Fascism and Resource Depletion

T Vijayendra

[This is meant to be an article for activist education and therefore it starts with explaining basic concepts and at the same time it avoids academic references.]

This essay is divided into the following sections: 1. What is Fascism? 2. What is Resource Depletion? 3. The Road to Fascism: Resource Depletion and the Crisis of Capitalism 4. Fascism in India Today 5. Resource Depletion in South Asia 6. How Fascism Can and Cannot be Fought! 7. How Will Fascism End?

1. What is Fascism?
Fascism is a specific form of bourgeois (capitalist) control of the state machinery through ideological means. This is exercised when the bourgeoisie feels threatened about its ability to rule. It is characterised by the big bourgeoisie and the government openly coming together.

Fascism is a philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader, subordination of individual will to the state’s authority, and harsh suppression of dissent. Martial virtues are celebrated, while liberal and democratic values are disparaged. It draws its support from the unorganised and underemployed masses of lumpen proletariat, petty bourgeoisie and petty shopkeepers.

Fascism arose during the 1920s and ’30s, partly out of fear of the rising power of the working classes. It is characterised by its protection of business and landowning elites and its preservation of class systems. The leaders of the fascist governments of Italy (1922-43), Germany (1933-45), and Spain (1939-75)–Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco–were portrayed to their public as the embodiment of the strength and resolve necessary to rescue their nations from political and economic chaos. Japanese fascists (1936-45) fostered belief in the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit and taught subordination to the state and personal sacrifice.

To understand fascism better, we have to begin with some basic concepts.

The state is an instrument of the ruling class, meant to serve its interests and keep the ruled classes under control. This control is rarely done by force, although the threat is always present. Most of the time, however, this control is exercised through a set of cultural processes which legitimise and justify the system of state power. In the medieval, feudal era it was mainly religion. Religions ask people to be ethical and good while allowing the ruling class to carry on exploitation and oppression. While religion has not vanished in modern democratic society it does not have the same role. In fact, normally secularism means the separation of state and religion.

However, an aspect of the medieval era has been retained in modern society–the institution of patriarchal family. We mention it here because it has a strong connection with fascism. In Wilhelm Reich’s (1897-1957) path breaking study of fascism, ‘Mass Psychology of Fascism’ (1933), he shows the relationship of the authoritarian family and fascism. Chapter V of the book contains the famous statement that the family is the first cell of the fascist society: “From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it. It is, however, its central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation.”

Social tendencies against authoritarian families–love marriage, inter-caste, inter-religion marriages, homosexuality and other aspects of sexuality also threaten authorita-rianism in general and therefore are seen as threats by the bourgeoisie and the state. Fascist tendencies oppose these urges for freedom. In India, the KHAP Panchayat and honour killings testify to this and often political leaders not only fail to condemn them, but also take a lenient view about them.

Today the main ideological form is democracy and election. Election gives legitimacy for the ruling class to rule through elected representatives of people. These representatives belong to political parties and different classes can influence them. On paper, most parties represent wide sections of the society (though communist parties are supposed to represent the working class), but in reality, they get influenced by the bourgeoisie or the capitalist class. This is done in many ways, chief among them is funding of the elections.

At different times, the ruling class feels threatened by different forces. Sometimes it is due to the protests of workers and the people. In such cases, it makes the state use all its repressive machinery–police, armed police and sometimes even armies. In extreme cases, it can invoke an ‘emergency’–suspending all democratic rights. This can be a form of fascism.

It can also get threatened by competition from other countries or control of resources by other countries and it may want to go to war with them. In such cases it has to obtain consent of the people and their support. This is often done by invoking patriotism. This can also contribute to the rise of fascism.

Sometimes, fear or hatred towards other communities is also used. Hitler used the superiority of the so called ‘Aryan’ race and hatred towards Jews for this purpose. In India, Hindu nationalism uses hatred towards Muslim for this purpose. Islamophobia is strengthening fascism in many countries in Europe too.

2. What is Resource Depletion?
Growth of the economy is a necessity for the capitalist system. That is why people constantly hear of growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product, which is considered an overall indicator of size of the economy of the country) in the media. Now, growth of the economy requires an increase in the rate of resource consumption. The rate of resource consumption increases at a ‘compound rate’, i.e. it is calculated as a percentage of the current rate which itself is continuously increasing. A good way to understand the relation between growth rate and the rate of resource consumption is to find out how many years it would take to double the rate of consumption of resources at a given growth rate. A simplified (but fairly accurate) formula is: 70 percent growth rate = No. of years in which the rate of consumption of resources doubles.

Thus, if the growth rate is 1% per annum, the doubling time is 70 years. If the growth rate is 2% per annum, the doubling time is 35 years and it will increase 4 times in 70 years! Capitalism has therefore resulted in a relentless increase in the rate of resource consumption. This aggressive and ever-increasing demand for resources results in commons resources, on which poor and ordinary people depend, being taken over and used up by corporations. However, the actual increase in the amount of resources consumed depends upon the rate at which you are currently consuming them. Thus, say an advanced capitalist country consumes 100 units whereas a developing country consumes only 10. Doubling the consumption for the former means 200 units whereas for the latter it would mean only 20 units. That is why the developing countries aim at a growth rate of 10 percent or so whereas the advanced countries cannot hope to have a growth rate of more than 2-3 percent.

