USSR was fascist under Stalinism: Red Fascism is not a slur

People normally confuse fascism as the far-right ideology. However, fascism is not a far-right ideology. Classical fascism is a philosophy or ideology that unite the far-left elements and far-right elements under one populist umbrella.

This piece starts off by arguing that fascism is not a far right ideology. This alone tells me that this contributor shouldn’t be allowed to post their nonsense on this site. This piece was posted in January and seems to have gone unnoticed.

@ heinhtetkyaw

Fascism is not an ideology that unites people on both the far left and far right. If there were individuals who claimed to be a leftist of some kind, but then changed into a fascist, then they essentially betrayed their former position. In fact, these individuals likely had very little understanding of the values espoused by the left, and weren’t very much leftist to begin with.

Also, fascism is not an ideology that unites ideas of both the far left and far right into a new synthesis. As I explained elsewhere, fascism doesn’t take any ideas from things like syndicalism or anarchism, because the latter ideas are the opposites of fascism. It is impossible. There are no syndicalist ideas that can be repurposed into fascism.

This reads like a weird mishmash of 'horseshoe theory' centrist liberalism and borderline Third Positionist neofascism.

Stalinist and fascist forms of government are distinct and it's necessary to distinguish between the two for understanding them and their historic role. The simplistic claims made here serve a dubious political agenda. The fact that one theory had some influence on another and that some people crossed over from one to another doesn't prove the claims made above. And, yes, this site shouldn't be hosting this crap; ffs, admins, the A. James Gregor cited in the post above was a segregationist, eugenicist and associate of white supremacists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Ethnology_and_Eugenics

heinhtetkyaw quote: Speaking of Eugenics, did you know that Soviet Union under Stalin at first endorsed eugenic politics for a while until the fraction of Lysenkoism won the internal debate. Then, they targeted the other side.

But even after stalin’s death, they lose again and a newer type of Eugenics politics in creating the ideal “New Soviet Man” came into existence while a lot of Indigenous people in the region and several Asian races were targeted.

I forgot this point for the article. This Eugenics politics inside USSR definitely is one characteristic of red fascism USSR developed.

Eugenics was actually quite ubiquitous in the West—the US's own eugenic policies, such as the forced sterilization of "undesirables," were in fact a direct source of inspiration for the Nazis. (Incidentally, intelligence testing and eugenics also went hand in hand historically and developed alongside one another; psychometrics has an appallingly racist history.) If we want to talk about the atrocities committed against particular ethnic groups and peoples, then the activities of Euro-Americans in the "New World" would definitely have Stalin beat (e.g. the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples and Africans/African Americans). It seems like you're just labeling any authoritarian acts or atrocities committed by the Soviet Union as some "precursor" to the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. It would be nice if you were to define what fascism actually means to you and explain the exact connection between Stalin's policies and the fascist movements of the twentieth century. Noting how this or that person directly influenced this or that movement is fine and all, but it's more than a stretch to go around arguing that the fascist movements of the twentieth century had some "Marxist roots."

I'm also not sure why you're quoting people like Ayn Rand to support your argument about the supposed "fascist" nature of the Soviet Union; of course a rabid anti-socialist and propertarian like Ayn Rand would describe the Soviet Union, and socialism itself (which the Soviet Union wasn't), as fascist... Why are you even relying on her?

heinhtetkyaw wrote: Historically, the “classical fascism” as an ideology has its Marxist roots. . . .

It's also important to distinguish here between the word "Marxist" in the sense of describing the actual ideas of Marx and Engels versus "Marxist" in the sense of describing the ideas of people who claimed to be influenced by them. Do you think that there is anything in Marx's and Engels' works that has anything to do with Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany? (The correct answer is that there is absolutely nothing; the fascist movements of the twentieth century were the antithesis of everything Marx and Engels stood for.)

If you're instead just arguing that self-proclaimed "Marxists" contributed to fascist movements in some way, then that similarly doesn't say much about Marx's and Engels' works themselves. Anyone can claim to be influenced by Marx and Engels (e.g. a mass murderer like Stalin)—that doesn’t automatically mean that this person's subsequent activities are in any way “Marxist” (in the sense of accurately representing Marx's and Engels' actual ideas) or that these activities have any so-called “Marxist roots.” Stalin was a faithful Marxist to the same extent that Ron Paul is a libertarian, i.e. Stalin's policies had virtually nothing in common with Marx's and Engels' ideas, just like how Ron Paul's advocacy of corporate tyranny has absolutely nothing to do with the socialist-anarchist tradition.

heinhtetkyaw wrote: Even if you disagree with the first part of the article, the main theme of the article saying about USSR's genocides, war crimes, and ideology, are quoted by those who analysed "USSR as red fascists". They are Marxists like CLR James, Otto Ruehle, and Anarchist thinkers such as Volin. So, you're throwing some random "ad hominem" and "red herring" fallacies.

