If that’s as surface level as you care to engage with the subject matter, I’m not sure engaging with theory or historian works (Micheal Parenti is a historian if you weren’t sure) would interest you but I’d be glad to be wrong. There clearly wasn’t unity, the SPD during the 1920s shifted to a more centrist platform and fought much more against worker uprisings than fascist movements despite enacting progressive policies when in power. If you have no interest in how capital interests affected the political landscape of Germany at the expense of the working class and in favor of more right-wing populism, we can just agree to disagree. I focus on material analysis, class warfare, and the interests of capital owners. Don’t know why you called me a tankie when I’ve never supported authoritarianism but whatever
A few of the sources from the first chapter:
1 Among the thousands of titles that deal with fascism, there are a few worthwhile exceptions that do not evade questions of political economy and class power, for instance: Gaetano Salvemini, Under the Ax of Fascism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969); Daniel Guerin, Fascism and Big Business (New York: Monad Press/Pathfinder Press, 1973); James Pool and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler (New York: Dial Press, 1978); Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on Fascism (New York: International Publishers, 1976); Franz Neumann, Behemoth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944); R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution (New York: International Publisher, 1935).
2 Between January and May 1921, “the fascists destroyed 120 labor headquarters, attacked 243 socialist centers and other buildings, killed 202 workers (in addition to 44 killed by the police and gendarmerie), and wounded 1,144.” During this time 2,240 workers were arrested and only 162 fascists. In the 1921-22 period up to Mussolini’s seizure of state power, “500 labor halls and cooperative stores were burned, and 900 socialist municipalities were dissolved”: Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, 124.
3 Earlier in 1924, Social Democratic officials in the Ministry of Interior used Reichswehr and Free Corps fascist paramilitary troops to attack left-wing demonstrators. They imprisoned seven thousand workers and suppressed Communist party newspapers: Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle (New York: Henry Holt, 1986), 47.
If that’s as surface level as you care to engage with the subject matter, I’m not sure engaging with theory or historian works (Micheal Parenti is a historian if you weren’t sure) would interest you but I’d be glad to be wrong. There clearly wasn’t unity, the SPD during the 1920s shifted to a more centrist platform and fought much more against worker uprisings than fascist movements despite enacting progressive policies when in power. If you have no interest in how capital interests affected the political landscape of Germany at the expense of the working class and in favor of more right-wing populism, we can just agree to disagree. I focus on material analysis, class warfare, and the interests of capital owners. Don’t know why you called me a tankie when I’ve never supported authoritarianism but whatever
A few of the sources from the first chapter:
I preferred the spoiler method used to hide text and make it more optional.