is woven into social analysis. Leaders are outstanding individuals who dictate to
and mould the formless and ignorant masses.
It follows from this avowedly statist doctrine that the nation has enemies both
from without and within who threaten its purity and cohesion. War and violent
conflict are the only viable responses so that the crushing of the other is the way
to affirm the self. Xenophobia and racism are built into the statism of fascist
premises, and so is male chauvinism. The superior individual must be a ‘he’ since
the notion of the female is identified with passivity and cowardice.
It is important not to see the state as itself a fascist institution, since states can
be liberal and anti-authoritarian in character in which, through devices like the rule
of law and parliamentary representation, state force is regulated and limited. On
the other hand, it is also important to see the continuities as well as the
discontinuities between fascism and the state. The use of force polarises, and can
only be justified against those who are deemed ‘enemies’ of society. The nationalism
that reaches its extreme form in fascism is inherent in the state, and it could be
argued that there is a real tension between the state as an institution claiming a
monopoly of legitimate force, and the notion of democracy as self-government.Stalinism
Can one describe Stalinism – authoritarian communism – as a form of fascism?
There are of course similarities. The concept of dictatorship is central to Stalinism
and a particularly vicious and exclusionary form of class struggle is used to justify
purges, mock-trials and authoritarian practices in general. There are also significant
dissimilarities so that, however tempting, it is, in our view, erroneous to see left
and right authoritarianism, Stalinism and fascism, as interchangeable.
In other words, the argument that became widespread during the cold war,
identifying communism and fascism as forms of totalitarianism, is superficial and
misleading. Mommsen makes the point that this theory glosses over the structural
features peculiar to the fascist party. The theory of democratic centralism may have
operated to strengthen the leadership of Communist parties but it was a theory of
organisation alien to fascism (Mommsen, 1979: 153). Moreover, fascist and
communist ideology are poles apart. Stalinism seeks to build a world that is ultimately
stateless and classless in character – it draws upon a Marxist heritage to argue that
under communism, people, all people, will be able to govern their own affairs.
This is not to deny the authoritarianism that existed (and still exists) in
Communist Party states but it could be argued that the ‘cult of the personality’, the
denial of democracy, the male chauvinism, etc. in these societies stand in
contradiction to the theories of communism. In fascism, on the other hand, these
features are not in contradiction with the doctrine: they are explicitly enshrined in
the theories and movements. This argument may not seem of much comfort to the
inmate of a gulag who is worked to death in inhuman conditions, but it points to
a qualitative difference between the statism of fascism and statism of Stalinism.
Moreover, as Kitchen points out, communism sought to radically change the means
of production, whereas fascist regimes did not, and this throws further doubt on
the proposition that similarities between fascism and communism outweigh the
differences (Kitchen, 1976: 31).298 Part 2 Classical ideologies