Fascism and Bonapartism

Abstract

The failure of the Third International to provide an adequate theory of fascism, and the resulting inadequacies of communist policies to combat fascism, prompted many Marxist thinkers to reconsider the problem. Among many such attempts the most successful was that of August Thalheimer, one of the leading intellectuals of the German party. Thalheimer based his analysis of fascism on Marx’s writing on Louis Napoleon, particularly the ‘18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ and ‘The Civil War in France’.* He was careful not to confuse fascism with Bonapartism, and he did not force contemporary reality into a historical mould. He realised that Marx had an exceptional theoretical understanding of the problem of a counter-revolutionary movement within bourgeois society, and that there were indeed striking similarities between Bonapartism and fascism in the historical relationship between classes, in the political practice, and in the dynamics of the two forms of reactionary regime.