Richard Luckett on
a Fischer of truth Ernst Fischer is known in this country for his books on aesthetics and his two anthologies, Marx in his Own Words and Lenin in his Own Words. In Austria, his native country, his rePutation is both greater and more ambiguous; he first came to prominence as a journalist and propagandist for the Social P,emocrats; in 1934, after the defeat of the ,viennese workers who rose in an attempt to mustrate Dollfuss's plan to dissolve political (tganisations, he fled the country and joined the Communist Party; in 1945 he returned to Austria from Russia, where he had spent the War working for the International's anti-Nazi ,secti on, and became, briefly, Minister for f4ducation. He also resumed his work as a Journalist and writer, and on the basis of his writings achieved a wider fame in Eastern Europe. At the root of this new celebrity was hU s increasing opposition to Russian irpPerialism, and his articulation of a Philosophical position which, whilst it remained firmly Marxist, implicitly denied inost of the Soviet orthodoxies. He was ex Iled from the Communist Party, yet at the same time his thought had a profound effect °n Marxist intellectuals in Czechoslovakia and the other Eastern European states. It has nc't been without its effect on Marxist inthellectuals in the West, though they have not ad the opportunity to test it against a Russian invasion.
. When Fischer published his autobiography
1969 he entitled it, modestly enough, iteeollections — and Reflections. In its English Iranslation it is called An Opposing Man, and is worth pondering the reasons for this. Aischer's father was an officer of the Imperial "strian Army and not, we gather, a disting4fliished ornament of his profession. His :11.9 ther also came from an army family, but s';!Is time of genuine distinction; it is clear that jue felt that she had married beneath her, and all the protracted and vicious domestic 12,"arrels Fischer took her side. Matters neached a climax when Colonel Fischer aniteGunced his intention to cut her househiePing and Ernst, aged fourteen, picked up it.s father's revolver and threatened him with w On the outbreak of war Colonel Fischer aets,apPointed to the cOmmand of a military wmY, and in his absence mother and son po're drawn closer together. Ernst wrote su&trY, affected a romantic Bohemianism, lov ered a nervous breakdown, had his first 414-affair whilst convalescing in Switzerland, joined up in 1917, just in time to Ceorience the collapse of the army. Shortly 1,7:re it happened he was visited in his for, reor.d artillery position by the colonel of his thtinlent, who attempted to bawl him out for Vhcondition of his men's uniforms and boots. bet„en Fischer pointed to the difference cok'vee, n the conditions pertaining at his thes-nei's villa and those of a front-line swamp, te, adjutant accompanying the colonel at
"'Med to draw his pistol only to have his An n
La wPposing Man Ernst Fischer (Allen move imitated by Fischer's gunners. It was then, he tells us, that he came to know what the word solidarity meant.
The significance of the word was to be brought home to him again. As a penniless student in Graz he joined a 'student company' which stood to arms to defend the town hall against a workers' march; it was not that he wished to defend the despised bourgeoisie, but that he was overwhelmed by an urge for brotherhood, and frightened of a proletariat which, in the post-war world, was better off than the dispossessed official class of a vanished empire. His mother upbraided him for his part in this; his father died fulminating against Jews and Socialists. When Fischer went to work in a factory he proved inept, but was helped by a girl who could do the work better than he. He eventually found a job on a Social Democrat newspaper, and thus joined the party which, by 1930, was to be the largest in Austria. Desire to impress a woman he loved led him to the discovery that he was an able public speaker. Yet against a sense of fulfillment in speaking, in writing, and in erotic experience stood deep dissatisfactions, a feeling of futility, fragmentation and waste. The person whom he most loved was his sister; they abstained from incest, not in response to the patriarchal taboo, but out of a sense that carnal knowledge would falsify their true understanding; they shared the same bed against the cold winter's nights until the day when Ernst went to Salzburg on journalistic business and his sister, who had a chill, contracted septicaemia and died. The Social Democrats continued to attract votes, but the more powerful they became the further they seemed from real power. Austria lacked a democratic tradition, both the right and the left had attempted coups, and the menance of Hitler loomed. Behind the Social Democrats was the armed Schutzbund, but the right could rely on — and indeed were largely led by — the Heimwehr, the Nazi gangs, and the forces of the Peasant League. When Dollfuss attempted to strengthen his position against Hitler by putting down the Schutzbund he in fact made it possible for Hitler to move in. By that time Fischer was in Russia.
