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Nazi

2026-09-07T17:39:55Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:''Nazi''}}
: ''This article refers to the word. For the ideology and party this term word to, see [[National socialism]] and [[National Socialist German Workers' Party]] respectively.''

'''''Nazi''''' (plural ''Nazis'') is a derogatory term for a supporter of [[national socialism]] (better known as ''Nazism''), a [[Fascism|fascist]] movement which emerged in [[Federal Republic of Germany|Germany]] during the [[interwar period]]. Post-[[Second World War|World War II]] adherence to Nazism is often called [[neo-Nazism]]. Someone who supported Nazism before 1945 and continued to adhere to Nazism even after the end of the Second World War is sometimes referred to as an "Old Nazi" (''Altnazi''). Nazis themselves tend to reject the label due to the negative connotation.

== Etymology and usage ==

=== Origins as a nickname ===
The term ''Nazi'' was already in-use in [[German-speaking countries]] long before the national socialist movement arose. It is a diminutive of [[Ignaz|Igna[t]z]], the [[Germanisation|germanised]] version of the [[Latin]] [[given name]] [[Ignatius]],<ref>[[Karl Breul]] (1906).: ''Heath's German and English Dictionary.'' [[London]]: [[D. C. Heath and Company]]. p. 522.</ref><ref name=":1">[[Gustav Michaelis (stenographer)|Gustav Michaelis]] (1856).: ''Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gebräuchlichsten Taufnamen''. Berlin: Verlag von Franz Duncker. p. 15.</ref> which was historically common in majority-[[Catholicism|Catholic]] regions such as [[Austria]], [[Bavaria]], and [[Bohemia]]. This is also present in the [[Hungarian language]] (which was heavily influenced by [[German language|German]] due to nearly four centuries of [[House of Habsburg|Habsburg]] rule), with the Hungarian form [[Ignác]] sometimes being shortened to ''Náci''. Other similar versions are ''Nace'' (chiefly [[Republic of Slovenia|Slovenian]]), ''Gnazi'' ([[Swiss Confederation|Swiss]]), ''Ignacy'' ([[Republic of Poland|Polish]]), ''Ignazi'', and ''Nazrl''.<ref name=":1" /> Examples of the word being used in this context include:

* The 1910 comedic novel [[Nazi Semmelbachers Hochzeitsreise|''Nazi Semmelbachers Hochzeitsreise'']] ("Nazi Semmelbacher's Honeymoon") by [[Anton Noder]] (writing under the [[pen name]] A. de Nora) follows Ignatius "Nazi" Semmelbacher, a municipal councillor and gingerbread maker who leaves behind his wife in [[Munich]] to travel to [[Venice]] with the poet Franz Paul Müller.<ref>A. de Nora (1910).: ''Nazi Semmelbachers Hochzeitsreise''. [[Leipzig]]: [[L. Staackmann Verlag]].</ref>
* [[Ignaz Semmelweis]], the [[Empire of Austria (1804–1867)|Austrian]] physician famous for introducing the revolutionary practice of [[handwashing]] in medicine, was frequently called "Nazi" or "Semmel-Nazi" by his colleagues.<ref>[[Elias Haffter]] (1898).: ''Dr. L. Sonderegger: In seiner Selbstbiographie und seinen Briefen''. [[Frauenfeld]]: [[J. Huber Verlag]]. p. 23.</ref> This is reflected in the 1979 Hungarian drama [[Gyilkosok (1979)|''Gyilkosok'']] ("Murderers"), in which Semmelweis is referred to as ''Semmelnáci'' a total of 14 times.<ref>[[Száraz György|György Száraz]] (1979).: [https://www.ponticulus.hu/rovatok/hidverok/szaraz-gyilkosok.html#gsc.tab=0 ''Gyilkosok'']. [[Ponticulus Hungaricus]]. Retrieved 2025-10-30.</ref>
* In a 1907 eulogy to [[Ignaz Auer]] (a prominent [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democratic]] politician from [[Lower Bavaria]]), [[Eduard Bernstein]] affectionately refers to his deceased friend as "Nazi".<ref name=":0">[[Eduard Bernstein|Bernstein, Eduard]] (1907).: ''Ignaz Auer: Eine Gedenkschrift''. [[State of Berlin|Berlin]]: [[Buchhandlung Vorwärts]]. p. 6.</ref>
* The satirical magazine ''[[Kikeriki]]'', which was banned under [[Federal State of Austria (1934–1938)|the Austrofascist regime]] due to its links to the [[German National Socialist Workers' Party (Austria)|Austrian Nazi Party]], once told a short story called ''Der Kosename'' ("The Pet Name") about a married couple named Mr. Ignaz and Mrs. Klara. One day Ignaz headed off to work, forgetting to bring his eyeglasses with him. Klara, concerned, opened a window and shouted for her husband: "Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!", whereupon the man was immediately arrested as an [[enemy of the state]] (''staatsgefährliches Subjekt''; literally "state-dangerous subject").<ref>No author (1933-06-18).: [https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=kik&datum=19330618&seite=7&zoom=51 "Der Kosename."] ''Kikeriki''. Retrieved 2025-06-07.</ref>

=== Evolution into an insult ===
Given the nickname's popularity in [[Southern Germany]], it was eventually picked up as a pejorative for Southerners, whom [[Northern Germany|Northern Germans]] often viewed as backwards, foolish, [[Conservatism|conservative]], and unsophisticated [[Rural stigma|due to their rural background]] (comparable to "[[redneck]]", "[[hillbilly]]", and especially "[[Cleetus]]" in [[English language|English]]).<ref name=":2">Nirmal Dass (2022-01).: [https://chroniclesmagazine.org/society-culture/the-strange-origin-of-the-word-nazi/ The Strange Origin of the Word 'Nazi']. [[Chronicles (magazine)|''Chronicles'']]. Retrieved 2025-11-09.</ref> This lead to ''Nazi'' gaining a negative connotation, which some sources claim is the reason why opponents of Nazism favoured the term.<ref name=":3">[https://www.etymonline.com/word/Nazi "Nazi"]. ''Etymonline''. Retrieved 2025-10-30.</ref> The [[National Socialist German Workers' Party|Nazi Party]] itself was founded in Munich and [[Adolf Hitler|its leader]] was an Austrian, which may have played into this stereotype. Additionally, as is much more well-known, the term '''''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alist'' ('national socialist') could be shortened to ''Nazi'', just as ''[[Sozi]]'' (also derogatory) was a [[Clipping (morphology)|clipping]] of '''''Sozi'''alist'' ('socialist') or ''[[Kozi]]'' was a clipping of '''''Ko'''mmunist'' ('communist').

Classical Nazis almost always avoided the term ''Nazi'', instead favouring "national socialist". One notable exception is the title of [[Joseph Goebbels]]' 1926 pamphlet [[Der Nazi-Sozi|''Der Nazi-Sozi: Fragen und Antworten für den Nationalsozialisten'']] ("The Nazi-Sozi: Questions and Answers for National Socialists"), in which he seeks to address common misconceptions about national socialist politics, though the word is not mentioned in the text itself. Hitler also used the term "anti-Nazi" on one occasion in reference to unfavourable coverage of national socialism in the international media, though likely in air-quotes.<ref><blockquote>''In the same speech Hitler said'': "Recently endeavours have been made to place broadcasting, also, in the service of this international campaign of hate [against Germany]. With regard to this, I wish to make the following warning public: If the broadcasts sent from certain countries to Germany do not cease we will soon answer to them.... I believe, as I always have done, that our work of enlightenment will be more effective than the campaign of lies of those Jews who stir up hatred between the peoples. Announcements by American film companies that they intend to produce '''anti-Nazi—that is, anti-German'''—films, can but induce us to produce anti-Semitic films in Germany...."</blockquote>[[Norman H. Baynes]] (1942).: ''The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922–August 1939''. Volume I. London: [[Oxford University Press]]. p. 742.</ref> Otherwise, as [[William Shirer]] noted in his [[Berlin Diary|''Berlin Diary'']] in 1940, "For some time now our censors have not allowed us to use the word 'Nazi' on the air. They say it has a bad sound in [[United States of America|America]]. One must say 'National Socialist' or avoid the term altogether, as I do."<ref>[[William L. Shirer]] (1941).: ''[[Berlin Diary]]: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941''. New York: [[Alfred A. Knopf]]. pp. 494-5.</ref>

''Nazi'' was likewise intentionally eschewed in the [[Eastern Bloc]]. [[Communism|Communists]] view ''Nazi'' as a [[misnomer]] since, in all practical respects, [[Nazi Germany|Germany under national socialism]] was a [[Capitalism|capitalist]]-[[Imperialism|imperialist]] country. Therefore, in order to avoid any confusion, risk giving credence to the notion that the Nazis were authentic [[Socialism|socialists]], and damaging socialism's good name, the terms "German fascism" and "Hitlerism" were favoured.<ref name=":3" />

=== Modern usage ===
Modern neo-Nazis continue to avoid the term due to the historical baggage associated with Nazism, as [[World War II]] and the [[Holocaust]] are still deeply ingrained in the [[West|Western]] psyche today. Instead, they often conceal their true beliefs in order to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible.

Today, the word ''Nazi'' is also synonymous with being needlessly strict, intolerant, or fanatical (see, e.g., "[[grammar Nazi]]").

=== Separate Swiss etymology ===
In [[Basel]], Switzerland, the [[Basler Zeitung|''National-Zeitung'']] (NZ), a [[Liberalism|liberal]] daily newspaper which ran from 1842 to 1977, was colloquially known as the ''Nazi-Zyttig'', or the "National Newspaper". From 1950 until the paper's merger with the [[Basler Nachrichten|''Basler Nachrichten'']] in 1977, it also published a weekly children's supplement called ''Dr glai Nazi'', or "The Little Nazi" in English. In this case, ''Nazi'' was just shorthand for ''National'', and was used in reference to this newspaper specifically.<ref name=":2" />

== See also ==

* [[German Reich (1933–1945)]]
* [[National Socialism]]
* [[National Socialist German Workers' Party]]
* [[Sozi]]

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Disambiguation pages]]

Cambodian genocide

2026-09-04T00:36:40Z

PuzzledFox99: No more bare links

{{Message box/Missing Sources}}[[File:Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum.jpg|thumb|Prison cells at Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, one of the most infamous prisons used by the Khmer Rouge.]]The '''Cambodian genocide''', also referred to as the '''Khmer Rouge genocide''', was the mass killing, forced labor, starvation, disease, forced displacement, and political repression carried out under [[Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)|Democratic Kampuchea]], the state ruled by the [[Khmer Rouge]] from 1975 to 1979. The regime was led by genocidal anti-communist [[Pol Pot]] and attempted to remake Cambodian society through an extreme agrarian program, abolishing money, attacking religion, emptying cities, and forcing much of the population into rural labor camps. Approximately 1.7 million people died, around one fifth of Cambodia's population at the time.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale|title=Cambodian Genocide Program|retrieved=2026-09-03|url=https://macmillan.yale.edu/gsp/cambodian-genocide-program}}</ref>

Although Democratic Kampuchea claimed communist legitimacy and is often described in anti-communist sources as a communist regime, many communists reject Pol Pot's politics as a nationalist, ultra-left, anti-Vietnamese deviation rather than socialism. The Khmer Rouge's rule destroyed working-class organization, attacked urban life, targeted minority groups, and produced a coercive agrarian state hostile to proletarian democracy. The regime was also closely aligned with the [[People's Republic of China]] against Vietnam and the Soviet Union, especially during the conflicts that developed into the [[Third Indochina War]].<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=H. Roger Segelken|newspaper=Cornell Chronicle|title=Mertha documents Chinese 'tutelage' of Khmer Rouge|date=2014-03-11|url=https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/03/mertha-documents-chinese-tutelage-khmer-rouge}}</ref>

== Background ==
Cambodia attempted to maintain a neutral position during the [[Vietnam War]], but this position became increasingly unstable as the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, China, and other powers treated Southeast Asia as a major Cold War battlefield. In March 1970, Prince [[Norodom Sihanouk]] was overthrown by General [[Lon Nol]], who established the anti-communist Khmer Republic. The coup pulled Cambodia more directly into the war and weakened the neutralist position that Sihanouk had attempted to maintain.

After the coup, Sihanouk allied with the Khmer Rouge from exile. This gave the insurgency greater nationalist legitimacy among many rural Cambodians, since Sihanouk remained a widely recognized symbol of Cambodian independence. The Khmer Rouge therefore grew not only through its own organization, but also through the crisis produced by war, displacement, and the collapse of the old political order.

=== The Khmer Republic and U.S. intervention ===
After Sihanouk's overthrow, the [[Khmer Republic]] under [[Lon Nol]] became increasingly dependent upon the [[United States]] for military, economic, and political support. The Nixon administration regarded Lon Nol's government as useful to the wider U.S. war against the Vietnamese revolutionary forces operating in Indochina. In April 1970, [[Richard Nixon]] wrote that the United States needed to make a "bold move" to demonstrate support for Lon Nol, while [[Henry Kissinger]] and other officials considered covert arms deliveries and other measures to strengthen his government.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Memorandum From President Nixon to His Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)|date=22 April 1970|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d64|website=Office of the Historian}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Memorandum for the Record|date=10 April 1970|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v06/d225|website=Office of the Historian}}</ref>

U.S. policymakers viewed Cambodia partly through its relationship to the war in neighboring Vietnam. A National Security Council memorandum described the preferred outcome as an anti-communist Cambodian government capable of preventing Vietnamese communist forces from using Cambodian territory against [[South Vietnam]]. After the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from Cambodia in June 1970, Nixon committed the United States to sustaining Lon Nol's government with weapons, funding, air support, training, and economic assistance. By 1971, the administration considered hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic assistance essential to achieving U.S. objectives in Cambodia.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Memorandum From Roger Morris, Winston Lord, and Anthony Lake to Henry Kissinger|date=22 April 1970|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v06/d250|website=Office of the Historian}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Editorial Note on United States support for Cambodia|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v07/d1|website=Office of the Historian}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Memorandum From the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs|date=20 October 1971|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v07/d271|website=Office of the Historian}}</ref>

== U.S. bombing and destabilization ==
Under President [[Richard Nixon]] and National Security Adviser [[Henry Kissinger]], the United States expanded the war into Cambodia. U.S. bombing campaigns, including [[Operation Menu]] and later bombing under [[Operation Freedom Deal]], targeted Vietnamese communist bases and supply routes but also devastated rural Cambodian society. Researchers Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen argue that the bombing drove many ordinary Cambodians toward the Khmer Rouge and helped transform a relatively small insurgency into a mass movement.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War|date=2007-05-02|url=https://apjjf.org/taylor-owen/2420/article|website=The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus|access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref>

The bombing destroyed villages, displaced peasants, damaged agriculture, and deepened hatred toward the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government. The Khmer Rouge used this devastation in its propaganda and recruitment, presenting itself as the force capable of resisting foreign intervention and the collapsing Khmer Republic. Although the United States did not create the Khmer Rouge as an organization, U.S. policy helped create the conditions in which the Khmer Rouge could grow.

The expansion of the war into Cambodia also produced major opposition inside the United States. In May 1970, protests against Nixon's Cambodia campaign culminated in the [[Kent State massacre]], where the Ohio National Guard killed four student protesters. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords ended direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but U.S. bombing in Cambodia continued until Congress cut off funding in August 1973.

== Khmer Rouge seizure of power ==
By 1974 and 1975, Lon Nol's government was collapsing. The Khmer Rouge surrounded [[Phnom Penh]], and on 17 April 1975 they captured the capital. Soon after taking power, the regime forcibly evacuated Phnom Penh and other cities, sending millions of people into the countryside. The Khmer Rouge claimed that this evacuation was necessary for revolutionary reconstruction and protection from possible U.S. bombing, but in practice it began a vast system of forced labor, starvation, political repression, and mass death.

The regime declared the beginning of "Year Zero", attempting to destroy the old society and build a new agrarian order. Money, markets, many schools, religious institutions, and private property were abolished. People associated with the former Khmer Republic, urban life, education, religion, foreign influence, or suspected opposition were targeted as enemies of the revolution. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the Khmer Rouge as promoting a radical agrarian ideology based on one-party rule, rejection of urban and Western ideas, and abolition of private property.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|title=Origins of the Khmer Rouge|retrieved=2026-09-03|url=https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/origins-of-the-khmer-rouge}}</ref>

== Genocide and mass repression ==
From 1975 to 1979, Democratic Kampuchea carried out mass killing, forced labor, starvation policies, forced transfers, political purges, and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities. Deaths resulted from execution, torture, hunger, disease, exhaustion, and the destruction of normal social life. Victims included former officials of the Khmer Republic, intellectuals, Buddhist monks, ethnic Vietnamese, Cham Muslims, suspected dissidents, and many ordinary peasants and workers accused of disloyalty.

The security prison S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, became one of the most infamous sites of Khmer Rouge repression. Prisoners were tortured, forced to confess to imaginary conspiracies, and then executed. Across Cambodia, local prisons, worksites, cooperatives, and execution sites became part of the regime's machinery of terror.

In 2018, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of genocide, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The judgment found that they were guilty of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese, while Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide against the Cham. <ref>{{Citation|author=Suhong Yang|year=2020|title=Trial Chamber Case 002/02 Against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia)|publisher=International Legal Materials 59(1), 159–79|doi=10.1017/ilm.2020.6|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-legal-materials/article/trial-chamber-case-00202-against-nuon-chea-and-khieu-samphan-extraordinary-chambers-in-the-courts-of-cambodia/0A1B861657D78185D9BDB0C9A5AA9DCA}}</ref>

== Third Indochina War and Vietnam's intervention ==
The fall of Democratic Kampuchea took place within the wider [[Third Indochina War]], a period of conflict involving Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Laos, Thailand, and rival Cold War blocs after the communist victories in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975. Relations between Democratic Kampuchea and [[Vietnam]] deteriorated after 1975. Khmer Rouge forces carried out attacks along the Vietnamese border, killing civilians and escalating conflict between the two states.

In December 1978, Vietnam launched a major invasion of Cambodia. Vietnamese forces entered Phnom Penh in January 1979 and overthrew the Khmer Rouge government, establishing the [[People's Republic of Kampuchea]]. Vietnam's intervention ended the Khmer Rouge's rule over most of Cambodia, but it also intensified the Third Indochina War by bringing Cambodia into the wider Sino-Soviet split and the conflict between China and Vietnam. <ref>{{Citation|author=Odd Arne Westad and Sophie Quinn-Judge|year=2006|title=The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-79|url=https://www.routledge.com/The-Third-Indochina-War-Conflict-between-China-Vietnam-and-Cambodia-1972-79/Westad-Quinn-Judge/p/book/9780415545051|city=Oxon|publisher=Routledge}}</ref>

The overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea ended the Khmer Rouge's control over most of Cambodia, but it did not destroy the movement. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge forces retreated toward the Thai-Cambodian border, where they continued to operate as part of the anti-Vietnamese resistance.

== China and Democratic Kampuchea ==
Democratic Kampuchea was closely aligned with the People's Republic of China. China provided political, military, and diplomatic support to the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot's regime was shaped in part by its relationship with Maoist China. This alignment was especially important because Vietnam was increasingly aligned with the Soviet Union, making Cambodia a battlefield in the Sino-Soviet split as well as the Third Indochina War. <ref name=":0" />

This relationship complicates anti-communist attempts to present the Cambodian genocide as a simple result of communism in general. Democratic Kampuchea was not aligned with Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, or the Soviet Union, and it fought violently against Vietnam, which was the state that overthrew it. The genocide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge state itself, but its rise and survival were shaped by U.S. bombing, civil war, Chinese support, Thai border policy, and wider Cold War conflict.

== Ford administration and the Mayaguez incident ==
The Ford administration's most direct confrontation with Democratic Kampuchea came shortly after the Khmer Rouge victory. In May 1975, Khmer Rouge naval forces seized the American cargo ship SS Mayaguez. President [[Gerald Ford]] ordered a military operation in response, leading to combat between U.S. forces and Khmer Rouge forces near Koh Tang.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=National Museum of the United States Air Force|title=Final Combat: The Mayaguez Incident at Koh Tang|retrieved=2026-09-03|url=https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196018/final-combat-the-mayaguez-incident-at-koh-tang/}}</ref>

The incident showed that the United States and the Khmer Rouge were not simple allies during the Khmer Rouge's time in power. However, after Vietnam overthrew Democratic Kampuchea in 1979, U.S. policy shifted toward opposing the Vietnamese-backed government and favoring the anti-Vietnamese diplomatic position.

== International support after 1979 ==
After the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, Cold War politics shaped the international response. The United States under President [[Jimmy Carter]], China, Thailand, and other U.S.-aligned states opposed Vietnam's intervention and refused to recognize the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea. Instead, Democratic Kampuchea retained Cambodia's seat at the United Nations after 1979, despite the Khmer Rouge's responsibility for the genocide. The Association for Asian Studies describes this as a situation in which the Khmer Rouge retained the UN seat in spite of its widely known atrocities.<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|author=|newspaper=Education About Asia|title=The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea|date=2009-12-31|url=https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-rise-and-fall-of-democratic-kampuchea/}}</ref>

In 1982, the Khmer Rouge joined with royalist and republican anti-Vietnamese factions to form the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. This coalition continued to hold Cambodia's UN seat for years. Although the coalition included non-Khmer Rouge factions, the arrangement allowed the Khmer Rouge to remain internationally relevant after its overthrow. China and ASEAN states pressured the Khmer Rouge to join this wider anti-Vietnamese coalition along the Thai border.<ref name=":1" />

== Thailand's role ==
Thailand became central to the post-1979 conflict. After Vietnam overthrew Democratic Kampuchea, Khmer Rouge forces and other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian factions operated along the Thai-Cambodian border. Yale's Cambodian Genocide Program describes the Vietnamese intervention as transforming the Khmer Rouge from Thailand's enemy into a useful anti-Vietnamese ally from Bangkok's perspective.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Puangthong Rungswasdisab|newspaper=MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale|title=Thailand's Response to the Cambodian Genocide|retrieved=2026-09-03|url=https://macmillan.yale.edu/gsp/thailands-response-cambodian-genocide}}</ref>

Thailand also hosted large numbers of Cambodian refugees, but the border camp system became entangled with the armed struggle against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea. Some camps and border zones became linked to Khmer Rouge and other anti-Vietnamese forces. This made the refugee crisis inseparable from the wider Cold War proxy struggle over Cambodia after 1979.

== Legacy ==
The Cambodian genocide remains one of the most severe mass atrocities of the twentieth century. It devastated Cambodian society, killed a large share of the population, and left lasting trauma across generations. It also became a major ideological weapon in Cold War politics, often used by anti-communists to equate the Khmer Rouge with all communism while ignoring the role of U.S. bombing, the Lon Nol regime, Chinese support, Thai border policy, and Western diplomatic support for anti-Vietnamese forces after 1979.

The Cambodian genocide cannot be understood only as the product of Pol Pot's ideology. It must also be understood in the wider context of colonialism, the Vietnam War, U.S. imperial intervention, the collapse of Cambodian neutrality, the destruction of rural society, the Sino-Soviet split, the Third Indochina War, and Cold War opposition to Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge carried out the genocide, but the conditions of war and the later international protection of anti-Vietnamese forces show how imperialist and geopolitical interests helped shape both the rise and survival of the movement.

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Anti-communist mass killings]]
[[Category:Genocides]]
[[Category:History of Cambodia]]

White Terror (Taiwan)

2026-09-01T05:16:48Z

PuzzledFox99:

During the '''White Terror''', the fascist anti-communist [[Kuomintang]] persecuted leftists on [[Taiwan Province|Taiwan]].

The White Terror begun with martial law being declared on 19 May 1949 which was lifted on 15 July 1987.

The period of the White Terror usually does not include the [[February 28 incident]], where the [[Republic of China|Nationalist government]] violently suppressed an uprising in which deaths have ranged between 18,000 and 28,000 people.

== Victims ==

== Human rights violations ==
[[Category:History of the Republic of China]]
[[Category:Anti-communist mass killings]]

Mao Zedong

2026-09-01T05:12:29Z

PuzzledFox99: /* College and developing political consciousness (1912-1918) */

{{Message box/Missing Sources}}{{Infobox revolutionary
| image = File:Mao Zedong portrait.jpg
| image_size = 200px
|honorific_prefix=Chairman| name=Mao Zedong| native_name= 毛泽东
| image_upright =
| image_alt =
| caption = Portrait of comrade Mao
| nationality = [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]]
| birth_name =
| birth_date = 26 December 1893
| birth_place = Shaoshan, Hunan, [[People's Republic of China#Semi-colonial_and_semi-feudal_society_.281840.E2.80.931949.29 | Qing dynasty]]
| death_date = 9, September, 1976 (aged 82)
| death_place = Beijing, [[People's Republic of China]]
| death_cause = Heart attack associated with old age
|political_orientation=[[Marxism–Leninism]] (developed what is now known as [[Mao Zedong Thought]]) [[Anti-imperialism]]| political_party=[[Communist Party of China]]
}}

'''Mao Zedong''' {{Datebio|birthday=26th|birthmonth=December|birthyear=1893|deathmonth=September|deathday=9th|deathyear=1976}} was a [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] revolutionary who led the Chinese people to [[Chinese revolution|their proletarian revolution]] and served as the supreme leader of the [[People's Republic of China]] from 1949 to 1976. Under Mao's leadership, China's life expectancy increased from 35 to 65 years and industrial production increased by an average of 11% annually.<ref>{{Citation|author=M. Meissner|year=1996|title=The Deng Xiaoping Era. An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994|city=Hill and Way}}</ref> Per capita food production increased by 60% and total food production increased by over 169%.<ref>{{Citation|author=Guo Shutian|year=2004|title=Can China Feed Itself? Chinese Scholars on China’s Food Issue|chapter=China’s Food Supply and Demand Situation and International Trade|city=Beijing|publisher=Foreign Languages Press}}</ref>

Mao's contributions to the development of Marxism-Leninism, military theory, and the theory of communist party organization are known in China as [[Mao Zedong Thought]]. Mao Zedong was also a poet and calligrapher.

== Biography ==

=== Early life (1893–1911) ===
Mao Zedong was born on 26 December 1893 in a middle [[Peasantry|peasant]] family in Shaoshan Valley, modern day Xiangtan County of Hunan Province, under the reign of [[Qing dynasty (1636–1912)|Qing Dynasty]] Emperor Guangxu.<ref name=":2">{{Citation|author=Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji|year=2011|title=Mao Zedong, a Biography. Volume 1. 1893–1949|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893%E2%80%931949|chapter=Leaving Home|chapter-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893%E2%80%931949#Leaving_Home|publisher=CCCPC Party Literature Research Office, Translated by Foreign Languages Press|volume=1}}</ref><ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/47b3UXeOlls2dqtF1RBQ9euk5nvQ6S5grjQRBfjOFkWIPa1ltVabtooqj1XMsHEO68MSM1QOJ1SrB8XHur3CBi5Ue5vS3PMNKQ December 26: Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshanchong, Xiangtan, Hunan] - Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China.</ref> He was born as the third child of Mao Yichang and Wen Suqin, and the first child to survive infancy. From the age of six, Mao worked on his father's land and at a later age served as the family account keeper, performing farm work alongside the laborers hired by his father. Mao Zedong learned from his own experiences the hardships that the Peasantry suffered, as Mao Yinchang enforced a harsh work discipline on Mao Zedong and his younger brothers, even beating them. Such a life ingrained in Mao a rebellious spirit and good work discipline.<ref name=":2" />

When Mao Zedong was 14, Mao Yunchang forced him into marriage for the purposes of securing more farm laborers. But, Mao Zedong never accepted the marriage nor lived with his intended wife, leaving his father no choice to accept his son's de facto unmarried state.<ref name=":2" /> Contrary to his adversarial relationship with his father, Mao's relation with his mother was far more positive. Wen Suqin's influence reflected in Mao's instances of disobedience against his father's exploitative practices towards neighbors and family members. Mao upheld his mother as the kind of person who would help others at their own expense whereas he remembered his father as a person emblematic of private ownership system that disregarded all fraternity.<ref name=":2" />

Since his early childhood, Mao studied at a traditional Chinese private school taught by his maternal uncle in Tangjiatuo in Xiangxiang County, living spent most of his childhood living with his mother's family, till he was 8 years old and brought back home to Shaoshan Valley. In the following 8 years, he attended six more private schools in nearby counties, excepting for two years when his father took him out of school to work full time, and even during his studies, being required to help on the side.<ref name=":2" /> Mao later described his early education as "six years of reading Confucian books" and despite initially favoring the thoughts of the ancient philosophers, he came to dislike them in part due to the teaching styles of his teachers. Growing an interest in books and subjects that his teachers disdained, such as the Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms among other works. Mao's studies and personal preferences cultivated in him a great interest in studying history and appreciation of the role that history plays in shaping the world. He read the tales to other children and elderly of the village, and detected the absence of peasant protagonists from the novels and the class dynamic inherent within the absence.<ref name=":2" />

In April 1910, during a time of famine and great suffering, the peasants had come to present petitions requesting aid at the governor's office. The governor's men fired on the petitioners, killing fourteen and wounding many more. The outraged masses set fire to the governor's office and other buildings before the Imperial Qing government bloodily suppressed them, beheading them and displaying the heads as warnings against future uprisings over the city's south gate. The news of the uprising and the bloody repressions reached Shaoshan Valley, where despite initial indignation, people quickly began to forget about the news. Mao for his part was immensely shaken by how innocents were driven to desperation and subsequently murdered. The incident stayed with him for the rest of his life.<ref name=":2" />

In 1911, famine struck Shaoshan Valley, and the hungry peasants organized themselves and began seizing food from the houses of landlords and delivery of merchants, including from Mao Yunchang. Mao Zedong did not sympathize with his father but as a result of his then reformist mindset, felt that the peasants had went about it wrongly.<ref name=":2" />

Owing to the isolation of his village, Mao's early political development was highly influenced by Reformist thought, like those of his teacher, Li Shuqing, whom he depended on greatly for developments in wider China like the constitutional reform attempt of the crumbling Qing Dynasty. At the age of 17, filled with the need to continue his studies outside his secluded village and hearing that Dongshan School taught modern knowledge, Mao convinced family members to persuade his father to approve of the move. Leaving the environs of Shaoshan Valley for the first time.<ref name=":2" />

Dongshan Higher Primary School in Xiangxiang County, Hunan Province, taught classical education but also subjects such as Natural Sciences, Geography and the English. It was at the school that Mao became informed that both the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi had been dead for years and the Xuantong Emperor having been enthroned for two years. Hunan Province was a stronghold of reformist thought and their publications were not outlawed unlike more revolutionary outlets, leading Mao to be influenced by the reformist thoughts of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, who advocated for a Constitutional Monarchy.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0">[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/45c61_sYsjwuFPa1aDDw8lcZjnk3omFT8e1bvav0Kglvx1_WFxZpF-EGCPAwByZusnJrNqR7WCn7nNWeNlb-PDQw3lNdl6gFAXixsnC1_4CqCQ9f-nnHKW0L Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1893-1925) Party History Channel] - People's Daily Online </ref> He was not aware of [[Sun Yat-sen]]’s [[Revolution|Revolutionary]] conceptions of establishing a [[Bourgeois democracy|Bourgeois Democracy]] in place of the old order, which had in fact became the dominant political trend across the country.<ref name=":2" />

After coming in possession of an edition of ''Xinmin congbao'' (New People’s Miscellany), the journal edited and published by Liang Qichao, Mao made his earliest political commentary. Advocating for a Monarchy with laws written by the people and Monarch favored with public approval, as opposed to a Monarchy where the laws are written by the Monarch and who enjoys no public support. With Britain and Japan as the former while China fell under the latter. Young Mao also put emphasis on great personalities, believing that China should strive to create individuals learned from Western history.<ref name=":2" />

In the spring of 1911, due to Mao's excellence in learning, his teacher, He Langang, took Mao with him to the Provincial Xiangxiang Middle School in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province. On the eve of the Bourgeois Democratic 1911 Revolution, Changsha was a hub of the Province's revolutionary activity, with even the local military forces aligning with the revolutionaries. Changsha was Mao's, then 18, first encounter with revolutionary thought, becoming a dedicated reader of the revolutionary publication ''Minli bao'' (People’s Journal). Expanding his world and political view greatly.<ref name=":2" /> Far from the Imperial Reformist he had been, Mao had become a fervent Republican and lead his fellow students in act of disobedience against Imperial laws, by cutting the legally mandated queue haircuts. News of the Guangzhou Uprising in 27 April 1911 shook the whole of China, including Hunan, where students such as Mao were driven into excitement. It led Mao to write an article supporting Sun Yat-sen, proposing that the revolutionary leader be welcomed home to serve as President but in a display of his still developing political consciousness, advocated also that the Imperial reformist Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao be in the same government. <ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" />

On 10 October 1911, the Wuchang Uprising broke out and revolutionaries seized the government of Hubei Province, quickly asking revolutionaries in Hunan to rise up in solidarity with them. A representative came to the Xiangxiang Middle School and gave a speech elucidating them on the Uprising, leading Mao and students to eagerly join in the fight for a Republic. Mao was set to leave for Wuhan to join the revolutionary armies gathering there when revolutionaries in Changsha successfully launched their own uprising and established a revolutionary government on 24 October 1911. Mao immediately joined the revolutionary army of the new government, but rather than a student detachment, he opted to join the regular army. Becoming a private in the left platoon of the First Battalion, 25th Brigade, of the Hunan New Army.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" />

During his time in the army, Mao would receive military training and a salary, latter of which he would use to purchase newspapers, journals and books to keep apace of political developments across China. It was while reading an article in the ''Xianghan xinwen'' (Xianghan News), that Mao would first encounter the term 'socialism'. The article itself had only been advocating reformism but Mao would become interested in the concept, reaching out to friends and acquaintances for their thoughts. Mao only served in the army for little over half a year since in little over two months after the Wuchang Uprising, majority of China had declared independence from the tottering Qing Dynasty and a peace process began between the Revolutionaries and the Qing. Resulting in a Republic being declared and the last Qing emperor forced into abdication. The conciliationist attitude of the revolutionaries unfortunately resulted in Yuan Shikai, a Qing official and general, becoming provisional president of the new Republic rather than Sun Yat-sen.<ref name=":2" />

After leaving the army, Mao resumed his quest for knowledge. He applied for entrance examination of the police academy, the soap-making technical school, the politics and law institute, and the public high school before entering the Hunan Provincial Senior Middle School for a short time. Chafing at the inflexible rules and limited curriculum, Mao left the school and opted for self-study, lodging at the Xiangxiang Guild Hall and securing study material, like the political and scientific works of the West, from the Provincial Library.<ref name=":2" /> Mao spent half a year studying in such a manner before circumstances changed, with his father refusing to financially support his unorthodox learning methods and rampageous disbanded army units coming to board at the Xiangxiang Guildhall, rendering the Guild Hall ill suited for peaceful living.<ref name=":2" />

=== College and developing political consciousness (1912-1918) ===
Mao, now 20, resolved to return to school and continue his studies that way when he became aware of the Hunan Provincial Fourth Teachers’ Training College offering free education, cheap housing and a teaching post for graduates. Mao passed the entrance examination and enrolled into the Training College's five year program. The Fourth Teacher's College was subsequently merged with the First Teacher's College located in the southern suburbs of Changsha, delaying Mao's graduation by several months.<ref name=":3" />

The First Teachers College, also known as Hunan Provincial Normal School, was a storied institution, whose history and incarnations stretched back to the 7th century CE, which endeavored to mold its students into ideal people and whose constitution advocated for up-to-date educational approach. The faculty were noted for their progressive outlook and great knowledge and during Mao's time, many progressive students of all ages but especially the young enrolled there. Earning the School the reputation of being the cradle of progressive youth. A teacher of particular importance was Yang Changji, Mao's ethics teacher. Yang had studied both in Japan and England, and toured Germany and Switzerland before returning to China. Despite being offered a government post, Yang declined and preferred to teach instead, seeing it his duty to guide young mind. He advocated thorough investigations while studying, and the fusion of Chinese and Western knowledge. Yang would be of great influence to young Mao and the other progressive youth that flocked around him. Mostly from the countryside, these students were familiar with the sufferings of the peasants and yearned for both social progress and national salvation.<ref name=":3" />

It was at the College that Mao further developed his political consciousness and became friends with like-minded people. His studies at the College encouraged Mao to put great emphasis on practical work and analysis of the world. Mao kept apace of current events by spending his college allowance to buy materials such as journals, newspapers, maps and reference works. Coming to earn a reputation among his fellow students as an expert in contemporary affairs.<ref name=":3">{{Citation|author=Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji|year=2011|title=Mao Zedong, a Biography. Volume 1. 1893–1949|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893%E2%80%931949|chapter=The College Student|chapter-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893%E2%80%931949#The_College_Student|publisher=CCCPC Party Literature Research Office, Translated by Foreign Languages Press|volume=1}}</ref>

For all Mao's development, at that time he still continued to hold Imperial Reformists such as Zeng Guofan and Kang Youwei and the opportunist Yuan Shikai to be as respectable as Sun Yat-sen. Not yet seeing all for who they truly were.<ref name=":3" />

Despite the formation of the Chinese Republic, the various ills that gave impetus to the Revolution of 1911 had not been resolved. Instead, the opportunist Yuan Shikai actively hampered progress since becoming the Provisional President by suspending the provisional constitution of the republic and disbanding parliament. In January 1915, Japan proposed the extortionist '21 demands' in return for assisting Yuan Shikai in assuming the throne in a restored Monarchy. They issued their ultimatum on 7 May, and on 9 May Yuan's government made rapid response in favor of the deal. Protests started across the nation at the gross betrayal of the country, and the First College was no exception to the sentiment. The students including Mao compiled statements and articles condemning the bargain.<ref name=":3" />

A confrontation between the people and the Yuan Government was building as Yuan redoubled his efforts to establish his own imperial dynasty, even declaring himself emperor, in face of popular disapproval and the people's wish to preserve the republic. The national sentiment was so great that even pro-Monarchist forces like such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong were forced to side against Yuan, at least publicly, in hopes of co-opting the popular movement. The southern provinces of China declared independence from the Yuan government and established military councils, prepared to fight against the Yuan warlord government. The country stood at the precipice of a second democratic revolution. Instead, Yuan died on 6 June 1916, only eighty-three days after his proclamation as emperor. Immediately conciliators set about to lull the people back to inaction. Li Yuanhong and Duan Qirui, Yuan's associates would assume political power after Yuan's death and proclaimed the restoration of the republic's provisional constitution and parliament while Liang Qichao used his standing as an anti-Yuan leader to facilitate reconciliation between the prospective revolutionaries and the collaborators.<ref name=":3" />

After the people of Hunan expelled Tang Xiangming, the provincial inspector-general appointed by Yuan Shikai, Mao lamented to a friend that there had been outbursts of violence and bloodshed and compared it to the French Revolution. Mao's still developing understanding considered peaceful resolutions as the best outcome and he was taken in by the machinations of Liang, Li and Duan.<ref name=":3" />

In the wake of Yuan Shikai's death, a power struggle developed between the President Li Yuanhong and Premier Duan Qirui whether to enter into [[First World War|the First World War]] on the side of the Entente Imperialists. Li Yuanhong was briefly able to cast Duan Qirui out of power but the power struggle had left the government distracted and vulnerable as the former Qing general, Zhang Xun, would also make a failed attempt at an imperial restoration. Zhang Xun claiming support for Duan Qirui besieged Beijing and held a coronation that briefly restored the former emperor Puyi to the imperial throne. Duan Qirui, restored as the Premier, defeated Zhang Xun. Only a month later, in September 1917, Dian Qirui became aware that Sun Yat-sen had returned from exile yet again and established a new government; the Military Government of the Republic of China. Duan Qirui swiftly sent troops against the rival government and sparked a north-south civil war.<ref>{{Citation|author=Colin Mackerras|year=10, July, 2008|title=China in Transformation: 1900-1949; 2nd edition|publisher=Routledge}}</ref>

Both attempts at imperial restoration and the chaos disturbed China's progressive intelligentsia, questioning why a republican system could not set roots in China. They came to the conclusion that the ideology of the Feudal system had not been combated and defeated, and that the masses, who still mostly operated under such ideology, were not able to take active part in the struggle for national salvation. This marked the beginnings of the New Culture Movement as they set about trying to transform the culture and consciousness of the nation. Out of the movement arose the ''New Youth'' magazine by [[Chen Duxiu]], a future founder of the [[Communist Party of China]]. After being introduce to ''New Youth'' by Yang Changji, who also wrote for it, Mao was greatly taken by the thoughts expressed in it. It was at the school that Mao also first came into contact with inklings of Materialist philosophy through the dualism of the Kantian school, comparing neo-Confucianists favorably to Immanuel Kant. The encounter with materialism, however diluted, facilitated Mao's growth towards a nascent dialectal worldview. No longer seeing 'great harmony as something viable in society.<ref name=":3" />

In summer of 1917 Mao and his friend, Xiao Zisheng, would go on a summer field trip to study the real conditions of China. Traveling 900 li (450 km) for over a month and conversing with people from all walks of life in towns and villages, from peasants to magistrates, and academics to priests. Mao would make more these field trips, including with another friend Cai Hesen the next year, and they served as the beginnings of Mao's method of investigation and study into the facts of life.<ref name=":3" />

In October 1917, the student's association held their annual elections and voted Mao to various posts, some of which were previously held by staff members. The college had a poorly attending evening school for workers and was about to discontinue the program. Using his new posts, Mao sought to revitalize the college's evening school for workers. He called for a meeting of the students to analyze the problem; the workers hadn't believe the schooling would be for free, notices informing about the school were incomprehensible for the illiterate, and the workers distrusted the notices because they were posted by policemen. Seeing the problems, Mao and his fellow students organized themselves to personally hand out the notices to the workers in working class districts and explain what was on offer. The initiative resulted in more than 100 workers enrolling in the evening classes.<ref name=":3" />

In November 1917, more chaos beset China as civil war between the Northern Warlords and the Southern Provinces raged on. After a battlefield defeat, a warlord army withdrew to the vicinity of Changsha driving to inhabitants to panic, fearing a looting. The college proposed to disperse the students to east of Changsha, but Mao instead proposed that students who were undergoing military training should mobilize to defend the college. The college authorities acceded to the proposal and a volunteer corp was formed. The retreating soldiers passed by the college. On 18 November however, Mao organized the several hundred volunteers into three detachments and had them take positions on hilltops in the Houzishi area. The students were mostly armed only in wooden rifles, but Mao had arranged that the local police force would use their weaponry while the students set off fire crackers. The unexpected confrontation devastated the morale of the shattered army and they surrendered, averting the feared sacking of Changsha. It was victory in Mao's very first military engagement. Zou Yunzhen, a schoolmate, asked Mao what if the soldiers had fought but Mao explained that the warlord army had demonstrated a lack of resolve and will by not attacking as soon as they had arrived and loitering about.<ref name=":3" />

Mao and his fellow progressive students wishes to gather more of those like minded, to act in unity and create something new. Under the influence of the New Culture Movement, they realized that merely thinking would not result in changes and took to organizing, creating a organization called the New People’s Study Society, with its constitution written by Mao and and Zou Dingcheng. The nascent group immediately fell short of Mao's expectations as provisions from the draft constitution considered too radical were struck down by Xiao Zisheng and majority of those in attendance. Within three months, Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen were thinking beyond the limits of the Society's constitution. Cai Hesen held Professor Yang Changji’s influence to be a limitation over the other Society members, commenting critically that despite the latter's decade of hard work, that Yang could only teach from books and has achieved little. That within three years, the Society should make itself a force to be reckoned within China. Both Mao and Cai were growing beyond Professor Yang's purely academic methods.<ref name=":3" />

By that time, most of the Society's members had graduated or about to. Its members were unwilling to remain in Hunan, wanting to travel throughout China or travel internationally to further their studies. Mao agreed, seeing further cultivation of Society members' talents as beneficial for future developments. Mao graduated the college two months later, after five and half years at the Teacher's College. Now aged 25 years old.<ref name=":3" />

=== May Fourth Movement ===
In June 1918, Mao got with Cai Hesen, Zhang Kundi and others to visit the villages in the vicinity of Mount Yuelu to set up a new work-study village based on equality and fraternity. They participated in self-education, discussed of social reforms as they also did their own daily chores such as meal preparation, collecting drinking water and firefood. The experiment ended after they became involved with a work-study program in France.<ref name=":4" />

On 15 August 1918, Mao Zedong and multiple compatriots left Changsha for Beijing, their first trip outside Hunan Province. Yang Changji, Mao’s former teacher at the Teachers College, had become involved with the Sino-French Education Association, which was recruiting Chinese workers at Beijing for a work-study program in France. Fresh graduates without immediate prospects were intrigued by the possibility.<ref name=":4">{{Citation|author=Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji|year=2011|title=Mao Zedong, a Biography. Volume 1. 1893–1949|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893–1949|chapter=Baptized by the Great Tide of the May Fourth Movement|chapter-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Mao_Zedong,_a_Biography._Volume_1._1893%E2%80%931949#Baptized_by_the_Great_Tide_of_the_May_Fourth_Movement|publisher=CCCPC Party Literature Research Office, Translated by Foreign Languages Press}}</ref>

The chaos of the civil war was such that continued education in Hunan was impossible. Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen and Xiao Zisheng determined that the program had potential and encouraged members of the New People’s Study Society to apply as fast as possible. Mao was further motivated by Cai delivering a message from Yang encouraging him to enter Peking University. They arrived in Beijing on 19, August, 1918.<ref name=":4" />

By that time, more than fifty people from Hunan in Beijing for the program, highest for any province. The Sino-French Education Association arranged classes for French language for the Hunan students, holding them places like the Peking University, city suburbs and villages. Mao created a study plan for the Hunan students and organized financial support for them. While his friends scattered to various locales, Mao stayed in Beijing, he however didn't apply to Peking University despite Yang Changji’s hopes and a compatriot doing so. It has been speculated that Mao didn't have the money to attend or that he returned to his prefrence for self study, in addition there was a Ministry of Education regulation that teacher's college graduates be required to serve as teacher for a few years before they can continue individual higher education.<ref name=":4" />

In October, Mao made acquaintances with Li Dazhao, the director of Peking University Library, after an introduction by Yang Changji, and he was appointed to become an assistant librarian. His duties in the Second Reading Room included registering and ordering fifteen Chinese and foreign newspapers and journals as they came in, maintain the room and record names of those checking out library resources. Salary for Peking University professors ranged from 200 to 300 Chinese silver dollars per month, but Mao’s monthly salary was barely 8 silver dollars. Mao however was content due to access to new reading materials and acquaintance with visitors to the reading room including noted scholars and young progressives.<ref name=":4" />

Peking University was the heart of the New Culture Movement, and the chancellor, Cai Yuanpei, was advocate of free discourse of ideas and views from all schools of thought. It was an atmosphere not avaliable in Hunan and Mao encountered people and ideas he had never encountered before. Mao quickly joined two academic associations, first being the Journalism Society founded on 14 October 1918 by Shao Piaoping, who offered lectures on running of newspapers. Second was the the Philosophy Society, which was established in January 1919, organized by Yang Changji to faciliate the study of eastern and western philosophers . All this serves give Mao a direct look at the activists of the New Culture Movement and make associate with people whose works he had been reading in College. Mao organized the New People’s Study Society members in Beijing to attend discussions with those luminaries, and he held Chen Duxiu in the high esteem at that time. Regarding Chen as the leader and commander in chief of the whole movement. <ref name=":4" />

As he was working in the Peking University Library, he was naturally in direct contact with Li Dazhao, the library director, and was most influenced by him. The theories of Marxism and socialism were beginning to attract a lot of attention in China and Li Dazhao was the first person in China to uphold the [[Russian revolution of 1917|Great October Socialist Revolution]]. Li's article ‘Victory of Bolshevism’ published in the journal New Youth, and a Tian’anmen speech in November 1918, entitled ‘Victory of the Common Man’, helped Mao to understand the October Revolution and Marxism.<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Peking University Library|title=Mao Zedong|url=https://www.lib.pku.edu.cn/portal/en/bggk/bgjs/lishiyange/maozedong|retrieved=2023-07-19}}</ref>

At the same time, Mao became acquainted with people like Tan Pingshan, Wang Guangqi, Chen Gongbo and Zhang Guotao, who'd later become important figures. He also became friends with Deng Zhongxia, a progressive student from Hunan working in the Chinese literature at Peking University. Mao was steadily becoming more political and radical in his thinking. He also encountered [[Anarchism]], and engaged in much discussion with Zhu Qianzhi, a Peking University student, about the subject. Mao came into contact with many Anarchist experiments and ideas. These had a big influence on young people and Mao felt their impact <ref name=":4" />

During his time in Beijing, Mao at first lodged with his former teacher, Yang Changji, while other members of the New People’s Study Society found accommodations at the Hunan Guild Hall. The resulting difficulties in meeting up caused them to seek other quarters. Mao and seven others, eventually moved into small three rooms in a local's courtyard. Sleeping side by side on kang (earthen beds). Mao's close association with Yang Changji led him to knowing his daughter, Yang Kaihui, as well. They had first met during Mao's time at the Teachers' College when she was 14, at Beijing she was 18, and he formed a close relationship with her. Mao would explore scenic spots across Beijing with Yang Kaihui or his other friends, once traveling to Tianjin after wanting to see the sea and investigated the locomotive plant at Changxindian<ref name=":4" />

In spring 1919, Mao went back to Hunan to tend to his ill mother as first batch of his friends finalized preparations for the work-study program in France. Then on 12 March, Mao saw off Cai Hesen, Xiao Zisheng and the others at Shanghai. While he had organized his fellow Hunanese youth for the program, Mao himself didn't feel quite prepared to depart himself despite the entreaties of his friends. Mao however explained that, first he felt reading Chinese translations of Western works saved time and facilitated greater understanding. Secondly, that China itself had much more for Mao to study and understand to fully analyze Western works. Finally, Mao felt that if he hoped to contribute to the China that he couldn't leave China without a thorough investigation of its conditions before departing for foreign lands.<ref name=":4" />

