Anti-Fascist Series #10: Classical View

 “Fascism – What It is and How to Fight It” by Leon Trotsky, 1930-1940

This short pamphlet put out by Pathfinder Press contradicts all the imprecise definitions of fascism floating around in the U.S. right now.  The hippie phrase ‘friendly fascism,’ the nonsense that Trump is already a fascist, Mussolini’s idea that when government and corporations work together, that constitutes fascism, that every authoritarian or military dictator is a fascist, the idea that the whole Republican Party is fascist presently, the idea that we must unite with the Democratic leadership to ‘fight the fascist right’ – all sourced from liberal commentators.  I’ve even been told that spitting at the president is ‘fascism.’ These are all examples of a lazy, impressionistic, anti-materialist approaches which will lead to defeat.

Here Trotsky gives the classical Marxist definition, embraced until the late 1920s by the 3^rd International, by Clara Zetkin in her analysis of Italy, by Lenin in his observations of the Russian Black Hundreds around the 1905 events.  It contradicts the ‘3^rd period’ ultra-leftism of the Comintern in 1930 and later, which claimed Social Democrats were also ‘social fascists,’ thus preventing a united front with the German Social Democrats against fascism.  This disunity quite clearly allowed the triumph of Hitler.  Another erroneous understanding of fascism.

Any social revolution in the U.S. will have to combat fascist movements before it ever deals directly with the forces of the state. Hence it is best to know what you are dealing with. As capital declines, it must resort to standard governmental authoritarianism (the Anaconda) and if that doesn’t work, fascist forces to prop up its rule.  Trump is the huckster/conman/Mafia Don this movement has initially found.  Instead of a real, mass socialist movement to oppose, the rightists have manufactured one out of the sad cloth of the Democrats, calling them socialists and communist.  This is why the majority of the capitalist class is still not on board – perhaps only 10% plus a still small section of the state apparatus want to get rid of bourgeois democracy completely.  Their shock troops were out in force on Jan. 6, 2021.  However, a majority might be in favor of an authoritarian regime achieved through 'democratic' means.  Orbanism...

This is the situation we find ourselves in now.  Behind this struggle, two clear factions of the bourgeoisie also fight over which economic grouping – the old oil/gas matrix or the new energy/ technology matrix – will ultimately triumph.  I think it is a serious faction fight which weakens the capitalists and gives the Left an opening.

Here are some quotes from the pamphlet as he looks at Italy and Germany.  Nearly all of this is still applicable if one looks at the present ultra-right, MAGA/QAnon, white nationalist, Christian fascist and reactionary Oathkeepers and Proud Boys groups.

1.   “The genuine basis for fascism is the petit-bourgeoisie.”  Petit-bourgeois means small and medium businessmen, landlords, independent contractors and farmers.  These are most prominent on the Right right now. Trotsky does not examine the white–collar “PMC” – the professional / managerial strata, which Bob Seeger called the UMC – the Upper Middle Class.

2.   “Through the fascist agency, capitalism set in motion the masses of the crazed petit-bourgeoisie and bands of declassed and demoralized lumpen-proletarians – all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”  Also ruin and conspiracy theories …

3.   Upon the unification of the fascist mass movement with the capitalist state “the workers organizations are annihilated.”  Happened yet?  No.

4.   “The reformists (social democrats, liberals) shut their eyes to the organic character of fascism as a mass movement growing out of the collapse of capitalism.” (In Germany & Italy, reformist leaderships relied on the state or conservative political leaders, even police, to save them.)

5.   “Italian comrades informed me that, with the exception of Gramsci, the Communist Party would not even allow the possibility of the fascists seizing power.”  This was also true in Germany.  “After Hitler, us.”

6.   To think that fascism and every form of capitalist reaction are identical is “vulgar Marxism.”  And factually untrue. 

7.   “…fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair.”

8.   Without a proposed united front with the Social Democracy in Germany, the CP formula of ‘social fascism’ was threatened by a real fascism, “no longer with wordy formulas of so-called radicalism but with the chemical formulas of explosives.”

9.   “The politicians of reformism... are inept boobs.”

10.       The 3 stages of bourgeois European politics – 1) Jacobinism against the landowners and royalty; 2) reformism and 3) fascism – all 3 “are basically programs of petit-bourgeois currents.”  In the U.S. 10% of the population are millionaires – a major prop to the ruling class.  The number of business owners are in the millions too.

11.       “But precisely with the war there begins the distinct decline of capitalism and, above all, its democratic form of domination.  Therefore the campaign against Marxism on the one hand, and democratic parliamentarism on the other.”  Sound familiar from the rhetoric of many Republican politicians?

12.       Capital alone cannot rule, so “they need the support of the petit-bourgeois." For this fascist purpose in times of strife, “it must be whipped up, put on its feet, mobilized, armed."  Already happening.

13.       “In all countries, the same historic laws operate, the laws of capitalist decline.”  This present alt-right is international in scope, though not in politics. See the 'elected' - Orban, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Erdogan etc.

14.       Since the army is sometimes ultimately unreliable - “that is why finance capital is obliged to create special armed bands, trained to fight the workers…”

15.       “The despairing petit-bourgeoisie sees in fascism … a fighting force against big capital.”

Meloni's troops?

The book also discusses the Spanish dictatorship under Primo de Rivera, the petit-bourgeois-backed Polish dictatorship of Pilsudski, the twists and turns of failed Comintern policy in Germany.  He points out how fascist ‘waves’ follow leftist failures. He seeks to bring the petit-bourgeoisie to the side of the working-class by the working-class having confidence in its own strength, as middle strata wobble and will follow those who can exhibit power.  Ultimately he calls for workers’ militias to combat fascist groupings, and against ‘flabby pacifism.’

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:  ‘Anti-Fascist Series,’ or Fascism Today, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate; Against the Fascist Creep; Fighting Fascism (Zetkin); The Real Red Pill; No Fascist USA; The Ultra-Right; It Can’t Happen Here (Lewis); Anti-Fascism, Sports, Sobriety; The Coming Storm; A Fascist Edge; Clandestine Occupations; Charlottesville, Virginia; What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?; Angry White Men, Alerta!.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

October 18, 2022