Translated from french found on sinistra.net by Claire Cical.
Fascism
Amedeo Bordiga
The fascist movement brought to its congress[1] the baggage of a powerful organization, and while intending to deploy its forces spectacularly in the capital, it also wanted to lay the foundations of its ideology and its program before the eyes of the public, its leaders having imagined that they had the duty to give to such a developed organization the justification of a « new » doctrine and policy.
The failure that fascism suffered with the Roman strike is nothing compared to the failure that emerges from the results of the congress with regard to this last claim. It is obvious that the explanation and, if you will, the justification of fascism are not to be found in these programmatic constructions that claim to be new, but which are reduced to zero both as a collective work and as a personal attempt by a leader: infallibly destined for the career of « a politician » in the most traditional sense of the word, this one will never be a « master ». Futurism of politics, fascism has not risen a millimeter above bourgeois political mediocrity. Why?
***
The Congress, it has been said, is reduced to Mussolini’s speech. But this speech is an abortion. Beginning with the analysis of the other parties, it has not arrived at a synthesis that would have revealed the originality of the fascist party in relation to all the others. If it has succeeded to a certain extent in characterizing itself by its violent aversion to socialism and the workers’ movement, it has not been seen in what way its position is new in relation to the ideologies of the traditional bourgeois parties. The attempt to expose fascist ideology by applying a destructive critique to the old schemata in the form of brilliant paradoxes was reduced to a series of assertions that were neither new in themselves nor connected by any link to each other in the new synthesis that was made of them, but rather rehashed without any effectiveness arguments of political polemics that had been worn out and put into every sauce by the mania for novelty that torments the politicians of today’s decadent bourgeoisie. We have thus witnessed not the solemn revelation of a new truth (and what is true of Mussolini’s speech is also true of all fascist literature), but a review of the entire bacterial flora that thrives on the bourgeois culture and ideology of our time of supreme crisis, and variations on formulas stolen from syndicalism, anarchism, the remains of spiritualist and religious metaphysics, in short, from everything except, fortunately, our horrifying and brutal Bolshevik Marxism.
What conclusion can be drawn from the shapeless mixture of Freemason anti-clericalism and militant religiosity, of economic liberalism and political anti-liberalism, by which fascism attempts to distinguish itself both from the program of the popular party and from communist collectivism? What sense is there in affirming that one shares with communism the anti-democratic notion of dictatorship, when one conceives of this dictatorship only as the constraint of the « free » economy on the proletariat and when one declares this « free » economy more necessary than ever? What sense is there in praising the republic when one holds out the prospect of a pre-parliamentary and dictatorial regime, and consequently ultra-dynastic? What sense is there finally in opposing the doctrine of the liberal party to that of the historical right which was more seriously and intimately liberal than the said party, both in theory and in practice? If the speaker had drawn from all these statements a conclusion which would have harmoniously ordered them, their contradictions would not have disappeared, but they would at least have lent to the whole that force proper to the paradoxes with which every new ideology is adorned. But since in this case the final synthesis is missing, all that remains is a jumble of old stories and the result is one of bankruptcy.
The delicate point was to define the position of fascism in relation to the bourgeois parties of the centre. One could more or less present oneself as an adversary of the socialist party and the popular party; but the negation of the liberal party and the need to get rid of it and, in a certain sense, to replace it, have not been theorised in any decent way or translated into a party programme. We do not want to assert by this, let us clarify this straight away, that fascism cannot be a party: it will be one, perfectly reconciling its extravagant aversions against the monarchy, at the same time as against parliamentary democracy and against… state socialism. We simply note that the fascist movement has a very real and solid organisation which can be political and electoral as well as military, but that it lacks an ideology and a programme of its own. The Congress and the speech of Mussolini, who nevertheless did his utmost to define his movement, prove that fascism is powerless to define itself. This is a fact to which we will return in our critical analysis and which proves the superiority of Marxism, which is perfectly capable of defining fascism.
