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”.

Parallels with historical fascisms

“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.

“Under no circumstances must we underrate fascism's power of ideological

infection.” -- “Fascism [[delivers up the people to be devoured by the most corrupt and venal
elements, but]] comes before the people with the demand for ‘an honest and incorruptible
government.’ Speculating on the profound disillusionment of the masses [[in bourgeois-
democratic governments]], fascism hypocritically denounces corruption.” (Georgi Dimitrov,
1935)

Final crisis of a particular historical regime of socialist (?) accumulation. (Parallel

with Sohn-Rethel, 1970.)

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 …

“The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois

government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the
bourgeoisie – bourgeois democracy – by another form – open terrorist dictatorship.”
(Dimitrov)

Contrary to the 1930-ies, the 1990-ies introduced “bourgeois democracy”

against socialist democracy. However, the more abstract Dimitrov’s formula does
adequately describe the process: “a substitution of one state form of class
domination […] by another form”. – The substitution of the “state form” was more
radical than in the case of historical fascisms. While in the case of historical fascisms,
it was only the state form that was transformed in order to secure the existing class
domination, the restoration of capitalism was a transformation of the nature of class
domination, whose only one dimension was the transformation of the state form.
However, the transformation of the state form was not a mere effect of the
instauration of the new class domination. To the contrary, the state was the main
agent that installed the new class domination by coercive means whose introduction
and enforcement are the exclusive prerogative of the state apparatuses. The
transformation of the state was the work of the state itself.
This is the meaning of the often expressed self-flattery of the new rulers
stressing that the transition to the new state form was achieved according to all the
norms of the rule of law. The violence of this process was displaced upon the armed
fighting that, itself, mostly had unilateral and shaky legal definitions, and where the
involved parties massively practiced crime.
The decisive role of the state was explicit in the act of the state appropriation
of the “social property”. To make privatisation of the means of production possible,
the state first had to abolish “social ownership” and to appropriate it by the means of
the legal constraint. In this way, the state performed the decisive operation that
separated immediate producers from the means of production, and thus established
the structural condition of the capitalist mode of production. The state executed “the
so-called primitive accumulation”.
One of our central problems is consequently to determine the nature of this
formally bourgeois democratic state that created its own structural conditions of
possibility.

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.

Yet another parallel

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.

It differs from the historical fascism by being:

- not the salvation of the existing class-domination, but the introduction of a

new class domination together with the composition of the new ruling
class;
- not the destruction of the bourgeois democracy, but its establishment.

To sum-up, it seems that fascisoid politics arises in situations when:

- there is a top-down attempt to change the state form;

- the weaker fraction of the ruling class (or coalition) attempts to
appropriate the transformation of the state form and its gains;
ALTERNATIVE: the ruling bourgeoisie in a (nationally and internationally)
weak position decides to change the state form in order to crush the
workers’ movement – and to establish a strong position in the
international imperialist competition (Italy);
 - the masses have been thoroughly disillusioned by the “established” “really
existing” socialist project.

Ideological mechanisms of hegemony

Mainstream discourse (i.e., the dominant ideology of the epoch) presented

post-socialist fascism in the post-Yugoslav countries as radical or extremist
nationalism. This explanation seemed too easy, and had two major flaws:

- It had a “neo-colonial” flavour, ascribing, as it was, the phenomenon to

the ethnocentrism and collectivist oppressiveness of peripheral nations.
- It could not (and generally did not bother to) explain the difference
between the relatively emancipatory anti-imperial 19 th century
nationalisms and the progressive nationalisms of the anti-colonial
struggles of the 20th century on one side, and the repressive nationalisms
verging to fascism of the end of the 20th century.

The solution was to invent an alternative concept of the nation as a

mechanism of social totalisation under the conditions of the capitalist mode of
production, characterised by the fragmentation of society into isolated individuals and
with no ideological cohesion-mediation, since its specific mode of exploitation has no
need of the extra-economic constraint. This concept considers the national (“mother”)
tongue as the material existence of the nation, operating as the general matrix of
mutual translatability of all the (ideological) discourses. The “progressive” nature of
the national constitution resides in the fact that it separates knowledge from belief.
Beliefs are many and pertain to the “freedom of consciousness”, while there is only
one integrating knowledge – the knowledge of the mother tongue that qualifies
individuals as members of the national community. Within the nation, ideologies
struggle for hegemony and at each moment there is one ideology that occupies this
position – without preventing other ideologies from continuing to exist and to wage
the ideological struggle.

As long as the nation exists, it is overdetermined by some hegemonic

ideology, without this ideology succeeding to conflate belief and knowledge. The
hegemonic ideology is itself incessantly challenged, subverted etc. by other
ideologies. Knowledge and belief remain separated, since the agonistic process
develops in the national language, its mastery being the only knowledge required for
the agon to continue and for the nation to reproduce itself.

