michael mann, fascists (2004)

Chapters 1 and 2

(1): study of rise of fascist movement, and not the regimes in power [obviously a place to push back, with paxton point about stages of development]

(1-4): seven reasons to take it seriously

1. a major political doctrine of 20th century
2. embraced nation-state
3. ideology must be taken seriously
4. 'core fascist constituencies' is a live problem
5. take seriously the movements behind them
6. seek to understand the evil in which they culminated
7. take seriously the chance that they might return--"some of the substance lives on"

(4): here Mann caricatures, as is his wont, the materialism-idealism "traditional polemic".

(5): four forms of social power [push back majorly, here]

1. ideological
   
2. economic
3. military
4. political

(13-17): a definition--"fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism", five key terms.

1. nationalism
2. statism--goal and organizational form
3. transcendence of class conflict (here he pushes back against Paxton)
4. cleansing
5. paramilitarism--key value and key organizational form

(18): key--here, again, Mann caricatures 'class'-based theories of fascism (which he thinks are limited to middle-class interest, and capitalist interest). he cannot acknolwedge that, in fact, these are much more complicated--and that, importantly, they don't rise and fall with the question of movement 'composition'. they are also, at the very least, meant to say something about the ideology/motivation that impelled these movements. [his argument, here, speaks also to his gross misunderstanding of the role of 'class' as structuring social life]

(21-22): classically bad!!!--because fascists weren't materialists, you can't use materialism to explain them (this is his argument at the bottom of this page, more or less--"fascists focused elsewhere")

(22): again, an impoverished understanding of materialism ('material interests') [plus, here, there's also the problem of foresight--people can pursue their material interests without the pursuit being in their long-term interest]

(25): the overreaction of the old regime [does this have to do with his understating the threat?]

(26-27): three core constituencies

1. favoring paramilitarism
2. favoring transcendence
3. favoring nation-statism

(32): state size 'explosion' in the 1700s

(34): organic vs. liberal conceptions of the nation-state (indivisible people, etc)

(36): complete excision of colonialism from his narrative of State expansion! (didn't Arendt say that Europe built fasicsm in the colonies before it built it at home?)

(38): 1920-1945 retreat of liberal democracy on the continent

(44): distinction between modern authoritarianism and those past--the former had to deal with the "organized political pressure from masses"

(45-47): four ascending degrees of authoritarianism

1. semi-authoritarian--"dual" state, but in mildest form
   
2. semi-reactionary authoritarian
3. corporatist regimes--integrated, hierarhchical
   
4. fascist regimes--corporatism plus paramilitarism

(48): here he starts his discussion of the four forms of power/crisis

(48-64): economic power, economic crisis

(49): first candidate--late-development theory (he will say this explains authoritarianism, partly)

(51): rise of authoritarianism mainly happened in the less developed countries (see his table on page 50)

(52): his critique of the Rueschemeyer et al. -- but why is it banal to state that the majority has an inherent interest in extending the franchise? it's critical.

(56-57): second candidate--the slump (but what about NW europe, he's saying?)

(58): third candidate--class conflict (see below)

(59): strength of left does not map onto the strength of reaction, either--their was an overreaction, from the right (he's stressing the weakness of the left, after 1920)

(62): important--claim that he will repeat, later, about capitalist interest in property vs. capitalist interest in profit. we ought to push back here, because he's neglecting their interdependence under capitalism. moreover, his counterfactual (that something less would have been in capitalists' long-term interests) is simply ahistorical, and not how 'capitalist interests' are typically calculated. though perhaps his formulation does let us say something interesting about 'old regime' interests.

(64): here is a key place where ideology takes on a life of its own, in his argument (the right in one-half of europe was more attracted to certain values). push back time.

(64): in sum, economic explanation is only partial.

(64-70): military power, military crisis

(67): importance of war dislocation--acquiring new territories, debts, etc., which was unique to the South, East, Center of Europe

(68): key--WWI made possible civic paramilitarism. this will be one of his key pegs.

(70-78): political power, political crisis

(71): important, as a place he's pushing back against RSS--participation vs. contestation (the NW didn't have the former, he agrees, but it did have the latter). it's unclear, though, that this is incompatible with what they were arguing.

(72): and, of course, his deployment of this fact is question-begging, completely, insofar as he's not discussing their causes.

(80): fascism as 'reactionary modernism'

(91): overdetermined outcomes--and total spectre, in this conclusion, of a descriptive analysis

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Chapter 3, Italy

(94): three preconditions, for union between nationalists and Left

1. distinction between nation and state, in Italy
2. Italian labor movement
3. nationalism had leftist elements.
   

(95): this was the "leftist nationalist interventionism" that turned into fascism (from 20,000 in late 1920 to 320,00 in Nov 1921)

(96-97): the class-based interpretation of Italian fascism -- as a 'petty-bourgeois' nationalism, that promised the world but that would likely have to sell out to the capitalists [Salvatorelli]. Mann's rejoinder is classically weak, even barbaric (consists, again, of asserting that materialism cannot take 'ideology' seriously)

(97-100): and Mussolini's own account of what explains fascism (!) -- some kind of transcendent, imperial, nationalist project, valuing action over ideology.