Another factor about doubling resource consumption when the growth rate remains constant is that with each doubling, the consumption is greater than the sum total of all the consumption till then. Let us see how this happens. Consider the series 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on. Each successive term is greater than the sum of all the previous terms. Thus, 8 is greater than 1+ 2+ 4 = 7. As one can see, with each doubling, the total increases to a bigger and bigger number. Eventually, the number will be astronomical. The total quantity of fossil fuels and other mineral resources available is finite, and with time, a crisis must inevitably result. As a result of the growth imperatives of capitalism, people have already arrived at a crisis point.

3. The Road to Fascism: Resource Depletion and the Crisis of Capitalism
Resource depletion does not always lead to fascism. However, the classical fascism in Germany and Japan were primarily due to their lack of access to petroleum – a major resource in capitalist development. On the other hand, the allies in the Second World War – USA, England, France and later USSR either had their own oil (USA and USSR), or access to colonies in West Asia and Indonesia (England, France and Holland) and therefore did not develop this kind of fascism.

Today, however, depletion of oil reserves is severe, as are ecological disasters resulting from excessive consumption of fossil fuels. Thus, the world is facing an even more severe crisis. The oil crisis led to the financial meltdown of 2008, and since then capitalism has entered a long recession. The manner in which the COVID pandemic was managed and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are desperate attempts of capitalism to come back on rail.

The consumption of fossil fuels continues to increase and peoplr are now in a disaster phase. This crisis has several aspects:

1.    Ecological (abiotic)–Giving rise to global warming, extreme climate events such as floods, hurricanes, and forest fires etc.
2.    Ecological (biotic)–Reducing the survival basis of flora and fauna, endangering the survival of species: Species extinction is taking place at an unprecedented rate. Ecologists call it the Sixth Mass Extinction in the history of life on Earth. However, this is the first extinction caused by a single species.
3.    Human society–Unprecedented inequality; people are suffering and organising themselves to protest against governments.
The ruling class, threatened by these protests, is getting more and more fascistic. This is happening in different forms in different countries. In many countries, including the USA, England, France, Germany and Northern Europe, right wing forces are gaining strength riding on Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. ‘Strong’ leaders like Putin and Xi are emerging. Local wars and warlike postures are getting more and more common.
4.    Fascism in India Today–There is no doubt that India has become a fascist state. While there have been fascistic tendencies even before the BJP came to power, it has accentuated since. In fact, one could even say that the BJP came to power because the crisis became severe after the 2008 financial meltdown and BJP was in an ideologist position to use Islamophobia and Hindutva to come to power. Here are the main features:

1.    Anti-labour laws are passed.
2.    Democratic rights are suppressed.
3.    Human rights activists are arrested under special laws and kept in jail without bail and without trial.
4.    The big bourgeoisie and the government are openly together. Adani, Ambani and Modi are like brothers! The government has forsaken lakhs of crores of loan to the big bourgeoisie. The ‘electoral bond’ scam nicely exposed this ‘brotherhood’.
(They are most likely to have bought electoral bonds, but their names don’t figure. They might have bought the bonds through shell companies.)
5.    Religious superiority of Hinduism and Hate of Muslims is used to stay in power through elections.
6.    Pogroms and atrocities are carried out against Muslims.
7.    To a smaller extent this is done against Christians too.
8.    When there is a criticism of India in the international press or international human rights institutions, the response is ‘patriotic’. It is argued that ‘they’ want to keep India backward and so ‘they’ are criticising. India’s growth and GDP rates are constantly paraded to show how great India is and how great the fascist leader Modi is!
9.    Ancient Indian (Hindu) greatness is also constantly paraded and India is portrayed as a teacher of the world in spiritual matters.
Of course, features 1 to 3 existed even before the BJP came to power, albeit in less virulent and overt form.
5.    Resource Depletion in South Asia–It is better to consider just two resources – energy and water. The focus will be mainly India as it is the biggest country in the region. It is the depletion of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) that is the essential threat driving not only India but the entire capitalist world towards right-wing politics and fascism. This is happening in the USA, Australia, France and Germany in a visible and virulent fashion. Strong leaderships in Russia, China and India have emerged bringing ‘greatness’ and ‘glory’ to their countries!

Energy
The principal sources of energy in capitalism are fossil fuels. The era of hydro-electricity has more or less ended, and although there is a lot of hype about renewable energy sources, on closer examination it can be shown that they are not significant.

Among fossil fuels, South Asia has coal but practically no petroleum. Most of the twentieth century world politics was influenced by availability of petrol. West Asia played a major role. In 1973, realising that petroleum was a limited resource, the Arab countries decided to control petroleum production by forming a cartel, namely, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). While the OPEC countries became very rich, the region became a theatre for wars. Today, the world’s petroleum resources have depleted considerably. Therefore, while on the one hand the wars for their control have intensified, on the other hand, the focus is shifting to the remaining resource–coal.

