843640
research-article2019
RRPXXX10.1177/0486613419843640Review of Radical Political EconomicsWilloughby
Understanding the Emergence of
Authoritarian Capitalist States:
Looking Backward to See Forward
Review of Radical Political Economics
1­–17
© 2019 Union for Radical
Political Economics
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419843640
DOI: 10.1177/0486613419843640
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John Willoughby1
Abstract
This paper examines how contemporary analysts can use the analytical legacy of earlier Marxist
writers on fascism and authoritarianism to understand the present. I argue that the emergence
of dictatorial rule in a capitalist society once organized by parliamentary institutions can best
be interpreted as a response to an intensifying crisis of representation within parliamentary
democracy. These crises come as changing material conditions disrupt systems of patronage
and support that had previously integrated or embedded populations into a deceptively stable
capitalist growth process. This analysis draws on Marx’s original analysis in The Eighteenth
Brumaire, Gramsci’s and Trotsky’s writings during the interwar period, and the early postwar
analysis of Nicos Poulantzas. The article does not find the state monopoly capitalist tradition
of this era to be particularly useful for understanding present (or past) periods of capitalist
authoritarianism.
JEL Classification: B1, B2, B3, B5
Keywords
Marxist theory—ideology and alienation, Gramsci, Trotsky, Fascism and Authoritarianism,
Poulantzas
1. Introduction
Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under
the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon’s successor, by springing constant
surprises—that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d’état in miniature every day—
Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed
inviolable to the Revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it,
and produces anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery
of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous. (Marx 1999: 67)
1Department of Economics, American University, Washington, DC, USA
Date received: August 1, 2018
Date accepted: March 21, 2019
Corresponding Author:
John Willoughby, Department of Economics, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC
20016-8007, USA.
Email: jwillou@american.edu
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One of capitalism’s strongest selling points has been the association of the rise of capitalist property relations with the establishment of stable parliamentary democracy and associated rights of
self-expression and personal experimentation. This freedom is normally linked to the existence
of the set of institutions of decentralized economic decision-making known as the market, in
which Freedom, Property, Equality, and Bentham reign (Marx 1977a: 280). Milton Friedman, in
Capitalism and Freedom (1982), is perhaps the best known author to make this argument, but
even more skeptical critics of the actually existing capitalism of their time, such as John Maynard
Keynes, accepted the claim that capitalist property relations allowed for greater personal liberty
and channeled destructive competitive tendencies of humans into the relatively benign field of
market competition, in which sociopaths attempt to establish control over their bank balances
rather than people directly.1
The Marxist critique of this perspective has two distinct arguments. The first set comes from
Marx himself, who notes that the freedom which property-less workers experience is severely
restricted and that workers face an increasingly exploitative work environment as capitalism
evolves. To put this another way, a capitalist who tyrannizes over his bank balance oppresses
those workers under his management’s command. Personal liberty and electoral democracy for
the property-holding elites and members of the professional middle class are purchased through
intensified exploitation in the capitalist workplace.2
In addition, Marx argued at the end of Chapter 1 of Capital (Marx 1977a: 163–77) and elsewhere that competitive market organization produces an alienation effect which inhibits workers
from articulating their collective interest, while fostering self-destructive individualistic behavior.3 Thus, while Marx and especially Engels recognized that organized workers could have a
political impact through struggles for parliamentary representation, they were deeply skeptical
that parliamentary democracy could allow workers to assert their will effectively as long as capitalist market relations persisted. Moreover, Marx’s vision of democracy was closely linked to
what we might today call anarcho-syndicalism. He viewed parliamentary democracy as creating
a distance between the people and the state. Networks of bureaucratic privilege supported by the
bourgeoisie and backing up a repressive apparatus would always prevent the working class from
reshaping a socialist order of socialized and democratically planned production if workers limited their activism to parliamentary politics (Marx 2000a; Miliband 1972). Instead, Marx advocated more direct forms of democracy in which workers and community members would form
councils (or soviets) which would both regulate the activities which directly impacted their lives
which and form higher levels of representative bodies to engage in popular system-wide planning
(Marx 2005: 70–90).
Given this skepticism about the democratic nature of bourgeois democracy, Marx did not
believe that there was a specific form of governance necessarily associated with the reproduction
of capitalist social relations. While a case could be made that parliamentary systems of representation were a way for disparate property-holding interests to compete for power and govern
1Neither Friedman nor Keynes asserted that capitalist property relations and market organization would inev-
itably produce personal liberty and democratic political institutions. Friedman acknowledged that fascism
was a type of capitalist society, but he nevertheless argues that such capitalist market relations are a necessary but not sufficient condition for democratic decision making and personal liberty (Friedman 1982: 17).
For Keynes’ argument on capitalism and liberty (although not democracy), see Keynes (2002: chapter 24).
2This is a theme in almost all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, but the young Marx expresses this dualism most forcefully. For example, “It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things—but for the
worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty—but for
the worker, deformity” (Marx 2000b: 30).
3Once again, this theme is articulated forcefully in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. “Money
… appears as this distorting power both against the individual and the bonds of society… It transforms
fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue” (Marx 2000b: 61).
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somewhat collectively, whether such a system could always work smoothly would depend on
historically contingent factors. More naked authoritarian government to preserve capitalist social
relations was always a possible reaction to intensified class struggle, and, as we shall see, Marx
also left open the possibility that members of the state apparatus itself would rise to assert dictatorial control over both capitalists and workers while maintaining capitalist property relations.
The second critique of capitalist democracy belongs to the immediate post-Marx period of
what has sometimes been called the golden age of Marxism (1880s–1913) (Kolakowski 2008).
