Communist legacies and the new world disorder

There are some days that generate more noise than heat. But other days consist of both. A decent article on a Hungarian news portal, talking about middle-class parents pushing and shoving their children into a very small list of elite grammar schools, seeking to avoid the general stagnation and slow implosion of the Hungarian state education system. But as the article pointed out, this is only doing what the intelligentsia has been doing since at least the 1970s: these characteristics of the elite rooted themselves in a system which, in theory, was communist. I mentioned this to a friend, that there was so little actual socialism under communism, and his response was simple: that the old system was actually pretty fascist.

And I think this is a really interesting comment, not just a throwaway remark. That a serious understanding of both actually existing communism, and post-communism, should start from the perspective that, in its implementation, in its grainy reality, that Soviet communism tended towards a brute infliction of hierarchy. I’m not equating communism and fascism, yet the more one sees de facto communism, it often looked… well, it all depends upon definitions of fascism. Actually Existing Communism included rigid, highly authoritarian structures of education, as well as, perhaps more familiarly, large educational associations. Communist hierarchies assumed the language and authority of previous administrative systems (for example, the Austro-Hungarian empire, or interwar autocracies), in the same way that the early years of Christianity in Britannia produced a Celtic version of the early church.

But this mutant strain, let’s call it communo-fascism (where the ‘communo’ might not mean communism, but communitarianism), had certain characteristics. It permeated and melded behaviours according to absolute dominance of some in the white-collar professions, and absolute subservience of those on the shopfloor. And that the propagation of the white-collar elite was conducted on a hereditary principle — real downward mobility for young people was very difficult, especially as the transition occured, from the late 1980s. The children of this elite would have to be especially determined to drop out, rather than simply underperform against expectations. The sheer differential of privilege, expressed through cultural capital, would ensure a certain level of existence. So we have a slow, if nonviolent repression of labour, especially manual labour, under communo-fascism. We have a creeping cronyism, that, for some, translates into business empires, or a mix of economic and political power.

And it is extremely relevant to 2017. It doesn’t stop, because the economic system has changed and Hungary, in theory, pivots towards the West from the late 1980s. The children of the liberal intelligentsia therefore go on to form what is normally regarded as the opposition to Viktor Orban’s authoritarian right-wing government. The opposition, hampered by their privilege, therefore has no-one — I believe it is now absolutely no-one — who can communicate with the Hungarian working class in a way which is credible, and which resonates. The resulting lockdown on politics means that the popular agenda is dominated by a right-wing which can make some welfarist concessions, whilst driving the remnants of universal public provision (especially in health and education) into the ground.

And here we get to the tricky part. A virulently more overtly fascistic variant of communo-fascism is now also the governing ideology of the USSR’s successor state, modern Russia. And whilst the ‘communist’ part of this ideology is truly dead, the corpse has been reanimated, as an insiduous device to both stir nostalgia for the pre-1990s USSR, and exploit political discontent in favour of Russian foreign policy goals.

Every time a leftist writes anything about how Western social democracy only existed as a tool for capital, and every time a leftist expresses nostalgia for the USSR, they risk becoming a useful idiot, for whilst the ‘communism’ part of Russia’s revanchist ideology is a cover, this reanimated corpse is being deployed in a sophisticated manner to divert economic discontent into regressive political formations. In some countries, this can take the form of communo-fascism, in other countries, it can perhaps be formulated as fascisto-communitarianism. The main target here is liberalism, and the forms of state power in Europe and the USA which serve, dualistically, both the interests of capital, and the social democratic provision of universal services.

Communo-fascism has its roots in the way communist regimes appealed to folk traditions, and tied an anti-imperialist narrative into an insular nationalism across the former Eastern Bloc. In its more Western European mutation, it is Islamophobic, it is anti-refugee. It claims to rescue forms of universal provision, by identifying the threat to universal provision as different outsider groups. Its ideas are percolating both into the populist extremes of conservative parties, and into the more rigid, angrier parts of socialist parties. Because, after all, imperialism is a thing. The racist legacy of imperialism is a thing. The West are not intrinsically the good guys. But, an important aspect of communo-fascism, is that it always absolves the host country of wrongdoing. Even former imperialist countries, such as France, or the UK, are only ever victims.

Communo-fascism is primarily a geopolitical project. It aims to change the status quo. But at core it is deeply hierarchical, and any positive effects will be dwarved by the way it allows the monopolisation of power, as has occured in Russia (for these days, to understand Russia fully, it is impossible to ignore an anarchist critique). There are many variants of this hybrid ideology, and some of them may even deploy anti-Russian and anti-communist rhetoric (whilst still nudging a type of nostalgia which can only be coloured by a partly positive view of existing communism). It will present an ongoing challenge to those of us who would like to see radical political change, who are opposed to the arbritary use of force and the concentration of power and money.

At a time when Trump and Putin seem set for a kind of ‘Poundland’ Ribbentrop Pact, we need to be very clear. If we fall for left nostalgia, and the sirens of brown-red populism, we will run aground. We betray the prospect of a future living socialism, for a decaying corpse. We then open the door to absolute rule by oligarchs and we saw off the branch upon which we sit, which is, yes, as part of a liberal democracy. We need to offer the future something better than a recursive retrofit of the worst of the 20th century. It’s a very tricky line to walk, whilst staying relevant to people, and still have a clear message of radical social change. Whether our future alliances should be called NATO, or a European Defence Initiative… it isn’t clear yet. But as democratic socialist, or social democrats, we’re back in the situation of clinging to a branch, on a tree which we know to be deeply imperfect, but from which we cannot yet jump. For the alternative is, indeed, worse.