(102-103): extraordinary statistics about military veterans in the fascist movement, attracted by 'paramilitarism'

(105): three bursts of violence (quite tame while in power, until Ethiopia)

(106): this is an important point, that needs to be responded to carefully --in Italy, fascism spread in those places where "civil society" was most dense (both in rural areas with varied relations of production, and in urban areas)

(107-109): beginning to discuss the class composition of Italian fascism--in short, more middle-class than the figures reveal, especially in the cities, but not so much in the rural areas

(110): key point--"fascism could not penetrate the organized working class", but had an easier time (see also 116)

(112): this is his central critique of the 'middle-class' theories, i think -- those that were attracted to fascism, within the middle-class, can't be distinguished on the basis of their social position, but rather perhaps simply on their attachment to 'nation-statist values' and 'paramilitary means' [but then, doesn't this become, simply, a non-explanation?]

(113-115): PNF popularity in rural areas -- split the socialists by offering an attractive program

(116-117): BUT, again--where the working classes were dense and organized in rural areas, they were rarely fascist. he's making quite an important point, here, about "organization" [the 'organized working class' is not the same as the 'working class']

(117): a key point, that's obscured in his presetntation--"rural fascism became increasingly conservative," an alliance between landlords and the middling to lower-middling peasants.

(119): his take-home point, if we're being charitable, is to focus our attention on the important question of 'violence' as means of organization (and, thus, question of why the fascists could become so popular) (see also 122)

(120): key--here, quite clearly, the distinction between 'fascism-as-movement' and 'fascism-as-power'; Mussolini is coming around to appease big capital.

(121): fascism didn't attack the state; attacked those who said they were attacking the state (i.e. Leftists)

(123): 'propertied classes' in Italy were afraid because of biennio rosso (1919-1920)(self-styled soviets, general strike in April in Turin, 500,000 workers occupying their factories at its height, etc.)--but, Mann, is arguing, their fears weren't commensurate to the facts. "fascism as preventative counterrevolution."

(125): and this, really, is the clincher--HE QUOTES MUSSOLINI TO PROVE THAT THE COMMUNISTS WERE DONE FOR.

(119-126): in sum, he has given us three economic reasons for elite support of fascism, all of which he finds useful, but incomplete. we can push back, here.

1. propertied classes' fear of pervasive and growing violence
2. fear of political revolution
3. repression of labor in order to protect profits (what was wrong with gilotti, he is saying?)
   

(127): defection of the state apparatus to the fascists (hollow monopoly of armed force)

(128): speaking of a 'class crisis' intertwined with a 'political crisis' -- but maybe this calls for some theorizing? he seems distinctly uninterested in the possibility.

(131): high recruitment in the Northern border regions.

(132): useful summary of his claims, thus far

(134): fascism in power as a "loose corporatism" -- conceding power to elites, etc. all this seems critical, but it is distinctly underemphasized (3 pages!) ('fascism as a movement' represented a very small fraction of the time we ought to be concerned with, surely)

(135): wow--only nine political executions, from 1927 to 1940. low level of repression, more generally.

(136-137): summary of his claims, re: Italian fascism. he calls his explanation "multifaceted", but it seems to me, rather, overdetermined and disorganized.

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Chapter 4, Nazis

(129): a 'slower' rise to power

(141): Jews made up 0.76% of the German population (only 2 percent of Germany's bankers/stockbrokers)

(142): early Nazis' socialism, and then the retreat from it in the late 1920s -- primacy of worker over exploiter, livelihood/welfard for citizens, take action against big finance, and radical land reform program (abandoned in 1928) [again, this is something that needs to be foregrounded]

(143): goal, again, was transcendence, and an 'organic community of the people'

(144): 63% of entry essays saw Marxists/socialits as principal enemies.

(146): fascism as regime, fascism as movement--alluding to the sidelining of the SA as the regime calcified, but is not making this systematic, at all. (see also 167)

(151): Nazis and military veterans (84% had served in the war, somewhat overrepresented; but later cohorts would be needed to replenish the movement--see 361)--and the importance of the military as a right/left faultline (German left had been antimilitarist). Two main explanations for why this is: (1) economic, demobilized soldiers, etc.; (2) translation of military into paramilitary values

(157): key--many Nazis were workers; alternatively, workers were slightly underrepresented in the Nazis (this disappears if we include the paramilitaries). but I don't think this is an empirical challenge to the Marxist thesis, at all. (see 160, also--where he says that the Nazis were 'multiclass'. the descriptor 'petty-bourgeois' is an adjective that is meant to describe the leading element, the ideological orientation. it has some claim on membership, certainly, and should be roughly correct--but not at all hard-and-fast.)

(159): the SPD and the KPD really were proletarian parties, he's acknowledging.