In addition to critiquing bourgeois democracy as such, important intellectuals/activists active in
the growing and increasingly influential socialist movements of the time maintained that the
evolution of capitalism itself threatens the existence of parliamentary systems of representation
and personal liberty. Here the argument is that the rise of finance and monopoly capitalism combined with imperialist competition for territory creates authoritarian political impulses, which
only grow in response to intensifying working-class resistance to capitalism. While some democratic institutions may have been important for the consolidation of capitalism as it emerged in
the context of absolutist feudal structures, these tendencies were only temporary. A more “natural” state of the capitalist polity in the era of state monopoly capitalism would be dictatorship
(Bukharin 1972; Hilferding 1981; Lenin 2005).
In this paper, I examine how Marxists used this theoretical legacy to analyze modern political
tyranny (in the forms of Fascism, Bonapartism, and Military Dictatorship). I argue that the emergence of dictatorial rule in a capitalist society once organized by parliamentary institutions can
best be interpreted as a response to an intensifying crisis of representation within parliamentary
democracy. These crises come as changing material conditions disrupt systems of patronage and
support that had previously integrated or embedded populations into a deceptively stable capitalist growth process. The social trauma associated with changing material conditions can spark a
search for magical solutions orchestrated by a “great” leader who promises national rejuvenation
while drawing on tribalist tropes which obscure class divisions while heightening ethnic, racial,
and nationalist conflict.
This analysis draws on Marx’s original analysis in The Eighteenth Brumaire, Gramsci’s and
Trotsky’s writings during the interwar period, and the works of Poulantzas on the exceptional
state during the early 1970s. I do not find the state monopoly capitalist tradition to be particularly
useful for understanding present (or past) periods of capitalist authoritarianism. On the other
hand, I do argue that Nicos Poulantzas’ Leninist attempt to link the rise of exceptional states to
the evolution of global imperialism remains a fruitful analytic framework if used in combination
with a Gramscian crisis of representation approach.
2. Marx and The Eighteenth Brumaire
Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire for a variety of purposes: to assess the political ramifications of the failure of the 1848 French Revolution, to provide a materialist, class analysis of the
rise of a Bonapartist dictatorship in France, and to assess how the capitalist political economic
order would eventually disintegrate in France. The text is nuanced, multifaceted, and demonstrates a willingness to consider the independent role of ideology in social change and the emergence of material-based interests based on access to the state rather than class. Its insights led to
the emergence of structuralist theories of the capitalist state in the 1970s which suggested that the
capitalist state works to mediate conflict to preserve underlying capitalist social relations even if
capitalist interests are not directly represented within the state (see Poulantzas 1975 and Jessop
1982). It is not the purpose of this essay to return to the structuralist/instrumentalist problematic
of this period, but rather use this text to examine how Marx believed that authoritarian forms of
governance emerged out of failed attempts to establish stable parliamentary governance.
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While it is difficult to summarize Marx’s analysis, I believe that the basic argument of The
Eighteenth Brumaire (with respect to the issue of explaining the dictatorial capitalist state) is
linked to six propositions.
First: the relationship of the capitalist class to parliamentary democracy is inherently contradictory. During the feudal and absolutist period, parliament was a vehicle for property-holding
interests to challenge royal privileges which restricted the economic activity of property holders
and siphoned off a portion of the surplus generated within small and big capitalist enterprises to
maintain the parasitic and repressive rule of the monarch. In the early capitalist period, parliament became a location which facilitated the relatively peaceful conflict resolution so that different factions or interests of capital could negotiate with each other and search for compromises
which would forestall the destruction of the polity itself. However, Marx recognized that the
spread of democratic institutions and the increased participation of non-capitalist classes and
interests could lead to reformist challenges to capitalist property rights.4
Second: the search for a great leader to represent society is a constant feature of capitalist
politics. The contradictions discussed in proposition one leads property holders to long for legitimate, indirect mystical rule through the monarch or great dictator who can suppress or coopt the
subordinate classes directly. This is because capitalist interests are inherently divided, rife with
conflict, and prone to crisis.
Third: as capitalism expands its increasing complexity forces the regulatory and legal institutions of the state to grow and adapt as well. State officials respond to contradictory impulses.
They regulate destabilizing predatory behavior, but they also facilitate the exploitative actions of
those close to state power and deploy repressive agents to suppress destabilizing social conflict
which might threaten capitalist property relations. This “trifecta” of regulation, parasitic exploitation (politely known as rent seeking in mainstream political economy), and repression are the
three key pillars of the mature capitalist state.
Fourth: internal and external conflict gives rise to a professional military which can even
more forcefully rule over society. The army or military does not directly represent bourgeois
interests since much of the personnel of the army comes from marginalized parts of society. In
Marx’s case, he focuses on the peasantry as the backbone of support for repressive national order,
but he also mentioned the lumpen proletariat, whose criminal activities frustrate the emergence
of a collectivist working-class politics (Marx 1999: 38).
Fifth: the stabilization of dictatorial role is associated with the increasing importance of
finance, which becomes the dominant capitalist class interest within the repressive state. Finance
provides the state with necessary credit and provides the high-level political apparatus with
4Marx’s argument on the ways in which parliament allows different capitalist interests to rule collectively
while competing for power bears some resemblance to the analysis of Douglass North (1981). The major
difference is that Marx also recognizes the potentially destabilizing nature of parliamentary democracy
because parliament can become an imperfect expression for non-capitalist popular interests. For example,
see the following two passages from Marx. The first passage expresses a “Northian” perspective, while the
second emphasizes the dangers of parliamentary rule to the maintenance of bourgeois order: “The parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory on which the two factions of the French bourgeoisie,
Legitimists and Orleanists, large landed property and industry, could dwell side by side with equality of
rights. It was the unavoidable condition of their common rule, the sole form of state in which their general
class interest subjected to itself at the same time both the claims of their particular factions and all the
remaining classes of society” (Marx 1999: 48); “If they nevertheless, as the party of Order, also insulted the
republic and expressed their repugnance to it, this happened not merely from royalist memories. Instinct
taught them that the republic, true enough, makes their political rule complete, but at the same time undermines its social foundation, since they must now confront the subjugated classes and contend against them
without mediation, without the concealment afforded by the crown” (Marx 1999: 22–3).
