Reader’s View
Comradely Greetings,
We consistently appreciate the analysis provided by The Anvil and the questions it raises for further reflection and study. In the US, what passes for ‘Marxist’ publications are either academic texts that adapt Marxist terminology to bourgeois ideology, or re-enactment projects that aim to relive historical threads that have already exhausted their course (for example, the pre-WWI parties of the Second International, Operaismo and related trends, etc.). A wide gulf separates such publications from genuine attempts to address the ideological and political questions posed to us by the experience of the 1917-1976 sequence and the subsequent crisis of the International Communist Movement, which has persisted to the present day. In our country in particular, there is a near-absence of publications that can contribute to the development of a general political line for the present. We are reminded of this fact with the appearance of each new issue of your journal.
We would like to comment briefly on the lead article in Issue 3, “The Unfolding of the Political Obscenities of Twenty-First Century Fascism.” The metaphor of the “shell” (5, 8) here brings to mind Lenin’s characterization of the bourgeois democratic republic. On the one hand, Lenin notes that the democratic republic is “best possible political shell” for bourgeois dictatorship – a “shell” whose bureaucratic, judicial, military, and police apparatus must therefore be smashed in the course of the social revolution and replaced by an apparatus through which the proletariat can exercise its own dictatorship. On the other hand, Lenin takes up Marx’s thesis in his Critique of the Gotha Program that the bourgeois democratic republic is the very form in which a broad and open class struggle can be “fought out to a conclusion,” culminating in social revolution.
Our understanding of fascism is that it is a bourgeois state form opposed to that of the bourgeois democratic republic. What is the essence expressed by the fascist state form? Fascism represents an extension of bourgeois dictatorship over all bourgeois fractions but the one in power. It emerges when sharp contradictions within the bourgeoisie coincide with the inability of one fraction to impose its political hegemony over the others within the framework of the parliamentary state. The crisis of representation is resolved when one fraction of the bourgeoisie organizes a mass revolt centered on the petty bourgeoisie. Fascism uses the petty-bourgeois revolt to equip itself with the force to take state power, remove all other fractions of the bourgeoisie from the state, and extend its dictatorship in order to overcome the political crisis in the interests of the whole threatened bourgeoisie.
The Anvil piece uses “shell” in two ways: (1) only the “shell” of a democratic republic remains following the rise of Modi and the RSS; (2) therefore, unlike classical fascism, contemporary fascism does not have its own state form, that is, the “shell” of the fascist state project is that of the bourgeois democratic republic, whether by cunning or circumstance.
This poses a fundamental question for us: in the view of Anvil, how does the question of state form relate to the fascist project? In other words, does Anvil hold that the bourgeois democratic state form is necessary today in order to provide both bourgeois liberals and bourgeois fascists alike with popular legitimacy? As we know from Lenin, the question of form is not indifferent, either for the bourgeois dictatorship or for the proletariat organizing for social revolution. While centered on the political reality of India today, this question has far-reaching consequences for the International Communist Movement, as fascists and other far-right forces enjoy increasing success on a global scale, from Brazil, the Philippines, Poland, and Hungary, to our own country, in the form of Trumpism.
Maoist Communist Group New York City, December 2018
Reply by the Editor to Maoist Communist Group’s letter:
Dear Comrades,
Your response to the content of ‘The Anvil’ has always helped us in improving it and has also helped us articulate our ideas in better way. We would like to express our deep appreciation and gratitude for this continued and concerned interest of comrades from the MCG.
Regarding your questions about our views on contemporary Fascism, here is a very brief answer:
First, our understanding of Fascism is that its differentia specifica is not a particular state-form (though it did take a particular state-form in the early-Twentieth century) but the fact that it is a reactionary social movement of the petty-bourgeoisie welded together with the interests of big monopoly capital by a Fascist cadre-based party, guided by a Fascist ideology. Depending on the particular historical conjuncture, such a Fascist regime may or may not do away with the particular form of parliamentary democracy. A particular modus vivendi of Fascism in a particular period, in our opinion, cannot be generalized to be its only possible modus vivendi. Can the Modi regime introduce some set of ‘exceptional laws’ when faced with an impending defeat in the next general elections? We do not know. This is less likely, but such an event cannot be ruled out. It also depends on their expectations. They still expect to win the next Lok Sabha elections, though the margin of victory might decrease, even according to their estimates.