Rühle wrote: These nine points represent an unbridgeable opposition between bolshevism and socialism. They demonstrate with all necessary clarity the bourgeois character of the bolshevist movement and its close relationship to fascism. Nationalism, authoritarianism, centralism, leader dictatorship, power policies, terror-rule, mechanistic dynamics, inability to socialize-all these essential characteristics of fascism were and are existing in bolshevism. Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism. For this reason the struggle against the one must begin with the struggle against the other.

Context is also important when considering Rühle's comments. The above quote by Rühle is taken from an article in the September 1939, Vol. 4 No 8 issue of Living Marxism. Rühle was writing around the same time that the Soviet Union had signed the non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, which was agreed upon in August 1939. Throughout his article, Rühle also repeatedly alluded to the Pact and the Soviet Union's attempts to compromise with the Nazi regime in order to avoid conflict (much like the Western powers had done as well). In that particular historical context, in which the brunt of the Nazi atrocities and extermination campaign had yet to occur, it's somewhat understandable why Rühle was interested in pushing this idea that the Soviet Union was indistinguishable from Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. He clearly wanted to persuade readers that Stalinist Russia offered no alternative to fascism, which was indeed true; Stalinism certainly had many fascistic features.

However, his arguments for the fascist nature of the Soviet Union are far from convincing. In particular, he completely ignored the ideological differences between fascism and what he called "bolshevism," under which he also included the Stalinist regime. Rühle for example wrote:

Rühle wrote: Whether party “communists” like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany. Essentially they are alike. One may speak of a red, black, or brown “soviet state”, as well as of red, black or brown fascism. Though certain ideological differences exist between these countries, ideology is never of primary importance. Ideologies, furthermore, are changeable and such changes do not necessarily reflect the character and the functions of the state apparatus.

In order to describe the Soviet Union as "fascist," Rühle just threw ideology out the window, which is not something you can do when trying to understand what fascism or Stalinism were. Stalinist Russia, in 1939 when Rühle was writing, may have shared some surface features with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (e.g. the existence of authoritarian states and personality cults around their leaders), but these regimes were driven by entirely different ideological and political goals. The governmental and societal structures of these regimes were also far from identical, so it was quite inaccurate for Rühle to regard them as "indistinguishable." Nazi Germany wasn't a peasant society and never pursued any kind of Collectivization policies when it came to agriculture, etc. It would be like describing tsarist Russia as "fascist" simply because it similarly had an authoritarian state, an entire Pale of Settlement in which Jewish people were confined, and definitely also a personality cult around the tsar, which many peasants regarded as some god-like figure. (And here's a fun exercise: what did Marx and Engels think of totalitarian tsarist Russia?—They were both overjoyed by the news of tsar Alexander II's assassination at the hands of the People's Will, to whom they also lent their support, and thought that revolution in Russia was right around the corner.)[1] With hindsight, and the knowledge that the Soviet Union did eventually stop cooperating with Nazi Germany when the latter invaded them, these differences between fascism and Stalinism should have become even more apparent.

1. See Late Marx and the Russian Road for Marx's and Engels' views on the People's Will, the assassination of tsar Alexander II, and tsarist Russia in general. Here's also a quote that captures Marx's and Engels' reaction to the assassination, which occurred on 13 March 1881. The quote is from a letter, dated 21 March 1881, to the chairman (i.e. Leo Hartman, a member of the People's Will) of the 1881 Slavonic Meeting, which was a meeting to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Commune:

Marx and Engels wrote: Citizen!

With great regret we have to inform you that we are not able to attend your meeting.