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access to wealth. Thus, dictatorial rule is associated with a form of financial parasitism, which
paradoxically undermines the social position of those peasant strata which participate in the military and other parts of the repressive apparatus of the state.
Sixth: because of the contradictory nature of the dictatorial regime, the resulting solution to
class and intra-capitalist conflict is temporary and flawed. The regime becomes increasingly
delegitimated through rising corruption and intensified struggles of rival interests within the state
apparatus which the dictator cannot completely control. In addition, the marginalized social base
of the regime continues to find its conditions of existence under threat by periodic economic
crises generated by unstable capital accumulation. Such contradictions provide the basis for
working-class uprisings and the emergence of a socialist alternative.
This schematic summary of Marx’s argument cannot capture all the nuances and tensions
within The Eighteenth Brumaire. For example, Marx links the emergence of contrasting ideologies to conflicting material interests but does not claim that adherents to a specific ideology must
be members of that class. This is clear in Marx’s assessment of the peasantry, the aristocracy, and
the bourgeoisie. With respect to the peasantry, he writes:
The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but
without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them
from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse… . Thus the great mass of the
French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a
sack form a sack of potatoes… . They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their
own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. (Marx 1999: 62)
In this passage, which has been cited many times by previous authorities because of the striking
imagery of peasants as a “sack of potatoes,” Marx argues that members of a class can only
express their material interests if they, as a social group, recognizes the reality in which they exist
and articulate their goals and dreams in opposition to opposing classes. It is possible for peasants
to become a class, but this depends on outside intervention by revolutionary or reactionary ideologues. The structural conditions of the peasants’ existence prevent this “class” from spontaneously forming a common consciousness:
The three years’ stern rule of the parliamentary republic freed a part of the French peasants from the
Napoleonic illusion and revolutionized them, even though superficially; but the bourgeoisie violently
repulsed them as often as they set themselves in motion. Under the parliamentary republic the modern
and the traditional consciousness of the French peasant contended for mastery. The process took the
form of an incessant struggle between the schoolmasters and the priests. (Marx 1999: 63)
Note that neither the schoolmasters nor the priests are peasants, although it is certainly possible
that they may have come from peasant households.
With respect to the ideology of French property holders, Marx divides this category into two
contending classes: the modernizing capitalist class and the landed aristocracy. He associates the
rule of Orleanist King Louis Philippe (1830–48) with the modern bourgeoisie, while the aristocracy is aligned with the post-Napoleonic Bourbon rule of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815–30).
This rather neat division loses it salience as the analysis of The Eighteenth Brumaire proceeds.
Instead, it is replaced with an account of how the struggle between parliament and the executive
during the brief Second Republic created a division between those who looked to an all-powerful
executive to solve the nation’s problems (in their interest), and those members of parliament who
had a stronger allegiance to the institutions of parliament. This contradiction between the longing
for order and the desire for a voice in the running of the state suggests that one cannot view the
emergence of the dictator as a representative of a specific bourgeois class interest because the
bourgeoisie itself is divided over this issue. The struggle over the specific institutional form of
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the capitalist state is a struggle of contending ideologies on the appropriate relationship of capitalist interests and individuals to the state.
Another productive tension in Marx’s class analysis concerns the emergence of material interests associated with the rise of the state. Not only does the government serve as an employer of a
large civilian staff, but the state and associated state officials have a unique ability to exert power
and demand obedience. Marx often focuses on the corrupting potential of this form of government, but he also recognizes that the ability of individuals to exercise authority as an agent of the
state constitutes a material interest. After all, the radical schoolmaster is also an employee of the
state, as is the peasant soldier or the military officer who is the son of a shopkeeper. It is clear
then—even if Marx does not stress this—that non-bourgeois social sectors as well as sectors of
the bourgeoisie can gain power and influence through the state:
It is immediately obvious that in a country like France, where the executive power commands an
army of officials numbering more than half a million individuals and therefore constantly maintains
an immense mass of interests and livelihoods in the most absolute dependence; where the state
enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends, and tutors civil society from its most comprehensive
manifestations of life down to its most insignificant stirrings. (Marx 1999: 30)
If Marx is correct, why then does the capitalist state remain capitalist when it undergoes an
authoritarian turn? Why does not the dictator and his coterie seize bourgeois property and create
a “socialist” regime under the direct rule of the great leader? Marx does not directly address this
question, but the long history of twentieth-century authoritarian rule provides some suggestions
which can be integrated with more contemporary political economy theory. I hypothesize that the
presence of a relatively mature financial sector makes it more likely that rulers will avoid a fullscale nationalization of capital assets. Finance can provide the means for state leaders to gain
access to resources both to implement their authoritarian projects and to enrich themselves for
their efforts. In addition, access to credit and to ownership shares of enterprises as well as to kickbacks from firms who do the state’s bidding all avoid the tedious, quotidian problems of economic management. The state officials stay above the fray, offload the problems of transactions
costs to the bourgeoisie and managerial elite, and use the liquidity which finance provides to
capture the economy’s commanding heights.5
There is one further argument in Marx on finance and the state which deserves emphasis. The
relationship between officials and the aristocracy of finance is inherently corrupt. Finance allows the
creation of parasitic surplus extraction projects which can be hidden from view or obscured by their
complexity. General rules of appropriate behavior are ignored or set aside with nods and winks.
3. From Marx to the Third International Analyses of Fascism
Marx’s analysis of the establishment of Louis Bonaparte’s dictatorship is brimming with scornful
anger, but his narrative is structured more as a comedy than a tragedy. Indeed, Marx signals this at
the beginning of the essay when he notes the farcical attempt of Louis Napoleon to recapture the
glory of his more historically significant uncle. The early twentieth-century writings on fascism
have none of this scornful amusement. Instead, we are in a more terrifying, totalitarian reality.
