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Book Reviews Continued from
previous page 16
Hitler and Stalin
The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia. By
Richard Overy. Penguin, £9.99.
 If you’ve been
thinking that books on the two most renowned political
dictators, Hitler and Stalin, have been done to death forget it and
read this book. Whereas books such as Alan Bullock’s Parallel Lives,
Alan Kershaw’s Hitler and Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Court of the Red
Czar (reviewed in the March 2006 Socialist Standard) concentrate on
personality, Richard Overy investigates issues far more important to
the working class. He raises such questions as how dictatorships could
happen, how did they manage to hold on to power and impose their will
on a sometimes-uncooperative working class. For answers to questions
such as these this book is excellent.
Overy finds many similarities in the methods adopted by the dictators
but also some important differences, lying mainly in the varying levels
of economic development existing in the two countries. Germany,
emerging from its history as a collection of loosely federated states
was already a capitalist nation. It had a native capitalist class,
trade unions, a democratic political constitution in the Weimar
Republic. Russia had none of these. Eighty percent of its population
were peasants, its homegrown capitalist class were almost non-existent,
or at any rate very weak. There were trade unions (in fact it was
largely trade union action which had toppled the Czar) they had not yet
reached the same level of development as those in Germany. There had
never been even the semblance of political democracy in Russia.
These historical conditions were important in the way the dictators
came to power and held on to it. One thing Overy makes abundantly clear
is that neither dictator was “imposed” or brought about by force
against an unwilling or resisting populace. Hitler used the electoral
process to gain power and, although no one in Russia ever had the
chance of voting against Stalin, he still needed working class support
to remain in power.
Hitler maintained his position of supreme ruler by adopting the cult of
leadership right from the beginning. Everyone (including, crucially,
the army) had to swear allegiance to the Führer. Stalin had to
work slowly and behind the scenes to achieve his pre-eminence. But, as
Overy makes clear, neither of them could move very far without popular
support, and they both went to extraordinary lengths to hold on to a
mass following.
This does not mean of course that Stalin and Hitler did not routinely
employ force. But by means of propaganda, of general scare alarms –
about “wreckers” in the case of Stalin, or “undesirables” in the case
of Hitler – they managed to enlist the support of the ordinary citizen.
Informers were actively encouraged and many enthusiastically took part
in wholesale denunciation of the regime’s opponents.
Overy makes a strong case for believing that both dictators believed in
their own ideologies – something that can be readily accepted in the
case of Hitler with his belief in the existence of “race” and of a
“racially pure” Aryan blood. However we find it much more difficult to
accept that Stalin really believed that he was building socialism.
Overy also suggests that Stalin’s purges of Communist Party members had
some basis in reality in the sense that they really did threaten his
conception of “socialism”. After getting rid of Roehm, Hitler was
much more loyal to his close circle as he built up his authority on the
basis of personal loyalty and did not see them as a threat. His biggest
problem lay in the conservative nature of the generals. This explains
why he took over the conduct of the war as sole commander, something
also attempted by Stalin, who sacked or murdered most of his generals.
Overy also appears to have a greater respect for Stalin as a political
theoretician than is warranted by the facts.
For anyone who wants to understand how the Holocaust came about and the
circumstances building up to it this book is essential reading.
>From general beginnings as slave labour to its eventual conclusion
as mass killing, it makes chilling reading. He also presents some
interesting statistics on the Gulags and their role as providers of
slave labour in the economy that goes a long way to understand them.
In the pursuit of maintaining power both dictators used spectacle.
Parades, military processions, torchlight rallies – all were used
extensively and served as displays of power and as entertainment. In
the days before television this was very effective. Rigid control of
the press was also an essential. Any criticism of the establishment was
viciously suppressed.
A serious shortcoming of this book lies in the author’s conception of
socialism. Overy takes the word “socialism” and the concept of
“national socialism” as used by Stalin and Hitler at their face value.
He never defines the terms and appears to believe that socialism is
synonymous with a “command economy” capitalism, regarding which he has
some very perceptive things to say. However the lessons implicit in
this book are vitally important and it is to be recommended.
CYR
After Socialism.
Reconstructing Critical Social Thought.
By Gabriel Kolko.
Routledge, £19.99
Kolko writes as a critic of capitalism, but
as one who has no time for
Marxism, or rather for what he thinks is Marxism. His two chapters on
this are irritating as he paints Marx as a crude economic determinist
who saw working class action to establish socialism as a mere
inevitable reflex action to capitalist conditions. But if this was the
case, why was he a revolutionary agitator in the 1840s and again in the
1860s and 1870s? True, he got it wrong in that, contrary to what must
have been his expectation, the working class has still not acted to
establish socialism. And this has meant that we socialists today are a
lot less confident than earlier generations in speaking in terms of
socialism being inevitable.
Kolko also criticises Marx for not having much to say on imperialism,
war and state intervention. This is true too, but then these only
became big issues after his death in 1883, and those in the Marxist
tradition (including ourselves but also the likes of Hilferding and
Bukharin) did address these questions.
Kolko’s real argument is with the two attempts in the 20th century to
ostensibly challenge capitalism – Social Democracy and “Communism”. The
former was led by ambitious parliamentary politicians who ended up
merely administering the status quo, and the latter by those who
cynically installed themselves in power as a new elite and then
paved the way for later members of this elite to transform themselves
into ordinary capitalists. According to him (and we can concur) both
these have been utter failures and any radical movement against
capitalism has to start all over again on a quite different basis. For
him, “socialism” is dead and cannot be resurrected. Hence the book’s
title.
The two chapters in which he describes “capitalist realities” – a world
dominated by capitalist corporations run by greedy and self-seeking
executives and by governments which do their bidding when not lining
their own pockets – are the best.
As to his solution, he proposes a new radical Left party which will be
more democratic and more principled than the old Social Democratic
parties. But, because he has rejected the sort of overall view that
Marxism has of capitalism as a system governed by economic laws, he
thinks that problems such as the threat of nuclear war, inequality and
poverty can be dealt with piecemeal. In other words, another version of
the same old, failed reformism.
Kolko is a historian who has specialised in analysing wars and he
thinks that history demonstrates that the best chance of a mass working
class movement to overthrow capitalism will
be after some war that the
ruling class will have foolishly embarked on. He could be right. But
let’s hope he’s not.
ALB
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