Today’s fascist political forces derive a significant portion of their power from accumulated wealth, which is the product of labor. So why not recognize the working class’s ability to refuse this labor and pursue an alternative political vision? In their article on countering the resurgence of fascism in Germany, Antje Dieterich and Daniel Gutiérrez argue that trade unions should be considered essential organizations within the anti-fascist ecosystem, as well as an extra-parliamentary structure of the anti-fascist economy.
*
When one assesses the growth of fascism in Germany or the global north more generally, it is hard to get a grasp of the conjuncture without understanding the general sense of powerlessness produced by a half century of neoliberalization.
By neoliberalization we refer to a historic bundle of processes and projects that have become globally hegemonic since the 1980s and responded to the crisis of the 1960s and 70s: the destruction of the welfare state by means of privatization of previously public goods and services, their financialization and the financialization of the economy as a whole, the freeing of capital to invest where wages and taxes are lowest, and the technological and communicative infrastructure capable of allowing capital to develop a neoliberal process of globalization that pits worker against worker in a race to the bottom resulting in the emaciation of the global trade union movement.
The left wing of the neoliberal project
Critical to the success of neoliberal project was the ideological capture of traditional structures of working-class opposition especially in the formal political arena. The Social Democrats after Gerhard Schröder, New Labour after Tony Blair, and the Democrats after Bill Clinton are examples of parties that traditionally represented working-class interests but abandoned working-class politics, further entrenching neoliberalization. In essence, they became the left wing of the neoliberal project.
Understandably, the traditional vehicles of social democracy have been abandoned, as calls from organizations of traditional working-class representation are understood to have only contributed to the sustained enshittification of everyday life. The very word ‘solidarity’ has been converted, for many, into the dog whistle of their suffering. We can see this in real time in Germany as the Social Democrats usher in a catastrophic labor reform package and work hand-in-hand with the Christian Democrats to set fire to the last kindling of credibility they had left. Ultimately, in the hands of the Social Democrats, politics is not a vehicle of change for the common good, but a haughty sermon about why we can’t have the good life.
From neoliberalism to a resrugence of fascism
Calls for solidarity that lack an opponent to blame for immiseration are not the answer to improving everyday life. It’s no surprise that people turn to competition or “negative solidarity” and embrace political projects that abandon the idea of fighting collectively for the common good. Although the mantra ‘you can’t trust those up there’ seems to reflect actual lived experience, we are seeing the rise of a politics that promises a vision of ‘fair’ competition among entrepreneurialized subjects. This vision excludes the ‘corrupt’ political and social ‘others,’ such as migrants, transgender people, and Muslims, who are supposedly responsible for ‘our’ immiseration and entrepreneurial failure.
As social theorist Rodrigo Nunes explains, the far-right’s “discourse can offer relief from individual blame – failure, which would normally be the responsibility of the individual, in this case is not – without acknowledging the action of social structures on our lives.”
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the excesses of neoliberal capitalist political forces (and the lack of checks on them) facilitate, if not fuel, the rise of fascism. The economic leaders of contemporary fascism dictate its erratic, contradictory, and always catastrophic trajectories. They are simultaneously unimaginative and unearthly economic titans who are heralded as geniuses. Moreover, contemporary fascism comprises an assemblage of political and ideological networks that are tightly linked in a shared project of denialism, organized moral panic, and scapegoating. This system rules over the gears of political economy at humanity’s most decisive juncture.
Anti-fascist economics
In this regard, Isabella Weber’s call for “anti-fascist economics” is a crucial and necessary component of a broader political response to the rise of fascism. As Weber explains, such an economics is centered around “addressing the material conditions that make fascism appealing. It’s a program restoring universal dignity rather than fueling divides and blaming scapegoats for the crisis.”
First, we must acknowledge that today’s fascist political forces derive their power from accumulated wealth – the product of labor. Actualizing labor’s capacity to refuse this labor and pursue an alternative political vision is essential. Therefore, unions must be considered keystone organizations within the anti-fascist organizational ecology and an extra-parliamentary structure of anti-fascist economics.
In order for unions to fully realize their anti-fascist potential, we must understand how they structure themselves to exploit fascist vulnerabilities. Following a brief analysis of some definitive features, obstacles, and opportunities of contemporary fascism in Germany, we will attempt to outline how trade unions must align themselves to best defeat this existential threat.
21st century fascism in Germany
Without delving into an academic debate about whether what we are seeing in Germany today is a form of fascism, it should be obvious that there is an ongoing process of fascistization. This process brings together a diverse group of actors, structures, and discourses around common enemies, such as democratic institutions, the rule of law, migrants, the disabled, and LGBTQ individuals.