The strength of Marx’s analysis in The Eighteenth Brumaire lies in his ability to use class
analysis as a starting, but not limiting, framework of analysis. While he made every effort to link
5This argument also gives some insight into the rise of totalitarian Stalinism. Trotsky, for example, argued
that the emergence of Stalinism reflected the backwardness of Russia. There was no sophisticated financial
or capitalist sector for the Bolsheviks to supervise and live off. Thus, as they slowly but surely became state
elites rather than egalitarian revolutionary socialists, they had to create and assert direct control over the
management of economic assets (Trotsky 1991).
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7
political conflict to class-based or fractional class-based material interest, Marx was willing to
emphasize the important role of ideology and non-class actors in shaping historical events. This
allows an elasticity in Marx’s historical work which permits the reader to consider how events on
the political “surface” are connected to the underlying evolution of the socio-economic order
without ignoring alternative causal factors such as the structure of state power and the relationship of different (non-class-defined) sectors of the citizenry to that power.
The dominant strand of Marxism in the early twentieth century did not utilize this flexible
framework. Instead, explanations were constructed to anticipate the inevitable rise of a repressive, authoritarian capitalist state. Paradoxically, this approach was more Marxist than Marx in
the sense that the analysis rested heavily on hypothesized economic trends which created an ever
more polarized and hierarchical capitalist social order. This materialist evolutionary approach
begins with Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1981) but finds its most thorough articulation in
Nikolai Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Economy (1972) as well as Lenin’s more well-known
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (2005).
Hilferding, Bukharin, and Lenin argue that Marx’s argument that capitalist enterprises become
concentrated (larger in scale) while the ownership of economic assets become centralized is
facilitated by the merger of industrial and banking capital interests, which Hilferding identifies
as the rise of finance capital. Lenin builds on this theory to construct a theory of imperialism
which predicts the cartelization of the world economy under the control of rival national capitalist blocs, while Bukharin stresses the creation of a new type of state monopoly capitalist social
order which suppresses destabilizing competition within the nation while intensifying the chaos
of international capitalist disorder (Willoughby 1990). Lenin also argues that the centralization
of capital reduces the competitive dynamism of capitalism and results in stagnation, although
Lenin does suggest in Imperialism that an aristocracy of labor can be created by the exploitation
of non-capitalist territories, which would lead to the pacification of labor within a “democratic”
advanced capitalist world. The combination of political economic centralization and intensifying
global conflict over the control of external colonial territories culminate in the creation of rival
state monopoly capitalist dictatorships undergirded by a colonialist/imperialist world order.
Fascism thus represents the culmination of tendencies inherent in capitalist evolution.
There is no doubt that this state monopoly capitalist/finance capital framework was an elegant
and persuasive theory for its time. It seemed to fit the reality of intensifying monopolization and
inter-capitalist competition. The international economic instability of the immediate post-World
War I period further suggested to many analysts that capitalism had become an exhausted, moribund, life-threatening mode of social organization.
Nevertheless, there were problems with this analysis, which was noted by Kautsky at the time
(Willoughby 1979). It was not clear even in the early twentieth century that the process of concentration and centralization was synonymous with the creation of national capitalist blocs; nor
was it obvious that such competition would necessarily lead to war if there were institutions
available to restrain and redirect international capitalist conflict; nor did the realities of technological change and capitalist production suggest that the centralization of capital was associated
with stagnationist tendencies within capitalism. There is not strong evidence for this claim (see
Field 2011). Lenin’s identification of the capitalism of his era with a specific form of imperialism
and accumulation dynamics introduced an unproductive rigidity in the state monopoly capitalist
analytical framework which left some Marxists unable to respond creatively and productively to
the challenge of fascism.6
Within the communist, revolutionary left of Western Europe, the renegade Kautsky’s critique
of the state monopoly capitalist approach was bound to fall on deaf ears. Instead, most
6For a fuller critique of the Leninist argument, see Willoughby (1986).
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revolutionary activists formed the early Communist Parties in the aftermath of the Russian
Revolution and looked to Lenin, Trotsky, and the other Bolshevik leaders for guidance and support. One of the first systematic debates on fascism within the Third Communist International
occurred in November 1922 at the fourth Comintern World Congress in the Soviet Union one
month after Mussolini came to power in Italy.7 Rather than insisting on unifying behind one analytical framework, the delegates debated the significance and meaning of this new political form.
Grigory Zinoviev, the Bolshevik chairman of the executive committee of the Comintern, developed the argument that fascism was a transitory phenomenon representing the decay of the capitalist order. Thus, all those parties attempting to save bourgeois democracy while defeating
fascism were instead supporting the fascist order by propping up capitalism. This analysis eventually led to the analysis later championed by Stalin that social democrats were “social fascists”
or, as Zinoviev said in 1922, “the left wing of the bourgeoisie.”
An alternative view on fascism articulated by Karl Radek (who was influenced by both Leon
Trotsky and Antonio Gramsci who was living in the Soviet Union during this time as the Italian
Communist Party’s representative to the Comintern) evoked more of the analysis of The
Eighteenth Brumaire by stressing that fascism received its main support from the petty bourgeoisie and disaffected veterans in the aftermath of World War I (Hoare and Smith 1971: li). Radek
conceded that the fascist movement as it came to power would receive funding from the bourgeoisie to eliminate the radical workers’ movement of Italy. Nevertheless, the political implication of Radek’s analysis is that it would be important to form tactical alliances with Social
Democracy to defeat the fascist menace.
