I’m an anti-capitalist too, but let’s be careful…

Christopher Birks
8 min readJan 31, 2017

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I attended the demonstration in London this week, the one aimed at expressing disgust at Theresa May’s lack of criticism for US President Donald Trump’s executive order to deny entry to the US to those holding citizenship in 7 majority Muslim states. I stood against this order because I do not believe the stigmatisation of any group — be it defined by nationality, race, religion or otherwise — is ever statistically accurate, factually justified, or historically prudent. In fact, history tends to show this is sort of stigmatisation is simply scapegoating.

On my way home from the demonstration I picked up a left-wing magazine. I’m left-wing, after all, and following an evening of solidarity with those who at least share my empathy for marginalised groups I thought it might make some self-congratulatory reading on the tube. I was therefore fascinated to read its assertion that the election of Trump and the success of the Leave campaign in the Brexit vote were in fact fantastic victories for the working class. Both votes represented a rejection of the neo-liberal capitalist agenda that has brought us such hits as the Credit Crunch and austerity.

And it’s a nice thought, isn’t it? We’re free from the financial fat-cats in the EU that had denied the Greek people their democratic socialist aspirations. The every-man in the US has sent a middle finger to Obama, who chose to bail the banks instead of investing in the people. Surely, with these decisions, capitalism has been thrown out and the workers of the world have an exciting future ahead of them?

It’s a nice thought, except a society does not choose simply between capitalism and socialism. It does not operate a sliding scale between private enterprise and collective ownership. There is another option, not based on capital or class. It is based on the nation. And it is called ‘fascism’.

Not that bloody word again…

Fascism as it’s understood in our everyday language is ‘oppression’. People telling you how to live? They’re fascists. A surveillance state? That’s fascism. Intolerance of opponents? Obviously fascism. But I’m afraid these are not fascism. Oh, yes, they existed in the fascist states, and, oh, yes, fascist principles made such things likely if not inevitable, but really they are authoritarian — the East Germans found that life was just as constrained under the Soviets as under the Nazis. Fascism is not defined by the ills it rolled out upon its citizens but rather the driving force that rolled out the ills, and we must understand that else we won’t see said ills coming.

Fascism is a nationalistic principle. It declares that the nation is what holds us all together in common culture, language and struggle. It asserts that it is the nation and nationhood that have been the catalyst for human endeavour, and that it is only by dedicating society to the advancement of said nation that any further human endeavour can be achieved. A fascist movement will have embedded in it the advocation — in word, symbolism and passion — of a great period in national history that if it can only be recaptured will produce another golden age that will bring great times again. For Hitler it was the First and Second Reich (with a bit of Charlemange and Frederick the Great thrown in) and for Mussolini it was the Roman Empire.

The old-fashioned Third Way & re-fashioned modern way

And it is a damned exciting vision: ‘Of course, it’s been under our noses all this time! I’m [insert nationality here], and our way of life is fantastic! We’ve made great things! And yeah we were great under [insert leader here], that’s right! I’m proud of [insert country here], always have been, why didn’t we see this before?!’

And it was particularly exciting for those living in interwar Europe, for I would argue similar reasons as now. Capitalism had not only failed (the Great Depression of the 1920s, as with the 2008 Financial Crash) but also it had failed to rectify the situation. Germany’s Weimar Republic couldn’t address a hyperinflation that made money worthless, and today austerity has hardly brought us back to pre-credit-crunch good times. Working together as a nation was much a more attractive alternative; no escape of wealth upwards or outwards but instead all controlled and managed within our own borders and directed for the greater good.

‘Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, if we’re talking about the greater good, surely we need to be talking about socialism, right?! The redistribution of wealth amongst those that need it most, and indeed taking it from those that have greedily exploited those less fortunate?’

‘Socialism? I don’t know. That all seems very alien. Power to the workers? They’ve not had power before. Aren’t they lazy? And stupid? And what’s collective ownership? Do you mean my things won’t be mine? I’ve worked hard for these things, it sounds like you want to take them away. Alright, fine, I’m on board, what needs to be done? Oh. Oh. Oh that’s a lot of work. A lot needs to change for that to happen. Hmmm. I’m not so sure…’

But fascism offered you the life you knew, in the occupation you had, with the aspirations you had, under the societal organisation you’d grown up in… but better. Because it was about all working together for the benefit and enrichment of the nation. Brilliant.

Why am I going to great lengths to define fascism? Because I think it’s here, and I think that the anti-capitalist left need to stop cheering its advocates simply because they’re anti-capitalist.

