Die Verbürgerlichung der Industriearbeiterschaft

Fascism infiltrates workers’ groups from two sides: the so-called ‘lumpen proletariat’ (an expression to which everyone takes exception) by means of direct material corruption and from the ‘workers’ aristocracy’, also by means of material corruption, as well as ideological influencing. In its political unscrupulousness, German fascism promised everybody everything. In an article by Dr Jarmer, ‘Capitalism’ (Angriff, 24 September 1931), we find:

At the German National Party rally in Stettin, Hugenberg spoke out against international capitalism with refreshing distinctness. At the same time, however, he stressed the necessity of a national capitalism.

In so doing he once again clearly demarcated the German Nationals from the National Socialists; for the latter know only too well that the capitalist economic order which is in the process of breaking down throughout the world has to be replaced by a different order, because even in national capitalism there can be no justice.

That sounds almost communistic. Here we have an example of fascist propaganda appealing directly and with a consciously fraudulent intention to the revolutionary ardour of the industrial workers. But the crucial question was why the National Socialist industrial workers failed to see that fascism promised everybody everything. It was known that Hitler negotiated with industrial magnates, received financial support from them and promised an injunction against striking. Thus, it must have been due to die psychological structure of the average worker that such contradictions were not squarely faced, despite the intensive work on the part of revolutionary organizations to make him conscious of them. In his interview with the American journalist Knickerbocker, Hitler had this to say about the recognition of private debts to foreign countries:

I am convinced that international bankers will soon realize that, under a National Socialist government, Germany will be a secure place of investment that a rate of interest of about 3% will be most willingly paid for credit.

[Deutscbland so oder so, p. 211]

If it were revolutionary propaganda’s cardinal task ‘to undeceive the proletariat’, this could not have been done solely by appealing to their ‘class consciousness’, nor solely by constantly impressing upon them the objective economic and political situation, and certainly not by constantly exposing the frauds that had been practised on them. The first and foremost task of revolutionary propaganda should have been to give the contradictions in the workers the most sympathetic consideration, to grasp the fact that it was not a clear revolutionary will that was concealed or befogged, but that the revolutionary impulse in the psychic structure of the proletariat was partially undeveloped and partially interfused with contrary reactionary structural elements. The distillation of the revolutionary sentiments of the broad masses is undoubtedly the basic task in the process of awakening their social responsibility.

In times of ‘quiet’ bourgeois democracy two fundamental possibilities are open to the industrial worker: identification with the bourgeoisie, which holds a higher position in the social scale, or identification with his own social class, which produces its own anti-reactionary way of life. To pursue the first possibility means to envy the reactionary man, to imitate him, and, if the opportunity arises, to assimilate his habits of life. To pursue the second of these possibilities means to reject the reactionary man’s ideologies and habits of life. Due to the simultaneous influence exercised by both social and class habits, these two possibilities are equally strong.

The revolutionary movement also failed to appreciate the importance of the seemingly irrelevant everyday habits, indeed, very often turned them to bad account. The lower middle-class bedroom suite, which the ‘rabble’ buys as soon as he has the means, even if he is otherwise revolutionary minded; the consequent suppression of the wife, even if he is a Communist; the ‘decent’ suit of clothes for Sunday; ‘proper’ dance steps and a thousand other ‘banalities’, have an incomparably greater reactionary influence when repeated day after day than thousands of revolutionary rallies and leaflets can ever hope to counterbalance. Narrow conservative life exercises a continuous influence, penetrates every facet of everyday life; whereas factory work and revolutionary leaflets have only a brief effect.

Thus, it was a grave mistake to cater to the conservative tendencies in the workers by giving banquets ‘as a means of getting at the masses’. Reactionary fascism was much more expert at this. The budding revolutionary modes of life were not cultivated. There was more truth about the reactionary structure of the workers in the ‘evening dresses bought by the wife of a worker for such a ‘banquet’ than in a hundred articles. The evening dress or at-home beer parties were, of course, only external manifestations of a process in the worker, a testimony of the fact that the groundwork for the reception of National Socialist propaganda was already there.

When, added to this, the fascist promised the ‘abolition of the proletariat’ and was successful with this promise, it was the evening dress and not the economic programme that accounted for success in ninety of one hundred cases. We must pay more, much more, attention to these details of everyday life. It is around these details that social progress or its opposite assumes concrete forms, not around the political slogans that arouse temporary enthusiasm only. There is important and fruitful work waiting here.

In Germany the revolutionary work for the masses was restricted almost exclusively to propaganda ‘against hunger’. The basis of this propaganda, as important as it was, proved to be too narrow. There are thousands of different things taking place behind the scenes in the life of the individuals of the masses. For instance, the young worker has a thousand sexual and cultural problems, which plague him as soon as he has appeased his hunger to a small degree. The fight against hunger is of primary importance, but the hidden processes of human life must also be placed under the fierce light of this monkey show, in which we are spectator and actor at one and the same time; and this must be done without restraint and without fear of consequences.

The working man would undoubtedly show himself to be infinitely creative in his attempts to develop his own conceptions of life and natural way of viewing things. The mastering of everyday social problems would give invincible impetus to the reactionary-infested masses. A detailed, concrete, and germane study of these problems is indispensable. It will accelerate and secure the victory of the revolution. And please don’t raise the threadbare objection that such proposals are Utopian.

Only by stressing all possibilities of a work-democratic way of life, by taking a militant stance towards reactionary thinking and militantly developing the seed of a living culture of masses of people, can lasting peace be secured. As long as reactionary social irresponsibility predominates over social responsibility, the worker will also be fairly closed to revolutionary, i.e., rational, behaviour. This is also another reason psychological work among the masses is so imperative.

