Fascism is a Thoroughly Modern Phenomenon
Prabhat Patnaik
ALL over the world there is an upsurge of fascistic forces. This includes India too where the fascistic Hindutva elements have been not just on the rise, but in power for more than a decade now. Liberal and progressive thinking in the country has been concerned with analysing the reasons for this upsurge of Hindu supremacism that treats a minority community as the “other”, generates hatred within the majority community against it, and attempts to destroy the secular and democratic character of the polity envisaged in the Constitution.
A number of reasons are adduced for the emergence of this phenomenon. These include: the massive and relentless drive by the RSS to establish educational institutions through which a toxic communal ideology is disseminated even to children; the energetic fomenting of communal-fascism among the majority community through the Babri Masjid movement that saw first the demolition of the 400-odd-year old mosque and later the construction of a temple in its place; the waning of the secular ethos that had been upheld by the anti-colonial struggle; the legacy of the partition which comes in handy for keeping alive the communal division in the country; and so on.
The common theme underlying this entire discussion has been that in India the growth of a syncretic culture and tradition had not completely got rid of a religious-communal divide among the people; and while the anti-colonial struggle and the Constitution that emerged after independence had expressed the former tradition, the persistence of the religious-communal divide gives the votaries of Hindutva a chance to pursue their agenda which they have seized at present. This discussion in other words has located Hindutva in history, seeing it as a throwback to a tendency underlying India’s historical evolution.
While this analysis has much that is insightful, it is crucially incomplete. For a start, it does not take account of the fact that the emergence of Hindutva in India in the current conjuncture is part of a global trend towards fascism. Milei in Argentina, Meloni in Italy, Orban in Hungary, Trump in the U.S., Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, and Netanyahu in Israel (though he is in a particularly repugnant category of his own) do have something in common, and are part of a global trend towards the ascent of fascism; and where the fascistic elements have not captured power, they are powerful enough to be knocking at its door in a manner unprecedented in recent memory, such as Marine Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany. A purely India-specific explanation for the present rise of Hindutva therefore is crucially inadequate.
Such a discussion of Hindutva is crucially incomplete in a second sense as well, namely, that it is completely without anchorage in any class analysis. The traditional votaries of Hindutva were to be found significantly among shopkeepers, petty traders and such like, broadly what would be characterized as the petty bourgeoisie. But when the Hindutva elements come to power does it then signify that the petty bourgeoisie has captured power? How in short would the ascent of the Hindutva elements be explained in class terms?
Both these incomplete aspects can be satisfactorily completed once we recognize Hindutva as a thoroughly modern phenomenon. In fact we need to recognize it as the Indian version of a fascistic upsurge that is itself a thoroughly modern phenomenon. To be sure, the fascistic elements themselves have a pre-modern outlook. Their total abandonment of reason and their superstitious belief in certain alleged historical developments for which there is not only no evidence but which are actually contradicted by evidence, mark them as being imbued with a pre-modern, pre-scientific attitude; but none of this explains the sudden world-wide upsurge of fascistic movements, unless we reckon with the fact that all such movements are backed at present by the most powerful segment of the bourgeoisie, namely the monopoly bourgeoisie. The emergence and the dominance of monopoly capital itself being a modern phenomenon (Lenin dated the transition from competitive to monopoly capitalism to the beginning of the twentieth century), fascism whose ascent is occurring because of the support of monopoly capital, must itself be seen as a modern phenomenon.
Fascistic groups exist in all modern societies, but as fringe groups; they appear centre-stage only when monopoly capital gives them financial help and the support of the media it controls. Their ascent in other words becomes possible only when big capital needs them, and hence forms a partnership with them in order to use them for its own ends. Their rule, in class terms, is therefore the rule, in a particularly brutal and repressive form, of monopoly capital, especially of a certain reactionary, aggressive and upstart segment of monopoly capital. As Georgi Dimitrov, President of the Communist International, had expressed the matter at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the fascist state is the “open, terrorist dictatorship” of the most reactionary sections of finance capital. Michal Kalecki the renowned economist had in a similar vein referred to fascist rule as being based on a partnership between “big business and the fascist upstarts”.
Such a partnership becomes necessary for big business in a period of crisis of the system when its hegemony comes under threat. It then needs a distractive discourse that simultaneously has the “advantage” from its point of view, of dividing the working people, so that they become incapable of launching any threat to its hegemony. The fascist groups ideally provide such a distractive and divisive discourse quite apart from their penchant for repression; and hence big business enters into a partnership with them in a period of crisis of the system. Classical fascism had risen to ascendancy during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the contemporary ascent of fascist forces is occurring in the context of the prolonged crisis of stagnation and increased unemployment that neo-liberal capitalism has run into after the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. in 2008. It is this which explains the simultaneity of the rise of fascistic elements in several parts of the world at present.
Fascism, whether in its classical or contemporary avatar is thus a modern phenomenon that invokes a pre-modern outlook, including often an idealized pre-modern world. The fascistic elements themselves of course are the embodiment of this outlook; but to see their rise merely in terms of a spread of this outlook is to miss the connection with monopoly capital, with capitalism, and hence with political economy altogether. This rise must instead be seen as a very “modern” monopoly capital using a pre-modern instrument for its own ends.
In India itself, while the RSS has been in existence for a hundred years, the rise to exclusive power at the centre of its political front organization, the BJP, occurred only in 2014, after it had acquired the support of the big business of the country. Narendra Modi had been instrumental in effecting this alliance between the fascistic elements and big business; and his name for Prime Ministership had been first mooted at an investors’ summit attended by all big capitalists of the country, that had been hosted by the Gujarat government when he was the Chief Minister of that state.
Seeing the rise of fascistic elements as a modern phenomenon is important for a successful struggle against it. If this rise was the result only of the survival and subsequent strengthening of pre-modernity, then the political struggle against it would have to be accompanied by a renewed drive towards “modernization” which would entail a vigorous pursuit of neo-liberalism. On the other hand, if fascist ascent is seen as being backed by monopoly capital to bolster its hegemony during a period of crisis of neo-liberalism that cannot be overcome within the framework of neo-liberalism itself, then the political struggle against it will have to be accompanied by an economic agenda of going beyond neo-liberalism.
Unless there is going beyond neo-liberalism, which is necessary for overcoming the crisis it has caused, even a political defeat of the fascistic elements in elections, will only cause a temporary setback to them; they will come back to power again, as Donald Trump has done in the U.S., because the conjuncture that gave rise to their ascent would not have been overcome. It follows therefore that a successful fight against the ascent of fascistic elements requires not just a political coming together of secular, democratic and anti-fascist forces, but also a minimum economic programme that entails going beyond neo-liberalism, at least in certain crucial respects to start with.