Although the delegates to the World Congress voted in favor of Radek’s perspective,
Zinoviev’s social fascist analysis eventually became the dominant frame which the Communist
Left used to understand the significance of fascism and the role of Social Democratic parties. In
general, this approach led to the adoption of excessively sectarian politics. To prepare oneself for
the revolution, the Communist movement must maintain its fighting purity. The social fascist
analysis suggested that Communists should focus on defeating Social Democracy rather than
confronting fascist parties. Stalin’s statement in 1924 captures this perspective well:
Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of SocialDemocracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for
assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles,
or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little
ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing
the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These
organisations do not negate but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins.
Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the
circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the
proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore
be a mistake to think that “pacifism” signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation,
“pacifism” is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, Social-Democratic wing pushed into the
forefront. (Stalin 1924)
Stalin later implicitly renounced his own analysis and called on Communists to form reformist
(social fascistic?) popular front pacts with Social Democracy and liberal bourgeois parties (such
as Roosevelt’s Democratic Party) before once again shifting back to an ultra-left rejection of
these political alliances during Stalin’s real political alliance with the Nazi regime (the Hitler–
Stalin pact) between August 1939 and June 1941.
7The following account is based on Hoare and Smith (1971).
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9
4. Trotsky and the Class Nature of Fascism
If we are to look for inspiration from this period within the Marxist tradition, we must go to the
political fringes where prophets outcast or imprisoned resided. Leon Trotsky developed his analysis of fascism in the context of his own political marginalization that rendered his Marxist revolutionary organizations embattled and ineffective throughout the interwar years. He responded to
Stalin’s mechanistic and opportunistic analysis with scornful alarm. Trotsky did accept the
Leninist premise that fascism emerged in response to the decay of state monopoly capitalism and,
as a result, deployed an apocalyptic rhetoric which suggested that the alternative facing the peoples of the advanced capitalist territories was socialism or barbarism.8
Given these choices, Trotsky believed it was imperative to identify which classes were prone
to adopting fascist ideology so that effective political anti-fascist alliances could be forged. In his
analysis, the petty bourgeoisie plays the role in his analysis that the peasantry did in The
Eighteenth Brumaire:
The genuine basis (for fascism) is the petty bourgeoisie. In Italy, it has a very large base—the petty
bourgeoisie of the towns and cities, and the peasantry. In Germany, likewise, there is a large base for
fascism... It may be said, and this is true to a certain extent, that the new middle class, the functionaries
of the state, the private administrators, etc., can constitute such a base. But this is a new question that
must be analyzed. (Trotsky 1944b)
Trotsky argues that during a time of crisis, the petty bourgeoisie gravitates to authoritarian solutions. (He does not stress as much as Marx did that all capitalist property holders long for the
great leader.) Trotsky’s definition of the petty bourgeoisie is not particularly rigorous. He includes
small urban property holders, the peasantry, and perhaps the new middle class that worked within
the state.
On the other hand, Trotsky is too careful an observer to be content with a singular focus on the
petty bourgeoisie—however amorphously defined. When he examines the actual fascist movements of Italy and Germany, he cannot but help to stress their plebeian character:
The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from
the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers.
It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the
proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement.
(Trotsky 1944b)
The gigantic growth of National Socialism is an expression of two factors: a deep social crisis,
throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary party that would be
regarded by the masses of the people as an acknowledged revolutionary leader. If the Communist
Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counterrevolutionary despair. When revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably
pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie.
Precisely in this sphere the election revealed the opposite picture: counter-revolutionary despair
embraced the petty bourgeois mass with such a force that it drew behind it many sections of the
proletariat. (Trotsky 1944c)
The last quote on the rise of Hitler makes two important points. Trotsky acknowledges that
Nazism has an important proletariat base, and he argues that one cannot understand the political
dimension of the fascist counter-revolution’s success without considering the ideological failures
8See, for example, his argument that fascism emerges during the period of capitalism’s decline (Trotsky
1944a).
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of socialist parties. (While Trotsky focuses on the revolutionary left, there is no reason why this
indictment would not also apply to social democracy in general.) This ideological vacuum leaves
the general populace open to irrational frenzy:
Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and
the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpen proletariat—all the countless human beings whom
finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. (Trotsky 1944d)
Like Marx (and Lenin), whether a class can act in its own interest depends on the development
of the appropriate ideology. Unlike Marx, who linked the importance of ideological direction for
the peasantry to its inherently atomistic mode of existence, Trotsky extends this analysis to the
working class itself. Marxist analysts at that time failed to note that this analysis, if true, undercuts the classical Marxist assumption that the changing material conditions will ineluctably lead
the proletariat toward socialist politics.
Trotsky’s stress on the non-capitalist base of fascist movements did not mean that he thought the
fascist state would supplant the capitalist order. Instead, he insisted that any attempt by a fascist movement to seize state power would result in the bureaucratization of the movement that could eventually
result in a “normal” dictatorship more like Louis Napoleon’s in France seventy years earlier:
Mussolini attained this at the cost of bureaucratizing the fascist party itself. After utilizing the
onrushing forces of the petty bourgeoisie, fascism strangled it within the vise of the bourgeois state.
Mussolini could not have done otherwise, for the disillusionment of the masses he had united was
precipitating itself into the most immediate danger ahead. Fascism, become bureaucratic, approaches
very closely to other forms of military and police dictatorship. It no longer possesses its former social
support. (Trotsky 1944c)
5. Gramsci: Fascism and the Crisis of Representation
Gramsci’s analysis of authoritarian rule, which he calls Caesarism or Bonapartism rather than
fascism, has a tone which is more distant and academic than Trotsky’s. This is perhaps because
Gramsci’s imprisonment was extremely isolating and difficult. He had no opportunity to participate in day-to-day polemics so characteristic of Marxist revolutionary politics and his irregular
access to the outside world meant that Gramsci focused on more general theoretical problematics. While Gramsci’s views on the political tactics necessary to confront fascism were fairly close
to Trotsky’s united front perspective, his supporters concealed this fact in order to ensure the
continued support of international Communism (Hoare and Smith 1971: xc–xci).