Coal is the dirtiest of all fuels in the world–from the point of production to its use. Only the end product, electricity, appears clean! India and China both still have vast reserves of coal and are becoming important centres of capitalism. Western capitalism is therefore encouraging the environmental movement against coal! It is true that air pollution in these countries–India and China–is very high and many cities are becoming unlivable!

If one widens the meaning of resources to include the waste absorption capacity of the environment, the overloading of sinks (including the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) can also be considered resource depletion. From the climate point of view, this has become a more urgent concern than the depletion of fossil fuel reserves.

Water
Due to capitalism in agriculture, the green revolution and white (milk) revolution being important manifestations of it, the water table has been continuously falling in many places in India. The reason is that these revolutions are all based on irrigation. In some places, large dams provide the water. In other places, tube wells are used to extract groundwater. Deep tube wells that came along with the green revolution in 1971 has helped to privatise water; because water under your own land is yours! Water has been part of the commons along with rivers, lakes and grasslands throughout history. Unsustainable extraction of groundwater led to a huge drop in the water table all over the country. In places where dry land farming has been the tradition, a shift to irrigated green revolution crops became common. Places that traditionally had a low water table–such as the Marathwada region in Maharashtra –have fared very badly in the last two decades. In many places, the entire population of villages migrates during summers.

In urban areas, local bodies such as lakes and ponds are getting polluted. They are often filled and the land is ‘acquired’ by builders illegally and developed as real estate. The building activity and increasing urban population is resulting in the depletion of groundwater. In the past, when people drew water from their wells manually, the water table used to be around 20 feet deep and never exceeded 50 feet. Today, in most places it is over 100 feet deep; even 500 feet is quite a common figure. Almost every building project starts with a deep tube well. Cities are also supplied with water pumped from distant rivers–Bengaluru from the river Kaveri, Hyderabad from the rivers Manjira, Krishna and Godavari, Kolkata from the Hooghly river, Indore from the river Narmada and so on. This implies further use of energy and more resource depletion.

Interstate disputes are common. The dispute over the Kaveri River between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has been going on for years. In the coming years, India’s dispute with Pakistan and Bangladesh over water will increase as both latter countries are dependent on India for their water resources. Their major rivers flow through India before reaching them and India can control the flow of water.

6.    How fascism can and cannot be fought!–The year 2024 is an important election year, and fascism is trying to strengthen itself by getting endorsement through votes as well. Putin in Russia has already gotten such an endorsement. So has Xi in China. In India, Modi has got it but with reduced strength and dependence on the coalition. In the USA, there is no choice– both parties are equally bad.

The fascist forces are gathering strength. One must also learn how to come together and  avoid mistakes. One must learn how not to fight fascism. One must reject all sectarian tendencies. One must resolve conflicts and cooperate in order to share resources in a fair manner. Most constructive work of ecological restoration must be local in which people must rise above divisions of caste, religion, class, etc. At the same time there should be mutual support among activists across interstate and international borders. Aggressive posturing must not be politically profitable.

Then one cannot call all the opposition parties as anti-fascist either. Nevertheless, they have come together opposing some of the excesses of the current political leadership. In the West, their support of Israel in the genocide of Palestinians is a touchstone. Opposition to them by students and working class organisations may prove to be a major anti-fascist front in the coming years. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is leaving a very small window of time for action. Lack of action on this front may render other forms of opposition to fascism very weak.

The central plank of opposition to fascism
The root of the crisis of capitalism is resource depletion and its effect on the climate crisis. For one thing the environment movement should be the central plank of the struggle against fascism. The environmental problem is not just national. It spills across boundaries and some aspects are global. Thus, warming is global whereas water problems can be regional. The most common demand for environmental action is to call for an end to fossil fuels. For water problems, local cooperation and restraint in using water should be the aim. The biggest guzzlers of water are the green revolution or chemical agriculture in rural areas and big industries.

On a regional basis, Pakistan and Bangladesh rivers flow from India. Snow-fed rivers for India flow from Nepal, Tibet and China. Therefore, if one wants water security there should be regional cooperation. However, the governments in these countries want to use more water than their share in order to serve capitalism and profits at the cost of people and future. For this, they go through aggressive postures, limited war-like confrontations and keep the tension high. They invoke a variety of discourses – patriotism, religion, distrust based on their own partial interpretation of history, etc. Therefore, the environment movement also has to be against such policies of the government of individual countries. At the same time, there has to be people-to-people regional cooperation among neighboring and regional counties. A regional coalition of environment movements of countries within a region is the need of the hour.

How Will Fascism End?
Fascism is an aspect of capitalism. It will end only with the end of capitalism. Such an end-of-an-era event will have multiple causes. There are four factors: 1. Inter-capitalist competition and struggle resulting in wars; 2. Resource Depletion; 3. Global warming and ecological degradation and 4. People’s struggle.

Today, all these are coming to maturity and one hopes the end of capitalism is not far. What people need to do is to work with full force in imagining alternatives and implementing. It is heartening to see that a lot of all this is already happening all over the world!

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Vol 57, No. 15 - 18, Oct 5 - Nov 2, 2024