New Left, Local Control, and Fascism

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through parliamentary struggle. The movement en- sabotage the kinds of organic alliances in which workdeavored
to develop mass support, ing people find a new social basis for their world
outlook, and on which unique basis working people and
As the movement grew it developed two antagonistic their allies begin to develop at least rudimentary socialwings.
Hitler himself, while personally uninterested in ist consciousness. As long as the various proponents of
domestic issues, wanted to limit "socialist" demagogy local control ideology have leadership hegemony in the
to vague attacks on big business. He was anxious lest socialist movement, that movement will inevitably tend
he lose sizeable financial support from capitalist contri- to be defeated.
butors. At the same time the "socialist" wing of the
movement, led by the Strasser brothers and initially Praxis
supported by Goebbels, was seeking a base in the trade
union movement. While they were by and large unsuccessful
with industrial workers, they did receive sup- of the Guardian is in this way objectively anti-revolu-
The Calvert-Neiman statement in the June 29 issue
port from a section of construction workers and from tionary despite the best intentions of its authors. We
white-collar workers, organized in nationalist trade quote: "A crucial concept...is not...how students can
unions, link up to the struggles of industrial workers, public
school teachers, technical workers and others, but how
The Strasser program called for "corporate" social- these groups can struggle in a way which embodies the
ism on the Italian model and included demands that most advanced and vital principles of the student
workers have a 49 percent share in the profits of movement." Or, from an earlier section of the same
production in each factory. After a sharp contest for article attacking socialist methods of organizing: "Stupower
in the party the Strassers were defeated. How- dents are 'reached' on narrow self-interest issues so
ever, as late as January 1933, right before Hitler came that they may be channelled into fighting for someone
else's narrow self-interest...The result is that the civil
to power, German political and military leaders were
considering dumping Hitler and bargaining instead rights movement is reduced to a small political club of
with Strasser, who still maintained a mass following in people willing to always fight someone else's battles,
North Germany and still was, in rhetoric and more or and the real concerns of the majority of students go
less in belief, a "socialist." unanswered."
Like Mussolini, Hitler came to power legally with the In a similar fashion-it can be legitimately contended
connivance and financial support of German capitalists, that the following statement from the same article,
after winning 13 million votes and a Reichstag plurality, insofar as it gains credence in the radical movement, is
Once in power, he was forced to purge his plebian so disorienting as to disarm the movement: "To argue,
ranks, who took Nazi rhetoric seriously and in many as the basis of organizing industrial workers in an old
places were seizing control of factories and businesses, left reformist fashion around wage demands, that workers
want to buy more things, for example, is to ignore
After suppressing the trade union movement, Hitler the nature of domestic imperialism. The problem is
instituted the Labor Front in its place. While the Labor posed as 'How can I, an affluent student, tell a worker
Front never formed workers' councils, it did represent he doesn't need more money?"
workers in grievances. With the development of the
war economy labor grew scarce. While maximum It is hard to understand how such words can be
wages were regulated by the government, employers written in a radical newspaper published in New York
were encouraged to recruit workers through profit City's Lower East Side, when one has only to leave the
sharing in the form of improved working conditions, hot Guardian offices to see their refutation. Blacks and
lunch programs, and factory-centered recreation. Puerto Ricans in this city pushing racks in the garment
Throughout Germany workers were forced to join edu- center or bedpans in the city hospitals are vitally
cational and recreational organizations, concerned with their material standard of living. So,
too, are the so-called affluent workers on assembly
As in Italy, Nazism regulated capitalism but did not lines. Even to meet a marginal standard of comfort, the
supercede it. While the standard of living of the average industrial worker has had to work extended
working class as a whole fell, the virtual elimination of overtime or moonlight on another job, and in many
unemployment through war industry helped to neutral- working-class families wives are also employed at least
ize working-class discontent, part time.
The counterrevolutionary character of all local-control
ideology -- as distinct from supporters of local These workers are burdened with installment paycontrol
who in many cases are genuinely revolutionary in ments, not to buy luxuries, but to afford a car which is
their aspirations -- is sufficiently located in the fact necessary transportation to work, a house, a freezer or
that exponents of such ideology oppose the creation of a washing machine. As real wages are falling, taxes
powerful new institutions of mass struggle, without rising, prices skyrocketing, how indeed can a student
which socialist victory is impossible. They attempt to tell a worker that he doesn't need more money?[