To know where Hitlerism gets its views on how history works, we can look to Proudhon, whose idealistic perspective would form the basis for fascism. The connection between Proudhon’s anarchist polemicism, and the ideological journeys of Hitler, Mussolini, and other defining fascists, becomes apparent when one examines the particular kind of infantile thinking which these fascists represent. This is an infantile mindset that was popularized specifically by Proudhon, and by the others who propagated the notion that the state is something fundamentally personal. The core of their worldview is that the state comes not from a practical need to facilitate the present mode of production; but rather from a conspiracy by those who brought the state into being.
It’s from this notion that the fascists created their warrior-crusader vision, where history is simply moved by willpower. And it’s this infantile narrative that Marxists can counter with our own vision, if we properly examine the class dynamics behind these beliefs. If we investigate the different material interests, and outlooks, that go behind the anarchist and Marxist perspectives on historical struggle. Because this distinction is what exposes today’s pro-Hitlerite voices as being advocates for senseless, wanton lumpen destruction, in contrast to the constructive working-class drive which Marxism represents.
When I describe the anarcho-Hitlerite ideological lineage as being lumpen in nature, I am talking about how these ways of thinking are detached from the cause of the workers. In order to arrive at their infantile ideas about how historical conflict works, the Proudhonists needed to come from a perspective that wasn’t guided by a proletarian experience. Hitler was a bohemian; his lifestyle was defined by idealism, and he was uninterested in the perspectives of somebody whose outlook is grounded within the reality of the worker. This was the same type of anti-proletarian thought process that Marx described in his rebuttal to Proudhon, where he identified Proudhon’s narrowly moralistic thinking as being petty-bourgeois in character. And it is appropriate to directly link Proudhon’s thinking to Hitler’s, because Proudhon’s crude anti-statism was driven by an obsessive hatred of Jews.
Wrote Marx about the class origins of Proudhon’s belief system:
For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides – one good, the other bad. He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good; he also did a lot of harm. The good side and the bad side, the advantages and drawbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in every economic category. The problem to be solved: to keep the good side, while eliminating the bad. Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus it also has its two sides. Let us leave alone the bad side and talk about the good side of slavery…What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side of this economic category, eliminate the bad. Hegel has no problems to formulate. He has only dialectics. M. Proudhon has nothing of Hegel's dialectics but the language. For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad.
These petty-bourgeois kinds of reactions in many ways overlap with the lumpen kinds of reactions; these two trends aren’t exactly the same, but they share a lack of investment within the struggle of the proletariat. Therefore they lack a desire to analyze things in a practical, dialectical way.
The anarcho-Hitlerite view is metaphysical, based within the idea that all traits throughout history are fixed and immutable rather than products of underlying conditions. Hitlerism sees civilization through the lens of genes—which are a metaphysical concept—rather than recognizing that civilization comes from humanity’s efforts to reckon with the contradictions in nature. It promotes a fantasy about excellence and progress originating from innate racial traits, denying how progress is won through advancements in the productive forces and the practical challenges they bring about. It’s because of this basic illiteracy about where social advancement comes from that today’s Hitlerites cannot coherently respond to China’s achievements. They can’t admit that communism is why China is winning; they’ve needed to create a narrative about how China is actually fascist, as they’re unable to face the objective superiority of the proletarian worldview.
China’s story is the ultimate proof that the anarcho-Hitlerite currents are nothing but poor imitations of what dialectics have to offer. They’re the substitutes that capital puts forth to try to divert us from authentic revolutionary politics, crafted by thinkers who’ve not wanted to truly confront reality. As Mao explained about where correct ideas come from, and why working-class thought is uniquely adept at leading us to these ideas:
At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness from existence to ideas…Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth. Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.
If the worker’s only reason for gaining knowledge is to change the world, this means that only through a proletarian perspective can we break free from the system which finance capital has imposed on us. The worker has no choice but to confront reality; their only path forward is to unflinchingly investigate. Recognizing communism as the reason for China’s success is one critical part of this investigative process, as it’s the biggest evidence we can find for which practices have worked. Another part is to recognize the connection between what the far right believes, and the ideas that have come out of capitalist society’s most decadent, rootless, and shallow elements.
The far right claims to be the antithesis of destructive lumpen politics, yet its entire basis is these politics. The metaphysical explanations that Hitlerism provides only make sense when one doesn’t investigate deeper, and the figures who came up with Hitlerism did so because they didn’t have a material reason to investigate deeper. They were not being compelled by the experience of labor, or by the philosophy of labor, that would shape somebody into seeking out a scientific approach towards learning. China has embraced this approach, and we are all able to see the spectacular outcome. America will embrace this approach as well, if it defeats the present ruling-class psyops that aim to rehabilitate Hitlerism. We have the tools to overwhelm these psyops; it’s up to us to find the most effective ways for using those tools.
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