This article was originally published in Turkish in Teori ve Eylem, No.51, 2021
Arif Koşar
INTRODUCTION
Countless documentaries and books on German fascism focus on the founders of the Nazi party, their ideas, and especially their actions after coming to power, which are recounted through documents and eyewitness accounts. Indeed, most Nazis were racist and anti-Semitic. They believed in the superiority of the “German race” and that Jews were a poisonous race that weakened it. They believed that the Treaty of Versailles had humiliated the Germans and trampled on their national honour. According to this narrative, the Nazis, with their racist, anti-liberal, statist and militaristic ideologies, brought out the latent anti-Semitism that already existed among the masses, gained their support, and thus came to power.
The 1929 crisis, record-breaking inflation and unemployment could only find a place in this narrative as elements of the social landscape. The support of some capitalists for the Nazis was not much different from that of the people. After all, a capitalist was, in the final analysis, an individual. Fascism, if it came to power, was at best a disease, and it found its expression in Hitler’s deviant personality, narcissism, lust for power, elimination of political rivals, massacres, and genocide.
Wilhelm Reich, one of Freud’s first-generation students, defined fascism in his famous book The Mass Psychology of Fascism as “the sum total of all the irrational psychological reactions of the ordinary middle-class person in its purest form.” [1] According to Reich, who argued that the political counterpart of racist hatred is fascism, the existence of racial prejudice around the world shows that fascism is an international phenomenon. The source of this universality is the “subconscious” that every human being possesses. “Racist doctrine is a vital disease that manifests itself in the personality of a person suffering from physical impotence.”[2]
This reductionist view of the relationship between fascist ideology and subconscious fears and drives is not merely a mistake of crudely applying psychoanalytic methods to social sciences. What makes Reich’s method problematic is that it reduces fascism to any characteristic of the individual. With this individualistic methodology, fascism is explained by the actions, evil nature, racism, or lust for power of the individual in crisis, even if subconscious drives are not at issue.
Explaining fascism through the culture, ideology, national character, or mass psychology that individuals are assumed to have “adopted” individually cannot go beyond giving the analysis a more sociological appearance. In one of these approaches, fascism is assumed to be a reflection of the characteristic features of the German nation, such as blind loyalty to the state, cruelty, and aggressive nationalism. According to this view, in Germany, where capitalist transformation was organized primarily through the state and where feudalism and bureaucracy continued to exert political and cultural influence, the effective presence of the “state” was a decisive factor in the rise of fascism, which is defined as a statist ideology.
Thus, the characteristics expressed for individual people were now attributed to the “mass” or “nation”, seen as a collection of individuals. The thoughts, ideology, or crisis of the “mass” became a critical factor in explaining fascism. According to Italian thinker Benedetto Croce, fascism is “a collapse of consciousness produced by war, a crisis of civilization, and the result of intoxication.” When the collapse of consciousness was resolved, the crisis ended, and the hangover from intoxication subsided, the fascist parenthesis closed!
The subject of this article is a critique of the original and widespread use of individualistic methodology in fascism theory. With this method, fascism is linked to the effective action of individuals or leaders who want fascism, and the political landscape is reduced to the struggle between the fascist movement and other parties. Here, capitalists exist only as individuals. A historical analysis of fascist movements, of course, requires an examination of the role and influence of individuals, but this must be placed within the context of capitalist production relations and class struggle. Otherwise, fascism is inevitably reduced to the free decisions, anger, ambitions, plans, or perversions of individuals. However, neither fascism as a form of government nor society is an arithmetic sum of individuals.
“ABSTRACT HUMAN” AND FASCISM
The institutionalization of the mutual relationships that humans enter into and are forced to enter into with other humans through their actions has led to institutions such as the state acquiring an autonomous character in some areas, giving the appearance of being outside and above production relations. The fact that the state is a unique and concentrated intersection of multifaceted social relations, and that it possesses decision-making power as a “subject” in legal, military, economic and political matters, has made the state a special object of interest and analysis throughout history.
This is a debate in the literature concerning political sovereignty. Throughout the Middle Ages, the source of legitimacy for sovereignty was institutional religion. Rulers with titles such as king, emperor, sultan and khan were considered to be the representatives of God on earth. From the 15th century onwards, defining political sovereignty in religious terms became insufficient and was unable to explain the real situation. [3] This was a period when “trade” with colonies and commercial relations within society developed, and the “bourgeois individual” emerged on the historical stage. As seen in the Renaissance, art, and later philosophy, placed humans at the centre of thought with their “free will”. This abstract human being was, of course, the property-owning “bourgeois human being”. Thus, as religion ceased to be the foundation of the state, it was replaced by this free human being, his free will, and his decisions.