***
The term « ideology » is a bit metaphysical, but we will use it to designate the programmatic baggage of a movement, the awareness it has of the goals it must successively achieve through its action. This naturally implies a method of interpretation and a conception of the facts of social life and history. At the present time, precisely because it is a class in decline, the bourgeoisie has a split ideology. The programs it displays to the outside do not correspond to the internal awareness it has of its interests and the action to be taken to protect them. When the bourgeoisie was still a revolutionary class, the social and political ideology that was specific to it, this liberalism that fascism claims to supplant, was in full force. The bourgeoisie « believed » and « wanted » according to the tables of the liberal or democratic program: its vital interest consisted in freeing its economic system from the obstacles that the old regime placed on its development. She was convinced that the realization of a maximum of political freedom and the granting of all possible and imaginable rights to every citizen down to the last one coincided not only with the humanitarian universality of her philosophy, but with the maximum development of economic life.
In fact, bourgeois liberalism was not only an excellent political weapon by means of which the state abolished feudal economy and the privileges of the first two « estates », the clergy and the nobility. It was also a not insignificant means for the parliamentary state to fulfill its class function not only against the forces of the past and their restoration, but also against the « fourth estate » and the attacks of the proletarian movement. In the first phase of its history, the bourgeoisie was not yet conscious of this second function of democracy, that is, of the fact that it was condemned to transform itself from a revolutionary factor into a factor of conservation as the main enemy increasingly ceased to be the old regime and became the proletariat. The Italian historical right, for example, was not aware of this. Liberal ideologues did not just say that the democratic method of forming the state apparatus was in the interest of all “the people” and ensured equality of rights for all members of society: they “believed” it. They did not yet understand that, in order to save the bourgeois institutions of which they were the representatives, it might be necessary to abolish the liberal guarantees enshrined in the political doctrine and constitutions of the bourgeoisie. For them, the enemy of the state could only be the enemy of all, a delinquent capable of violating the social contract.
Subsequently, it became clear to the ruling class that the democratic regime could also be used against the proletariat and that it was an excellent safety valve for the latter’s economic discontent; the conviction that the liberal mechanism served its interests magnificently therefore became more and more deeply rooted in the consciousness of the bourgeoisie. It now regarded it only as a means and no longer as an abstract end, and it realized that the use of this means is not incompatible with the integrative function of the bourgeois state, nor with its function of repression, even violent, against the proletarian movement. But a liberal state, which in order to defend itself must abolish the guarantees of freedom, provides historical proof of the falsity of the liberal doctrine itself as an interpretation of the historical mission of the bourgeoisie and the nature of its government apparatus. On the contrary, its true aims appear clearly: to defend the interests of capitalism by all means, that is, both by the political diversions of democracy and by armed repressions, when the former are no longer sufficient to curb the movements threatening the State itself.
This doctrine is not, however, a « revolutionary » doctrine of the function of the bourgeois and liberal State. To put it better, what is revolutionary is to formulate it, and that is why in the present historical phase the bourgeoisie must put it into practice and deny it in theory. In order for the bourgeois State to fulfill its repressive function, which is quite naturally its own, the so-called truths of the liberal doctrine must have been implicitly recognized as false, but it is not at all necessary to go back and revise the constitution of the State apparatus. Thus the bourgeoisie does not have to repent of having been liberal or to abjure liberalism: it is by a sort of « biological » development that its organ of domination has been armed and prepared to defend the cause of « freedom » by means of prisons and machine guns.
