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Simmons

On Some Misconceptions of
Fascism and State Capitalism

(July 1933)


From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 37, 29 July 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).


In addition to the Stalinist practice of tagging everything and everybody not a member of the official Communist party (or close sympathizer) with the contradictory label of social-Fascist and Scott Nearing’s amusing view of Fascism as a movement based on a retreat from the technological mass production economy of today to the village economy of the past, a new conception of Fascism has come into being. This conception has for its basic premise the belief that “State Capitalism’’ is a distinguishing characteristic of Fascist dictatorship. It sees in the growth of state control over industry and state monopolies a move toward Fascism when in reality such a process is a part of the evolutionary tendency of capitalism and has been developing for a good many years.

Increasing state capitalism is not a characteristic peculiar to Fascism but is a phenomenon present during the state of economic and political development which makes the rise of Fascism historically possible. It is an instrument of Imperialism, being an advanced form of the mechanism by which competition between capitalist countries is carried on – a sort of a growing integration of the economic activity of a national or international unit as a whole.

By means of concentration and centralization, the credit system, issue of securities, financial pressure, directorships, ownership of stock, etc., a handful of finance capitalists have organized the economic life of the various nations into virtual monopolies. The parts of this system are ever in the process of drawing closer together, due to a certain interrelation of interests, thereby exhibiting a tendency to transform the entire economic activity of each of the leading countries into a single national enterprise under the control of the state which acts as an “executive committee of the ruling classes” regulating prices, production, distribution, etc. At the same time there is occurring the formation of actual state monopolies financed by large banks, as well as monopolies jointly controlled by the state and private trusts.

Between 1914 and 1919, under pressure of the demands of the world war, the move toward state capitalism went forward at a rapid pace. In Germany, for instance, in addition to state control of private enterprises and jointly controlled, “mixed” enterprises, state monopolies for the production of bread, potatoes, nitrates, etc. were formed. The financial system was centralized under control of the Reichsbank. In short, the entire economic life of the nation was consolidated temporarily into a single unit, the same process being discernible in other belligerent nations and, to a lesser degree, in some of the non-belligerent ones.

Since then, although state capitalism subsided for a time, its growth has reached a point where emphasis must be placed upon the competition and antagonisms occurring between nations as national units rather than upon those occurring within the territorial confines of the various capitalist powers.

State control of industry or state capitalism, during the present period of capitalist decay, with its narrowing markets, is the mechanism by which individual national economies or countries are preparing to attempt to wrest from other national economies a larger share of the existing trade and world control. It is the mechanism by which the living standards of the workers will be driven further downward.

Nor is its development confined to Europe. On the contrary state capitalism is almost as evident in “democratic’’ United Slates as it is in Fascist Germany and to view the process as a move toward Fascist dictatorship is to create confusion.

The fundamental role of Fascism is not to form a so-called “corporate state” but to prevent the workers from moving toward social revolution. Fascism will gain strength precisely at the moment when the workers begin to threaten – when the revolutionary movement begins to assume menacing proportions – and once it comes to power it will seek to destroy not only the vanguard but also all working class organizations and to sweep out of existence all elements of working class democracy.

To believe that it will “convert big business into an adjunct of the state”, as is claimed in an article in the July issue of the Modern Monthly, is to reveal a failure to understand its real character. To see in the growth of state control a move toward Fascism is to create the illusion that the present administration of the United States is Fascistic and tends to resurrect the theory of social-Fascism in another form.

In reality, Fascism is an instrument created and maintained by the big bourgeoisie to protect themselves against the march of the workers. As comrade Trotsky pointed out in What Next?:

“After Fascism is victorious, finance capital gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, directly and immediately, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative and educational powers of the state: The entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the cooperatives. When a state turns Fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the pattern set by Mussolini – the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role – but it means, first of all for the most part, that the workers organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of Fascism.”


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