We can see the typical form of explaining the existence and even the form of the state on the basis of the “free will” of individuals in social contract theories. In the 17th century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) developed a theory of sovereignty defending absolute monarchy on a secular basis during a period of great internal turmoil and struggle in England. This was not yet a liberal theory of the state. However, he took the first step by placing the abstract human being or bourgeois individual, who seeks to undermine others, at the centre of the theory. Hobbes, who sought to prove the necessity of the state, assumed a kind of “state of nature” where absolute freedom prevailed. [4] “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”[5] In the “state of nature”, people are at war with each other. There is no property, justice, or security of life. To escape this situation, people entered into an agreement that safeguarded their lives and property: the “social contract”. In Hobbesian thought, property is guaranteed by law and forms the basis of justice. The element that makes the establishment of property and justice possible is the state/sovereign itself.[6] Through this contract, people relinquished their absolute freedom and transferred their rights to the sovereign. [7]
Another English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), developed a social contract theory shortly after Hobbes that reflected the interests of the commercial bourgeoisie and local feudal powers.[8] Locke, who is considered as the founder of philosophical liberalism, emerged as a defender of property rights. In Locke’s “state of nature”, there are laws (natural laws) and natural rights (such as property rights). Labor is the basis of property. When a farmer cultivates a piece of land, he becomes the owner of that land. [9] However, it is necessary to establish a common will that will enforce natural laws in specific situations and protect natural rights. Thus, individuals transition to a legal-political structure through a contract, and political power is established. Unlike Hobbes, individuals do not transfer all of their rights to the state, but only a part of them, and the state’s primary duty is to protect property. [10]
In all these contract theories, people with a fixed “essence”, whether good or bad, decide to overcome their problems and voluntarily transition from the “state of nature” to the “state of society” (or “political society”) and establish the state. The subject is an abstract human being with free will. This human being is so abstract that, at the beginning, that is, in the “state of nature”, he lives alone, outside of society. In this theory of the state/sovereignty based on the abstract human being, there is, of course, no place for classes, that is, for concrete human beings. [11]
To put it bluntly, the “abstract human being” placed at the centre of the bourgeois contractual theory of the state never existed.
As political anthropology studies conducted as early as the 19th century have shown, neither the “state of nature” nor the abstract atomic individual living in the “state of nature” nor the state as a product of a contract existed. Even in primitive stateless societies, people did not live as pure “individuals” but within kinship relations based on family, gens, or blood ties. They built their lives within the context of the hunter-gatherer economic relations and cultural values of primitive society. They were part of a shared existence.[12] From the earliest stages of its evolution, humanity has always been part of society, its relationships, and its practices. If there was such a thing as a pre-societal human, it was at most a “pre-rational”[13] human.
From this perspective, each individual exists only on the basis of their practical actions and relationships within the community, changing both nature/society and themselves through their actions. Human existence is shaped not by the development and blossoming of their internal “essence”, but by their interactions within social relationships and the unity of the conditions and necessities in which they are involved. As Marx states in his sixth thesis on Feuerbach, “…human essence is not an abstract quality within individuals but rather the sum total of their social relations.”[14]
There is no such thing as an abstract human being or a fixed human nature; there is only the human being who acts within specific objective conditions, that is, as a component of a social class in class-based societies. Fascism in particular, and politics in general, cannot be understood in the abstract, but only on the basis of concrete human beings and the historical classes they form. Additionally, there are historical conditions that must be considered and taken into account. Because, “People make their own history, but they do not make it freely, under conditions of their own choosing, but under conditions that already exist, that are given and transmitted from the past.”[15]
***
So far, we have focused on the development of capitalist commercial relations within feudal society and, in parallel, the establishment of state theory on the basis of the “bourgeois individual”/“abstract human being.” Another important aspect of the same discussion concerns the fundamental assumptions about the state, which are still dominant today. When individuals in the “state of nature” transition to the “state of society,” laws acquire a binding quality for everyone, the people’s “natural rights” are guaranteed, with property rights as the foundation, and the state establishes all of this as the representative of the “general will.” Thus, while the state is reduced to the “abstract individual” and his “free will,” it is also placed in a neutral position above the contradictions and conflicts between classes/individuals, thereby separating itself from the “bourgeois society” that is the sphere of activity of individuals.