One noteworthy feature of Gramsci’s writings in The Prison Notebooks (1971) is his focus on
the political and ideological rather than the economic. Thus, Gramsci does not find the origins of
early twentieth-century authoritarian rule in the rise of state monopoly capitalism. Rather, he
generalizes the crisis of representation analysis developed by Marx:
At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from political parties. In
other words, the traditional parties in that particular organizational form, with the particular men who
constitute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognized by their class (or fraction of class) as
its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous,
because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces represented by
charismatic “men of destiny.” (Gramsci 1971: 210)
This represents a genuine advance. Gramsci is articulating a view that parliamentary politics imposes
its own trajectory on its participants, which lead politicians to lose their connection to popular bases.
This is possible because of the distance imposed on representatives by parliamentary constitutional
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structures, changes in the structural conditions of economic life which disrupt the state’s relationship
with the citizenry, the corrupting influence of the state on all politicians, and political trauma such as,
in the case of 1920s Italy, the ability of the workers’ movements of Italy to destabilize society, but not
seize state power. The implication is that the populace no longer sees their representatives as working
on their behalf—even in a limited way. Or rather they see their representatives working within a
political dynamic which makes it impossible for their voices to be heard.
Gramsci also devotes more analysis to the governance implications of the military’s role in
maintaining the authority of the authoritarian leader. He stresses the importance of understanding
the non-bourgeois origins of junior military officers in particular:
In a whole series of countries therefore, military influence in national life means not only the
influence and weight of the military in the technical sense, but the influence and weight of the social
classes from which the latter (especially the junior officers) mostly derives its origin. This series of
observations is indispensable for any really profound analysis of the specific political form usually
termed Caesarism or Bonapartism. (Gramsci 1971: 214–15)
Gramsci’s conceptualization of the military as an independent social force takes him somewhat
beyond Marx, who tended to view the Bonapartist state as both a servant and beneficiary of
finance. Gramsci instead suggests that the elites within a new authoritarian state do not simply
become craven agents of finance. They demand a certain share of resources from the capitalist
order, and thus the tension between the state and capital takes on new forms within the dictatorial
order. The paralysis of political representation caused by political economic crisis, long-term
economic deterioration, or shifts in social influence as a result of the logic of capital accumulation and related dynamics of social evolution allows the dictatorial state to displace parliamentary conflict and move it within the executive state. If authoritarian states are to be stable, then
some form of tribute must flow to its “sponsors” even if the bulk of surplus is captured by financial oligarchs. As Gramsci notes, this combination of support for the regime’s non-capitalist
social base and financial parasitism is not necessarily unstable. This form of the capitalist state
can be as “natural” and compatible with capitalism as the liberal democratic order to which most
of us in the West are accustomed. Unlike Marx, Gramsci envisions a period of social equilibrium
which can allow the authoritarian state to persist:
That a state can exist politically based simultaneously on the plutocracy and on the “ordinary folk” is
not in any case entirely contradictory, as is proved by the example of France, where the rule of
finance capital could not be explained with the political base of a democracy of petit-bourgeois and
peasant rentiers. (Gramsci 1971: 316)
6. Nicos Poulantzas and the Attempt to Construct
a Gramscian/Leninist Synthesis
Nicos Poulantzas was the foremost early postwar Marxist thinker who studied fascism, dictatorship, and the capitalist state. He had an amazingly productive career before ending his life at the
age of 43 in 1979. In this section, I focus on two works, The Crisis of the Dictatorship: Portugal,
Greece, Spain (1976) and Fascism and the Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem
of Fascism (1974). The goal is to determine how Poulantzas’ thinking is linked to the earlier
Marxist work on the authoritarian state we have reviewed. His general approach is to analyze
how representational connections between state institutions (or apparatuses) and class interests
“outside” the state evolve in response to the evolution of state monopoly capitalism and the structure of capitalist imperialism. Thus, Poulantzas’ work can be seen as an innovative synthesis of
Gramscian and Leninist Marxist traditions. In this summary, I return to the six arguments I made
about Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire.
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6.1 The Problematic Relationship of Capitalism to Parliamentary Democracy
Unlike some analysts of the Third International, Poulantzas agrees with Marx that the authoritarian state tends to arise in the aftermath of working-class defeats. A general socio-political crisis
(the 1848 Revolutions and the failed revolutionary struggles after World War I in Germany and
Italy) can culminate the dissolution of parliamentary representation institutions altogether. Thus,
Poulantzas sides with Marx’s argument that there is no reason to believe that bourgeois democracy represents some inherent political feature of the capitalist social order. Indeed, Poulantzas
stresses in Fascism and the Dictatorship that the “exceptional” state shares certain common
features and practices with all capitalist states—namely the reinforcement of a repressive and
exploitative social order (Poulantzas 1974: 12).
6.2 Capitalism and the Status of the Great Leader
Poulantzas does not analyze the tendency for a charismatic leader to emerge to “solve” real or
perceived crises of the social order. Given his detailed commentaries on Italian and German fascism, there is surprisingly little attention paid to the individual psychology of Mussolini and
Hitler and the hold of these clearly damaged individuals on their followers. Such an approach
would have required Poulantzas to move beyond class analysis in order to understand the sociopsychological mechanisms which build and sustain cross-class coalitions.
6.3 The Growth in State Complexity
Poulantzas does not make broad-brush characterizations of the state in the way that Marx imprecisely discusses the parasitic and bureaucratic state of mid-nineteenth-century France. However,
one of his major contributions to our understanding of the capitalist state is his disaggregation of
the state into different organized institutions or apparatuses. In particular, Poulantzas’ commentaries on ideological and repressive state apparatuses are crucial to his effort to distinguish the
parliamentary democratic from the exceptional state (Poulantzas 1974: 311).