(163): key membership from the civil service and professionals, and white-collar workers (civil servants were most overrepresented occupational group--four times as likely)

(165): an 'antimaterialist' explanation of the way in which they were attracted to the Nazis ('blood and soil' nationalism) that is crying out for--in fact--a materialist explanation to save it from its being question-begging.

(167): SA was proletarian

(170): again, here what's critical, again, is a dense "civil society" -- the Nazis were at the heart of it. very important.

(171-172): critical, six points about class and the Nazis (again, this is where we stress that 'petty-bourgeoisie' is not a claim about composition, but about character; nor does this obviate materialism, at all)

1. all classes well represented
2. rural classes moved from under- to over-representation
3. nation-statist, educated bourgeoisie was overrepresented; business bourgeoisie underrepresented
4. difficult penetrating organized working-class communities
5. not marginals and economic losers that joined the fascists (heart of civil society)
6. distant from the main arenas of modern class conflict. indirect observers of the most pronounced class struggle.
   

(175): the nation congeals in violence--they managed to convince elite s that violence was needed to solve the country's anarchy.

Chapter 5, German Sympathizers

(177): three reasons that the Nazis could seize power

1. activism of militants
2. votes of the electorate
3. ambivalence about Weimar/assistance of the elites

(178): "strong nationalism" characterized Nazi propaganda.

(179): claim, here, he's making about how the Nazi program of transcendence mirrored the 'classless' composition of their movement.

(182): EXTRAORDINARY--the Nazis didn't believe in the "laws of the capitalist economy," hence they didn't apply to them!!!

(182): socialists believed the class/nation were opposed; Nazis saw that, for most Germans, they were not [interesting, though not unproblematic (effect or cause?)--does open to the question of revolutionary internationalism]

(183): important--discussion of Strasser, Hitler and the Left--but there's not enough chronology, here. this, if anything, cannot be treated as static across time.

(185): the election figures (from 3% in 1928 to 33 percent in November 1932).

(189): core voting areas were primarily Protestant and secondarily rural.

(190); artisans as workers, not petty-bourgeois?

(190-191): many fascist workers voted for it, but they weren't at the heart of the class struggle (again, though, there's a real problem about taking a snapshot at their high-point in 1932 and then running with it to disprove theories about the movement and the regime)

(191): Nazis took votes from the bourgeois parties--they radicalized the conservatives, in essence.

(194): elites began to gravitate towards authoritarianism after the gov't started to creak, following the Great Depression. first they had turned to the semi-authoritarians; then they turned to the fascists.

(197): relationship between business and the Nazis (Mann's very confused paragraph, here)--but business had no choice, in a sense.

(199): the complicity of the army and state apparatus in the rise to power, quite critical.

(200): key--Nazi accession to power--no coup, and uneven elite support. but complicity of state apparatus. and Schmitt, in the background (the fear of 'mass politics' diluting integrity of elite debate).

(201): his four objections to empirical theories

1. economic crisis is important, but only partial
2. Nazi constituencies were least affected by economic crisis
3. capitalists did not actively support Nazis (though they didn't support the Weimar republic, either)
4. crisis period was too short to explain a break with democracy

(202): Eley's important re-working of the class thesis, where it is protracted class fonrontation which produces the political stalemate that allows the Nazis in. this seems critical, insofar as the appeal of 'transcendence' needs to be explained. (see also 205 -- what was the Nazis' appeal, why did they emerge in the way they did at the time they did; all this needs to be explained, not wished away)

(203): here, the second of the two claims that seem worth pursuing/tackling

1. paramilitarism
2. the fact that the core support was 'away from the front lines'

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Chapter 10, Conclusion

(353): important--his is a two-part explanation--first, explaining the rise of authoritarianism (353-358); second, the turn to fascist in some of the countries that went authoritarian (358-363)

(353-354): economic crisis--very underdeveloped claims, here

(354): his presentation of the political crisis, that produced authoritarianism and then fascism--the phenomenon of 'dual states', attempting to undercut democracy, find alternative ways of mobilizing masses. [this is compelling, but we need to, in general, account for the 'bedrock' -- what does the explaining, here? i.e., a Barrington Moore or RSS account, which would engage material explanations quite obviously--see also 365]

(355): ideological crisis--"civilization needed rescuing"

(356): five reasons for the elite overreaction

1. revolution seemed a real possiblity, after 1917
2. agrarian landlords were particularly vulnerable, because radical land reform was on cards
3. military officer corps were perturbed
4. churches, too
5. geopolitical disorder, which made some territorial issues particularly prominent
   

(357): key passage, to unpack--claims about instrumental and value-rationality, which seem muddled. better solutions available to elites, etc.

(359-360): another key point--he is arguing that fascists were outside of the class struggle because they sought to transcend it. this is nonsensical, even conceptually. and empirically, as his stuff on the next page, shows, it was too--this posturing served the interests of the status quo.

(363): Franco as authoritarian rightist

(364): only weakened old regimes let in fascism

(365): merger of Enlightenment and Romanticism

(368): the new right mobilizes a different kind of racism

(369): a lot of the supoprt is 'protest voting'

(370): stability of institutionalized liberal democracy