Until around the end of the First World War in Russia and until the worldwide economic crisis around 1930 in the United States, the relationship between the system of private capitalism and the system of the state was a simple one. For Lenin and his contemporaries the ‘capitalist state’ was simply the power instrument of the ‘class of private capitalists’. The simplicity of this relationship was depicted somewhat as follows in Russian revolutionary films:
The private owner of a factory attempts to depress wages; the workers demand higher wages. The capitalist refuses to comply with this demand, whereupon the workers go on strike to push through their demand. The capitalist telephones the police commissioner and charges him ‘to re-establish order’. In this case, the police commissioner figures as a public tool of the capitalist, and as such merely attests to the fact that the state is a ‘capitalist state’’. The police commissioner orders his force to the factory and has the ‘ringleaders’ arrested; the workers are without leadership. After a while they begin to feel the pangs of hunger and willingly or unwillingly return to their jobs. The capitalist has won. This demands better and stricter organization of the workers. In the opinion of the
sociologists who took the part of the workers, this film reflected the relationship between state and capitalism in America. But the enormous social readjustments of the past twenty years have effected changes which no longer coincide with this simple conception. More and more corporations, which were generally described as ‘state-capitalistic’, grew out of the private capitalist system. The Russian society replaced private capitalism with the unlimited power of the state. It makes no difference what it is called, but in the strict Marxist sense state capitalism has taken the place of private capitalism. As we already pointed out, the concept of capitalism is not determined by the existence of individual capitalists, but by the existence of market economy and wage labour.
As a result of the worldwide economic crisis 1929-33, social processes that tended towards state capitalism also set in Germany and America. The state as an organization above society also began to assume an autonomous position towards the system of private capitalism. In part, it took over functions that had formerly been left to private capitalists: for instance, also imposed wage controls on private capitalism, in some areas more and in others less. All of this was brought about by the pressure exerted by masses of wage labourers and employees. It was in this way that they exercised their social influence: not by a direct take-over of administrative social functions by their organizations, but in a fundamentally different way, namely by exerting the necessary pressure upon the state apparatus to force it to restrict the interests of private capitalism and to safeguard the rights of the labourers and the employees.
In other words: As a result of the revolutionary events in the Soviet Union and the economic slumps in other large societies, which had a more gradual effect, severe crises had been created and with them also the need to mobilize the existing state apparatus to prevent disintegration. ‘The state’ as an autonomous social power again stressed its original function of holding society together at all costs.
This process was very evident in Germany. The need for cohesion in the acute crisis years 1929-39 was so great that the totalitarian and authoritarian idea of the state had hardly any difficulty in gaining wide acceptance. Admitted that the society was held together, the fact remains that the problems that had precipitated the social crisis were not solved. This is easily understood, for the ideology of the state is incapable of dealing with opposing interests in a. factual and practical way. Many of the anti-capitalistic measures adopted by fascism are to be explained on the basis of this process, measures that seduced some sociologists into looking upon fascism as a revolutionary social movement. But fascism was anything but a revolutionary movement. It was merely a precipitant change from the autocracy of private capitalism to state capitalism. In the Goring industries, state capitalism and private capitalism merged into one. Since anti-capitalistic tendencies had always been strong among German workers and employees, this change could be effected only by the use of anti-capitalistic propaganda. It was precisely this contradiction that made the victorious campaign of fascism the prototype of social irrationalism and, consequently, so difficult to grasp. Since fascism promised the masses of people a revolution against private capitalism and at the same time promised private capitalism salvation from the revolution, its moves could be nothing but contradictory, incomprehensible and sterile. This also accounts to a large extent for the compulsion that drove the German state apparatus into an imperialistic war. There was no possibility of regulating the conditions within the German society in an objective way. The use of police clubs and pistols to create the semblance of peace can hardly be called a ‘solution
of social problems’. The ‘unification of the nation’ had been brought about in an illusionary way. We have learned to ascribe just as great, if not a greater, effectiveness to processes that are based on illusions as to processes that are based on hard reality. The effect of the church hierarchy has been an incontestable proof of this for thousands of years. Even though not a single factual problem of social life had been actually solved, the illusionary unification of the state created the impression that it was a fascist achievement. The untenability of such a solution was clearly brought out in the course of time. Social discord was greater than it had ever been, yet the illusionary cohesion of the state was sufficient to keep the German society from formal collapse for ten years. The factual solution of the existing discord was reserved for different and more fundamental processes.
