BOOKS
49
out that the existence of both Communism and Fascism are effects of the
breakup of the capitalist system; and that, consequently, it is ridiculous to
consider one effect to be the cause of the other. Moreover, he shows that
in Italy Fascism came to power because a Communist movement did
not
exist; even reactionary and liberal historians admit that Communism was
fully possible in Italy during September 1920, but it
w:~s
prevented by the
reformist leadership of the working class. In the case of Austria, Fascism
was instituted in a country where Social-Democracy controlled practically
the entire working class; in Russia, on the contrary, where all the workers
followed Communism, it was never able to appear.
Dutt describes how the Social-Democratic leaders, playing the role of
the heralds and footment of Fascism, distort even the question,
Is Fascism
inevitabld
They command the workers not to fight until
afte1·
Fascism
takes over the state, thereby admitting the inevitability of its coming to
power. The Communists, on the other hand, stress the necessity of smash–
ing Fascism before it is given complete control of the capitalist state ap–
paratus. As Dutt puts it, Fascism becomes inevitable only when the work–
ing class and its allies follow the line of reformism, refuse the united
front, and put their faith in bourgeois democracy. When the entire work–
ing class follows the Communist program it can "pass straight to the
socialist order with no costly or shameful Fascist interlude.
John Strachey has shown that accepting the inevitability of Fascism
is not more dangerous than accepting its impossibility in "democratic"
countries. This seems to be what Mr. H. M. Kallen, die-hard liberal,
is driving at when he tells us, in recent symposium, that Fascism has
beeen established "only in old countries without a genuine and tested tradi–
tion of freedom." It is fatal to be blind to the danger of this menace in
bourgeois democratic countries. Fascism develops in and through the
forms of bourgeois democracy. To place any faith in such institutions
is to play directly into the hands of modern capitalism, which is abandoning
parliamentary democratic forms for open class dictatorship.
Liberals and Social-Democrats who do precisely this, usually present
the modern political dilemma as that of
Democracy vs. Dictatorship.
Dutt
dissolves this argument with Bolshevik thoroughness: "The real issue is
commonly confused by the vulgar propagandist treatment that the attack
on 'democracy' is a parallel attack of Communism and Fascism. On the
contrary, the critique of Communism or Marxism against capitalist
democracy is not that it is 'too democratic' but that it is 'not democratic
enough,' that it is in reality only a deceitful cover for capitalist dictatorship
and that the real democracy for the workers can only be achieved when
the proletarian dictatorship breaks the power of the capitalist class. The
movement of modern capitalism, on the other hand, against parliamentary
democracy is a movement to strengthen repression of the workmg class
and establish the open and violent dictatorship of monopoly capital."
Dutt's answer to the question,
Is Fascism an independent revolutionary
movement of the middle-classf
represents one of the most adequate sections
of his book. As he mentions, the theory of Fascism as a petit-bourgeois