It will be seen that, in his early career at least, Fischer was hardly an 'opposing man.' He fought with the big battalions even though, in the first instance, the big battalions were defeated. But if we relate the notion of opposition to that of alienation then the position is clearer. Marx defined alienation as man's inability to see himself in his own works; the social world, a man made thing, oppresses man. If we associate with this the notion of repression, with its Freudian connotations, then we come close to defining Fischer's experience. After 1934 he became. for a while, convinced that 'official' communism was the answer; certainly, in terms of realpolitik, it was the only bastion against Hitler. But his Russian years showed him, despite his desperate attempts to see things differently, the reality of the Soviet terror, and
they engendered in him a new belief, in Austria and the Austrian character. Out of this experience came a new attempt at definition, the rejection of the new, alienating autonomy of the 'official' party, and a re-examination of the'autonomy of the self.
All of this helps to explain the structure of the book. As historical memoirs Fischer's recollections have little value; they conform more closely to the Dichtung und Wahrheit tradition. The new title-though it is, as I have tried to show, in some ways appropriate — does not greatly contribute to a just estimate of the work, since it emphasises the polemical aspect, the move away from Stalinism and post-Stalin imperialism, and there is little in this that cannot be found, more cogently expressed, in the pages of Arthur Koestler. The narrative stops short in 1945 and the most specific passages, those on the decade beforehand, add little if anything to the established record and contain a good deal, of dross. The liveliest concern the Bulgarian communist, Georgi Dimitrov, who obviously became something of a hero to Fischer, and whom he knew well during their shared Russian exile. The most moving are those in which Fischer looks back, with unflinching honesty, at some of the articles he wrote during that period, in defence of the monstrous operations of the Soviet machine. In his opening chapter Fischer claims that what he is offering amount to "the confessions of a man who was weak but who endeavoured to live beyond his strength." It is a claim which seems both moderate and just, and if there is an implied comparison with Rousseau then it is worth noting that in his Confessions Rousseau managed to suppress a number of betrayals of a kind far less defensible than Fischer's reluctance to face the realities of Stalinism.
But the comparison also works in the other direction. The publishers have obtained for this book a translation, by Peter and Betty Ross, which deserves the highest praise. They have also tampered with the title and provided as an introduction an account by John Berger of Fischer's death in 1972. Of this introduction it can only be said that either the feeling or the prose style is questionable, and it is to be hoped that the latter is the case. The blurb tells us that in the book "politics are inevitably mixed with love, Eros with Nietzsche, life with death," and that it "will probably come to be seen as one of the key accounts of the twentieth century experience." It would be more truthful to say that it may come to be so regarded by Marxist intellectuals, but that for those fortunate enough not to need emancipation from the shackles of official Marxism it will look quite different. Autobiography involves both a chronicle of actions and emotions, and an evaluation of those actions and emotions. In his last years Fischer attained a genuine wisdom which he convincingly conveys. Yet part of his evaluation of his past amounts to an admission that his early and jejeune romanticism persisted too long, that he succumbed to the temptations of rhetoric and easy drama. In other words, the depth of his emotions and the degree of consideration behind his actions is in doubt. He brings the reader to a condition of understanding and of sympathy, but a sense of weakness predominates. His outlook is solipsistic, in a limiting sense; his apprehension of the sufferings of others is too closely related to drives and frustrations within himself. There is no self-pity, but there is an absence of pity for others. At no point does he say "This being so, what else could I do?" and he does not see the application of this to the rest of the world. No great effort of the imagination is needed to relate this to the unspoken postulates about class and history that condition his thought. And for those of us who are not Marxists it is these conditioning factors that necessarily limit larger claims for his book.
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