Earlier when founding the New People’s Study Society, Mao had considered studying in Japan, years later in 1921, Mao still felt that he needed three or four more years of studying before he could permit himself to travel abroad, to Russia, for at least five years of study. It is speculated this is fastidious approach enabled to lay the foundation for [[Socialism with Chinese Characteristics]].<ref name=":4" />

On 6 April 1919, Mao returned to Changsha, and found employment at Xiuye Primary School thanks to recommendation of a former classmate Zhou Shizhao who worked there as a teacher for six hours a week. The salary was low but it permitted Mao to meet with New People’s Study Society and participate in social and political activities.<ref name=":4" />

During World War 1, China had joined the Entente Powers in hopes of recovering sovereignty violated by Germany. The victories Imperial Powers at the Paris Peace Treaty however decided to transfer German privileges and interests to Japan. China was outraged by the decision and students of Beijing took action starting on 4 May 1919. They engaged in large protests and demonstrations that reverberated across the country, voicing the outrage and indignation that Chinese people felt towards all the Imperial powers. <ref name=":4" />

News of the Beijing student actions spread to Hunan when newspapers defied the censorship ordered by the provincial military governor Zhang Jingyao. In mid-May; Deng Zhongxia and He Shuheng and other representatives of the Beijing Students’ Federation arrived in Changsha, where they briefed Mao about the developments of the Beijing student movement and talked about how to reorganize the Hunan Students’ Federation to support the movement started in Beijing. <ref name=":4" />

Mao and his fellow New People’s Study Society discussed events and came to conclusion that the New People’s Study Society must take active part and helped to send representatives from more than twenty schools to a meeting at Chuyi Primary School on 25 May 1919. The meeting resolved to establish a new Hunan Students’ Federation and organize a students strike in early June. The Students' Federation was formally established three days later and organized a city wide strike of more than twenty schools in Changsha schools involved. It sent a telegraph to the Beijing government six demands, including the stipulation that the government must repudiate the Paris Peace Treaty and abrogate all unqueual treaties.<ref name=":4" />

The Students’ Federation's headquarters was at the Hunan Commercial Training School and many of its leaders were also members of the New People’s Study Society, including its chairman Peng Huang. Since Mao worked close by, he would sometimes stay overnight to provide guidance and it was felt by some that he was the leader of this militant students' organization.<ref name=":4" />

On 9 July, at urging of the Students’ Federation, the Hunan Federation of All Circles was established. It utilized effective grassroots activity and quickly grew to more than 400 branches within the month. Possibly influencing Mao's later idea of 'The Great Union of the Popular Masses'.<ref name=":4" />

The May Fourth Movement caused an explosion of progressive outburst as progressive peoples sought to study and introduce all kinds of new ideas. New journals advocated for new concepts, including in Hunan, which gave rise to a dozen or so publications. Hunan Students’ Federation to publish its own journal the Xiangjiang Pinglun (Xiang River Review) at Mao's urging and tapped him to be its editor-in-chief and primary contributor.<ref name=":4" />

The first issue of Xiang River Review on 14 July 1919, which declared the journals objective to publicize new thinking and trends, commentary on current events in Asia, the West and globally, and the like all to be written in the common language rather than literary style. Only five issues would be printed.<ref name=":4" />

Mao threw himself into the work, writing pieces himself when other contributors failed to send in articles. Working into night despite hot summer days and mosquitos. Mao wrote some fourty articles for the journal, doing the editing, type-setting, proofreading and sometimes even selling copies on the street himself. His salary as a teacher amounted to little other than his meals, with his belongings reduced to an old mosquito net, an old quilt, an old woven bamboo sleeping mat, a rather worn-out long grey cotton gown, and a pair of white, cotton trousers for daily wear, but the lenient work schedule had been what he had chosen the position for.<ref name=":4" />

Mao's writings for the Xiang River Review demonstrated a growth in his thinking as a result of the revolutionary situation of the May Fourth Movement. Outgrowing ideas of 'essential laws of the universe’ and paying more attention to material basis that gives rise to thought and ideas. Turning to practical issues and comprehensive social transformation. Growing closer to [[historical materialism]] but he also continued to experiment with ideas like new village formations as a tools in social reform.<ref name=":4" />

The most important work Mao wrote for the Xiang River Review was ‘The Great Union of the Popular Masses’, where for the first time, Mao praised the October Revolution and its impact. Of the alliance between [[Dictatorship of the proletariat|workers and peasants]]. Inspired by the October Revolution and the May Fourth Movement, Mao shed ideas about singular great philosophers and moralists that would change the world, instead he began to realize the latent potential of the masses which he had not quite appreciated previously. Advocating that the popular masses transform society since they outnumber the nobles, capitalists and other powerful figures and all significant movements in history rose from them.<ref name=":4" />

Mao at this time advocated for two schools of thought, the radical school of Marxism and the moderate line of Peter Alexievich Kropotkin. The contradiction between his praise for the October Revolution and flinching away from violence required to overthrow reactionary regimes was blatant. Mao thought that the moderation reformism was of greater depth and advocated the people to launch a sustained “movement of admonition”, to effect “a revolution through appeal”. Calling on the peasants to fight for reduced land rent and taxes, rather than abolition of the feudal exactions.<ref name=":4" />

In mid-August 1919, the military governor of Hunan, Zhang Jingyao, banned the Xiang River Review and forced the Hunan Students’ Federation to disband. The Journal despite its short time in operation had a great influence. Its publications constantly sold out, influenced young progressives into political activity, and was noticed outside of its home province. The Beijing Meizhou Pinglun (Weekly Review), ran an article titled ‘Introducing New Publications', favorably introducing the Xiang River Review as a younger brother and praised its works. The author of the article, and Chief Editor of the Weekly Review, Hu Shi was engaging in a struggle against Li Dazhao for ideological leadership of the May Fourth Movement and led to a split.<ref name=":4" />

Mao held both Li Dazhao and Hu Shi in high regard at the time, and advocated for study of multiple ideological doctrines, including Hu Shi's experimentalism. He intended on establishing a society for study of problems and mailed a draft charter to multiple places, including his friend Deng Zhongxia, a student leader at Peking University. At the time, a female student named Zhao Wuzhen was forced into marriage and committed suicide during the ceremony in a move that shocked the country. After learning of the event, Mao sent Li Si’an, a female student at Hunan Girls Senior Middle School and newly joined New People’s Study Society member to investigate. From 16 to 28 November, Mao wrote nine articles for the Dagongbao about women's liberation and called people to fight oppression of feudal society.<ref name=":4" />

As the May Fourth Movement progressed, socialism became the leading idea among Chinese progressives. But it was a socialism that was diffuse and confused. Multiple utopian and petty bourgeois trend such like Anarchism, Kropotkin’s mutual aid, Tolstoyism, ideas from Japan, U.S and others competed with Marxism. All of these ideas were being discussed and experimented with Anarchism being dominant early on. It had arrived earlier in China than Marxism and seemingly set deep roots among the vast sea of petit bourgeoisie in China. Anarchism was Mao Zedong’s stepping stone on his way to scientific socialism.<ref name=":4" />

In 1 December 1919, Mao he published one of his ideas 'The Work of the Students' for ideal society in the Hunan Education Monthly. It was a fairly detailed construction plan for a new village type, with all the amenities of the city and new social formations that he hoped would gradually transform the whole nation into a big new village ideal, shying at the moment from calling it the "model country” and such other terms. It was the same view as found in the Xiang River Review. Mao thought the area around was most fit for these 'villages' and hoped to draw support by publishing his ideas. Further progress was halted by the political realities of China and Hunan province.<ref name=":4" />

Ever since March 1918, Hunan been under the control of Zhang Jingyao, a warlord of the Anhui faction, who seized the post of the military governor of Hunan. Hunan suffered under his rule. Zhang permitted his soldiers to steal from the people; issues bank notes without restraint; shut down educational facilities, seized and sold state mines; press ganged peasants into planting opium; silenced speech, issued extra taxed to pay his soldiers, and faked elections among other abuses. Zhang’s abuses only grew in response to the May Fourth Movement.<ref name=":4" />

In aftermath of the Hunan Students' Federations' forced disbanding, Mao knew that Zhang had to be forced out of Hunan. In mid-September, Mao met with former members of the Hunan Students’ Federation to study the issue of Zhang and recommended that as the struggle between the Anhui and Zhili factions of the northern warlords was intensifying, it was the best time to drive Zhang from Hunan. He further determined that the Hunan students be the driving force behind the expulsion and that the students must rally the teachers and journalists to assist. Seeing the struggle as a continuation and deepening of the earlier patriotic movements.<ref name=":4" />

The Hunan Students' Federation reestablished itself, and on 2 December, it along with people other people set fire to Japanese goods to protest Japanese aggression, but the rally was put down by Zhang Jingyao’s troops. For the next two days, Mao met with teachers, students and other people from Changsha to deliberate, and on 6 December, the Students’ Federation published an article declaring their intent to drive out Zhang Jingyao and announced a general students strike of all the middle schools and colleges in the city. It was the first political movement with great social impact that Mao led.<ref name=":4" />

On the day of the students' strike, it was decided to send delegates to cities like Beijing to gather support for the anti-Zhang movement. On 18 December 1919, Mao Zedong arrived in Beijing as leader of one of the delegations. Mao met with various contacts and formed the various organizations and a news agency dedicated to expelling Zhang and sent publications to newspapers in other cities. Mao led the delagation that presented Jin Yunpeng, prime minister of the northern warlords’ government, with the group's seven petitions.<ref name=":4" />

As Mao's name appeared in telegrams, journals, and news, until it reached the attention of his old teacher Yang Changji. Yang Changji wrote to Zhang Shizhao, Secretary-General to the Guangzhou military government and representative to the North-South Negotiations for Reconciliation, to recommend Mao and Cai Hesen before dying shortly after. Mao visited Yang in the hospital until his death, and joined Yang's son, Yang Kaizhi, and daughter, Yang Kaihui for the funeral. Mao raised donations for the funeral and support of the family, and on 22 January 1920 joined Cai Yuanpei, Zhang Shizhao and Yang Du, in publishing Yang Changji's obituary and short biography in the Peking University Journal.<ref name=":4" />

In Beijing, Mao joined the Young Chinese Society launched by Wang Guangqi and in Feburary, visited a mutual-aid project for women sponsored by Wang. Mao was curious about the project but also skeptical given a similar project for men had already failed. He then called on Professor Zhou Zuoren, an advocate of new villages, to converse about the subject. Mao also wrote to Professor Li Jinxi, a former teacher of his, an article titled ‘Deliberations on Conditions for Reconstruction of Hunan’, which he considered to be a piecemeal suggestions but a necessary step.<ref name=":4" />

Mao had maintained connections with Li Dazhao, two talking about issues of studying in Russia and of woman studying abroad. It was through Li Dazhao's influence that Mao's nascent interest in [[Marxism–Leninism|Bolshevism]] was cultivated. Mao paid more attention to Marxist materials being published, searching out few translations on Marxism available in China. Mao and his friends Deng Zhongxia, He Mengxing and Luo Zhanglong set up a small study room they named ‘Kang-mu-yi Study’ (the Communism Study-room), where they mimeographed Chinese edition of the [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party|The Communist Manifesto]] as translated by Liu Renjing.<ref name=":4" />

After Li Jinxi saw Mao with a copy of the Communist Manifesto, Mao would write to his friend Tao Yi self criticizing about how he had been hazy in his thinking, achieved little and studied too little. Mao would meet with Li Jinxi and talked about the types of socialism and China's need for a fundamental solution.<ref name=":4" />

While in Beijing, Mao twice wrote to members of the New People’s Study Society in Changsha about his preference for studying in Russia as opposed to France and encouraging others to do likewise. He planned to organize new study groups headed towards Russia and refereed to it as the world's first civilized country.<ref name=":4" />

Mao's thinking was undergoing an evolution, but he considered himself to not be versed enough in the various 'isms and theories' and thus still be 'unawakened'. But from the practical efforts required for the anti-Zhang movement and a growing understanding of Marxism, Mao was growing increasingly aware about how abstract reformist ideas are about their goals and how much reformism lacks details studies about its means and goals.<ref name=":4" />

On 1 April 1920, Mao, Peng Huang, and other New People's Study Society helped found the ‘Association for Promoting Reform of Hunan’, a mass political organization for discussion and action regarding Hunan's future. One 11 April, Mao left Beijing for Shanghai, so as too meet up with Peng Huang for collaboration and see off another batch of students for the work-study programme in France. Along the way, Mao stopped at Qufu, birthplace of Confucius.<ref name=":4" />

On 11 May in Shanghai, the society members bade farewell to Xiao San and five others. Afterwards, Mao invited Peng Huang, Zhang Wenliang and some others to try a mutual-aid/work study life. They rented a few rooms on Minhou South Lane, where they shared chores, studying, meals and clothing. Mao was also tasked with washing the clothes and retrieving newspapers. After sometime, the project was abandoned after being deemed untenable.<ref name=":4" />

By 11 June 1920, Zhang Jingyao's situation became increasingly untenable under public pressure but he was finally forced out of Hunan by the military threat of the northern warlords' Zhili faction and local Hunanese forces. Tan Yankai, new member of the [[Kuomintang|GMD]] led Hunanese forces into Changsha and absorbed it into the South China government<ref name=":4" />

On 6 June, Yi Lirong, a member of the New People’s Study Society, wrote to Mao criticizing how activities from beginning of Zhang's occupation to his expulsion had resulted in little, and that more must be done to gather strength and train people before greater aims could be realized. Mao wrote that the anti-Zhang movement may have been purely against the occupation but it could be made a step in fundamental reforms for both Hunan and China at large, and the role that the New People's Study Society could serve.<ref name=":4" />

With the political situation having changed, Mao wrote a series of articles for Shanghai newspapers about how the people of Hunan could prevent the emergence of another Zhang Jingyao. He firstly recommended abolition of the military governorship, reduction of standing army, and citizen control of banks, education and protection of citizen rights to attain 'popular governance'. Mao felt that as each province worked out their individual problems, by uniting in the future, the whole country's problems could be resolved.<ref name=":4" />

At Shanghai, Mao met with Chen Duxiu, who along with Li Da, Li Hanjun and others had been organizing the Shanghai Communist Group. Mao asked about Chen Duxiu for advice and the conversation turned to the topic of Marxism. Meeting Chen Duxiu in the south and Li Dazhao in the north, two of China's great Marxist ideologists helped push Mao to Marxism.<ref name=":4" />

By 26 June 1920, last of Zhang Jingyao's soldiers were forced to leave Hunan and various elements who had gone outside to province to seek support for Zhang’s expulsion returned to Changsha. Mao returned to Changsha on 7 July via Wuhan. Along which, he was tapped to be headmaster of the primary school attached to the First Teachers’ Training College and the College's teacher in Chinese classics.<ref name=":4" />

In Changsha, Mao became involved with multiple projects of long term and immidiate importance.

His long term goal had became to guide public consciousness to Marxism and awareness of events in Russia. He along with Yi Lirong and some others, founded the Wenhua shushe (Cultural Book Society), intending it to release the latest foreign and Chinese books and fresh educational material. Mao wrote in the Hunan Dagongbao that want of knowledge and new culture was a greater need than even hunger, and how Russia could be an inspiration for China. The Book Society's intended audience encompassed more than the previous scope of 'new villages' and 'self-study colleges'.<ref name=":4" />

Mao canvassed within and outside the city for financial support and expanded its network to some sixty or seventy entities within and outside the province. The Book Society's publications of Marxist materials such as 'A Study of the New Russia, Worker-Peasant Government and China, An Introduction to Marx’s Das Kapital' and others were met with a receptive audience. The offices located at Xiangya Medical School would later serve as an underground office for the Hunan Communist Group.<ref name=":4" />

At the same time; Mao, Fang Weixia, Peng Huang, He Shuheng and others organized a Hunan Russian Studies Society. Its goal was to make a study of Russia, publish works informing people of Russia and to facilitate work-study programs towards Russia. The Hunan Russian Studies Society was founded on 15 September 1920 with Mao being elected as its executive secretary. Articles such as ‘History of the Russian Communist Party’, 'Biography of Lenin’ and ‘Study of the Worker-Peasant System’ were sourced from the Gongchandang (Communist Party), a monthly magazine published in Shanghai, to be reprinted in Hunan. The Society helped progressive youth and future CPC members such as Liu Shaoqi, Ren Bishi, Xiao Jinguang and thirteen other young progressives travel to Shanghai Foreign Languages School before progressing to Russia.<ref name=":4" />

Mao's more immediate operations included works for Hunanese self-government after the expulsion of the military governor Zhang Jingyao. China had only become more destabilized as the northern warlord government instigated multiple expeditionary wars against the south under the slogan of 'unification through military force'. Political power was devolving to provincial level as people sought to establish provincial self-government or alliance of multiple provinces for self defense. Both Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu approved of the development, with Li believing that China couldn't be reformed without such provincial alliances. The discourse made an impact on Mao who spoke, with his friend Luo Zhanglong, of making Hunan into a leading light of China. Despite his growing warmth towards Marxism, he still held some hope in reformism. Without putting his conceptions to the test, it was impossible to disregard them easily and totally.<ref name=":4" />

Zhang Jingyao's expulsion revitalized Hunan and the new GMD military governor, Tan Yankai, seemed attuned to the wishes of the people and their desire for self governance. But it was out of necessity. Tan required popular support for his unstable position and to repel further aggression from the norther warlord government. People who had suffered under warlord governance placed much hope in Tan's promises, with organizations and associations pressing harder on the line of 'Hunan self-rule' or 'governance by the people'.<ref name=":4" />

Mao was at his home village of Shaoshan when Tan Yankai began to demonstrate his true intentions. Tan proclaimed Hunanese autononmy but he did so with proclamation of 'Hunan government by Hunanese' as opposed to 'Hunanese people's self-government'. By 1 September 1920, Mao was back in Changsha and began a literary retort, having publishing in local and Shanghai newspapers some fourteen articles elaborating on the issues about autonomy in span of a month. Mao pointed out that Tan's declaration confused rule by Hunanese bureaucrats and politicians as opposed to rule by the popular masses. The people wanted rule by the people and Mao demanded that self-governance should be a bottom up movement, with the model being Soviet Russia.<ref name=":4" />

Mao advocated for a 'Hunan republic', which possessed full autonomy from the greater China. He felt that nationwide reconstruction would take great amount of time, during which if separate provinces had underwent individual reconstructions for a decade or two and 'a thoroughgoing revolution', then they could contribute to a comprehensive nationwide solution to the ongoing chaos. Mao felt that 'a Hunan republic' had the opportunity to abolish warlord rule via government of the people, which would; run the banks, develop industry, advance education, set up trade unions and peasant associations, establish popular rule in county and village levels, and ensure democratic rights.<ref name=":4" />

This plan however was utopian conception, reflecting of Mao's contradictory mindset. The thrust of the plan depended on public opinion being able to compel Tan Yankai into giving up on his consolidation of power, harkening to Mao's conception of 'a revolution through appeals'. The upsurge of public opinion frightened Tan and he swiftly convened a 'Conference on Autonomy' on 13 September 1920, where it was decided that his provincial government and legislature would select people to serve on a ‘Hunanese Autonomy Council’ which would draft a provincial constitution and assemble a constituent assembly.<ref name=":4" />

Immediately, Mao Zedong, Peng Huang and Dagongbao editor Long Jiangong published a counterproposal to Tan, titled “Hunan Revolutionary Government” Convene a “Hunan People’s Constitutional Convention to Enact a ‘Hunan Constitution’ in Order to Build a ‘New Hunan””. They brought up Tan's earlier promises of being a true revolutionary and urged him at this moment of opportunity to convence an assembly of the people that would draft constituion and form basis of a new government. Signed by 377 and published across two days on 5-6 October, it drew attention and growing support. Mao went to work meeting various peoples and organizations to garner their support for the document.<ref name=":4" />

On 7 October, the Hunan Students' Federation organized a meeting of various Changsha people's organizations and newspapers, and the meeting decided to stage a petition demonstration on 10 October. Mao and and Long Jiangong were requested to draft the petition's demands. The next day, Mao chaired a meeting assembled by the Provincial Education Association. The 436 delagetes discussed the prospect of people's constituion, and decided that Fang Weixia and some others would report to the provincial government about the deliberation results.<ref name=":4" />

On 10 October, 20,000 people attended the planned demonstration despite adverse weather. Peng Huang handed the petition demands written by Mao to Tan Yankai whilst the demonstrators tore down flags in outrage at the attempt to circumvent their voices in formation of the new government. Tan rejected the petition out of hand and by end of November was replaced as commander of the Hunan Army by Zhao Hengti. Zhao discarded the illusion of openmindedness that Tan had feigned. He immidiately set about attacking Mao, as a crucial figure in the demonstration, spreading allegations that Mao had intended to lauch a coup against the provisional government. The provincial police summoned Mao for interrogation to create an atmosphere of terror.<ref name=":4" />

Mao published an article, ‘Letter Refuting Unjust Accusations’, in the Dagongbao to refute the allegations. Though the police took no further actions, the peaceful petition turned out to be like ‘asking a tiger for his skin’ and had reached a dead end. The failiure of the reform movement exhausted Mao and he left the provincial capital for a few days at the end of Novement, heading to Pingxiang in Jiangxi Province. There, Mao reflected on the course of events, about the failure of his reformist approach and knew a new path was required. The ability to draw lessons from failiure and discarding erronous conceptions would serve him well.<ref name=":4" />

Mao began a series of correspondes with fellow New People’s Study Society members, with his letters to Xiang Jingyu, Li Si’an and Luo Zhanglong reflecting his self critical analysis and new approach to activities. He described political reform as a blind alley that must be discarded, that the Society must adopt a doctrine to give clear expectations as to its goals and finally that long term plans and preparations must be made to grow strength to create favorable conditions rather than engaging in contests of daily superiority with people like Tan Yankai and the Warlords. He was shedding the last vestiges of illusion regarding a reformist path and to embrace a revolutionary road.<ref name=":4" />

Mao collected corresponces between Society members and compiled it into two volumes, with summaries and commentaries. Having it printed in December as a review of the evolution of his and other members' ideological views over the course of two years. Writing about the effort to expel the warlord governor Zhang Jingyao and movement for Hunanese autonomy, Mao wrote that they were expedient movements under circumstances previaling then but that the New People’s Study Society's goals go far beyond them.<ref name=":4" />

By late November, Mao recieved letters from members of the Society participating in the French work-study programme, including from his friend Cai Hesen. Cai and those of the first contingent able to read French had immersed themselves into translating books and journals of several dozen revolutionary publications into Chinese, leading them to accept Marxism and Leninism slightly earlier and with some deeper understanding than Mao. On 5-10 July 1920, fifteen of the society’s members held a meeting at Mouton-Duvernet in southern Paris, revealing formation of groups led by Cai and a moderate group headed by Xiao Zisheng, leading both to send letter to Mao to inform of differing views.<ref name=":4" />

Xiao Zisheng’s letter dismissed the Russian (Marxist) revolution as being unjustified and was favorable towards anarchist and non-violent new formatulation revolution, with education as the start and means. Cai openly advocated for China to enter the road of socialism and embrace of the class struggle and proletarian dictatorship, with; the Party, trade unions, cooperatives and soviets as the means. Cai stressed that in China's conditions, organization of the Communist Party was a priority and that he hoped Mao would prepare for it.<ref name=":4" />

In light of the failed reform movement in Hunan, Mao replied on 1 December to Society members advocating for the approach of the Communist Party as had been proposed by Cai Hessen. Explaining that while Reformist measures sound good in theory, they do not work in practice. That history demonstrated that Reactionaries will not give up of their own accord and must be overthrown. The Russian revolution had pointed the way forward after failiure of all other paths. Mao's letters to Cai represented Mao's solidified belief in Marxism and Communism at the age of 27.<ref name=":4" />

=== Communist Start & Beginning of Military Career (1921 - 1930） ===
'''1921'''

From January 1st to 3rd, together with more than ten people including He Shuheng, Peng Huang, Zhou Shizhao , Xiong Jinzheng, held the New Year's meeting of members of the Xinmin Society in Changsha Chaozong Street Cultural Publishing House. At the meeting, it was proposed that the Xinmin Society should take "transformation of China and the world" as its common purpose, and agreed to use "Russian-style" methods to transform China.

From July 23 to early August, together with He Shuhen, he attended the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in Shanghai as a representative of the Changsha Communist Group.

In August, he returned to Changsha and served as the director of the Hunan Branch of the Secretariat of the Chinese Labor Organization. He founded Hunan Self-study University with He Shuheng .

On October 10, the Hunan branch of the Communist Party of China was established and served as secretary.

'''1922'''

In May, the Hunan District Executive Committee of the Communist Party of China was established and served as secretary.

From September to December, he organized and led a series of strikes by the Guangdong-Han Railway workers, the Anyuan road and mine workers, and the Changsha mud and wood workers, pushing the Hunan labor movement to a rapid climax.

'''1923'''

In April, he left Changsha and arrived in Shanghai to work in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In June, he attended the Third National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Guangzhou and was elected as a member of the Central Executive Committee, a member of the Central Bureau, and served as the Secretary of the Central Bureau.

On September 16, in accordance with the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and entrusted by Lin Boqu, the deputy director of the General Affairs Department of the Kuomintang headquarters, he returned to Changsha to prepare for the establishment of the Hunan Kuomintang organization.

'''1924'''

In January, he attended the first National Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang in Guangzhou and was elected as an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee.

In February, he went to Shanghai and served as a member of the Shanghai Executive Department of the Kuomintang and secretary of the Organization Department.

In December, he returned to Hunan to recuperate.

'''1925'''

In February, when he returned to Shaoshan, he recuperated from his illness and launched a peasant movement at the same time.

In September, went to Guangzhou to participate in the preparations for the Second National Congress of the Kuomintang.

In October, he served as the acting director of the Central Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang.

On December 1, the article " Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society " was published.

On December 5, the editor-in-chief of the Kuomintang Central Propaganda Department publication " Politics Weekly " was launched.<ref name=":0" />

'''1926'''

In January, he attended the Second National Congress of the Chinese Kuomintang and continued to be elected as an alternate executive member of the Central Committee.

On March 18, he delivered a speech entitled "The Significance of Commemorating the Paris Commune " at the gathering commemorating the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Paris Commune at the Guangzhou KMT Political Workshop.

In March, Chiang Kai-shek created the Zhongshan ship incident in Guangzhou , and advocated a counterattack with Zhou Enlai and others.

From May to September, he hosted the Sixth Peasant Movement Workshop of the Kuomintang and served as the director.

In November, he went to Shanghai to serve as the Secretary of the Peasant Movement Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Soon he went to Wuhan and founded the Kuomintang Central Peasant Movement Workshop.

In December, he attended the first workers' congress and the first farmers' congress in Hunan province in Changsha.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/45d1GZiQpz0WFcWR579pvVGwAIuBatoLiskG75Z310XehxG0ZLVa6Y7aqiTyWbWOkPb7SM4m_5Vwg7l95RnBNCPgahFfqKpBpHEXDwxMyq5-uuREUVgzD4h8 Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1926-1931) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1927'''

From January 4th to February 5th, he inspected the peasant movement in five counties of Xiangtan, Xiangxiang, Hengshan, Liling and Changsha in Hunan.

In March, he published the " Investigation Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan "; he attended the Third Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of the Kuomintang in Wuhan.

On April 12, Chiang Kai-shek launched a counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai.

From April 27th to May 10th, he attended the Fifth National Congress of the Communist Party of China and was elected as an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee. The meeting criticized Chen Duxiu's rightist mistakes.

On July 15, Wang Jingwei launched a counter-revolutionary coup in Wuhan, Ninghan merged , and the Great Revolution failed.

On August 1, the Nanchang Uprising broke out. Together with Song Qingling and other 22 Kuomintang Central Committee members, they jointly issued the "Central Committee Members' Declaration", condemning Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei for betraying the national revolution.

On August 7, he attended an emergency meeting held by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Hankou, and put forward the idea that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and was elected as an alternate member of the Provisional Political Bureau of the Central Committee. After the meeting, he went to Hunan to lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi .

On September 9, the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi broke out. When going to the headquarters of the third regiment of Tonggu Xiaojia Temple in Jiangxi, passing Liuyang Zhangjiafang, he was caught by the Qingxiang team of the regiment defense bureau and escaped with wit on the way.

In September, after the Autumn Harvest Uprising was frustrated, he led the uprising troops to march towards the middle of the Luoxiao Mountains .

In October, arrived at Maoping, Ninggang County, Jiangxi, and began to establish the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base .

In November, he was wrongly accused by the Political Bureau of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and was removed from his position as an alternate member of the Political Bureau.

'''1928'''
[[File:Mao 3 rules painting.png|thumb|Mao during the [[Chinese Civil War|Civil War]]]]
In April, he led his troops to join forces with the remaining troops of the Nanchang Uprising Army led by Zhu De and Chen Yi and the peasant army of the Southern Shonan Uprising in Long City, Ninggang County, Jiangxi Province .

In May, he served as the party representative and secretary of the Military Commission of the Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army ''(later renamed the Chinese Red Army), which was jointly organized by the two troops.''

In July, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee at the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

In October, he drafted a resolution for the Second Hunan-Jiangxi Boundary Congress of the Communist Party of China, proposing the idea of "armed separatism of workers and peasants ".

On November 25, he wrote a report to the Central Committee on behalf of the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army of the Communist Party of China, summarizing the experience of the Jinggangshan armed separatism of workers and peasants.

In December, presided over the formulation of Jinggangshan "Land Law".

'''1929'''

In January, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the main force of the Fourth Red Army to march to southern Jiangxi and western Fujian. In the spring of 1930, two revolutionary bases in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian were initially formed.

In April, presided over the formulation of the " Land Law " of Xingguo.

In June, he attended the Seventh Congress of the Fourth Red Army of the Communist Party of China held in Longyan. His correct opinions on the tasks, political work and military work of the Red Army were not accepted . Others are in charge. After the meeting, he left the main leadership position of the Fourth Red Army, went to western Fujian to recuperate and guide local work.

In July, guided the convening of the first Congress of the CPC in West Fujian.

In September, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a letter of instruction to the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army, affirming Mao Zedong's correct proposition on the Red Army's strategy of action and building a strong people's revolutionary army.

In December, presided over the Ninth Congress of the Fourth Red Army of the Communist Party of China in Gutian Village, Shanghang County, Fujian Province, made a political report at the meeting, and drafted the resolution of the meeting (that is, the resolution of the Gutian Conference). The General Assembly re-elected Mao Zedong as Secretary of the former Party Committee.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/ef41lepOlKVUI6KqdtRtOuAAqar2rLjVZxZqIdtlJEZXO6ZHsIhcZ_PJOpNe_ZjiAZHcjhQbkabQKtmFn1XRHN7IV-eHgX3t9MPQXGXyN8g Fourth Red Army Big Nines] - Guangming.com</ref>

'''1930'''

In January, wrote the article " A single spark can start a prairie fire ", expounding the theory of the Chinese revolutionary road of encircling the city from the countryside and seizing power by armed forces.

In May, conducted an investigation in Xunwu, Jiangxi; at the same time, he wrote an article " Against Bookishness ", proposing that "without investigation, there is no right to speak".

In August, he served as the general political commissar of the Red Front Army and the secretary of the General Front Enemy Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In September, he was elected as an alternate member of the Politburo at the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From December 30 to January 3 of the following year, together with Zhu De and others, he commanded the Red Front Army to smash the first "encirclement and suppression" of the Kuomintang army.

=== The Long March and the War to Resist Japanese Imperialism (1931 - 1940) ===
'''1931'''

On January 7, the enlarged Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Shanghai, and was elected as an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (did not attend the meeting). Wang Ming entered the Political Bureau of the Central Committee with the support of representatives of the Communist International.

From April to May, together with Zhu De and others, he commanded the Red Front Army to smash the second "encirclement and suppression" of the Kuomintang Army.

From July to September, the third "encirclement and suppression" of the Kuomintang army was crushed.

From November 1st to 5th, he was squeezed out at the first congress ( Southern Jiangxi meeting ) held by the party organization in the Central Soviet Area, and was accused of "narrow empiricism", "rich peasant line" and "extremely serious consistent right- wing opportunism ".

In November, he made a report at the First National Congress of the Chinese Soviet; he was elected as the chairman and chairman of the People's Committee at the first meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic.<ref name=":1">[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/55dfKe2dQNS8Z7ANwabKeuK4M3HdUKEplIzM7rOLAhdDz5KZ-JApZ1Z1xHuAH7g2ChwUFd1TagcX3Py2ysanDlkBzA1JlQXuLmHfbjn5O-YMHNQoS8GhYpTG Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1926-1931)] - News of the Communist Party of China </ref>

'''1932'''

In January, I went to the ancient temple of Donghua Mountain on the outskirts of Ruijin, Jiangxi to recuperate.

In March, after the Red Army failed to attack Ganzhou, they stopped recuperating and rushed to the front line to command.

On April 15, the "Declaration of War Against Japan" was issued.

On May 9, Tong Xiangying issued "The Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic Opposes the KMT's Selling of Songhu Agreement".

In June, together with Zhu De, he commanded the First Red Army and the Fifth Red Army to return to southern Jiangxi from western Fujian.

In October, at the meeting of the Central Bureau of the Soviet Area of the Communist Party of China held in Ningdu, Jiangxi, he was hit by the wrong leadership of the "Left". After the meeting, he was dismissed from the position of general political commissar of the Red Army and went to Changting, Fujian to recuperate.<ref name=":1" />

'''1933'''

In late January, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee moved to the Central Revolutionary Base.

In early February, the provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of China comprehensively implemented the "offensive line", eliminated the influence of Mao Zedong's active defense line in the central base areas, and launched the so-called struggle against the " Luo Ming line ".

On May 30, Tong Xiangying and others issued the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic's "Declaration on Selling out Pingjin for the Kuomintang".

On June 1, Tong Xiangying and others issued the "Instructions on Land Survey Movement" of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic.

In August, made a report on "Smashing the Five "Encirclement and Suppression" and Soviet Economic Construction Tasks" at the Economic Construction Conference of the Seventeen Counties in the South of the Central Soviet Area held in Ruijin.

In October, he wrote the article "How to Analyze Rural Classes", which became the standard for classifying rural classes.

In November, he conducted investigations in Changgang Township of Xingguo County and Caixi Township of Shanghang County successively, and wrote "Investigation of Changgang Township" and "Investigation of Caixi Township".

'''1934'''

In January, he was elected as a member of the Politburo at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China. Made a work report at the Second National Congress of the Chinese Soviet. Continue to be elected as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic.

On June 19, Tong Xiangying and others published the "Declaration of the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic on Selling North China for the Kuomintang".

On July 15, Tong Xiangying and others published the "Declaration for the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to Go North to Anti-Japanese War".

On the evening of October 18, he led the security squad to leave Yudu and embark on the Long March.

At the end of November, the Red Army suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Xiangjiang. On the 30th, crossed the Xiangjiang River with the First Field Column of the Military Commission.

On December 12, at the emergency meeting of the heads of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Hunan Passage, it was adopted that the Red Army was urged to abandon the original plan to join the Second and Sixth Red Army Corps in western Hunan and instead advance to Guizhou, where the enemy was weak.

'''1935'''

From January 15th to 17th, he attended the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Zunyi, Guizhou , and was co-opted as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. The meeting ended the rule of Wang Ming's "Left" adventurism in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and actually established a new central leadership represented by Mao Zedong.

In March, he formed a three-member military command group with Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxiang.

From March to May, together with Zhou Enlai and others, he commanded the Red Army to cross the Chishui River four times , cross the Jinsha River skillfully , and seize the Luding Bridge by flying , winning decisive victories in the strategic shift.

On June 15, Tong Xiangying and others issued the "Declaration for Opposing Japan's Annexation of North China and Chiang Kai-shek's Traitorous Country".

In June, he led the Red Front Army to join the Red Fourth Front Army in western Sichuan. Soon, he fought against Zhang Guotao's escapism and separatism .

On October 19, he led the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to Wuqi Town, Yan'an, Shaanxi . The Red Army successfully completed the Long March .

In December, he attended the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Wayaobao , northern Shaanxi. The meeting determined the strategy of establishing the anti-Japanese national united front .

On December 27, he made a report on "On the Strategy of Opposing Japanese Imperialism" at the meeting of party activists , expounding the strategy and policy of the Anti-Japanese National United Front.

'''1936'''

On January 25, together with Zhou Enlai, Peng Dehuai and other 20 generals of the Red Army, they jointly issued the "Letter to All Generals and Soldiers of the Northeast Army for the Red Army's Willingness to Join Forces with the Northeast Army in Anti-Japanese War", proposing specific methods for organizing the national defense government and the Anti-Japanese Allied Forces, and suggested sending representatives to each other Negotiate together.

From February to May, together with Peng Dehuai, he led the main force of the Red Army across the Yellow River.

In March, five points of opinion were put forward to the Nanjing authorities to stop the civil war and unanimously resist Japan.

On June 1, together with Zhu De, he issued 20 propositions on saving the country and the people.

On June 12, he and Zhu De issued a declaration, expressing support for the " Guangdong Incident " and proposing eight programs for resisting Japan and saving the nation.

From July to October, he met with American journalist Snow many times in Yan'an, northern Shaanxi , answered his questions about the Chinese revolution and the Red Army of Workers and Peasants, and introduced his own experiences.

On August 10, he attended the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and made a report on the relationship between the two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the issue of the united front.

On August 25, he drafted the "Letter from the Communist Party of China to the Chinese Kuomintang", calling for a unified resistance to Japan.

On December 7, he served as the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On December 12 <ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/274bAy3rBGeX2Zh1YonADY9VQxrbpUeDtCw-fMAB28xtAQhHRGb9DPf2DI3BL8-bKaQSk82amgftAwx4WYIwWh3o5TH5mDEPfVPk Xi'an Incident] - People's Daily Online </ref>, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng carried out " military remonstrance " in Xi'an and detained Chiang Kai-shek. Mao Zedong and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China analyzed the complicated political situation at that time, determined the policy of peacefully resolving the Xi'an Incident , and sent Zhou Enlai and others to Xi'an to participate in the negotiations to promote the peaceful settlement of the incident.

In December, he wrote "Strategic Issues in China's Revolutionary War".<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/971bjRWYCTlHcKVIUeYweZ3aS1vRrIo8xD20lgLBmHB03AljT0HeW0bP-aEyJMGdY2e1H11RhOqiXFyr8DAcNsyYpZgSotmAqjBN65f7W9kWcvDzcEbwXonk Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1932-1936)] - News of the Communist Party of China</ref>

'''1937'''

On January 13, stationed in Yan'an with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Military Commission.

On February 9, he attended the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The meeting discussed and passed the "Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Third Plenary Session of the Chinese Kuomintang", and put forward five national policies and four guarantees. This document actually became the program of the Kuomintang-Communist cooperation negotiations.

In March, met with American journalist Smedley and answered some questions she raised about the Sino-Japanese War and the Xi'an Incident.

From April to July, he taught dialectical materialism at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, two of which were later organized into "On Practice" and "On Contradiction".

In May, at the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he made the report "The Mission of the Communist Party of China in the Anti-Japanese Period" and the conclusion of "Struggle to Win Millions of People into the Anti-Japanese National United Front".

On July 7, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out and the National War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began.

On July 23, he published "Principles, Measures and Prospects for Opposing Japan's Offensive", proposing the principles and policies of resolutely resisting the Japanese War and opposing compromise and concessions.

From August 22nd to 25th, attended the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Luochuan, northern Shaanxi, emphasized the principle of independence in the united front, clarified the strategic policy of independent mountain guerrilla warfare, and served as secretary of the newly formed Central Military Commission of the CPC .

On August 25, jointly issued an order with Zhu De and Zhou Enlai on the reorganization of the Red Army into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army . Subsequently, he directed the Eighth Route Army to go to the front line of the Anti-Japanese War.

On November 12, he made a report on " The Situation and Tasks of the Anti-Japanese War after the Fall of Taiyuan in Shanghai " at the meeting of activists of the Yan'an Party , comprehensively expounding his opinions on the united front and the relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.

In December, attended the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and delivered a speech, reiterating and adhering to the principles and policies determined at the Luochuan meeting in response to Wang Ming's right-leaning capitulationist idea of "everything goes through the united front".<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/09c8JgYPSUxL659ejxJWPaaazHLKyYdaX57UZz0KsAHWaKsJe4Da1TRNKlohdsfIQ4sVYPJMF-ITojN56t4nla8GP_dxQWiyJn4vLK6gJ1eW-X7fdVxY9cma Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1937-1940)] News of the Communist Party of China </ref>

'''1938'''

In the spring, a decision was made for the Eighth Route Army to enter the plains from the mountains of North China to carry out guerrilla warfare.

In May, the article "Strategic Issues in Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Warfare" was published.

From May 26th to June 3rd, gave a lecture on "On Protracted War" at the Yan'an Anti-Japanese War Research Association. Comprehensively analyze the era of the Sino-Japanese War and the basic characteristics of both sides, refute the theory of quick victory and national subjugation, and expound the general policy of the protracted war in China's Anti-Japanese War.

From September 14th to 27th, he attended the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Wang Jiaxiang conveyed the instructions of the Communist International, saying that the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China should be headed by Mao Zedong to solve the problem of unified leadership. Mao Zedong made a long speech at the meeting.

From September 29th to November 6th, attended the Sixth Plenary Session of the enlarged Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and made a political report and conclusion of the meeting on "On the New Stage". The meeting approved the line of the Politburo headed by Mao Zedong.

'''1939'''

On February 2, he spoke at the Party, Government and Military Production Mobilization Conference in Yan'an, calling for his own efforts to overcome economic difficulties.

On February 5, gave a speech on "Opposing Capitulationism" at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In late April, wrote the article "May 4th Movement".

On May 4, gave a speech on "The Direction of the Youth Movement " at the Yan'an Youth Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the May 4th Movement .

From July to August, he made several reports, condemning the diehards of the Kuomintang for creating anti-communist friction and calling for continued unity in the war of resistance.

On September 16, I talked with three reporters from Central News Agency, "Sweeping Daily" and "Xinmin Daily", reiterating the self-defense of "I will not be attacked if people do not attack me; in principle.

On October 4, the "Communist" was published, stating that the united front, armed struggle, and party building are the three magic weapons for the Chinese revolution to defeat the enemy.

On December 1, drafted a decision for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on absorbing a large number of intellectuals.

On December 21, wrote the article " Memorial Bethune " for the "Norman Bethune Memorial Book" compiled and printed by the Political Department of the Eighth Route Army and the Ministry of Health.

In the same month, he co-authored "The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China".

From December to March of the following year, the leader repelled the first anti-communist climax of the Kuomintang diehards.

'''1940'''

In January, "On New Democracy" was published, which systematically discussed the theory and program of the New Democratic Revolution.

On March 6, drafted instructions for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the issue of political power in the anti-Japanese base areas, proposing to implement the "three-three system".

On March 11, he made a report on "Current Strategic Issues in the Anti-Japanese United Front", summed up the experience of repelling the first anti-communist upsurge, and put forward the strategic thinking of "developing progressive forces, winning over middle forces, and opposing stubborn forces" and rational, Beneficial and moderate principles.

On May 4, he drafted an instruction from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Southeast Bureau and the New Fourth Army, emphasizing the need to let go of the expansion of the army to resist the attacks of anti-communist diehards, and pointed out that the policy of struggle should be adopted to "deal with possible sudden nationwide incidents."

In late June, he made a report at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, analyzing the international situation and its impact on China's War of Resistance, and pointed out that we should not only be alert to sudden incidents launched by the diehards of the Kuomintang, but also strive for a better situation.

In November, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Ye Ting , Xiang Ying replied to He Yingqin and Bai Chongxi 's "Hao Dian" telegram ("Jia Dian"), clearly refuting Hao Dian's unreasonable accusations against the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army.

In December, he talked with comrades who came back from the front to study at the Central Party School , emphasizing the importance of cadres being proficient in Marxism-Leninism.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/09c8JgYPSUxL659ejxJWPaaazHLKyYdaX57UZz0KsAHWaKsJe4Da1TRNKlohdsfIQ4sVYPJMF-ITojN56t4nla8GP_dxQWiyJn4vLK6gJ1eW-X7fdVxY9cma Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1937-1940)] News of the Communist Party of China </ref>

=== The End of the War of Anti-Japanese Resistance and a New China is born (1941- 1950 ) ===
'''1941'''

In early January, the Southern Anhui Incident occurred.

On January 20, he drafted an order for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China to rebuild the military headquarters of the New Fourth Army, and made a speech on the Southern Anhui Incident to Xinhua News Agency reporters, and solemnly proposed twelve measures to solve the Southern Anhui Incident.

On May 1, the " Government Program for the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region ", which was reviewed and rewritten and approved by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was released, stipulating that the construction of political power in the border region should implement the "three-three-system" principle.

On May 8, drafted the "Summary on Repelling the Second Anti-Communist Upsurge" within the party instructions, and put forward the strategic thinking of "fighting against fighting, pulling against pulling" and winning over the centrists.

On May 19, at the Yan'an cadre meeting, he made a report on " Reforming Our Study", which proposed to oppose subjectivism and clarified the ideological principles of seeking truth from facts.

On August 1, drafted the "Decision on Investigation and Research" for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From September 10th to October 22nd, he attended the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and made a report against subjectivism and sectarianism.

On September 26, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made the "Decision on the Advanced Study Group" and established the Central Study Group with Mao Zedong as the leader.

In autumn and winter, he successively presided over the editing of the party's historical literature collections such as "Since the Sixth National Congress", "Before the Sixth National Congress" and "Two Lines".<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/ca21_rzu4oz9hNSo9ONLY8dp9zMlNMql22DMS6RcgbfOt9JjKslA8ex5m2xenDScEKVWla0bdbPYfadlLTsxy-PNiRJFhKFE4P5LSFeKPTOZmDaAaO-q5CMC Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1941-1945) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1942'''

On February 1, at the opening ceremony of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he made a report on "Rectifying the Party's Style of Work".

On February 8, made a speech on "Opposing Party Stereotypes" at a cadre meeting convened by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In May, delivered a speech and made a conclusion at the Yan'an Literature and Art Workers Symposium.

On September 7, he wrote an editorial for the Yan'an "Liberation Daily", discussing that streamlining the army and streamlining administration is an extremely important policy.

In December, submitted a long written report on "Economic Issues and Financial Issues" to the senior cadre meeting of the Northwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, discussing the general policy of financial and economic work of "developing the economy and ensuring supply".

'''1943'''

On March 20, at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he was presumed to be the chairman of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and the chairman of the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

On May 26, at the cadre meeting held by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he made the "Report on the Dissolution of the Communist International".

On June 1, drafted a decision on leadership methods for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On July 1, he sent a letter to Kang Sheng, pointing out that the work of "anti-rape" should be investigated and studied, distinguish right from wrong, educate the masses, and oppose "forced, confessed, and believed".

On July 12, he wrote the editorial "Questioning the Kuomintang" for the "Liberation Daily" in Yan'an, exposing the conspiracy of the Kuomintang diehards to attack the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region.

From early September to early October, presided over the meeting held by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China during this period, criticizing Wang Ming's "left" adventurism mistakes during the ten-year civil war and right opportunism mistakes in the early days of the War of Resistance. Speech and make a summary.

In December, the inscription "Seek truth from facts" was completed for the auditorium of the Central Party School.

'''1944'''

On April 12 and May 20, he gave lectures on study and the current situation at the senior cadre meeting of the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the first department of the Central Party School.

On May 15, Lin Boqu, who had negotiated with the Kuomintang representatives in Xi'an, submitted a written opinion drafted by him as the specific content of the negotiations. The opinion paper puts forward 20 opinions on issues concerning national politics and pending cases of the two parties.

On May 21, at the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was elected as the chairman of the Central Committee and the chairman of the Bureau of the Seventh Plenary Session.

On June 5, the drafted "Instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Urban Work" was discussed and approved at the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From June to August, he met many times with members of the Northwest Visiting Group of Chinese and foreign journalists and members of the US Army Observation Group stationed in Yan'an, and expounded on issues such as the Chinese Communist Party's anti-Japanese policy and the relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.

On September 8, delivered a speech "Serving the People" at Zhang Side's memorial service.

On October 31, presided over the meeting of the Presidium of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and decided to send Wang Zhen and Wang Shoudao to lead the troops to the south to "establish a base with Hengshan as the center".

In November, Zhou Enlai and Hurley, the personal representative of US President Roosevelt , held several talks on the relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and reached a five-point draft agreement. This draft agreement was rejected by Chiang Kai-shek.

'''1945'''

On April 20, he attended the last meeting of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The meeting basically passed the "Resolution on Certain Historical Issues" , which was revised many times by Mao Zedong.

From April 23 to June 11, presided over the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, delivered an opening speech ("The Destiny of Two Chinas") and a closing speech ("The Foolish Old Man Moved Mountains"), and submitted "On Coalition Government" to the conference Written political report. The Congress decided to use Mao Zedong Thought as the guideline for all the work of the whole party.

On June 19, he was elected chairman of the Central Committee at the First Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In July, he held talks on the relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party with six people including Chu Fucheng and Huang Yanpei, members of the National Political Council. Talking about the "new road" of democracy, jumping out of the "cyclic law" of the rise and fall of political parties and groups.

On August 9, the statement "The Last Battle Against the Japanese Invaders" was issued.

On August 13, he delivered a speech titled "The Situation after the Victory of the Anti-Japanese War and Our Policy", proposing the policy of tit for tat and fighting for every inch of the Kuomintang to strive for domestic peace and democracy.

On August 28, he went to Chongqing for peace talks with Chiang Kai-shek.

On September 2, the Japanese government formally signed the instrument of surrender. China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression ended victoriously.

On October 10, the Minutes of the Meeting between the National Government and the Representatives of the Communist Party of China (referred to as the " Double Ten Agreement ") was signed in Chongqing. On the 11th, return to Yan'an.

On October 17, at the Yan'an cadre meeting, he made a report on the Chongqing negotiations, pointing out that the Chinese revolution "has a bright future, but the road is tortuous."