When the Commune of Paris succumbed to the atrocious massacre organised by the defenders of ‘Order’, the victors little thought that ten years would not elapse before an event would happen in distant Petersburg which, maybe after long and violent struggles, must ultimately and certainly lead to the establishment of a Russian Commune;

In the present context, where white supremacy grows and debates are often framed in debased, mangled terms where the far right claim ‘the nazis were socialists’ (nat-soc, right?), that Orwell was anti-socialist cos he criticised Stalinism, that mildly liberal Democrat capitalists are denounced as ‘communists’ (and sometimes as fascists) etc – it is curious to see, on a libertarian communist site, eugenicists and fascists cited approvingly and without qualification; solely on the basis that their credibility is supposedly guaranteed as they operated out of “top-tier” academic institutions. That is, deliberately or not, serving of a far right agenda and a bad precedent for this site.

That such institutions can happily facilitate the rise of fascists to their peaks is not even seen by the author here as a problem - but this ‘prestige’ is seen as adding proof of the validity of their claims! (Yet other academics within the “top-tier” contest their views on the closeness of Stalinism and fascism; some criticise Gregor’s & co’s claims of fascism as fulfilling a necessary and effective developmental role for ‘underdeveloped’ nations; Hitler’s already heavily industrialised Germany is an obvious contradiction.)

For those forced to live under totalitarian regimes life had some similarities, yes. But the historical analysis of those regimes and the usage of terms, opportunist or otherwise, by diverse political currents is another matter.

Gregor, grandaddy of this academic line, & co base their analysis mainly on Italian fascism. (Gregor was a lifelong defender and friend of Italian fascism and later revivalists.) But the subsequent generalised non-specific use of the “red fascism” category conveniently ignores the absence of any significant marxist influence in the nazi movement or ideology; no Sorelians or syndicalists there; the Strasserite nazi left was anti-marxist. (Though heinhtetkyaw has another libcom article unconvincingly claiming otherwise, based on the same far right academics.)

There were also many conservatives and nationalists who influenced fascism and participated; but that doesn’t fit the political agenda presented here. A prime motivation for Hitler’s anti-semitism was his assessment of the USSR as part of the global ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ forces he saw necessary to eliminate, again showing the limits of any claimed ideological unity. Meanwhile, anti-semitism was not central to Italian fascist ideology, which only introduced persecutory laws against Jews and other races after nearly 20 yrs of rule in 1938 as it grew closer to nazi Germany. Again, all you are really ‘proving’ is that a few former Italian marxists crossed over, that authoritarian regimes take diverse forms and both are forms of statism.

As a reviewer of Sternhell notes;

The central problem with Sternhell's argument is the huge gulf that separates the ideas of those he singles out as the intellectual and cultural precursors of Italian fascism and the praxis of the Fascist regime. Having lovingly detailed the revolutionary credentials of the Fascist intellectuals, Sternhell is forced to admit that by 1920, at the latest, Mussolini had quietly abandoned almost all of this socially radical revolutionary baggage and begun to seek accommodations with the conservative political elite, the army, the agrarians, the monarchy, the church, and the business community. Moreover, that this should have been the case was the indispensable pre-condition of the Fascists ever attaining power. And, of course, there was little in the social program of Fascist Italy that bore much resemblance to the ideas of the Italian revolutionary syndicalists.
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=540

This is a very different scenario from what happened in the “fascist” USSR, where no such accommodations with elites happened. (A few ex-tsarist officers did join the Red Army.)

The reviewer concludes;

There is much in Sternhell with which one can agree. He is quite right to stress that the intellectual and cultural roots of European fascism are well established before World War I and equally right to identify a pan-European malaise with the modern world as the crucible from which the new doctrine emerges. Nor could anyone dispute that fascism represents a radical rejection of the values of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Finally, it is important to record that at least some of the time and in some places this anti-Enlightenment sentiment was articulated by individuals who were, nominally at least, within the Marxist tradition. But the problem is that Sternhell wants to stop the story there. But surely the evolution of a handful of (more or less) Marxist intellectuals is not the whole story on the intellectual origins of fascism or the most important story. Dissident Marxists were hardly unique in their radical rejection of the Enlightenment. They were joined by large numbers of European conservatives, who not only helped define fascism, but also mobilized their big battalions in support of it. And that made all the difference.
- W.D. Irvine (My emphasis)

Irvine’s critique could also largely apply to Gregor and those who parrot him.

