German Bonapartism¶
Core Argument¶
In this analysis from October 1932, Trotsky dissects the social and political character of the Papen-Schleicher "presidential" government, defending his Marxist classification of it as a species of Bonapartism against critics on the left. The core argument is that the regime represents a Bonapartist dictatorship specific to the epoch of capitalist decline, distinct from classical nineteenth-century Bonapartism but sharing its essential function: raising a military-police apparatus over the nation to preserve property and order by balancing between the two warring camps of fascism and the proletariat.
Trotsky grounds his analysis in the concrete historical situation. The Papen government, he argues, would be impossible without fascism, yet fascism is not in power; nor is the regime itself fascist. It depends equally on Hindenburg, whose second election was a plebiscite in which millions of workers, petty bourgeois, and peasants voted for him as a "super-arbiter" to avoid civil war. This plebiscitary character is the most important function of Bonapartism. The regime's combined nature is expressed through the fact that the Social Democracy and National Socialism both performed the demagogic work of catching masses for Hindenburg.
Trotsky engages in sharp polemics against several opponents. He dismisses the Stalinist Comintern leadership for simply placing Papen in the fascist camp, calling this the "vulgarian" political literature Marx taught one to despise. He attacks the SAP for evading the question with general phrases. His most sustained polemic is against the Brandlerites, particularly Thalheimer, who argued that Bonapartism must be supported by the peasantry and use pseudo-radical Social Democratic methods, and who defined Papen's regime instead as a "Junker-monarchist dictatorship." Trotsky calls this "purest liberal nonsense" worthy of Vorwärts. He refutes Thalheimer by citing Marx and Engels themselves, who likened Bismarck's regime to French Bonapartism despite Bismarck not being a pseudo-radical demagogue nor supported by the peasantry. Trotsky notes that the organ of heavy industry, the DAZ, opportunistically quoted Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire to justify the president's boot on parliament's neck, confirming Trotsky's analysis from an unexpected source.
Trotsky insists that German Bonapartism differs utterly from that of the ascending bourgeois epoch. It is not supported directly by the petty bourgeoisie; it holds on only by neutralising the proletariat and the fascists. Behind Papen stand only the propertied heights—great landowners, finance capitalists, generals—and precisely therein lies his weakness. Finance capital has reserves: pure fascism if contradictions sharpen, manoeuvring if they soften. The regime exposes capital too clearly, leaving it without a fig leaf.