Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 22:07:11 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: Working-Class Resistance to Hitler (Was: What will socialism look like?) 



Charlotte (Keyes) writes:

>Your categorical dismissal of the German working class as tepid
>and docile accomplices of the Nazi regime neglects a number of
>important factors that tended to neutralize the working class's capacity
>for protest and resistance....Of the divisions within the working class, the
>political and organizational of the 1920s appear to have been more significant
>than the regime's attempts to achieve a further fragmentation and
hierarchization
>through a new wage system...Career opportunities within the sector of manuel
>labor,  for example,  probably helped to make life seem less intolerable....How
>far German workers were flattered and distracted from their own rightlessness
>by being elevated above foreign slave remains to be explored....Despite these 
>attempts at political neutralization...[the working class] was seen as the sole
>threatening collectivity by a regime which could otherwise identify only very
>specific groups as dangerous (Jews,  priests,  freemasons,  Communists)...
>There is much to Louis (P)'s criticisms of your approach...


My  "approach",  as you call it,  is merely to point out that,  save for a
brief period in Italy during 1943-44,  working class resistance to fascism
did not exist *in any organized fashion as such*.     This did not include
the actions of Italian partisans (which was largely peasant in character,
though the 1943 strikes in Turin contributed much to the PCI's enormous
prestige which it carried out of the war),  or,  say,  the actions of the
KPD-led resistance within Germany itself.    I say this,  not to denigrate
the working class which,  being the author of all wealth (as Marx,  Ricardo
and Adam Smith himself wrote) is the seminal class in modern history,  but
by way of example in arguing that,  left to its own devices,  it will
usually seek the path of reform,  rather than that of revolution.     Too,
this is a corollory of my belief that attempts to reify or "fetishize" the
working class,  in the sense of endowing it with powers which it does not
enjoy and with which it is wholly out of character,  does no service to
Marxism or to the cause of socialism.

On a less ethereal level,  I will point to three conditions which I feel
contributed significantly to the rather tawdry record of German
working-class resistance.    They are,  briefly: (1) *The ambiguity of the
state system under the Nazis*:   It is well-known that the initial power of
the regime depended upon the "co-ordination" of existing state institutions
-- their disruption or supercession by the Nazi movement would have helped
to create a highly unstable political situation in which the unions might
have been able to regain the political initiative.     As it was,  the
gradual fusion of the Nazi movement with the machinery of administration and
the co-operation of big business and the army with this new political
formation put the working class in a position of complete subjection. 
(2)*Political isolation*:    Generally,  working-class protest and
resistance in the Third Reich could count on no sympathy or support from any
other social groups or organizations.    A few Catholic congregations formed
a notable exception in that they did defy the religious policies of the
regime (even refusing to turn Communists away from their demonstrations),
but for the rest support for working class economic and political interests
was practically nil.      Why?    Fear is no doubt part of the answer,
tactical concessions and paternalism on the part of the regime another,  and
the general belief that Hitler wanted to put things right yet another.
Important,  too,  was the fact that,  as a whole,  the German working class
had become politically too sophisticated,  too used to organize activities
to adopt more desperate,  or violent methods.    

(3)*The demoralizing effect of the 1933 defeats*:  The defeat of the workers
in 1933 was qualitatively different from the defeat of the Russian
Revolution of 1905,  of the British General Strike of 1926 or even of the
Spanish working class between 1937 and 1939.    It is not just that the Nazi
seizure of power constituted a more comprehensive defeat --the Third Reich
conceded less space for Left insurgents than any other regime in history --
it was a defeat that bore the stigma of self-infliction.    All involved
(the Communists,  the Social Democrats,  the main union federation,  the
ADGB) showed a catastrophic lack of political judgement in a defeat that
induced,  perhaps uniquely,  scepticism,  disillusionment and political
*anomie*  (see Tim Mason,  "The Containment of the Working Class in Nazi
Germany,"  in *Nazism,  Fascism and the Working Class* [Cambridge, 1995:
Cambridge University Press],  pp. 231-273).

There are,  doubtless,  other reasons as well,  including the various wage
inducement schemes to which you allude.    On balance,  though,  there
appears to be few grounds for believing that the socio-economic
fragmentation of the German working class was a major factor in the damping
down or neutralization of its hostility to the Nazi dictatorship (see
Michael Prinz's forthcoming *Wages and Working Class Resistance in Nazi
Germany, 1933-1945* [Princeton,  NJ, 1997: Princeton University Press]).
Finally,  there is nothing "categorical" about my analysis of the working
class during this frightful period;  I am merely suggesting some possible
avenues that may,  upon further inquiry,  prove fruitful.


Louis Godena



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