In 18th-century political economy and philosophy, “bourgeois society” is the social sphere that emerged with the development of capitalist relations and remained outside the state, mostly defining economic activities. In both the contractual tradition and liberal political economy, and in a different context in Hegel, the state is positioned above competition, particularity, and contradictions in bourgeois society. It represents universality.
Marx, on the other hand, links the state directly to “bourgeois society” and its contradictions and conflicts:
“My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term “civil society”; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy.”[16]
In Hegel, the state is the embodiment of the moral principle that creates humans and “bourgeois society”, while in Marx, it is linked to “bourgeois society” and production relations. The state emerged at a certain stage in the development of human society. However, it did not emerge as a result of a decision or agreement made by people’s free will, but as an element of the economic domination of one section of society over others, in order to keep this domination. The formation of classes and the emergence of the state are two sides of the same coin. The state is an instrument of oppression and domination of one class over another. Therefore, it gains its meaning, existence, and “essence” in this context, rather than being outside or above class contradictions and conflicts.
“CONCRETE HUMAN” AND FASCISM
The existence of the “concrete human” under specific historical and social conditions is, of course, not limited to their position in the production process. They possess social gender, national or ethnic identity, worldview, family relationships, status, etc. However, the fundamental production relations are the basis upon which all these “identities” and relationship forms are built.
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.”[17]
When the subject is a methodological discussion of fascist theory and the treatment of fascism, the first point of concreteness must be class relations, for the reasons explained above. This does not mean that other forms of relations are ineffective in the fascist movement and its rule.
The fundamental problem with analysing the experiences of fascism using an individualistic methodology is that it focuses on the Nazi movement, or even Hitler’s worldview, psychological problems, obsessions, anxieties, the culture in which he was born, his personal life story, or coincidences. The most accurate social analysis must take into account economic conditions and constraints, the political atmosphere and power relations, the legal/regulatory framework, prevailing ideologies, cultural traditions and tendencies, as well as the personal worldviews and biographical stories of the direct actors. The problem is the inability to consider the individual in conjunction with the social and class context. Under the conditions of bourgeois domination, the omission of this context is not a coincidence but rather related to the concealment of fascism’s real social/class foundations.
For example, economic crises usually manifest themselves in the form of companies being unable to sell their products at a sufficient profit and going bankrupt for various reasons. Employers who cannot make a profit go bankrupt, and consumers who cannot meet their needs sufficiently fall into poverty. However, describing people’s “actions” in this way does not reveal anything about the structural and conjunctural causes of the crisis. The real issue is why people carry out these “actions” and what economic conditions and class relations drive them into this process, which requires a social analysis that goes beyond the actions of individuals. This does not mean reducing human action to an automatic outcome of the structure, as the structuralist tradition does, but rather that economic processes and laws, such as capital accumulation, condition the actions of capitalists and impose certain necessities, which in turn requires analysing the crisis through social phenomena beyond individuals.
Just as fascist theory requires examining the conditions that drive individuals toward fascism, beyond their adoption of it, and more importantly, the context of fascism as a form of state within capitalist relations and class struggle. Let us try to clarify what has been said with a few examples.
Due to the economic and social devastation caused by World War I in Germany, the mass struggle of workers and peasants saw a significant rise. In November 1918, the German Empire collapsed, and workers’ and soldiers’ councils, along with local governments elected by these councils, were established across the country. However, the attempt to establish a council government nationwide was suppressed. The ruling social democratic party used police forces as well as units composed of former soldiers and vagrants who had been left unemployed after the war. Some of these later organized themselves into the Nazi Party. In January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were executed on the orders of the social democrats. A bourgeois democratic republic was established. However, the organized working class achieved significant gains both during and after this process: women’s suffrage, an 8-hour workday, the generalization of collective bargaining agreements, unemployment insurance, the election of “works councils”, etc. Peasants also gained the right to organize and unionized en masse. The membership of the Federation of Agricultural Workers was around 10,000 in mid-1918, but by 1920, this number had reached 700,000. They gained the right to collective bargaining, unemployment insurance, and the right to elect “works councils.”
