ignores.
The essay also deals with how to confront fascism. The main points are a United Front (an alliance with broad, non-communist but working class based forces to fight fascism without giving up the independence of those forces to the capitalist class forces) and an armed working class willing to match whatever force the fascists bring to the table, as they are prone to violence and the police are materially pre-dispositioned to be fascists themselves and cannot be trusted to keep them from violently seizing power. While not central to my main question, looking at how different instances of fascism have successfully or not so successfully dealt with fascist movements could be a good extra credit part of an answer.
EDIT: aw crap I misspelled his name in the title, what kind of trotskyist am I D:
I thought about trying to write up my thoughts on Trotsky's and other Marxist definitions of fascism, but was forced to confront the fact that u/commiespaceinvader is better at it than I am. I broadly share their view that Marxist analyses of fascism are important - not least because they actually tried to come to grips with fascism as a theoretical concept in the 1920s and 1930s, decades before anyone else really tried all that hard. However, it's important to note that a class-based analysis has limitations here as well - it explains the reactionary elements of fascism well, but perhaps less the revolutionary elements. I don't think I'm contradicting the linked answer there - I would say that u/commispaceinvader is writing a defence of the usefulness of Marxist scholarship, rather than an assertion of its ability to completely explain all facets of Nazism, but they are welcome to set me straight if I'm wrong there.
The place where I might be able to help more is with the 'extra credit' (how does that work? should I see you after class?) element of your question. I've written before on the specific failure of German anti-fascism, and the successes and failures of efforts to learn from these issues after 1933, though there's perhaps more to be said about the substantive differences between the Comintern's 'Popular Front' policy and Trotsky's proposed 'United Front'. I'll even throw in this other unsolicited opinion about what 'worked' in terms of confronting interwar fascism.
Looks like I missed field day.
Jokes aside I am glad that both /u/commiespaceinvader and /u/crrpit took care of business; these have been infernal days...
Yet, I feel I may have something to say about this one. At least in so far as the points which relate to Italian Fascism in particular – which is to say, those I feel I can address more properly – and, accounting for the fact that the value and significance of Marxist historiography for the interpretation of Fascism (points that I have no intention to dispute) has already been covered, I suppose I can spend a few words on the specific contributions you linked.
Now, the reason you won't find Trotsky's or Zetkin's works referenced in scholarly works on Fascism – I mean, they are referenced, of course; and so are those of many other politically relevant figures who wrote about Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, but you won't find them referenced as “scholarly sources” - is the fact that they aren't.
While I can agree that they are the product of two insightful individuals who attempted, often under urgency and pressure (which, given the circumstances of political conflict and the limitations and immediate threat experienced by many communist activists in the 1920s, may be a bit of an understatement), to provide either a first or an alternative interpretation to the mainstream (Socialist) one, and therefore some of their shortcomings can be excused, they are unfortunately rife with oversimplifications, misrepresentations and objective and manifest ignorance of the subject, as well as – apparently, and given their context, understandably – more committed to the defense of their interpretation than to an actual understanding of the observed events, that they both fall short of a good portion of contemporary analysis (which is to say, of the many other contemporary observers who discussed the Fascist phenomenon, such as Gramsci, Tasca, Amendola, Sturzo, Gobetti, Salvemini and later on – perhaps surprisingly – even Togliatti, who, doctrinaire tolls aside, displayed a better understanding of certain Italian situations).
In other words, they truly are “political” works – which is not to say that they are “bad”, but that in this specific instance, their political intent, which is manifest, and regardless of our judgment on their position, shapes their understanding in a way that appears to critically undermine it. For this reason, while I would agree that they are somewhat relevant to an analysis of Fascism, I'd argue that, in terms of historical analysis, they can serve, at best, as the remote and distant antecedents of (a certain trend of) Marxist historiography of Fascism.
I will, of course, attempt to substantiate this argument with a brief (well...) examination of both texts – according to chronological order – where I try to highlight the main issues I have with them, and especially with their characterization of Italian Fascism.