On December 28, drafted the "Establishing a Solid Northeast Base Area" instruction.<ref>[https://www.hudong.com/page/reference_snapshot?wiki_doc_id=8372826320516163274&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdangshi.people.com.cn%2Fn%2F2013%2F1202%2Fc85037-23714604.html&collect_params=%22%7B%5C%22search_query%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22search_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22source%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22doc_title%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22doc_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22view_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22first_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22second_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22third_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%7D%22 Chronological table of Mao Zedong's life (1941-1945)] . People's Daily Online</ref>

'''1946'''

In April, he wrote "Some Estimates on the Current International Situation".

On June 26, the Kuomintang army aggressively attacked the Liberated Areas of the Central Plains, and a full-scale civil war broke out.

On July 4, the Southern Front Field Army made a strategic decision to "fight a few victories on the inside and then move to the outside."

On July 20, drafted the inner-party directive of "Smashing Chiang Kai-shek's Attack with Self-Defense War".

On August 6, he met with American journalist, Strong, and put forward the famous assertion that "all reactionaries are paper tigers".

On September 16, he drafted the instruction "Concentrate Superior Forces and Annihilate Enemies Individually" for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China.

On October 1, he drafted an inner-party directive for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, summarizing the experience of the three-month war.

On November 18, the name "People's War of Liberation" was used for the first time in the party directive drafted for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

'''1947'''

On March 18, he led the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army to withdraw from Yan'an, and began the one-year battle in northern Shaanxi.

From March to August, he led the Northwest Field Army to successively win the battles of Qinghuabian, Yangmahe, Panlong, and Shajiadian, smashing the key attacks of the Kuomintang on the liberated areas of northern Shaanxi.

From July 21st to 23rd, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Xiaohe Village, Jingbian County, Northern Shaanxi Province, and the idea of resolving Chiang Kai-shek's struggle in five years (from July 1946) was proposed. Before and after this, the three armies of Liu Deng, Chen Su, and Chen Xie were deployed to cross the Yellow River and switch to a strategic offensive.

In October, the " Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army " was drafted, and the slogan "Down with Chiang Kai-shek and liberate the whole of China" was put forward.

In November, the "How to Divide Classes" and "Decisions on Some Issues in the Land Struggle" drafted in 1933 were reissued to the whole party to guide the correct development of the land reform movement in the liberated areas.

From December 25th to 28th, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (i.e. the December meeting) was hosted in Yangjiagou, Mizhi County, northern Shaanxi, and a written report "Current Situation and Our Tasks" was submitted to the meeting, and the top ten military forces were proposed. Principles and the three major economic programs of New Democracy.

'''1948'''

On January 18, drafted a draft decision on "Several Important Issues Concerning Current Party Policies" for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On March 23, the war in northern Shaanxi was over, and the Yellow River was crossed eastward to the North China Liberated Area.

On April 1, he delivered an important speech at the Caijiaya Jinsui Cadre Meeting in Xing County, Shanxi, clarifying the party's new democratic revolution general line and land reform general line.

From April 30th to May 7th, he presided over an enlarged meeting of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee in Chengnanzhuang, Fuping County, Hebei Province, and put forward several opinions on leading the war to the Kuomintang-ruled areas, developing production, and strengthening discipline.

On May 1, he sent a letter to Li Jishen and Shen Junru , proposing to establish a democratic coalition government and hold a new Political Consultative Conference first.

On May 27, he arrived at Xibaipo Village, Pingshan County, Hebei Province, where the Central Working Committee of the Communist Party of China is located.

From September 8th to 13th, he hosted a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Xibaipo, and made important reports on issues such as war, nation-building, and finance and economics.

From September to January of the following year, he organized and commanded the three strategic decisive battles of Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin, gathering and annihilating the main force of the Kuomintang army to the north of the Yangtze River.

On December 30, he wrote the 1949 New Year's message "Carrying the Revolution Through to the End" for Xinhua News Agency.

'''1949'''

In March, he presided over the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and proposed guidelines and basic policies for realizing the shift of the party's work focus, winning national victories, and building a new China.

On March 25, he led the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army to be stationed in Beiping.

On April 21, when the Nanjing government refused to accept the "Domestic Peace Agreement", he and Zhu De jointly issued the "Order to March to the Nation".

On April 23, the People's Liberation Army occupied Nanjing and wrote the poem " Seven Laws: The People's Liberation Army Occupies Nanjing ".

From June 15th to 19th, he attended the first plenary meeting of the preparatory meeting of the new CPPCC and delivered a speech at the opening ceremony.

On June 30, the article "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" was published.

On July 4th, Cheng Qian was called again, and he praised Cheng's policy of opposing Chiang Kai-shek and Guangxi and peacefully resolving the Hunan issue, and made arrangements for related matters.

From September 21 to 30, he attended the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, delivered an opening speech, and was elected chairman of the Central People's Government. The meeting adopted the "Common Program " drafted by Zhou Enlai and reviewed and revised by him many times.

On October 1, the People's Republic of China was established and presided over the founding ceremony.

On December 5, the "Instructions on the Army's Participation in Production and Construction Work in 1950" was issued.

On December 16, he arrived in Moscow and visited the Soviet Union for the first time . On February 14, 1950, China and the Soviet Union signed the "Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance."

From December to early next year, specific arrangements were made for the liberation of Tibet.

'''1950'''

From June 6th to 9th, he presided over the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, submitted a written report on "Struggling for a Basic Improvement in the National Financial and Economic Situation", and made a speech on "Don't Attack from All Sides".

On June 28, the Eighth Meeting of the Central People's Government Committee was presided over and the " Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China " was passed.

In early October, he presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and made a decision to "resist US aggression, aid Korea, defend the country".

On October 8, an order was issued to form the Chinese People's Volunteers, ordering the volunteers to immediately dispatch to North Korea to aid the Korean people, and appointed Peng Dehuai as the commander and political commissar of the Volunteers . Then he personally directed the first to third campaigns.

After October, launched and led the suppression of counter-revolutionary movement.<ref>[https://www.hudong.com/page/reference_snapshot?wiki_doc_id=8372826320516163274&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdangshi.people.com.cn%2Fn%2F2013%2F1202%2Fc85037-23714655.html&collect_params=%22%7B%5C%22search_query%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22search_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22source%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22doc_title%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22doc_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22view_id%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22first_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22second_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%2C%5C%22third_classify%5C%22%3A%5C%22%5C%22%7D%22 Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1946-1950)] . People's Daily Online</ref>

=== Building up New China (1951 - 1960) ===
'''1951'''

In February, at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the idea of "three-year preparation and ten-year planned economic construction" was put forward.

On May 20, the article "We Should Pay Attention to the Discussion of the Movie "The Legend of Wu Xun"" was published in the form of an editorial in "People's Daily".

On May 24, a banquet was held to celebrate the signing of the "Agreement on the Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet". So far, the whole territory of mainland China has been liberated.

In September, presided over the formulation of the "Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Mutual Assistance and Cooperation in Agricultural Production (Draft)".

On October 12, the first volume of " Selected Works of Mao Zedong " was published. The second and third volumes were published in April 1952 and April 1953, respectively.

In December, the "Three Antis" campaign against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy was launched.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/ecc8Dimf9sWViFFtAnjCxFb28FRUpvnonR9Ay_mKBa4t8ctBg8WBV6O11_k5ddH6-0hUwB9wBwI5JFCWXKFZVZ9uv33axJsfUb9d1hjvlbKiX9tt38_KkMmQ Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1951-1956)] - News of the Communist Party of China</ref>

'''1952'''

In January, he presided over the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee and passed the "Decision on Carrying out the Study Movement for Ideological Transformation of People from All walks of life".

On January 26, he drafted instructions for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on launching the "Five Antis" campaign (the "Five Antis" are against bribery, against tax evasion, against theft of state property, against cutting corners, and against theft of national economic intelligence).

On April 6, drafted the "Instructions on Tibet Work Policy" for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On August 9, the "Outline for the Implementation of Regional Ethnic Autonomy of the People's Republic of China" was released.

In September, the general line for the transitional period began to be conceived.

'''1953'''

On January 13, the Constitution Drafting Committee of the People's Republic of China was established and served as the chairman.

On March 26, drafted instructions for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on opposing the ideology of Han chauvinism.

On June 15, he spoke at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and made a relatively complete statement of the party's general line during the transition period.

On July 27, the Korean armistice agreement was officially signed in Panmunjom .

On September 7, he talked with some representatives of the democratic parties and business circles, pointing out that state capitalism is the only way to transform capitalist industry and commerce.

On October 15 and November 4, he had two conversations with the head of the Rural Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He pointed out that the rural work departments at all levels should regard mutual assistance and cooperation as extremely important matters.

'''1954'''
[[File:Mao voting.png|thumb|Mao voting in the 1954 election]]
In January, began to preside over the drafting of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in Hangzhou.

On March 23, presided over the first meeting of the Constitution Drafting Committee, and proposed the first draft of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China.

From September 15th to 28th, he attended the first plenary session of the first session of the National People's Congress, delivered the opening speech "Strive for the Construction of a Great Socialist Country", and was elected as the Chairman of the People's Republic of China.

On September 28, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China was formed and served as its chairman.

On October 16, wrote the "Letter on the Research Issues of the Dream of Red Mansions" to the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and relevant comrades.

On October 19, in a conversation with Indian Prime Minister Nehru , he proposed that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence should be extended to all state relations.

'''1955'''

On January 15th, Liu Shaoqi, [[Zhou Enlai]], and [[Deng Xiaoping]] were instructed: "We should thoroughly criticize Hu Feng's bourgeois idealism, anti-party and anti-people literary thought."

In March, he delivered an opening speech and conclusion at the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, calling on cadres to delve into the issue of socialist industrialization and become experts in this area.

On May 12, at the Supreme State Council, the policy of eliminating counter-revolutionaries was proposed.

On June 9, wrote an inscription for the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square: The people's heroes will live forever.

On July 31, he made a report on "About the Issue of Agricultural Cooperation" at the meeting of secretaries of the provincial, municipal and autonomous regional party committees convened by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From September to December, presided over the editing of the book "The Socialist Upsurge in Rural China", and wrote two prefaces and 104 notes.

From October 4th to 11th, presided over the Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and passed the "Resolution on Agricultural Cooperative Issues".

On October 29, the executive members of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce were invited to discuss the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce.

On December 16, the draft directive of the Central Committee on intellectual issues was revised, and it was proposed to train intellectuals in large numbers and pay attention to absorbing high-level intellectuals into the party.

'''1956'''

On January 20, he spoke at a conference on intellectuals held by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, calling on the whole party to study scientific knowledge, unite with non-party intellectuals, and strive to quickly catch up with the world's advanced scientific level.

On January 25, chaired the Supreme State Council to formally discuss and approve the "National Agricultural Development Program (Draft) from 1956 to 1967" ''(forty articles)'' .

From February to March, successively listened to the reports of 34 central working departments, and conducted systematic investigation and research on economic construction issues.

At the beginning of April, "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was reviewed and revised.

On April 25, at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he made a report on " On the Ten Major Relationships ".

On April 27, cremation was carried out after the signature died.

On April 28, at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the policy of "letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend" was proposed.

On August 22, he presided over the Seventh Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and proposed two work priorities, one is socialist transformation, and the other is economic construction. The main focus of the two is still construction.

From September 15th to 27th, hosted the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China and delivered an opening speech. During the Eighth National Congress, the importance of strengthening economic construction was emphasized again.

On September 28, he was elected chairman of the Central Committee at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

On November 15, he made a speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: Our economic construction has retreated and advanced, but the main thing is to advance.

In December, "Revisiting the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was revised.

'''1957'''

On February 27, made a speech on "Correctly Handling Contradictions among the People", and put forward two kinds of contradiction theories.

On March 12, he spoke at the National Propaganda Work Conference of the Communist Party of China and announced the start of rectification within the party.

On April 30, leaders of various democratic parties were invited to have a discussion and asked them to help the Communist Party rectify the movement.

On May 15th, he wrote the article "Things Are Changing", and then launched the anti-rightist struggle, and made a serious mistake of magnification.

From September 20th to October 9th, he presided over the Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. At the meeting, he raised objections to the discussion of the main contradictions in Chinese society in the resolution of the Eighth National Congress, and believed that it should return to the proposal of the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party

In November, led the Chinese party and government delegation to visit the Soviet Union, participated in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution , and attended the representative meeting of the Communist Party and the Workers' Party . During the period, it was proposed that within 15 years, the output of China's major industrial products should catch up with that of the United Kingdom.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/3d8fGQKZLf8UIJhgOqtIn2VUfa9cteY9YwFe70NZ32DNSBigrS277q1nIWoxPbGAH6yDTNbzSkwvxPfSLLbbdxMx4zmcd1-jjzxdYUVyz_GzqLc3CX3kmhTG Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1957-1961)]</ref>

'''1958'''

In January, hosted the Nanning Conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and drafted the "Sixty Articles of Working Methods (Draft)". Criticize "anti-rash advance" at the meeting.

In March, hosted the Chengdu Conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The meeting continued to criticize "anti-rash advance", and the various economic indicators formulated were greatly improved.

From May 5th to 23rd, hosted the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The meeting changed the relevant conclusions of the first meeting of the Eighth National Congress, arguing that the struggle between the two classes and the two roads is still the main contradiction in the country. The meeting passed the general line of "go all out, strive for the top, and build socialism more quickly, better and more economically".

From July 31 to August 3, he held talks with Khrushchev, the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee who was visiting, and rejected the Soviet side's suggestion of establishing a joint fleet and a long-wave radio station that violated China's sovereignty.

From July to August, deployed the bombardment of Kinmen.

On August 6, inspected Qiliying People's Commune in Xinxiang, Henan. When it comes to "the name People's Commune is good".

From August 17th to 30th, an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was hosted in Beidaihe, and the "Resolution on the Establishment of People's Commune in Rural Areas" was passed.

From November 2nd to 10th, he presided over the first Zhengzhou meeting and began to correct the "Left" errors in the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement. During the meeting, he wrote a letter to the party committees at the county level and above, requesting to study "Problems of the Socialist Economy in the Soviet Union" and "Marx Engels on Communist Society".

From November 28 to December 10, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Wuchang, and the "Resolution on Several Issues Concerning the People's Commune " was passed.

'''1959'''

From February 27th to March 5th, he presided over the second Zhengzhou meeting. From March 25th to April 5th, he held an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Seventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in Shanghai to continue to correct "left" errors.

In April, according to Mao Zedong's opinion, the first meeting of the Second National People's Congress passed a resolution that he would no longer serve as the chairman of the country and Liu Shaoqi would be the chairman.

From June 25th to 28th, I went back to my hometown Shaoshan.

From July 2 to August 16, hosted the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in Lushan. The enlarged meeting of the Politburo originally planned to further correct the mistakes of the "Left", but in the later period and at the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, it mistakenly launched a criticism of Peng Dehuai and others.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/0599mt14ZXxwIG8QT5S3ZuwBtlaVFGBM5yzt242up9DDdUebpaZ9dx_x5lPo6IGC2PvYkmwu7mEwzTdugelquJYOBGY32UeKnqlBgccpzGSjWks2gp40ylPO Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1957-1961) Communist Party News Network] </ref>

'''1960'''

In March, the fourth volume of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" was approved in Guangzhou. Published in September.

On March 30, he drafted the "Instructions on Combating Bureaucracy" for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From June 14th to 18th, he presided over an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in Shanghai, wrote the article " Ten Years Summary ", re-emphasized the principle of seeking truth from facts, and proposed to seriously study the laws of socialist revolution and construction.

From July 5th to August 10th, presided over the work conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Beidaihe to study international issues and domestic economic adjustment issues.

On November 15, he drafted the "Instructions on Thoroughly Correcting the "Five Winds" Issues" for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. ''("Five Styles", that is, communist style , exaggerated style , command style, cadre special style and blind command style.)''

=== Adjusting, consolidating, enriching, educating and improving New China and the launch of the Cultural Revolution (1961 - 1970) ===
'''1961'''

From January 14th to 18th, he presided over the Ninth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and called for the great promotion of investigation and research. This meeting officially approved the eight-character policy for adjusting the national economy. After the meeting, he organized and led three investigation teams to conduct in-depth investigations and researches in the rural areas of Zhejiang, Hunan, and Guangdong.

From May 21st to June 12th, presided over the work meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to discuss and revise the "Regulations on the Work of Rural People's Commune (Draft)" ''(namely, the sixty agricultural articles)'' . It stipulates that the supply system will be abolished; whether or not to run a canteen is entirely up to the members to discuss and decide.

From August 23rd to September 16th, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China hosted a work conference in Lushan to discuss issues such as industry, food, finance and trade, and education. The meeting emphasized the earnest implementation of the eight-character policy of economic adjustment.

On September 29, it proposed "three-level ownership, team-based", and the basic accounting unit of the rural people's communes was delegated to the production team.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/e07fGrGoUsW0yOSpQ8me6eJph38Qpr4eaEy2amSAo-XaC-gZZ__Frl8P32Z49TzdvXHjOKL69U3j0cAYmiDTZDYxuclShWxs56kRImKp7dMDqRgX0WpZLJWU Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1957-1961) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1962'''

From January 11th to February 7th, he presided over the enlarged Central Work Conference of the Communist Party of China ''(also known as the "Seven Thousand People Conference ")'' and delivered an important speech on the issue of democratic centralism .

From July to September, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Work Conference and the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee were held successively in Beidaihe and Beijing, criticizing the so-called "dark wind", "going alone" and "reversing the verdict" and making comments about class, situation, contradictions and inner party The speech on the question of unity further developed the erroneous thesis that class struggle is the principal contradiction in socialist society.

'''1963'''

From February 11th to 28th, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a working conference, which decided to carry out the "Four Cleans" movement in rural areas and the "Five Antis" movement in cities.

On March 5, the inscription "Learn from Comrade Lei Feng" was published in the "People's Daily" .

In May, presided over the formulation of the "Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's Decision on Several Issues Concerning Current Rural Work (Draft)" ''(referred to as the "Ten Articles")'' in Hangzhou , as a programmatic document to guide the "Four Cleans-ups" in rural areas.

On December 16, I heard Nie Rongzhen's report on the ten-year plan for science and technology, and pointed out: Without science and technology, productivity cannot be improved.

In December, the first instruction on literary and artistic work was made.

'''1964'''

On February 13, a symposium on educational work was convened to propose ideas for reforming the educational system.

In May, when listening to the report on the third five-year plan , he put forward the idea of two fists ''(agriculture, national defense)'' and one butt ''(basic industry )''; he also proposed the strategic layout of dividing the country into first, second, and third lines.

On June 15th and 16th, watch the Beijing and Jinan military training report performances.

On June 16, at a small meeting held at the Ming Tombs in Beijing, he gave a speech on cultivating successors to the cause of the proletarian revolution.

In June, he again issued instructions on literary and artistic work, and the literary and artistic circles expanded to other areas of ideology, erroneously carrying out excessive political criticism.

On October 16, China's first atomic bomb was successfully detonated.

From December 15th to 28th, presided over the central working conference to discuss and formulate "Some Issues Presently Raised in the Rural Socialist Education Movement" (referred to as "''23 Articles")'' , and partially correct the "Leftist", but mistakenly stated that "the focus of the movement is to rectify those in power within the party who are taking the capitalist road."<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/d8e9fooguaBoQe9ohz_xjMzFcqqmXMJqPTHTdatP9jphVcyMJxbEUMX2yYcGS9tpuHRKOCNLzV5aTYbj42udcxsSn006JIa1ALB_naHba5UdPGSpoqr5jqGv Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1962-1968) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1965'''

From May 22nd to 29th, go back to Jinggangshan.

On July 27, he met Li Zongren, the former acting president of the Kuomintang government , and his wife who had returned from overseas.

At the beginning of November, the article "Comment on the New Historical Drama "Hai Jui Dismissed from Office" was approved to be published, which opened the prelude to the "Cultural Revolution".

'''1966'''

On March 12, he sent a letter to Liu Shaoqi, proposing "preparing for war and famine for the people".

At the end of March, he falsely accused the "Outline of the Report on Current Academic Discussions" formulated by the Five-member Cultural Revolution Group chaired by Peng Zhen.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/d8e9fooguaBoQe9ohz_xjMzFcqqmXMJqPTHTdatP9jphVcyMJxbEUMX2yYcGS9tpuHRKOCNLzV5aTYbj42udcxsSn006JIa1ALB_naHba5UdPGSpoqr5jqGv Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1962-1968) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

On May 7, the "May 7 Instructions" were issued, proposing that the People's Liberation Army "should be a big school", that all walks of life should focus on their own professions, "learn other things at the same time", and "education should be revolutionary" and so on.

On May 16, the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China passed the "Notice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" formulated by Mao Zedong, which made a serious miscalculation of the political situation of the party and the country at that time.

From August 1st to 12th, presided over the convening of the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and passed the "Decision on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". During the meeting, Mao Zedong's "Bombarding the Headquarters—My Big-Character Poster" written on the 5th was printed and distributed, criticizing "Rightist Revisionism" The enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in May and the convening of this meeting marked the full launch of the "Cultural Revolution".

From August 18th to November 26th, he met eight times in Beijing with teachers, students and Red Guards from all over the country.

'''1967'''

In January, expressed support for the "January Revolution " in Shanghai. Since then, the wind of seizing power has spread all over the country.

On January 23, the "Decision of the Chinese People's Liberation Army to Resolutely Support the Revolutionary Left Masses" was issued.

On February 11th and 16th, Tan Zhenlin , Chen Yi , Ye Jianying , Li Fuchun , Li Xiannian , Xu Xiangqian , Nie Rongzhen , etc. were dissatisfied with Lin Biao and Jiang Qing 's perverse actions, and strongly criticized the wrong practices of the "Cultural Revolution" in order to "make a big noise." in Huairen Hall. After listening to the report of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, Mao Zedong expressed his dissatisfaction.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/d8e9fooguaBoQe9ohz_xjMzFcqqmXMJqPTHTdatP9jphVcyMJxbEUMX2yYcGS9tpuHRKOCNLzV5aTYbj42udcxsSn006JIa1ALB_naHba5UdPGSpoqr5jqGv Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1962-1968) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1968'''

On January 16, he made important instructions on the so-called "Notice of Wu Hao and others leaving the Communist Party" and other materials sent by Jiang Qing and others: "This matter has long been clarified, and it was the Kuomintang's rumors and slanders", which made their attempt to frame Zhou Enlai fail.

From October 13th to 31st, he hosted the Twelfth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Under extremely abnormal circumstances, he made the decision to expel Liu Shaoqi from the party.

On December 22, the directive "It is very necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from poor and lower-middle peasants" was published in the " People's Daily ", and the upsurge of educated youth going to the mountains and countryside began.

'''1969'''

From April 1st to 24th, he presided over the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, approved the theories and practices of the "Cultural Revolution", and designated Lin Biao as his successor in the party constitution.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/fb60ClI3JHlc4l0zj9GW9jJxcLOq6-1tYKY8CmWYXNlZGWi2llLv2ZmkaaWRZ3qt-mW544mOKfzQj2czKV5fE0yrR_TjeVRJogRWMeGEyrlDt3U_PJIMAx9J Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1969-1976) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

On April 28, he was re-elected as the chairman of the Central Committee at the First Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China.

'''1970'''

On April 24, China's first artificial earth satellite was successfully launched.

On May 20, published the statement piece "People of the World Unite, Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their lackeys !"

From August 23rd to September 6th, hosted the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Lushan, and wrote "My Opinion", exposing and defeating Lin Biao and Chen Boda's conspiracy to seize power

On December 18, he met with American friend Snow and expressed his welcome to the visit of US President Nixon to China.

=== The Cultural Revolution and Mao's twilight years (1971 - 1976) ===
'''1971'''

From August to September, during his tour in the south, he had many conversations with the local party, government and army leaders to expose Lin Biao's conspiracy. On the way, he vigilantly changed his action plan several times, and returned to Beijing on September 12 to smash the counter-revolutionary armed coup plot of the Lin Biao clique.

On September 13, Zhou Enlai and others decisively dealt with Lin Biao's defection. When Zhou Enlai asked whether to intercept Lin Biao's landline, Mao Zedong said: "Let him do it."

On October 25, the 26th UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution to restore all legal rights of the People's Republic of China in the UN and expel the representatives of the Chiang Kai- shek clique.

On November 14, he received comrades who participated in the symposium in Chengdu, and rehabilitated the so-called " February Adverse Current ".

'''1972'''

On January 10, attended Chen Yi 's memorial service.

On February 21, met with US President Nixon who was visiting China; on the 28th, China and the United States issued a joint communiqué in Shanghai, deciding to realize the normalization of Sino-US relations.

On September 27, he met with Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka ; on September 29, the Chinese and Japanese governments issued a joint statement announcing the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan and the formal establishment of diplomatic relations.

'''1973'''

In March, it was proposed to restore Deng Xiaoping's position as vice premier of the State Council.

From August 24th to 28th, he presided over the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, allowing a group of older generation proletarian revolutionaries to re-enter the Central Committee, but at the same time, the power of Jiang Qing Group was also strengthened.

On August 30, he was elected chairman of the Central Committee at the First Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China.

In December, Deng Xiaoping was proposed to serve as a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army. He also proposed to rehabilitate He Long , Luo Ruiqing , Yang Chengwu , Yu Lijin , and Fu Chongbi .

'''1974'''

On January 18, it was approved to forward the materials of " Lin Biao and the Way of Confucius and Mencius". The campaign of " criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius " began.

On February 22, met with Zambian President Kaunda , during the conversation he proposed the idea of " three worlds ".

On July 17, he criticized Wang Hongwen , Zhang Chunqiao , Jiang Qing , and Yao Wenyuan for engaging in gang activities at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee , raising the issue of the " Gang of Four " for the first time.<ref>Mao's Last Revolution, page 397</ref>

On September 29, with the approval of Mao Zedong, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China rehabilitated He Long

On October 4, Deng Xiaoping was proposed to be the first vice premier of the State Council.

On November 12, he issued instructions to Jiang Qing 's letter, criticizing her ambition of " forming a cabinet ", and clearly pointed out that "don't let you form a cabinet ''(be the backstage boss)'' ".

'''1975'''

From January 13th to 17th, the first meeting of the Fourth National People's Congress was held in Beijing. The meeting reaffirmed the realization of the four modernizations within this century, elected members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress with Zhu De as the chairman , appointed The State Council consisted of Zhou Enlai as Premier and Deng Xiaoping as Vice Premier. After the meeting, Zhou Enlai became seriously ill, and the work of the State Council was actually presided over by Deng Xiaoping.

In February, with the support of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping began to lead the adjustment and rectification of railways and education.

On May 3, the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China were convened in Beijing to talk, emphasizing the need to practice Marxism-Leninism , to unite, to be aboveboard, and to criticize the "Gang of Four" again.

On July 14, he made a speech on literature and art issues, pointing out that the party's literature and art policy should be adjusted.

In late November, after reviewing and approving the "Speech Points for Greetings", the so-called "Criticizing Deng and Countering the Rightist Overturning the Verdict" campaign was launched.<ref>[https://baike.baidu.com/reference/113835/fb60ClI3JHlc4l0zj9GW9jJxcLOq6-1tYKY8CmWYXNlZGWi2llLv2ZmkaaWRZ3qt-mW544mOKfzQj2czKV5fE0yrR_TjeVRJogRWMeGEyrlDt3U_PJIMAx9J Chronology of Mao Zedong's Life (1969-1976) News of the Communist Party of China] </ref>

'''1976'''

On January 8, Zhou Enlai passed away in Beijing.

On January 21 and 28, Hua Guofeng was proposed to be the acting premier of the State Council and to preside over the daily work of the central government.

From late March to April 5, millions of people in Beijing spontaneously came to Tiananmen Square for several days, laying wreaths and poems, mourning Zhou Enlai, and denouncing the " Gang of Four ." Mao Zedong mistakenly approved the report trying to cover up the Tiananmen incident

On April 7, according to Mao Zedong's proposal, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee passed the "Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Comrade Hua Guofeng's Appointment as the First Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Premier of the State Council" and "Resolution on Removing Deng Xiaoping from All Posts Inside and Outside the Party".

On September 9, Mao died in Beijing.

== See also ==

* [[Quotes:Mao Zedong]]
* [[Mao Zetan]]

==Library works==

* (1926) [[Library:Analysis of the classes in Chinese society|Analysis of the classes in Chinese society]]
* (1927) [[Library:Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan|Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement In Hunan]]
* (1928) [[Library:Why is it That Red Political Power Can Exist in China|Why is it That Red Political Power Can Exist in China]]
* (1930) [[Library:Oppose Book Worship|Oppose Book Worship]]
* (1937) [[Library:On guerrilla warfare|On guerrilla warfare]]
* (1937) [[Library:Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front|Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front]]
* (1937) [[Library:On practice|On practice]]
* (1937) [[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]
* (1937) [[Library:Combat liberalism|Combat liberalism]]
* (1940) [[Library:On New Democracy|On New Democracy]]
* (1942) [[Library:Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art|Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art]]
* (1943) [[Library:Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership|Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership]]
* (1945) [[Library:The Destiny of Two Chinas|The Destiny of Two Chinas]]
* (1947) [[Library:The Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention|The Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention]]
* (1963) [[Library:Where do correct ideas come from?|Where do correct ideas come from?]]
* (1963) [[Library:Statement supporting the American Negroes in their just struggle against racial discrimination by U.S. Imperialism|Statement supporting the American Negroes in their just struggle against racial discrimination by U.S. Imperialism]]
* (1964) [[Library:On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World|On Khrushchov’s Phony Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World]]
* (1964) [[Library:Talk On Questions Of Philosophy|Talk On Questions Of Philosophy]]
* (1966) [[Library:Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung|Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung]]

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Anti-imperialists]]
[[Category:Chinese leaders]]
[[Category:Communists]]
[[Category:Former heads of state]]
[[Category:Marxist theorists]]
[[Category:Socialist rulers]]
[[Category:Mao Zedong Family]]
[[Category:Chinese communists]]
[[Category:Featured page]]

Wikipedia

2026-08-12T17:15:13Z

PuzzledFox99: Infobox

{{Infobox website
| name =
| logo = File:Wikipedia logo.png
| logo_size = 200px
| logo_alt =
| logo_caption =
| screenshot =
| screenshot_size =
| screenshot_alt =
| screenshot_caption =
| type = Online encyclopedia
| language_count =
| language =
| founding_name =
| founding_date = 15 January 2001
| founding_website =
| founded =
| founder = [[Jimmy Wales]] [[Larry Sanger]]
| key_people =
| num_users =
| url = [https://www.wikipedia.org/ wikipedia.org]
| footnotes =
}}
'''Wikipedia''' is an [[Bourgeois media|imperialist propaganda outlet]] and [[Misinformation|disinformation]] website presenting itself as an encyclopedia launched in 2001 by [[bourgeois]] [[Libertarianism|libertarians]] [[Jimmy Wales]] and [[Larry Sanger]]. Wikipedia is maintained by a predominantly white male population, of which about 1% are responsible for 80% of edits. It has also been linked to corporate and governmental manipulation and [[Imperialism|imperialist]] agendas, including the [[United States Department of State|U.S. State Department]], [[The World Bank|World Bank]],<ref name=":5">{{Web citation|author=[[Ben Norton]], [[Max Blumenthal]]|newspaper=[[The Grayzone]]|title=Meet Wikipedia’s Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation’s regime-change operative CEO|date=2020-06-11|url=https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-loving-founder-and-wikimedia-foundations-regime-change-operative-ceo/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220816135825/https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-loving-founder-and-wikimedia-foundations-regime-change-operative-ceo/|archive-date=2022-08-16|retrieved=2022-09-10}}</ref> [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]], [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], and New York Police Department.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Stansfield Smith|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]|title=US national security state censoring anti-imperialists to control ‘compatible left’|date=2022-07-02|url=https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/02/censorship-anti-imperialists-compatible-left/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220830195608/https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/02/censorship-anti-imperialists-compatible-left/|archive-date=2022-08-30|retrieved=2022-09-10}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Jari Bakken|newspaper=GitHub|title=Anonymous Wikipedia edits from around the world|url=https://jarib.github.io/anon-history/|retrieved=2025-08-08}}</ref>

Its popularity means that it is a prime target for misinformation campaigns by state actors or corporate interests. This was, in part, the reasoning behind starting [[ProleWiki]].

Wikipedia uses the same software that ProleWiki and [[EcuRed]] use, called [[MediaWiki]].

== History ==
[[File:2005 October 28 Jimbo Wales edits Jimmy Wales article to remove Larry Sanger from history of Wikipedia section.jpg|thumb|Picture of the edit made by Jimmy Wales (user Jimbo Wales) removing mentions of Larry Sanger from Wikipedia.]]
[[Wiki]] websites were created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who started WikiWikiWeb<ref>[https://wiki.c2.com/ WikiWikiWeb] website</ref> as a collaborative repository for developers. In 2001, hedge fund manager Jimmy Wales had the idea of creating his own online encyclopedia. He hired programmer Larry Sanger for the task, who was inspired by WikiWikiWeb for the functioning of this new encyclopedia. In 2005, Wales edited Wikipedia's own pages to delete Sanger's contributions and cofounder status (despite being instrumental in the founding) as he was only an employee according to Wales.

== Concept ==
Wikipedia claims its main purpose is to:<blockquote>"benefit readers by acting as a '''widely accessible and free encyclopedia'''; a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge."<ref name=":3">{{News citation|newspaper=Wikipedia|title=Wikipedia:Purpose|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose|retrieved=2022-7-16}}</ref></blockquote>Wikipedia further claims that:<blockquote>"The goal of a Wikipedia article is to present a neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, "just-the-facts style". Articles should have an encyclopedic style with a formal tone instead of essay-like, argumentative, promotional or opinionated writing."<ref name=":3" /></blockquote>It also claims that:<blockquote>"Wikipedia's content is governed by three principal core content policies - neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research."<ref name=":3" /></blockquote>In practice, these principles push Wikipedia editorship towards being [[Liberalism|liberal]] (pro-capitalism and pro-[[imperialism]]) and using [[bourgeois media]] as infallible sources. With time (over 20 years of Wikipedia existing), this created a self-reproducing culture of liberalism within Wikipedia which is heavily punished if one deviates from it.

Additionally, Wikipedia doesn't prevent lobbyists from paying people to edit pages.<ref name=":4">{{News citation|newspaper=Wikipedia|title=Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid-contribution_disclosure|retrieved=2022-6-28}}</ref>

== Criticism ==
[[File:Wikipedia-biased-sources.png|alt=Screenshot of wikipedia sources many of which are anti-communist|thumb|Western [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] sources are prevalently used on English Wikipedia. ]]

=== Administration and users ===

==== Founder Jimmy Wales ====
Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, is a self-described [[Ayn Rand]] [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] and [[Anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]]<ref name=":5" /> who also wilfully participates in imperialist operations at the request of the US government. In a 2007 US Senate Committee, Wales stated:
:I am grateful to be here today to testify about the potential for the Wikipedia model of collaboration and information sharing which may be helpful to government operations and homeland security.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Wikisource|title=2007 Testimony by Jimmy Wales to United States Senate|url=https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=2007_Testimony_by_Jimmy_Wales_to_United_States_Senate&oldid=12776340}}</ref>
In addition to [[United States imperialism|U.S. imperialism]], Wales supported [[State of Israel|Israel]]'s bombing of [[Gaza Strip|Gaza]] in 2018.<ref name=":5" /> In 2025, Wales voiced his disapproval of the "[[Israel-Gaza war and genocide|Gaza genocide]]" article name to Wikipedia editors. He further told them that "the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested" despite the fact that several associations and international bodies have ruled that Israel is committing genocide.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Emma Roth|newspaper=The Verge|title=Wikipedia co-founder joins editing conflict over the Gaza genocide page|url=https://www.theverge.com/news/813245/wikipedia-co-founder-jimmy-wales-gaza-genocide|retrieved=2025-11-05}}</ref>

While the website is technically managed by the Wikimedia foundation, it was created by Wales himself who remains on the board of trustees<ref>[https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/jimmy-wales/ Jimmy Wales profile]. Wikimedia Foundation.</ref> and is still seen as a "benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch, digital evangelist and spiritual leader".<ref>Noam Cohen. “[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/technology/17wikipedia.html Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World]”. ''New York Times'', 17 March 2008.</ref>

====CEO Katherine Maher====
Katherine Maher, the former CEO of the foundation, previously worked for the [[The World Bank|World Bank]], specifically in the African and Middle-East divisions.<ref>[https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/katherine-maher/ Katherine Maher profile]. Wikimedia Foundation.</ref> She also worked at the [[National Democratic Institute]] (an [[National Endowment for Democracy|NED]] front group)<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiuwen Baike|title=What is an "objective view based on Chinese values"? A brief discussion on the hypocrisy of Wikipedia's "neutrality"|url=https://www.qiuwenbaike.cn/wiki/Qiuwen:%E4%BD%95%E8%B0%93%E2%80%9C%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E4%BB%B7%E5%80%BC%E8%A7%82%E5%9F%BA%E7%A1%80%E4%B8%8A%E7%9A%84%E5%AE%A2%E8%A7%82%E8%A7%82%E7%82%B9%E2%80%9D%EF%BC%9F%E7%AE%80%E8%B0%88%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E5%BC%8F%E2%80%9C%E4%B8%AD%E7%AB%8B%E2%80%9D%E7%9A%84%E8%99%9A%E4%BC%AA|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240426120219/https://www.qiuwenbaike.cn/wiki/Qiuwen:%E4%BD%95%E8%B0%93%E2%80%9C%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E4%BB%B7%E5%80%BC%E8%A7%82%E5%9F%BA%E7%A1%80%E4%B8%8A%E7%9A%84%E5%AE%A2%E8%A7%82%E8%A7%82%E7%82%B9%E2%80%9D%EF%BC%9F%E7%AE%80%E8%B0%88%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E5%BC%8F%E2%80%9C%E4%B8%AD%E7%AB%8B%E2%80%9D%E7%9A%84%E8%99%9A%E4%BC%AA|archive-date=2024-04-26}}</ref> and is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. In a June 2020 article from ''[[The Grayzone]]'', authors [[Ben Norton]] and [[Max Blumenthal]] delved deeper into Maher's connections to regime-change operatives and unearthed her whole résumé which linked her to more imperialist organisations and institutes.<ref name=":5" /> In particular, Maher went to [[Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–2011)|Libya]] in early 2011, right before the Arab Spring began.

In April 2017, she participated in a briefing for the U.S. State Department and appeared in a panel with the former director of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and NSA in 2018. She is now on the advisory board of the [[Open Technology Fund]], which was created by CIA propaganda outlet [[Radio Free Asia]].<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Open Technology Fund|title=OTF's History|url=https://www.opentech.fund/about/our-history/|quote=... the Open Technology Fund (OTF) was created in 2012 as a program of Radio Free Asia.}}</ref>

In 2021, Maher left Wikipedia to join the State Department. She is also the current CEO of [[National Public Radio|NPR]], a US state media outlet.<ref name=":0" />

====User demographics====
While Wikipedia boasts that anyone can contribute, in reality only 1% of accounts are responsible for 80% of all edits.<ref>Grace Lisa Scott. [https://www.inverse.com/article/38302-wikipedia-one-percent “Wikipedia Study Reveals a Surprising Stat About Who Edits It”]. ''Inverse,'' 9 August 2017.</ref> Famously, the most prolific editor on Wikipedia (Steven Pruitt), who has edited 1/3rd of all articles, currently works for the US department of border control with previous employment at the [[United States Transportation Security Administration|TSA]] and [[United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement|ICE]].<ref>http://archive.ph/ix7kx</ref>

Other accounts in this 1% figure are people such as [[Philip Cross]], who posts without fail every single day from 6AM to 10PM<ref>Craig Murray. [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ “The Philip Cross Affair”], 18 May 2018.</ref> and has over 100,000 edits.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[MintPress News]]|title=Phillip Cross: The Mystery Wikipedia Editor Targeting Anti-War Sites|url=https://www.mintpressnews.com/phillip-cross-the-mystery-wikipedia-editor-targeting-anti-war-sites/250824/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220816135847/https://www.mintpressnews.com/phillip-cross-the-mystery-wikipedia-editor-targeting-anti-war-sites/250824/|archive-date=2022-08-16|retrieved=2022-09-10}}</ref> This user makes and pro-war, [[Zionism|Zionist]], and [[climate change]] denial edits,<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Proletarian (newspaper)|Proletarian]]|title=How Wikipedia is used to prop up the imperialist lie machine|date=2018-08-20|url=https://thecommunists.org/2018/08/20/news/how-wikipedia-is-used-to-prop-up-imperialist-lie-machine/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519031628/https://thecommunists.org/2018/08/20/news/how-wikipedia-is-used-to-prop-up-imperialist-lie-machine/|archive-date=2022-05-19|retrieved=2022-12-18}}</ref> which highly suggests that the account is a [[sockpuppet]] managed by a whole governmental team, likely the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|British]].<ref name=":2">Media Lens. [https://www.mintpressnews.com/phillip-cross-the-mystery-wikipedia-editor-targeting-anti-war-sites/250824/ “Phillip Cross: The Mystery Wikipedia Editor Targeting Anti-War Sites”]. ''Mint Press News,'' 17 October 2018.</ref>

====Administrators====
Administrators on the site are editors with user-management powers (such as banning people, or preventing articles from being edited). Administrators are the supreme decision-making authority, making them very worthwhile friends to have. They are also not accountable to anyone and can freely pick new people to join their ranks. It is not rare for users going against the agenda set out by the administrators to simply be banned on frivolous grounds. Around 1,000 IP addresses are banned by Wikipedia administrators every day. There is little privacy and users may be traced and tracked by Wikipedia administrators.<ref>[http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/the-dark-side-of-wikipedia “The Dark Side of Wikipedia”]. ''Full Measure,'' 21 August 2016.</ref>

In 2020, it was discovered that the Scots language Wikipedia was almost solely edited and managed by a 19-year-old [[United States of America|US]] citizen who did not speak a word of Scots from the time he was 12. He also used his administrative powers to block others from correcting his vandalism.<ref>Libby Brooks, Alex Hern. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia “Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia”]. ''The Guardian,'' 26 August 2020.</ref>

He was responsible for defacing almost half of Scots Wikipedia, and it is interesting to see here how easily administrator privileges are given to random users by other administrators, suggesting a widespread problem in the hierarchy. There have been various examples in the past of administrators who used their privileges to prevent their articles from being edited (therefore presenting their biased opinion as fact), or even asking for payment to let an edit through.

Wikipedia is purposely kept difficult to edit (providing only a plain-text markup editor, resolving conflicts through talk pages that have been filling up since 2010, etc.) so that administrators, most of whom have been editing Wikipedia since it became famous in 2003, can keep problematic users out citing technicalities and preventing them from defending themselves.

====Anonymous or non-prolific users====
New users who do not take time to learn of the obscure templates, navigate through the very strict (and sometimes absurd) editorial guidelines or do not socialize with other users will often see their edits reverted in mere minutes, no matter how accurate or labour-intensive their edits were.

The Wikimedia foundation will still claim that their encyclopedia is "community-created". This is mainly a convenient lie for Wales to make it seem like his libertarian principles can work on a large scale. This has prompted Ben Norton to call Wikipedia a scam<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ben Norton|newspaper=Twitter|title=It has been known for well over a decade (this report is from 2007) that Wikipedia is heavily edited by corporations and governments and PR flacks they hire to spread propaganda. Enough with this absurd techno-"libertarian" nonsense. It was always a scam|date=2020-02-12|url=https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1227725961975803905}}</ref> (in the interest of Jimmy Wales's bourgeois, libertarian interests). In truth, much like [[libertarianism]] itself, it remains controlled by corporate elites and imperialist organisations.

===="Name and shame" pages====
On Wikipedia, there are publicly-visible "name and shame" pages such as "Sockpuppet investigation" casepages (SPI) and Long-term abuse pages (LTA) whose ostensible aims are for assisting anti-vandalism purposes.<ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=7 November 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=20 October 2025}}</ref> Pages in the latter category often contain personally-identifiable attributes of users who're branded as "long term abusers" (LTA) for supposedly engaging in disruptions against the Wikipedia over a long period, including IP addresses, full legal names.<ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia talk:Long-term abuse/Archive 6 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Long-term_abuse/Archive_6#Should_we_really_be_including_personal_information_in_LTA_reports? |website=Wikipedia |language=en |date=15 September 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Ananny |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Ananny |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=3 October 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Bambifan101 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Bambifan101 |website=Wikipedia |language=en |date=21 November 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Tirgil34 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Tirgil34 |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=23 September 2024}}</ref> In at least one case where a user accused of being an LTA is an apparent juvenile, no special measures to consider their privacy rights (i.e. hiding LTA pages to only audiences with Wikipedia accounts) are apparently observed. <ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia talk:Long-term abuse/Archive 6 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Long-term_abuse/Archive_6#Should_we_really_be_including_personal_information_in_LTA_reports? |website=Wikipedia |language=en |date=15 September 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Ananny |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Ananny |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=3 October 2025}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Bambifan101 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Bambifan101 |website=Wikipedia |language=en |date=21 November 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Tirgil34 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Tirgil34 |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=23 September 2024}}</ref> Such practices may risk violating GDPR as there's also a case where scientific researchers based in Czech Republic and Slovakia were doxxed that way due to accusations that they had engaged in self-promoting edits on Wikipedia. At a glance, little to no fact-checking and quality checking processes were observed in the LTA page creation process, which may mean that some or all accusations in some if not all of LTA pages may be inaccurate and could therefore constitute defamation/libel.<ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Europeanhematology |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Europeanhematology |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=24 March 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation |title=Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/DEATH TO COVID |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/DEATH_TO_COVID |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=4 May 2024}}</ref>

=== Racism and genocide denial===

==== Distortion of Polish involvement in the Holocaust ====
In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors on the English instance have been promoting a skewed version of the history of the [[Holocaust]] that is touted by right-wing [[Republic of Poland|Polish]] [[Nationalism|nationalists]], whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust, and bolsters stereotypes about [[Judaism|Jews]]. Due to this group's work, Wikipedia's articles on the Holocaust in [[Republic of Poland (1918–1939)|Poland]] minimize Polish [[antisemitism]], exaggerate the Poles' role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported [[Communism]] and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (''Żydokomuna'' or [[Cultural Marxism|Judeo-Bolshevism]]), blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Nazis]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=Jan Grabowski, Shira Klein|newspaper=Taylor&Francis Online|title=Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust|date=2023-02-09|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939|archive-url=https://archive.ph/OIY9Z}}</ref>

====Congolese genocide denial====
The article on the [[genocide]] that happened in the [[Congo Free State (1885–1909)|Congo Free State]]<ref name=":1">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State&oldid=986289478 Quoting the article in question:<blockquote>''"The significant number of deaths under the Free State regime has led some scholars to relate the atrocities to later genocides, though understanding of the losses under the colonial administration's rule as the result of harsh economic exploitation rather than a policy of deliberate extermination has led others to dispute the comparison; '''there is an open debate as to whether the atrocities constitute genocide'''."''</blockquote>We have also a [https://prolewiki.org/images/6/61/Wikipedia_Congolese_genocide_denial.png full page print] if Wikipedia ever decides to take the article down. This cited quote was taken from the section ''Historiography and the term "genocide"''.</ref> (the [[Kingdom of Belgium|Belgian]] colony of the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|Congo]]), is now called "Atrocities in the Congo Free State" following a dispute between [[White people|white]] and African users over the previous name of "Congolese Genocide."

User Brigade Piron,<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brigade_Piron</ref> a white [[Kingdom of Belgium|Belgian]] nationalist editor, claims that the term genocide is contested and at this time the article contradicts itself: first making it seem like the Congolese Genocide was caused mainly by disease, later saying it was caused by "harsh economic [[exploitation]], rather than a policy of deliberate extermination".<ref name=":1" /> Most edits of the article come from another white European, user Indy Beetle, from [[Swiss Confederation|Switzerland]].<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State&offset=&limit=500&action=history Contains more than 160 edits by Wikipedia user Indy Beetle.</ref>

==== Nanjing Massacre denial ====
Japanese Wikipedia uses the title "Nanjing Incident" (南京事件) to refer to the [[Nanjing Massacre]] and does not include photos of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese]] war crimes that are included in the Chinese and English instances.<ref name=":0" />

==== White genocide conspiracy theory ====
Wikipedia accuses the [[Republic of Haiti|Haitian]] revolutionary [[Jean-Jacques Dessalines]], who overthrew [[French]] [[colonialism]] and ended [[slavery]] in his country, of committing genocide against white colonists.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Wikipedia|title=Jean-Jacques Dessalines|date=2023-02-05|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-Jacques_Dessalines&oldid=1141432955|retrieved=2023-02-26}}</ref>

==== Settler colonialism apologia ====
Wikipedia pages related to [[United States of America|Statesian]] [[settler colonialism]] tend to downplay or outright deny the genocide of indigenous people in the United States. Settler nationalist editors have the monopoly on editing these pages and maintain it by banning or harassing indigenous or allied editors off the site.<ref>{{Citation|author=Kyle Keeler|year=2024|title=Wikipedia’s Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world’s largest encyclopedia|title-url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2201473X.2024.2358697|pdf=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/2201473X.2024.2358697?needAccess=true|doi=10.1080/2201473X.2024.2358697|series=Settler Colonial Studies}}</ref>

===Sexism===
Women have been speaking about the [[sexism]] they faced on Wikipedia for many years, as about 90% of the user base is male according to Wikipedia's own study.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Wikimedia|title=Gender across Wikimedia project contributors in 2018, weighted|date=2018|url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/LE15_Gender_overall_in_2018.png}}</ref>

Women are generally discouraged from participating through widespread bullying and harassment.<ref>Emma Paling. [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/how-wikipedia-is-hostile-to-women/411619/ “Wikipedia's hostility to women”]. ''The Atlantic,'' 21 October 2015.</ref> Notably, several women were brought on board various projects aimed at reducing "gender bias" (Wikipedia's technical term for its sexist atmosphere), and all left after facing repeated harassment. This issue has been brought to the Wikimedia foundation's attention, to which founder Jimmy Wales responded, in one case:<blockquote>I'm afraid I don't know enough about the specific details here to be able to make a meaningful comment.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_178#Said_at_GGTF_arbitration</ref></blockquote>Articles about famous women are often deleted or see their edits reverted, rendering them invisible. Edits by women themselves are often reverted as well, no matter how good the quality may be.

