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Fascism And The Squeezed Middle

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by baz (U14258304) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  We hear a lot from the political/media class about the 'squeezed middle' and the 'underclass' nowadays. These aren't new concepts: in the early 1940s Erich Fromm, in his book The Fear Of Freedom*, was writing about the middle class being squeezed in Weimar Germany:
  
  "While the years between 1924 and 1928 brought economic improvement and new hopes to the lower middle class, these gains were wiped out by the depression after 1929. As in the period of inflation, the middle class, squeezed in between the workers and the upper classes, was the most defenceless groupand therefore the hardest hit."
  
  Fromm gives a description of this section of society, which became the bedrock of the Nazi vote:
  
  "The answer to question why the Nazi ideology was so appealing to the lower middle class has to be sought for in the social character of the lower middle class. Their social character was markedly different from that of the working class, of the higher strata of the middle class, and of the nobility before the war of 1914.As a matter of fact, certain features were characteristic for this part of the middle class throughout its history: their love of the strong, hatred of the weak, their pettiness, hostility, thriftiness with feelings as well as with money, and essentially their asceticism. Their outlook on life was narrow, they suspected and hated the stranger, and they were curious and envious of their acquaintances, rationalizing their envy as moral indignation; their whole life based on the principle of scarcity - economically as well as psychologically."
  
  Today's constant referral to a 'squeezed middle', which is also told it is the nation's backbone and is being ripped of by an 'underclass', is eerily reminiscent of a people being tolf they were a super race being held down by 'untermenschen'.
  
  Are our political/media class playing with fire?
  
  
  *Erich Fromm, The Fear Of Freedom, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1942.
  
  ISBN 0-415-25542-2 hardback
  
  ISBN 0-415-25388-8 paperback
  
  

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• Message 2

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  Posted by Thomas (U14985443) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  baz:
  
  ...in the early 1940s Erich Fromm, in his book The Fear Of Freedom* ...Β 
  
  There might be something relevant in what youΒ΄ve cited from his book. Considering who and what Fromm was, not only in the light of the 20th July 1944 plott, the date of his book canΒ΄t be a reliable source about the description of the situations in the Weimar Republic.
  
  There might be some similarities concerning the middle class in the past and in the present time. To me it was more the financial crisis that effected the "squeezing" of them not the working class and where the middle class had most been better off in some ways, the workers were lost.

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• Message 3

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  baz
  
  Amongst other things I have written recently about the hope between the wars that it might be an "Age of the Common Man"- because so many people came back from the wars feeling angry and disillusioned about the Imperial and Industrial scale of the age that had just closed..
  
  Many of them thought that in a new post Imperial age with smaller self-determined states- etc they could keep out of the huge Metropolises and just have some kind of family size business where they could be their own boss.
  
  This included lots of those who thought that with modern technology that they had learned about in the war they could actually make smallholdings work producing crops as food and commodities. Richer Middle Class people understood the risks in business- and many lost almost everything expecially in Germany in 1923- families like the Bielenberg's of Hamburg that Christabel Bielenberg married into came from generations of merchants and traders going right back to the Hanseatic League. They knew better than to blame the crises on anyone in particular..
  
  But -as in the present crisis- people with small businesses could easily be persuaded that they were being unfairly treated by the Jewish banking system.. And for "Corporal Hitler" they could easily become the vital bedrock of the Nazi establishment. They and their children were often perfect people to be 'blocleitters' those who spied on, bossed around and informed upon their neighbours and neighbourhood.- including those Nazi "garden cities" and suburbs where city and country mixed.
  
  Cass

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• Message 4

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  Posted by wiseraphael (U14258190) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  The Germans believed because they wanted to believe.....and I think you'll find that the ones who "believed" most were mainly lower class.
  
  They needed a scapegoat; so when they were told that the Jews stayed at home during the War and got rich they wanted to believe it......actually over 100,000 Jews served in the German army in WW!, 12,000 lost their lives fighting for Germany and something like 11,000 actually won various levels of Iron Cross.
  The percentage of Jewish bank directors was tiny.
  But hey, that didn,t matter...the scapegoats were there and the vast majority were only too willing to go along with it....working class, middle class or upper class.
  
  I only hope the German have changed.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  wideraphael
  
  Yes.. But there was a process and a learning curve.
  
  A key moment came with the elections.. probably those in Schleswig-Holstein (Thomas will correct me) which may have been a plebiscite like the Saar Coalfield over whether they wished to be part of Germany or Denmark..
  
  For Hitler and the Nazi Party these were key elections because what support they had up to this point was largely in the cities.. But this was a predominantly rural agricultural region with producers being devastated (as they were all over the world) by the collapse in the prices they could get for their produce- and therefore squeezed terribly by the interest of loans that they had taken out hoping for better times just a couple of years before.. Nasty bankers were easy to blame with ideas- that we see once again- that global financiers will always come out OK from other people's misery... And in Germany there was a longstanding idea that international houses like the Rothschilds had an advantage in this post-Versailles world of lots of small self-determined states. It was very easy to persuade these countryfolk that it was all the fault of those city-ghetto Jews, and the Nazis were then able to roll out this message nationwide.
  
  Cass

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• Message 6

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  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 30th September 2011

  The "squeezed middle" in the UK are precisely the people who vote, and vote in marginal constituencies where British general elections are won and lost. In those terms, they are actually the most influential group in UK politics.

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• Message 7

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  Posted by baz (U14258304) on Saturday, 1st October 2011

  The Germans believed because they wanted to believe.....and I think you'll find that the ones who "believed" most were mainly lower class.Β 
  
  I don't agree with that, Raph. Fascism has always been a middle class vice: one only has to look at Chile, Argentina, Spain, and all the other fascist regimes in history. Their first and foremost function was to suppress the workers: Hitler did the same but added the horrible ingredient of racism to the mix.
  
  

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• Message 8

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Saturday, 1st October 2011

  Their first and foremost function was to suppress the workers: Hitler did the same but added the horrible ingredient of racism to the mix.Β  I think, apart from unskilled ones, workers were part of the middle class, and, by and large, fascist dictators were popular among them. Of course, Mussolini cracked down hard on Mafia, which would help the Americans to land in Italy, for example.

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• Message 9

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 1st October 2011

  Yes. Much depends upon the definition of "the working class"..
  
  There is a good case for saying that the skilled working class and the lower middle class are the categories who depend most upon their work and the least upon Capital..
  
  Even unskilled "navvies" building canals railways etc have only got work because of Capital investment..
  
  The small businessman and the skilled worker have worked hard to invest in their skills and their grasp of the "mysteries" of their trade, and then depend upon the quality of their work in order to make a living.
  
  Cass

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