Working Class Fascism

Plaque to the Battle of Cable Street, Wikimedia Commons

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Sections of the white working class in Europe are moving into an alliance with sinister, racialised right-wing nationalism

by Phil Hall

One of the dirty secrets of history is that fascists can also come from the working class. Marxists, communists, and socialists claim that all fascism comes from the middle and lower middle classes, that fascism is a last-ditch response to the failure of capitalism, an attempt to rescue a struggling capitalism. But who was it who fought the fascists in Cable Street? It was an intersectional alliance of many different people: Jews, communists, socialists, and workers. It wasn’t the British working class fighting fascism on its own. Even well-meaning liberals can fight fascism.

It is not true to say that elements of the working class do not sometimes support fascism. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, an organisation that was part of the Nazi Party, received support from significant sections of the working class during the Weimar Republic; support that grew in the 1930s. Support for fascism came from those workers who felt competition from immigrant Slav workers, from those who were long-term unemployed, from those who despaired of the unions, the socialists, communists, and the social democrats of ever improving the situation for German workers.

There was the attraction of German nationalism and flattering stories of German superiority and entitlement. The Nazis promised preferential treatment for the German working class over others. ‘Aryan’ workers wouldn’t be enslaved; they would be treated as if they were the salt of the Earth.

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German nationalism was attractive for working-class people whose communities, self-esteem, and physical and mental well-being had been nearly destroyed by the First World War, hyperinflation, and the depression. If you were white, working-class, not a socialist or a communist, not gay or a gypsy, not disabled, or a foreigner, or Jewish, National Socialism meant something different to you in pre-war Germany; it meant something positive.

The National Socialist Party offered you vital services, some of them free of charge. It offered free education and training, jobs, free healthcare, youth activities, free holidays, care for the elderly, home visits, clean streets, good pensions, affordable electricity and hot water, affordable housing, free entertainment, social activities, good affordable public transport, and an expanded infrastructure.

In fact, in the run-up to the war, Germany was for the Germans, and many working class socialists became national socialists because they saw the benefits it gave the German working class.

Fellow travelling with the ruling class has become a key characteristic of important sections of the working class in Europe. In 1914, the working class in imperialist Europe chose to mow each other down with mortars and machine guns rather than unite. Much of subsequent Marxist theorising became an attempt to analyse that historic failure. Many of the soldiers who enforced British rule and killed and oppressed the local inhabitants of Australia, South Africa, Canada, India, America, Kenya, and many other countries were members of the British working class.

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One of the earliest explanations for why elements of the working class might not unite in solidarity was economic. It ignored the cultural and psychological explanations that were discussed later on. Lenin’s book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, was based on the findings of John A. Hobson in his book Imperialism. Lenin’s book explained how the contradictions of capitalism were no longer so intense in the metropolis, in places like Paris, London, and Berlin, because of the wealth that accrued in these places from empire and this resulted in a betrayal of socialism by the labour aristocracy. Consequently, Lenin concluded, as a result of the accumulation of surplus capital in the imperial metropolis, the potential for revolutionary change in these centres was considerably diminished.

The contradictions of capitalism intensify at the periphery. In developing countries, usually, wealth is extracted by multinational companies at low cost in the form of raw materials: everything from minerals and oil to agricultural products like coffee, sugar, chocolate, and tea. A nationalist struggle in a developing country against the metropolis is, by its very nature, anti-imperialist. It is an attempt to wrest control of natural resources and markets away from international capitalism.

While workers in droves have their jobs in the USA, US corporations moved to Mexico and China. They did so in order to pay much less to Mexican and Chinese workers and force them to slave in poor conditions for longer hours. China had the advantage—for global capitalism—of being a tyranny. The workers who come to a collective political consciousness about their shared exploitation don’t live so much in Western Europe any more, but in places like India, China, and Brazil.

In contrast, the flag waving nationalism of elements of the British white working class is not progressive and anti-imperialist; rather, it is often deeply reactionary and nostalgic for empire. It is a nationalism that rejects solidarity across racial and gender lines. Certainly, it rejects solidarity with exploited migrants. When it comes to memories of colonialism or slavery, often white working-class nationalism is unapologetic.

There is a big difference between the healthy and justifiable nationalism of a country that is at the receiving end of the unfairness of traditional, unequal north-south relations and the toxic patriotism of the working-class inhabitants in a country which dictates the terms of trade and dominates weaker nations.

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In the USA, then, it is no surprise that desperate, disillusioned, unemployed white workers, living hand-to-mouth in trailer parks, could fall for Trump, who, in turn, points the finger of blame at immigration and China. If Trump is not a fascist, then he’ll do as a place holder until real US fascism comes along. It is no surprise that the long-term unemployed in the north of England, out of desperation, seek alliances with sinister right-wing establishment forces under the banner of ‘Brexit’. A word that means nothing more nor less than ‘Britain for the British’.

The story in the USA and the richer European countries has some similarities to that of pre-war Germany: the failure of social democracy to provide jobs and a secure income. In the USA, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton failed to institute quality, affordable social protection. The policies in Europe and the USA were aimed at helping the wealthy. Western governments bailed out the financial corporations in 2008 with vast amounts of money (quantitative easing) from the public exchequer, simply in order to keep the system on its feet. Ordinary people paid for the financial corporations’ speculative failures with more than a decade of cuts to basic social services.

Unemployment, poor pay and conditions; the tendency to scapegoat not only recent immigrants but long-term immigrants, (immigrants who have been in the UK for generations) insecure zero-hour contracts; a lack of affordable housing; and a fraying infrastructure are pushing elements of the white working class in the UK not towards communism and socialism, but towards an alliance with sinister right-wing nationalism; key sections of the working class have betrayed their own long-term class interests by voting for Boris Johnson.

Disillusion and the failure of the social democratic left in the USA, UK, and other European countries is pushing the white working class further to the right, just as it did during the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 20s and 30s.

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Phil Hall was born into an ANC family in South Africa. The family was forced into exile in 1963 after his mother was imprisoned and his father banned. They relocated to East Africa, where his parents continued their activism and journalism. In 1975, after a period living in India, they journeyed overland back to the UK, eventually settling in Brighton.

Phil pursued a broad education, studying Russian, Spanish, politics, economics, literature, linguistics, and English grammar and phonology. His path led him to live and study in Spain, the USSR (in Ukraine), and later in Mexico, where he married and started a family. Over the next decade, Phil and his partner balanced activism with work before relocating to the UK—a move initially intended to be permanent.

However, professional opportunities took him to Saudi Arabia and then the UAE, where he spent ten years before returning to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in Britain, he founded Ars Notoria Magazine and, alongside fellow humane socialist Paul Halas, launched AN Editions, a small venture dedicated to publishing thoughtful, progressive and exciting new books.