6.4 The Importance of the Professional Military and Its Link to Class Rule
Poulantzas’ analysis of the military, its class basis, and capitalist state repression makes significant advances on Marx’s arguments in The Eighteenth Brumaire. He divides the exceptional state
into three sub-categories: Bonapartist, Military Dictatorial, and Fascist. While the military is
always a key institution of the state, Marx views the Bonapartist state as one in which the dictator’s power resides in his control over the general civil service. On the other hand, the fascist state
develops new mechanisms of repression and control through the creation and/or expansion of a
political police with close ties to the mass fascist party. Only with the military dictatorship does
the officer caste of the army, navy, and air forces directly rule.
An additional distinguishing feature of Poulantzas’ analysis is his de-emphasis of the importance of the peasantry as the social basis of dictatorial control. Instead, he focuses on the petty
bourgeoisie in general as providing the personnel for exceptional state rule. As with Trotsky,
however, Poulantzas’ definition of the petty bourgeoisie is surprisingly imprecise.
6.5 Finance and the State
Poulantzas does not share Marx’s focus on finance and finance capitalists. Instead, he concentrates
on the tension between the petty bourgeoisie as rulers within the exceptional state with the progressive consolidation of monopoly capitalist domination of the social formation. For Marx, finance
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provides the mechanism for the consolidation of capitalist oligarchy, while Poulantzas does not
explore the fundamental corruption at the heart of dictatorial capitalist regimes. This is perhaps
because Poulantzas views this corruption as endemic to all forms of capitalist governance.
6.6 The Temporary Status of Exceptional States
Marx concludes The Eighteenth Brumaire with the argument that the intensifying contradictions
within the state and social order would produce the literal tumbling down of Napoleon’s statue at
the top of the Vendôme Column and a successful French socialist revolution. Marx’s first prediction was correct, but the 1871 Paris Commune did not produce socialism. Rather, after a period
of murderous repression against the Communards, a non-exceptional, parliamentary Third
Republic emerged. (A new statue of Napoleon was also erected at the Place de Vendôme.)
Poulantzas’ analysis also does not see the exceptional state as a permanent solution to the
contradictions of capitalism. Thus, regime forms can change, including, as Trotsky suggested,
moving from one form of an exceptional state (fascist or military dictatorship) to another
(Bonapartist). Still, Poulantzas is much less sanguine than Marx about the possibility of socialist
transformation. He focuses, not on the spontaneous combustion of the social order, but rather on
the need for appropriate (i.e. Leninist) leadership if a socialist revolution is to be successful.
There are two important arguments made by Poulantzas which are not captured by this comparison with prewar Marxist thinkers. The first concerns Poulantzas’ attempt to lodge our understanding of fascism and military dictatorship within the context of an evolving global capitalist
order. In their analyses, Marx, Trotsky, and Gramsci focus on internal class dynamics and make
little reference to the political economic dynamics of global capitalism. On the other hand,
Poulantzas argues that fascism in particular must be understood in the context of evolving interimperialist relations. This corresponds to Lenin’s assertion that World War I was a product of
uneven capitalist development and the corresponding political struggle for imperial privilege.
While Poulantzas’ language is often obscure, he sees German and Italian fascism arising in order
to consolidate state monopoly capitalism and thereby strengthen the state’s position in what
Poulantzas calls the imperialist chain. In The Crisis of the Dictatorships, Poulantzas argues that
military rule arose in the southern tier of Europe because of the reorganization of capitalist social
relations as a result of the emergence of dependent industrialization within Europe (Poulantzas
1976: 12–20). The more general implication of this framework is that the analyst should not just
focus on internal accumulation dynamics but should also be aware of how the structures which
attempt to regulate global accumulation evolve. The evolution of nation-state capabilities and
institutions cannot be understood outside of this global capitalist framework.
The second contribution of Poulantzas is his careful attention to tensions within the nationstate. While Gramsci especially notes the ways in which different classes or social groups within
the state contend for power, Poulantzas’ focus on different apparatuses of the state allows us to
render more precise analytic descriptions of internal state-society interactions. One implication
of this work is that we should expect heterogeneity within state formations. Authoritarian
impulses might play out differently in different spatial and institutional locations of the state.
Thus, between the 1880s and the 1950s, a one-party state, which deployed white supremacist
paramilitary terror throughout much of the Southern United States, coexisted with a multiparty
democracy in the rest of the country (Peery 1972). In a less dramatic way, the European Union
seems to be evolving toward a combination of bourgeois democratic governance in the core of
Europe with authoritarian experiments on its Eastern periphery. This approach warns us against
assuming that capitalist authoritarian tendencies are a uniform process affecting all parts of
global capitalism or all institutions within the nation-state in the same manner.
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7. Concluding Thoughts: Toward an Updated Materialist Theory
of Capitalist Authoritarianism
To understand the argument of Trotsky, Gramsci, and Poulantzas, it is useful to recall Marx’s
historical materialist framework developed in his Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of
Political Economy (Marx 1977b). Here he argues that revolutions occur when the evolution of
the forces of production come into conflict with a stagnant set of relations of production or more
generally property relations and the political system which supports them. New social interests
(classes) supported by new materially based forms of production cannot construct a state which
will allow them to prosper and regulate their present and future conditions of existence. In a time
of crisis caused by breakdown tendencies inherent in the old system, the new and increasingly
powerful social classes take action to overthrow the old order.