Like much fascist discourse around the world today, contemporary fascism in Germany conjures the image of a victimized Volk (‘the people’) under siege by unruly, degenerate migrants who are supported by a corrupt, cosmopolitan, university-trained progressive elite that has pillaged and corroded a claimed former glory through political, economic, and cultural mismanagement.
Definitively, the economic remedy proposed by the AfD is not unlike that of its Trumpian counterparts: a kind of nationalist neoliberalism that simultaneously is 1) highly skeptical of EU regulation; 2) nonetheless desires capital to be unshackled by any democratic constraint from either trade unions or the state, and; 3) requires, at least discursively, a purging and policing of migrant labor through nativist policies of ‘remigration.’ It is precisely this contradictory, capitalist-driven ‘elite populist’ economic project that poses its greatest vulnerability and weakness.
In other words, the kernel of truth upon which the legitimacy of the AfD is based is the political and economic failure of neoliberalism in Germany to improve living standards for most people. Instead, the combination of privatization, financialization, labor and capital deregulation, and the rise of tech and finance capital has worsened everyday life for most people. Political leaders from the ‘democratic’ arena – be they from the Greens, the Social Democrats, the CDU, or even Die Linke during their time in state governments – either supported the neoliberal project or failed to meaningfully combat it. This has led to the very real and geographically unequal economic crisis that Germany is experiencing today.
Window of opportunity
However, we firmly believe that there is currently an opportunity that must be seized. The political remedy that the AfD proposes against the economic malaise afflicting the overwhelming majority will invariably lead to a worsening of economic conditions, as evidenced by the similar Trump project in the United States.
This is precisely because – to put this more plainly – it is a capitalist project that ruthlessly sacrifices socially constructed ‘others’ for the purposes of maintaining class hegemony without either surrendering power or economic improvements. As historian Salar Mohandesi remarks, unlike the historical experience of National Socialism, which did deliver (momentary) improvements in the quality of life of workers deemed Ayran, the AfD, like the rest of the global far-right, will offer only more of the same. The only foreseeable deliverable is an affective, subjective ‘relief’ against feminist and anti-racist discourses and culture.
While the AfD has been effective in dividing the working class in Germany, anti-fascist forces must seize the contradiction between its capitalist-driven populism and the economic immiseration that will result from it. Unions can play a critical role in this effort.
Solidarity must deliver the goods
If we are correct to understand the rise of the AfD as a variation of neoliberalism from below, wherein the working-class embraces a ruthless competition of all against all, this is at least partially because projects that claim a politics of solidarity have failed to satisfactorily, noticeably, and meaningfully deliver social, economic, and political improvements.
In order to achieve this, a core strategic tenet of anti-fascist politics must be to improve quality of life and cultivate workers’ power over decision-making mechanisms that affect quality of life through the actualization of solidarity. In short: anti-fascist economics.
However, the state apparatus is not the only structure through which anti-fascist economics is possible. The bargaining table is also such a mechanism. Union campaigns can bring workers together across difference by centering struggles around demands that are so deeply and broadly felt that they are capable of mobilizing majorities.
The ability to strike
The function of trade unions within the political ecosystem is unique. What distinguishes them from all other social movement organizations is their capacity to deliver increased power over means and ends of their labor through its specialization in withholding labor – the ability to strike.
Our unique leverage as workers is our employers’ dependency on our labor. Until the day they can go the corner kiosk and buy a box of labor power to sprinkle on top of the machines to make them do what they need them to do (effectively, the wet dream of Artificial General Intelligence), this is our means of leverage nulli alio similis to win influence over the decisions that affect us outside of the formal political arena. In short, organized labor is our source of power.
And when conducted through a Bargaining for the Common Good framework, we can also articulate broader coalitions of community beyond the workers of the workplace who have stakes in the outcome of the struggle itself. Given such stakes, demands are formulated with those users of services directly affected by the outcome to bring them into the struggle and leveraging broader associational power.
Learning from hospital workers in Berlin
To this end, the Berliner Hospital Movement (Berliner Krankenhausbewegung) of which the service workers’ union ver.di is the central actor is instructive. Over the last decade, hospital workers in Berlin formed alliances with broader community coalitions, including patient associations, to improve working conditions and thus the quality of services, following years of privatization and financialization. This crystalized most concretely when the combined movement won codetermination rights on nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in 2021, resulting in improved services for patients (better care) and better conditions for workers (less and more focused labor).
The outcome of such struggles go beyond the actual workplace. They result not only in the improvement in the quality of life of workers and the community members who depend on their labor, but in the expansion of their decision-making power via the bargaining table. The actualization of solidarity then becomes the structure through which ‘the goods’ are delivered – satisfactorily, noticeably, and meaningfully.
Note from the editors: In the second part of their essay, the authors will expand on the trajectories that trade unions must follow to best defeat the existential threat of contemporary fascism in Germany.