In Germany, the fascist movement began to emerge immediately after World War I, during such a period. It was supported by the bourgeoisie against the labour movement. This support reflected the class interests of German capitalists. Even capitalists who found the Nazis’ programme and slogans absurd and unrealistic saw no harm in calling on and supporting the Nazis when it came to the resistance or rights of workers in their own businesses. The capitalists’ stance was not an “individual” action but a class-based action of the “individual” as a class member.
In 1924, Fritz Thyssen, one of Germany’s biggest capitalists, said, “There is no reason for democracy in our country.” Former minister Dernburgise said, “The eight-hour workday is the nail in the coffin of Germany.” While fascist stormtroopers attacked labour unions, communists, and democratic forces, the German bourgeoisie and Junkers, along with the army and bureaucracy, were quite pleased with this brown terror. However, the conditions did not necessitate the establishment of a fascist dictatorship from the perspective of the German bourgeoisie, nor were the conditions ripe for it. Therefore, they ceased to support the fascist movement, instead backing bourgeois democratic parties, causing the Nazis to lose much of their power.
After the capitalist crisis of 1929, things changed. The German bourgeoisie and the Junkers saw from their own experience that bourgeois democracy was insufficient to roll back the working class, crush the Communist Party, which was one of the main political forces in the country, and neutralize the trade unions, thereby restoring their profits, which had fallen sharply due to the gains of the working class. After the crisis, they turned to using the fascist movement, which had gained the support of a section of the population, more effectively. President Paul von Hindenburg, encouraged by his close circle of landowners and monopolistic capitalists, appointed Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933. [19]
With the Treaty of Versailles, the German bourgeoisie, which had entered the struggle for world domination later than its rivals, had lost its raw material resources, important industrial regions (Lorraine, Upper Silesia, Saar, etc.), and colonies. It had been forced to disarm and was sentenced to pay 132 billion gold marks in reparations. Financial capital, seeking both to reclaim the markets it had lost and to free itself from the disarmament conditions that deprived it of an important source of profit, as well as the burden of war reparations that affected its costs and reduced its profits, drove Germany toward an aggressive and nationalist foreign policy. The fascists were perfectly suited for this purpose. [20]
Emil Kirdorf, a long-time admirer of Hitler since 1927 and owner of the powerful Gelsenkirchen metallurgy consortium, made the following statement on May 1, 1936: “When I look back on my entire life, I am grateful to God for granting me a long life… and thus, at the exact moment when it was needed, I do not know how to thank God for enabling me to come to the aid of our beloved Führer.” On April 8, 1937, Hitler visited Kirdorf in Duisburg on the occasion of his 90th birthday and honoured him with the Reich Eagle, the regime’s highest award. [21]
With the rise of the fascist movement to power, there was a rapid convergence between fascist party leaders and monopolies. Until 1933, with a few exceptions, the major industrial capitalists had stayed away from official state positions. They had ruled through their relatives, friends, or hired agents, but they themselves had never been members of parliament or high-ranking state officials. After 1933, however, they secured positions within the state apparatus. Nazi leaders also became managers in industry. This coalition prepared the country for war. A full mobilization was declared across all industries, particularly in the arms, metal, and mining sectors. The beneficiaries of this mobilization were the monopolistic capitalists, who reaped the profits.[22]
The Italian experience also showed that monopolies openly supported fascism against bourgeois democracy, and that fascism came to power with this support. In Italy, the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the working people rose rapidly after the First World War. Wages increased, the 8-hour workday was legalized, and collective bargaining agreements were generalized. In 1919, there were 1,663 strikes, and in 1920, there were 1,881 strikes. Organized dockworkers in major ports forced shipowners to accept their demands. Metalworkers were engaged in a fierce struggle. 600,000 metalworkers occupied factories and directly managed production through their own elected “factory councils.” After the agreement was reached, they were promised the right to oversee the operation. Peasants were also engaged in radical struggle. When the promised land reform was not implemented after they returned from the war, they occupied the land. The government was forced to recognize these occupations.[23] Sharecroppers succeeded in revising the terms and conditions of the contract in their favour. Rural workers, relying on the support of rural communes, organized themselves into unions and “red brigades.” They forced large landowners to enter into collective bargaining agreements.[24]