Marx used this framework to explain revolutionary transformations of whole socio-political
systems, but Gramsci’s and Poulantzas’ arguments suggest that this analytical framework can be
used more generally to analyze political disruptions which stop short of revolution. A modified
understanding of Marx’s forces of production/relations of production argument would be the following. The underlying system of material reproduction, production, and distribution is supported by a political and cultural order in which members of society create meaning and attempt
to maintain and/or restructure the institutions which organize their material lives. This mechanism of containment and adaptation to an evolving economic and cultural order is imperfect, and
over time, discordances or contradictions in the political economic system intensify and generate
crises of representation or legitimacy. To use another Gramscian framework, the hegemonic
understanding of what needs to be preserved in our social system begins to dissolve. It is in this
context that authoritarian political movements and potential dictatorial leaders emerge. Note that
this analysis is not dependent on another staple of Marxist analysis—the argument that capitalism as a social system will die or atrophy because of laws of motions embedded in the logic of
accumulation.9
Instead, I posit that a traumatic shock to the socio-economic order makes manifest the increasing incoherence or lack of representativeness of the political economic order. These “shocks” are
products of capitalism, but they are not inevitable products. While the rise of fascism was clearly
due to the extraordinary trauma of World War I, the failure of the Western European left to
restructure the social order in its chaotic aftermath, and the collapse of a very fragile global capitalist order during the 1920s, none of these events were mechanistically inevitable. In the case of
the French struggles of the mid-nineteenth century, Marx suggests in places that the shock was
the French 1848 uprising, which itself was a product of widespread food shortages and other
economic dysfunctions as well as the long-term social trauma associated with the emergence of
an intensifying, exploitative capitalist order. If this general framework is correct, then the analyst
must integrate her or his understandings of the build-up of long-run political contradictions with
the appearance of not surprising but inherently unpredictable short-term economic, political, and/
or geopolitical shocks.
The radical movements, which arise in response to traumatic disruptions and the slow decline
in the political hegemony of the power bloc, are often polarized. While radical movements of the
left agitate for an egalitarian transformation of the established order, authoritarian movements are
governed by the politics of radical nostalgia that promise “greatness” for social groups accustomed to asserting their superiority and domination over those considered to be marginal or, in
extreme cases, to be pollutants to the social order. It is not surprising that authoritarian
9An alternative institutionalist framework which is very similar to this Gramscian articulation is provided
by Polanyi’s emphasis on the importance of having embedded institutions for the maintenance of capitalist
order (Polanyi 2001). For a contemporary elaboration of this analysis see O’Hara (2012).
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movements might initially have greater popularity during a representation crisis period than the
contending left. The authoritarian right offers something which a sector of the population feels is
their due within the present social order—while the left asks for these “culturally privileged”
groups to liquidate their identity and participate in a new solidaristic (and thus threatening) social
order. During times of crises of representation, the repressive nature of the authoritarian project
also attracts financial support from sectors of capital, which further buttresses the power of the
right.
This analysis suggests that, contrary to Poulantzas’ Leninist framework, the failures of the left
during the 1920s or today were and are not just a product of ideological incompetence. In the
absence of effective radical movements for social transformation, we can expect periods of political authoritarianism, which restrict the personal liberty of some and block the electoral transfer
of power from one group or political economic faction to another. Inhabitants of the so-called
Third World will not be surprised to learn what we in the advanced capitalist world are just
relearning. There is no inevitable connection between the reproduction of the capitalist social
order and the maintenance of parliamentary systems of governance, which guarantee some personal liberty.
As the opening quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire indicates, the would-be authoritarian
leader engages in risky maneuvers, which destabilize and profane state institutions in order to
strengthen the leader’s ability to gather state functionaries under his personal authority. This
normally requires the cooperation and connivance of those elites who control the state’s repressive apparatus. In addition, the dictator can often count on the cooperation of many capitalist
elites. This is partly because, as Marx and Trotsky emphasized, members of the bourgeoisie will
subordinate themselves to the dictator in order to maintain their class privileges.
This cogent analysis would be strengthened by borrowing insights that begin with Adam
Smith, who noted in chapter 10 (part 2) of The Wealth of Nations that: “People of the same trade
seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” (Smith 2008). The implication is
that capitalists often struggle against a rule-based capitalist order and the constraints of market
competition which limit the ability of individual elites or groups of elites to use their influence to
wheedle and bargain for ever greater surplus. A dictator affords those well placed within the
political order to enrich themselves further—after supplying appropriate kickbacks to members
of the new political order.
It follows that an aspiring dictator who is him or herself a capitalist may be the most eager to
deconstruct a rule-based capitalist order. This is especially true for those who extort surplus
through misrepresentation and the withholding of information. This is close to the description of
Marx’s own account of the mechanisms of financial parasitism. Well-known contemporary economists such as Akerlof and Schiller have provided a more general framework for the ubiquitous
and ineluctable practice of fraud within poorly regulated market economies (Akerlof and Shiller
2015). They have not, unlike Marx, connected this to the normal day-to-day fraudulent activity
of many capitalist enterprises, but it is delusional to think that the institutions of rule-based capitalist governance are inherently stable. They can dissolve quickly during crises of representation,
and those capitalists who commonly use fraud and misrepresentation to accumulate capital are
the most eager architects of liberal capitalism’s destruction.
It is not difficult to connect contemporary authoritarian tendencies to this analysis. Campaigns
asserting traditional patriarchal “rights” within the family or confronting the alleged immigrant
menace or calling for the dismantling of an elitist bureaucracy or celebrating the militarized
deployment of the police or army all signal the growth of powerful reactionary social movements. This has destabilized traditional centrist parliamentary parties in many countries and
shifted mainstream politics decisively to the right in many cases. Noting these similarities
between the contemporary era of political disruption and previous Marxist explanations takes us
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far, but not far enough. This general framework cannot tell us the precise nature of the crisis of
representation currently bedeviling us. It is my hope that this brief look back to attempts by earlier Marxists to analyze earlier eras of repressive rule will provide some guidance to the contemporary study of this important question.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my colleague Jon Wisman at American University for his close reading and critique
of an earlier draft of this article. The RRPE reviewers of the manuscript provided important advice and criticisms which greatly improved the essay. My heartfelt thanks to Michael Keaney, Mary Wrenn, and
Annamaria Artner.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
John Willoughby is Professor of Economics at American University. He has written on theories of imperialism, postwar Germany, and the political economy of the Arabian Peninsula. He was recently Co-Director
of the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at the American University.