Ungovernability has come to Capitol Hill in Washington, thanks primarily to the clash between reactionaries and fascists inside the Republican conference. When the Speaker of the House John Boehner resigned his post three weeks ago, on September 26, shortly after the visit of Pope Francis, many observers expected either House Majority Whip McCarthy or a compromise candidate to become speaker. Since then, much attention has focused on Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a dyed in the wool austerity ghoul who has never strayed far from the John Birch Society brand of politics, which is so common in Wisconsin Republican circles.

But now, Halloween is fast approaching, and no succession seems viable. Ryan is demanding a respectable majority of the 247 House Republicans. He also wants guarantees that the fascistic “Freedom Caucus” will not rebel, and discredit him by, for example, driving the United States into default and national bankruptcy over the issue of raising the national debt in November or December. But the freedom caucus is obdurate, and always regards compromises as betrayals of their barbaric principles of social reorganization.

The House Republicans are scheduled to meet Tuesday evening to attempt to break the logjam, but the signs are not auspicious. The result is that, not just the Republican conference, but the entire House Of Representatives is increasingly paralyzed, with the problem getting worse all the time. The Republicans are providing graphic proof that they cannot govern, but rather are capable only of the kind of ideological zoo parade in which the various brands of Austrianism, Confederate economics, extreme neoliberalism, and other toxic doctrines are showcased.

The problem the Republicans face is that any candidate capable of assembling a majority of the representatives will axiomatically be too moderate, too reasonable, and too willing to compromise (no matter how reactionary that person might be, like Ryan, in the eyes of an average person) for the tastes of the raving Freedom Caucus extremists. By contrast, any candidate who would please the Freedom Caucus would be too much of a stormtrooper, and for the Republicans who still aspire to some form of mainstream respectability.

This is the typical situation of political ungovernability, in which the center has collapsed and the two extremes have no common ground. We should hasten to point out that ungovernability of this type is not so much a matter of psychology as it is of economics. Partisanship and the refusal to cooperate are generated by economic decline, where a shrinking economic pie robs a government of its ability to dole out concessions to the various political factions so that they can bring home the bacon for their various constituents and donors. The US economy is in dire straits, and the concessions pie has shrunk so far that some factions, not only will not be gratified, they will be triaged and wiped out. In the current situation, lifeboat ethics prevail in the ruling class, with no guarantee that every interest group will find a seat at the table. In the resulting struggle for survival, partisanship and bitterness occur quite naturally.

Germany under the Weimar Republic between the end of World War I and Hitler’s seizure of power provides a number of interesting parallels to the current situation in the US House of Representatives. If we can say that the point of ungovernability in the U.S. House was reached in September-October 2015, then the analogous point of paralysis may well be considered the fall of the Herman Müller Grand Coalition government in March, 1930.

Müller’s coalition was one of the broadest of the entire Weimar period, with two large members, the Social Democrats and the Catholic Center Party, and two smaller partners, the German Democratic Party and the German People’s Party of Stresemann. After 1929 as today, the effect of an economic depression is often to destroy centrist political forces for the reasons which have just been indicated. In the Weimar Republic, groups like the German Democratic Party, The German People’s Party, and the ultra-reactionary German National People’s Party were all rapidly eroded, in just the same way that Blue Dog Democrats and liberal Republicans have been.

The fall of Müller came over the issue of how to finance the unemployment compensation system, which was coming under increasing strain because of the results of the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. Some of the coalition parties wanted an increase in taxation on workers, while the labor-based Social Democrats rejected this. Müller himself was ready to increase taxes on the workers, but the rest of the party leadership was not. This led to the fall of the Grand Coalition government on March 27, 1930.

The significance of this date is that it marks the end of the last government during the entire Weimar Republic which was able to assemble a majority of the parliament in its support. From this point on, up until the seizure of power by Hitler in January 1933, no German government enjoyed an actual parliamentary majority. Instead, the various chancellors had to rely on the quasi-dictatorial emergency powers of the Reich President von Hindenburg. From this point on, if the Chancellor wanted a law passed, he had to convince Hindenburg, who would then enact it by way of an emergency decree (Notverordnung).

This system proved disastrous, especially under Chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Catholic Center Party, who carried out an austerity so severe that he became universally hated as the Hunger Chancellor. Brüning had studied at the London School of Economics, the home of such Austrian school crackpots as von Hayek and von Mises. In proportional terms, this austerity can be compared to the Ron Paul 2011-2012 “Restoring America” shock therapy, which propose to cut $1 trillion from the US federal budget in one year. Then as now, such austerity is enough to destroy the economic system and the political system of the targeted country. If his tax reform plan is any indication, Donald Trump can also be expected to embark on genocidal austerity against the 99%.

Heinrich Brüning an original austerity ghoul

Brüning governed from March 1930 to May 1932. After that came an interlude with proto-fascist von Papen, and then the short-lived government of General Schleicher, who had some interesting ideas, but was quickly overthrown by domestic intrigue around the gambling debts of President Hindenburg’s son, with additional help from the British embassy.

And then, in January 1933, it was time for Hitler, and Germany was locked on a path to catastrophe. The point we need to stress right now is that from the fall of Müller to the coming of Hitler, just 34 months passed. Here in the United States today, we must no longer beguile ourselves with the illusion that the existing form of government is somehow invulnerable to the intrigues of greedy bankers, demagogues on the make, or generals hungry for glory.

The most important thing to remember today is that, between the German governmental paralysis that began in March 1930 and the institution of a dictatorship, was a matter of just 34 months. And we might have Trump in power in just 19 months.