Second, when we say that only the shell of parliamentary democracy remains, what it means, becomes very clear from the past four-year experience of Modi government. All the basic characteristic processes and institutions of parliamentary democracy have been seriously compromised. For instance, now it is a common knowledge that the BJP is meddling with the very process of bourgeois democratic elections by hegemonizing the Election Commission from within, which conducts the elections. In the recent legislative assembly elections, EVMs were found at the homes of BJP leaders! Some of them were even found lying at roads! The surveillance cameras in the room, where the used EVMs were stored, went off suddenly! In one instance, the Election Commission did not declare the date of elections, but the BJP knew the dates already and one of their state unit members by mistake declared the dates on a social media platform! A year ago the declaration of the dates of legislative assembly elections were deferred till the incumbant BJP government declared some welfare schemes! The issue of “faulty” EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) has remained in the centre of controversy in every elections of legislative assemblies and even student union elections since the election of Modi in 2014. It seems that they are not using rigged EVMs in all booths because then the whole rigging process would become easily discernible. It appears that they are using it only on select booths and centres, where the margin of victory is supposed to be very small, which are called ‘swing seats’. However, this often brings a complete shift in the results of the elections because in many states as well as Lok Sabha, the number of swing seats has been considerable. The three state assembly elections that the BJP lost recently, was the result of extreme anti-incumbency and rejection of the economic mismanagement of the Modi government and due to this the number of swing seats itself decreased dramatically. Still, it is noteworthy that in two of these states, which were the bigger ones, the margin of victory of the Congress was not as big as was expected. A lot of independent observers have attributed it to the rigged EVMs. In fact, the new Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath has declared that he would order an independent enquiry of EVMs used in elections, because the margin of victory was not as expected. Needless to say, the results of such an enquiry would be non-consequential during the Modi regime.
We believe that Modi can also lose the 2019 elections; however, this would only start a preparation for an even more ferocious and rabid kind of rise of Hindutva Fascism in the next round, may be with some new fuhrer figure at the helm, given that the deepening and intensification of economic as well as political crisis, does not lead to the realization of revolutionary potential, which under the present circumstances seems to be a far cry. If we look at the experience of rise of Fascism in India, this is what has been happening since 1996. A number of Marxist historians have produced very good research about it in the past decade. The Fascists have come into power three times and every time they have consolidated their positions in society and politics and came back into power with much greater force. This brings us to the next point.
Third, Fascism today is an ongoing project, rather than an event. It might not reach “completion” in the same way as it did in Germany with the enactment of Hitler’s ‘enabling laws’. However, that would not stop the Fascists in power to inflict all kinds of damage, repression, genocide, lynching, etc. that the German Nazis and Italian Fascists did. Fascists can come into and go out of power today. Even when not in power, they play their anti-working-class role as strike-breakers, terror-brigades, etc., as is well-known, and today the centre-right or centrist bourgeois parties, when in power, are obliged to allow them to exist and even thrive more than ever, because in the extremely decadent and moribund state of capitalism in the period of, at least seemingly, perpetual crisis obliges them to allow such forces to exist.
Fourth, all the cherished and celebrated processes and institutions of bourgeois democracy have been de-activated by the Modi government. We have already talked about the Election Commission and the process of election. But that is not the only example. The Fascists have sabotaged the institutions like judiciary, bourgeois media, Reserve Bank of India, Central Bureau of Investigation, police force, armed forces, etc. from within. Even some petty-bourgeois democrats are writing columns about it and its a real concern for various liberal, humanist bourgeois commentators. Recently, the Modi government has given permission to ten state agencies to implement full-spectrum surveillance; it has subverted every democratic procedure regarding the appointment of director of the RBI and that of the CBI. The present crisis in the RBI and the CBI only demonstrates this fact. Similarly, the judiciary has been passing judgements which fail on any democratic standard. Recently, it gave a clean-chit to Modi government on Rafale deal on the basis of a CAG report. Later, it was revealed that the CAG report on Rafale deal was not even written! That means no such report existed! The Court gave clean-chit to Amit Shah in the fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin, which was a total travesty of even bourgeois justice. This shows the extent to which the most cherished institutions of bourgeois democracy have been and are being compromised from within. They have not been formally suspended; but they have no effectivity under Modi regime. They have been de-activated. Only their shell remains. Every decision is taken by the Fascists in their headquarters in Nagpur.
Fifth, how it became possible for the Fascists to de-activate these institutions? The answer lies in the particular way in which Fascism came to power in India, and may be some other countries too, as a ‘hurricane from below’. The long gestation period and molecular permeation allowed the Indian Fascists to effect a deep penetration into the state machinery, like the bureaucracy, police, armed forces, judiciary as well as non-state institutions like the bourgeois press and media. There is a reason why the Fascists are successful in carrying out their genocides (in 1992-93 in Bombay, for instance) even when the Congress or some other party is in power. The reason is that these parties, even when they are willing, are often unable to stop such genocides because the Police force behaves autonomously and often under the indirect directions of the Fascists.