=== Censorship ===
Wikipedia blocks the IP addresses of VPNs and other proxies, preventing users from mainland [[People's Republic of China|China]] from editing. They can apply for an account, but it takes an average of 41 days to receive a response. On 13 September 2021, Wikipedia purged many Chinese users, leading them to create [[Qiuwen Baike]] as an alternative.<ref name=":0" />

Wikipedia often deletes articles about topics outside of the [[Imperial core|West]]. For example, Chinese Wikipedia deleted an article about the Xuzhou urban expressway while keeping an article about a 200-meter-long street in [[Hong Kong Special Administrative Region|Hong Kong]].<ref name=":0" />

===Corruption and paid editing===
[[File:Wikipedia paid-editor policy example..png|thumb|366x366px|Wikipedia permits people paid by pro-capitalist organizations to edit on their articles.<ref name=":4" />]]
Although Wikipedia purports to be a reliable and neutral source of knowledge, it has been mangled by several known cases of corruption, involving paid editors hired to whitewash their clients' reputation. A former lawyer, user edsussman, has been hired by [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]] PR, news companies Axios and [[National Broadcasting Company|NBC]] to tweak pages related to the respective client in a favorable manner, all while adhering to the rules of the site.<ref>Ashley Feinberg. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-facebook-nbc-axios_n_5c63321be4b03de942967225 “Facebook, Axios And NBC paid this guy to whitewash Wikipedia pages”]. ''The Huffpost,'' 14 March 2019.</ref>

The Wikimedia Foundation collects over $100 million per year even though only $10 million is needed to keep Wikipedia running. It raises money by lying that Wikipedia needs more money to avoid shutting down.<ref name=":0" />[[File:Wikipedia imperialist censorship.png|alt=Wikipedia censorship of trustworthy news media.|thumb|These are news sources which Wikipedia considers unreliable. Highlighted in yellow are actually trustworthy sources of information which disputes the US imperialist propaganda narrative.]]

==Ties to imperialist organizations==
The Wikiscanner tracing program has revealed that the CIA and FBI edited Wikipedia articles on the [[Iraq War]] and [[Guantánamo Bay detention camp|Guantánamo Bay]] prison.<ref>{{News citation|author=Randall Mikkelsen|newspaper=[[Reuters]]|title=CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits|date=2007-08-16|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia/cia-fbi-computers-used-for-wikipedia-edits-idUSN1642896020070816|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220411092828/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia/cia-fbi-computers-used-for-wikipedia-edits-idUSN1642896020070816|archive-date=2022-04-11|retrieved=2022-05-24}}</ref>

===Funding===
In spite of Wikipedia systematically and regularly requesting its readers to donate money, Wikipedia, along with its parent organisations, makes over $100 million USD each year, far more than the amount needed for its upkeep.<ref name=":5" /> Furthermore, the Wikimedia Foundation has ties with Western corporations such as [[Amazon.com, Inc.|Amazon]],<ref>{{News citation|author=Andreas Kolbe|newspaper=Daliy Dot|title=Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate?|date=2021-5-24|url=https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/|retrieved=2022-7-30|quote=Just five years later, the endowment passed $90 million, and the $100 million mark, now described as an “initial goal,” will be reached this year. Major donations from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others have been supplemented by legacy gifts—and $25 million from the WMF itself.

It’s noteworthy that money donated to the endowment is not included in the WMF’s reported net assets ($180 million as of last June) or annual revenue ($130 million). Money the WMF pays into the endowment, however, is recorded under expenditures (“Awards and Grants”). These two facts disguise that the WMF has effectively operated with a far larger surplus for the past five years than its financial statements indicate—they “only” show a $100 million increase in net assets over that time period. In reality, the WMF’s total funds have increased by twice as much.

The endowment is not the only money Wikimedia funnels to the Tides Foundation. Last year, when the WMF literally had more money than it knew what to do with, with community events canceled due to the pandemic, it transferred another $8.7 million to a new “Tides Advocacy” fund.}}</ref> and some of its largest donors are [[Google Inc.|Google]], [[Microsoft Corporation|Microsoft]], and [[Apple Inc.|Apple]].<ref name=":5" />

==External links==

=== Alternatives ===

* [https://baike.baidu.com/ Baidu Baike] (Chinese)
* [https://www.ecured.cu/EcuRed EcuRed] (Spanish)
* [https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Main_Page Leftypedia] (English)
* [https://prolewiki.org/ ProleWiki] (multilingual)
* [https://ru.ruwiki.ru/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0 Ruwiki] (multilingual)
* [https://www.qiuwenbaike.cn/wiki/Qiuwen:%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5 Qiuwen Baike] (Chinese)

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Wikis]]
[[Category:Online encyclopedias]]
[[Category:Capitalist progaganda]]
[[Category:Bourgeois media]]
[[Category:Disinformation]]
[[Category:Imperialist propaganda]]

Imperialism

2026-07-23T13:46:56Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:1920px-North South divide.svg.png|thumb|World map with most imperialist countries in blue]]
'''Imperialism''' is the most recent evolution of the [[capitalist]] [[mode of production]] that began in the late 1800s to early 1900s, in which [[Monopoly|monopolies]] and [[Cartel|cartels]] become the dominant economic force of society.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|title=Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism|chapter=Chapter 1: Concentration of production and monopolies|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|quote=Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.}}</ref> It involves the merger of banking capital with industrial capital to create the greater finance capital and a fundamental distinguishing character of export of [[capital]] instead of export of [[Commodity|commodities]].

It is a global system of economic, political, and military domination, with the imperialist powers using a variety of means, including economic sanctions, military interventions, and cultural influence to maintain their dominance over other nations.

[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] synthesized a [[Marxism|Marxist]] analysis of imperialism in his pamphlet ''Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism'' in 1916, expanding on the foundation of the earlier work of [[J. A. Hobson|John A. Hobson]] entitled ''Imperialism: A Study''. Lenin wrote that rapid growth of industry and concentration of production in growing enterprises represent the key characteristic of capitalism.<ref name=":0" /> He summarized it in one phrase as "the monopoly stage of capitalism".<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism|Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|quote=If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.}}
</ref>

Multiple theorists have updated, deepened, developed or critically engaged with the classical analysis of Imperialism. For example, [[Kwame Nkrumah]], who wrote [[Library:Neocolonialism,_the_Last_Stage_of_Imperialism|Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism]]. Most recently, the concept of [[neoimperialism]] has emerged in the work of [[Cheng Enfu]].

The development of imperialism in the global economy also reinforces a dialectical relationship between core-periphery countries, mainly [[dependency]] and subordination of [[Underdevelopment|underdeveloped countries]] to imperialist economies. In conjunction with these developments, new theoretical models were proposed to understand developments, such as dependency theory and world-systems theory.

Imperialism is inevitable under Capitalism because Capitalism is based on the premise of infinite growth in a finite system. When capitalists first run into the limits of their own country, they will eventually be forced to expand their markets, resources, and influence into other countries and territories in order to continue increasing their profits. Not only that, but the [[tendency of the rate of profit to fall]] ensures that with their own market's profit yields are bound to decrease and in order to offset that, outwards expansionism and conquest of foreign markets becomes a material necessity rather than whim.

Furthermore, the capitalists can exploit and oppress the workers of other nations much more easily than they can in their own. For example, by moving manufacturing jobs from the imperialist countries to the imperialized countries where wages are lower, and environmental protections and labour rights are much weaker -- if they exist at all -- they can reduce costs which increases profits.

When the capitalists run into limits again, and are unable to continue increasing their profits -- even by exploiting the periphery -- they will inevitably turn Imperialism inwards and further oppress and exploit workers domestically. This is the origin of [[Fascism]].

== Mistranslation of "highest stage" ==
In his [[Library:Vladimir_Lenin/Imperialism,_the_highest_stage_of_capitalism|book on Imperialism]], Lenin is often translated as having said that imperialism is "the highest stage" of capitalism. In the original Russian version, Lenin is stating that imperialism is the 'latest' or 'most recent' or contemporary stage, rather than definitively saying that it is the ''final stage''.

== Theoretical overview ==
In [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s further analysis of imperialism, this economic stage is defined by five basic features:
* The presence of [[Monopoly|monopolies]] which play a decisive role in economic life.
* The merging of bank [[capital]] with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a [[Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie|financial oligarchy]].
* The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of [[Commodity|commodities]].
* The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations ([[Cartel|cartels]]) and [[multinational corporations]].
* The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.
* The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|title=Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism|chapter=Chapter 7: Imperialism as a special stage of capitalism|quote=But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm}}</ref> This expansion to Marx's analysis of capitalist development was one of Lenin's most important theoretical contributions to [[political economy]].
Marx posited that as capitalist economies matured, they would inevitably be driven into a crisis which would result in internal class revolt and the establishment of a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]] (and eventually [[socialism]]). However, according to Lenin's observations, the development of ''imperialism'' allowed capitalism to postpone this crisis through the acquisition of colonies, which served as a new outlets for capital investment and a new source of labour power to exploit.

This scramble for the expansion of capitalist empires drove the various imperialist powers into a competition with one another over the size of their imperialist spheres of influence and access to resources and labour markets, which led to destructive inter-imperialist conflicts such as the [[First World War|First World War.]] Imperialism thus stretches the inherent contradictions of capitalism to ever more extreme limits, leading [[J.V. Stalin]] to deem Leninism the "Marxism of the era of imperialism".

Imperialism as a stage of development in capitalism means that it will always develop in any sufficiently advanced capitalist mode of production. As markets become saturated within the boundaries of the individual nation (due to an influx of producers), capital must be exported elsewhere, and the main function of banks is to help with that (see [[finance capitalism]]).

Capitalist countries must eventually turn to imperialism for two main reasons:
#Capitalism requires constant consumption, which translates into constant growth (and GDP growth). Without GDP growth, capitalism stagnates and a recession occurs. However, since it is impossible to expect infinite growth with finite available resources and as markets become saturated, the bourgeoisie must seek new opportunities.
#The bourgeoisie is also in constant internal competition, and as such there is a very rational reason for a capitalist to emerge victorious over the competition; accessing untapped markets and cheaper labour will give them an edge over the competition.
However, imperialized countries will not be allowed to develop past the most primitive stage of capitalism, preventing them from developing their own imperialism. In these countries, we may see the emergence of two distinct subsections of the bourgeoisie. Firstly, a "comprador" class, i.e. the section of the national bourgeoisie which is allied with, and dependent upon, foreign imperialist investment; and second, the "national" bourgeoisie, whose class interests are, at least temporarily, aligned with the exploited working class: to achieve [[national liberation]] (so that they can become exploiters without being exploited, upon which point their tentative alignment with the national proletariat will end).

== Origins and historical development ==
[[File:Common history of imperialist countries.png|thumb|Most modern imperialist countries originated as [[Genocide|genocidal]] colonial powers]]
The development of imperialism began with the [[Long Depression|Panic of 1873]], which caused an economic depression lasting through the 1880s. When the economy recovered in 1889, [[Cartel|cartels]] took advantage of the situation and drove up prices. After another depression from 1900 to 1903, they became even stronger and controlled the coal, mining, and iron industries by 1905.<ref name=":0" />

The early 20th century was marked by several imperialist, colony-grabbing wars: the [[Spanish–Statesian War|Spanish-Statesian War]] of 1898, the [[Boer war|Boer War]] of 1899-1902, the [[Russo-Japanese War]] of 1905, the [[Italo-Turkish war|Italo-Turkish]] war of 1911-1912, and the [[Balkan wars]] of 1912-1913. These various conflicts between the imperialist powers of Europe reached an explosive head, culminating in the 1914 war, popularly known as [[First World War|World War I]]. It is in this historic context of the build-up to WW1, the great race by the various western powers for colonial tributaries—instigated by the burgeoning needs of [[capital]] and capital reproduction—that Lenin wrote up the foundation theory of Imperialism.

== Contemporary imperialism==

===Imperial core===
[[File:Imperial core rings.png|thumb|Diagram of the four rings of the imperial core from [[Tricontinental]]]]
Today, imperialism is still very much alive as Lenin described. The [[International Monetary Fund]] (IMF) and [[World Bank]] for example were institutions created for the benefit of the imperial core (the richest and oldest capitalist economies, grossly encompassing North America and Western Europe) so as to perpetually keep former colonised countries in debt that they can not repay. The IMF is known to demand specific [[free market]] policies put into place so as to facilitate movement of capital from the imperial core towards these ex-colonies, also known as the [[Global South]]. On top of having many strings attached, the IMF is allowed to seize projects when loans cannot be paid back, and they often can't due to very harsh payment plans (usually very high interest rates over a 7-year period).

This "soft" imperialism is not the only form of imperialism happening, and we can look at the [[US Invasion of Iraq]] in 2003 for a "harder" form of imperialism. In this case, the entire country of Iraq as well as the surrounding region was destabilized, which allowed U.S. oil companies to eliminate competition and seize these wells for themselves.

=== Imperialist military ===
Imperialism is enforced by military power—especially, since the early 20th century, by U.S. military power. One indication of this is the large number of military bases that the U.S. maintains in foreign countries and the large number of U.S. troops stationed around the world.

==== U.S. military personnel in Europe ====
At the end of 2021, the United States had 74,000 military personnel stationed in Europe in long-term positions (according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Reuters|title=Factbox: Where NATO forces are deployed|date=2022-01-24|url=https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/where-nato-forces-are-deployed-2022-01-24|access-date=2022-03}}</ref> Not all are combat-ready troops. The numbers of these U.S. personnel in some particular countries is as follows:

* [[Federal Republic of Germany|Germany]]: 36,000
* [[Italian Republic|Italy]]: 12,000
* [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|Britain]]: 9,000
* [[Kingdom of Spain|Spain]]: 3,000
* [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]]: 1,600

Besides these personnel, the U.S. rotates 4,500 troops through [[Republic of Poland|Poland]].<ref>Reuters 2022, ''op. cit.''</ref>

== Myths ==

=== Soviet "imperialism"===
During the [[Cold War]], a rivalry between the world's two global powers at the time (the USA and the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Soviet Union]]), the CIA's [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] cultivated a milieu of anti-Soviet leftists to advance the geopolitical line of the US. One accusation that was leveled against the Soviet Union was that it was yet another imperialist state, based on the conflicts which happened between the [[Sino-Soviet split|Soviet Union and China]]. USSR did not practice imperialism in the [[Leninism|Leninist]] sense — it did not export capital and was not under control of a financial oligarchy.

===Chinese "imperialism" ===
In modern times, some accuse China of being imperialist, mainly in [[Africa]]. These people again use the liberal definition of imperialism and can be ignored in much the same way.

With its [[Belt and Road Initiative]], China does not practice the same harsh policies as the [[IMF]] (namely, forcing austerity upon loan recipients) and that is why they are being favored by more and more countries, leading to a disinformation campaign by the imperial core to help drive popular support from the B&R and back towards the IMF. Famously, Chinese loans pay for infrastructure (needed for development), are often forgiven and restructured<ref>{{Web citation|author=Jevans Nyablage|newspaper=[[South China Morning Post]]|title=China to forgive interest-free loans to Africa that are coming due, Xi Jinping says|date=2020-06-18T03:43|url=https://www.scmp.com/news/world/africa/article/3089492/china-forgive-interest-free-loans-africa-are-coming-due-xi}}</ref>, and there are no policies required to get such a loan. Where the West builds economic dependency the PRC builds mutual economic cooperation.<blockquote>If any debtors encounter difficulties to pay on time, there may be tailored plans including rescheduling… adding grants to help bring projects back to life, conducting debt-equity swaps, or hiring Chinese firms to assist operations. Just like repairing and enhancing a patient’s hemopoietic system, adopting such measures to help the projects get back on track and gain profit has advantages over simply offering write-offs which may only solve issues on the surface and are unsustainable<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|author=Kevin Acker, Deborah Brautigam, and
Yufan Huang|newspaper=China Africa Research
Initiative, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University,
Washington, DC.|title=Debt Relief with Chinese Characteristics|url=http://www.sais-cari.org/publications.|quote=...China has not applied the kinds of highly contested economic austerity and structural adjustment conditions imposed by the HIPC process. Yet, there is always one political condition: countries need to have diplomatic relations with Beijing (instead of Taipei).}}</ref></blockquote>Moreover, unlike the IMF and Western international financial institutions the PRC does not enforce austerity upon nations with heavy debt to it. Instead only conditioning it on political recognition of the Chinese state rather than the forward base of Western Imperialism in East Asia, [[Taiwan Province|Taiwan]].<blockquote>...China has not applied the kinds of highly contested economic austerity and structural adjustment conditions imposed by the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) process. Yet, there is always one political condition: countries need to have diplomatic relations with Beijing (instead of Taipei).<ref name=":1" /></blockquote>The Chinese build economic cooperation and strength against the imperial core (because that is in the material interest of the Chinese state) in contrast the West builds economic dependency and imperialist control.

=== Russian "imperialism" ===
In certain circles, there have been attempts to paint the [[2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict|Russo-Ukrainian conflict]] as a war between two imperialist countries, the United States and [[Russian Federation|Russia]]. Similarly to the above Chinese example, this is incorrect.

Unlike the western powers, Russia does not have any capital [[Monopoly|monopolies]] that control the world market or supply chains. Russia having Gazprom and an extraction industry doesn’t mean they are imperialist. The essence of imperialism is monopolistic on a global scale, which is precisely why Russia is not imperialist, not whether they have capital generally. A perfect example of monopolies that share the world amongst themselves is the West, specifically the United States in their control of the [[World Economic Forum|WEF]], [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]], [[The World Bank|World Bank]], and [[United Nations|UN]] Security Council, allowing the western powers to enforce this dominance through jingoistic foreign policy, embargoes, and hindering the development of other countries. Neither Russia nor China has anywhere close to this level of global power through [[finance capital]].

Russia lacks finance capital and division of the world's resources. It only has 4 of the top 100 corporations in the world and 6 of the top 500. 82% of Russian exports are raw materials, including 58% oil, 11% metal, and 6% food. In 2017, Russia imported $106.2 billion worth' of machine goods and only exported $12.8 billion. Russia does not have any of the top 100 corporations in terms of [[capital]] export, and most Russian capital export is capital flight to tax havens. Russia only controls 0.7% of the world's wealth and has much less wealth per adult than the [[United States of America|United States]] ($8,843 vs $336,528). Russia has intervened militarily in other countries such as [[Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2006)|Yugoslavia]], [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]], Ukraine, and [[Syrian Arab Republic|Syria]], but not to seize natural resources like imperialist countries do.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Stansfield Smith|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=Is Russia imperialist?|date=2019-01-02|url=https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230315020644/https://mronline.org/2019/01/02/is-russia-imperialist/|archive-date=2023-03-15|retrieved=2023-03-22}}</ref>

== Early theoreticians (pre-1945) ==

=== Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ===
[[Engels|Friedrich Engels]] alluded to imperialism in ''[[Library:The principles of communism|The principles of communism]]'':

{{Quote|In this way, all semi-barbarian countries, which had hitherto been more or less strangers to historical development, and whose industry had been based on manufacture, were violently forced out of their isolation. They bought the cheaper commodities of the English and allowed their own manufacturing workers to be ruined. Countries which had known no progress for thousands of years – for example, India – were thoroughly revolutionized, and even China is now on the way to a revolution.

We have come to the point where a new machine invented in England deprives millions of Chinese workers of their livelihood within a year’s time.

In this way, big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries.|Engels|Principles of communism {{Refn|Engels. [[Library:The principles of communism|''The principles of communism'']]: [[Library:The principles of communism#What were the immediate consequences of the industrial revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat?|''What were the immediate consequences of the industrial revolution and of the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat?'']]|name=|group=note}}}}
At the time of his writing, imperialism was not yet a word in common use (not until the 1870s) however, policies of imperialism were already happening around the world—especially at hands of the British Empire in Africa.

Given that imperialism is, according to Lenin, the highest stage of capitalism, one tendency of imperialism is to export the class conflict of a nation to foreign lands. Thus, the British nation, in order to solve its problem of unemployment and food scarcity along a capitalist basis (without socialism; redistribution of wealth and power to the commoners through social ownership), had to find new lands to settle the unemployed.

{{Quote|"In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets. ... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question."|[[Cecil Rhodes]], British imperialist, as quoted in [[Lenin]]'s [[Library:Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism|Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism]]}}

=== Vladimir Lenin ===

== Later theoreticians (post-1945) ==

=== Michael Parenti ===
[[Michael Parenti]] described several examples of imperialism in ''[[Library:Against Empire|Against Empire]]''.
{{Quote|By "imperialism" I mean the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people.

The earliest victims of Western European imperialism were other Europeans. Some 800 years ago, Ireland became the first colony of what later became known as the British empire. A part of Ireland still remains under British occupation. Other early Caucasian victims included the Eastern Europeans. The people Charlemagne worked to death in his mines in the early part of the ninth century were Slavs. So frequent and prolonged was the enslavement of Eastern Europeans that "Slav" became synonymous with servitude. Indeed, the word "slave" derives from "Slav." Eastern Europe was an early source of capital accumulation, having become wholly dependent upon Western manufactures by the seventeenth century.

A particularly pernicious example of intra-European imperialism was the Nazi aggression during World War II, which gave the German business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder the resources and exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave labor of concentration camps.

The preponderant thrust of the European, North American, and Japanese imperial powers has been directed against Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the nineteenth century, they saw the Third World as not only a source of raw materials and slaves but a market for manufactured goods. By the twentieth century, the industrial nations were exporting not only goods but capital, in the form of machinery, technology, investments, and loans. To say that we have entered the stage of capital export and investment is not to imply that the plunder of natural resources has ceased. If anything, the despoliation has accelerated.

[...]

Imperialism is older than capitalism. The Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and Mongol empires all existed centuries before the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Emperors and conquistadors were interested mostly in plunder and tribute, gold and glory. Capitalist imperialism differs from these earlier forms in the way it systematically accumulates capital through the organized exploitation of labor and the penetration of overseas markets. Capitalist imperialism invests in other countries, transforming and dominating their economies, cultures, and political life, integrating their financial and productive structures into an international system of capital accumulation.

A central imperative of capitalism is expansion. Investors will not put their money into business ventures unless they can extract more than they invest. Increased earnings come only with a growth in the enterprise. The capitalist ceaselessly searches for ways of making more money in order to make still more money. One must always invest to realize profits, gathering as much strength as possible in the face of competing forces and unpredictable markets.|Michael Parenti|Against Empire. City Lights Books.|1995, p. 5}}
==Further reading==

* [[Library:Imperialism,_the_highest_stage_of_capitalism | ''Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism'']]
* [[Library:Neocolonialism,_the_Last_Stage_of_Imperialism |''Neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism'']]
* [[Library:Five_Characteristics_of_Neoimperialism |''Five Characteristics of Neoimperialism'']]

== Notes ==
<references group="note"/>
==References ==
<references />
[[Category:Marxist terminology]]
[[Category:Marxist theory]]
[[Category:Marxism]]
[[Category:Leninism]]
[[Category:Capitalism]]
[[Category:Debunking myths]]

Communist Party of Kampuchea

2026-07-09T15:14:21Z

PuzzledFox99: Sources + further information

{{Message box/Stub}}{{Infobox political party|name=Communist Party of Kampuchea|native_name=បក្សកុម្មុយនីស្តកម្ពុជា|logo=Emblem of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.svg.png|founded=28 June 1951|abbreviation=CPK|general_secretary=[[Pol Pot]]|dissolved=6 December 1981|split=[[Indochinese Communist Party]]|successor=[[Party of Democratic Kampuchea]]|newspaper=Tung Padevat|youth_wing=Communist Youth League of Kampuchea|political_orientation=[[Chauvinism]] [[Nationalism|Ultranationalism]]<ref name=":0" />}}{{Communist Parties}}

The '''Communist Party of Kampuchea''' ('''CPK'''), also known as the '''Khmer Communist Party''', was a party in [[Kingdom of Cambodia|Cambodia]] led by [[Pol Pot]] that claimed to be [[Communism|communist]]. However, by the time of 1963–1964, it had effectively become a [[reactionary]] [[nationalist]] party that cloaked itself in communist rhetoric while purging actual communists, much like how the [[National Socialist German Workers' Party]] claimed to be socialist.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=VOV.VN|title=Bài học xương máu từ chế độ diệt chủng Pol Pot - Khmer Đỏ|date=2014-01-07|url=https://vov.vn/the-gioi/ho-so/bai-hoc-xuong-mau-tu-che-do-diet-chung-pol-pot-khmer-do-355913.vov}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)]]
*[[Pol Pot]]

==References==
<references />

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

2026-06-24T22:34:10Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox politician|name=Volodymyr Zelenskyy|native_name=Володимир Олександрович Зеленський|birth_date=25 January 1978 (age 46)|birth_place=Kryviy Rih, [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919–1991)|Ukrainian SSR]], [[Soviet Union]]|image=Volodymyr Zelenskyy.png|nationality=Ukrainian|political_line=[[Populism]] (2021–2022) [[Imperialism]] (2022–present)}}

'''Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy''' (born 25 January 1978) is a far-right [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] politician who has served as [[President of Ukraine]] since 2019. He was elected on the basis of ending the War in [[Donbass]], but considering the fact that the war has only escalated, it's clear that Zelenskyy does not hold a democratic mandate.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=[[Alexander Rubinstein]] and [[Max Blumenthal]]|date=2022-03-04|title=How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia|url=https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/|newspaper=[[The Grayzone]]}}</ref>

Zelenskyy has close links to both the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and [[Secret Intelligence Service|MI6]] and there is evidence to suggest he is a intelligence agent for the [[Imperial core|West]] with MI6 chief [[Richard Moore]] being his handler. Multiple former Western state employees have stated that Zelenskyy's rise to power was a “carefully planned operation by Western intelligence services.”<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=Jeremy Kuzmarov|newspaper=CovertAction Magazine|title=Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Came to Power in Carefully Planned Operation Coordinated by Western Intelligence Services, Says Former U.S. Diplomat|date=2024-08-04|url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/08/04/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-came-to-power-in-a-carefully-planned-operation-coordinated-by-western-intelligence-services-says-former-u-s-diplomat/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241223044527/https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/08/04/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-came-to-power-in-a-carefully-planned-operation-coordinated-by-western-intelligence-services-says-former-u-s-diplomat/|archive-date=2024-12-23}}</ref>

== Early career ==
From 2015 to 2019 Zelenskyy starred in the Ukrainian television drama ''Servant of the People'', in which he played a high school teacher whose monologue against [[corruption]] catapults him to the role of President of Ukraine.<ref name=":0" />

== Political career==
His electoral campaign was based on the false image that his politics were the same as the character he played. He achieved this by paying $70,000 to [[United States of America|Statesian]] public relations firm, [[Signal Group]], along with assistance from Statesian experts, including former members of [[Barack Obama|Obama]]'s Presidential campaign. He ran on the promise of fighting corruption and calling for a ceasefire in the Donbass, both promises in which he did the opposite of in office.<ref name=":0" />

He won the 2019 election against the unpopular [[Petro Poroshenko]] with 73% of the vote, but his approval rating dropped to 23% by January 2022 due to his [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] economic reforms. He shut down three opposition news outlets in February 2021.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Natylie Baldwin|newspaper=[[The Grayzone]]|title=The real Zelensky: from celebrity populist to unpopular Pinochet-style neoliberal|date=2022-04-28|url=https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/28/zelensky-celebrity-populist-pinochet-neoliberal/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221020121347/https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/28/zelensky-celebrity-populist-pinochet-neoliberal/|archive-date=2022-10-20|retrieved=2022-10-30}}</ref>

Corruption rose under Zelenskyy in a country which already had high corruption with money being siphoned off [[COVID-19 pandemic|COVID]] relief and cancer research funds. Zelenskyy himself has connections to oligarch [[Ihor Kholomoisky]] who bankrolled Zelenskyy's political ascendency and gave Zelenskyy the capability to transfer $41 million to offshore bank accounts. Zelenskyy serves as a puppet to the West passing [[Russophobia|Russophobic]] laws, and allowing foreign takeover of Ukrainian land whilst provoking war with [[Russian Federation|Russia]] and displaying eagerness to join his fellow imperialists in [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]].<ref name=":0" />

In April 2022, Zelenskyy described his vision for the future Ukraine as a "big [[Israel]]", by which he meant an illiberal, militarised state.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sam Sokol|newspaper=Haaretz|title=Zelenskyy Says Post-war Ukraine Will Emulate Israel, Won’t Be ‘Liberal, European’|date=2022-04-05|url=https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2022-04-05/ty-article/.highlight/zelenskyy-says-post-war-ukraine-will-emulate-israel-wont-be-liberal-european/00000180-5bc4-d718-afd9-dffcdfdd0000}}</ref>
<ref>{{Web citation|author=Daniel B. Shapiro|newspaper=Atlantic Council|title=Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to be ‘a big Israel.’ Here’s a road map.|date=2022-04-06|url=https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/zelenskyy-wants-ukraine-to-be-a-big-israel-heres-a-road-map/}}</ref>

==Russo-Ukrainian War==
The [[National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine|National Security and Defense Council]], led by Zelenskyy, banned 11 opposition parties in March 2022. In June 2022, only four out of 55 [[Africa|African]] leaders attended his video conference.<ref>{{News citation|author=[[Ben Norton]]|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=Only 4 of 55 African leaders attend Zelensky call, showing neutrality on Ukraine and Russia|date=2022-06-25|url=https://mronline.org/2022/06/25/only-4-of-55-african-leaders-attend-zelensky-call-showing-neutrality-on-ukraine-and-russia/|retrieved=2022-06-25}}</ref>

Zelenskyy has made very little effort to end the [[2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict|Russo-Ukrainian War]] with all attempts at a ceasefire being rejected with insults sent to [[Vladimir Putin]] instead of diplomacy. He has allowed Ukraine to become a testing ground for Western weapons and [[Neo-Nazism|Neo-Nazi]] groups whilst using the Ukrainian proletariat as mere canon fodder in an attempt to weaken Russia on the behalf of the West.<ref name=":0" />

==References==
<references />
[[Category:1978 births]]
[[Category:Current heads of state]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Politicians in Ukraine]]
[[Category:Presidents of Ukraine]]

American Communist Party (current)

2026-06-07T01:47:57Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox political party|name=American Communist Party|logo=ACPlogocurrent.jpg|founded=21 July 2024|abbreviation=ACP|split=|newspaper=[[Red America]]|political_orientation="Unified Tendency" of [[Marxism–Leninism]] (''de jure'')<ref>[https://acp.us/constitution "Constitution of the American Communist Party"]. acp.us. Retrieved 2025-09-06.</ref> [[Patriotic socialism]] (''de facto'') [[Social chauvinism]] (''de facto'')|position=[[Left-wing]] (''de jure'') [[Far-right]] (''de facto'')<ref name=":1">{{Video citation|channel=Brandon Torres|title=The Nonsense of MAGA Communism|date=2025-04-04|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpLy6brTYvM}} {{Web citation|title=sources|newspaper=Pastebin|url=https://pastebin.com/KNJ0mpf7|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251116104642/https://pastebin.com/KNJ0mpf7}}</ref>|international=[[World Anti-imperialist Platform]]|colours=Red|seats1_title=|seats1=|website=https://acp.us/|twitter=|youtube=|facebook=|instagram=}}{{Stub}}
The '''American Communist Party''' ('''ACP''') is a self-described [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] [[political party]] operating in the territory of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]. It was founded in [[Chicago]] in July 2024 by several [[Patriotic socialism|patriotic socialist]] social media [[Influencer|influencers]] and claims to be the legitimate successor to the historic [[Communist Party of the United States of America|Communist Party USA]]. Its Plenary Committee (now named the Executive Board) consists of [[Haz Al-Din]], [[Henry Ahmad]], and [[Grayson Preutz]] of [[Infrared]]; [[Edward Smith|Eddie "Liger" Smith]], [[Carlos Garrido]], [[Noah Khrachvik]], and [[Kyle Pettis]] of [[Midwestern Marx]]; former [[Party of Communists USA|PCUSA]] International Secretary [[Chris Helali]]; [[Rev Laskaris]] of the [[Research and Technical Studies Group|RTSG]]; and most famously [[Jackson Hinkle]].<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=American Communist Party|title=Declaration of the American Communist Party|date=2024-07-22|url=https://acp.us/declaration|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241126205435/https://acp.us/declaration|archive-date=2024-11-26}}</ref>

Although the party has added the names of various CPUSA sections as signatories of its founding declaration,<ref name=":0" /> many of these sections were not aware their name had been put on the document and made statements distancing themselves from the ACP.<ref>{{Web citation|author=@UncolaMD|newspaper=Twitter|title=Of the 29 orgs. these dinguses claimed, 16 (red) have publicly refuted any association or endorsement, 2 (orange) don't even exist, and 1 (purple) dissolved roughly a week before this and is no longer active.|date=2024-07-23|url=https://x.com/UncolaMD/status/1815567086074126460|archive-url=https://archive.ph/iG1md}}</ref> In response, an ACP supporter claimed that the signing sections had been "unconstitutionally expelled from [CPUSA]",<ref>{{Web citation|author=JSummit2036|newspaper=Twitter|title=The social media account of a club represents only the illegal Sims clique, not the Communist Party itself. The true representatives were unconstitutionally expelled from the party. And who told you UConn/Storrs wasn’t real?|date=2024-07-25|url=https://x.com/JSummit2036/status/1816482334901727614|archive-url=https://archive.ph/0QcH5}}</ref> though without providing any evidence, and admitting that the people claiming to represent these sections had no authority to sign the CPUSA name on the ACP declaration.

Previously in 2022, patriotic socialists set up fake CPUSA accounts on Twitter to hijack the names of CPUSA sections as part of their failed [[CPUSA 2036]] strategy.<ref>The real CPUSA Indiana Twitter account is [https://x.com/indianacpusa @IndianaCPUSA], and a fake one handled by patriotic socialists exists at [https://x.com/CPUSA_IN @CPUSA_IN]</ref> Based on this, it is plausible to say that the ACP only used the name of CPUSA to boost their launch but otherwise had close to no contact with it.

== Ideology ==
The ACP is associated with the "[[MAGACommunism|MAGA Communism]]" trend of Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle, both leaders of the party. In the ACP's party programme, the party omits properly dealing with the colonial question which dominates American history (never referencing [[land-back]]) and calls for the "Promotion of American Civilization".<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=American Communist Party|title=Party Program|date=2024-10-12|url=https://acp.us/program}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Patriotic socialism]]

American Communist Party (current)

2026-06-07T01:47:27Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox political party|name=American Communist Party|logo=ACPlogocurrent.jpg|founded=21 July 2024|abbreviation=ACP|split=|newspaper=[[Red America]]|political_orientation="Unified Tendency" of [[Marxism–Leninism]] (''de jure'')<ref>[https://acp.us/constitution "Constitution of the American Communist Party"]. acp.us. Retrieved 2025-09-06.</ref> [[Patriotic socialism]] (''de facto'') [[Social chauvinism]] (''de facto'')|position=[[Left-wing]] (''de jure'') [[Far-right]] (''de facto'')<ref name=":0">{{Video citation|channel=Brandon Torres|title=The Nonsense of MAGA Communism|date=2025-04-04|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpLy6brTYvM}} {{Web citation|title=sources|newspaper=Pastebin|url=https://pastebin.com/KNJ0mpf7|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251116104642/https://pastebin.com/KNJ0mpf7}}</ref>|international=[[World Anti-imperialist Platform]]|colours=Red|seats1_title=|seats1=|website=https://acp.us/|twitter=|youtube=|facebook=|instagram=}}{{Stub}}
The '''American Communist Party''' ('''ACP''') is a self-described [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] [[political party]] operating in the territory of the [[United States]] and [[Canada]]. It was founded in [[Chicago]] in July 2024 by several [[Patriotic socialism|patriotic socialist]] social media [[Influencer|influencers]] and claims to be the legitimate successor to the historic [[Communist Party of the United States of America|Communist Party USA]]. Its Plenary Committee (now named the Executive Board) consists of [[Haz Al-Din]], [[Henry Ahmad]], and [[Grayson Preutz]] of [[Infrared]]; [[Edward Smith|Eddie "Liger" Smith]], [[Carlos Garrido]], [[Noah Khrachvik]], and [[Kyle Pettis]] of [[Midwestern Marx]]; former [[Party of Communists USA|PCUSA]] International Secretary [[Chris Helali]]; [[Rev Laskaris]] of the [[Research and Technical Studies Group|RTSG]]; and most famously [[Jackson Hinkle]].<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=American Communist Party|title=Declaration of the American Communist Party|date=2024-07-22|url=https://acp.us/declaration|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241126205435/https://acp.us/declaration|archive-date=2024-11-26}}</ref>

Although the party has added the names of various CPUSA sections as signatories of its founding declaration,<ref name=":0" /> many of these sections were not aware their name had been put on the document and made statements distancing themselves from the ACP.<ref>{{Web citation|author=@UncolaMD|newspaper=Twitter|title=Of the 29 orgs. these dinguses claimed, 16 (red) have publicly refuted any association or endorsement, 2 (orange) don't even exist, and 1 (purple) dissolved roughly a week before this and is no longer active.|date=2024-07-23|url=https://x.com/UncolaMD/status/1815567086074126460|archive-url=https://archive.ph/iG1md}}</ref> In response, an ACP supporter claimed that the signing sections had been "unconstitutionally expelled from [CPUSA]",<ref>{{Web citation|author=JSummit2036|newspaper=Twitter|title=The social media account of a club represents only the illegal Sims clique, not the Communist Party itself. The true representatives were unconstitutionally expelled from the party. And who told you UConn/Storrs wasn’t real?|date=2024-07-25|url=https://x.com/JSummit2036/status/1816482334901727614|archive-url=https://archive.ph/0QcH5}}</ref> though without providing any evidence, and admitting that the people claiming to represent these sections had no authority to sign the CPUSA name on the ACP declaration.

Previously in 2022, patriotic socialists set up fake CPUSA accounts on Twitter to hijack the names of CPUSA sections as part of their failed [[CPUSA 2036]] strategy.<ref>The real CPUSA Indiana Twitter account is [https://x.com/indianacpusa @IndianaCPUSA], and a fake one handled by patriotic socialists exists at [https://x.com/CPUSA_IN @CPUSA_IN]</ref> Based on this, it is plausible to say that the ACP only used the name of CPUSA to boost their launch but otherwise had close to no contact with it.

== Ideology ==
The ACP is associated with the "[[MAGACommunism|MAGA Communism]]" trend of Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle, both leaders of the party. In the ACP's party programme, the party omits properly dealing with the colonial question which dominates American history (never referencing [[land-back]]) and calls for the "Promotion of American Civilization".<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=American Communist Party|title=Party Program|date=2024-10-12|url=https://acp.us/program}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Patriotic socialism]]

Christopher Columbus

2026-03-12T17:47:33Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox person|name=Christopher Columbus|native_name=Cristoffa Corombo Cristóbal Colón|birth_place=Genoa, [[Republic of Genoa]]|death_date=20 May 1506 (aged 54)|death_place=Valladolid, [[Crown of Castile (1230–1715)|Castile]]|birth_date=1451|known=Beginning the invasion of the Americas|image=Christopher Columbus image.jpg|caption=Portrait of Columbus from after his death}}

'''Christopher Columbus''' (1451 – 20 May 1506) was a Genoese sailor, explorer, navigator, and [[Slavery|slave trader]] who initiated the [[European colonisation of the Americas]], the [[genocide]] of its [[indigenous peoples]], and the [[Atlantic slave trade|transatlantic slave trade]].

==Early career==
In the 1480s, Columbus hoped to find a faster route from Europe to India by crossing the Atlantic west instead of traveling east. He based his plan on errors in his mathematical calculations, which caused him to underestimate the size of the earth and overestimate the size of Asia.<ref name=BSE>{{Citation|author=I.P. Magidovich|year=1973|chapter=Columbus, Christopher|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Columbus,+Christopher|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=12|page=459-460|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т12_727.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Douglas McCormick|newspaper=IEEE Spectrum|title=Columbus’s Geographical Miscalculations|date=2012-10-08|url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/columbuss-geographical-miscalculations|archive-date=2021-10-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211010133547/https://spectrum.ieee.org/columbuss-geographical-miscalculations}}</ref> Contrary to popular misconceptions, Columbus did not prove that the earth was round; most of his contemporaries in Europe already knew that from Ancient Greece mathematicians such as Aristotle.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Alison Hudson|newspaper=Medieval Manuscripts Blog (British Library)|title=The Earth is, in fact, round|date=2018-05-04|url=https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html|archive-date=2025-08-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250805093025/https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html}}</ref>

==Genocide of indigenous peoples==
Columbus sailed from Spain to what is now the [[Commonwealth of The Bahamas|Bahamas]] in 1492 with support from the Spanish monarchy. He enslaved the Arawak people in the Bahamas and Hispaniola (now [[Republic of Haiti|Haiti]] and the [[Dominican Republic]]) and forced them to mine gold. If they could not find enough gold, he cut their hands off. Columbus sent about 5,000 enslaved Arawaks to Europe. When the gold supply ran out, the Spanish began a system of plantation [[slavery]]. From 1492 to 1516, the Arawak population dropped from eight million to 12,000. The Spanish had completely wiped out the Arawaks in Hispaniola by 1555.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation School]]|title=The real legacy of Christopher Columbus: slavery and genocide|date=2014-07-03|url=https://www.liberationschool.org/the-legacy-of-christopher-columbus/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220525183525/https://www.liberationschool.org/the-legacy-of-christopher-columbus/|archive-date=2022-05-25|retrieved=2022-08-28}}</ref>

=== First voyage ===
On 24 December 1492, Columbus landed the ''Santa María'' in what is now Haiti and used its wood to build the fort La Navidad. The Taíno people were originally friendly and gave him gold and wood. He told 39 men to stay on the island and find its gold and spices before he returned.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=David Vine|year=2020|title=The United States of War|isbn=9780520972070|city=Oakland|publisher=University of California Press|lg=http://library.lol/main/191568BFAC73F009132DB00ECD0F0F05|page=71–2|chapter=Conquest}}</ref>

=== Second voyage ===
Columbus returned in 1494 with 17 ships and 1,200 men. The fort was destroyed, and the sailors were dead, although he could not tell whether they were killed by the Taíno or by each other. He created fort Santo Tomás and enslaved and killed hundreds of Taínos to take their gold. Columbus then went to what is now [[Guantánamo Bay concentration camp|Guantánamo Bay]].<ref name=":0" />

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Genocide perpetrators]]
[[Category:Imperialists]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Columbus, Christopher}}

Christopher Columbus

2026-03-12T16:56:35Z

PuzzledFox99: Archive link

{{Infobox person|name=Christopher Columbus|native_name=Cristoffa Corombo Cristóbal Colón|birth_place=Genoa, [[Republic of Genoa]]|death_date=20 May 1506 (aged 54)|death_place=Valladolid, [[Crown of Castile (1230–1715)|Castile]]|birth_date=1451|known=Beginning the invasion of the Americas|image=Christopher Columbus image.jpg|caption=Portrait of Columbus from after his death}}

'''Christopher Columbus''' (1451 – 20 May 1506) was a Genoese sailor, explorer, navigator, and [[Slavery|slave trader]] who initiated the [[European colonisation of the Americas]], the [[genocide]] of its [[indigenous peoples]], and the [[Atlantic slave trade|transatlantic slave trade]].

==Early career==
In the 1480s, Columbus hoped to find a faster route from Europe to India by crossing the Atlantic west instead of traveling east. He based his plan on errors in his mathematical calculations, which caused him to underestimate the size of the earth and overestimate the size of Asia.<ref name=BSE>{{Citation|author=I.P. Magidovich|year=1973|chapter=Columbus, Christopher|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Columbus,+Christopher|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=12|page=459-460|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т12_727.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Douglas McCormick|newspaper=IEEE Spectrum|title=Columbus’s Geographical Miscalculations|date=2012-10-08|url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/columbuss-geographical-miscalculations|archive-date=2021-10-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211010133547/https://spectrum.ieee.org/columbuss-geographical-miscalculations}}</ref> Contrary to popular misconceptions, Columbus did not prove that the earth was round; most of his contemporaries in Europe already knew that from Ancient Greece mathematicians such as Aristotle.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Alison Hudson|newspaper=Medieval Manuscripts Blog (British Library)|title=The Earth is, in fact, round|date=2018-05-04|url=https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250805093025/https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html}}</ref>

==Genocide of indigenous peoples==
Columbus sailed from Spain to what is now the [[Commonwealth of The Bahamas|Bahamas]] in 1492 with support from the Spanish monarchy. He enslaved the Arawak people in the Bahamas and Hispaniola (now [[Republic of Haiti|Haiti]] and the [[Dominican Republic]]) and forced them to mine gold. If they could not find enough gold, he cut their hands off. Columbus sent about 5,000 enslaved Arawaks to Europe. When the gold supply ran out, the Spanish began a system of plantation [[slavery]]. From 1492 to 1516, the Arawak population dropped from eight million to 12,000. The Spanish had completely wiped out the Arawaks in Hispaniola by 1555.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation School]]|title=The real legacy of Christopher Columbus: slavery and genocide|date=2014-07-03|url=https://www.liberationschool.org/the-legacy-of-christopher-columbus/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220525183525/https://www.liberationschool.org/the-legacy-of-christopher-columbus/|archive-date=2022-05-25|retrieved=2022-08-28}}</ref>

=== First voyage ===
On 24 December 1492, Columbus landed the ''Santa María'' in what is now Haiti and used its wood to build the fort La Navidad. The Taíno people were originally friendly and gave him gold and wood. He told 39 men to stay on the island and find its gold and spices before he returned.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=David Vine|year=2020|title=The United States of War|isbn=9780520972070|city=Oakland|publisher=University of California Press|lg=http://library.lol/main/191568BFAC73F009132DB00ECD0F0F05|page=71–2|chapter=Conquest}}</ref>

=== Second voyage ===
Columbus returned in 1494 with 17 ships and 1,200 men. The fort was destroyed, and the sailors were dead, although he could not tell whether they were killed by the Taíno or by each other. He created fort Santo Tomás and enslaved and killed hundreds of Taínos to take their gold. Columbus then went to what is now [[Guantánamo Bay concentration camp|Guantánamo Bay]].<ref name=":0" />

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Genocide perpetrators]]
[[Category:Imperialists]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Columbus, Christopher}}

Romani people

2026-03-01T01:41:34Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Romani flag.svg|thumb|Romani Flag]]
The '''Romani''', also known as the '''Roma''', are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group comprising diverse communities that traditionally maintained itinerant or semi-nomadic lifestyles<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|newspaper=Britannica|title=Roma|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rom|retrieved=2026-01-31}}</ref>. The Romani have maintained a rich cultural identity centered on extended family, community loyalty (Romanipen), and distinct social values, with notable traditions of music and performance arts.

Linguistic, genetic, and historical evidence indicates that the Roma originated in northwestern [[Republic of India|India]], most likely in or near the region of modern-day Rajasthan, and began migrating westward around 1000 CE.<ref>{{Citation|author=Mendizabal, et al.|year=2012|title=Reconstructing the Population History of European Romani from Genome-wide Data|title-url=https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01260-2|publisher=Elsevier Inc.|doi=10.1016/j.cub.2012.10.039}}</ref> Their movement occurred in multiple waves, passing through [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]] and the [[Eastern Roman Empire (395–1453)|Eastern Roman Empire]], before arriving in Europe between the 13th and 14th centuries. Romani populations later migrated to the Americas, particularly during the 19th century.<ref>{{Citation|year=1995|title=Roma/Gypsies: A European Minority|pdf=https://minorityrights.org/app/uploads/2023/12/download-127-romagypsies-a-european-minority.pdf|isbn=1897693168}}</ref>

The Romani have endured centuries of systematic [[Antiziganism|discrimination]] and persecution across Europe<ref>{{Web citation|author=Suki Haider|newspaper=OpenLearn|title=The historical and ongoing persecution of Europe’s gypsies|date=2025-11-09|url=https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/the-historical-and-ongoing-persecution-europes-gypsies|retrieved=2026-02-28}}</ref>. They were, and still are, subject to widespread hostility, prejudice, and exclusion. Notably, many Roma were [[Slavery in Romania|enslaved]] in the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia from the 14th century until emancipation in the mid-19th century<ref>{{Web citation|author=Iulia Hau|newspaper=Europeana|title=Roma slavery in Romania - a history|date=2021-07-07|url=https://www.europeana.eu/de/stories/roma-slavery-in-romania-a-history|retrieved=2026-02-28}}</ref>. They were also targeted by deportation policies across several European states, with France expelling them in 1660 and many were also forcibly transported to the [[British Caribbean]] colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries, being sold into [[slavery]]. In 1749, Spain ordered a nationwide genocidal raid against the Roma, affecting 3/4 of all Romani in Spain<ref>{{Web citation|author=Manuel Martínez|newspaper=Rom Archive|title=From the Extermination of Spanish Roma to full Citizenship Status: One Century of Hope (1749–1843)|url=https://www.romarchive.eu/en/flamenco/from-extermination-of-spanish-roma-to-citizenship/|retrieved=2026.01.31}}</ref>. During the Second World War, Roma were victims of genocide under Nazi Germany and its allies. Between 250,000 and 500,000 Romani were systematically murdered in the [[Porajmos]] (the Romani Holocaust). The Romani were also subjected to segregationist laws and social stigmatisation, which persists to the present day in various regions.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sean Benstead|newspaper=Jacobin|title=Europe’s Romani Population Can’t Breathe|date=2021.07.18|url=https://jacobin.com/2021/07/europe-roma-czech-republic-stanislav-tomas-police-killing-world-romani-congress-movement|retrieved=2026.02.28}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Amnesty International|title=Europe: Discrimination against Roma|date=2007.10.25|url=https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/eur010122007en.pdf|retrieved=2026.01.31}}</ref>

Today, the global Romani population is estimated to be between 10 and 15 million people, with approximately 10-12 million living in Europe, especially in central, eastern, and southern Europe<ref name=":1" />. Significant communities also exist in West Asia, especially Turkey and Iran, and also the United States, and Brazil.

The Romani language is an Indo-Aryan language that retains strong influences from Persian, Armenian, Greek, and South Slavic languages, reflecting the Roma's historical migrations. Due to long-term dispersion and contact with surrounding populations, Romani exists in numerous dialects, and in some cases has blended with local languages to form para-Romani varieties.