The degradation of manual labour (which is a basic element of the inclination to imitate the reactionary white-collar worker) constitutes the psychological basis upon which fascism relies as soon as it begins to infiltrate the working classes. Fascism promises the abolition of the classes, that is to say, the abolition of proletarian status, and in this way it plays upon the social inferiority felt by the manual labourer. As long as peasants were still migrating to the city to become workers, they brought along a fresh rural family ideology, which, as we have already shown, is the best soil for the fostering of an imperialistic-nationalistic ideology. In addition to this, there is an ideological process in the workers’ movement, which, in the assessment of the chances of a revolutionary movement in countries having a highly developed industry as well as in those countries whose industry was still undeveloped, has been accorded much too little attention.

Kautsky noted that, politically, the worker in highly in-dustriali2ed England was less developed than the worker in industrially undeveloped Russia (Soziale Revolution, second edition, pp. 59-60). The political events in the various countries of the world during the past thirty years have clearly shown that revolutionary revolts take place more readily in industrially undeveloped countries, such as China, Mexico and India, than in countries such as England, America and Germany.

And this is the case, notwithstanding the existence of disciplined, well-organized workers’ movements rooted in old traditions in the latter countries. If bureaucratization, which is itself a pathological symptom, is abstracted from the workers’ movement, the question arises as to the exceptional entrenchment of conservatism in Social Democracy and in the trade unions in Western countries. From the standpoint of the psychology of the masses, Social Democracy is based on the conservative structures of its followers. As in the case of fascism, the problem here lies not so much in the policies pursued by the party leadership as it does in the psychological basis in the workers. I want to point out only a few relevant facts, which, however, may well solve a riddle or two. Here are the facts:

In early capitalism, besides the sharp economic division between bourgeoisie and proletariat, there was an equally sharp ideologic division-, and particularly a structural division. The absence of any kind of social policy, the emasculating sixteen-, indeed eighteen-hour workday, the low standard of living of the industrial workers - classically described in Engels’ ‘Condition of the Working Classes in England’ - precluded any structural assimilation of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The structure of the nineteenth-century proletariat was characterized by a meek submission to fate. The psychological mood of this proletariat, including the peasantry, was one of indifference and apathy. Bourgeois thinking was lacking; consequently, this apathy did not hinder the sudden outbreak of revolutionary sentiments, if suitable occasions arose and did not prevent these sentiments from developing to an unexpected intensity and resoluteness. In later stages of capitalism, on the other hand, it was different.

If an organized workers’ movement had succeeded in winning socio-political improvements - as shorter working hours, franchise, and social security - this had the effect of strengthening the working class; but at the same time a contrary process set in: With the raising of the standard of living, there was a structural assimilation to the middle class. With the elevation of one’s social position, ‘one’s eyes turned upward’. In times of prosperity this adaptation of middle-class habits was intensified, but the subsequent effect of this adaptation, in times of economic crisis, was to obstruct the full unfolding of revolutionary sentiments.

The strength of the Social Democracies during the crisis years shows just how completely the workers had been infected with this conservatism. Thus, this strength was not to be explained on purely political grounds. It is now important to comprehend its basic elements. Two facts stand out: the emotional tie to the fuhrer, that is to say, the unshakableness of the faith in the infallibility of the political leadership (notwithstanding all the criticism, which never materialized into action), and the sex-moralistic assimilation to the conservatism of the lower middle class.

This assimilation to the middle class was energetically encouraged by the upper middle class everywhere. The Social Democrats should have literally swung their cudgels, in the beginning, at a time when fascism had not yet attained victory. Instead, they held them in reserve and used them only against the revolutionary workers. For the masses who were- Social Democrats, they had a far more dangerous expedient: conservative ideology in all areas.

When, then, the Social Democrat worker found himself in the economic crisis which degraded him to the status of a coolie, the development of his revolutionary sentiments was severely retarded by the conservative structuralization that had been taking shape in him for decades. Either he remained in the camp of the Social Democrats, notwithstanding his criticism and rejection of their policies, or he went over to the N SD AP in search of a better replacement. Irresolute and indecisive, owing to the deep contradiction between revolutionary and conservative sentiments, disappointed by his own leadership, he followed the line of least resistance.

Whether he would give up his conservative tendencies and arrive at a complete consciousness of his actual responsibility in the production process, i.e., at a revolutionary consciousness, depended solely on the correct or incorrect leadership of the revolutionary party. Thus the communist assertion that it was the Social Democrat policies that put fascism in the saddle was correct from a psychological viewpoint. Disappointment in Social

Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking, must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations. For example, following the fiasco of the Labour party’s policies in England, in 1930-31, fascism began to infiltrate the workers who, then, in the election of 1931, cut away to the Right, instead of going over to communism. Democratic Scandinavia was also severely threatened by such a development.

Rosa Luxemburg took the view that a revolutionary fight was not possible with ‘coolies’ (Ges. W. Bd. 4, p. 647). What kind of a coolie are we dealing with: the coolie before or after he has gone through conservative structurali2ation? Beforehand we are dealing with a coolie who has an almost impenetrable dullness, but also a great capacity for revolutionary action. Afterwards we are dealing with disappointed coolies. Would it not be more difficult to rouse their revolutionary inclinations? How long can fascism exploit the masses’ disappointment in Social Democracy and their ‘rebellion against the system’ for its own narrow purposes? As difficult as it may be to answer this momentous question, one thing is certain: the international revolutionary movement will have to tackle it, if it wants to deal fascism its death blow.

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