The Coming of the American Behemoth. Michael Joseph Roberto
rel="nofollow" href="#u9ec32180-4cae-53be-86be-36cbc7fbe212">Chapter 9 examines the plethora of fringe groups that made up what many considered to be relatively insignificant in the making of American fascism—what one left-liberal journalist famously called “small-fry fascisti.”15 I also discuss the political trajectories of the two most reactionary populist demagogues of the times, the Catholic radio priest Charles Coughlin and Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, both of whom failed to build mass movements.
This leads to my discussion in chapter 10 of writers in 1934 and 1935 whose class analyses determined that the middle class would not play the primary role in the making of American fascism. In chapter 11, I focus on President Roosevelt’s assertion that the business system was “fascist.” I examine the background to his use of the word when, in the spring of 1938, he called for an inquiry into the growing power of monopolies and financial institutions that he deemed fascist. I discuss how Roosevelt’s position illustrates the “good vs. bad capitalism” dynamic in American politics, which persists today. Chapter 12 closes out the second part of the book with a discussion of Robert Brady’s detailed analysis of the business system and the progress it had made since the early 1920s in synchronizing capitalist domination over the marketplace while extending its political influence in government.
I consider this book an introduction rather than a detailed and comprehensive account. I leave the latter to U.S. historians and other social scientists whose knowledge of American history is greater than mine. I wrote this book from the perspective of a world historian who deemed it necessary to consider fascism as a product of capitalist development, specifically in the particular form that fascism took in the United States in the interwar period.
There are aspects of the making of American fascism that will not be found in the following pages. I do not treat the major personalities of the period who are rightly considered its usual fascist suspects—Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and William Randolph Hearst to name a few. Their activities have been covered by many other historians and writers. Nor do I focus on race, gender, religion, or other cultural forms of differentiation, recognizing that the entire history of American fascism in this period requires that these aspects receive full treatment. Instead, I have chosen to emphasize the capital-labor relationship and the various ways it was understood by my predecessors in the 1930s and early 1940s. Their findings were central and foundational to my work. I have also chosen not to discuss the man who was considered to be the leading American fascist intellectual of the day, Lawrence Dennis. This is because his peculiar worldview and politics were tangential to those who were the real architects of American fascism: the ruling class and its various attendants in government; trade associations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and the media outlets that knowingly or unknowingly supported fascist ideas and processes.
My hope is that this brief study will convince others that there is much work to be done. Even though this book reflects my training as an historian, what I have done here also reflects my work as a journalist, with the object being to tell a story grounded in the evidence and made readable for the public. To that end, I have endeavored to make the most compelling case possible about the coming of the American Behemoth, to its now mature and frightening presence as a capitalist empire in utter decline and decay leaping from the carcass of liberal capitalist democracy into fascism.
IN 1942, FRANZ NEUMANN published his historic analysis of National Socialism, Behemoth, as much of the world fought against the fascist Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Neumann justified his choice of the title by comparing it to Thomas Hobbes’s use of the same word for the title of his book on the Long Parliament, which Hobbes called a time of “complete lawlessness” in England, between 1640 and 1660, and which he described politically as a “non-state.”16 This condition, Neumann said, applied to Germany under National Socialism. Moreover, fascist ideology virtually defied theorizing within the boundaries of existing political theory. Though it contained elements of every conceivable philosophy—idealism, pragmatism, positivism, vitalism, etc.—these were not integrated to form a whole. In short, Neumann wrote, National Socialism was “incompatible with any rational political philosophy,” and the reason for it could be found in the structure of National Socialist society itself. “There exists,” he wrote, “a fundamental antagonism between the productivity of German industry, its capacity for promoting the welfare of the people and its actual achievements, and this antagonism is steadily deepening.” Neumann noted that the huge and continuous industrial machinery had been geared toward war while the regime broke one sweet promise after another.17
At the same time, National Socialism had grown stronger because it had acted “according to a most rational plan, that each and every pronouncement by its leaders is calculated, and its effect on the masses and the surrounding world is carefully weighed in advance.”18 For Neumann, what made National Socialism a distinct political phenomenon was its appeal to the people. This was the main reason it came to power. It had incorporated into its own ideology the very thing it had wrecked: large-scale democracy under the Weimar Republic. But the appeal of the former lived on in the latter and was essential to it. “National Socialism has transformed institutional democracy of the Weimar Republic into a ceremonial and a magic democracy, a development made necessary by the requirements of totalitarian war, in which the distinctions between civilians and soldiers are annihilated and in which the civilian suffers even more than the soldiers.” Neumann referred to the American political scientist Harold Lasswell, who described this situation as “the socialization of danger,” which more than ever required “full control over the whole mass of the people and over each aspect of their individual lives.”19 In order to manipulate the masses, to control them, to atomize them, to terrorize them, they had to be captured ideologically. This, Neumann said, was the essence of the fascist dictatorship.
But fascism did not end capitalism and that was central to Neumann’s critical analysis of the structure of National Socialism. No deep antagonisms among the German ruling classes existed, but neither were there common loyalties. “The cement that binds them together is profit, power, and, above all, fear of the oppressed masses,” Neumann wrote. But he also recognized that the widening contradictions between the rulers and the ruled held out the possibility that the Nazi regime would not survive, that the German masses would ultimately act on the understanding many had of the whole fraudulent and fictitious character of the regime’s ideological front—that it was all just “bunk.”20 Sooner or later, all the contradictions between those who understood the realities beneath the paradox of National Socialist ideology and its anti-capitalist and anti-state propagandas would unwittingly further genuine socialist trends. Unfortunately, the history of National Socialism tragically proved otherwise.
As for the United States, fascism never came to power in the interwar period, though it is marching toward it in the present. For sure, its path is less clear than it was in Italy or Germany. Nevertheless, fascist processes in the United States have now coalesced into a clear fascist trajectory. As we go to press, it is especially evident that the ruling class has taken a decisive step in its dance with a president whose crude pragmatism is at the root of his fascist ideology. In this respect, Trump is no different than was Hitler, who railed against the ruling class and then embraced it at a crucial moment in the consolidation of his power.
To know the American Behemoth as Neumann knew its German predecessor is the condition required to bring it down. This is why I have chosen to study its origins.
PART 1
The Germ of Fascism in the Prosperous 1920s
1—The Wonders of American Capitalism in the New Era
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS weary of conflict