== Oppression ==

=== Second World War ===
The [[Fascism|fascist]] [[Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement|Ustaše]] killed at least 26,000 Roma at the [[Jasenovac death camp]] in [[Republic of Croatia|Croatia]].<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=[[Michael Parenti]]|year=2000|title=To Kill a Nation|chapter=Croatia: New Republic, Old Reactionaries|page=41–43|pdf=https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1614706295182-3.pdf|publisher=Verso}}</ref>

=== Yugoslav Wars ===
In addition to targeting [[Republic of Serbia|Serbs]], the [[Kosovo Liberation Army|KLA]] and [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]] attacked Romani people in the former [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992)|Yugoslav]] republics. 14,000 Roma homes were burnt after the beginning of NATO occupation. Many Roma fled from [[Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija|Kosovo]] to [[Republic of North Macedonia|Macedonia]], but they had to declare [[Republic of Albania|Albanian]] nationality because the KLA also ran the refugee camps in Macedonia.<ref name=":022">{{Citation|author=[[Michael Parenti]]|year=2000|title=To Kill a Nation|chapter=Ethnic Cleansing, KLA-NATO Style|page=160–161|pdf=https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1614706295182-3.pdf|publisher=Verso}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Ethnic groups]]

MAGA movement

2026-02-27T19:07:56Z

PuzzledFox99: sources for "neo-fascist"

[[File:Trump_image.png|thumb|[[Donald Trump]], namesake and figurehead of Trumpism.]] The '''Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement''', also sometimes referred to as '''Trumpism''', is the [[Neo-fascism|neo-fascist]]<ref>{{Web citation|author=John Bellamy Foster|newspaper=Monthly Review|title=MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime|date=2025-05|url=https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-maga-ideology-and-the-trump-regime/}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Brandon Torres|newspaper=This Is A Blog|title=Trump and the MAGA Coalition|date=2025-08-12|url=https://tleebrandon.substack.com/p/trump-and-the-maga-coalition}}</ref> [[political movement]] led by and [[cult of personality]] surrounding [[Donald Trump]], the 45th and 47th [[President of the United States]]. It is the dominant faction within the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]. The movement, which is the culmination of the [[anti-establishment]], [[Anti-neoliberalism|anti-neoliberal]], [[National conservatism|national conservative]], and [[Right-wing populism|populist]] sentiment that has been building up within the Republican Party since the 1960s, represents a break from the previous line of the Party.

Trump's [[America First]] slogan is sometimes confused with [[isolationism]], which Trump does not advocate for. America First proposes that the United States should be independent from international treaties and obligations and be able to act unilaterally against the rest of the world.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Bill Fletcher Jr.|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=Race Is About More Than Discrimination|date=2020-07-01|url=https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/race-is-about-more-than-discrimination/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230323205358/https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/race-is-about-more-than-discrimination/|archive-date=2023-03-23}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Trumpism]]
[[Category:Neo-fascism]]
[[Category:Politics of the United States of America]]
[[Category:Stubs]]
[[Category:Pages needing references]]

Donald Trump

2026-02-27T19:06:51Z

PuzzledFox99: sources for ideologies

{{Infobox politician|image=Trump image.png|name=Donald John Trump|political_line=[[Imperialism]]<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /> [[Conservatism]] Right-wing [[populism]] [[Fascism]]<ref>{{Web citation|author=John Bellamy Foster|newspaper=Monthly Review|title=MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime|date=2025-05|url=https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-maga-ideology-and-the-trump-regime/}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Brandon Torres|newspaper=This Is A Blog|title=Trump and the MAGA Coalition|date=2025-08-12|url=https://tleebrandon.substack.com/p/trump-and-the-maga-coalition}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=April Rubin|newspaper=Axios|title=Trump's top general calls former president "fascist" and "dangerous" threat|date=2024-10-11|url=https://www.axios.com/2024/10/11/mark-milley-trump-fascist-bob-woodward-book}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Ximena Bustillo|newspaper=NPR|title=Trump's former chief of staff called him a 'fascist.' Harris is campaigning on that|date=2024-10-23|url=https://www.npr.org/2024/10/23/g-s1-29490/trump-john-kelly-fascist-dictator}}</ref> |birth_date=14 June 1946|nationality=[[Statesian]]|political_party=[[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]|birth_place=[[Queens]], [[New York City]], [[State of New York]], [[United States of America]]}}'''Donald John Trump''' (born 14 June 1946) is a [[United States of America|Statesian]] [[Bourgeoisie|billionaire]] and serial rapist who is currently serving as President of the United States since January 20, 2025. He also served as the 45th [[President of the United States]] from 2017 to 2021. Trump is the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms since [[Grover Cleveland]].

Trump claims to be a pro-[[Proletariat|worker]] politician despite cutting taxes on billionaires and corporations.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=PSL Statement – Workers shouldn’t be fooled: Trump is a tool of the ultra-rich|date=2022-11-15|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-workers-shouldnt-be-fooled-trump-is-a-tool-of-the-ultra-rich/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221118034739/https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-workers-shouldnt-be-fooled-trump-is-a-tool-of-the-ultra-rich/|archive-date=2022-11-18|retrieved=2022-11-19}}</ref> Trump is a member of the [[America First]] movement, which believes the USA should be able to act unilaterally without limits from international law and treaties. Contrary to popular belief, the movement is not isolationist.<ref name=":3">{{Web citation|author=Bill Fletcher Jr.|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=Race Is About More Than Discrimination|date=2020-07-01|url=https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/race-is-about-more-than-discrimination/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230323205358/https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/race-is-about-more-than-discrimination/|archive-date=2023-03-23}}</ref> Likewise, Trump is not a "peace president," as he has engaged in numerous acts of military aggression.<ref name=":4">{{Web citation|author=Eric Draitser|newspaper=New Eastern Outlook|title=President Trump? US War Machine Rolls On|date=2016-03-26|url=http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/26/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160829185750/http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/26/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/|archive-date=2016-08-29|retrieved=2026-01-06}}</ref>

== Pre-presidency ==
In 1968, while still in college, Donald Trump started getting involved in his father's New York City real estate business.<ref name="ArtOfDeal">{{Citation|author=Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz|year=2004|title=Trump: The Art of the Deal|publisher=Ballantine Books|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=B3CD9D3C47EC1F58C3833D050C888B38}}</ref>:78, 93 In 1971, Donald Trump inherited control over the business,<ref name="ArtOfDeal"/>:93–94 and in 1973, he renamed it to the "Trump Organization."<ref name="ArtOfDeal"/>:104–105

Also in 1973, the Trump Organization was charged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) with discrimination against [[Black (race)|black people]]. Trump and the DOJ battled in court until the DOJ agreed to drop the discrimination charges and Trump agreed to make some concessions.<ref name="ArtOfDeal"/>:98–99<ref>{{Web citation|author=Wayne Barrett and Jon Campbell|newspaper=Village Voice|title=How a Young Donald Trump Forced His Way From Avenue Z to Manhattan|date=2015-07-20|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/news/how-a-young-donald-trump-forced-his-way-from-avenue-z-to-manhattan-7380462|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905212408/http://www.villagevoice.com/news/how-a-young-donald-trump-forced-his-way-from-avenue-z-to-manhattan-7380462|archive-date=2015-09-05}}</ref>

In November 2015, Donald Trump mocked [[Serge Kovaleski]]'s [[disability]], arthrogryposis, in response to Serge stating that they never claimed many Muslims support the [[September 11 attacks]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016|title=Donald Trump Criticized After He Appears to Mock Reporter Serge Kovaleski}}</ref>

== First presidential term (2017–2021) ==
In 2017, Donald Trump passed a tax cut that decreased corporate taxes to only 11.3% of profits. He also made a $45 billion cut in food stamp benefits.<ref>{{News citation|author=Robert Reich|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|title=How Trump has betrayed the working class|date=2019-12-22|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/22/trump-wants-to-be-champion-of-the-working-class-but-with-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-it-doesnt-add-up|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220416230953/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/22/trump-wants-to-be-champion-of-the-working-class-but-with-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-it-doesnt-add-up|archive-date=2022-04-16|retrieved=2022-05-20}}</ref>

The first Trump administration's nationalist and populist rhetoric bore "no relation to its actual policies."<ref name=":2" /> In 2018, Trump attended the [[World Economic Forum]] in Davos and declared "America is open for business" before an audience of global elites, in stark contrast to his nominal protectionist, anti-"globalist" rhetoric.<ref name=":2">{{Citation|author=William I. Robinson|year=2019|title=Global capitalist crisis and twenty-first century fascism: beyond the Trump hype|publisher=Science & Society, 83(2), 155–183|doi=10.1521/siso.2019.83.2.155|quote=In the regard, the ideology of 21st-century fascism rests on irrationality — a promise to deliver security and restore stability that is emotive, not rational. It is a project that does not and need not distinguish between the truth and the lie. The Trump regime’s public discourse of populism and nationalism, for example, bears no relation to its actual policies. In its first year, Trumponomics involved deregulation — the virtual smashing of the regulatory state — slashing social spending, dismantling what remained of the welfare state, privatizations, tax breaks to corporations and the rich, and an expansion of state subsidies to capital — in short, neoliberalism on steroids.

This is a distinction lost on many commentators. German monopoly capitalists turned to the Nazis to crush the powerful trade unions, socialist and communist movements. But they also turned to the Nazi state to open up vast new opportunities for accumulation and to compete, including through territorial expansion, against capitalist groups from other countries. In sharp distinction to this fusion of German national capital with the fascist state, Trumpism has sought to open up vast new opportunities for profit-making inside the United States (and around the world) for transnational capital. The Trump White House has called for transnational investors from around the world to invest in the United States, enticed by a regressive tax reform, unprecedented deregulation, and some limited tariff walls that would benefit groups from anywhere in the world that establish operations behind them. “America is open for business,” Trump declared at the 2018 meeting of the global elite gathered for the 2018 annual conclave of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Now is the perfect time to bring your business, your jobs and your investments to the United States” (Bierman, 2018, A3).}}</ref>

In 2020, the United States withdrew from the [[Paris Climate Agreement]].<ref>{{News citation|author=Tyler Clevenger, Dan Lashof|newspaper=World Resources Institute|title=7 Ways the Biden Administration Can Reverse Climate Rollbacks|date=2021-01-19|url=https://www.wri.org/insights/7-ways-biden-administration-can-reverse-climate-rollbacks|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220309070958/https://www.wri.org/insights/7-ways-biden-administration-can-reverse-climate-rollbacks|archive-date=2022-03-09|retrieved=2022-05-20}}</ref>

Under Trump's presidency, civilian deaths caused by the U.S. military increased greatly.<ref name=":5">{{News citation|author=Murtaza Hussain|newspaper=The Intercept|title=Civilian Deaths in U.S. Wars Are Skyrocketing Under Trump. It May Not Be Impeachable, but It’s a Crime.|date=2019-10-02|url=https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civilian-casualties-war/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220507031915/https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civilian-casualties-war/|archive-date=2022-05-07|retrieved=2022-05-20}}</ref>

Trump also vastly expanded concentration camps at the US-Mexico border, where asylum-seeking immigrants are kept in inhumane conditions.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Andi Zeisler|newspaper=NBC|title=AOC was right to compare Trump's border internment camps to concentration camps|date=2019-06-19|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/aoc-was-right-compare-trump-s-border-internment-camps-concentration-ncna1019381|retrieved=30/06/2024}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Ben Norton|newspaper=Geopolitical Economy Report|title=Weaponization of immigration policy: Ukrainians welcomed, refugees of US wars abused|date=2022-04-08|url=https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/04/08/immigration-policy-ukrainians-victims-us-wars/|retrieved=30/06/2024}}</ref> During his presidential term, nearly half a million children were separated from their families and kept in cages for extended periods of time.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Anna Flagg and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón|newspaper=The Marshall Project|title=500,000 Kids, 30 Million Hours: Trump’s Vast Expansion of Child Detention|date=2020-10-30|url=https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/10/30/500-000-kids-30-million-hours-trump-s-vast-expansion-of-child-detention|retrieved=30/06/2024}}</ref>

=== Involvement in the Capitol insurrection ===
{{Main article|2021 United States Capitol insurrection}}
On 6 January 2021, near the end of his presidential term, Trump rallied his supporters to [[2021 United States Capitol insurrection|storm the United States Capitol]] in an attempt to reconsolidate his power. The attack ultimately failed and Trump's term came to a close.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJVMoe7OY0&t Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol | Visual Investigations]</ref>

== Post-first presidency ==
On 8 August 2022, the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] raided Trump's home in the [[State of Florida]].<ref>[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/09/guda-a09.html FBI raids Trump estate at Mar-a-Lago]</ref> In November 2022, Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.<ref name=":0" />

During a rally in Butler, [[Commonwealth of Pennsylvania|Pennsylvania]] on July 13, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt by the 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead by Secret Service members just moments after. Having been grazed at his ear by one of the bullets, Trump bumped his fist in the air while being rushed off the stage as the crowd chanted "U.S.A."<ref name=":1" /> One attendee of the rally died and two others were critically injured because of this attempted assassination.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Democracy Now!|title=Long Legacy of U.S. Political Violence: RNC Begins in Milwaukee in Wake of Trump Assassination Attempt|date=2024-07-15|url=https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/15/trump_shot_john_nichols|retrieved=July 15, 2024}}</ref> [[President of the United States|President]] [[Joe Biden]] denounced the attack during an address to the nation on the following day.<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|newspaper=Democracy Now!|title=FBI Seeks Motive in Trump Assassination Attempt; President Biden Calls for “Cooling Down” Rhetoric|date=2024-07-15|url=https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/15/headlines/fbi_seeks_motive_in_trump_assassination_attempt_president_biden_calls_for_cooling_down_rhetoric|retrieved=15.07.2024}}</ref>

== Second presidential term (2025–present) ==
Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election with 312 electoral votes against [[Kamala Harris]]' 226 electoral votes, making him the first president since Grover Cleveland to be re-elected non-consecutively.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=People|title=Donald Trump Is the Second President in History Elected to 2 Non-Consecutive Terms — Here's the Other|date=2025-1-20|url=https://people.com/donald-trump-second-president-nonconsecutive-terms-after-grover-cleveland-8735726|quote=More than a century before Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, a similarly embattled Grover Cleveland became the first ex-president to be restored to the office}}</ref> On his first day of his second term, Trump signed 26 executive orders. He rewithdrew the US from [[Paris Agreement|Paris Climate Accords]],<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the Press Secretary|title=Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements|date=2025-1-20|url=https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/putting-america-first-in-international-environmental-agreements}}</ref> then withdrew the US from [[World Health Organization|WHO]],<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the Press Secretary|title=Withdrawing The United States From The World Health Organization|date=2025-1-20|url=https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-the-worldhealth-organization}}</ref> and pardoned about 1,500 insurrectionists of the [[2021 United States Capitol insurrection|January 6th coup d'etat attempt]]<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=NBC News|title=Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack|date=2025-1-21|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna187735}}</ref> (many of whom had prior convictions for sex crimes<ref>{{Web citation|author=Tom Dreisbach|newspaper=NPR|title=Criminal records of Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump include rape, domestic violence|date=2025-1-30|url=https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5276336/donald-trump-jan-6-rape-assault-pardons-rioters}}</ref>). He granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who operated a dark web market website Silk Road,<ref>{{Web citation|author=Brian Doherty|newspaper=Reason.com|title=President Donald Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht|date=2025-1-21|url=https://reason.com/2025/01/21/president-donald-trump-pardons-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht/}}</ref> and reversed an executive order issued by [[Joe Biden]] to reduce the cost of medicine.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Alexandra Gerlach|newspaper=Pharmacy Times|title=Reversal of Executive Order 14087 Raises Questions About Future Drug Pricing Reforms|date=2025-1-22|url=https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/reversal-of-executive-order-14087-raises-questions-about-future-drug-pricing-reforms}}</ref> Trump also threatened to impose 25% tariffs on [[Mexican United States|Mexico]] and [[Canada]] on February 1st, 2025.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CNN|title=Trump threatens 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Feb. 1, punting Day 1 pledge|date=2025-1-20|url=https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/economy/tariffs-trump-executive-order/index.html}}</ref>

Starting in January 2025, Trump began a campaign of mass deportations, which saw (among other things) [[United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement|ICE]] agents detaining legal immigrants who broke no US law,<ref>{{Web citation|author=Billal Rahman|newspaper=Newsweek|title=Multiple Legal Migrants Detained by ICE Amid Trump Blitz|date=2025-01-31|url=https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-legal-migrant-detained-ice-raids-trump-2024014}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Alex Woodward|newspaper=Independent|title=New Jersey officials condemn ‘egregious’ ICE raid that detained U.S. citizens and military veteran|date=2025-01-24|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-raid-newark-new-jersey-trump-b2685888.html}}</ref> indigenous people of the [[Navajo Nation|Navajo]] and other nations facing ICE raids,<ref>{{Web citation|author=Erin Alberty and Russell Contreras|newspaper=Axios|title=Native American tribes say ICE harassing members amid raids|date=2025-01-29|url=https://www.axios.com/2025/01/29/native-american-immigration-raids-navajo-nation}}</ref> and public schools being raided by US agents.<ref>{{Web citation|author= Adam Edelman and Daniella Silva|newspaper=NBC News|title=Public schools try to protect undocumented students from Trump immigration raids|date=2025-01-28|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/public-schools-undocumented-students-trump-immigration-raids-rcna189466}}</ref> In April 2025, when Trump was in office, the United States killed at least 80 civilians (including 5 paramedics) when bombing [[Yemen]]'s Ras Isa fuel port.<ref>{{News citation|author=Dave DeCamp|date=2025-04-17|title=US Massacres Civilian Workers and Paramedics in Attack on Yemen Fuel Port|url=https://news.antiwar.com/2025/04/17/us-massacres-civilian-workers-and-paramedics-in-attack-on-yemen-fuel-port/|newspaper=Antiwar.com}}</ref> Later, on June 22, 2025, the U.S. Army under the Trump Administration illegally bombed what they described as three nuclear weapon development sites in [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]] (which the [[International Atomic Energy Agency]] has visited and validated as being civilian nuclear research facilities) as part of their involvement in the [[June 2025 Iran-"Israel" strikes]]. It has been reported that the strikes likely failed to hit any operational facility and nuclear research in Iran continues.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Natasha Bertrand|newspaper=CNN|title=Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say|date=2025-06-29|url=https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/06/24/politics/intel-assessment-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites|quote=“The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program“}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Billionaires]]
[[Category:Capitalists]]
[[Category:Criminals]]
[[Category:Imperialists]]
[[Category:Neoliberals]]
[[Category:People on Epstein flight logs]]
[[Category:Presidents of the United States]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:Reactionaries]]
[[Category:Statesians of German descent]]
[[Category:Statesians of Scottish descent]]
[[Category:Zionists]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trump, Donald}}
[[Category:Current heads of state]]

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

2026-02-16T18:10:57Z

PuzzledFox99: /* 1979 uprisings */ Include sources please

{{Infobox country|name=Kingdom of Saudi Arabia|native_name=ٱلْمَمْلَكَة ٱلْعَرَبِيَّة ٱلسُّعُوْدِيَّة|image_flag=Flag of Saudi Arabia.svg|mode_of_production=[[Capitalism]]|government_type=Unitary Islamic [[Absolute monarchy]]|leader_title1=King|leader_title2=Crown Prince and Prime Minister|leader_name1=[[Salman bin Abdulaziz]]|leader_name2=[[Mohammed bin Salman]]|population_census=32,175,224|population_census_year=2022|currency=Saudi riyal|currency_code=SAR|drives_on=right|calling_code=+966|iso3166code=SA|cctld=.sa السعودية.|image_coat=Emblem of Saudi Arabia.svg|capital=[[Riyadh]]|largest_city=[[Riyadh]]|national_motto=لا إله إلا الله، محمد رسول الله|englishmotto=There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God|image_map=Saudi Arabia map.png|map_width=290|official_languages=Arabic|religion=[[Islam]]|demonym=Saudi Saudi Arabian|legislature=none|area_km2=2,149,690}}'''Saudi Arabia''', officially the '''Kingdom of Saudi Arabia''', is a [[United States of America|US]]-backed [[absolute monarchy]] in [[Western Asia]] ruled by the [[House of Saud]]. It is bordered to the north by [[Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan|Jordan]], [[Republic of Iraq|Iraq]] and [[State of Kuwait|Kuwait]], to the east by [[Kingdom of Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[State of Qatar|Qatar]], the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]] and the [[Persian Gulf]], to the south by [[Sultanate of Oman|Oman]] and [[Republic of Yemen|Yemen]] and to the west by the [[Red Sea]]. In its war against Yemen, it has killed or injured over 18,000 civilians.<ref>{{News citation|date=2020-03-25|title=Five Years of Data on Saudi-led Air War|url=https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=1912a1b11cab332fa977d3a6a&id=e0562bce18|newspaper=Yemen Data Project|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211204223156/https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=1912a1b11cab332fa977d3a6a&id=e0562bce18|archive-date=2021-12-04|retrieved=2022-01-16}}</ref>

== History ==

=== First Saudi State ===
The Saudi dynasty began in the 18th century because its founder made a pact with [[Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab]].<ref name=":1222" />

=== Post-unification ===
In 1933, Saudi Arabia signed concessions to US and [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|British]] oil companies.<ref name=":1222" />

[[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Franklin Roosevelt]] made an alliance with Saudi Arabia. After [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Nazi Germany]] surrendered in 1945, the USA continued building a military base in Dhahran.<ref name=":0222">{{Citation|author=David Vine|year=2020|title=The United States of War|chapter=Empire of Bases|page=260–1|city=Oakland|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520972070|lg=http://library.lol/main/191568BFAC73F009132DB00ECD0F0F05}}</ref>

Crown Prince [[Faisal Al Saud|Faisal]] attended the 1955 [[Bandung Conference]]. Despite the king's opposition to [[Gamal Abdel Nasser|Nasser]], Egypt defended Saudi Arabia against a [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|British]] invasion from [[Oman]], and Saudi Arabia lent money to Egypt during the [[Suez Crisis]].<ref name=":1222" />

==== Free Princes ====
[[Talal bin Abdulaziz]], the leader of the Free Princes and a follower of Nasser, proposed creating a National Council in 1958. Faisal and [[Saud of Saudi Arabia|Saud]] both rejected his proposed constitution. In 1961, Talal used secular public works to decrease [[unemployment]].

In 1962, Faisal took over from his brother Saud and rejected Talal's labor law, leading many of the Free Princes to flee to [[Lebanese Republic|Lebanon]]. Soon after, Faisal created the [[World Muslim League]].<ref name=":1222">{{Citation|author=[[Vijay Prashad]]|year=2008|title=The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World|chapter=Mecca|page=260–9|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceascnzh26r5d6uitjjs2z7rflhaxlt7rboz5whzdf76qg6xxvecqq?filename=%28A%20New%20Press%20People%27s%20history%29%20Vijay%20Prashad%20-%20The%20darker%20nations_%20a%20people%27s%20history%20of%20the%20third%20world-The%20New%20Press%20%282008%29.pdf|publisher=The New Press|isbn=9781595583420|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=9B40B96E830128A7FE0E0E887C06829F}}</ref>

=== 1979 uprisings ===
In 1979, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by armed militants led by Juhayman al‑Otaybi, who claimed he was the Mahdi. They held hostages and killed innocents.<ref name=":1222" />

== Workers' movement ==
In 1953, the [[Proletariat|workers]] of [[Aramco]] tried to [[Strike action|strike]] to form a [[Trade union|union]]. They protested against King [[Saud of Saudi Arabia|Saud]] and demanded the end of U.S. occupation. The state killed officers from the Dhahran Air Base who mutinied in support of the workers.<ref name=":1222" />

== Women's rights ==
Male guardians control where women can travel and work in Saudi Arabia. Adultery and "witchcraft" are punishable by death by stoning or beheading.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Hypocrisy of U.S. government, corporate media on display in reaction to Iran protests|date=2022-09-26|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/hypocrisy-of-u-s-government-corporate-media-on-display-in-reaction-to-iran-protests/|retrieved=2022-09-26}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Saudi Arabia]]
[[Category:Asian countries]]
[[Category:Countries]]
[[Category:Member states of OPEC]]
[[Category:Member states of the Arab League]]

Conspiracy theory

2026-02-15T20:26:43Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:White-Genocide paper..png|thumb|391x391px|A person promoting the "[[White genocide|Great Replacement"]] conspiracy theory.]]
A '''conspiracy theory''' is an attempted rationalization of an event or pattern of events through which a small yet powerful group of people coordinate to propagate a lie or act maliciously, often for the purpose of keeping their power. Conspiracy theories often reject commonly held knowledge or empirical data and rely on a number of cognitive biases to be believed in. Technically, whether or not something is a "conspiracy theory" has little bearing on whether or not it is true, as actual conspiracies can and do happen; however, the methodology of conspiracy theories is still flawed by their nature.<ref>{{Citation|author=Harambam, J., & Aupers, S.|year=2021|title=From the unbelievable to the undeniable: Epistemological pluralism, or how conspiracy theorists legitimate their extraordinary truth claims.|title-url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367549419886045|pdf=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/1367549419886045|doi=10.1177/1367549419886045|trans-lang=English}}</ref> Conspiracy theories have been used to justify large atrocities, such as [[genocide]].<ref name=":2">{{Citation|author=Douglas, Karen M.; Uscinski, Joseph E.; Sutton, Robbie M.; Cichocka, Aleksandra; Nefes, Turkay; Ang, Chee Siang; Deravi, Farzin|year=2019|title=Understanding Conspiracy Theories|title-url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12568|pdf=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/pops.12568|isbn=0162-895X|doi=10.1111/pops.12568|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

[[Fascism|Fascists]] and [[reactionaries]] are the biggest believers in conspiracy theories (of any kind) which is a way of blaming the difficulties of [[capitalism]] on other causes, usually minority groups.<ref name=":2" /> This kind of theorizing is exemplified by the anxiety over the [[World Economic Forum|World Economic Forum's]] "Great Reset"; while the Reset itself focused on concessions to prevent "violent shocks like conflicts and even [[Revolution|revolutions]]" in the words of its creators, conservative and libertarian groups funded by oil companies accused the Reset of being a "socialist" plot to destroy capitalism.<ref>{{Video citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0enOIccHPg|channel=Bes D. Marx|title=What is the World Economic Forum really planning? {{!}} Conspiracy Myth vs. Capitalist Reality|date=2023-01-17}}</ref> These conspiracy theories often attempt to give the government/state a character independent from [[class struggle]], as in the case of a hacker who accessed [[United States Department of State|US State Department]] messages about [[Imperialism|regime change]] in [[State of Libya|Libya]], but only because he was looking for evidence within them that the [[Illuminati]] controlled the [[Government of the United States of America|US government]].<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=Lorenzo|newspaper=Popaganda|title=Chomsky vs. Parenti, part 2: "Conspiracy Theorism"|date=2016-05-31|url=https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/part-2/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160531193908/https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/part-2/|archive-date=2016-05-31|retrieved=2025-11-12|quote=[I]t’s possible for investigations rooting out “conspiracies” to go wildly wrong. This is what happened in the case of Marcel Lehel, the Romanian better known as the hacker “Guccifer.” Guccifer gained illicit access to the private online accounts of Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, and George W. Bush, amongst many others. As he was reading then-Secretary of State Clinton’s personal emails, many exchanged with the CIA on the subject of Libya, Guccifer was looking for evidence of Illuminati connections. In Guccifer’s case, the bad conspiracism was blinding him to the valid conspiracism—he was watching the regime change-sausage get made, and all he could see was a non-existent cabal. This is an object lesson in the dangers of attributing blame to one set of actors in contravention of existing evidence. The most insidious such theory in history is likely anti-Semitism: an idea that attributes the predatory behavior of a capitalist ruling class to a group that has been victimized throughout history, namely Jews. The perversion of class-based analysis earned anti-Semitism the nickname “the socialism of fools,” and similar tropes pop up in many instances. Any time that blame is taken off the ruling class and diverted onto a set of bad apples is an example of bad theorizing[.]}}</ref> As noted by [[Lenin]] in his seminal work, [[Library:Vladimir Lenin/The state and revolution|The State and Revolution]], governments do not have independent character or agency. They are byproducts of the conflict in-between and [[Contradiction|inability]] to [[Harmony(chinese philosophy)|harmonize]] the differences of the [[Class|classes]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Lenin|title=The State and Revolution|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Vladimir_Lenin/The_state_and_revolution|quote=On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however, order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.}}</ref>

One reason why right-wingers are prone to conspiracy theories is because they have an [[Elite theory|elitist]] view of history, where events are caused by autonomous human agents with power, and therefore write off mass movements as having some kind of secret elite origin.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Michael E. Acuña|newspaper=Common Ruin|title=The Origins and Ideological Function of Cultural Marxism|date=2015-01-13|url=https://commonruin.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/the-origins-and-ideological-function-of-cultural-marxism-revised.pdf|quote=As a consequence of the right’s elitist conception of history, conspiracy theories abound in conservative historiography and social analyses when events develop in a manner contrary to their economic and/or cultural preferences. This is especially so on the fringes of the right, among its various fascistic and religious fundamentalist sects. Whether it be a cabal of malicious Zionists seeking to subvert gentile societies in order to achieve racial hegemony, or secular humanists unwittingly fulfilling the antichrist’s unholy objectives through the promotion of nonreligious educational curricula, conservative sociology is fundamentally based upon autonomous human agents directing the course of history. This applies equally to when society happens to be in accord with the values conservatives espouse: the institutional hierarchy is thought to be occupied by men of principle in these instances.}}</ref> On the other hand, as [[Michael Parenti]] points out, the denial by some on the [[compatible left]] such as [[Noam Chomsky]] of any conspiring by the [[bourgeoisie]] is also undialectical because it assumes that the bourgeois class behaves completely [[Spontaneous|spontaneously]] and lacks any [[class consciousness]] or organization. In reality, just like [[Proletariat|workers]] [[Unionization|unionize]] or form [[Vanguard party|parties]], the bourgeoisie must cooperate to defend its continued existence as a class, which at times requires secrecy because bourgeois interests conflict with the class interests of the majority of the population.<ref>{{Video citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t21UZxRYYA4|channel=Alternate Analysis|title=Michael Parenti, Conspiracy and Class Power|date=2020-04-20}}</ref> Accusations of conspiracy theorism may be used against those on the left and/or outside the [[imperial core]] who use inductive reasoning to discuss [[covert action]] or make systemic critiques, which cannot be done without the use of some induction, categorically excluding them from "reasonable" and "moderate" discussion.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Web citation|author=Lorenzo|newspaper=Popaganda|title=Conspiracy Facts|date=2014-12-26|url=https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/conspiracy-facts/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919191033/https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/conspiracy-facts/|archive-date=2015-09-19|retrieved=2025-11-12}}</ref>

== History ==
The term "conspiracy theory" has been in use since the 1860s but was largely revived after [[United States of America|Statesian]] President [[John F. Kennedy]]'s assasination.<ref>{{Web citation|author=GRAPH MASSARA|newspaper=Associated Press|title=‘Conspiracy theory’ coined long before JFK assassination|date=2023-01-06|url=https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-conspiracy-theory-jfk-941578119864}}</ref> Conspiracies have existed throughout history, e.g. when the tobacco industry conspired to downplay or even cover the effects of their products on health.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Neil Francey, Simon Chapman|newspaper=National Library of Medicine|title=“Operation Berkshire”: the international tobacco companies' conspiracy|date=2000-08-05|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118337/}}</ref> The difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy ''theory'' is that the latter requires someone to spread the rumor. As such, a conspiracy theory may very well turn out to be true eventually.

One of the earliest modern conspiracy theories, promoted by [[reactionary]] Scottish author [[John Robison]], was that the [[French Revolution]] was caused by the Bavarian [[Illuminati]], a group active in Bavaria from the 1770s to 1780s. Robison claimed, in his 1797 book ''Proofs of a Conspiracy'', that the Illuminati actually went underground in [[Freemasonry|Masonic]] lodges across Europe and was behind the French Revolution.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Mike Jay|newspaper=Public Domain Review|title=Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy|date=2014-04-02|url=https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/darkness-over-all-john-robison-and-the-birth-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy/}}</ref>

== List of false conspiracy theories ==

=== Flat Earth ===
[[Flat Earth|Flat earth]] is the disproved idea that the Earth is in the shape of a flat disk with a ring of ice on its exterior. Furthermore, they believe that gravity is merely caused by the earth constantly accelerating upwards. Those who believe in this idea often also believe other conspiracy theories such as the idea of the [[Moon landing conspiracy theories|Moon landing hoax]] due to the fact that should the Earth be flat, the pictures of the Earth from the Moon would have to have been falsified.{{Citation needed}}

=== Fluoridation ===
Fluoridation refers to the conspiracy theory that the addition of fluoride to the public water supply is intended for mind control purposes or for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies as fluoride makes people sick.{{Citation needed}} The reason some cities add fluoride to their water is because of its health benefits on teeth,<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=American Cancer Society|title=Water Fluoridation and Cancer Risk|url=https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/water-fluoridation-and-cancer-risk.html}}</ref> though some countries have stopped adding fluoride as the delivery mechanism (ingestion in the body) may not provide the desired effects as revealed by later studies.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Maitreyee P. Unde, Raju Umaji Patil, Persis P. Dastoor|newspaper=National Library of Medicine|title=The Untold Story of Fluoridation: Revisiting the Changing Perspectives|date=2018-12-22|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6309358/}}</ref>

=== Great Replacement ===
{{Main article|Great Replacement}}
The Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory claiming that immigrants from [[Latin America]] and [[Africa]] will replace white people as the majority of the population in the [[imperial core]]. [[Fox News Channel|Fox News]] host [[Tucker Carlson]] has promoted this conspiracy theory.<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Brian Becker]]|newspaper=[[BreakThrough News]]|title=Buffalo Massacre Aftermath: Mainstream Media Still Validating Racist 'Replacement Theory'|date=2022-05-20|url=https://breakthroughnews.org/buffalo-massacre-aftermath-mainstream-media-still-validating-racist-replacement-theory-2/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220930043804/https://breakthroughnews.org/buffalo-massacre-aftermath-mainstream-media-still-validating-racist-replacement-theory-2/|archive-date=2022-09-30|retrieved=2022-11-23}}</ref>

=== New World Order ===
The New World Order is an umbrella term for many conspiracy theories which surround a 'secret powerful government'. This correlates with the term 'deep state'. A popular conspiracy theory is the Illuminati, which was the name of a real secret society in the 18th century, but which conspiracy theorists wrongly claim still exists.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Fred Kelly|newspaper=The Week|title=What is the Illuminati conspiracy theory?|date=2024-09-26|url=https://theweek.com/62399/what-is-the-illuminati-and-what-does-it-control|retrieved=2024-10-21}}</ref>

=== QAnon ===
[[QAnon]] is a [[4chan]]-based conspiracy theory claiming that Statesian billionaire [[Donald Trump]] is saving the [[United States of America|USA]] from a cabal of Satanic pedophiles led by the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]].<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|author=Raul Diego|newspaper=[[MintPress News]]|title=From British Israelism to the Miami Model: What’s Behind QAnon’s 2020 Resurgence?|date=2020-10-06|url=https://www.mintpressnews.com/israelism-police-miami-model-qanon-2020-resurgence/271785/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211016233224/https://www.mintpressnews.com/israelism-police-miami-model-qanon-2020-resurgence/271785/|archive-date=2021-10-16|retrieved=2022-08-08}}</ref>

=== Russiagate ===
{{main article|Russiagate}}
Russiagate is a conspiracy theory that the [[Russian Federation]] was responsible for Trump's victory over [[Hillary Clinton]] in the [[2016 United States presidential election|2016 U.S. presidential election]] when it was actually caused by the [[slavery]]-based electoral college.<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Brian Becker]]|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Past a point of no return: “Russiagate” and the reorientation of U.S. imperialism|date=2018-04-07|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/past-point-no-return-russiagate-reorientation-u-s-imperialism/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220518233640/https://www.liberationnews.org/past-point-no-return-russiagate-reorientation-u-s-imperialism/|archive-date=2022-05-18|retrieved=2022-10-30}}</ref>

=== Reptilians ===
Antisemite and fascist [[David Icke]] in his book ''Children of the Matrix'' was the first to promote the theory that some of the world's leaders and celebrities are actually shape-shifting reptilians, or lizard people, taking the shape of humans so as to embed themselves in society and direct it from these positions of power. His theory has parallels with older antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as that Jewish people control banks, entertainment etc. forming a shadowy cabal, or that they were depicted in propaganda posters as having lizard-like features (likely itself originating from the original sin in the [[Bible]]).

=== Staged moon landing ===

== List of conspiracy theories that may be true ==

=== JFK assassination ===
{{Main article|John F. Kennedy#Assassination}}
According to the documentary ''JFK: Destiny Betrayed'', the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] assassinated [[John F. Kennedy]] as part of a coup to reassert the rule of the [[Imperialism|imperialist]] [[ruling class]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=John Potash|newspaper=[[CovertAction Magazine]]|title=New Four-Part Documentary “JFK: Destiny Betrayed” Leaves No Doubt That JFK Was Assassinated as Part of CIA Coup|date=2022-07-26|url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/26/new-four-part-documentary-jfk-destiny-betrayed-leaves-no-doubt-that-jfk-was-assassinated-as-part-of-cia-coup/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230623164517/https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/26/new-four-part-documentary-jfk-destiny-betrayed-leaves-no-doubt-that-jfk-was-assassinated-as-part-of-cia-coup/|archive-date=2023-06-23}}</ref>

=== 9/11 ===
{{Main article|September 11 attacks#Alleged U.S. government involvement}}

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Outline needs additional content]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]

Nicolás Maduro

2026-01-11T21:11:38Z

PuzzledFox99: Link to Flores' article

{{Infobox politician|image_size=200|birth_date={{birth date and age|1962|11|23|df=y}}|birth_place=Caracas, [[Republic of Venezuela (1953–1999)|Venezuela]]|nationality=Venezuelan|political_orientation=[[Marxism–Leninism]] (claimed) <ref name=":lenin">https://x.com/molotovnewss/status/1774958700307918931?s=46</ref> [[Chavismo]] [[Anti-imperialism]] [[Democratic socialism]] [[Bolivarianism]]|political_party=[[United Socialist Party of Venezuela|PSUV]]|image=Nicolas Maduro.png}}

'''Nicolás Maduro Moros''' is a [[Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela|Venezuelan]] politician who has served as [[president of Venezuela]] since 2013. He has also served as president of the [[United Socialist Party of Venezuela]] (PSUV) since 2013, taking up both presidencies upon the death of President [[Hugo Chávez]]. Previously, he served as vice president under Chávez from 2012 to 2013 and was also the minister of foreign affairs from 2006 to 2012.

Because of [[United States imperialism|U.S. imperialism]] against Venezuela,<ref>[[John Bolton]] (2020). [https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=QjTMDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=ko&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir'': 'Chapter 9: Venezuela Libre'.] Simon and Schuster.</ref><ref>[[Benjamin Norton|Norton, Ben]]. [https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/12/trump-john-bolton-coups-venezuela/ “Trump Advisor John Bolton Admits Planning US Coups in Venezuela and beyond.”] [[Multipolarista]]. July 13, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220731205139/https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/12/trump-john-bolton-coups-venezuela/ Archived] 2022-07-31.</ref> Maduro's presidency has faced various forms of aggression and interference, such as assassination attempts,<ref>Joe Parkin Daniels (2018-08-05). [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/04/nicolas-maduros-speech-cut-short-while-soldiers-scatter "Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro survives apparent assassination attempt"] ''[[The Guardian]]''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220715064109/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/04/nicolas-maduros-speech-cut-short-while-soldiers-scatter Archived] from the original on 2022-07-15.</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /> and destabilization efforts organized by US-backed coup leader [[Juan Guaidó]], who, after a phone call with U.S. Vice President [[Mike Pence]], proclaimed himself president of Venezuela.<ref>Dan Cohen, [[Max Blumenthal]] (2019-01-29). [https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/amp/?__twitter_impression=true "The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela’s coup leader"] ''[[The Grayzone]]''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220322210646/https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/amp/?__twitter_impression=true Archived] from the original on 2022-03-22.</ref>

On August 7, 2025, the [[United States Department of State|US Department of State]] announced a reward offer increase of up to $50 million for information leading to Maduro's arrest and stated the US does not recognize Maduro as president of Venezuela.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Marco Rubio|newspaper=United States Department of State|title=Reward Offer Increase of Up to $50 Million for Information Leading to Arrest and/or Conviction of Nicolás Maduro|date=2025-08-07|url=https://www.state.gov/reward-offer-increase-of-up-to-50-million-for-information-leading-to-arrest-and-or-conviction-of-nicolas-maduro/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250901033015/https://www.state.gov/reward-offer-increase-of-up-to-50-million-for-information-leading-to-arrest-and-or-conviction-of-nicolas-maduro/|archive-date=2025-09-01}}</ref> Previously, the State Department had announced a reward of up to $15 million in 2020.<ref>[https://www.state.gov/nicolas-maduro-moros-new-target/ “Nicolás Maduro Moros - New Target.”] United States Department of State. March 26, 2020. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221103061620/https://www.state.gov/nicolas-maduro-moros-new-target/ Archived] 2022-11-03.</ref> Later, on January 3rd, 2026, Maduro was illegally kidnapped by Statesian forces on false charges and forced to stand trial.<ref name=":5" />

== Early life ==
Nicolás Maduro Moros was born in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, on November 23, 1962.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Ministerio del Poder Popular del Depacho De La Precidencia|title=Président de la République bolivarienne du Venezuela|url=https://presidencia.gob.ve/Site/Web/Principal/paginas/classPresidente.php|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250906072729/https://presidencia.gob.ve/Site/Web/Principal/paginas/classPresidente.php|archive-date=2025-09-06}}</ref> Opposition figures have repeatedly tried to claim that Maduro was actually born in [[Republic of Colombia|Colombia]] or had Colombian dual citizenship due to his Colombian mother, in an attempt to invalidate him from the Presidency. These claims have been rejected by the governments of both Venezeula and Colombia as false.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Lucas Koerner|newspaper=[[Venezuelaanalysis]]|title=Venezuelan Supreme Court: Maduro is not Colombian|date=2016-11-01|url=https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12762/|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250916173341/https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12762/|archive-date=2025-09-16}}</ref>

He was born into a left-wing family who influenced him towards [[Progressivism|progressive]] politics from a young age, taking him to political rallies as early as 1967. His father, Nicolás Maduro García, was a prominent trade union leader and member of [[Democratic Action (Venezuela)|Democratic Action]] (AD). Maduro soon moved beyond his parents and from a young age was defending the [[Cuban Revolution]] and joining radical left organizations such as the [[Socialist League (Venezuela)|Socialist League]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=Luis Hernández Navarro|newspaper=La Jornada|title=Nicolás Maduro, le chauffeur|date=2013-03-19|url=https://www.jornada.com.mx/2013/03/19/opinion/023a2pol|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250715022521/https://www.jornada.com.mx/2013/03/19/opinion/023a2pol|archive-date=2025-07-15}}</ref>

== Presidency (2013-present) ==

=== Elections ===
Maduro was initially elected on April 14, 2013. This occurred following Chávez's death in March of that year.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=Mario Hubert Garrido|newspaper=Granma|title=The Maduro government’s first two years|date=2015-04-22|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2015-04-22/the-maduro-governments-first-two-years|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

Maduro won with 50.66% of the votes cast. His main opposition was Henrique Capriles. Capriles was part of the Primero Justicia party. After losing, he attempted to encourage riots in 2013, which caused the fatalities of 11 people.<ref name=":0" />

The following year, Leopoldo López and his party of Voluntad Popular held 'La Salida' which were attacks which killed 43 people. These attacks also injured over 800 people.<ref name=":0" />

In early 2015, the Venezuelan government uncovered plans for a [[coup d'état]]. These plans had included attacking civilian regions in Caracas, as well as governmental institutions. These plans had been backed by the [[United States of America]] via its embassy in Venezuela. A number of politicians within the country had also loaned it their support.<ref name=":0" /> This coup plan came to be known as the Blue Coup. Antonio Ledezma and Julio Borges were also found to be key operatives in this plan.<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|author=Misión Verdad|newspaper=Granma|title=Maduro shows his strength, looks death in the face|date=2018-08-10|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-08-10/maduro-shows-his-strength-looks-death-in-the-face|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

Leading to the second election, some of the conservative parties threatened to not participate in the election. Maduro made it clear that the election would still be held regardless of this threat.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=Maduro: There will be elections come rain or shine|date=2018-02-16|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-02-16/maduro-there-will-be-elections-come-rain-or-shine|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

In the following election, Maduro won a second time. 45.99% of the population voted, with 67.78%, or 6,157,185 votes, in favor of reelection. The main opposition candidate, Henri Falcon, received 21.01% of the vote.<ref name=":2">{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=World leaders congratulate Nicolás Maduro for his reelection|date=2018-05-22|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-05-22/world-leaders-congratulate-nicolas-maduro-for-his-reelection|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref> Falcon had gone against the election boycott of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) and had run in the election regardless of it.<ref name=":4">{{Web citation|author=Dayron Rodríguez Rosales|newspaper=Granma|title=How can the resistance of the Venezuelan people and Nicolás Maduro’s government be explained?|date=2018-10-28|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-05-28/how-can-the-resistance-of-the-venezuelan-people-and-nicolas-maduros-government-be-explained|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

After the victory over Falcon, Maduro was accused of 'violating democracy' by the Venezuelan National Assembly on October 23, 2016. This was led by opposition leader Julio Borges. They also stated that Maduro was ineligible to hold the position due to having Colombian ancestors. The National Assembly was considered to hold no authority due to a ruling by the Supreme Court. Maduro accused the opposition of fraud and of having submitted falsified signatures during the signature drive. The opposition to Maduro in the National Assembly arranged protests called 'The takeover of Venezuela'.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=Venezuela's right wing wants to impeach President Maduro|date=2016-10-24|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2016-10-24/venezuelas-right-wing-wants-to-impeach-president-maduro|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

Regardless of the actions of these opposition parties, Maduro has repeatedly encouraged dialogue and communication with the opposition groups.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=Maduro invites opposition to meet with government|date=2017-12-04|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2017-12-04/maduro-invites-opposition-to-meet-with-government|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

According to an Insight poll of 2600 Venezuelans, Maduro is the preferred candidate of 52.4% of those polled in the July 28, 2024 elections. This is followed by 37% for opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia. 16.08% of respondents are undecided or do not know who they will vote for yet. The remainder of respondents were split among other candidates.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=teleSUR|title=Nicolas Maduro Is the Favorite Candidate According to Insight Magazine|date=2024-04-29|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nicolas-Maduro-Is-Favorite-Candidate-According-Insight-Magazine--20240429-0021.html|retrieved=2024-04-30}}</ref>

=== Assassination attempts ===
During an event in Caracas on Bolivar Avenue on August 4, 2018, two drones attempted to assassinate Maduro. This attack occurred while he was finishing giving a speech.<ref name=":1" />

This attack was carried out by Soldados de Franelas. Soldados de Franelas had links to Óscar Pérez and CICPC, who had killed civilians in attacks in 2017. Governmental investigations also found connections to the attack with outgoing Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos and agents within [[Florida]].<ref name=":1" />

Following the attack, a suspect named Juan Carlos Monasterios was arrested and revealed details of the plot. It was learned from Monasterios that Juan Requesens was involved. Requesens was arrested afterward. He also revealed that Rayder Alexander Russo Márquez and Osmán Alexis Delgado Tabosky were both involved in the attack. Neither were immediately caught. Everyone arrested has explained the involvement of Julio Borges.<ref name=":3">{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=Nicolás Maduro: Here is the evidence on the failed assassination attempt|date=2018-08-09|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-08-09/nicolas-maduro-here-is-the-evidence-on-the-failed-assassination-attempt|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

It was learned that a group calling itself, Bravo, had planned attacks on other events which were called off due to a lack of preparation.<ref name=":3" />

=== Achievements ===
Social programs created by Chávez have been supported and continued by Maduro.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Granma|title=President Maduro praises social programs in Venezuela|date=2016-09-08|url=https://en.granma.cu/mundo/2016-09-08/president-maduro-praises-social-programs-in-venezuela|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

In order to help promote what is beneficial to the people, Presidential Councils of People's Government have been created. These councils deal with a specific issue in the country and may aid in setting policy related to said issue.<ref name=":0" />

The Maduro government had taken significant steps to combat [[poverty]] in the country. As of 2015, 64% of the national budget is dedicated to this. This opposition to poverty have led to the creation of new governmental missions, such as, Jóvenes de la Patria and Hogares de la Patria.<ref name=":0" />

==== Food ====
The country also has excellent policies in relation to nutrition, according to Marcelo Resende, who is a representative at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.<ref name=":0" />

The Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) have provided 60,000 tons of food and necessities to the poor in Venezuela.<ref name=":4" />

In the past, Venezuelan's required food was satisfied by importing 85%. It now produces 94% of all required food goods in the country.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=teleSUR|title='We Consolidated Peace in Venezuela in 2022', President Maduro|date=2023-01-02|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/We-Consolidated-Peace-in-Venezuela-in-2022-President-Maduro-20230102-0001.html|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

==== Housing ====
Maduro has continued the legacy of Chávez's Great Venezuela Housing Mission (GMVV). By 2017, 1.6 million houses had been built.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=teleSUR|title=President Maduro Celebrates 1.6 Millionth Home Built for the Poor|date=2017-04-30|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/President-Maduro-Celebrates-1.6-Millionth-Home-Built-for-the-Poor---20170430-0018.html|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref> This number had swelled to 4.6 million built by 2023.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=teleSUR|title=Venezuela: President Maduro Delivers House Number 4.6 Million|date=2023-07-21|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuela-President-Maduro-Delivers-House-Number-4.6-Million-20230721-0011.html|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

==== Medicine ====
During the Maduro administration, many steps have been taken to further the medical quality of the population. 71,900,000 free medical examinations have been provided. Venezuela has also worked with [[Cuba]] on [[Operation Miracle]] and has allowed sight back to 70,000 people.<ref name=":4" />

== Kidnapping ==
On the 3rd of January 2026, Maduro and his wife [[Cilia Flores]] were kidnapped by [[United States of America|Statesian]] imperialists on false charges of "narco-terrorism" and other drug charges as a front for the true intentions of imperialist plunder of Venezuelan oil.<ref name=":5">{{Web citation|newspaper=Al Jazeera|title=Video shows Venezuela’s President Maduro in US custody|date=2026-01-04|url=https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/1/4/video-shows-venezuelas-president-maduro-in-us-custody}}</ref> Two days later on January 5th both Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty on charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and possession of machine guns and other weapons.<ref>This is despite the fact that Maduro is the leader of the country and therefore it is legal for him to own such weapons.</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Jan Wolfe|newspaper=Reuters|title=What are the charges against Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro?|date=2026-01-05|url=https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/what-are-charges-against-venezuelas-nicolas-maduro-2026-01-05/}}</ref>

== Political positions ==

=== International relations ===
The United States of America has attempted to meddle in Venezuelan affairs with other countries, including relations with European nations.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=teleSUR|title=President Maduro Urges Lifting Sanctions Against Venezuela|date=2023-07-19|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/President-Maduro-Urges-Lifting-Sanctions-Against-Venezuela-20230719-0009.html|retrieved=2023-08-01}}</ref>

After Maduro's reelection in 2018, he received wide congratulation from many different nations, including [[Plurinational State of Bolivia|Bolivia]], Cuba, [[El Salvador]], Iran, [[Republic of Mozambique|Mozambique]], [[Nicaragua]], [[Russia]]<ref name=":2" />, and the [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]].<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Rodong Sinmun|title=WPK Central Committee's Congratulatory Message to Venezuelan Party Leader|date=2022-4-30|url=http://rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?MTJAMjAyMi0wNC0zMC1OMDA1QDExQDBATWFkdXJvQDBANA==|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

In 2022, Maduro signed a 20-year cooperation agreement with the [[Islamic Republic of Iran]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Benjamin Norton]]|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]|title=Venezuela and Iran sign 20-year cooperation plan, Maduro pledges joint ‘anti-imperialist struggle’|date=2022-06-11|url=https://multipolarista.com/2022/06/11/venezuela-iran-20-year-agreement/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220718213509/https://multipolarista.com/2022/06/11/venezuela-iran-20-year-agreement/|archive-date=2022-07-18|retrieved=2022-12-04}}</ref> Later that year, he signed a declaration with [[Republic of Colombia|Colombian]] president [[Gustavo Petro]] striving for Latin American reintegration.<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Ben Norton]]|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]|title=Colombia’s new president reverses US coup, visits Venezuela, pledges unity in ‘spirit of Bolívar’|date=2022-11-02|url=https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/02/colombia-petro-visits-venezuela-unity-bolivar/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221125060316/https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/02/colombia-petro-visits-venezuela-unity-bolivar/|archive-date=2022-11-25|retrieved=2022-12-04}}</ref>

Nicolás Maduro has affirmed Venezuelan support for the DPRK against imperialism multiple times.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Rodong Sinmun|title=Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Receives Greetings from Venezuelan President|date=2022-9-11|url=http://rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?MTJAMjAyMi0wOS0xMS1OMDEzQDExQDBATWFkdXJvQDBAMw====|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Rodong Sinmun|title=Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Receives Message from Venezuelan President|date=2022-12-27|url=http://rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?MTJAMjAyMi0xMi0yNy1IMDA2QDExQDBATWFkdXJvQDBAMg====|retrieved=2023-07-22}}</ref>

Maduro has claimed to be a Marxist-Leninist.<ref name=":lenin"></ref>

=== LGBT+ rights ===
In 2017 and 2020, Maduro stated his support for the legalisation of same-sex marriage and made a request for Venezuela's National Assembly to discuss the topic.<ref>http://shangay.com/maduro-creo-que-todo-el-mundo-se-puede-casar-aunque-sea-homosexual</ref><ref>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-lgbt/venezuelas-maduro-citing-pope-asks-congress-to-consider-same-sex-marriage-idUSKBN27737E/</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:1962 births]]
[[Category:Current heads of state]]
[[Category:Ministers of foreign affairs of Venezuela]]
[[Category:Politicians in Venezuela]]
[[Category:Presidents of Venezuela]]
[[Category:Targets of imperialism]]
[[Category:United Socialist Party of Venezuela politicians]]
[[Category:Venezuelans of Colombian descent]]
[[Category:Vice presidents of Venezuela]]

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

2026-01-11T21:09:00Z

PuzzledFox99: Dates

[[File:ICE logo.png|thumb|ICE logo]]
The '''United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement''' ('''ICE''') is a [[White supremacy|white supremacist]] organization and government agency in the [[United States of America|United States]].