It’s not even defined which fascism Stalinism or Marxism is equated with; as seen above, the differences are as significant as the similarities.
Maybe you’ve adopted a rightist critique to try to fight a leftist battle and confront or wind up ageing Stalinoids. But the understanding of the present relative forces of left and right won’t be clarified by doing so. You can use fascism as a descriptive term of historical particularities or as a general bogeyman for all authoritarian states: but that usage only over-emphasises basic similarities between what are actually diverse modes of state function and development.

So authoritarian regimes share some characteristics, no great revelation. Maybe you’re trying to convince leftists who have some sympathy for Stalinism that it’s worse than they thought; so you go the whole hog and denounce it as the ultimate bogeyman – fascist. No doubt in some places that’s still an active debate – though it’s not the threat of Stalinism that stalks the world stage at present.

The usage by the far right that you uncritically reference and thereby encourage replicating has its own political agenda; that fascism had a ‘necessary’, even positive, historical role as a developmental force in ‘underdeveloped’ societies; while left wing ideas lead to the worst oppressive outcomes which the left conveniently ignore as they condemn fascist regimes. (This is partially true but is used to amalgamate, dismiss and discredit all those categorised as left or progressive by the far right, from liberals to revolutionaries.) So while left ideas inevitably lead to miserable opposite outcomes fascism achieves its positive goals of strong leadership, ethno-national unity, rapid development, territorial consolidation and expansion, elimination of the ‘inferior’ and disloyal etc.

Post-WWII, ‘red fascism’ was popularised in the US by the right to imply that, while fascism had been defeated on the battlefield, the threat now was a left proto-totalitarian enemy within. It often seeks to taint any left wing or radical ideas with totalitarianism. That is a very different usage from the pre-war radical anarchist & marxist usage of the term that you try to conflate with it.

You could easily make your point without uncritically citing far right sources so we can wonder why you didn’t? Because their supposed “top tier” academic prestige overrides the overall content of what they represent, that larger far right/fascist whole you are cherry picking from? Or are there worse reasons?

One depressing aspect of present times is the mainstreaming and normalising of far right ideas and their use as supposedly ‘neutral’ sources: your uncritical approach only encourages that - on a libertarian communist site, of all places. You talk of echo chambers. You’re being deafened by the echo chamber of far right academia.

You have completely misinterpreted what I said; I’m not in any way defending or trying to “preserve” Stalinism, I’m disputing that it’s useful to amalgamate diverse authoritarian regimes as actual “fascism” on the basis that a few marxists and syndicalists crossed over. The relevance of fascism’s traceable intellectual origins as portrayed are also questionable; given that there is no trace of leftism in the practice of fascist regimes and that the organised left parties & unions were some of their first targets of repression – including, in Italy, the anti-fascist resistance of the syndicalist movement. The over-emphasised ideological influence of syndicalism doesn’t explain the concrete practice of fascist regimes at all.

And, yes, of course Sorel was a marxist, I never disputed that either. But any “Sorelian movement” or “Sorelian syndicalism” ‘founded by him’ was an intellectual phenomena. Sorel was a detached intellectual commentating on a pre-existing syndicalism in which he saw the possibility of a revolutionary rejuvenation of the workers movement that had become reformist under the influence of marxist social democracy. With syndicalism’s independent existence pre-dating Sorel’s commentary it’s misleading to talk as if the active syndicalist workers movement was “Sorelian”; to trace intellectual influences is not to describe a concrete movement. (As already pointed out above regarding actual practice of fascist regimes.) As Levy explains, https://libcom.org/article/currents-italian-syndicalism-1926-carl-levy Sorel’s influence was primarily on syndicalist intellectuals, with little influence on rank & file workers – who put up the bulk of resistance to fascist attacks. Talking of “syndicalism” without making such material distinctions is misleading but conveniently selective to serve the far right agenda you reference.

You seem unable or unwilling to differentiate between left wing comparisons of similarities between left and right authoritarian regimes and far right attempts to use any similarities to dismiss all left or radical ideas as tending towards totalitarianism; your ‘evidence’ conflates the two.

You uncritically reference far right/ fascist sources without qualification (also without referencing the many critiques of them). Your claim made elsewhere that this is no different from referencing Marx, Engels, Bakunin etc – because they also expressed racist views on occasion – is wholly unconvincing. Their remarks were a handful of scattered asides, many if not most in private correspondence, and those views were more expressions of personal bigotry rather than a central part of a programme. (In Marx & Engels’ case it could be argued it did bleed into their politics somewhat; eg, the determinist views that more ‘progressive’ nations/races may triumph over ‘inferior’ ones so as to advance History.) But you could read thousands of pages and never come across the bigoted asides in their writings (unless you knew where to look); as racism was not a central theme of their political theory or agenda. Unlike those sources of yours, where it very much is…

Struggling to work out if the article is more unhinged than the responses or vice versa.