Sixth, the Modi regime, representing one fraction of Indian bourgeoisie (the big monopoly finance capital lobby represented by Ambani, Adani, etc.), has put other fractions into politically and economically subordinate position and has obliged them to a large extent to cooperate with it. Even though the formal structure of this subordination is quite different from what we saw in Germany and Italy of the 1930s, this shows that the fractional contradictions of the different blocs of bourgeoisie had reached a tipping point. In fact, the huge scams just before the Modi’s rise to power were symptomatic of these fractional contradictions becoming dominant. Moreover, it seems to us that the dictatorship of one fraction of bourgeoisie over other fractions in the absence of parliamentary system cannot be made the differentia specifica of Fascism, because it can happen in different regimes as historical experience shows, not only under Fascism. Secondly, it is possible for one fraction of bourgeoisie to put the other fractions into subordination, without doing away with the parliamentary system. The specific characteristics that differentiates Fascism from other forms of reaction has to be its character as an organized reactionary social movement of the petty-bourgeoisie serving the interests of big capital, under the political leadership of a cadre-based Fascist organization and the particular unity, that is, Fascist ideology.
Therefore, our understanding is that, the character of a Fascist regime should be determined on the basis of its political class character, its ideological character and its organizational character. The form that it would assume, in terms of state-form, depends on the historico-political context and conjuncture. The age in which capitalism was in the early-Twentieth century is quite different from today. The whole global political situation has changed. There is no threat of an impending socialist revolution, no existing socialist state, no powerful economistic and trade-unionist working class movement. And yet the unprecedented crisis of capitalism has created a situation in which the uprooted or about-to-be-uprooted petty bourgeoisie is being driven into the arms of Fascism; the upper echelons of petty-bourgeoisie which is feeling suffocated by whatever remains of state regulation, too, are attracted towards Fascism; the big capital is obliged to resort to Fascist regime which would remove all obstacles placed by bourgeois democracy in the way of increasing or maintaining the rate of profit and crush every form of resistance, which has been increasing in the form of spontaneous working class outbursts. All these factors have contributed to the rise of Fascism in a new way. It is essential for us to understand these changes in the modus operandi and modus vivendi of Fascism. Today, it is less likely for Fascists to impose/use the state-form that was imposed/used by Fascists or that they were obliged to impose/use in the early-Twentieth century Germany and Italy. The ruling class too learns from its historical experience and even the reactionary Fascist politics performs a ‘redemptive activity’. Therefore, it can be said that by historical circumstances as well as by “cunning” (!), the Fascist regimes would in most likelihood, keep the shell of parliamentary democracy, though will make the bourgeois democratic processes and institutions as empty as possible.
In sum, our understanding is that a Fascist regime should be identified by its particular ideological character, political (class) character and its organizational character and strategy. The particular state-forms that it assumes might be different depending on the particular national and world historical context and conjuncture.
Needless to say, any understanding of contemporary Fascism can at best be tentative and so is ours. Since the phenomena of the Twenty-first century Fascism itself is unfolding before our very own eyes, any understanding of this phenomena can only be tentative and dynamic and will finally depend on the concrete political practice and experience of Fascism today. Our understanding too is an understanding in the process of development. However, this much seems to be clear and certain to us, that Fascism does and can assume a variety of state-forms, depending on the particular historico-political context. Nevertheless, it is an ongoing enquiry and the present global situation is quite conducive for such an enquiry, as events in Poland, Hungary, in our country and elsewhere show. We hope to continue this very fruitful and important dialog on the contemporary Fascism under the light of new experience of present and future.
With Warm Revolutionary Regards, Editor, The Anvil
The article on Anand Teltumbde is extremely thought-provoking. After your critique of Dr. Ambedkar’s philosophy, politics and economic thought in the previous issue, this is another eye-opening article on the caste question. Abhinav Sinha’s arguments are quiet convincing and the style is in contrast with most of the leftist critiques of Ambedkarite movement which tend to be mechanical and superficial. I hope Mr. Teltumbde replies to this critique. The critique of Prabhat Patnaik’s theory of imperialism is also a bold attempt to critique one of the most-revered intellectuals of the parliamentary left. It is really shocking why no one has critiqued his outrageous views on imperialism before.
S. Chowdhuri, New Delhi
“…revolutionary communists share anything more than the concern and intent to fight against caste, with Dr. Ambedkar. As sooon as we move to the Ambedkar’s historical analysis of caste, his political program, his economic program, his view of society, his understanding of ‘socialism’, his notion of ‘democracy’ and ‘dictatorship’ and his concept of an ideal society, there is nothing that revolutionary communists share with Ambedkar. Therefore, as far as the question of what Ambedkar can teach revolutionary communists philosophically, ideologically and politically, the answer would be – ‘Nothing.’” I have quoted from the last para of the article on Anand Teltumbde. This is indeed a very bold statement to make today when communists of all hues are falling over each other in upholding Ambedkar’s thoughts, and proclaiming a mixture of ‘blue’ and ‘red’ without explaining what is ‘revolutionary’ or ‘radical’ in Ambedkar!
I have received all the three issues of your journal and I think you are doing a great job. I fully agree that confusion and deviations on fundamental issues of Marxist theory is the real roadblock in the development of a revolutionary left movement in India. I sincerely hope The Anvil will develop into a platform for serious and sincere polemics within the left circles in India.
Diwakar S., Hyderabad