== Human rights abuses ==
ICE forcibly sterilized immigrant women in Ocilla, [[State of Georgia|Georgia]] in 2020.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Nicholas Ayala|newspaper=[[ANTICONQUISTA]]|title=Forced Hysterectomies at ICE Facility Are Acts of US Genocide|date=2020-09-17|url=https://anticonquista.com/2020/09/17/forced-hysterectomies-at-ice-facility-are-acts-of-us-genocide/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519031017/https://anticonquista.com/2020/09/17/forced-hysterectomies-at-ice-facility-are-acts-of-us-genocide/|archive-date=2022-05-19|retrieved=2022-11-13}}</ref> This action falls under the [[United Nations]] definition of [[genocide]].<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|date=9 December 1948|url=https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220413091325/https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide|archive-date=2022-04-13|retrieved=2022-10-28}}</ref>

Immigrants are routinely held in freezing cells for days. People in these cells did not have access to showers or soap for handwashing.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Human Rights Watch]]|title=In the Freezer|date=2018-02-28|url=https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/02/28/freezer/abusive-conditions-women-and-children-us-immigration-holding-cells|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220606214035/https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/02/28/freezer/abusive-conditions-women-and-children-us-immigration-holding-cells|archive-date=2022-06-06|retrieved=2022-08-06}}</ref>

ICE tested experimental drugs on children at Shiloh Treatment Center in [[Texas]] in 2018. The experiments were conducted without their parents' consent.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Hamish Macdonald, et al.|newspaper=[[ABC News]]|title=Immigrant children held at Texas centre forced to take drug cocktail, lawsuit alleges|date=2018-06-22|url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-22/allegations-immigrant-children-in-texas-centre-forcibly-drugged/9898298|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210726145005/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-22/allegations-immigrant-children-in-texas-centre-forcibly-drugged/9898298|archive-date=2021-07-26|retrieved=2022-08-06}}</ref>

Two [[Republic of Guatemala|Guatemalan]] children died in [[New Mexico]] in 2018 while being imprisoned by ICE.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Pamela Ren Larson|newspaper=The Arizona Republic|title=2 migrant children died this month. But warnings were documented long before that|date=2018-12-28|url=https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/12/28/migrant-children-deaths-health-warnings-came-months-earlier-border-patrol-jaklein-caal-felipe-gomez/2416379002/|retrieved=2022-08-06}}</ref>

Starting in January 2025, Trump began a campaign of mass deportations, which saw (among other things) [[United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement|ICE]] agents detaining legal immigrants who broke no US law,<ref>{{Web citation|author=Billal Rahman|newspaper=Newsweek|title=Multiple Legal Migrants Detained by ICE Amid Trump Blitz|date=2025-01-31|url=https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-legal-migrant-detained-ice-raids-trump-2024014}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Alex Woodward|newspaper=Independent|title=New Jersey officials condemn ‘egregious’ ICE raid that detained U.S. citizens and military veteran|date=2025-01-24|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-raid-newark-new-jersey-trump-b2685888.html}}</ref> indigenous people of the [[Navajo Nation|Navajo]] and other nations facing ICE raids,<ref>{{Web citation|author=Erin Alberty and Russell Contreras|newspaper=Axios|title=Native American tribes say ICE harassing members amid raids|date=2025-01-29|url=https://www.axios.com/2025/01/29/native-american-immigration-raids-navajo-nation}}</ref> and public schools being raided by US agents.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Adam Edelman and Daniella Silva|newspaper=NBC News|title=Public schools try to protect undocumented students from Trump immigration raids|date=2025-01-28|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/public-schools-undocumented-students-trump-immigration-raids-rcna189466}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Racism]]
<references />
[[Category:Government of the United States of America]]
[[Category:Imperialist secret police]]
[[Category:Terrorism]]
[[Category:Terrorists]]

Nuclear fission

2026-01-11T21:06:56Z

PuzzledFox99: Archive

{{Message box/Stub}}

Nuclear fission is a physical process in which the nucleus of a fissile atom (such as Uranium-235 (U-235)) absorbs a free neutron and becomes unstable. The nucleus then splits into two smaller nuclei, releasing a large amount of energy, additional neutrons, and various byproducts.
The released neutrons can go on to trigger further fission events, allowing a chain reaction to develop.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|year=1978|chapter=Nuclear Fission|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/nuclear+fission|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=30|page=452-454|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т30_742.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Baidu Baike]]|title=核裂变|date=|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/核裂变|archive-url=https://archive.today/euDVe|archive-date=2026-01-11}}</ref>

Nuclear fission is the process used in nuclear reactors to generate electricity in a controlled manner.
It is also the physical principle behind the explosive energy release in atomic bombs, where the reaction occurs in an uncontrolled form.

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Nuclear physics]]

Category:Oceans

2026-01-03T15:52:01Z

PuzzledFox99: Created page with "Category page for '''oceans''' Category:Places"

Category page for '''oceans'''
[[Category:Places]]

Pacific Ocean

2026-01-03T15:51:06Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox country|name=Pacific Ocean|image_map=Pacific.png|map_width=250|area_km2=165,250,000}}

'''The Pacific Ocean''' is the largest continuous body of water on Earth, covering more than a third of the world's surface. As the deepest and most island-rich of all the oceans, its waters reach the shores of [[Asia]], [[Oceania]], [[North America]], [[South America]], and [[Antarctica]]. The Pacific Ocean accounts for 49.8% of the world’s total ocean area and contains approximately 10,000 islands, which represent 45% of the global island area.<ref>{{Citation|author=Eakins, B.W. and Sharman, G.F.|title=Volumes of the World's Oceans from ETOPO1|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259327179_Volumes_of_the_World's_Oceans_from_ETOPO1}}</ref>

[[Imperialism]] has taken root within this ocean. The [[United States of America|United States]], [[Commonwealth of Australia|Australia]], and [[Japan]], alongside other [[Imperial core|imperial core states]], use this body of water to militarily and economically attempt to cripple [[People's Republic of China|China]], while asserting neocolonial control through policing programs and pressuring their [[Neocolonialism|neocolonies]] into compliance.<ref>{{Citation|author=Patrick Dupont|title=The United States’ Indo–Pacific Strategy and a Revisionist China|title-url=https://pacforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/issuesinsights_Vol21WP2-Patrick-Dupont.pdf}}</ref>

== Geography ==
The Pacific Ocean’s maximum north-south length is 15,800 kilometers, while its greatest east-west width reaches 19,500 kilometers. To the southwest lies the [[Indian Ocean]], to the southeast the [[Atlantic Ocean]], and to the north the [[Arctic Ocean]]. The Pacific Ocean has an average depth of approximately 4,028 meters.<ref>{{Citation|author=National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)|title=How big is the Pacific Ocean?|title-url=https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/ocean-fact/pacific-size/}}</ref>

Islands within the Pacific include the [[Samoan Islands]], the [[Hawaiian Islands]], the [[Ryukyu Islands]], the [[Kuril Islands]], the [[Aleutian Islands]], the [[North and South Islands of New Zealand]], [[New Guinea]], [[Borneo]], and the [[Sakhalin Islands]].<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Encyclopedia Britannica|title=Pacific Islands|url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Pacific-Islands}}</ref> If we include all notable territories we have: [[Republic of Fiji|Fiji]], [[Independent State of Papua New Guinea|Papua New Guinea]], [[Solomon Islands]], [[Republic of Vanuatu|Vanuatu]], [[Federated States of Micronesia]], [[Republic of Kiribati|Kiribati]], [[Republic of the Marshall Islands|Marshall Islands]], [[Republic of Nauru|Nauru]], [[Republic of Palau|Palau]], [[Independent State of Samoa|Samoa]], [[Kingdom of Tonga|Tonga]], [[Tuvalu]], [[New Zealand]], [[Commonwealth of Australia|Australia]], [[Japan]], [[Republic of the Philippines|Philippines]], [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[Taiwan Province|Taiwan]], [[Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste|Timor-Leste]], [[Cook Islands]], [[Niue]], [[Hawaii]], [[French Polynesia]], [[Easter Island]], [[Galapagos Islands]] and the [[Pitcairn Islands]].

== Economy ==
The Pacific Ocean is rich in marine life, abundant with herring, cod, anchovies, salmon, tuna, and crab. Half of the world's fish are caught within the Pacific, specifically within the fishing hotspots of [[Japan]], [[Republic of Peru|Peru]], [[Korea]], and [[People's Republic of China|China]], alongside the Northwestern [[United States of America|United States]] and [[Canada]]. Deep-sea minerals are also plentiful, with an abundance of manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper, as well as natural gas and oil.<ref>{{Citation|author=The Food and Agriculture Organization|title=The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024: Blue Transformation in action.|title-url=https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/8ab20ccf-1e9d-4ae6-836c-ca770d16da01}}</ref>

Major international ports bordering the Pacific include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Sydney, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Busan, Yokohama, Kobe, Vladivostok, Dalian, and Kitakyushu, among many others. Alongside these major ports, key shipping routes include those from [[Japan]] to [[Commonwealth of Australia|Australia]], [[South America]] to [[Europe]], [[East Asia]] to [[North America]] via the [[Panama Canal]] and [[People's Republic of China|China]] to the [[Persian Gulf]] via the [[Strait of Malacca]].<ref>{{Citation|author=UNCTAD|year=2024|title=Review of Maritime Transport 2024|title-url=https://unctad.org/topic/transport-and-trade-logistics/review-of-maritime-transport}}</ref>

The Pacific Ocean facilitates the movement of 80% of all global products and goods. The [[Trans-Pacific Route]] connects [[East Asia]] ([[People's Republic of China|China]], [[Japan]], [[Republic of Korea|Korea]]) to [[United States of America|North American]] markets, and the [[Strait of Malacca]] serves as the bridge between the Pacific and the [[Indian Ocean]], with the [[Panama Canal]] still remaining influential for trade between the [[United States of America|US]] and [[Asia]]. Ninety-eight percent of all international internet traffic passes through the Pacific Ocean via undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables are chosen as they are cheaper per bit compared to satellites and can handle enormous amounts of data relative to them.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=United Nations Conference on Trade and Development|title=Review of Maritime Transport|url=https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-transport-2025}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Oceans]]

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

2026-01-03T15:45:41Z

PuzzledFox99: /* Armed aggression */

{{Infobox country
| name = Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
| native_name = República Bolivariana de Venezuela
| image_flag = Flag_of_Venezuela.svg
| image_coat = Coat of arms of Venezuela.svg
|capital=Caracas|largest_city=Caracas|government_type=Federal presidential republic|leader_title1=President|leader_name1=[[Nicolás Maduro]]|leader_title2=Vice President|leader_name2=[[Delcy Rodríguez]]| image_map = Venezuela Map.svg
| image_map_size = 260px
|map_caption=Map of Venezuela according to the 2023 referendum. Light green territories are not recognized by the UN.| official_languages = Spanish
| recognized_national_languages = 26 indigenous languages
| area_km2 = 916,445
| population_estimate = 30,518,260
| population_estimate_year = 2023
|currency=Venezuelan bolívar|currency_code=VED|calling_code=+58|iso3166code=VE|cctld=.ve}}

'''Venezuela''', officially the '''Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela''',<ref>{{News citation|date=15 December 1999|title=Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela|url=http://www.me.gob.ve/media/contenidos/2006/d_269_8.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131001032323/http://www.me.gob.ve/media/contenidos/2006/d_269_8.pdf}}</ref> is a country on the northern coast of [[South America]], consisting of a continental landmass and many islands in the [[Caribbean Sea]]. It borders [[Colombia]] to the west, [[Federative Republic of Brazil|Brazil]] to the south, [[Republic of Trinidad and Tobago|Trinidad and Tobago]] to the northeast, and [[Co-operative Republic of Guyana|Guyana]] to the east. Modern Venezuela is a [[Anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] state ruled by the left-wing [[Chavismo]] movement.

In 1960, Venezuela produced 30% of the world's [[Petroleum politics|oil]].<ref name=":122" />:184 Venezuela has been the target of hostility from the [[United States imperialism|US imperialists]] due to its significant reserves of oil, as well as its recent trend of electing left-leaning progressive governments which prioritize [[Bolivarian missions|social programs]] and the implementation of what some observers describe as [[Socialism of the 21st century]].<ref>https://pt.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Resolucoesdo3oCongressoPT.pdf</ref>

Under the anti-imperialist government of [[Hugo Chávez]], unemployment decreased by almost half, GDP per capita more than doubled, infant mortality decreased, and extreme poverty dropped from 23.4% to 8.5%.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|title=How did Venezuela change under Hugo Chávez?|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/04/venezuela-hugo-chavez-election-data|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230424073050/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/04/venezuela-hugo-chavez-election-data|archive-date=2023-04-24}}</ref>

== History ==

=== Spanish colonialism ===
In 1777, a treaty between the [[Kingdom of Spain (1700–1808)|Spanish]] and the [[Kingdom of the Netherlands|Dutch]] defined the Esequibo River as the eastern border of the Captaincy General of Venezuela.
[[File:Venezuela map 1777.png|thumb|282x282px|Map of Venezuela under the 1777 treaty, which includes territory now occupied by [[Federative Republic of Brazil|Brazil]], [[Republic of Colombia|Colombia]], [[Co-operative Republic of Guyana|Guyana]], and [[Republic of Trinidad and Tobago|Trinidad and Tobago]]]]
After [[Statesian Revolution|losing control of its Thirteen Colonies]] in North America in 1776, the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922)|British Empire]] sought to take over parts of South America. In the early 19th century, it annexed the [[Guayana Esequiba]] region from [[Kingdom of Spain (1813–1873)|Spanish]]-occupied Venezuela and the Tigri region from Dutch-occupied [[Republic of Suriname|Suriname]]. Around the same time, Venezuela became independent from the Spanish.

In 1797, the British seized the island of [[Republic of Trinidad and Tobago|Trinidad]] from Venezuela. The Spanish [[Colonialism|colonizers]] recognized it as British territory five years later with the Treaty of Amiens.<ref name=":2">{{Web citation|author=Saheli Chowdhury|newspaper=[[Orinoco Tribune]]|title=Essequibo and Other Border Issues: Venezuela’s Territorial Losses to Imperialist Powers Through the Centuries (Part 1)|date=2023-12-01|url=https://orinocotribune.com/essequibo-and-other-border-issues-venezuelas-territorial-losses-to-imperialist-powers-through-the-centuries-part-1/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231202012125/https://orinocotribune.com/essequibo-and-other-border-issues-venezuelas-territorial-losses-to-imperialist-powers-through-the-centuries-part-1/|archive-date=2023-12-02}}</ref>

=== Early republic ===
In 1815, Britain recognized the 1777 borders of Venezuela. In 1822, under the orders of [[Simón Bolívar]], Ambassador [[José Rafael Revenga]] criticized British intrusions west of the Esequibo. After [[Gran Colombia]] broke apart, the Michelena-Pombo Treaty of 1833 divided the Guajira Peninsula roughly in half between Colombia and Venezuela. The Venezuelan parliament rejected the treaty and continued to dispute the region until 1883.<ref name=":2" />

In 1840, the Royal Geographic Society of London sent [[Robert Schomburgk]], a [[Holy Roman Empire (800–1806)|German]] geographer, to map the border between Venezuela and British Guyana. His map claimed the sparsely populated Guayana Esequiba and Tigri regions as part of Guyana. In 1841, [[Alejo Fortique]], the Venezuelan ambassador to the UK, argued the Esequibo issue and made the British agree to future negotiations on the border. After he died in 1845, Venezuela agreed to postpone border negotiations.<ref name=":3">{{Web citation|author=Saheli Chowdhuri|newspaper=[[Orinoco Tribune]]|title=Essequibo and Other Border Issues: Venezuela’s Territorial Losses to Imperialist Powers Through the Centuries (Part 2)|date=2023-12-03|url=https://orinocotribune.com/essequibo-and-other-border-issues-venezuelas-territorial-losses-to-imperialist-powers-through-the-centuries-part-2/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231204033538/https://orinocotribune.com/essequibo-and-other-border-issues-venezuelas-territorial-losses-to-imperialist-powers-through-the-centuries-part-2/|archive-date=2023-12-04}}</ref>

General [[Ezequiel Zamora]] led the [[peasantry]] in the [[Federal War]] (1859–1863). He fought against the [[ruling class]] while trying to redistribute land and wealth.<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|date=2023-02-28|title=The Strategic Revolutionary Thought and Legacy of Hugo Chávez Ten Years After His Death|url=https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-61-chavez/|newspaper=[[Tricontinental]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230429215204/https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-61-chavez/|archive-date=2023-04-29}}</ref>

=== United States of Venezuela (1864–1953) ===
After the Federal War, Juan Cristósomo Falcón became President and appointed [[Antonio Guzmán Blanco]] as representative to Britain. Britain rejected Guzmán Blanco's attempts to solve the border dispute in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1883, [[Kingdom of Spain (1874–1931)|Spain]] also ended the Guajira dispute in favor of Colombia, and President Guzmán Blanco recognized the result. Venezuela ended relations with the UK in 1887 and mistakenly asked for the USA's help against Britain.[[File:Guyana Disputed Areas.svg.png|thumb|253x253px|Venezuela claims the Guayana Esequiba region, which Guyana currently controls.]]

In 1895, the United States asserted the [[Monroe Doctrine]], which considers the Americas to be territory for colonization by the USA rather than colonization by [[Europe]]. The UK initially refused to negotiate until the USA threatened war. In 1897, after the UK refused to negotiate with Venezuela, which it considered uncivilized, the USA decided to negotiate on Venezuela's behalf without taking its interests into account. The UK and USA created a tribunal of five people: two from the UK and three from the USA. The last member, [[Frederick Fyodor Martens]], was a [[Russian Empire (1721–1917)|Russian]] diplomat who wanted Russia and Britain to cooperate in invading Central Asia. In 1899, the tribunal created the Paris Arbitration Award, which surrendered Guayana Esequibo the British.<ref name=":3" /> The affair was an early instance of the Monroe Doctrine being invoked and the U.S. asserting itself as an imperial power.<ref>[https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/venezuela “Milestones: 1866–1898 - Office of the Historian.”] 2023. State.gov. 2023.</ref><ref name=":0">Wilkins, Brett. [https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/The-History--and-Hypocrisy--of-US-Meddling-in-Venezuela--20190128-0016.html “The History - and Hypocrisy - of US Meddling in Venezuela.”] Telesurenglish.net. teleSUR. 2018. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307033238/https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/The-History--and-Hypocrisy--of-US-Meddling-in-Venezuela--20190128-0016.html Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref>

From 1902 to 1903, Venezuela was blockaded by [[Europe|European]] navies.<ref>{{News citation|title=US Imperialism in Nicaragua and the Making of Sandino|date=2020-02-21|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/sandino-us-imperialism-making-20200219-0029.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305215145/https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/sandino-us-imperialism-making-20200219-0029.html|archive-date=2021-03-05|retrieved=2022-06-25}}</ref>

During the [[Dutch-Venezuelan crisis of 1908]], the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] helped Venezuelan Vice President [[Juan Vicente Gomez]] seize power in a coup. Gomez endeared himself to [[Government of the United States of America|Washington]] and [[Wall Street]] by granting highly lucrative concessions to foreign oil companies including [[ExxonMobil|Standard Oil]] (ExxonMobil today) and [[Royal Dutch Shell]].<ref name=":0" />

In December 1936, the oil [[Proletariat|workers]] of Maracaibo went on [[Strike action|strike]].<ref name=":122">{{Citation|author=[[Vijay Prashad]]|year=2008|title=The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World|chapter=Caracas|page=|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceascnzh26r5d6uitjjs2z7rflhaxlt7rboz5whzdf76qg6xxvecqq?filename=%28A%20New%20Press%20People%27s%20history%29%20Vijay%20Prashad%20-%20The%20darker%20nations_%20a%20people%27s%20history%20of%20the%20third%20world-The%20New%20Press%20%282008%29.pdf|publisher=The New Press|isbn=9781595583420|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=9B40B96E830128A7FE0E0E887C06829F}}</ref>:176

In 1949, the Statesian Judge [[Otto Schoenrich]] published the [[Mallet-Prevost Memorandum]]. [[Severo Mallet-Prevost]] had been one of the Statesian lawyers at the 1899 Paris tribunal along with former [[President of the United States|U.S. president]] [[Benjamin Harrison]] and others. The memorandum described the tribunal in detail and said that the British had forced the U.S. jurors to accept an unequal treaty towards Venezuela.<ref name=":3" />

=== Fourth Republic (1953–1999) ===
Oil production increased after [[Mexican United States|Mexico]] nationalized its oil in 1938, doubling in the 1950s. The dictator [[Marcos Pérez Jiménez]], who ruled from 1952 to 1958, used oil revenues to fund construction projects that did not help the workers. In 1958, a new progressive government led by the [[Democratic Action (Venezuela)|Democratic Action]] party planned to nationalize the oil industry.<ref name=":122" />:176–9 [[Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso|Juan Pérez]] helped establish [[Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries|OPEC]] in 1960.<ref name=":122" />:184

When Guyana became independent from the British in 1966, Venezuela agreed to temporarily leave the Esequibo region under Guyana's control until they could reach a permanent solution. However, Venezuela did not recognize Guyananese authority over the disputed region. In 1970, with the Port of Spain Protocol, Prime Minister [[Eric Williams]] of Trinidad and Tobago made an agreement that Guyana and Venezuela would maintain bilateral ties and that Venezuela would not claim the Esequibo until 1982.<ref name=":3" />

[[Carlos Andrés Pérez]] ruled Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993. He implemented the [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] Great Turnaround in 1989, causing [[Caracazo|mass protests]]. His successor, [[Rafael Caldera]], continued neoliberal rule and allowed foreign [[Imperialism|imperialists]] to own the economy. In 1992, [[Hugo Chávez]] and the [[MBR-200]] attempted to overthrow the neoliberal government and start a revolution.<ref name=":1" />

=== Bolivarian government (1999–present) ===

==== Chávez presidency ====
[[File:CastroChavez.jpg|thumb|Chávez, right, with Cuban leader [[Fidel Castro]]]]
The Bolivarian Revolution refers to a left-wing [[Populism|populist]] social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who founded the [[Fifth Republic Movement]] and later the [[United Socialist Party of Venezuela]]. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after [[Simón Bolívar]], an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement [[Bolivarianism]]—[[popular democracy]], economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political [[corruption]]—in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a populist perspective, using [[Socialism|socialist]] rhetoric.<ref>https://www.mintpressnews.com/bolivarianism-vs-fake-us-democracy/38258/</ref>

In 2004, Venezuela began the [[Bolivarian missions|National System of Missions]] to address [[poverty]], [[illiteracy]], and health and housing problems. It also formed the [[Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America]] with [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]].<ref name=":1" /> The Venezuelan and Cuban governments also teamed up for [[Operation Miracle]], which provided treatment for people with eye problems in the [[Global North and South|Global South]]. The [[Great Housing Mission Venezuela]] has constructed over 4.2 million homes for poor and working class Venezuelans, with a goal of 5 million by 2025.<ref>https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuelan-Government-Has-Built-4.2-Million-Homes-So-Far-20221028-0002.html</ref> In 2006, construction began on a planned socialist community, [[Ciudad Caribia]], which was the brainchild of Chávez.

On March 5, 2013, Chávez died after 14 years in office. His vice president [[Nicolás Maduro]] took over the office of the presidency.

==== Maduro presidency ====
The US maintains a blockade against Venezuela to try to strangle their independent economy. In August of 2021, Peru announced it would no longer participate in the blockade.<ref>[https://orinocotribune.com/peru-will-no-longer-support-blockade-on-venezuela/?fbclid=IwAR3ccbSE2XbDbpEYHe1XtQB4h3QiG6nIbOGH9dgoO0A6AlPnubvnUrEKBio Peru Will no Longer Support Blockade on Venezuela]</ref> The blockade against Venezuela even negatively affects US businesses<ref>[https://orinocotribune.com/blockade-against-venezuela-makes-us-businesses-suffer-us-exports-dropped-by-93-from-2012-to-2020/ Blockade Against Venezuela Makes US Businesses Suffer: US Exports Dropped by 93% from 2012 to 2020] by [[Orinoco Tribune]]</ref> and has caused 40,000 deaths due to lack of food and medicine.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=Andrew Buncombe|date=2019-04-26|title=US sanctions on Venezuela responsible for 'tens of thousands' of deaths, claims new report|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html|newspaper=Independent|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220219184503/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html|archive-date=2022-02-19|retrieved=2022-03-11}}</ref> Venezuelan capitalists have burned food<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=[[TeleSur]]|title=Venezuela Protesters Set 40 Tons of Subsidized Food on Fire|date=2017-06-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180514115445/http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuela-Protesters-Set-40-Tons-of-Subsidized-Food-on-Fire-20170630-0017.html|archive-date=2018-05-14}}</ref> and buried it underground.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=[[TeleSur]]|title=Venezuela's Economic War: Tons of Food Found Buried Underground|date=2015-08-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150926075944/http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelas-Economic-War-Tons-of-Food-Found-Buried-Underground-20150817-0024.html|archive-date=2015-09-26}}</ref> Despite this, Venezuela's malnutrition rate has decreased from 13.2% in 2001 to 8.2% in 2017.<ref>{{News citation|author=Food and Agriculture Organization|newspaper=[[World Bank]]|title=Prevalence of undernourishment (% of population)|url=https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?page=4&year_high_desc=false|retrieved=2022-04-15}}</ref>

In 2021, president [[Nicolás Maduro|Maduro]] spoke to the [[United Nations|UN]] General Assembly saying that 'we must build a "new world without imperialism"'<ref>[https://benjaminnorton.substack.com/p/venezuela-at-un-we-must-build-new Venezuela at UN: We must build 'new world without imperialism'] by [[Ben Norton]] of [[Moderate Rebels]] on Substack Sep 22, 2021</ref>

Despite their elections being declared democratic by the US-based Carter Center<ref>[https://www.cartercenter.org/countries/venezuela.html Carter Center > Venezuela > Monitoring Elections]</ref>, and not having the death penalty<ref>Roger G. Hood. ''The death penalty: a worldwide perspective'', [[Oxford University Press]], 2002. p10</ref><ref>''Determinants of the death penalty: a comparative study of the world'', Carsten Anckar, Routledge, 2004, ISBN [tel:0-415-33398 0-415-33398], p.17</ref>, the US media insists that Venezuela is a dictatorship with no regard for human rights, thus trying to lay the groundwork for "[[Humanitarian intervention|humanitarian interventions]]"<ref>[https://orinocotribune.com/venezuelas-strange-dictatorship/ Venezuela’s Strange Dictatorship] by [[Orinco Tribune|Orinoco Tribune]]</ref>

Despite attempts at economic isolation, the US was forced to re-engage the Venezuelan economy for its oil.<ref>{{News citation|author=Francisco Dominguez|newspaper=Morning Star, Popular Resistance|title=MADURO’S SUCCESS: PRINCIPLED RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM PAYS OFF|date=2022-06-01|url=https://popularresistance.org/maduros-success-principled-resistance-to-imperialism-pays-off/}}</ref>

On March 17, 2022, President Maduro announced a new social media app called [[Ven App]] which will be used as a means of direct communication with the government, in an effort to help the government reach citizens with better services. It has been inspired by [[Russian Federation|Russia]]'s [[VK]] and [[People's Republic of China|China]]'s [[WeChat]].<ref>{{News citation|title=Ven App: Venezuela’s New Social Media|date=2022-03-27|url=https://orinocotribune.com/ven-app-venezuelas-new-social-media/}}</ref>
== Imperialist aggression ==

=== US coup attempts ===
Chavismo has attracted repeated attacks from the US imperialists to the north, including coup attempts in 2002, [[2019 Venezuelan uprising attempt|2019]], and [[Operation Gideon|2020]],<ref>{{News citation|journalist=[[Benjamin Norton]]|date=2022-02-06|title=CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says|url=https://youtu.be/v5K4ktRw0Ps|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]}}</ref> among others.<ref>https://elpais.com/diario/2002/04/17/internacional/1018994403_850215.html</ref><ref>https://www.rt.com/usa/497111-trump-ruined-venezuela-coup/</ref>

In his 2020 memoir ''The Room Where It Happened'', [[John Bolton]], former National Security Advisor under U.S. President [[Donald Trump]], wrote regarding Venezuela:<blockquote>Shortly after the drone attack [on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on August 4, 2018]<ref>{{News citation|author=Joe Parkin Daniels|newspaper=The Guardian|title=Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro survives apparent assassination attempt|date=2018-08-05|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/04/nicolas-maduros-speech-cut-short-while-soldiers-scatter|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220715064109/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/04/nicolas-maduros-speech-cut-short-while-soldiers-scatter|archive-date=2022-07-15|retrieved=2022-07-15}}</ref>, during an unrelated meeting on August 15, Venezuela came up, and Trump said to me emphatically, “Get it done," meaning get rid of the Maduro regime. “This is the fifth time I've asked for it,” he continued. [...] Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because “it's really part of the United States.”<ref>{{Citation|author=John Bolton|year=2020|title=The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir|title-url=https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=QjTMDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=ko&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false|chapter=Chapter 9: Venezuela Libre|quote=Shortly after the drone attack, during an unrelated meeting on August 15, Venezuela came up, and Trump said to me emphatically, “Get it done," meaning get rid of the Maduro regime. “This is the fifth time I've asked for it,” he continued. I described the thinking we were doing, in a meeting now slimmed down to just Kelly and me, but Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because “it's really part of the United States.”|publisher=Simon and Schuster}}</ref></blockquote>

=== Sanctions ===
The United States and [[Canada]] have placed [[Economic sanctions|sanctions]] on Venezuela. Donald Trump encouraged the [[European Union|EU]] to sanction Venezuela as well.<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Eugene Puryear]]|newspaper=[[Liberation School]]|title=Is Venezuela Turning Further Left?|date=2017-10-11|url=https://www.liberationschool.org/is-venezuela-turning-left/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220122044427/https://www.liberationschool.org/is-venezuela-turning-left/|archive-date=2022-01-22|retrieved=2022-11-27}}</ref>

In early 2019, the United States began an embargo of Venezuela's oil industry, the most important sector of its economy.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=PSL Editorial – End the U.S. economic war on Venezuela now!|date=2022-11-28|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-editorial-end-the-u-s-economic-war-on-venezuela-now/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230127054344/https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-editorial-end-the-u-s-economic-war-on-venezuela-now/|archive-date=2023-01-27}}</ref>

=== Boat bombings ===
In August 2025, the US began deploying a naval force to the waters near Venezuela, including amphibious assault ships and other vessels carrying about 6,000 sailors and marines and various aircraft.<ref name=":4">{{Web citation|author=Ben Finley, Konstantin Toropin, Regina Garcia Cano|newspaper=MSN|title=A timeline of the US military's buildup near Venezuela and attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats|date=2025-12-06|url=https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-timeline-of-the-us-militarys-buildup-near-venezuela-and-attacks-on-alleged-drug-boats/ar-AA1RNSP9}}</ref> In September, the US military began a series of deadly bombings on small boats in the Caribbean in waters near Venezuela, claiming the people on them were "narcoterrorists" transporting drugs. The first few strikes were announced by US officials who also posted videos on social media of what was apparently footage of the bombings.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=US Forces Destroy Small ‘Venezuelan’ Boat Allegedly Carrying Drugs—11 Killed|date=2025-09-02|url=https://orinocotribune.com/us-forces-destroy-small-venezuelan-boat-allegedly-carrying-drugs-11-killed/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250913234748/https://orinocotribune.com/us-forces-destroy-small-venezuelan-boat-allegedly-carrying-drugs-11-killed/|archive-date=2025-09-13}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> The first strike occurred on September 2, killing eleven people. The second strike followed on September 15, killing three. US officials declared another attack on September 19, also killing three, with more deadly strikes continuing over the following months.<ref name=":4" /> In October 2025, US president Trump openly said that he was considering land operations and that he had "authorized" the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, saying he did so because Venezuela "emptied their prisons" into the US and because "we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela".<ref>{{Web citation|author=Aamer Madhani|newspaper=AP|title=Trump confirms the CIA is conducting covert operations inside Venezuela|date=2025-10-17|url=https://apnews.com/article/trump-cia-covert-operations-venezuela-ecb477ac7f07d5beaf48d44dee75c5e5|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251217112720/https://apnews.com/article/trump-cia-covert-operations-venezuela-ecb477ac7f07d5beaf48d44dee75c5e5|archive-date=2025-12-17|quote=President Donald Trump confirmed Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country. [...] Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.” Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.}}</ref> As of December 22, 2025, the death toll from the 29 known strikes reached at least 105 people.<ref name=":4" />

Throughout the deployment of US naval forces near Venezuela and the continuing attacks, Venezuela began conducting military exercises as well as civil militia training throughout the country.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Venezuela Launches Military Exercises in All Regions Throughout the Country|date=2025-09-21|url=https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-launches-military-exercises-in-all-regions-throughout-the-country/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251017021556/https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-launches-military-exercises-in-all-regions-throughout-the-country/|archive-date=2025-10-17}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Venezuela: Militia Swells to 8 Million, International Supporters Pledge to Join|date=2025-09-17|url=https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-militia-swells-to-8-million-international-supporters-pledge-to-join/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251021010530/https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-militia-swells-to-8-million-international-supporters-pledge-to-join/|archive-date=2025-10-21}}</ref> Bolivarian Militia member Armando Urgelles, interviewed in November 2025, stated that the ideological basis of the militia is rooted in the anti-colonial struggle and said that every week, militia members participate in "revolutionary patriotic training which includes theory and political education to learn about our history, our roots, our struggles".<ref name=":5">{{Web citation|author=Ria Evelyn|newspaper=Venezuelanalys>is|title=Interview: Venezuela’s Militias and the Civil-Military Union|date=2025-11-04|url=https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/interview-venezuelas-militias-and-the-civil-military-union/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251111162441/https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/interview-venezuelas-militias-and-the-civil-military-union/|archive-date=2025-11-11}}</ref> Urgelles noted that Venezuela has many critical and strategic minerals and other resources important for the functioning of the capitalist system, making Venezuela a country of strategic geographical importance. Urgelles stated that the militias have "very high morale" and that "just as the militias are prepared for civil duties, we are prepared in the strategic concept of permanent war".<ref name=":5" />

=== Oil tanker seizures ===
On December 10, 2025, the US seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.<ref name=":6">{{Web citation|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Venezuela: UN Report Demonstrates Illegality of US Blockade|date=2025-12-27|url=https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-un-report-demonstrates-illegality-of-us-blockade/}}</ref><ref name=":4" /> A second tanker was seized on December 20.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" />

=== Armed aggression ===
On January 3, 2026, the US launched military strikes against in Venezuela, targeting both military sites and civilian infrastructure. Caracas, the capital city, as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua and La-Guaira, were bombed, causing temporary electricity disruptions.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Sputnik|title=US Strikes On Venezuela: What's Known So Far|date=2026-01-03|url=https://sputnikglobe.com/20260103/us-strikes-on-venezuela-whats-known-so-far-1123406106.html}}</ref>

The location of Nicolás Maduro, the current president, is unknown. U.S. president [[Donald Trump]] claims taking him and his wife hostage.<ref>{{Web citation|author=@SputnikInt|newspaper=Twitter/X|title=🚨🇺🇸🇻🇪 Donald Trump confirms the US carried out strikes on Venezuela, claims Maduro and his wife were captured|date=2026-01-03|url=https://t.co/mj629taqRj}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Reuters|title=Trump Says Venezuela's Maduro Captured After Strikes|date=2026-01-03|url=https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/loud-noises-heard-venezuela-capital-southern-area-without-electricity-2026-01-03/}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Venezuela]]
[[Category:Anti-imperialist states]]
[[Category:Countries]]
[[Category:Countries sanctioned by the US]]
[[Category:Former Spanish colonies]]
[[Category:Global south]]
[[Category:Latin American countries]]
[[Category:Member states of OPEC]]
[[Category:Targets of regime change operations]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Venezuela}}

Spartacist uprising

2025-12-29T17:56:10Z

PuzzledFox99:

The Spartacus League Uprising, also known as the January Uprising, was a large-scale armed insurrection that took place in Berlin, Germany, from January 5 to January 15, 1919. Led by the "Spartacus League" (the precursor to the Communist Party of Germany) and its radical left-wing supporters, the uprising aimed to overthrow the newly established Weimar Republic and establish a soviet-style socialist government.{{Citation needed}} It was ultimately suppressed by the provisional government led by Friedrich Ebert and the Social Democratic Party, with direct paramilitary forces like the Freikorps.{{Citation needed}} The leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were killed after its failure.{{Citation needed}} This event marked the climax and endpoint of the German November Revolution, signifying the collapse of hopes for achieving socialism through parliamentary means in Germany.{{Citation needed}} The Freikorps, which were instrumental in the rise of Fascism within Germany through ideals of the many conservative figures within the Freikorps.{{Citation needed}}

==References==
<references />
[[Category:German history]]

AN602

2025-12-29T17:55:07Z

PuzzledFox99:

The '''AN602''' was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever constructed and detonated. Constructed by the Soviet Union, it was tested on 30th October 1961 in an aeriel explosion on the island of Novaya Zemlaya in the countries far north. The bomb yielded approximately 50 megatons of TNT.{{Citation needed}}

Its initial prototype was designed to yield 100 megatons of TNT.{{Citation needed}}

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Nuclear physics]]

Nick Fuentes

2025-12-16T15:30:25Z

PuzzledFox99: Views

{{Infobox politician|name=Nick Fuentes|image_size=200|birth_date=August 18, 1998|birth_place=La Grange, [[Illinois]], [[United States of America|United States]]|nationality=Statesian|political_orientation=Neo-[[Nazism]] [[Christian fundamentalism]] [[White supremacy]] [[Holocaust]] denial|image=Nick Fuentes.png}}

'''Nicholas Joseph Fuentes''' (born August, 1998) is a Statesian [[Neo-fascism|fascist]] and leader of the [[Groyper Army|Groypers]]. He is a member of the [[America First]] and [[incel]] movements. He opposes other right-wingers including [[Donald Trump]], [[Ben Shapiro]], and [[Charlie Kirk]] for not being [[Homophobia|homophobic]] or [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] enough. He established the [[America First Political Action Conference]] to challenge the [[Conservative Political Action Committee]] associated with the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Anya Parampil]]|newspaper=[[The Grayzone]]|title=From the ‘Groyper Wars’ to ‘America First’: Nick Fuentes becomes a ‘somebody’|date=2023-02-16|url=https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/16/groyper-wars-america-first-nick-fuentes/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230217031514/https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/16/groyper-wars-america-first-nick-fuentes/|archive-date=2023-02-17|retrieved=2023-02-17}}</ref>

== Views ==
=== Hitler and Nazism ===
Fuentes openly admires [[Adolf Hitler]], claiming that Hitler is "really fucking cool"; in an interview with [[Piers Morgan]], he doubled down on these views.<ref name=":0">{{Video citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KXvjOJ7YA|channel=Piers Morgan Uncensored|title=‘What a CROCK of S***!’ Piers Morgan vs Nick Fuentes | Full interview|date=2025-12-08}}</ref>1:08:31

=== Zionism ===
Despite being anti-[[Zionism|Zionist]] and opposing [[State of Israel|"Israel's"]] alliance with the United States, Fuentes admits that "In Israel, they have my politics"<ref name=":0" />1:21:04 and that his own white nationalist politics is not essentially different.

== References ==
<references />

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuentes, Nick}}
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Fascists]]
[[Category:Reactionaries]]
[[Category:Sexists]]

Nuclear fission

2025-12-12T19:20:52Z

PuzzledFox99: Sources + category

Nuclear fission is a physical process in which the nucleus of a fissile atom (such as Uranium-235 (U-235)) absorbs a free neutron and becomes unstable. The nucleus then splits into two smaller nuclei, releasing a large amount of energy, additional neutrons, and various byproducts.
The released neutrons can go on to trigger further fission events, allowing a chain reaction to develop.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|year=1978|chapter=Nuclear Fission|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/nuclear+fission|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=30|page=452-454|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т30_742.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Baidu Baike]]|title=核裂变|date=|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/核裂变|archive-url=https://archive.today/|archive-date=2025-12-12}}</ref>

Nuclear fission is the process used in nuclear reactors to generate electricity in a controlled manner.
It is also the physical principle behind the explosive energy release in atomic bombs, where the reaction occurs in an uncontrolled form.

