Reclaiming the differences: Three neglected theories of fascism in Lukács, Marcuse, and Bloch (original) (raw)

This paper [authors' copy, preprint, to appear in Socialism and Democracy], coauthored with Matthew King (Deakin University), excavates three lesser-known 20th century critical analyses of fascist ideology by leading thinkers that contradict Adorno and Horkheimer's influential conception of fascism in Dialectic of Enlightenment, which anticipated and contributed to shaping subsequent post-structuralist theorizing. These analyses situate fascism as not too rationalist, but ideologically irrationalist; not as the culmination in extremis of a monologic modernity, but the attempt to fabricate alternative anti-liberal modernities; and not inevitable or normative in any way, but as one possible product of specific socioeconomic and political conditions. The first of these accounts (Part 1) is Herbert Marcuse's 1933 critique of what he terms the "heroic-folkish realism" of Nazi thought in figures such as Krieck, Köllreutter, van den Bruck, Schmitt, and others in "The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian Theory of the State". With Gyorgy Lukács's 1952 The Destruction of Reason (Part 2), in contrast, we find both an analysis which traces fascist irrationalism back to a lineage of irrationalist thought hailing from the early 19th century, and a Marxist materialist account of the conditions of its emergence and popularisation. Finally, Bloch’s analysis in The Heritage of our Times of the defining features of fascist ideology’s attack on the “Ratio” (Part 3) is coupled to an analysis which goes beyond that of Lukács of the socioeconomic conditions, of the greatest potential present relevance, which explains why particular “non-synchronous” strata of populations (those who fear being left behind, having previously been relatively privileged) are susceptible to Far Right mobilization which passes.