First, though, I have to address a point that seems relevant to any discussion of Marxist political thought in the early XX Century – that is, I don't believe it can be removed, or examined abstracting from political action. Which, in itself, is a completely legitimate proposition. But also one that, good intentions aside, confers a specific and indeed rather absolute perspective to any analysis. And, while, in general, Marxist historiography has adopted certain tools, ideas and points of view developed by Marx or within the experience of the socialist movement, without necessarily subordinating the use of these instruments to a specific political direction – which, at times, has contributed to a certain ambiguity of thought, where one doesn't really address the broad political conclusions of their chosen theoretical approach, but has allowed for the maintenance of a degree of separation between their political experience and their work of analysis – here, given the specific circumstances of their formulation, both texts reveal a markedly different imprint as, for both authors, their political action is the primary motive of their analysis and investigation.
The reason why I believe this to be problematic, is the fact that their perspective on the historical function of socialism, Marxist thought, and the role of the organized labor movement can't be ignored in an examination of the development and affirmation of Fascism. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, with its influence on the international socialist movement – while it doesn't represent, like the Great War or the inflation period, a purely mechanical “cause” of Fascism – was certainly a central element, both ideologically and practically, in the process which led to its establishment as a mass movement and eventually as a political force able to take control of the institutions of the liberal state. In this sense, when one maintains that we should examine Fascism – as I certainly believe we should – from the perspective of a “national”, anti-socialist movement, it is impossible to ignore what the declared “enemy” of Fascism represented for Fascism itself and, more generally, for the public mind. And conversely we can't ignore that the perspective of a Fascist defeat in the early 1920s – hence, by extension the interpretation of its affirmation – had two substantially opposite meanings for contemporary observers: either the survival and restoration of the authority of the “bourgeois” liberal state over the masses, with the state able to secure their involvement and stable participation to the life of the nation, or its final and ultimate destruction thanks to the revolutionary action of those same masses.
This general perception existed, remarkably enough, despite Mussolini's best efforts to promote a view of Fascism as alternative to both Socialism and the liberal state – which, in a way, could represent a consistent evolution of the original influences of “national radicalism”, with their opposition to parliamentarism, to the liberal institutions, to “democracy” in its weak liberal interpretation, with the aspiration to the formation of a “new state” more attuned to the “nation”. Yet, obvious as it may appear, these aspirations to maintain a distance from the outdated, crumbling institutions of the post-unitary state could not prevent Fascism from assuming, even by function alone, the role of a guard dog of the institutions, the warden of the inept liberal government, and therefore the champion of an anti-Socialist resistance.
Therefore, while Mussolini – commenting on the collapse of the “legalitarian” front on August 9^th 1922 – could vindicate that Fascism was not only victorious over Socialism but represented
the beginning of a long epoch of Italian history; the end of the inept liberal state and of its antagonistic parasite, socialism, and the formation of the national state, which does not negotiate or begs for its own existence, but reclaims and enforces it.
In the other chamber of the Italian Parliament, liberal-conservative senator Luigi Albertini – one of the greatest champions of Italy's liberal institutions and prominent exponent of the industrial bourgeoisie – was forced to admit that the only viable solution to the crisis of the liberal state was the assignation of government functions to Fascism:
One can't make sense of the impressive phenomenon of reaction taking place within the public opinion, which Fascism represents, unless one takes into account the depth and length of the causes which provoked it; unless one admits that, one act of submission after another, one proof of weakness after another, the authority of the state amounts, by now, to nothing at all. […]
A time has come, from one side, to be done with threats and violence […] and from the other, to acknowledge that the best way to remove any excuse for violence is to call the fascists to prove their ability to handle the public thing, to maintain those promises which have driven so many adepts to their ranks.
And a few weeks later – on October 4^th 1922, after his more famous, and probably more significant “ministerial” speech of Udine, while cautiously preparing his ascension to the Ministry – Mussolini provided a new partial reassurance of his interpretation of the functions of government.
We can't give liberty to those who would take advantage of it in order to assassinate us. Here is the stolidity of the liberal state: that it gives liberty to all, even those who use it to bring it down. We won't give anyone this liberty. Not even if the demand for it comes wrapped up in the old faded charts of immortal principles. […]
That said, Fascism's belligerence was not indiscriminate:
We can divide the Italians in three categories: the “unconcerned”, who will keep to their homes and wait; the “sympathetic”, who will be allowed out; and, last, the Italian “enemies”, who won't be.