I’m giving a rather lengthy recap of A. James Gregor’s book: Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism. I’m opening here with my own summary of some points that will prove important, and then recaps of Chapter 1- Introduction, and Chapter 2- The Roots of Revolutionary Ideology.
First, my summary of the central problematic assertions of Marx, and then two important factors in getting from Marx to the ideologies of the 20th century.
This book refers repeatedly to several Marxist doctrinal problems:
1) Determinism- socialism was mechanistically destined to happen.
2) The universe is mechanistic, amoral, and purely material. Morality is nothing more than a reflection of modes of production.
3) History was exclusively the struggle between classes.
4) Socialist overthrow of capitalism could not happen until capitalism reached maturity. Nations where it had not reached maturity would not develop a proletariat that had the requisite class consciousness, and any revolution in such underdeveloped nations would not lead to socialism.
Those 4 assertions would trouble socialists after Marx and Engels died. There are a few more points of interest; the first is because of its innate materialism, Marxists hitched their wagon to Darwinism. After Marx and Engel’s death, Marxists disciples sought clarification of some of Marx’s ill-defined concepts increasingly in Darwinism. But Darwin’s answers didn’t necessarily accord with Marxism, so hybrid variants of Marxism arose.
Perhaps THE important consideration among the Marxist theoreticians of the time was: how do we convert the theories into concrete policies. It was this question that caused them to search the documents for answers to some of their questions. They couldn’t find the answers, and so were forced to fill in some gaps.
The author traces the development of Marxism as theoreticians sought to turn the theory into concrete policies. But they had to answer those 4 issues in a more satisfactory way that Marx did, and for that, they would sometimes resort to sources outside Marx, including Darwin.
Chapter 1- Intro
The Soviets, in their opposition to Germany, positioned themselves as ‘antifascists’. They tied fascism and capitalism together, calling fascism the inevitable aim of capitalism, and identified their struggle against the Nazis and fascism as an extension of their struggle against capitalism and the West.
Marxism was, in theory, an international movement. But workers in different countries found their identification more in their nation, than in any international brotherhood of workers. So socialism’s implementation couldn’t avoid a nationalist element. For example, the Soviets were always ‘Russian’ at heart, and even their international intentions had a imperialist bent that always saw Russia as the leader of the worldwide revolutionary movement.
Fascism started from Marxist roots, but rejected Marxism’s class consciousness for a nationalist consciousness. Nationalism was supposedly a hallmark of fascism, having no place in Marxism. Yet some form of nationalism took hold in every nation where communism/socialism was implemented for the aforementioned reason: Individuals more readily identify with their local groups; people that look, think, sound, and act like them, than their economic class.
Both systems are totalitarian. Totalitarianism starts from the identification of the individual with the single party state. Individuals were subordinate to the collective. (A totalitarian state is one in which the state exercises control over every area of citizen’s lives. I’m convinced that a totalitarian ideology is an all-encompassing, or total, worldview. It isn’t just an economic system, or a system of governance, it is more like a religion meant to govern every aspect of living and thinking.)
Both Marxism and Fascism were totalitarian systems. While Marxists have tried to distinguish themselves from fascists, both have the same roots, tried to solve the same problems, approached the solutions differently, yet ultimately arrived at the same types of societies.
Chapter 2- The Roots of Revolutionary Ideology
Humans seek moral justification for morally abhorrent acts like violence.
Revolutions require violence, typically considered unethical or immoral, so revolutionaries seek moral justification for their actions.
What did Marx give as moral justification for advocating revolution and violence? Marx believed that ‘modes of production’ determined morality. Ethics, and the laws that codified them, were no more than determined responses to existing economic conditions. They were not driven by thoughtful human considerations.
If the mode of production at a time and place gave rise to an oppressor class, the oppressed class would rise up and a new morality would rise with it. He utterly dismissed the idea of morality or institutions rising from anything else. He saw any morality as existing only for that time and place, and due purely to the material conditions. Conditions gave rise to morality. If material conditions cause a new morality to arise in which revolt and violence are necessary, then it is not wrong or immoral. In fact, nothing else could expected in such conditions, and so it followed that violence would be, for that time, ethical and moral.