Paul A. Baran (1909–1964), professor of economics at Stanford University, was the author of The Political Economy of Growth (1957) and (with Paul M. Sweezy) Monopoly Capital (1966)—both published by Monthly Review Press.
This reprise is excerpted from an article, “Fascism in America,” that Baran published under the pseudonym Historicus in Monthly Review vol. 4, no. 6 (October 1952): 181–89.
One of the most disturbing features of the present political situation in the United States is the widely observable complacency concerning the danger of fascism in this country. That this complacency permeates the political thinking of the so-called “general public,” of the conformist intellectuals, and of the kept press is not remarkable—in fact it represents an important aspect of the existing political situation. What is really alarming is the attitude of such progressive and left-wing forces as exist in our country, an attitude that deprecates the threat of fascism in America, that refuses to consider fascism as a possible, let alone probable, stage in the development of American capitalism. All the more gratifying, therefore, is the political awareness and insight of the editors of Monthly Review who, always retaining historical perspective, have frequently and eloquently drawn attention to the seriousness of the fascist danger and to the folly of the prevailing optimism.
Such optimism is usually based on the following rather simple reasoning: for a political system to “qualify” as fascist, it has to display the German or Italian characteristics of fascism. It must be based on a fascist mass movement anchored primarily in paramilitary formations of brown shirts or black shirts. It must be a one-party regime, with the party headed by a Führer or a Duce symbolizing the principle of authoritarian leadership. It must be violently nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic. It must be frankly illiberal, intolerant of opposition, hostile to civil liberties and human rights.
It is quite obvious that, if this yardstick is applied, there is little reason to become greatly alarmed over the American political scene. In this country we have neither a fascist mass movement, nor do storm troopers terrorize the streets of our cities. Neither [Harry] Truman nor [Adlai] Stevenson nor even [Dwight] Eisenhower is, in his personal make-up and political aspirations, [an Adolf] Hitler or a [Benito] Mussolini. While racism and anti-Semitism undoubtedly play a considerable role in the ruling ideology, their place is not dominant.… Although the opposition to the existing order is haunted, jailed, and persecuted, it is not entirely outlawed and suppressed….
Nevertheless, this way of thinking about fascism is quite misleading. Indeed, while based on more or less accurate observation of German experience, it tends to make us concentrate on the forms of political events and to pay insufficient attention to their social content and historical significance. Not that the forms do not matter. But it is crucial to bear in mind that the forms may change from country to country and from period to period, and that it is only through understanding the economic and social substance of the historical process that specific political events can be seen in their proper light.
Fascism is a political system evolved by capitalist societies in the age of imperialism, wars, and social and national revolutions. It is designed to strengthen the state as an instrument of capitalist domination and to adapt it to the requirements of intensified class struggle on the national and/or international scene.…
With some 100 to 200 corporations controlling the bulk of the American economy, the ruling class acquires a leadership that is based firmly on a tremendous concentration of property and power. It is no longer primarily interested in grabbing occasional spoils—and quickly running for cover. Instead it is determined to streamline the government into a normally functioning executive of the capitalist class.…
The problem of securing a mass base for fascism in the United States differs in a number of important respects [from classical cases in Italy and Germany]…[given military spending-induced full employment, a weak left, and the coalition of organized labor with Big Business].…
Under such circumstances, there is obviously no need to fill concentration camps with the leaders of labor organizations, to have storm troopers spread terror in working-class districts, or to direct popular energies to the persecution of the Jews. Yet these exceptionally favorable conditions cannot be expected to last forever. The masses who support or tolerate a political system that provides them with employment in the production of armaments may look less favorably upon a regime that would offer them employment as cannon fodder in a global war. Thus the ruling class cannot leave to chance the cohesion and stability of its mass basis. The ideological “processing” of the population to assure its loyalty to the policies of the Big Business-military coalition (in peace but especially in war) has become a matter of supreme urgency. To insure popular acceptance of the armament program and popular loyalty in case of war, the existence of external danger has been systematically hammered into the mind of the American people. This external menace has been continuously invoked to justify the suppression of whatever sources of potential opposition may exist in American society.… American Communists, independent socialists, and intransigent enemies of fascism have been systematically removed from crucial sectors of national life. An incessant campaign…by both government and Big Business, has been designed to produce an almost complete uniformity of opinion on all important political issues. An elaborate system of economic and social pressures has been developed to silence independent thought and to stifle independent scientific, artistic, or literary expression. A spiderweb of corruption has been spun over the entire political and cultural life of the country and has driven principles, honesty, humanity, and courage from public life. The cynicism of vulgar empiricism has destroyed the moral fiber, the respect for reason, and the ability to discriminate between good and evil, among wide strata of the American intelligentsia. The stress on crude pragmatism, on the “science” of manipulation, has killed any preoccupation with the purposes and goals of human activity; it has elevated efficiency to an end in itself regardless of what is to be “efficiently” accomplished. Nonconformism and noncompliance with this official ideology, though not yet always punished with jail sentences, do lead to loss of employment, to social ostracism, and to endless harassment from the authorities.
The ideological and political consolidation of this mass basis creates the indispensable internal prerequisites for the crucially important external politics of the American ruling class. For this basis must at the present time support the country’s leading position in the class struggle which, in the epoch of imperialism, wars, and revolutions, has moved to the international arena. The American ruling class, endeavoring to preserve capitalism wherever possible, fighting to maintain the colonial system wherever it threatens to break down, trying to strangle social revolutions wherever they succeed, has become the architect of a new counter-revolutionary Holy Alliance.… As yet they need no storm troopers in the United States, slaughtering the wives and children of revolutionary workers and farmers. But they employ them where they are needed: in the towns and villages of Korea.…
Whatever the forms of its specific actions, the Big Business-military coalition in the United States assumes all the functions of a fascist regime. It undertakes all the basic assignments of fascist rule. And it develops rapidly into its own American variety of government under capitalism in the age of imperialism, wars, and national and social revolutions. It becomes fully adapted to its sinister historical mission—to be the instrument of ruthless class struggle on the national and international planes.
%20%5BPDF%5D.jpg "The Danger of Fascism in the United States: A View from the 1950s")
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