Abstract

:Roger Griffin’s paper points towards the importance of historical time when discussing fascism. Walter Benjamin’s Theses, the discussion of which informs Griffin’s paper, engages with the topic of historical time at several points, especially in its discussion of the theory of progress that Benjamin found in German Social Democracy, to which the Theses was directly opposed. Revisiting sympathetically a theory of progress akin to that of Karl Kautsky and other Marxist writers enables us to add substance to the key Marxist concept of fascism as a reactionary movement. Combining this idea with an emphasis on the autonomous, mass character of fascism enables us to grasp the dynamics of fascism as a contradictory whole: a future-orientated and activist politics without revolutionary content