What is Fascism and How Do We Fight It?

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444,retired
HEO/GED
6-22-24

I came to revolutionary politics through, believe it or not, reading the writings of the Soviet Dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I read three of his books: Cancer Ward, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and lastly, The First Circle. This really influenced me. I always liked Russian history since I read Dostoyevsky,  but was, like most English workers, not drawn to the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.

On my own I investigated the issue a bit. I came across this guy Leon Trotsky and read a three-volume set about Trotsky’s life by Isaac Deutscher titled, The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed and The Prophet Outcast detailing Trotsky’s life as a revolutionary, his role in the Russian Revolution, his exile and eventual assassination by one of Stalin’s agent’s.

 

I do not refer to myself as a Trotskyist, and don’t demonize Stalin as others do; though Soviet totalitarianism did irreparable damage to the workers’ movement and the struggle for socialism in my view. But we have to look beyond individuals to find the answer for why great revolutionary upheaval’s like the Russian revolution end up as they did. Sectarianism is rife among the left and very destructive, and workers see this whenever we come in to contact with them.

 

I posted a short video to Tiktok and X (formerly Twitter) yesterday where I commented on the escalating tension in the Middle East around, as always, the insane European colonial settler state we know as Israel and its primary backer, the declining world power, US imperialism.

 

I believe that there are significant influential elements in the Israeli government that are fascist. I believe that fascist elements are clearly present in the Republican Party.  But the US is not a fascist state.

 

Leaving aside nuclear warfare at the moment and the consequences of that development which is unlikely but clearly not ruled out, if the Zionists continue down this path to, what they describe as the “elimination of  Hamas” which even Israeli military personnel are now saying is impossible it can only end in disaster and also spread beyond the Middle East. The US rogue regime has stated it will fight alongside Israel, which, in the immediate term would mean air power but given the situation in this region I think it is unlikely that the US and Israel can win without US troops on the ground.

 

We’re in dangerous times.

 

Much of the response to the present situation, has been the rise of right wing demagogues and right wing parties. But, with regard to fascism, I have to say, I am a supporter of the writings of Leon Trotsky on this issue among others. I was with a friend two nights ago and we were talking about whether we are in a civil war situation (some American friends have told me they believe we are close to civil war here.) and could fascism gain a hold here. My view is that there is too much money around.  The middle class and a significant section of the working class is doing pretty well. And, in addition, we have no party of our own and no movement at all at this point. This is an obstacle to the rise of a working class movement.

 

This is all a little long but years ago (after Deutscher) I read Leon Trotsky’s Rise of Fascism in Europe. His comments are directed to the situation in Germany at the time.

I had previously thought fascism and Hitler were a product of the German working class; how could this movement have arisen given the potential strength of the working class with two powerful political parties, the socialists (SDP) and communists?  

Leon Trotsky had a completely different view. For Trotsky, Fascism was a middle class movement. Here below are his comments on Fascism reprinted from International Socialist Review from Trotsky’s great book The Rise of Fascism in Germany.

On the conditions that give rise to Fascism

“The gigantic growth of National Socialism is an expression of two factors: a deep social crisis, throwing the petty-bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary party that would be regarded by the masses of the people as an acknowledged revolutionary leader. If the Communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counterrevolutionary despair”

“Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or thirteenth. A hundred million people us electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.”

On the class character of Fascism

“[T]he Big Bourgeoisie, even those who supported Hitler with money, did not consider his party theirs. The national “renaissance” leaned wholly upon the middle classes, the most backward part of the nation, the heavy ballast of history. Political art consisted in fusing the petty bourgeoisie into oneness through its common hostility to the proletariat. What must be done in order to improve things? First of all, throttle those who are underneath. Impotent before big capital, the petty bourgeoisie hopes in the future to regain its social dignitiy through the ruin of the workers.”

“German fascism, like Italian fascism, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organizations of the working class and the institutions of democracy. But fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital. Mussolini is right: the middle classes are incapable of independent policies. During periods of great crisis they are called upon to reduce to absurdity the policies of one of the two basic classes. Fascism succeeded in putting them at the service of capital. “

“The coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organizations, the eradication of its belief in itself and its future. Considering the far greater maturity and acuteness of the social contradictions in Germany, the hellish work of Italian fascism would probably appear as a pale and almost humane experiment in comparison with the work of German National Socialism”

On the United Front

“The Communist Party must call for the defense of those material and moral positions which the working class has managed to win in the German state. This most directly concerns fate of the workers’ political organizations, trade unions, newspaper, printing plants, clubs, libraries, etc. Communist workers must say to their Social Democratic counterparts: “The policies of our parties are irreconcilably opposed; but if the fascists come tonight to wreck your organization’s hall, we will come running, arms in hand, to help you. Will you promise us that if our organization is threatened you will rush to our aid?” This is the quntessence of our policy in the present period. All agitation must be pitched in this key.
The more persistently, seriously, and thoughtfully...we carry on this agitation, the more we propose serious measures for defense in every factory, in every working-class neighborhood and district the less the danger that a fascist attack will take us by surprise, and the greater the certainty that such an attack will cement rather than break break apart the ranks of the workers.”

“Worker-Communists, you are hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot leave for anyplace; there are not enough passports for you. Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers canbring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little tim left!”

Source: The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, (Pathfinder, 1971)