Abstract
Having looked at the case of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s in terms of its concrete politics and the basic class sociology behind it, we must now ‘situate’ class politics in the phenomenon of deliberate regime change by the power bloc to avert a revolutionary situation. This, as we shall see, is part of the ‘logic’ of social capital.
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Notes and References
Poulantzas, 1974, is a prominent example of a sophisticated and nuanced later treatment. A good example of the original school is Sohn-Rethel, 1978, basically written between 1938 and 1941 (see Sohn-Rethal, 1978, pp. 10–12).
Poulantzas, 1974, p. 73, emphasis in original. For an important critical view of Poulantzas’s work on National Socialism see Caplan, 1989, although I do not share her view of fascism as ‘the extreme form of the autonomisation of politics under capitalism’ (p. 143).
See also the critical discussion of Abraham in Evans, 1982, pp. 91–3. For a general critique of ‘autonomist’ views of the state, see Post, 1996, pp. 241–5.
Poulantzas, 1974, p. 94, emphasis in original; see generally pp. 92–5.
At this point disagreement must be registered with Abraham’s whole approach, which is built around a series of hypothetical class alliances and hence different power blocs. His basic verdict is that ‘[e]lectorally, the most viable possibility remained socialist-bourgeois collaboration under bourgeois leadership …; politically the SDP remained willing, but once the economic crisis set in, as it did after 1929, the economic costs it exacted proved intolerable’ (Abraham, 1977, p. 248). This comes down in the end to a speculation about what might have been, how the Weimar Republic might have been saved after all. The verdict of Kurt Grossweiler seems sounder — ‘most important representatives of the ruling class … agreed, despite their internal conflicts, not to allow a return to the parliamentary system’ (Grossweiler, 1989, p. 167). It is crucial to remember that by the time the Nazis came to power bourgeois democracy had in effect been much weakened. However I do not see this as ‘an expression of the primacy of politics’, as Grossweiler does (ibid., emphasis in original), as I would not separate political from other practices in that way. For other discussions of the Nazi phenomenon in relation to capital, see Geary, 1983, and Nagle, 1989.
For an alternative to Eley’s ‘Nazi eclecticism’ line see Kershaw, 1983. He argues that Nazi appeals were not ‘uniquely’ or ‘naturally’ German, but rather ‘the extreme formulation and continuation of a branch of imperialist ideology, adapted within the framework of German “national” and “political culture” to petty bourgeois aspirations’ (p. 169). This loads too much on a rather vague class designation of scapegoats for a more general German historical heritage.
Some key general texts are Bessel, 1987, Mason, 1977, Noakes, 1983, Peukert, 1987, and Schoenbaum, 1966. Saunders, 1992, provides a useful summary and discussion.
Trotsky, 1970, pp. 10, 11, 17, 18. For a positive evaluation of Trotsky on this topic, see Bambery, 1993, pp. 39–44.
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© 1997 K. W. J. Post
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Post, K. (1997). National Socialism and Social Capital. In: Communists and National Socialists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14514-0_7
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