workers’ syndicates could be represented. Spanish and Argentinian
fascists have developed similar ideas and institutions.
With the defeat of Hitler, explicit endorsement of Nazi or fascist
ideas has, on the whole, become rather unfashionable. On the
extreme right in Europe even those who express a qualified admira-
tion for Hitler have tended to deny that the wholesale slaughter of
Jews in the Holocaust took place, rather than enthusiastically endorse
it. The swastika is more prized as an icon for rebellious youth to
embarrass parents with, than a serious political symbol. But racist
and extreme nationalist sentiments remain the mark of the extreme
right together with an anti-communist/labour rhetoric.
It is interesting that the most recent large-scale use of near-Nazi
symbolism (admittedly a three-, rather than a four-legged ‘swastika’)
has been by the South African AWB movement seeking to defend
apartheid in its dying days. The South African apartheid regime could
be seen as the last contemporary fascist state with an ideology based
on racialism and supported by an apparatus of torture and repression.
The Milosovich Serbian regime in the former Yugoslavia might also
be interpreted in a similar way, although here, too, the ideology is
nominally one of nationalism rather than racialism.Marxism
At the opposite end of the left/right political spectrum it is con-
ventional to place the followers of Karl Marx [1818–1883]. In practice
it is clear Marxists vary enormously in their radicalism and in their
beliefs.
We have already seen (Chapter 1, p. 20], that Marx and Engels
adopt a collectivist and conflict-oriented view of politics. It is worth
stressing that this is part of both a theory of history and a programme
of political action. As Marx says ‘The philosophers have only
interpretedthe world differently – the point is to changeit’ (11th
Thesis on Fuerbach, Marx and Engels, 1962, Vol. II: 403). Both the
theoretical and the practical parts of their writing are impressive in
their scope and depth. Marx and Engels published extensively not
only on the nature of contemporary capitalism, but also on the
transition from feudalism to capitalism and on ancient and oriental
societies (Marx and Engels, 1962, passim).
In the more theoretical writings of Marx and Engels ‘the dialectic76 IDEOLOGIES