The monopolistic bourgeoisie, which had made huge profits during the war, was now deprived of those profits. It had also failed to obtain the colonies it had been promised for participating in the war. The struggle of the working class and peasantry had narrowed its profit margins, and the severe economic crisis that lasted throughout 1921 had put it in a very difficult position. It was impossible to make the working class back down, to subjugate them, to return to the old profit margins, and to take advantage of new colonies for large-scale production through the peaceful methods of bourgeois democracy. Under these conditions, the fascist movement in Italy went beyond being a simple apparatus fed by the bourgeoisie in exchange for attacking workers’ organizations. In October 1922, capitalists who were members of the Industrial Confederation poured millions into the March on Rome that brought the fascists to power. The leaders of the Industrial Confederation and the Agricultural Confederation sent a telegram to Rome stating that the only way out of the crisis was a Mussolini government. On October 28, intensive talks took place between Mussolini and Stefano Benni and Gino Olivetti, leading members of the General Confederation of Industry. Prime Minister Luigi Facta wanted to intervene militarily in the march, but the king did not give his permission. A day later, King Vittorio Emanuele III appointed Mussolini as prime minister. The fascists came to power without any conflict. [26]
Of course, the direct support of the fascists by the monopolistic bourgeoisie in Germany and Italy did not mean that they were mere puppets. The relationship between the ruling class and the state, political parties, or leaders is not simply one of command and obedience. It is a relationship that is mutually influential, involving the subjective sphere, but strongly conditioned and limited by economic and other social conditions. Therefore, the “subjectivity” involved here does not mean “free will.” However, it does mean that actions that some sections of the bourgeoisie do not want or that exceed their demands can also be taken. Although there is a close relationship between the political sphere (party, government, state, etc.) and the economic sphere (economic classes, production relations, capital accumulation, etc.), politics has a relative autonomy. The issue in fascism debates is not whether all Nazi actions were directly ordered by the managers of monopoly capital. The relationship between capital and government—except in certain periods—is not like that. There were many conflicts and purges within the Nazi Party. However, aside from the power struggles within the Nazis, the ground that enabled them to carry out these massacres was the support provided by monopoly capital.
German monopolistic capital preferred a fascist state apparatus because it could not realize its interests within the boundaries of the bourgeois democratic state, and in this direction, it openly supported the fascists and paved the way for them to come to power. The fascist state implemented the interests of monopoly capital through violence and terror. This form of state became an expression of the interests of monopoly capital, served it, and thus paved the way for all kinds of “extremism,” murder, arbitrary rule, massacres, and genocide.
It is impossible to understand the fascist regime in Germany and Italy without considering the struggle between capitalists and the working class. Monopoly capitalists saw that bourgeois democracy was insufficient to raise profit rates, eliminate the gains of the working class, crush its movement, and regain lost colonies. Fascism, with this support, relatively easily seized power and quickly completed the fascist transformation of the state.
***
Fascism, wherever it emerges, is influenced by cultural, religious, moral, and other historical elements, incorporating some of them, opposing others, but always existing within this context. All of these are important facts in the analysis of fascism as a historical formation. Fascist theory may be the result of an analysis that evaluates these historical facts. However, the multifaceted nature of the historical analysis of fascist experiences, extending from economics to culture, from classes to parties and individuals, does not mean that fascism is an ambiguous mixture of all these. As a product and state form of the imperialist era, fascism can only be understood in the context of monopoly rule, interests, and class struggle.
From this perspective, fascism can take on different cultural, symbolic, and ethical forms. While religious arguments were weak in the fascist movement in Germany, they were strong in the fascist movement in Austria. Anti-liberal rhetoric is frequently used in German fascism, even finding its way into the Nazi programme, while Augusto Pinochet’s coup—aside from its criticism of the so-called “liberal” parliamentary democracy—turned Chile into a laboratory for neoliberal policies. Similarly, the economic programme of the 1980 September 12 fascism in Turkey is the neoliberal programme expressed in the January 24 Decisions of the same year.
Of course, fascist experiences throughout history share many common features, such as national leadership, extreme nationalism, the invention of historical origins, expansionism, and militarism. However, fascist theories developed on the basis of these features lead to the concealment of the class essence of fascism and its reduction to a specific ideology or politics.