For what it's worth, other communists like Pankhurst drew similar parallels between Mussolini's Italy and British society. So I guess you can add Britain alongside Stalin's Russia to the list of supposedly "fascist states." I think Pankhurst, Rühle and other communists understood that fascism was something qualitatively different, but they were simply trying to draw attention to how, for example, British capitalism and Stalinist Russia could be just as barbaric or fascistic at the respective times when they were writing. I don't think their rhetorical comparisons carry much weight as far as seriously arguing that the British government in 1923 or Stalinist Russia in 1939 were both "literal fascist states," indistinguishable from Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. As with Rühle, ideology is not something you can just throw out the window when trying to understand what fascism was, otherwise people could just describe anything as fascist (which is exactly what "red fascism" is). Fascism, I would argue, has to be understood as a specific historical time period and political movement, primarily associated with the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The sort of loose usage of the word "fascist" is not particularly useful these days, especially when it is primarily the far-right who employ it to characterize socialists of all types.

Here's Pankhurst in the Dreadnought (3 November 1923):

Pankhurst wrote: Fascism is merely the politics of the bruiser. Other governments cover their violence with a veneer of legality: Fascism glories in its violence and accompanies it by utterly wanton torture and terrorism. We have often had in this country the thing that is called Fascism. The medical workmen assaulted by hired mobs when they went to sit for their qualifying examinations, Josephine Butler and her colleagues assailed in the same manner in their campaign against the C.D. Acts, the Suffragettes, the C.O.'s and opponents of war, the Germans and others whose houses were sacked during the "Intern Them All" agitation—all these have encountered Fascism.

In Italy Fascism assumed more monstrous proportions and was invited to assume Governmental power, simply because the pioneering force Fascism was used to crush was stronger and more fundamental in its aims than the British movements we have enumerated.

She was absolutely right though. Both Nazism and Fascista were admirers of butcher’s apron colonialism and the feeling was mutual until they got too competitive. Stefania Consigliere points out that this false fascism/anti fascism dialectic sidetracked most of the 20th century and arguably this one so far. I know splitting hairs is all that radicalism has left but whether it was the Boer camps, the Nazi camps or Russian camps, you’re in a death camp. Debord’s concentrated versus diffuse spectacle is more elegant but even that distinction is disappearing.

goof wrote: She was absolutely right though. Both Nazism and Fascista were admirers of butcher’s apron colonialism and the feeling was mutual until they got too competitive. Stefania Consigliere points out that this false fascism/anti fascism dialectic sidetracked most of the 20th century and arguably this one so far. I know splitting hairs is all that radicalism has left but whether it was the Boer camps, the Nazi camps or Russian camps, you’re in a death camp. Debord’s concentrated versus diffuse spectacle is more elegant but even that distinction is disappearing.

I never said she wasn't right as far as drawing attention to the parallels between Fascist Italy and Britain. Italian fascism was something entirely distinct and separate from the sort of examples that Pankhurst cited, however. If we're just going to call everything fascist (in a literal, non-persuasive sense), then we might as well call the US fascist during the interwar period, seeing as how we had an entire eugenics program that directly influenced the Nazis; we might as well call tsarist Russia fascist, seeing as how Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement and were treated horrifically (it's no coincidence that the Zionist movement drew most of its early support from Imperial Russia; the word "pogrom" itself originates from the Russian Empire); so on and so forth. Rhetorical comparisons are fine and all, but an understanding of fascism as simply "committing atrocities and targeting particular ethnic groups/peoples" (or to use Pankhurst's definition, "the politics of the bruiser") is quite inadequate, otherwise there would be a long list of fascist candidates.

I’d take that. Follow “if everything is fascism, nothing is” to its end, you’d arrive at a Bakuninist analysis of states. Nazism was so crude that it was unsustainable and quote unquote vanquished in 1945. Meanwhile the United States employed its’ personnel, created NATO and West Germany with them at the fore, carried out their own extermination project albeit more business than personal and deploys phrases like never again whilst erasing a people. Which has been more virulent?