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Nuclear physics]]

Unconverted long-term prisoners

2025-11-28T18:14:01Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Unconverted long-term prisoners in south Korea.jpg|thumb|A demonstration calling for a second repatriation of unconverted long-term prisoners in south Korea. The sign reads "Call for repatriation of non-converted long-term prisoners" ("비전향장기수 송환 촉구").<ref>장동욱 (Jang Dong-wook). [http://www.saramilbo.com/5940 “비전향장기수 2차 송환 촉구.”] ("Call for second repatriation of non-converted long-term prisoners.") 사람일보. (Saram Ilbo.) 2006-09-02. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311145007/http://www.saramilbo.com/5940 Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref>]]
'''Unconverted long-term prisoners''' (Korean: 비전향 장기수 or 미전향 장기수) is a term which refers to [[Political prisoner|political prisoners]] imprisoned in [[Republic of Korea|south Korea]], generally on charges of "anti-state" activities or views in support of [[communism]] or [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]].<ref name=":1">[https://www.amnesty.org/es/documents/asa25/033/1993/en/ “South Korea: Unfair Trial and Torture: Long-Term Political Prisoners.”] [[Amnesty International]], September 30, 1993.</ref><ref name=":6">"National reunification prizes awarded to unconverted long-term prisoners", [[Korean Central News Agency]], 2000-09-04. [https://web.archive.org/web/20191124030603/http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200009/news09/04.htm Archived] 2019-11-19.</ref> The term commonly refers to people who were mostly arrested from the 1950s to 1980s and imprisoned and tortured for decades and who refused to sign a "conversion" statement renouncing communist or [[Left–right political spectrum|left-wing]] ideology, which had been a condition for their release.<ref>Amnesty International, [https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/amnesty/1999/en/24250 Amnesty International Report 1999 - Korea, -, 1 January 1999]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311065515/https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/amnesty/1999/en/24250 Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref> In the 1990s, some of the prisoners began being released. Some chose to remain in south Korea while others sought to be repatriated to DPRK.<ref name=":0">Kim Dong-won. ''Repatriation'' (2003). Documentary. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xu2mEvU29Q</ref>

== Imprisonment and torture ==
The individuals arrested by the southern regime on charges of anti-state activities faced unfair trials,<ref name=":1" /> torture,<ref name=":1" /> and isolation,<ref name=":2">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/286070.stm "Solitary: Tough test of survival instinct."] [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] News. February 25, 1999. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311083202/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/286070.stm Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref> with some of them being imprisoned for over 40 years.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":8">[https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1995/nov/15/worlds-longest-held-political-prisoner-released/ "World’s Longest Held Political Prisoner Released."] Prison Legal News, 1995-11-15. [https://web.archive.org/web/20231001182401/https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1995/nov/15/worlds-longest-held-political-prisoner-released/ Archived] 2023-10-01.</ref><ref name=":3">[https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/388611.html “Truth Commission Confirms Yushin-Era Violations on Prisoners’ Freedom of Conscience.”] Hankyoreh, 2009-11-19. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311105516/https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/388611.html Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref> While some of the prisoners were arrested for actual acts of espionage,<ref name=":4">Kang Jin-kyu (2016-08-07). [https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2016/08/07/politics/Spies-who-cant-come-in-from-the-cold/3022316.html "Spies who can't come in from the cold"] ''Korea JoongAng Daily''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230208033225/https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2016/08/07/politics/Spies-who-cant-come-in-from-the-cold/3022316.html Archived] 2023-02-08.</ref> others have been described as [[Prisoner of conscience|prisoners of conscience]], with organizations such as [[Amnesty International]] stating in a 1993 document that some of the prisoners were "held solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association" while also stating that prisoners "appear to have been tortured during interrogation" and were "convicted largely on the basis of these coerced confessions after an unfair trial" and raising concerns that they had been denied lawyers during their interrogations.<ref name=":1" />

In 2009, south Korean news outlet Hankyoreh reported that south Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a statement which concluded that the conversion tactics which had been used on left-wing prisoners during the Yushin era of the 1970s constituted state violence and that acts of brutality were used to convert left-wing prisoners.<ref name=":3" />

=== "Conversion" statements ===
Until 1998, the prisoners were pressured to sign statements of "conversion" renouncing communist ideology as a condition of being released. Many prisoners refused to sign, later becoming referred to as "unconverted" prisoners.<ref name=":0" /> The requirement to sign a conversion statement was substituted in 1998 with a "Pledge to Obey the Law" which was eventually discontinued in 2003.<ref name=":3" />

Among those who did sign the "conversion" statement as a condition of release, there are accounts such as that of [[Park Hee-sung]], who said that his so-called "conversion" was the result of physical torture, and that he meant none of it,<ref name=":4" /> or the case of [[Kim Young-sik]], who commented on his own experience with torture in the 2003 documentary [[Repatriation (film)|''Repatriation'']], "torturing you and forcing you to renounce your belief, can you really call that conversion?"<ref name=":0" /> Kim Young-sik was also quoted in a 2018 article saying of this forced conversion via torture, "I'm still very angry [...] How could they torture me to force me to give up an ideology that I believe is correct?"<ref name=":7">Kim, Hyung-jin. [https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/southern-exposure-the-north-koreans-longing-to-be-sent-home-20180523-p4zh0h.html “Southern Exposure: The North Koreans Longing to Be Sent Home.”] The Sydney Morning Herald. May 24, 2018. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311103437/https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/southern-exposure-the-north-koreans-longing-to-be-sent-home-20180523-p4zh0h.html Archived] 2024-03-11. </ref>

Former prisoner [[Ahn Hak-sop]] recounted similar methods of pressure to try to get him to renounce his beliefs, including bribery and torture, in an interview with [[Liberation School]]: "First they tried to make theoretical arguments against the DPRK. But they couldn’t defend their beliefs to me. After that, they tried to bribe me with property. After that, there was torture."<ref name=":5" />

=== Torture ===
The methods of torture recounted by various victims include waterboarding,<ref name=":7" /> being forced to eat off the floor with hands cuffed behind their backs,<ref name=":7" /> being spun while hanging from the ceiling,<ref name=":7" /> beatings,<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":9">Kristof, Nicholas D. [https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/20/world/free-in-seoul-after-44-years-and-still-defiant.html?pagewanted=all "Free in Seoul after 44 Years, and Still Defiant."] [[The New York Times]]. Aug. 20, 1995. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311152015/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/20/world/free-in-seoul-after-44-years-and-still-defiant.html?pagewanted=all Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref> prolonged solitary confinement,<ref name=":2" /> water being thrown in the room in winter,<ref name=":5" /> being doused with cold water in winter while being beaten,<ref name=":13">Ri In Mo. [https://archive.org/details/my-life-and-faith-eng/page/n2/mode/1up "My Life and Faith."] Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, Korea. 1997.</ref> convicts being beaten until unable to walk properly and then "made to crawl back to their prison cells, beaten with clubs and kicked on the way",<ref name=":13" /> being force-fed salt water through a hose forced into their throat,<ref name=":13" /> clothing and bedding being taken away,<ref name=":5" /> starvation,<ref name=":9" /> prisoners being "expected to wash themselves with their own urine",<ref name=":9" /> confiscation of medications (resulting in death in some cases),<ref name=":13" /> and denial of medical and dental care.<ref name=":1" /> The 1993 Amnesty International document noted that the long-term prisoners were often kept in poor conditions and that some were suffering ill health due to their long term imprisonment and a reported lack of adequate medical care. The document also mentions that those who refused to sign the conversion statement generally suffered even worse treatment than the other prisoners.<ref name=":1" /> An article from 1999 by the BBC states that "Life inside was almost entirely spent in dark and cold cells and medical attention was scarce. Torture sometimes took the form of being locked up with a particularly sadistic prisoner."<ref name=":2" />

In the memoirs of former prisoner [[Ri In Mo]], the author writes that some prisoners committed suicide. He writes about a prisoner whose medications were confiscated, being told that he would get his medications back if he converted. The prisoner went on multiple hunger strikes, then hanged himself with a torn strip of blanket, having said he would rather kill himself than die of disease.<ref name=":13" />

According to a 1995 [[Prison Legal News]] article, unconverted prisoner [[Kim Sun Myung]], who had been in captivity for over 43 years, had been beaten, starved, threatened with execution, watched his fellow prisoners die, was kept in solitary confinement for decades, and was denied medical care by prison doctors as he went blind from cataracts. Commenting with regard to the torture upon his release, Kim said: "They say that when you hammer steel, it only gets harder. Well, when you hit people, you just turn them into enemies, and they become stronger."<ref name=":8" />

== Repatriation movement ==
[[File:Repatriation demonstration for unconverted long-term prisoners vop.co.kr.jpg|thumb|Members of the preparatory group for the 20th anniversary of the repatriation of non-converted prisoners hold a press conference in front of the government complex in Seoul to urge the second repatriation (2020).<ref>Photo by 김철수 (Kim Cheoulsu). [https://www.vop.co.kr/A00001510809.html <nowiki>민중의소리 (Voice of the People). 인도적조치 비전향장기수 송환하라[포토] (Repatriate non-converted long-term prisoners for humanitarian measures [Photo]).</nowiki>] 2020-09-08.</ref>]]
Of the former prisoners who sought repatriation to DPRK, some were eventually able to be repatriated, notably 63 of them in the year 2000.<ref name=":7" /> However, others remained in the south, being denied their requests for repatriation.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":4" /> The 63 individuals who were repatriated in September of 2000 were celebrated in [[Pyongyang]] and awarded [[National Reunification Prize|National Reunification Prizes]].<ref name=":6" /> At the time, the prisoners ranged in age from 66 to 90 years old.<ref name=":10">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/907307.stm "Korean communists go home."] BBC News, 2 September, 2000. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240311153647/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/907307.stm Archived] 2024-03-11.</ref>

A Liberation School interview with a former prisoner, Ahn Hak-sop, reveals that many who participated in the repatriation in the year 2000 and many of those who remained in south Korea made their decisions based on their impression at the time that there was going to be more freedom of movement between ROK and DPRK thereafter. Ahn, who chose to remain in the south when the 2000 repatriation happened, said one of his reasons was that he "thought it was a temporary situation." Ahn also notes regarding two prisoners released alongside him who were repatriated, that "[T]hose comrades went to the North because they thought that shortly there would be free movement between the two states. They went to the North to study and thought they would come back later." Regarding his own intention to stay in the south temporarily, Ahn elaborated: "[T]here were young [[Progressivism|progressive]] people here in the South, and they asked me to stay. [...] We have to keep struggling here for the withdrawal of US army, the peace treaty, and peaceful reunification. I decided to stay here to fight for these goals. In 1952, I came here to liberate the southern half of the peninsula, and I need to stay here and continue that struggle."<ref name=":5">Liberation School (Jul 27, 2022). [https://www.liberationschool.org/interview-with-ahn-hak-sop/ "Still fighting for Korea’s liberation: An interview with Ahn Hak-sop"] ''Liberation School''. [https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.liberationschool.org/interview-with-ahn-hak-sop/ Archived] from the original.</ref>

Those who oppose or criticize the repatriation of these former prisoners generally do so on grounds of demanding that DPRK repatriate people to the south as well.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":10" />

== Persecution and surveillance ==
The unconverted long-term prisoners who were released have faced various difficulties while living in south Korea, ranging from ongoing health issues from their imprisonment, to not being given social security numbers, living in poverty, and being subjected to state surveillance. In some cases, their families have also suffered persecution during and after their relative's imprisonment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":9" />

Giving examples of the forms of persecution and surveillance he faced, former prisoner Ahn Hak-sop explained, "[T]here are security police who follow me. Whenever there is a problem with the North and South, they raid my house and stand guard outside my property. One time at a demonstration, [[Conservatism|conservative]] forces attacked me. The police did nothing to protect me. Every week or every other week, the police come to my house and ask about my activities, who has visited my house, and so on. Once every other month I need to report to them about what I did, who I met, and who visited me. Every two years I need to go to court."<ref name=":5" />

[[Kang Yong-ju]], a citizen activist who had been involved in the 1980 [[May 18 uprising|Gwangju Uprising]] as a student, is an unconverted long-term prisoner who was arrested in 1985, on charges of connection to a "spy ring" which have been regarded as unfounded<ref>[https://www.refworld.org/reference/countryrep/amnesty/1998/en/93950 "Long-Term Prisoners Still Held under the National Security Law."] Amnesty International. May 1, 1998. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240316184146/https://www.refworld.org/reference/countryrep/amnesty/1998/en/93950 Archived] 2023-03-16.</ref> and alleged to have been fabricated by the [[Chun Doo-hwan]] regime.<ref name=":11">Bak Gwang-yeon. [https://english.khan.co.kr/khan_art_view.html?artid=201802222015297&code=710100 "Kang Yong-ju, Free from the Shackles of 'Security Surveillance'."] [[The Kyunghyang Shinmun]], 2018-02-22. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240316182453/https://english.khan.co.kr/khan_art_view.html?artid=201802222015297&code=710100 Archived] 2024-03-16.</ref> He refused to sign a statement renouncing his views, and was thus imprisoned by the south Korean regime for 14 years, being released in 1999.<ref>Kim Min-kyung. [https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/824966.html “Prosecutors Request Prison Time for Unconverted Political Prisoner.”] Hankyoreh, 2017-12-25. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240316183657/https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/824966.html Archived] 2024-03-16.</ref> In the years following his release, Kang was subjected to the Security Surveillance Act until a court decision in 2018 finally prohibited the extension of further surveillance on Kang.<ref name=":11" />

A column in Hankyoreh describes the surveillance program which Kang had been subjected to in the following manner:<blockquote>Being subject to security surveillance means that you must report your every move, every three months. If you move to a new house, you have to report that, and if the police suddenly call you in the middle of the night, you have to pick up the phone. If you want to travel, you have to provide advance notice of the destination and length of your trip and your travel companions. The police can ban you not only from meeting or contacting other people but also from attending public gatherings and demonstrations. Not only your family and relatives but even your [[landlord]], coworkers, church parishioners and apartment security staff can be asked to provide information about you or may be subject to surveillance themselves. Even though you have already finished your prison sentence, your life as a convict continues for the rest of your life.<ref name=":12">Lee Myung-soo. [https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/792186.html <nowiki>“[Column] Kang Yong-Ju Must Not Be Treated like a Convict for the Rest of His Life.”</nowiki>] Hankyoreh, 2017-04-25. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240316183604/https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/792186.html Archived] 2024-03-16.</ref></blockquote>The column also notes that security surveillance must be renewed every two years, but if the Justice Minister believes that there is a risk of recidivism, "the state can continue to monitor an individual’s private life until the day they die."<ref name=":12" />

== Media ==
Former prisoner Ri In Mo, who was repatriated to DPRK in 1993, wrote a memoir titled ''My Life and Faith'' (Korean title: 신념과 나의 한생) in which he recounted his life story. The book includes his youth during the anti-Japanese national liberation struggle as well as his 34 years of imprisonment in south Korea.<ref name=":13" />

A documentary about the unconverted long-term prisoners called ''Repatriation'' (Korean title: 송환) was released in 2003 by south Korean director Kim Dong Won. After several of the unconverted long-term prisoners had moved to his neighborhood after their release, the director developed a close relationship with them and began a film project that "spanned 12 years and 800 hours of videotaping".<ref>[https://asiasociety.org/kim-dong-wons-film-north-korean-prisoners-held-south-korea “Kim Dong Won’s Film on North Korean Prisoners Held in South Korea.”] Asia Society. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220725151533/https://asiasociety.org/kim-dong-wons-film-north-korean-prisoners-held-south-korea Archived] 2022-07-25.</ref> Another film by the same director, titled ''The 2nd Repatriation'' (Korean title: 2차 송환),<ref>[https://indieground.kr/indie/movieLibraryView.do?seq=4374&type=D "2차 송환."] 독립영화 라이브러리, Indieground. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240321041311/https://indieground.kr/indie/movieLibraryView.do?seq=4374&type=D Archived] 2023-03-021.</ref> was released in 2022 and follows the lives of the former prisoners, such as Kim Young-sik, who remained in south Korea but who have been urging for a second repatriation.<ref>[https://eng.jeonjufest.kr/db/movieView.asp?idx=4781&sEP_NUM=23 "The 2nd Repatriation."]전주국제영화제. The 23rd JEONJU International Film Festival. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220924153321/https://eng.jeonjufest.kr/db/movieView.asp?idx=4781&sEP_NUM=23 Archived] 2022-09-24.</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-z7JGcWUQ "【第十三屆台灣國際紀錄片影展】當代風景｜第二次遣返 The 2nd Repatriation."] YouTube.</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Repatriation (film)]]

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Democratic People's Republic of Korea]]

Conservapedia

2025-11-27T02:38:55Z

PuzzledFox99: I don't deny that they believe this but cite sources plz

[[File:Conservapedia.png|alt=The logo of Conservapedia: An American flag with the words "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia" beneath|right|frameless]]
'''Conservapedia''' is a [[far-right]] [[Christian extremism|Christian extremist]] hoax website posing as an "encyclopedia." It was created in 2006 by [[Statesian]] [[Conservatism|conservative]] Andrew Schlafly (son of [[Phyllis Schlafly]]) who believed that [[Wikipedia]] was too left-leaning,<ref name=":0">{{News citation|journalist=|date=2007-02-03|title=Conservapedia: christlich-konservative Alternative zu Wikipedia|url=https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Conservapedia-christlich-konservative-Alternative-zu-Wikipedia-152252.html|newspaper=Heise Online|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-09}}</ref> despite the encyclopedia already being a reactionary hive of imperialist misinformation.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Stansfield Smith|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]|title=US national security state censoring anti-imperialists to control ‘compatible left’|date=2022-07-02|url=https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/02/censorship-anti-imperialists-compatible-left/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220830195608/https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/02/censorship-anti-imperialists-compatible-left/|archive-date=2022-08-30|retrieved=2022-09-10}}</ref><ref>Craig Murray. [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ “The Philip Cross Affair”], 18 May 2018.</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Proletarian (newspaper)|Proletarian]]|title=How Wikipedia is used to prop up the imperialist lie machine|date=2018-08-20|url=https://thecommunists.org/2018/08/20/news/how-wikipedia-is-used-to-prop-up-imperialist-lie-machine/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519031628/https://thecommunists.org/2018/08/20/news/how-wikipedia-is-used-to-prop-up-imperialist-lie-machine/|archive-date=2022-05-19|retrieved=2022-12-18}}</ref><ref>Ashley Feinberg. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-facebook-nbc-axios_n_5c63321be4b03de942967225 “Facebook, Axios And NBC paid this guy to whitewash Wikipedia pages”]. ''The Huffpost,'' 14 March 2019.</ref> Although it claims to oppose [[liberalism]], it confuses this term with [[Left-wing politics|leftism]]<ref name=":1">{{News citation|journalist=Liberaltears|date=2021-10-08|title=Liberal|url=https://conservapedia.com/Liberal|newspaper=Conservapedia|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-09|quote=A liberal (alternately called a left-winger or leftist) is someone who advocates an increase in government spending}}</ref> and actually supports [[neoliberalism]].<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Neoliberalism|retrieved=2025-04-15|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Neoliberalism|archive-date=2024-12-27|archive-url=https://archive.today/2024.12.27-005837/https://www.conservapedia.com/Neoliberalism}}</ref>

== Misinformation ==

=== United States ===
[[File:Conservapedia example picture.png|thumb|510x510px|According to Conservapedia, the right-wing [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] are, at the same time, neo-Nazis, communists, "globalists," "woke," [[Antisemitism|antisemites]], Marxists, and [[slavery]]-supporters.]]
According to Conservapedia, the Statesian [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] is a "leftwing [[Fascism|fascist]] [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian]] organization" which supports [[socialism]], [[democratic socialism]], [[communism]], [[Neo-Nazism]], [[authoritarianism]] all at once.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Democratic Party|retrieved=2022-06-23|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Democratic_Party}}</ref> The [[Social democracy|social-democratic]] politician [[Bernie Sanders]] is called a "[[Marxist–Leninist]]" and accused of calling for the "extermination and genocide of infants from the Third World" (in reference to his calls for more birth control access).<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Bernie Sanders|retrieved=2025-03-30|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Bernie_Sanders|quote=Bernard "Bernie" Sanders, born September 8, 1941 (age 83), is a Marxist-Leninist, Communist, pro-inflationist limousine liberal elite millionaire 1%er, and demagogue in the pocket of Big Pharma who preys on naive and unsuspecting youth, minorities, and working people with class war hate speech. He currently serves as a United States Senator representing Vermont. His extremism is visible in his 2020 Presidential campaign slogan, "No Middle Ground." Sanders is a pre-eminent leftwing Socialist mass murder denier and proponent of communist dictatorship. Sanders has openly advocated for the extermination and genocide of infants from the Third World.}}</ref> Furthermore, they claim that [[Hollywood]] pushes a "[[Homophobia|homosexual agenda]]," that is "destroying the fabric of American culture," that it is sympathetic to communism, and criticise it for lacking their hardline Christian ideas.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Hollywood values|retrieved=2022-06-23|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Hollywood_values}}</ref>

Conservapedia believes that from 2021 to 2025, the [[United States of America]] was under a military junta ("[[Joe Biden|Biden]]-[[Kamala Harris|Harris]] junta") headed by [[National Bolshevism|fascist-Nazi-communist]] dictator Joe Biden, who gained power after the 2021 "Biden Putsch", which they think included the [[2021 United States Capitol riot|2021 capital coup attempt]], however, they claim that it was "[[Conspiracy theory|staged]]," and really done by "leftists."<ref name=":2">{{News citation|journalist=Telling|date=2022-01-09|title=Joseph Biden|url=https://conservapedia.com/Joseph_Biden|newspaper=Conservapedia|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-09|quote=}}</ref> It also claims that in 2022, a "Satanic portal" opened above the White House.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=The White House|retrieved=2025-01-12|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/The_White_House|archive-date=2024-08-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240803140316/https://www.conservapedia.com/The_White_House|quote=In 2022, conservative activist Roger Stone revealed that under the Biden Regime, a Satanic portal had opened up above the White House.}}</ref>

=== Other content ===
Conservapedia denies [[climate change]]<ref>{{News citation|journalist=Shobson20|date=2021-12-22|title=Climate change|url=https://conservapedia.com/Climate_change|newspaper=Conservapedia|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-09|quote=Climate change is the new name used by liberals for their global warming hoax}}</ref> and [[evolution]].<ref>{{News citation|journalist=Barret Brown|date=2009-04-23|title=Conservapedia: Bastion of the Reality-Denying Right|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/conservapedia-bastion-of-the-realitydenying-right|newspaper=Vanity Fair|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090530022101/http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/conservapedia-bastion-of-the-realitydenying-right.html|archive-date=2009-05-30|retrieved=|quote=}}</ref> They believe the myth that video games cause gun violence{{Citation needed}} (in reality, crime results from capitalism-induced poverty and desperation).

According to Conservapedia, communism (which they fail to understand is a [[Mode of production|economic system]], not a political one) and [[socialism]] (which they falsely define as a economic system where a "bureaucratic elite" controls the economy) are both "failed" systems. However, Conservapedia nonetheless appears to claim that nearly every political organization in the west that is not far-right is either "socialist" or "communist." Furthermore, Conservapedia claims that socialism has been "tried" in the [[UK]], [[Republic of India|India]], and [[State of Israel|Israel]], but "failed."<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Socialism|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Socialism|retrieved=2022-6-27|quote=[...]and it has been tried and failed in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, and Israel during the 20th century.}}</ref> They also claim that the [[European Union]]'s purpose is to subject Western Europe to [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]]/"Marxist-[[Trotskyism|Trotskyist]]" thought.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=European Union|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/European_Union}}</ref>

While Conservapedia calls nearly everybody who is even slightly less [[reactionary]] and hateful than them "far-left," Conservapedia also claims that the term "far-right" was developed as a conspiracy by [[Joseph Stalin]] and the "[[Frankfurt School]]."<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Political spectrum|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Political_spectrum|retrieved=2022-7-25|quote=Usage of terms like "right wing", "far right", and "ultra-right" by liberals about conservatives is usually intended to conjure up images of fascism and Nazi genocide (though any objective interpretation of the left-right political spectrum would reveal that the fascist regimes of WWII Europe were closer to the left-wing than to the right-wing). Indeed, some critics openly liken Israel and its leaders to "Nazis", even though Israel is the most democratic country in the entire Middle East. The misapplication of the right wing and far right to that of the Nazis is due to Josef Stalin stating after World War II that Nazis and fascism were "far right" or "right wing" both to paint truly right-wing organizations in a negative light and to deflect any blame from the Soviets regarding similar actions they may have conducted, as well as the Frankfurt School taking advantage of the post-war attempt by the American Jewish Committee to research the events of Nazism to prevent it from coming back to mislead people per their Marxist agenda.}}</ref>

Conservapedia's stance on [[United States imperialism]] appears entirely partisan: the invasion of [[Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–2011)|Libya]] under [[Barack Obama]] (a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]]) is condemned, while the [[Iraq War|invasion of Iraq]] under [[George W. Bush]] (a [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]) is defended.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Regime change|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Regime_change|retrieved=2025-03-30|quote=More successful historical regime changes occurred in [...] the removal of the dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and establishment of a parliamentary democracy. 
It should be noted, many extreme leftists in the United States vehemently opposed the establishment of a parliament democracy in Iraq and supported Iraqi fascism. 
[...] 
By contrast, the Obama administration, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power secured a U.N. Resolution to establish a No-fly zone during the Libyan uprising. 
The results were catastrophic: (1) slave markets were set up in the new regime Clinton and Obama created; (2) a tide of three million displaced persons invaded Europe; (3) a breakdown in international Superpower relations as Russia and China vowed to never trust American leaders' promises and assurances again.}}</ref> The website supports [[Vladimir Putin]] and the [[Russian Federation]], not because they play a positive role against imperialism, but because of Russia's socially conservative policies (such as the so-called "Gay Propaganda Law").<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> In fact, Conservapedia denies the existence of the Ukrainian nation.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Ukraine|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Ukraine|retrieved=2022-08-31}}</ref> Conservapedia is also ardently [[Zionism|Zionist]] and defends the actions of [[State of Israel|"Israel"]] frequently; in their discussion of the [[2023 Israel-Gaza War]], they repeat [[atrocity propaganda]] about Hamas supposedly beheading babies.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Swords of Iron|retrieved=2024-10-29|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Swords_of_Iron}}</ref>

Though it correctly claims that [[National Socialism]] "does not seek to abolish capitalism," Conservapedia still classifies National Socialism as a "far-left" ideology. It also claims that the [[People's Republic of China]] under [[Xi Jinping]] is an example of National Socialism.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=National Socialism|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/National_Socialism|retrieved=2022-08-31|quote=National socialist ideology does not seek to abolish capitalism; rather it seeks to use capitalism and racial or ethnic identity, as in Nazi Germany and contemporary China and Ukraine, to gather more strength and power to itself.}}</ref> Despite claiming to be against Nazism, it openly supports the [[Spanish State (1939-1975)|dictatorship]] of [[Francisco Franco]] in Spain, which was backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Essay:Worst Liberal Movies|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Essay:Worst_Liberal_Movies|retrieved=2024-12-24|quote=Promotes the Communistic Spanish Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War as "good guys" while demonizing Francisco Franco's forces. These themes, promoted by Marxist director Guillermo del Toro, were later expanded upon in Pan's Labyrinth.}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Conservapedia|title=Francisco Franco|url=https://www.conservapedia.com/Francisco_Franco|retrieved=2025-03-30}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Far-right groups in the United States]]
[[Category:Imperialist propaganda]]
[[Category:Imperialist organizations]]
[[Category:Online encyclopedias]]
[[Category:Wikis]]

Leo XIV

2025-11-23T23:17:09Z

PuzzledFox99: Changed redirect target from Robert Prevost to Leo XIV Prevost

#REDIRECT [[Leo XIV Prevost]]

Fascism

2025-11-23T23:09:40Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1981-052-06A, Albert Speer spricht in Munitionsfabrik.jpg|thumb|The Roman Salute is commonly associated with Nazis and other Fascists.]]
'''Fascism''' is a [[Counterrevolution|counter-revolutionary]] [[reactionary]] movement led by finance [[capital]]<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1935|title=The fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the struggle of the working class against fascism|chapter=The class character of fascism|page=|quote=No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. '''Fascism is the power of finance capital itself'''. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Main Report delivered at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|title=Encyclopedia of Marxism|url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/a.htm#fascism}}</ref> and a form of [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]] which emerged during periods of [[economic crisis]] in [[Imperialism|imperialist]] countries.<ref>{{Citation|author=William I. Robinson|year=2019|title=Global capitalist crisis and twenty-first century fascism: beyond the Trump hype|quote=Fascism, whether in its classical 20th-century form or possible variants of 21st-century neo-fascism, is a particular response to capitalist crisis, such as that of the 1930s and the one that began with the financial meltdown of 2008. Global capitalism is facing an organic crisis involving an intractable structural dimension, that of overaccumulation, and a political dimension, that of legitimacy or hegemony that is approaching a general crisis of capitalist rule.|publisher=Science & Society, 83(2), 155–183|doi=10.1521/siso.2019.83.2.155}}</ref> In other words, fascism is [[capitalism]] in decay.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Rajani Palme Dutt]]|year=1935|title=Fascism and Social Revolution|chapter=Preface to the Second Edition|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocial0000rpal/page/n15/mode/2up|page=xiv|location=London|publisher=Martin Lawrence LTD|quote=Fascism is not merely the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final attempt to defeat the working-class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay.}}</ref> The [[Communist International (1919–1943)|Third International]] described fascism as the "open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most [[Chauvinism|chauvinistic]], and most imperialist elements of finance capital."<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Georgi Dimitrov]]|year=1935|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|chapter=Fascism and the Working Class|quote=Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm}}</ref>

Fascism abolishes [[bourgeois democracy]] without abolishing bourgeois rule itself. In contrast, [[socialism]] abolishes both in order to create a [[Democratic centralism|more substantive form of democracy]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[John Bellamy Foster]]|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=This Is Not Populism|date=2017-06-01|url=https://monthlyreview.org/2017/06/01/this-is-not-populism/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230718012353/https://monthlyreview.org/2017/06/01/this-is-not-populism/|archive-date=2023-07-18}}</ref>

Fascism usually promotes policies that favor the ever-expanding domination of capital. Its political aspect is marked by pervasive [[anti-communism]], a profound aversion towards [[democracy]], the justification and glorification of [[class society]] through [[class collaboration]], and chauvinistic tendencies, namely reactionary [[nationalism]], [[racism]], [[sexism]], [[xenophobia]], [[transphobia]] and [[ableism]]. Fascist ideologues usually promote [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]], irrational myths and manipulative distortions of truth to gather support of their popular base.

== Analysis ==

According to [[Georgi Dimitrov]], fascism is "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital,"<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital."}}</ref> taking vengeance against the [[Proletariat|working class]] and the revolutionary section of the [[peasantry]] and [[intelligentsia]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Fascism is not a form of state power "standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie," as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia."}}</ref> Both the development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country. In certain countries, principally those in which fascism has no broad mass basis and in which the struggle of the various groups within the camp of the fascist bourgeoisie itself is rather acute, fascism does not immediately venture to abolish parliament, but allows the other bourgeois parties, as well as the Social-Democratic Parties, to retain a modicum of legality. In other countries, where the ruling bourgeoisie fears an early outbreak of revolution, fascism establishes its unrestricted political monopoly, either immediately or by intensifying its reign of terror against and persecution of all rival parties and groups. This does not prevent fascism, when its position becomes particularly acute, from trying to extend its basis and, without altering its class nature, trying to combine open terrorist dictatorship with a crude sham of parliamentarism."}}</ref>

In foreign policy, fascism incites violent hatred of other nations, acting in the interests of the extreme imperialists, yet it presents itself to the masses in the guise of a champion of an ill-treated nation, and appeals to outraged national sentiments.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations."}}</ref> Within a country or nation, fascists are not the patriots they boast to be, as they engage in [[historical revisionism]] of cultures, a form of ethnocide, to promote their fascist ideology. Communists must urgently expose the way fascists in practice do not care about the proletariat's native cultures, and combat this revisionism, outshining fascists with a more genuine nationalism, adapting Marxism-Leninism to their own national conditions, and practice [[proletarian internationalism]]. The proletariat of colonized nations will not shy from national sentiments and struggle against the imperialism oppressing their native cultures, and the proletariat of imperialist nations will struggle against their own bourgeoisie's oppressor policies. Communists from oppressor nations must valorize the more noble, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, non-chauvinist aspects of their cultures.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1914|title=ON THE NATIONAL PRIDE OF THE GREAT RUSSIANS|title-url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/NPGR14.html|quote=Are we class-conscious Great-Russian proletarians impervious to the feeling of national pride? Certainly not. We love our language and our motherland; we, more than any other group, are working to raise its laboring masses (i.e., nine-tenths of its population) to the level of intelligent democrats and socialists. We, more than anybody are grieved to see and feel to what violence, oppression and mockery our beautiful motherland is being subjected by the tsarist hangmen, the nobles and the capitalists. We are proud of the fact that those acts of violence met with resistance in our midst, in the midst of the Great Russians; that this midst brought forth Radischev, the Decembrists, the intellectual revolutionaries of the seventies; that in 1905 the Great-Russian working class created a powerful revolutionary party of the masses.
We are filled with national pride because of the knowledge that the Great-Russian nation, too, has created a revolutionary class, that it, too, has proved capable of giving humanity great examples of struggle for freedom and for socialism; that its contribution is not confined solely to great pogroms, numerous scaffolds, torture chambers, severe famines and abject servility before the priests, the tsars, the landowners and the capitalists.
We are filled with national pride, and therefore we particularly hate our slavish past... and our slavish present, in which the same landowners, aided by the capitalists, lead us into war to stifle Poland and the Ukraine, to throttle the democratic movement in Persia and in China, to strengthen the gang of Romanovs, Bobrinskis, Puriskeviches that cover with shame our Great-Russian national dignity.|city=Moscow|publisher=Progress Publishers|trans-title=Sotsial-Demokrat No. 35|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="The fascists are rummaging through the entire history of every nation so as to be able to pose as the heirs and continuators of all that was exalted and heroic in its past, while all that was degrading or offensive to the national sentiments of the people they make use of as weapons against the enemies of fascism. Hundreds of books are being published in Germany with only one aim -- to falsify the history of the German people and give it a fascist complexion."}}</ref> The socialist revolution will be the "salvation" of nations, cultures and the people. Both the proletariat's international and diverse national interests will be defended. The cultures will be liberated from monopoly capitalism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Communists who suppose that all this has nothing to do with the cause of the working class, who do nothing to enlighten the masses on the past of their people in a historically correct fashion, in a genuinely Marxist-Leninist spirit, who do nothing to link up the present struggle with the people's revolutionary traditions and past -- voluntarily hand over to the fascist falsifiers all that is valuable in the historical past of the nation, so that the fascists may fool the masses. No, Comrades, we are concerned with every important question, not only of the present and the future, but also of the past of our own peoples. ...to sneer at all the national sentiments of the broad masses of working people is far from being a genuine Bolshevik, and has understood nothing of the teaching of Lenin on the national question.
Comrades, proletarian internationalism must, so to speak, "acclimatize itself" in each country in order to strike deep roots in its native land. National forms of the proletarian class struggle and of the labor movement in the individual countries are in no contradiction to proletarian internationalism; on the contrary, it is precisely in these forms that the international interests of the proletariat can be successfully defended.
...the socialist revolution will signify the salvation of the nation and will open up to it the road to loftier heights. By the very fact of building at the present time its class organizations and consolidating its positions, by the very fact of defending democratic rights and liberties against fascism, by the very fact of fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, the working class is fighting for the future of the nation. The revolutionary proletariat is fighting to save the culture of the people, to liberate it from the shackles of decaying monopoly capitalism, from barbarous fascism, which is laying violent hands on it. Only the proletarian revolution can avert the destruction of culture and raise it to its highest flowering as a truly national culture -- national in form and socialist in content
Only by struggling hand in hand with the proletariat of the imperialist countries can the colonial peoples and oppressed national minorities achieve their freedom. The sole road to victory for the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries lies through the revolutionary alliance of the working class of the imperialist countries with the national-liberation movement in the colonies and dependent countries, because, as Marx taught us, "no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations."
Communists belonging to an oppressed, dependent nation cannot combat chauvinism successfully among the people of their own nation if they do not at the same time show in practice, in the mass movement, that they actually struggle for the liberation of their nation from the alien yoke. And again, on the other hand, the Communists of an oppressing nation cannot do what is necessary to educate the working masses of their nation in the spirit of internationalism without waging a resolute struggle against the oppressor policy of their "own" bourgeoisie, for the right of complete self-determination for the nations kept in bondage by it. If they do not do this, they likewise do not make it easier for the working people of the oppressed nation to overcome their nationalist prejudices.}}</ref>

Fascists gain their following from the petty bourgeoisie and certain sections of the proletariat through disingenuous appeals to their needs and demands, inflaming prejudices and playing on their sense of justice and even on their revolutionary traditions, their faith in revolution, their resentments, hatred of corruption, and the urge towards socialism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote=What is the source of the influence of fascism over the masses? Fascism is able to attract the masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands. Fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, but also plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice and sometimes even on their revolutionary traditions.}}</ref> Fascism promised many things: to fight corruption, "a fair wage," a great future for the youth; for the landless and indebted peasants, an end to debt bondage and rent, expropriation of the landed estates from usurers without compensation.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote=This, the true character of fascism, must be particularly stressed because in a number of countries, under cover of social demagogy, fascism has managed to gain the following of the mass of the petty bourgeoisie that has been dislocated by the crisis, and even of certain sections of the most backward strata of the proletariat.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="WHAT DOES FASCIST VICTORY BRING TO THE MASSES? Fascism promised the workers "a fair wage," but actually it has brought them an even lower, a pauper, standard of living. It promised work for the unemployed, but actually it has brought them even more painful torments of starvation and forced servile labor. In practice it converts the workers and unemployed into pariahs of capitalist society stripped of rights; destroys their trade unions; deprives them of the right to strike and to have their working-class press, forces them into fascist organizations, plunders their social insurance funds and transforms the mills and factories into barracks where the unbridled arbitrary rule of the capitalist reigns. Fascism promised the working youth a broad highway to a brilliant future. But actually it has brought wholesale dismissals of young workers, labor camps and incessant military drilling for a war of conquest. Fascism promised to guarantee office workers, petty officials and intellectuals security of existence, to destroy the omnipotence of the trusts and wipe out profiteering by bank capital. But actually it has brought them an ever greater degree of despair and uncertainty as to the morrow; it is subjecting them to a new bureaucracy made up of the most submissive of its followers, it is setting up an intolerable dictatorship of the trusts and spreading corruption and degeneration to an unprecedented extent. Fascism promised the ruined and impoverished peasants to put an end to debt bondage, to abolish rent and even to expropriate the landed estates without compensation, in the interests of the landless and ruined peasants. But actually it is placing the laboring peasants in a state of unprecedented servitude to the trusts and the fascist state apparatus, and pushes to the utmost limit the exploitation of the great mass of the peasantry by the big landowners, the banks and the usurers."}}</ref>

But actually, it brings them an even lower standard of living: destroys their trade unions, deprives them of the right to strike and to have their working-class press, forces the revolutionary movement underground, pressures them into fascist organizations, plunders their social insurance funds and transforms the mills and factories into prisons, where the unbridled arbitrary rule of the capitalist reigns. Fascism causes wholesale dismissals of young workers, labor camps and incessant military drilling for a war of conquest, places the peasants in unprecedented servitude to the usurers, landlords, and the fascist state apparatus. It supresses the democratic liberties of the working people, falsifies, curtails and intensifies the law. It commits unspeakable crimes against humanity in concentration camps and torture chambers, and through police brutality, sterilization and countless murders.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="I have before me a statistical summary drawn up by the International Red Aid [international organization of that time for aid to revolutionary fighters] regarding the number of killed, wounded, arrested, maimed and tortured to death in Germany, Poland, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In Germany alone, since the National-Socialists came to power, over 4,200 anti-fascist workers, peasants, employees, intellectuals -- Communists, Social Democrats and members of opposition Christian organizations -- have been murdered, 317,800 arrested, 218,600 injured and subjected to torture. In Austria, since the battles of February last year the "Christian" fascist government has murdered 1,900 revolutionary workers, maimed and injured 10,000 and arrested 40,000. And this summary, comrades is far from complete."}}</ref>

From the point of view of the colonized, fascism is very familiar. Fascism in the colonizing states is the exact violence that these colonialist-imperialist nations (e.g. Europe) unleashed upon the world turned inward.<ref>{{Citation|author=Aimé Césaire|year=1950|publisher=Monthly Review Press|title=Discourse on colonialism|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Discourse_on_Colonialism|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=36|quote=[W]e must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact…each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France and they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery (13).
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind-it’s Nazism, it will, pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack (14).|pdf=https://libcom.org/files/zz_aime_cesaire_robin_d.g._kelley_discourse_on_colbook4me.org_.pdf|city=France|publisher=Réclame|isbn=1583670254|doi=|lg=|mia=|trans-title=Discours sur le colonialisme|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Frantz Fanon|year=1961|title=Wretched of the earth|chapter=|section=|page=90|quote="what is fascism if not colonialism when rooted in a traditionally colonialist country?"|pdf=|city=|publisher=Grove Press|isbn=9780802150837|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=D2A7D155578D59565375286BA995A79D|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Fascism in the settler colonial countries translates to the acceleration of colonialist violence upon indigenous and marginalized groups, perpetrated largely by a collaboration between the settler population, the settler-colonial state, and indigenous compradors. Along with that, all the indignities of accelerated capitalism may be thrust upon not only the native, but also the settler population. With diminishing returns of [[primitive accumulation|primary capital accumulation]] as the colonialist project progresses, the bourgeoisie may enact increased demands and pressure on the settler proletariat. The effects of fascist [[propaganda]] results in its followers being inspired to violent [[terrorist]] actions against the blamed populations, and these terrorists are quietly or even loudly supported by fascist politicians.<ref>{{Citation|author=Mnar Adley|year=2023|publisher=Mint Press News|title=Manifestos of Hate: What White Terrorists Have in Common|title-url=https://www.mintpressnews.com/manifestos-of-hate-what-white-terrorists-have-in-common/261344/}}</ref> The murder of [[working class]] Muslims and Latin Americans, and the shooting and bombing of Mosques and Synagogues to fight "globalists" or "replacement" anxieties of the white man are examples of this.<ref>{{Citation|author=Weiyi Cai, Simone Landon|year=2019|title=Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections.|publisher=The New York Times|title-url=}}https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Natasha Lennard|year=2019|title=The El Paso Shooter Embraced Eco-Fascism. We Can’t Let the Far Right Co-Opt the Environmental Struggle.|publisher=The Intercept|title-url=https://theintercept.com/2019/08/05/el-paso-shooting-eco-fascism-migration/}}</ref>

In the preliminary stages, bourgeois governments adopt reactionary measures that facilitate the fascist acquisition of power. This is the time when fascism should be fought, or it will be too late. Fascism was able to come to power primarily because the working class succumbed to class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and was divided and disarmed in face of the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. The Communist Parties failed to form a united anti-fascist proletarian front with the Social-Democratic leaders, to struggle against fascism's poisonous ideology and its historical and cultural revisionism, this failure cleared the path to power for fascism. In order to defeat fascism, there needs to be an agreement to form a united anti-fascist proletarian front with the progressive non-Communists.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="All this, however, does not make less important the fact that, before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism. Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory."}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1952|title=Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|city=Moscow|section=2,part 2|page=81-82|url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC20.html|quote="If we establish a united front with the Communists, the petty bourgeoisie will take fright at the 'Red danger' and will desert to the fascists," we hear it said quite frequently. But does the united front represent a threat to the peasants, small traders, artisans, working intellectuals? No, the united front is a threat to the big bourgeoisie, the financial magnates, the junkers and other exploiters, whose regime brings complete ruin to all these strata.}}</ref> Humanity will inevitably take the next step towards progress. Fascism and the bourgeoisie are doomed to fail, and communism will succeed.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1952|title=Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|city=Moscow|section=2,part 2|page=81-82|url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC20.html|quote=Acting thus, the bourgeoisie acts as all classes doomed by history have acted. Communists should know that the future, at any rate, belongs to them; therefore we can and must combine the most intense passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the coolest and most sober evaluation of the mad ravings of the bourgeoisie.}}</ref>

Take note however that this does not mean Communists and progressives must or will have complete political unity. In order to more formally unite under one big party, without ceasing to be revolutionary, these 5 conditions must be met:

# Complete independence from the bourgeoisie and dissolution of the alliance between progressives and the bourgeoisie;
# Preliminary unity of action;
# Recognition of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
# Refusal to support one's own bourgeoisie in an imperialist war;
# Building up the Party on the basis of democratic centralism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="First, complete independence from the bourgeoisie and dissolution of the bloc of Social-Democracy with the bourgeoisie;
Second, preliminary unity of action;
Third, recognition of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of soviets a sine qua non;
Fourth, refusal to support one's own bourgeoisie in an imperialist war;
Fifth, building up the Party on the basis of democratic centralism, which ensures unity of purpose and action, and which has been tested by the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks."}}</ref>

== Ideological origins ==

Rather than being a unified, cohesive ideology, Fascism has always been very eclectic and based in philosophical [[idealism]]. In fact, it is a core characteristic that fascists opportunistically recycle, adapt and twist narratives to fit their goals. However, the goals are always equally brutal. Therefore, it is necessary to outline fascism's ideological evolution by observing its noteworthy material impacts upon the world, not by discerning its myriad of overlapping, incoherent and obscure ideological tendencies and thinkers. The only uniting force behind fascism, in practice, is its defense of the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy, settler-colonialism and imperialist chauvinism. A disproportionate amount of influence, in fact, originated from European aristocrat ideologues.

The origins of fascism as a counter-revolutionary movement can be traced back to the [[French Republic|French]] far-right [[French Action]],<ref group="lower-alpha">French: ''Action Française''</ref> which was an openly anti-[[Marxism|Marxist]] political organization established in 1899 proposing an "integral nation" for French society through [[class collaboration]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Ernst Nolte|year=1966|title=Three faces of fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|page=|pdf=|city=New York|publisher=New American Library|isbn=9780451008619|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=082DBA3CA0FEE611DCDB8D2CC1DF350C|mia=|trans-title=Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Die Action française, Der italienische Faschismus, Der Nationalsozialismus|trans-lang=German}}</ref>

The term "fascism" comes from the [[Italian Republic|Italian]] National Fascist Party,<ref group="lower-alpha">Italian: ''Partito Nazionale Fascista''</ref> a party founded by [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1921; whose practices and ideology would later define this [[reactionary]] movement as a whole. Mussolini's fascism was constructed out of an admiration and romanticization of [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Roman civilisation]], which originated in modern-day Italy. Thus, the name fascism was based on the ''fasces'', an axe that is surrounded and bound to a bundle of sticks and was carried by officials (''lictors'') in political and military demonstrations. This was a symbol of power and authority that Mussolini repurposed for fascism.

Shifting blame away from [[capital]] is as old as fascism's birth. The oldest and most common example for such a distraction shared by fascists worldwide is [[antisemitism]]. The most widely circulated and influential myth since the late 19th century is a conspiracy theory that blames Jewish people for the world's problems, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<ref>{{Citation|author= JACQUES E. HALBRONN, LARISSA BLIMAN-HALBRONN, לריסה and ז'אק הלברון
בלימן הלברו|year=1997|title=THE TERM PROTOCOLS, FROM THE ZIONIST CONGRESSES TO "THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION" AND THE RECEPTION OF THE RUSSIAN "PROTOCOLS" IN CENTRAL EUROPE BEFORE 1917|publisher=האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות / World Union of Jewish Studies|title-url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/23535804}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Marisa Meltzer|year=2021|publisher=Washington Post|title=QAnon’s Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality|title-url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/}}</ref> This rag remains the most widely circulated book by fascists on the internet today.

==== Blavatsky, Cultural Appropriation and New Age Myths ====

The violent and shameless [[appropriation]] of the world's cultures has been wildly popular among Europeans since European colonialism began, and by the 19th century, their [[orientalism|orientalist]] gaze fixated upon Asia, or "the Orient".<ref>{{Citation|author=Edward Said|year=1978|title=Orientalism|publisher=Vintage Books|page=4|quote=To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental "experts" and "hands," an Oriental professorate, a complex array of "Oriental" ideas (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use -- the list can be extended more or less indefinitely. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did.}}</ref> These appropriations became extremely instrumental to fascist myth making. [[New Age]] occultism such as the bizarre "Theosophy" (not to be confused with the term used by Neoplatonists) was invented by 19th century German aristocrat, Helena Blavatsky<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie |year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref>, a lifelong traveler and [[settler]] in Russia, the United States of America and India. Theosophy used a patchwork of orientalist myths and interpretations of various indigenous cultures, such as Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Blavatsky was the inventor of the Atlantis myth, Lemurians, etc. Among the bizarre myths, Theosophy claimed that the mixing of races caused degeneration.<ref>{{Citation|author=Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|title=The Secret Doctrine Vols. I & II|publisher=Theosophy|title-url=libgen.li/file.php?md5=4722005421409000a2200f8f271a99a1}}</ref> Theosophy was influential in the 20th century German fascist regime's construction of the "Aryan" national myth through Guido von List's German adaptation of it into the spiritual and cultural framework of Nazism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie|year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=Springer|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref> That is why the Nazis appropriated the swastika from Buddhism.<ref>{{Citation|author=James M. Skidmore|year=2017|title=How Nazis twisted the swastika, a symbol of the Buddha, into an emblem of hate|publisher=Quartz|title-url=https://qz.com/india/1068860/how-nazis-twisted-the-swastika-a-symbol-of-buddhism-hinduism-jainism-into-an-emblem-of-hate}}</ref> It is important to emphasize that the fascists did not truly understand the cultures they were appropriating.

The way that early [[orientalism|orientalists]] treated the [[BIPOC]], often Asian, cultures they culturally appropriated is not much different from [[New Age]] followers today, in fact the fundamental idea of a [[New Age]] movement was coined and developed in 1970 by the theosophist David Spangler and maintains its orientalist and settler-colonial core and remains popular into the 21st century.<ref>{{Citation|author=J. Gordon Melton|year=2000-2023|title=New Age movement|publisher=Encyclopaedia Brittanica|title-url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement}}</ref> The term "New Age" is probably a reference to the magazine ''The New Age'' (1907-1922) which included Nietzschean and Theosophist writings. <ref>{{Citation|author=Robert Scholes|title=General Introduction to The New Age 1907-1922|publisher=The Modernist Journals Project (searchable database). Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing.|title-url=https://modjourn.org/general-introduction-to-the-new-age-1907-1922-by-scholes-robert/}}</ref>

==== Nietzsche ====
Historian and [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] philosopher [[Domenico Losurdo]] in his work ''Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel'', pointed out that [[Nietzsche]], who was an aristocrat, can be associated with a reactionary trend against the rise of the [[Paris commune]] in 1871.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=26|quote=[In The Birth of Tragedy,] Nietzsche’s preoccupation, or rather his anguish, about a danger not remote or hypothetical, but real and impending, is plainly evident. The reference to the Paris Commune is transparent, an event that a great part of the culture of that time experienced as the threatening announcement of a possible imminent end of culture.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Nietzsche's views were consistently anti-[[Liberalism|liberal]], anti-[[Socialism|socialist]], anti-democratic and even promoted racial hygiene, a tendency which would later inspire fascist movements.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=731|quote=Even a scholar that moves cautiously on ground alien to him, that of philosophical historiography, and clearly wants to avoid a critical confrontation with the hermeneutics of innocence is forced to acknowledge an essential point regarding Nietzsche interpretations: ‘Much in his work can be interpreted in terms of racial hygiene.’ Other authors are even clearer: with his insistence on the ‘degeneration’ and ‘physiological decline of European humanity’, the philosopher must be placed ‘in the context of the direct preparation of eugenics’. Indeed, in this context, he sadly occupies a privileged position: he represents the ‘turning point’ for the transition from the ‘idea of selection’ to ‘anti-degenerative activism’. The reconstruction of the history behind Hitler’s eugenic and genocidal practices cannot, in this view, ignore Nietzsche, who expressly and peremptorily demanded the ‘suppression of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate.’|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

==== Sorel ====
Georges Sorel (1847–1922) was a French syndicalist that contributed and inspired the rise of [[National Syndicalism]] in Italy and Spain. His most famous works centred around the idea of [[myth]], which he highlights as "forming the centre of man’s cosmology and world view in all ages".<ref>{{News citation|title=Georges Sorel and the Triumphant Return of the Myth|date=2020-10-15|url=https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/georges-sorel-and-triumphant-return-myth|journalist=Rodrigo Sobota}}</ref> In 1909, Sorel began to adopt the idea of Integral Nationalism, publishing an article praising the far-right group [[French Action]] in ''Divenire Sociale''—the leading journal for Italian Syndicalists at the time. It received immense praise by French Action; being reprinted under the name "Antiparliamentary Socialists”, and in 1910, he joined the group. During this time, he developed further reactionary ideals, leading him to support Catholic Patriotism and further embedding himself in fascist ideology.<ref>{{Citation|author=Zeev Sternhell|year=1994|title=THE BIRTH OF FASCIST IDEOLOGY|chapter=1–3|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceavi2ziwuqzadtp7fjcw24uvkoix4wzybsibskpjmfbksjcxwblyg?filename=Zeev%20Sternhell%2C%20Mario%20Sznajder%2C%20Maia%20Asheri%20-%20The%20Birth%20of%20Fascist%20Ideology_%20From%20Cultural%20Rebellion%20to%20Political%20Revolution-Princeton%20University%20Press%20%281994%29.pdf|isbn=0-691-03289-0|lg=http://library.lol/main/10886BD4A08A7180CDA3D8B3BED5ADD1}}</ref> Mussolini looked up highly to Sorel and claimed he was his "foremost teacher".<ref>{{News citation|title=A Premature Fascist? ― Sorel and Mussolini|date=1950-03-01|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106591295000300102?journalCode=prqa&|journalist=James H. Meisel}}</ref>

== Fascism in Europe ==

===Italian fascism===
The Italian fascist government of 1922 was the first known historical example of large-scale privatizations of state-owned enterprises.<ref>{{Citation|author=Germà Bel|year=2011|title=The first privatization: Selling SOEs and privatizing public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922-1925)|chapter=|page=|quote=Italy’s first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatization policy between 1922 and 1925. [...] These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatization episodes in the Western world.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=10.1093/cje/beq051|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

===German fascism===
{{Main article|Nazism}}
The most extreme form of fascism was German fascism, which called itself National Socialism despite being supported by finance capitalists.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=[[Georgi Dimitrov]]|year=1937|title=The United Front|page=10–11|chapter=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International|title-url=http://marx2mao.com/Other/TUF35i.html|city=San Francisco|publisher=Proletarian Publishers|chapter-url=http://marx2mao.com/Other/TUF35i.html#c1}}</ref> Bourgeois magazine ''The Economist'' introduced the euphemism ''privatization'' in 1936, to describe [[German fascism|Nazi Germany]]'s economic policies,<ref>{{Citation|author=Germà Bel|year=2006|title=Retrospectives: the coining of “privatization” and Germany's National Socialist Party|chapter=|page=|pdf=|city=|publisher=Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(3), 187–194|isbn=|doi=10.1257/jep.20.3.187|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=|quote=}}</ref> which from a Marxist perspective is the selling out of state infrastructure to the highest bidder.