Nevertheless, some characteristics common to fascist movements can also be seen in non-fascist state forms and regimes in other contexts. For example, in popular movements, some regimes established as a result of anti-imperialist liberation struggles in Africa took on a military/militarist character due to the leading or “leadership-stealing” role of the military bureaucracy. Similarly, single-party regimes were established in these countries. However, these were not fascist but rather authoritarian state forms based on a single party. This formal approach to fascism can be seen in the literature on totalitarianism.
In summary, fascism takes on different national forms and shapes. However, what makes it fascism, what gives it its “essence”, is the capitalist mode of production in which it is shaped: it is the most violent, most terrorist form of the monopoly bourgeoisie’s domination under imperialist conditions.
The class-based analysis of fascism also determines the fundamental aspects of the struggle against it. In the struggle against fascism, the working class and its party defend bourgeois democratic rights and freedoms. However, its horizon and goal are not limited with a bourgeois democratic state. This does not mean that alliances with reformists or unity fronts on a bourgeois democratic line are rejected in the struggle against fascism. However, it sets the limits of these alliances and criticizes their bourgeois-inconsistent line. Regardless of the alliance in question, it organizes and strives to strengthen its own independent revolutionary line. The restoration of bourgeois opposition can roll back and resolve fascism, but it settles for a compromise between different bourgeois cliques. However, a struggle led by the working class and its party/programme takes up the fight against fascism in the context of the struggle against monopolies, can uproot it, ensure the prosecution of fascist murderers, and make democratic rights and freedoms truly usable for workers. This requires linking the struggle against fascism to a revolutionary perspective.
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[1] Reich, W. (1979) The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 2nd Edition, Payel Publishing House, Istanbul, pp. 11-12.
[2] Reich, op. cit., p. 12.
[3] In the 15th century, particularly in Italy, wealthy merchant families held political power in city-states whose main activity was trade, without any religious reference. It was not possible to explain this type of domination on a religious basis. It was no coincidence that the first secular analyses of the source of sovereignty were conducted in Italy. Niccolo Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, wrote warnings about the ways and means of governing, thereby conducting the first comprehensive analysis that is considered the beginning of political science.
[4] Hobbes and other social contract theorists did not actually claim that there was a “state of nature.” This was a conceptual tool used to explain the foundations of sovereignty. However, since this assumption determined the rest of the theory, it became a subject of criticism by later thinkers.
[5] Hobbes, T. (1993) Leviathan, trans. S. Lim, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, Istanbul, p. 94
[6] Aydın, B. (2019) “A Critique of Social Contract Theories Based on Marx and Foucault,” Liberal Thought Journal, 94, 65-87, p. 70.
[7] Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 131-136
[8] Tunçay, M. (1969) History of Political Thought-2, AÜ SBF Publications, Ankara, p. 164.
[9] Locke, J. (2002) Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 288.
[10] Aydın, op. cit., p. 73.
[11] Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contractual theory, while incorporating originalities that take into account human inequalities, is subject to similar criticisms.
[12] Abeles, M. (2012) The Anthropology of the State, trans. N. Ökten, Dipnot Yayınları, Ankara, p. 32.
[13] Strauss, L., quoted in Abeles, op. cit., p. 34.
[14] Marx, K. and F. Engels (2008) The German Ideology, trans. S. Belli, Sol Publications, Ankara, p. 23.
[15] Marx, K. (2016) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. T. Bora, İletişim Publications, Istanbul, p. 145.
[16] Marx, K. (1979) Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. Belli, 4th ed., Sol Publications, Ankara, p. 25. In Marx’s original text, the German term “bürgerliche gesellschaft” is translated as “bourgeois society” rather than “civil society.”
[17] Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 25.
[18] Guerin, D. (2014) Fascism and Big Capital, trans. B. Tanör, Habitus Kitap, Istanbul, p. 36.
[19] Bauer, O. (2018) “Fascism,” in Fascism and Capitalism, Ayrıntı Yayınları, Istanbul, pp. 82, 86-7.
[20] Guerin, Fascism and Big Capital, p. 38.
[21] Guerin, Fascism and Big Business, p. 42
[22] Kuczynski, J. (1979) The Working Class and Working Conditions Under Nazi Rule, trans. N. Himmetoğlu, Bilim Yayınları, Istanbul, p. 49
[23] Visochi Decree dated September 2, 1919
[24] Guerin, Fascism and Big Business, pp. 28-29
[25] Guerin, Fascism and Big Business, p. 35.
[26] Lyttelton, A. (2008) The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929, Routledge, New York, pp. 75-77.