Look at the Trump and Brexit movements. Both have rooted themselves firmly in ‘The Nation’. Both have asserted a national agenda going forward. Both talk about firming up borders to focus on what’s inside them. Both tell supporters that we’ll all work together to make the nation better than it is, just like it used to be. Ah, and there it is. Perhaps most tellingly, both are using that imagined past to excite their supporters. Trump is obviously looking to ‘make America great again’, and the Brexit campaign was laced with jingoist callbacks to the days of Empire — we’ll just slot back into running the Commonwealth, right?

‘Fine Chris, these movements are a bit fascist-y, but as long as they don’t start killing people isn’t that ok? Maybe the nation is a more useful way of visualising society than class or capital?’ I would say not.

The alternative truth

‘The nation’ is not real. It is a man-made concept, born of a peculiar grasp on geography only made possible due to communication and transport. Before the railway, where or what was Birmingham to ordinary people living in Newcastle? Before the telephone, what was this thing called Wales to the average Joe in Kent? Hell, before the horse and cart, what on earth was Lincolnshire to Lincoln? Modern nations were born in the Nineteenth Century when ordinary people were able to access them; before then they were just taxable territories understood only by the royals that taxed them, everyone else was busy trying to make sure they grew enough turnips to pay this Lord Derbyshire chap that kept turning up.

Fascism is therefore serving not an overlooked catalyst for human progress, but rather clumsily casting a very recent concept over long swathes of history. The Roman Empire was not the Italian nation but a city state holding tributaries in ever-turbulent cohesion. Frederick the Great was not concreting Germany but overseeing an impressive Prussian overlordship.

Fascism puts the ‘-land’ above the ‘-ish’. Trump talks about making America great again, not Americans. When the nation is the primary concern the citizen falls by the wayside, miniscule when compared with the great national project. The Leave campaign was not characterised by promises to empower the impoverished and improve their contracts. It relied on talk of Britain, and convincing people that Britain was being stifled — the ‘land’ was the focus, not the people, the ‘-ish’, living in it. Fundamentally, there was no criticism of the structures in our midst that have made our lives so difficult. The banking sector was promised protection and the great private railway companies that fleece us were nowhere to be criticised. I remind everyone that the arms we primarily export are not British Made for British People but simply ‘Made in Britain’… by private enterprise.

The same is true in the US. A promise of creating American jobs, but using the existing private company infrastructure. Have any of these movements promised power and influence to the unions? No. Quite the opposite. Both are sneering of unions. Both put the trust in private bosses to do the work and use the language of the nation to bludgeon the employee into accepting terms.

The historical precedent is the same. Germany outlawed trade unions, instead creating the DAF which offered members prizes and gifts like holidays and Volkswagens. ‘You don’t need rights, you need to work hard for the nation and get rewards!’ In fact, by many interpretations the class abuse was far worse than under capitalism. Without competition amongst bosses what instead resulted was a cronyism of oligarchs, each at the top of their respective industry and each dictating terms and demands to their workforce.

The society we face

When the left cheers fascistic nationalism for its anti-capitalism, this is the sort of society they are advocating for the proletariat they apparently represent. Such partisan behaviour is at best akin to the apologists for Stalin’s communism (whose blind advocacy to any state calling itself ‘socialist’ was Orwell’s reason for writing Animal Farm) and at worst wantonly, blindly, stupidly, irresponsibly and un-learnedly spiteful.

The fascistic society is one built on a lie, driving us to sacrifice everything to re-achieve a fairytale that never existed. Critically, the biggest problem with serving a great nation is that its greatness must be proven. Its superiority — the logical conclusion of its greatness — must be shown. Cheering these movements leads us all inevitably on the path of national feats of strength. We are already seeing that with Trump. He’s being forced to assert his version of American greatness with executive orders on walls and visas. True, this could mean it all unravels before it’s begun… but it could also mean that it’s uncompromising from the beginning. That is when the authoritarianism kicks in. When the rhetoric fails to match reality. That’s when you get the secret police, the walls and the pogroms. That’s when loudspeakers read out year-on-year fantastical increases in production, wealth and glory. All to assert a truth that is nowhere to be found. And true, history shows this can accelerate a fall. Confidence in Mussolini’s fascism collapsed as his military failings in Abyssinia and Europe hardly matched the fascists’ rhetoric of Italian national superiority. But I’m afraid the damage done in the process — then and potentially now — to the lives of ordinary civilians, domestic and foreign, does not deserve us giving fascism a chance for a second.

In an age where our technology has stretched beyond the nation, when the internet and air travel exposes borders to be as real as they look on Google Earth, let us no more champion those that lock us, our vision, and our aspirations within them.

In case you’re wondering, nobody ever got the shiny new Volkswagen…

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