Capitalism + Democracy = Dictatorship: Counterrevolution in Germany and Chile

Simeon J. Newman, University of Toronto

Democrats let power fall to the authoritarian far right in moments of crisis. Why? In this paper, I use secondary literature to refine two interrelated theses that are together capable of explaining these dynamics in the cases of Germany (from Weimar to Nazism) and Chile (from Allende to Pinochet). / Thesis 1: Liberal democracy divides the left. Liberal-democratic institutions are the product of left-wing mobilization. Once instantiated, they have sufficient credibility to attract the center-left but not the far left. In both Germany and Chile, this led to an intraleft division. This reflected the fact that liberal-democratic institutions had attracted the different wings of the left differentially: they drew the center-left in, whereas the far left remained outside. The intraleft cleavage weakened the left-wing agenda in absolute terms. / Thesis 2: Under capitalism, investment decisions weigh massively into the success or failure of any incumbent government. When the center-left is in government and prosecutes socialistic reforms, it provokes a capital strike. Conditions therefore get worse before the imagined socialist future when they will get better. In both Germany and Chile, socialist reforms prompted capital to unite ranks. This took some time, as several factors divided the distinct fractions of the capitalist class. / In both cases, these factors led to a successful counterrevolution. The counterrevolutionary coalition was comprised differently in each case. In Germany, the petty bourgeois crisis stratum prompted the Junker and industrial elites to unite ranks. In Chile, a wing of the military, cut from a similar cloth as Junkers and backed by the U.S., was in the commanding position for the entire counterrevolution, but benefited from mass petty bourgeois political outrage at the government. Because the left had relied on liberal-democratic institutions, which weakened it politically, it could do little to oppose the triumph of the counterrevolution.

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 Presented in Session 219. Domination through Administration