***
As long as it formulates programs and remains on the political terrain, a bourgeois movement cannot squarely recognize this necessity of the ruling class to defend itself by all means, including those theoretically excluded by the constitution. This would be a false maneuver from the point of view of bourgeois conservation. On the other hand, it is indisputable that ninety-nine percent of the ruling class feel how wrong it would be, from this same point of view, to repudiate even the form of parliamentary democracy and to demand a modification of the state apparatus, both in an aristocratic and autocratic sense. Just as no pre-Napoleonic state was as well organized as modern democratic states for the horrors of war (and not only from the point of view of technical means), no one would have come close to them for internal repression and the defense of its existence. It is therefore logical that in the current period of repression against the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, the participation of citizens belonging to the bourgeois class (or its clientele) in political life takes on new aspects. Constitutional parties organized in such a way as to bring out of the electoral consultations of the people a response favorable to the capitalist regime signed by the majority are no longer sufficient. The class on which the State is based must assist it in its functions according to the new requirements. The conservative and counter-revolutionary political movement must organize itself militarily and fulfill a military function in anticipation of civil war.
It is appropriate for the State that this organization be constituted « in the country », in the mass of citizens because then the function of repression is better reconciled with the desperate defense of the illusion that the State is the father of all citizens, of all parties and of all classes. Because the revolutionary method is gaining ground in the working class, preparing it for a military struggle and leadership, and because the hope of emancipation by legal means, that is, permitted by the State, is diminishing among the masses, the Party of Order is forced to organize and arm itself in order to defend itself. Alongside the State, but faced with its quite logical protests, this party is “faster” than the proletariat in arming itself, it is also arming itself better and it is taking the offensive against certain positions occupied by its enemy and which the liberal regime had tolerated: but this phenomenon must not be taken for the birth of a party that is an adversary of the State in the sense that it would like to seize it in order to give it pre-liberal forms!
This is for us the explanation of the birth of fascism. Fascism integrates bourgeois liberalism instead of destroying it. Thanks to its organization with which it surrounds the official state machine, it realizes the double defensive function that the bourgeoisie needs.
If the revolutionary pressure of the proletariat increases, the bourgeoisie will probably tend to intensify to the maximum these two defensive functions which are not incompatible, but parallel. It will display the most audacious democratic and even social-democratic policy, while unleashing the storm troopers of the counter-revolution on the proletariat to terrorize it. But this is another aspect of the question which serves only to show how meaningless the antithesis between fascism and parliamentary democracy is, as the electoral activity of fascism is enough to prove.
It is not necessary to be an eagle to become an electoral and parliamentary party. Nor is it necessary to solve the difficult problem of a “new” program. Fascism will never be able to formulate its reason for being in programmatic tables, nor form an exact conscience of it, since it is itself the product of the splitting of the program and the conscience of an entire class and since, if it had to speak in the name of a doctrine, it would have to enter into the historical framework of traditional liberalism which has entrusted it with the task of violating its doctrine « for external use » while reserving that of preaching it as in the past.
Fascism has therefore not been able to define itself at the Congress of Rome and it will never learn to do so (without giving up living and exercising its function) since the secret of its constitution is summed up in the formula: organization is everything, ideology is nothing, which dialectically responds to the liberal formula: ideology is everything, organization is nothing.
Having briefly demonstrated that the separation between doctrine and organization characterizes the parties of a decadent class, it would be very interesting to prove that the synthesis of theory and action is the property of rising revolutionary movements, a corollary proposition that responds to a rigorously realistic and historical criterion. Which, if we act with hope, leads to the conclusion that when we know the adversary and the reasons for his strength better than he knows himself, and when we draw our own strength from a clear awareness of the goals to be achieved, we cannot fail to win!
Amedeo Bordiga, Fascism, published in “il comunista”, November 17, 1921
Notes:
[1] This is the Second National Congress of the Fasci, which was held in Rome from 7 to 10 November 1921 and founded the National Fascist Party. Thirty thousand fascists had gathered in the capital on this occasion and carried out their usual exactions (5 dead and 120 wounded in three days). On 9 November, they assassinated a railway worker; the Roman proletariat responded with a magnificent general strike that nothing – neither government orders nor a fascist ultimatum – would make bend: it would end on the 14th, well after the end of the Congress. (The PNF program adopted by the Congress would not appear in “Il popolo d’Italia” until 27 December)..