Whether we are concerned with a capitalist state or a proletarian state, the function of affecting a unity of social discords is the same. Still we must bear in mind the difference in the original intention: In fascism the authoritarian state becomes the fixed prototype of the idea of the state, which means that masses of people are relegated to the status of permanent subjects. Lenin’s proletarian state had the intention of undermining itself continuously and of establishing self-administration. In both cases, however, the core is given by the ‘state control of consumption and production’.
Let us return to our common denominator, the inability on the part of working masses of people to administrate society themselves. We will then have a better understanding of the logicality of the development of private capitalism to state capitalism which has taken place during the past twenty-five years. In Russia the working masses of people were capable of overthrowing the old tsarist state apparatus and replacing it by a state apparatus whose leaders stemmed from their own ranks. But they were not capable of going on to self-administration and of assuming the responsibility themselves.
In other countries the working masses of people who were highly organized formally were not capable of advancing and putting into practice the self-administration that was a part of the ideology of their own organizations. Hence, the state apparatus was forced to take over more and more functions that actually devolved upon the masses. It took them over in their stead, as it were, for instance, in Scandinavia and in the United States.
As basically different as the state control of social production and consumption was in Russia, Germany, Scandinavia and the United States on the basis of their historical development, there was still a common denominator, the incapacity on the part of masses of people to administrate society themselves. And the danger of authoritarian dictatorships follows logically and simply from this common basis of a development towards state capitalism. Whether a state functionary has democratic orientation or whether he is an authoritarian representative of the state is purely accidental. Viewed from the perspective of the structure and ideology of the working masses of people, there is, in reality not a single concrete guarantee that a dictatorship will not develop from state capitalism. It is precisely for this reason that, in the fight for genuine democracy and social self-administration, it is of decisive importance to single out and stress the role of man’s character structure and the shifting of man’s responsibility to the processes of love, work and knowledge.
As painful and embarrassing as it may be, the fact remains that we are confronted with a human structure that has been shaped by thousands of years of mechanistic civilization and is expressed in social helplessness and an intense desire for a fuhrer.
The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic. In contrast to the German and Russian state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism. This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point-out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe’s dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbours more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a tsar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm. By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other hand, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old. This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different - more open and more accessible — attitude towards the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may also explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else. We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency towards dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.
I want to stress that we are not concerned with the question of guilt or evil will, but solely with the elucidation of developments on the basis of definite, already existing conditions.
Let us briefly summarize the connections between the structure of the masses and the form of the state.
The influence of the character structure of masses of people is decisive in determining the form that the state assumes, whether this structure is expressed passively or actively. It is the structure of the masses that tolerates imperialism. It is this structure that actively supports it. By the same token it is the structure of masses of people that is capable of
overthrowing despotism, even though it does not have the ability to prevent the emergence of new despotism. It is this structure that promotes and supports genuine democratic efforts when the state operates in this direction. It is this structure that gives rise to national revolutionary movements when the genuine democratic international freedom movement fails. It is this structure that takes refuge in the illusionary unity of family, people, nation and state when democracy fails; but it is also this structure that passes on and develops the process of love, work and knowledge. Hence, only this structure is capable of imbibing the genuinely democratic tendencies of a state administration by taking over the administrative functions ‘above it’ piecemeal and learning to execute them through its own work organisations. It is beside the point, i.e., it is not of crucial importance, whether the change from state administration to self-administration takes place quickly or slowly. It is better for everyone if it takes place organically and without bloodshed. But this is possible only if the representatives of the state above society are fully conscious of the fact that they are nothing but the delegated executive organs of the working human community; that, in the strictest sense of the word, they are executive organs from necessity, i.e., they are executive organs made necessary by the ignorance and wretchedness in which millions of people live. Strictly speaking, they have the tasks of good educators, namely the task of making self-reliant adults of the children entrusted to their care. A society that is striving to achieve genuine democracy must never lose sight of the principle that it is the task of the state to make itself more and more superfluous, just as an educator becomes superfluous when he has done his duty towards the child. If this principle is not forgotten, bloodshed can be and will be avoided. Only to the extent to which the state clearly and unequivocally abolishes itself is it possible for work-democracy to develop organically; conversely, to the same extent to which the state tries to eternalize itself and to forget its educational task, it provokes human society to remind it that it came into being from necessity and must also disappear from necessity. Thus, the responsibility rests upon the state as well as upon masses of people, a responsibility in the good and not the bad sense of the word. It is the state’s duty not only to encourage the passionate yearning for freedom in working masses of people; /’/ must also make every effort to make them capable of freedom. If it fails to do this, if it suppresses the intense longing for freedom or even misuses it and puts itself in the way of the tendency towards self-administration, then it shows clearly that it is a fascist state. Then it is to be called to account for the damages and dangers that it caused by its dereliction.
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