However, it was during this period of rationalization and the creation of gigantic Konzerns that the economic foundations and social necessities for the advent of Fascism in 1933 emerged in Germany. The accentuated concentration of the proletarian masses as a result of capitalist tendencies, social legislation thrown out to avoid dangerous revolutionary movements, but too costly, permanent unemployment disturbing social relations, heavy external burdens (reparations) necessitating continuous attacks on wages already very low since inflation. Above all, what called for fascist domination was the threat posed by the proletariat in the post-war period – a threat from which capitalism was able to escape thanks to the respite provided by social democracy, but which required a political structure to match the disciplinary concentration achieved in the economic sphere. Just as the unification of the Reich was preceded by industrial concentration and centralization in 1865-67, the advent of Fascism was preceded by a highly imperialist reorganization of the German economy, necessary to save the entire class cornered by Versailles. When we speak today of Fascism’s economic interventions, of “its” planned economy, “its” autarky, we misrepresent reality. It only represents the social structure which, at the end of an economic and social evolution, was necessary for capitalism. Appealing to fascism after 1919, when German capitalism was decomposing miserably, was not an option, especially as the proletariat was there, threatening. That is why Kapp’s putsch was fought by the fractions of capitalism, as well as by the Allies, who understood the invaluable help of the social traitors. (...)

In short, all Fascism’s innovations, from an economic point of view, lay in the accentuation of economic “disciplinization”, the linking of the State and the major Konzerns (appointment of commissioners to the various branches of the economy), and the consecration of a war economy.

Democracy, as the flag of capitalist domination, cannot correspond to an economy cornered by war, shaken by the proletariat, and whose centralization is a position of resistance in the expectation of new carnage, a way of transposing its internal contradictions onto the world stage, all the more so as it presupposes a certain mobility in economic and political relations, a capacity to displace groups and individualities which, although gravitating around the maintenance of the privileges of one class, must nevertheless give all classes the perception of a possible elevation. In the post-war period of German economic development, the Konzerns linked to the state apparatus, demanding repayment of the concessions they were forced to make as a result of workers’ battles, removed any possibility of democracy surviving, since the prospect was not of exploiting colonies with plentiful profits, but of a hard, bitter struggle against Versailles and its reparations system, and for a right to world markets. This was the path of brutal, violent struggle against the proletariat, and here, as in the economic sphere, German capitalism showed the way for other countries to follow by entirely different means. It is obvious that without the help of world capitalism, the German bourgeoisie would never have achieved its goals. To allow the workers to be crushed, it was necessary to remove all American labels hindering the German bourgeoisie’s exclusive exploitation of the workers; to grant moratoria; and finally to remove the burden of reparations. It also required the intervention of the Soviet state, which abandoned the German workers for its five-year plans, blurring their struggle and finally becoming part of the fascist victory.

An examination of the situation from 1923 to March 1933 shows that from the Weimar Constitution to Hitler, a process of perfect, organic continuity is unfolding. The defeat of the workers came after the full flowering of the bourgeois and “socializing” democracy expressed by Weimar, and enabled the reconstitution of capitalist forces. Then, gradually, the noose tightened. Soon, in 1925, it was Hindenburg who became the defender of this Constitution, and while capitalism rebuilt its ever-growing armature, democracy became more restricted, expanded in moments of social tension, and even saw some socialist coalition governments (H. Müller), but insofar as socialists and centrists increased the disarray of the workers, it tended to disappear (Brüning government and its decree laws) to make way, finally, for fascism, which met with no opposition from the workers. There was no opposition between democracy, with Weimar as its crowning glory, and fascism: one allowed the revolutionary threat to be crushed, dispersed the proletariat and confused its consciousness, while the other, at the end of this evolution, was the capitalist iron heel that consecrated this work, rigidly realizing the unity of capitalist society on the basis of the stifling of any proletarian threat. (...)

German fascism can be explained neither as a class distinct from capitalism, nor as an emanation of the exasperated middle classes. Rather, it reflects the form of domination exercised by capitalism, which is no longer able, through democracy, to bind all classes of society around the maintenance of its privileges. (...) The fact remains that the petit bourgeois, immersed in a historical environment where the productive forces, by crushing him and making him understand his powerlessness, determine a polarization of social antagonisms around the main players: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, no longer even has the possibility of swinging from one to the other, but instinctively moves towards those who guarantee him the maintenance of his hierarchical position on the social ladder. Instead of rising up against capitalism, the petit bourgeois, whether a starched collar worker or a shopkeeper, gravitates towards a social shell that he had like to see solid enough to ensure “order, calm” and respect for his dignity, in opposition to dead-end workers’ struggles that irritate him and confuse the situation. But if the proletariat rises up on its feet and goes on the attack, the petty bourgeois can only cower and accept the inevitable. When fascism is presented as a movement of the petty bourgeoisie, historical reality is violated by concealing its true terrain. Fascism channels all the contradictions that endanger capitalism and directs them towards its consolidation. It contains the petty bourgeois desire for calm, the exasperation of the starving unemployed, the blind hatred of the disoriented worker and, above all, the capitalist desire to eliminate any element of disruption from a militarized economy, to reduce to a minimum the maintenance costs of an army of permanently unemployed. (…)

In short, Hitler’s victory in March 1933 needed no violence at all: it was the ripe fruit of socialism and centrism, a natural outcome of an outmoded democratic form. Violence only had a raison d’être after the advent of the Fascists, not in response to a proletarian attack, but to prevent it forever. From a disaggregated, dispersed force, the proletariat was to become an active element in the consolidation of a society all geared to war. This is why the Fascists could not simply tolerate class organizations led by traitors, but had to extirpate the slightest trace of class struggle, the better to pulverize the workers and turn them into blind instruments of the imperialist aims of German capitalism.”

Bilan #16, 1935, “L’écrasement du prolétariat allemand et l’avènement du fascisme”
(“The Crushing of the German Proletariat and the Advent of Fascism”, translated by us