However, if an ideological vacuum arises (the situation diagnosed by many

theoreticians of fascism: masses having lost their trust in the socialist forces, while
bourgeoisie had been delegitimised), then the nation, to continue to exist,
ideologically overdetermines itself by itself: the hegemony is assumed by the
“national culture” (cf. the importance of culture and the arts in Italian fascism).
Knowledge and belief are conflated, as “national culture” operates as the secret
native knowledge in the exclusive possession of the members of the community. The
members believe that the native knowledge cannot be transmitted to the outsiders,
since it defines the identity of the communal individuals. When this happens, the
nation has passed into an identitary community.

This “vacuum” occurred in Yugoslavia when socialist ideology was no longer

able to overdetermine the national constructions, and when, at the same time,
capitalism had no chance to appeal to the masses. The past strength of the Yugoslav
socialism had thoroughly disqualified capitalist ideology. It was paradoxically one of
the causes of the brutality of the disintegration. Had socialism not delegitimised
capitalism, the vacuum may have been filled by the illusions about the capitalist
welfare, as it happened in most of the post-socialist countries.

If nation was pluralistic and liberal, identitary community is monistic and

intolerant. The “auto-ethnographic identification” becomes problematic: as soon as it
is challenged, its utterer starts losing the authority to utter it. Consequently, an
identitary community is inwardly oppressive. Its outward stances are paradoxical: on
one side, it is outwardly aggressive, since it believes itself to be in possession of a
secret and exclusive knowledge/culture, and thus feels superior to its non-members
and neighbours. On the other side, an identitary community is incessantly in the need
of recognition, and searches for a supreme authority that would bestow it.

Here the book started …

 The book presented the idea that the normative and authoritarian dimension
of the “national culture” was predominantly established by the national literary canon,
depository of the “proper” national language. The school apparatus provided
linguistic orthopaedic and cultural police. Its authoritarian and disciplinary efficiency
derive from the particular mix of the oral and the written communicational
technologies transmitting the knowledge of the mother tongue and the morals of the
canonical national literature. The cultural bureaucracy, who during socialism
practically acquired the monopoly over the educational and cultural apparatuses, had
long been processing whole generations through a specific cultural form that was to
become, at a particular historical conjuncture, the “cultural fascism”.

Provisional conclusion

We could conclude with a quote from Trotsky (1932):

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.

The independent crystallisation of the proletariat had been importantly

hampered already during socialism. The obstruction was double and quite
paradoxical. On one side, it took the classical form of the political bureaucracy’s
monopoly over the representation of working classes “in general”. This meant that
political bureaucracy, in the good old manner of the Hegelian dialectics of “terror”,
was able to disqualify and eventually to repress any labour self-organisation “in
particular”. On the other hand, workers’ collectives were integrated by the system of
self-management into the competition among enterprises on the socialist market. In
this way, the system of socialist “administration” had already importantly reduced the
potential of the independent crystallisation of the working people.

During the restauration of capitalism historical paths of post-Yugoslav states

diverged. In most countries, given the weakness of the working masses inherited
from socialism, the governments, supported by the pressure of organised
transnational capital, attacked the labour rights, introduced a fragmented and
“flexible” market of labour force, and dismantled the welfare state. The management
in the enterprises acted as the vanguard of this process and imposed non-standard
labour contracts, introduced new intensive forms of organisation of the labour
process, corporate governance, transferred the risks upon the workers etc.

In Slovenia, trade unions prevented the neo-liberal “shock therapy” and

preserved the main mechanisms of the socialist social state during the 1990-ies.
Under the then almost consensual ideology of “accession to EU”, a class
compromise was formed between the working class and the national bourgeoisie in
the making. The implicit deal was that the working class would assume the burden of
the conditions of accession to EU, while the ruling bourgeoisie would not destroy the
social state. This class compromise was the material basis of the Slovene “success
story” of the nineteen-nineties. The integration of trade unions into the system (via
collective negotiations and the tripartite Social-economic council) importantly
weakened the organised labour, while national bourgeoisie never succeeded its
class-composition. The accession to EU marked the triumph of the comprador
fraction over the national bourgeoisie, the beginning of its long-term offensive against
the labour, and the progressive erosion of trade unions. EU prevented the ascent of
fascism by doing its work.

However, the menace of fascism is still hovering above many a country.

Some of the conditions seem fulfilled: massive disappointment over EU, ideological
vacuum, weakening organised labour, “unprincipled” fraction struggles within local
ruling classes.

Some actualisations:

- Hungary: a political attempt at the top-down composition of the national

bourgeoisie (that failed to establish itself as a class during the
restauration of capitalism); and an attempt at the top-down transformation
of the state form from EU peripheral (“colonised”) state to a nation-state.
- Ukraine is, in our perspective, an inverted case: a top-down attempt at the
transformation of the state form from a failed nation-state to an EU
peripheral (“colonised”) state; its social agent is the “chrematocracy”
(formed during the restoration of private property of the means of
production), itself incapable to organise and run the national economy.
- In Greece, chances for fascism seem weak right now: EU bureaucracy (+
agents of the transnational capital like IMF, ECB), in collaboration with the
national bourgeoisie already performed the top-down transformation of
the state form (into an EU neo-colony); the fascisoid response is relatively
strong, but has by no means achieved an ideological hegemony. The
present defeat of fascism in Greece is, the achievement of Syriza, and
depends on the success of Syriza.