It is not true that history does not repeat itself. The generalized
advance of the extreme right in Europe retraces paths already traveled,perhaps with a different intensity, a different speed, fewer bloody
outcomes, but adopting institutional models, "documents of intention"
(Marc Bloch, Apologia della storia, ed. 2024), "measures" (Deleuze,
Difference and repetition, 1968) and cultural drifts (Prospero, La
scienza politica di Marx, 2015) that belong to a tragic past. All this
makes it necessary for us too to deal with the "ghost" of that fascism
that disturbs the sleep of so many self-proclaimed democrats.
Irrational, instinctive, reactionary, hyper-nationalist impulses have
always animated world politics since the fall of the ancient regimes,
both as a factor of resistance to modernity and social and technological
development and, in the opposite sense, as a push to recreate a strongly
centralized and authoritarian State. What has allowed these forces to
acquire a mass base and aspire to conquer the State, in addition to an
intrinsic capacity for transformation and adaptation, has mainly been a
phenomenon that has been little studied but in many respects decisive,
which goes under the name of "Caesarism".
The term "Caesarism", with its variants and digressions, is now
conventionally accepted to define or "classify" events, even if
different from each other, which have as their purpose the establishment
of a "system of government characterized by a strong power centralized
in the hands of a single leader" (Fascism. Dictionary of history,
characters, culture, economy, sources and historiographical debate,
1998), through, and here is the novelty, the use of democratic and
constitutional instruments. In order to found a party that would allow
them to enter the democratic and electoral game (Pombeni, La ragione e
la passione, 2010), the fascists assume the role of flag-bearer of a
varied class, composed mainly of small and medium-sized bourgeois,
farmers, employees, military personnel and ex-military personnel who, in
periods of political instability and economic crisis, fear losing their
acquired privileges, pointing out as hypothetical enemies the
"expropriating" left, immigrants, taxation, and capitalists from other
nations. Once they have conquered power through universal suffrage, and
legitimized it through plebiscites and referendums - passed off as
instruments of direct and popular democracy -, the fascists proceed in
various ways, exploiting the illusion nourished by old liberals and
technocrats of being able to use them for their political and economic
ends, to all sorts of limitations first, then deprivation, of popular
rights and freedoms, up to creating a totalitarian dictatorship, that
is, one that claims to invade and control every aspect of social life.
Caesarism - in this last case "totalitarian Caesarism", as Emilio
Gentile defines it (Fascismo. Storia e Interpretazione, 2002) -
therefore does not find its privileged vehicle in a violent revolution
or in coups d'état but in the democratic and constitutional system that
it intends to overturn and undermine, often without making a mystery of
it. So much so that it has been hypothesized that it is nothing more
than an extreme variant of that same system, to be activated in the
event that, for internal reasons (e.g. out-of-control inflation) or
external ones (e.g. protests from below), the capitalism that is
intertwined with it and supports it does not risk capitulating in turn.
This is what Clara Mattei (Operazione austerità, 2022, and L'economia è
politica, 2023) argues most recently, reviewing the support that
economists and technocrats of high finance have given and continue to
give to fascisms, and the opportunity that these represent to "shape
society on the ideal of their models". The fact is that fascist regimes
have almost always brought about profound political upheavals but almost
never economic interventions that radically affected property and capital.
In any case, the "vulnus" of the democratic system, what prevents it
from creating sufficient antibodies to repel fascist "advances" (as
proclaimed by many inveterate voters), is so evident today that it has
even been noted by Luciano Canfora (La democrazia, 2004, and, lastly,
Dizionario politico minimo, 2024), one of those old-Marxist repentants,
or false repentants, who still aspire, despite repeated failures, to
occupy the State by electoral means.
For Canfora, however, the "vulnus" does not lie in the democratic method
and universal suffrage but in a distortion of them, obtained by
switching from proportional representation (which is the "obvious
counterpart" of universal suffrage) to majoritarianism. It essentially
saves the electoral system and democracy, and at the same time
certifies, resoundingly denied by many recent facts, that through
proportional representation fascisms cannot take power.
For us anarchists, however, the "vulnus" lies precisely in the electoral
process, in the mystique of the vote and in the delegation of power that
legitimizes the State and allows every form of corruption of the
individual and popular will, depriving of antigens the living forces
that animate society, including truly anti-fascist movements.
Canfora also argues with those who believe that historical facts cannot
repeat themselves. For him, Italian fascism remains "a model for
experiments and methods already tested and returning" (id., Fascism has
never died, 2024). In this he finds us in agreement. Far from a cheap
sociologism (Bobbio, in his Lezioni di filosofia politica, 2021, warned
historians against trying, like certain sociologists, to harness the
continuous flow of history), militant historians should agree that,
under certain conditions, even the darkest past can reappear in a more
or less similar way.
The debate and the ongoing struggles to prevent the establishment of
fascist or para-fascist regimes should therefore find us in the front
row, if only to discard easy illusions and compromises to the downside,
and propose truly alternative solutions.
Natale Musarra
http://sicilialibertaria.it
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