Fascism Theory And Practice Summary

A Review of “Fascism: Theory and Practice”

Sudhir Kumar Yadav

Kirori Mal College

SM141/410003

March 16, 2015

Dave Renton

Fascism

Theory and Practice

London: Pluto Press, 1999

150pp

0 7453 1475 9

Dave Renton in this book is totally opposed to fascism and has written polemically against it taking a Marxist stand. He has analyzed the different Marxist explanation of fascism viz. the left, the right and the dialectical. However, it is the dialectical approach, a synthesis of the ‘’left’’ and the ‘’right’’, which seems to give the true understanding of fascism. Renton is vocal about the contradictions in the preaching of the fascists and their practices and exposes

He says that the writers like Roger Griffin, Stanley Payne and Zeev Sternhell describes fascism primarily in terms of its ideas rather than the actual practice of Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany making fascism appear to be a much more positive movement that it was or is. He says that it is wrong to see fascism as being simply set of ideas, observable in the discussion of intellectuals. Since 1989, fascist parties have resurrected having thousands of members active in Britain, Europe and throughout the world. He says that the historians who talk about the positive, imaginative and idealistic character of fascism are playing into the hands of existing fascist

He has shown that as long as capitalism is there, the threat of fascism is always there. The crisis in capitalism which leads to the economic misery of the masses produces fascism. Thus, the ultimate cure of fascism is to uproot capitalism itself. However, it must be prevented whenever and wherever the fascist party rises. One of the reasons for the failure to prevent the Nazi party was lack of united opposition to it. The SPD and the KPD did not put a united opposition to the Nazi in Germany. During the period 1928 to 1934, both have undermined the power of the Nazi Party. Whereas the SPD thought to bind Hitler legally, the KPD maintained that social democracy was a natural ally of fascism. However, the KPD sought to have alliance with individual members of the SPD making the ‘revolutionary United Front from Below’. By 1935 Communist groups knew that fascism was now powerful and the only way to win people away from it was to incorporate the demands of the working class into a broader alliance with those members of the middle and ruling classes hostile to fascism. This meant a political alliance, not only with socialists, but also with liberals, radicals and eventually conservatives making the ‘Popular Front’. It is the ‘United Front’ tactics, championed by Trotsky who argued that in Germany the SPD and the KPD should unite around