Chapter Seven: Fascism’s Rise to Power¶
Core Argument¶
In late 1928, the Nazis were a fringe group, reduced to 2.6 per cent of the vote after the failure of Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall putsch. The 1929 Wall Street Crash and ensuing Great Depression transformed this landscape. With industrial output collapsing by nearly forty per cent and mass unemployment soaring, the traditional bourgeois parties proved incapable of managing the crisis. The ruling class, fearing proletarian revolution, turned to fascism as a dictatorship to crush the workers’ movement. German big business poured millions into Nazi coffers; Fritz Thyssen boasted of personally giving one million marks, while international capitalists like Henry Ford also provided funds. In the September 1930 Reichstag election, the Nazi vote surged 700 per cent to over six million, making them the second largest party.
The Comintern, under Stalinist leadership, insisted the Social Democrats were the ‘chief enemy’, not the Nazis. The KPD dismissed the election result as a communist victory, declaring that Hitler’s success contained ‘the germ of his future defeat’. Trotsky and the International Left Opposition appealed for a united front against fascism, predicting that a fascist victory would mean war with the USSR. The Stalinists denounced this as ‘the most dangerous theory and the most criminal’. The capitalist crisis crushed the petty bourgeoisie, creating a collective neurosis. Disillusioned with the working class’s failure to take power, these layers turned to fascist demagogy, with the Nazis exploiting Jews as scapegoats. The ruling class financed the fascists to dupe the middle class, while fascist paramilitary gangs carried out indiscriminate attacks to intimidate the working class.
The fratricidal struggle between the KPD and SPD rendered the working class impotent. In August 1931, the KPD joined the Nazis in a referendum to oust the Social Democratic government of Prussia, renaming it the ‘Red Referendum’ and referring to SA members as ‘working people’s comrades’. In November 1931, the KPD and Nazis jointly led the Berlin transport strike. The SPD, meanwhile, pursued a ‘policy of toleration’ towards Brüning’s right-wing government, accepting wage cuts and the suspension of the Reichstag. In the March 1932 presidential election, the SPD backed Hindenburg as the ‘lesser evil’ against Hitler. By the July 1932 election, the Nazis became the largest party with 37.4 per cent, while the KPD gained at the SPD’s expense, declaring itself the ‘sole victor’.
The text argues that fascism was a distinct mass movement of counter-revolutionary despair, financed by finance capital to destroy the labour movement. As the crisis deepened, bourgeois democracy became incompatible with capitalism’s needs, driving the ruling class towards Bonapartist and then fascist dictatorship. Under Bonapartism, the capitalist state becomes semi-independent, balancing between classes during extreme crisis. However, its social base was too narrow to destroy working-class organisations entirely. Fascism was required for that task, mobilising the petty bourgeoisie and lumpen-proletariat as a mass base to annihilate workers’ organisations. On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor. The Reichstag fire on 27 February was used as a pretext for mass repression: over 4,600 Communist and Socialist leaders were arrested. After years of denouncing Social Democrats as ‘social fascists’, the Comintern abruptly reversed course in March 1933, calling for a united front—too late. In the 5 March election, despite Nazi terror, 10.5 million workers still voted for the KPD and SPD. On 24 March, Hitler forced through an Enabling Act granting dictatorial powers. The Stalinists drew false conclusions, with Fritz Heckert still calling Social Democrats ‘the main social buttress of the dictatorship of capital’ in July 1933, after the total destruction of the working class.