German fascism was most known for its [[Genocide|genocidal]], [[Expansionism|expansionist]], [[Imperialism|imperialist]] and [[Colonialism|colonialist]] rule under the [[National-socialist German Workers' Party|Nazi Party]] from 1933 to 1945, culminating in the deaths of at least 30 million people, including 26.6 million Soviets.<ref>{{Citation|author=Lieutenant Colonel S.B. Eremenko|year=|title=On the issue of losses of the opposing sides at the Soviet-German front during the Great Patriotic War|chapter=|page=|quote=Today we can state with a certain degree of probability that losses of the Soviet Union amounted to 26.6 million people, including losses of the Armed Forces amounted to 8,668,400 servicemen. The total statistical figure includes not only those killed in action and those who died from wounds and illnesses, but also civilians killed during bombing, artillery shelling and punitive actions, prisoners of war and underground fighters shot and tortured in camps, and those sent away for forced labor in Germany.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=|title-url=https://encyclopedia.mil.ru/encyclopedia/history/more.htm?id=11359251@cmsArticle|chapter-url=|trans-title=К вопросу о потерях противоборствующих сторон на советско-германском фронте в годы Великой Отечественной войны: правда и вымысел|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref> While the word "Nazi" is short for "National socialist", they were capitalists, the term "socialist" being nothing more than a ploy to gain working-class support. Not only did the German fascists allow the virulent [[exploitation]] of the working people and concentration of capital,<ref>{{Citation|author=Sidney Merlin|year=1943|title=Trends in German economic control since 1933|chapter=|page=207|quote=The party, moreover, facilitates the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires by its foremost members and collaborators through "privatization" and other measures, thereby intensifying centralization of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite.|pdf=|city=|publisher=The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 57|isbn=|doi=10.2307/1882751|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> they adopted a [[Settler colonialism|settler-colonial]] model coupled with exploitation, colonialism, and mass terror applied to the [[Europe|European continent]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Thomas Kühne|year=2013|title=Colonialism and the Holocaust: continuities, causations, and complexities|chapter=German colonialism and German peculiarities|page=343|quote=Hitler's writings and speeches, public and private, left no doubt that Lebensraum, or living space, was to be gained on the continent rather than overseas. The German equivalent of British India or French Algeria was not Cameroon, Togo or German Southwest Africa but central and east Europe, as some scholars have reminded the advocates of the salt water colonial paradigm.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 15|isbn=|doi=10.1080/14623528.2013.821229|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> The ideological justification for colonization of European peoples by Nazis was promoted as ''[[Lebensraum]]'',<ref group="lower-alpha">English: ''Living space''</ref> and was directly influenced by [[United States of America|Statesian]] genocide of native peoples through [[Manifest Destiny]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Robert J. Miller|year=2020|title=Nazi Germany's race laws, the United States, and American Indians|chapter=|page=14|quote=Many of the Lebensraum justifications that Hitler and Nazis used directly echoed the justifications given for American Manifest Destiny. (...) National Socialists took on the mantle of noble colonizers who were fighting against ignoble savages. Not surprisingly, scholars recognize that these Nazi ideas on Lebensraum were largely modeled on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century understandings of American expansion.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=http://librarian.libgen.gs/ads.php?md5=77a60b95047d1913f026368bbf9a3225&downloadname=10.2139/ssrn.3541009|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

The Nazi Party was beaten into dissolution by the [[Soviet Union]] after the Battle of Berlin in May 1945.

=== Greek fascism ===
{{Main article|Hellenic Republic#Military junta (1967–1974)}}

In 1967, a coup d’etat in Greece established a military-fascist junta that lasted until 1974.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=A. A. Galkin|year=1977|chapter=Fascism|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Fascism|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=27|page=222-224|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т27_604.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref>

=== Portuguese fascism ===
From 1933 to 1974, [[Portugal]] was ruled by the ''Estado Novo'' ("New State"), headed by [[António de Oliveira Salazar]]. Under Salazar's dictatorship, the Portuguese [[working class]] was subjugated to [[reactionary]] [[Christianity|Christian]] doctrine, as well as a [[Third Positionism|corporatist]] economy. The Salazarist regime was also militantly [[imperialist]], repressing calls for independence and self-determination in [[Republic of Angola|Angola]] and [[Republic of Mozambique|Mozambique]]. The Estado Novo would finally fall in 1974, after a progressive military coup and later a popular revolution that was left unfinished. By the end of the 1970s, Portugal had returned to being a bourgeois democracy.<ref>{{Citation|author=Howard J. Wiarda|year=1977|title=Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dHFaAAAAIAAJ|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=9780870232213|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

Portugal, at the time a Fascist dictatorship, was one of the founding members of the [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization]].

===Spanish fascism ===
Following the victory of the Spanish [[Popular Front]] in 1936, a fascist revolt led by [[Francisco Franco]] broke out, whose ambitions were assisted by invading Germany and Italy, and silently backed by the rest of the allies. A [[Spanish Civil War|civil war]] lasting three years followed, culminating in the crushing of Republican forces.<ref name=":1" /> The regime went on to last three more decades, and it is said that the current "reformed" Spanish state is a continuation of the same regime. Notably, Franco reintroduced the king of Spain in 1956 (whose parent was deposed in 1931). To this day, Spain remains a monarchy.

=== British Fascism ===
{{Main article|Oswald Mosley}}

== Fascism in the Americas ==

=== United States ===
[[File:USA capital photo jan. 2021.jpg|thumb|Many neo-fascist groups were involved in the [[2021 United States Capitol riot|2021 United States Capitol coup attempt.]]]]

After World War II, the settler-colonial United States of North America began to be the new pioneer of orientalism,<ref>{{Citation|author=Edward Said|year=1978|title=Orientalism|publisher=Vintage Books|page=4|quote=From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did.}}</ref> and, unsurprisingly, many Fascist currents are initially developed there before being replicated internationally.<ref>{{Citation|author=Alex Ross|year=2018|publisher=The New Yorker|title=How American Racism Influenced Hitler|title-url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler}}</ref> Contemporary fascists such as the [[White House]] cabinet member and close advisor to [[Donald Trump]], Steve Bannon, have publicly quoted Julius Evola.<ref>{{Citation|author=Jason Horowitz|year=2017|title=Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists|publisher=The New York Times|title-url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Morgan Jones|year=2022|title=How Julius Evola Became the Internet’s Favorite Fascist|publisher=Jacobin|title-url=https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-bronze-age-pervert}}</ref> Evola was an Italian fascist ideologue, spiritualist, and orientalist, influenced by theosophy and Nietszche, who (like Mussolini) called for a restoration of the ancient Roman empire, but fully rejected [[modern]] Western society and predicted its [[accelerationism|accelerationist]] collapse and the return of pre-"rational", "feudal", "mystic" society in his own Esoteric Fascist theory.<ref>{{Citation|author=Julius Evola|year=1934|publisher=Inner Traditions|title=Revolt Against the Modern World|trans-title=Rivolta contro il mondo moderno|page=341|quote=Conversely, it has rightfully been suggested that the feudal system is that which characterizes the majority of the great traditional eras and the one most suited for the regular development of traditional structures. In this type of regime the principle of plurality and of relative political autonomy of the individual parts is emphasized, as is the proper context of that universal element, that unum quod non est pars that alone can really organize and unify these parts, not by contrasting but by presiding over each one of them through the transcendent, superpolitical, and regulating function that the universal embodies (Dante). In this event royalty works together with the feudal aristocracy and the imperial function does not limit the autonomy of the single principalities or kingdoms, as it assumes the single nationalities without altering them.|trans-lang=Italian}}</ref> Fascist New Agers have been found storming the capitol building of the United States of North America.<ref>{{Citation|author=Susannah Crockford|year=2021|publisher=Religion Dispatch|title=Q Shaman’s New Age-Radical Right Blend Hints at the Blurring of Seemingly Disparate Categories|title-url=https://religiondispatches.org/q-shamans-new-age-radical-right-blend-hints-at-the-blurring-of-seemingly-disparate-categories/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Angus Greig|year=2021|publisher=The Washington Post|title=QAnon’s Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality|title-url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/}}</ref>

The term "alt-right" refers to a loose grouping of far-right extremists, largely based on the internet. Alt-righters are often "white nationalists" ([[Racism|white supremacists]]), [[Neo-Nazism|neo-nazis]], highly [[Sexism|misogynistic]], and otherwise chauvinist. Many alt-righters claim to be promoting a form of [[identity politics]], that is, for the support of white people or white males, against perceived repression from ethnic minorities and females. Many other alt-righters are openly white-supremacist, and otherwise seek to create a white ethno-state, often motivated by bloated and fear-mongering reports of "illegal aliens" (non-white people) that come from the [[Statesian]] [[Bourgeois media|capitalist news]].<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Southern Poverty Law Center|title=Ideology: Alt-right|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right}}</ref>

A cult of personality developed around multi-billionaire president [[Donald Trump]], whose rise to infamy was cheered on by a wave of reactionary nationalism, xenophobia, and populism. Such trends were marked by increased membership in neo-fascist paramilitary groups such as the [[Proud Boys]], [[Three Percenters]], and [[Oath Keepers|Oathkeepers]].

Trump’s first term ended in an [[2021 United States Capitol riot|attempted putsch of the American government]], mainly done by the Far-right paramilitary groups mentioned above. The putsch (often referred to in the capitalist media as the “Jan. 6 insurrection" or riot), was motivated by false conspiracy theories about the [[2020 United States presidential election|2020 election]] being rigged in favor of the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]], as well as Trump’s personal agitation.

Donald Trump took power again after the [[2024 United States presidential election|2024 election]], starting a second term. At his side as vice president is [[JD Vance]], a pupil of billionare [[Peter Thiel]] and disciple of [[Curtis Yarvin]], the latter of whom advocates for the United States being under a "national [[CEO]], [or] what's called a [[dictator]]."<ref name=":2">{{Web citation|author=Stephanie Pavlick|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Meet Peter Thiel: The tech billionaire influencing top members of the Trump administration|date=2024-12-06|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-influencing-top-members-trump-administration/}}</ref> Thiel, another disciple of Yarvin's, has built a large network of tech billionaires whose goal is to turn the United States into an explicit corporatocracy. Through Vance, they have tremendous influence in the White House.<ref name=":2" />

=== Latin America ===

{{Main article |Pinochet}}
{{Main article |Alberto Fujimori}}
{{Main article |2019 Bolivia Coup Attempt}}

== Fascism in Asia ==

===Japanese fascism===
Japanese fascism, also known as Shōwa Statism, was based on a number of [[imperialist]] and [[Ultranationalism|ultranationalist]] political ideas from various Japanese thinkers. Japan became a fully fascist state in 1940 and remained that way until they surrendered in 1945.<ref>{{Citation|year=1978|chapter=Japan|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Japan|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=30|page=516-547|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т30_742.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian|quote=As preparations for war proceeded, there was a dramatic upsurge of reactionary forces, and the entire socioeconomic structure of Japan became fascist in nature. Trade unions were abolished in 1940. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association was created in October 1940 to replace the political parties, which had been dissolved; headed by the prime minister, the association formed the basis of the “new political structure.” }}</ref> Japanese fascism manifested itself in extreme militarism, monarchism, and expansionism in [[Asia]].

== Post-World War II ideological trends of fascism ==

After World War II, fascism was in retreat. It has since taken on a more international character, borrowing from many sources. Similar to the fascists of the 20th century, neo-fascism is born as a reaction to changing social climates, as well as growing economic hardships among the [[Petty bourgeoisie|petit-bourgeoisie]]. The term "neofascist" is often vauguely defined, and besides its usage as a mere pejorative, "neo-fascism" better refers to an entire grouping of [[far-right]] trends that appeared after [[Italian fascism|classical fascism]] largely died as a power-holding ideology after World War 2.<ref>{{Citation|author=Anna Cento Bull|year=2012|title=The Oxford Handbook of Fascism|title-url=https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34510/chapter-abstract/292835413?redirectedFrom=fulltext|chapter=Neo-fascism|page=586–605|quote=The term neo-fascism defines primarily those political and ideological groups and parties that operated after 1945, especially in Europe, and which were directly inspired by the experience of the inter-war fascist and Nazi regimes in Germany, Italy, and other European countries. These groups were often made up of remnants of fascist and Nazi activists who were not prepared to give up their political militancy or indeed to renounce their ideologies despite military defeat. Many held radical and uncompromising views, emphasizing the revolutionary nature of fascism rather than its more ‘reassuring’nationalist or statist version. This article analyses neo-fascism after the Second World War; neo-fascism and anti-communism in the United States; neo-fascism during the Cold War; the second-generation neo-fascists after 1968; the extreme right today; and the neo-fascist legacy.|publisher=Oxford university press|doi=https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199594788.013.0032|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

With the rise of [[neoliberalism]], and the increasing concentration of capital into fewer-and-fewer hands, neo-fascism has gained new popularity among many nations, particularly because of [[climate change]] and economic problems (the results of [[capitalism]]).<ref>{{Citation|author=Marc-André Argentino, Blyth Crawford, Florence Keen, Hannah Rose|year=2021|title=Far From Gone: The Evolution of Extremism in the First 100 Days of the Biden Administration|title-url=https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ICSR-Report-Far-From-Gone-The-Evolution-of-Extremism-in-the-First-100-Days-of-the-Biden-Administration.pdf|publisher=London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.|trans-lang=English}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|newspaper=EuropeNow|title=Understanding the Rise of the Far Right: The Need for a Historical Approach|url=https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/11/09/understanding-the-rise-of-the-far-right-the-need-for-a-historical-approach/|retrieved=2022-6-20}}</ref>

==== Neo-Nazism ====
{{main article|Neo-Nazism}}

Neo-nazism, by its most general meaning, refers to the post-World War Two adherence to [[nazism]]. Neo-nazis are highly [[Racism|racist]], often of the white supremacist and anti-semitic type, [[Conspiracy theory|conspiratorial]], and [[reactionary]]. Neo-nazism is heavily linked with the "[[alt-right]]", and can be viewed as a particular form of neo-fascism. Neo-nazis goals range from preforming terrorist actions against perceived racial enemies to starting a race war and creating a Fourth Reich.

==== Strasserism or Nazbolism ====
[[File:Black Front Flag.png|thumb|200x200px|Flag often used by strasserists.]]
[[Strasserism]] is a [[Third positionism|third positionist]] ideology based on [[Nazism]]. Strasserism is based on the works of Gregor and Otto Strasser, who were both associated with the [[National Socialist German Workers' Party]]. The main difference between Strasserism and their [[Nazi]] counterparts is that Strasserism calls for a more [[Proletariat|worker]]-based and socialistic form of regular Nazism. Much like [[National Socialism|Nazism]], Strasserism is greatly [[Antisemitism|anti-semitic]], but in the case of Strasserism, its racist conspiracy theories are built on economic anti-semitism, a form of anti-semitism in which the reason why Jewish people are used as a scapegoat for economic ills is because they are supposedly of a higher economic status than the "racially-pure" worker.<ref>{{Citation|author=Christopher T. Husbands|year=2020|title=Militant neo-Nazism in the 1990s|title-url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780429060076-3/federal-republic-germany-christopher-husbands|isbn=9780429060076|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

==== Ecofascism ====

Cooptation of the aesthetics of existing popular movements through [[entryism]] remains a common strategy for fascist self-promotion, solely to capture popularity. Thus, as the climate crisis unfolds in the 21st century, [[ecofascism]] has strongly emerged as a right-wing deviation of environmentalism, shifting blame from [[fossil fuel]] [[capital]] to [[immigrants]] and nations of the [[global south]] -- in practice, promoting fascist policies through [[greenwashing]]. One prominent politician of ecofascist policies is Marine Le Pen.<ref>{{Citation|author=Laurent Hubert and Jean-Noël Geist|year=2022|publisher=EuroNews|title=Why Marine Le Pen’s environmental agenda is greenwashing|title-url=https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/22/why-marine-le-pen-s-environmental-agenda-is-greenwashing}}</ref> [[Population control]], [[anti-immigrant policies]], and [[ethnocide]] become the alternatives pushed instead of facing capital's responsibility for ecological destruction.

Ecofascism, outside its derogatory usage by reactionaries to insult anybody who accepts the existence of man-made [[climate change]], refers to the ideological trends that combine hard-line [[environmentalism]] with reactionary nationalism and xenophobia. Ecofascists view [[Earth]] as a [[Malthusianism|Malthusian]] battleground between racial and ethnic groups, and think that ecological harmony is tied with ethnic or racial monodominance. To combat climate change, ecofascists believe not only in things such as [[eugenics]], but also in the purging of ethnic minorites, by means of forced relocation or [[Genocide|otherwise]].<ref>{{News citation|author=Alistair Walsh|newspaper=Deutsche Welle|title=Eco-fascism: The greenwashing of the far right|date=2022-5-19|url=https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-eco-fascism-the-greenwashing-of-the-far-right-terrorism-climate-change-buffalo-shooter/a-61867605|retrieved=2022-6-21}}</ref>

Ecofascism is greatly inspired by nazism, particularly the "blood and soil" idea, which states that a race is attached with the land it inhabits. Many ecofascists are New Age [[Neo-pagan|neo-pagans]], mostly worshiping the norse pantheon, largely because they are perceived by ecofascists as being "racially" pure "heroes" of "white people". In online ecofascist groups, the algiz rune "ᛉ" is often used. The algiz rune symbolizes life, that is, in the case of ecofascists, life for nature and white people. The algiz rune was also a symbol for [[lebensraum]]; the nazi plan for the enslavement and extermination of the Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe, and colonization by ethnic Germans.<ref>{{News citation|author=Sarah Manavis|newspaper=The Newstatesman|title=Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online|date=2018-9-21|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/09/eco-fascism-ideology-marrying-environmentalism-and-white-supremacy}}</ref>

==== New Age and Esoteric Fascism ====
Esoteric fascism refers to any form of fascism that integrates racialism into a mystical or theological system. The most infamous Esoteric Nazis often view the "aryan" race as having come from some otherworldly place, often the legendary land of [[hyperborea]]. Esoteric Nazis also are often neo-pagans, commonly nordic or greco-roman pagans. Esoteric Nazis also subscribe to other pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical theories, often entailing UFOs Nazi bunkers in [[Antarctica]], among similar things.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Southern Poverty Law Center|title=Former neo-nazi explains ‘Esoteric Nazism’|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/former-neo-nazi-explains-%E2%80%98esoteric-nazism%E2%80%99}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|newspaper=BBC|title=Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right|date=2017-10-29|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41757047|retrieved=2022-6-21}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Neoliberalism]]
* [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Greater German Reich]]
* [[Far-right politics]]
* [[Genocide]]
* [[Neo-Nazism]]
* [[Populism]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group="lower-alpha" />
[[Category:Political ideology]]
[[Category:Fascism]]
[[Category:Extremism]]
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]
[[Category:Anti-communism]]
[[Category:Imperialism]]

Hellenic Republic

2025-11-23T23:07:08Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Message box/Incomplete}}{{Infobox country|native_name=Ελληνική Δημοκρατία|name=Hellenic Republic|largest_city=Athens|mode_of_production=[[Capitalism]]|government_type=Unitary corporatocratic republic|leader_title1=President|leader_name1=[[Katerina Sakellaropoulou]]|leader_title2=Prime Minister|leader_name2=[[Kyriakos Mitsotakis]]|leader_title3=Parliament Speaker|leader_name3=[[Konstantinos Tasoulas]]|image_coat=Coat of arms of Greece.svg|capital=Athens|area_km2=131,957|population_census=10,432,481|population_census_year=2021|currency=Euro|image_map=Greece map.png|map_width=290|official_languages=Greek|demonym=Greek, Hellene|image_flag=Flag of Greece.svg}}
The '''Hellenic Republic''', also known as '''Greece''', is a country located in south-eastern [[Europe]] at the southern tip of the [[Balkans]]. It is bordered by [[Republic of Albania|Albania]], [[Republic of North Macedonia|North Macedonia]] and [[Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] to the north and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]] to the east with the [[Ionian Sea]] to the west, the [[Sea of Crete]] and [[Mediterranean Sea]] to the south and the [[Ionian Sea]] to the east. Its ancient civilization saw a huge revival during the Renaissance, where ancient Greek society began to be considered the origin of Western civilization. Greece is home to many philosophers that inspired both [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]] and [[Karl Marx|Marx]]. Greece is a member of the [[European Union|EU]], the [[Council of Europe]], [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]], the [[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development|OECD]], the [[World Trade Organization|WTO]], the [[Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe|OSCE]], and the [[Organisation internationale de la Francophonie|OIF]].

==History==

=== Bronze Age ===
The Minoan civilization rose to power from 1950 to 1450 BCE on the island of Crete. It became a major power in the Mediterranean by using powerful sailboats, and its rulers lived in large stone palaces.<ref name=":02222">{{Web citation|author=Neil Faulkner|year=2013|title=A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals|chapter=The First Class Societies|page=20|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedljwr5izotdclz23o3c5p4di4t3ero3ncbfytip55slhiz4otuls?filename=Neil%20Faulkner%20-%20A%20Marxist%20History%20of%20the%20World_%20From%20Neanderthals%20to%20Neoliberals-Pluto%20Press%20%282013%29.pdf|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=9781849648639|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=91CA6C708BFE15444FE27899217FBA8E}}</ref>

=== Ancient Greece ===
Ancient Greece was divided into at least thousand city-states that frequently fought each other for land and resources.

In the 6th century BCE, the Athens overthrew a 30-year-old dictatorship and installed an aristocratic government, which was then overthrown by a popular democratic revolution. [[Sparta]] attempted a [[Counterrevolution|counterrevolutionary]] invasion but was defeated, and Athenian democracy spread to many other Greek city-states, lasting almost 200 years. Philosophers such as [[Socrates]], [[Plato]], and [[Aristotle]] opposed democratic rule. In the early 5th century BCE, Greece defeated invasions from the [[Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE)|Persian Empire]], but a conservative alliance led by Sparta defeated Athens in the [[Peloponnesian War]] in 404 BCE.

The city-states remained divided, with Thebes conquering Sparta in 371 BCE before [[Macedonia (808–168 BCE)|Macedon]] conquered all of Greece starting in 338 BCE.<ref name=":03">{{Web citation|author=Neil Faulkner|year=2013|title=A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals|chapter=Ancient Empires|page=36–40|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedljwr5izotdclz23o3c5p4di4t3ero3ncbfytip55slhiz4otuls?filename=Neil%20Faulkner%20-%20A%20Marxist%20History%20of%20the%20World_%20From%20Neanderthals%20to%20Neoliberals-Pluto%20Press%20%282013%29.pdf|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=9781849648639|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=91CA6C708BFE15444FE27899217FBA8E}}</ref>

Between 200 and 150 BCE, [[Roman Republic (509–27 BCE)|Rome]] conquered Greece and crushed any leaders who tried to forgive [[Debt|debts]].<ref name=":1" />

==== Athens ====
Athens did not allow [[Slavery|slaves]], women, or foreigners to vote but did enfranchise poor [[Peasantry|farmers]] and artisans. Out of a total population of 200,000 people, only 30,000 could vote. The government consisted of ten leading officials (''strategoi'') who were elected every year, an elected council of 400 people (''boule''), and a popular assembly (''ekklesia'') of all free citizens. Courts of up to 2,500 people administered justice, and people who received 6,000 negative votes could be exiled from the city for ten years.<ref name=":03" />

[[Solon]] cancelled debts in the early fifth century BCE, and [[Pisistratus]] and his descendants democratized the economy.<ref name=":1">{{Web citation|date=2023-05-05|title=Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world|url=https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/05/24/debt-michael-hudson-oligarchies-greece-rome/|newspaper=[[Geopolitical Economy Report]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230528041512/https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/05/24/debt-michael-hudson-oligarchies-greece-rome/|archive-date=2023-05-28|author=[[Ben Norton]], [[Michael Hudson]]}}</ref>

==== Sparta ====
Sparta banned [[money]] in an attempt to avoid the existence of debt. Later, Rome attacked Sparta when kings [[Agis IV|Agis]] and [[Cleomenes III|Cleomenes]] tried to cancel their citizens' debt and create their own army instead of using mercenaries.<ref name=":1" />

=== Second World War ===
[[German Reich (1933–1945)|Nazi Germany]] invaded and occupied Greece during the [[Second World War]]. In 1941, the Communist Party of Greece formed the [[Greek People's Liberation Army]] (ELAS) and the [[National Liberation Front (Greece)|National Liberation Front]] (EAM) to fight against the [[Fascism|fascist]] occupiers. The EAM grew to over a million members and ranged from communists to the center-left. In November 1944, the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland|British]] army entered Greece and began fighting against ELAS with the help of former Nazi collaborators. In January 1945, ELAS surrendered and the British took over Greece.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=William Blum|year=2003|title=Killing Hope|chapter=Greece 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state|page=33–37|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedfo2kzml5sodng4rtlybjdvertim3nybowazzlo6rztq6khixbv4?filename=William%20Blum%20-%20Killing%20Hope_%20US%20Military%20and%20CIA%20Interventions%20Since%20World%20War%20II-Zed%20Books%20Ltd%20%282003%29.pdf|city=London|publisher=Zed Books|isbn=1842773682}}</ref>

=== Civil War ===
{{Main article|Greek Civil War}}
Greek leftists began a rebellion in the fall of 1946 and the British left Greece in February 1947 to be replaced by the [[United States of America|USA]]. [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania (1946–1992)|Albania]], [[People's Republic of Bulgaria (1946–1990)|Bulgaria]], and [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992)|Yugoslavia]] assisted the Greek communists. By the end of 1947, the Greek government received all of its military supplies from the United States. The Greek revolutionary forces surrendered in October 1949.

By the 1950s, Greece was an [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] US-backed police state and a member of NATO. Greece sent troops to fight against the [[Korean People's Army]] during the [[Fatherland Liberation War]].<ref name=":0" />

=== Military junta (1967–1974) ===
Liberal [[Georgios Papandreou]] won the February 1964 election, but King [[Constantine II|Constantine]] removed him from power in July 1965.<ref name=":02">{{Web citation|author=William Blum|year=2003|title=Killing Hope|chapter=Greece 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said the President of the United States|page=215|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedfo2kzml5sodng4rtlybjdvertim3nybowazzlo6rztq6khixbv4?filename=William%20Blum%20-%20Killing%20Hope_%20US%20Military%20and%20CIA%20Interventions%20Since%20World%20War%20II-Zed%20Books%20Ltd%20%282003%29.pdf|city=London|publisher=Zed Books|isbn=1842773682}}</ref>

In April 1967, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] overthrew the Greek government and installed the Nazi-aligned CIA agent [[Georgios Papadopoulos]] as the military dictator of Greece. Papadopoulos banned all political parties and killed 8,000 people in the first month of his rule.<ref name=":2">{{Web citation|author=William Blum|year=1995|title=Killing Hope|chapter=|section=|page=219|quote=|pdf=|city=Monroe|publisher=|isbn=1567510523|doi=|lg=|mia=|title-url=https://archive.org/details/killinghopeusmil00blum_0/page/219/mode/2up|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> He sent over 6,000 suspected communists to prisons or remote islands.<ref name=":3">{{News citation|journalist=|date=1975-09-01|title=Answering to History|url=|newspaper=Time|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081212222634/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947162,00.html|archive-date=|retrieved=}}</ref> The CIA gave the junta 74,000 tons of military equipment to defend U.S. interests. After a failed coup in Cyprus which pursued to annex the island into Greece, the Junta collapsed.

=== Third Hellenic Republic (1974–present) ===

==== First and second government (1974–1981) ====
During this time, the first Greek Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis, leading the [[New Democracy (political party in the Hellenic Republic)|New Democracy]] legalized the Communist Party of Greece, but left-wingers were still very marginalized. Aside from this and the establishment of a republican system, nothing else changed significantly.

Greece entered the EU in early 1981.

==== First PASOK governments (1981–1989) ====
As Greeks became increasingly disappointed with the government, they voted for the [[Social democracy|social-democratic]] [[Panhellenic Socialist Movement|PASOK]], led by [[Andreas Papandreou]]. During Papandreou's first two terms, many significant changes happened, even though Greece remained a [[Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie|bourgeois republic]]. Some enterprises were [[Nationalization|nationalized]] during this time and as such, the public sector was expanded. Communists that fought with KKE's side in the Greek Civil War were allowed to return in Greece and received special pensions.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/pdfViewerForm.html?args=5C7QrtC22wED8PRhve6aLndtvSoClrL88VQbDIJsbtp5MXD0LzQTLWPU9yLzB8V68knBzLCmTXKaO6fpVZ6Lx3UnKl3nP8NxdnJ5r9cmWyJWelDvWS_18kAEhATUkJb0x1LIdQ163nV9K--td6SIuWOCH0GRt-K2xNttmT5_Xib4r8XJBXogZSz4_0UkwyOn|title= ΦΕΚ 115Α/20-09-1982, Νόμος 1285"Για την αναγνώριση της Εθνικής Αντίστασης του Ελληνικού Λαού εναντίον των στρατευμάτων κατοχής 1941-1944"|language=el}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/pdfViewerForm.html?args=5C7QrtC22wH6SCddhZcqgXdtvSoClrL8LCLHE8WeG_Z5MXD0LzQTLWPU9yLzB8V68knBzLCmTXKaO6fpVZ6Lx3UnKl3nP8NxdnJ5r9cmWyJWelDvWS_18kAEhATUkJb0x1LIdQ163nV9K--td6SIuaoZ1MEDTB99sift1pNJaQOCmwcNyY_dWR0qaCJM3ZsQ|title= ΦΕΚ A 105/1949, Α.Ν. 971(Αναγκαστικός Νόμος 971, 29 Απριλίου 1949, "Περί απονομής ηθικών αμοιβών εις τας εθνικάς αντάρτικας ομάδας και Εθνικάς Οργανώσεις εσωτερικής αντιστάσεως"|language=el}}</ref> A [[Universal healthcare|free and universal healthcare system]] was established during the 80s, whereas living conditions improved, as the purchase power of Greeks increased by 26% during the course of the decade.<ref>Sassoon, Donald (1997) ''Looking left: European socialism after the Cold War''. I.B. Taurus. {{ISBN|1860641792}}</ref> [[Trade union|Trade unions]] and work councils also received rights, shops had fixed opening and closing times, and social security was established. Safety and education were also improved during this time.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=4KW4ePkLPg8C&dq=greece+1988+budget+unemployment&pg=RA25-PP14 Foreign Labor Trends 1986]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0sUYgpvYQtcC&dq=Foreign+Labor+Trends+Report+Greece+1988&pg=RA20-PP5 Foreign Labor Trends Report Greece 1988]</ref> A more progressive taxation was introduced. Finally, parental leave was introduced, albeit in a limited scale.

During this time, Papandreou tried to pull Greece out of NATO and the EU but failed, as the majority of the party supported to remain in both. However, he did challenge the US imperialist narrative and somewhat de-puppetize Greece.<ref name=":13">{{Web citation|author=John C. Loulis|newspaper=Foreign Affairs Magazine|title=Papandreou's Foreign Policy|date=1984-12-01|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081029202002/http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19841201faessay8413/john-c-loulis/papandreou-s-foreign-policy.html|archive-url=http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19841201faessay8413/john-c-loulis/papandreou-s-foreign-policy.html|archive-date=2008-10-29|retrieved=2014-02-23}}</ref> He also condemned [[State of Israel|"Israel"]]'s policies in the occupied [[State of Palestine|Palestinian]] territories. However, he supported a two-state solution and not an entirely free Palestine.<ref name=":14">{{Web citation|author=Spyros Kaminaris|newspaper=Middle East Review of International Affairs|title=Greece and the Middle East|date=1999-06|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120201100748/http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1999/issue2/jv3n2a4.html|archive-url=http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1999/issue2/jv3n2a4.html|archive-date=2012-02-01}}</ref>

==== 1989-2004 ====
In 1989, a scandal got revealed in Greece and Papandreou was accused of involvement. This led to an electoral decline of PASOK and after three subsequent elections, New Democracy (led by Konstantinos Mitsotakis) formed a cabinet. As the [[counterrevolutions of 1989]] and the [[overthrow of the Soviet Union]] took place during this time, Mitsotakis [[Privatization|privatized]] many enterprises. He also cut government spending, formally recognized Israel as a country and aligned Greece more with the US once again, as he negotiated about re-opening NATO bases. He also attempted to pass a [[reactionary]] bill concerning education, which caused widespread student protests.<ref name=":15">{{Web citation|title=ΦΕΚ A 156/1990|title-url=http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/pdfViewerForm.html?args=5C7QrtC22wFWwnXHUzxPWXdtvSoClrL8oegNlWStPL95MXD0LzQTLWPU9yLzB8V68knBzLCmTXKaO6fpVZ6Lx3UnKl3nP8NxdnJ5r9cmWyIq-BTkXB0ftEAEhATUkJb0x1LIdQ163nV9K--td6SIud2vs3dpVqYulrW5RWTsoeSfTZU2aJn-ImeQvVJgAXhw}}</ref> The police assassinated a teacher during the protests.

Andreas Papandreou got re-elected in 1993, but passed away in 1996 and got succeeded by the new president of PASOK, Costas Simitis.

During Simitis, while infrastructure was upgraded (the so-called "Modernization"), Greece adopted the Euro as official currency and abolished the Drachma in 2001-02, causing a big rise in prices and crippling the purchase power of Greek citizens.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFmadq2MKzY|channel=Nikolas Angelidis|title=Ρεπορτάζ Tempo Αλλαγή από δραχμή σε Ευρώ, 2001|date=2021-10-23}}</ref>

In 1997, the International Olympic Committee selected Athens to organize the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Under Simitis, the government was bribed by Siemens so that OTE (the then state-owned communications service) bought equipment by said company. An executive was sentenced to two-year jail on probation and fined 108,000 euros (around 170,000 U.S. dollars) for this. According to the court, "Siemens divisions were using kickbacks to officials and purchasing executives in Greece, Italy and other nations to win major contracts. Slush funds hidden in the Siemens accounts were used as a conduit for paying "consultancy" fees to corrupt foreign officials. In reality, the recipients did not provide any consulting time to the front companies, but simply influenced buying decisions to favor Siemens.".<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[People's Daily]]|title=Former Siemens executive sentenced for bribery scandal|date=2008-07-29|url=http://en.people.cn/90001/90777/90853/6461400.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200904124209/http://en.people.cn/90001/90777/90853/6461400.html|archive-date=2020-09-04|retrieved=2024-03-13}}</ref>

==== 2004–2009 ====
Kostas Karamanlis (the nephew of Konstantinos Karamanlis) won the 2004 elections. During his term, the 2004 Summer Olympics took place in Athens.

In December 2008, a 15-year old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed by a policeman. Violent protests occurred in Athens which lasted until January 2009.

==== Acute Financial Crisis (2009–2015) ====

===== 2009 =====
Karamanlis resigned in 2009, as the CIA allegedly plotted to assassinate him, as he planned the participation of Greece in the construction of South Stream, a [[Russian Federation|Russian]] gas pipeline connecting Burgas with Alexandroupoli.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CNN (although the sources for the claim are provided by Russian State Television)|title=Ντοκιμαντέρ για το σχέδιο δολοφονίας του Κώστα Καραμανλή έπαιξε η ρωσική τηλεόραση (vid)|url=https://www.cnn.gr/kosmos/story/102050/ntokimanter-gia-to-sxedio-dolofonias-toy-kosta-karamanli-epaixe-i-rosiki-tileorasi-vid}}</ref> In order to lose the elections, he told people the actual economic state of Greece and proclaimed austerity measures, whereas PASOK leader George Papandreou (the son of Andreas Papandreou), proclaimed social expenditures that Greece could not actually afford. This led to a financial crisis.

The social expenditures that Papandreou proclaimed caused a deficit in the Greek economy, which made Greece turn to the [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]] to get a loan. IMF required Greece to take harsh austerity measures.

===== 2010 =====
The first austerity package got approved on 9 February 2010. It froze all wages of government employees, cut 10% of bonuses and overtime workers' and public employees wages and work-related travel subsidies. <ref>{{Web citation |url=http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=130472 |title=Πάγωμα μισθών και περικοπές επιδομάτων ανακοίνωσε η κυβέρνηση |trans-title=Government announced cuts and a freeze in salaries |date=9 February 2010 |publisher=enet.gr |access-date=14 August 2011}}</ref>

Another austerity package was approved just a month later, in March 2010. <ref>{{Web citation |url=http://www.enet.gr/?i=issue.el.home&date=04/03/2010&id=137789 |title=Αξέχαστη (!) και δυσοίωνη η 3η Μαρτίου |trans-title=An unforgettable (!) and ominous 3 March |date=4 March 2010 |publisher=enet.gr |access-date=14 August 2011}}</ref> On 2 May 2010, the first IMF/EU loan known as the First Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece and commonly referred to as the "first memorandum" got signed, after a request on 23 April of the same year. <ref>{{Web citation |title= Greece, Out of Ideas, Requests Global Aid |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/business/global/24drachma.html |work= The New York Times |access-date=11 August 2013|first1=Niki |last1= Kitsantonis |first2=Matthew |last2= Saltmarsh |date=23 April 2010}}</ref> <ref>{{Web citation|title=EU, IMF agree $147 billion bailout for Greece|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-idUSTRE6400PJ20100502|work=Reuters|access-date=11 August 2013|date=2 May 2010}}</ref> The European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF formed the so-called Troika. These measures led to massive protests in Greece and the rise of the so-called anti-austerity movement. 2 days after the memorandum got signed, massive protests happened where 3 people died during the arson of a bank.<ref>{{Web citation |date=2010-05-08 |title=The Greek spirit of resistance turns its guns on the IMF |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/09/greece-debt-crisis-euro-imf |access-date=2022-12-09 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref>

Another austerity package was approved by the Parliament in 6 May 2010, privatizing 4,000 companies, cutting wages and pensions and increasing taxes. <ref>{{Web citation|title=Greek Bailout Talks Could Take Three Weeks|publisher=Bloomberg L.P.|url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-20/greek-bailout-talks-could-take-three-weeks-bond-payment-looms.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100422033111/http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-20/greek-bailout-talks-could-take-three-weeks-bond-payment-looms.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 22, 2010}}</ref>

===== 2011 =====
In February 2011, massive protests occurred again in all major Greek cities. Protests re-began in May and happened continuously until December 2011. Many [[Bourgeois media|private TV channels]] did not cover the protests during their early days. During May-August 2011, an "Indignant Citizens Movement" emerged,<ref name="ERT 1">{{Web citation|url=http://www.ert.gr/index.php/eidiseis/ellada/38-koinonia/6516-2011-05-26-18-55-52.html|title=Νέα συγκέντρωση στο Σύνταγμα (New demonstration at Syntagma)|language=el|date=26 May 2011|publisher=news.ert.gr|access-date=26 May 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611040619/http://www.ert.gr/index.php/eidiseis/ellada/38-koinonia/6516-2011-05-26-18-55-52.html|archive-date=11 June 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Ελλάδα|url=http://www.greek-radar.gr/iaganaktismeni-polites-sigkentrononte-sto-sintagma/|title=Ελλάδα – Πάνω από 20.000 οι "αγανακτισμένοι'' πολίτες στο Σύνταγμα!|date=29 October 2010|access-date=30 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110530022146/http://www.greek-radar.gr/iaganaktismeni-polites-sigkentrononte-sto-sintagma/|archive-date=30 May 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="SKAI poleis">{{Web citation|url=http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/170493/oi-aganaktismenoi-diadilonoun-stis-ellinikes-poleis-/|title=Οι "Αγανακτισμένοι" διαδηλώνουν στις ελληνικές πόλεις (The 'indignants' protest in Greek cities)|language=el|date=26 May 2011|publisher=skai.gr|access-date=26 May 2011}}</ref> inspired by the 15-M Spanish movement.<ref name="SKAI xnaria">{{Web citation|url=http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/170468/oi-aganaktismenoi-diadilonoun-stis-ellinikes-poleis-/|title=Στα χνάρια των Ισπανών αγανακτισμένων (On the footsteps of the Spanish 'indignados')|language=el|date=26 May 2011|publisher=skai.gr|access-date=26 May 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.sigmalive.com/news/greece/386263|title=Ελλάδα: πλήθος πολιτών διαδήλωσαν για τα μέτρα λιτότητας|publisher=Sigma Live|access-date=30 June 2011}}</ref><ref name="Eleftherotypia orgi">{{Web citation|url=http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.politikh&id=278646|title=Δίχως κόμμα, συνδικάτο, μόνο οργή (Without a party or syndicate, just anger)|language=el|date=26 May 2011|publisher=eleftherotypia.gr|access-date=26 May 2011}}</ref> In late May, a "Real Democracy Now!" movement emerged inspired by the Spanish one. The first vote of the People's Assembly in Greece got signed in 27 May 2011. The proceedings were:<ref name="Real Democracy Now! vote2">{{Web citation|url=http://real-democracy.gr/el/%CF%88%CE%AE%CF%86%CE%B9%CF%83%CE%BC%CE%B1-%CE%BB%CE%B1%CF%8A%CE%BA%CE%AE%CF%82-%CF%83%CF%85%CE%BD%CE%AD%CE%BB%CE%B5%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B7%CF%82-%CF%80%CE%BB%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%B1%CF%82-%CF%83%CF%85%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%B3%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%82-0|script-title=el:Ψήφισμα λαϊκής συνέλευσης Πλατείας Συντάγματος|language=el|publisher=real-democracy.gr|access-date=31 May 2011|title=Real-democracy.gr}}</ref><ref name="Proceedings 27">{{Web citation|url=http://real-democracy.gr/node/47|title=Proceedings of the First Assembly|language=el|date=26 May 2011|publisher=real-democracy.gr|access-date=26 May 2011}}</ref>

* Any corrupt politician should either be sent home or to jail.
* When we, the people, start discussions without fear, fear grips them, inside the parliament building.
* This is not just the politician's fault. It's all our faults, with our selfish attitudes.
* Demonstrations should take place every evening at 6 pm and an assembly at 9 pm.
* Their democracy guarantees neither Justice nor Equality.
* The taxation system is not the same for the rich and the poor. Equal rights for everyone.

A fourth austerity package got signed in June 2011,<ref name="Real Mesoprothesmo">{{Web citation|url=http://www.real.gr/DefaultArthro.aspx?page=arthro&id=76372&catID=11|title=Τι προβλέπει το Μεσοπρόθεσμο – Διαβάστε όλα τα μέτρα|trans-title=What's included in the mid-term plan – Read all the measures|date=24 June 2011|publisher=real.gr|access-date=22 August 2011}}</ref><ref name="Vima Mesoprothesmo 2">{{Web citation|url=http://www.tovima.gr/finance/article/?aid=409325|title=30 ερωτήσεις και απαντήσεις για μισθούς και συντάξεις|trans-title=30 questions and answers for salaries and pensions|date=4 July 2011|publisher=tovima.gr|access-date=22 August 2011}}</ref> further cutting wages and pensions and doing more privatizations. Another one got signed in October 2011,<ref>{{Web citation|title=Greek government austerity measures|work=BBC News|date=19 October 2011|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/business-13940431|access-date=24 July 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Πολυνομοσχέδιο: ο λογαριασμός στους Ελληνες|date=9 October 2011|url=http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=424202|publisher=tovima.gr|access-date=24 July 2015}}</ref> reducing the tax-free threshold from 12,000€ to only 5,000€, as well as closing schools and cutting pensions, as well as other measures. In the protests during the same month, there were violent demonstrations and [[strikes]], inspired by the Statesian [[Occupy Wall Street]] movement.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://greece.greekreporter.com/2011/10/15/greek-demonstrators-join-global-day-of-rage/|title=Greek Demonstrators Join Global 'Day of Rage'|date=15 October 2011|publisher=greece.greekreporter.com}}</ref> Communist Party of Greece members and hard-line protesters tried to invade the parliament, resulting in the death of one KKE member.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

In 28 October, a national holiday about Greece's refusal to be used as a base for [[Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)|Italy]], the military parade officially got cancelled due to protests. The then-President of the Hellenic Republic, Karolos Papoulias, was forced to leave.<ref name="Skai Parelasi Thessaloniki">{{Web citation|url=http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/184631/akurothike-i-parelasi-sti-thessaloniki-apohorise-o-k-papoulias/|title=Ακυρώθηκε η παρέλαση στη Θεσσαλονίκη – Αποχώρησε οργισμένος ο Κ. Παπούλιας|date=28 October 2011|trans-title=Parade in Thessaloniki cancelled – Mr. Papoulias departed outraged|access-date=28 October 2011|publisher=skai.gr}}</ref>

Papandreou resigned on 11 November 2011, due to the protests that happened. A provisional government was formed, led by [[Lucas Papademos]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-idUSTRE7AC15K20111117|work=Reuters|title=Greek protests as France, Spain face squeeze|date=17 November 2011}}</ref>

===== 2012 =====
In February 2012, another wave of protests started against the caretaker government,<ref name="cnn2012">{{Web citation|url=http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/12/world/europe/greece-debt-crisis/index.html|title=Clashes erupt as Greek Parliament debates austerity measures|date=12 February 2012|publisher=CNN|access-date=12 February 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17003432|title=Buildings set ablaze as Greek MPs debate austerity plan|date=12 February 2012|work=BBC News|access-date=12 February 2012}}</ref> since on the 13th of the same month the parliament approved the sixth package of harsher austerity measures, such as:<ref name="SZ-staat-neu">{{Web citation|url=http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/sparpaket-in-griechenland-der-ganze-staat-soll-neu-gegruendet-werden-1.1282482|title=Der ganze Staat soll neu gegründet werden|publisher=Sueddeutsche|date=13 February 2012|access-date=13 February 2012}}</ref><ref name=":17">{{Web citation|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-13/greece-votes-in-favour-of-austerity-plan/3826308|title=Greece MPs clear way for $170bn bailout|publisher=ABC News|date=13 February 2012|access-date=13 February 2012}}</ref>
* 22% cut in minimum wage from €750 to €585 per month
* Permanently cancel holiday wage bonuses (one extra month's pay each year)
* 150,000 jobs cut from state sector by 2015, including 15,000 by the end of 2012
* Pension cuts worth €300 million in 2012
* Changes to laws to make it easier to lay off workers
* Health and defence spending cuts
* Industry sectors are given the right to negotiate lower wages depending on economic development
* Opening up closed professions to allow for more competition, particularly in the health, tourism, and real estate sectors
* Privatisations worth €15 billion by 2015, including Greek gas companies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEPA DEPA] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESFA DESFA]. In the medium term, the goal remains at €50 billion

In fact, the passing of the austerity measures was a precondition for the next €130 billion lending package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to the Greek government, without which the country would have faced sovereign default by 20 March.<ref name="SZ-staat-neu" /><ref name=":17" /> The Second Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, usually referred to as the "second memorandum" was signed in 1 March. <ref name="BW 21 October 2011">{{Web citation|title=Papandreou Prevails in Greek Austerity Vote as One Dies|url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-21/papandreou-prevails-in-greek-austerity-vote-as-one-dies.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111022191018/http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-21/papandreou-prevails-in-greek-austerity-vote-as-one-dies.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 22, 2011|access-date=29 December 2011|newspaper=Businessweek|date=21 October 2011|author=Maria Petrakis|author2=Natalie Weeks}}</ref><ref name="BBC 01.11.2011">{{Web citation|title=Greek crisis: Papandreou promises referendum on EU deal|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15526719|access-date=29 December 2011|newspaper=BBC News|date=1 November 2011}}</ref>

On 5 April, people once again demonstrated against the government after a pensioner named Dimitris Christoulas committed suicide by shooting himself, refusing to share the fate of those people who have had to search for food in garbage.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}}

The two major labor unions of Greece warned that the harsh austerity measures would "drive Greece to despair".<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.rferl.org/content/greek_unions_call_for_strike_austerity_talks_continue_int/24475192.html|title=Greek Unions Call For Strike As Crisis Talks Continue|date=6 February 2012|work=Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty homepage|access-date=12 February 2012}}</ref>

In May 2012, elections happened, but no government was formed, so new elections happened in June. New Democracy (the first party, acquiring almost 30% of the votes), PASOK (having fallen at less than 12.3%) and Democratic Left (a social democratic party, which took 6.25% of the votes), formed the government. [[Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance|Syriza]] came second with almost 26.9% of the votes and was the main opposition party. However, the [[Neo-Nazism|neo-Nazi]] [[Popular Association – Golden Dawn|Golden Dawn]] party received more than 6.97% of the votes (from 0.29% in 2009) entering the Parliament for the first time. KKE was crippled at 4.5% and became the seventh (and last) party to enter the parliament, even though it received almost 4% more in the May 2012 elections.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ministry of Interior of Greece|title=Results of the June 2012 election|url=http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/v2012a/public/index.html?lang=en#%7B%22cls%22:%22level%22,%22params%22:%7B%22level%22:%22epik%22,%22id%22:1%7D%7D}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Ministry of Interior of Greece|title=Results of the June 2012 election|url=http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/v2012b/public/index.html?lang=en#%7B%22cls%22:%22level%22,%22params%22:%7B%22level%22:%22epik%22,%22id%22:1%7D%7D}}</ref> As such, [[Antonis Samaras]] became the new Prime Minister.

A new austerity package was approved in October-November 2012.<ref name="guardian-7Nov2012">{{Web citation|url=https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/nov/07/eurozone-crisis-greece-strike-austerity-vote|title=Greek parliament narrowly approves €13.5bn austerity package after mass protests – as it happened|author=Phillip Inman|date=7 November 2012|work=Economics blog|publisher=guardian.co.uk|access-date=8 November 2012|location=London}}</ref>

===== 2013 =====
On 28 April, a new austerity package was signed. The law created a new tax for immovable property that would be defined later. The teachers reacted to the bill by declaring strikes. However, the government prohibited the strikes, proceeding to implement Civil mobilization.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Greece: Teachers Abandon Strike Plan|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/world/europe/greece-teachers-abandon-strike-plan.html?_r=0|newspaper=nytimes.com|date=17 May 2013|access-date=29 July 2015|last1=Kitsantonis|first1=Niki}}</ref> On 17 July, a new package laid off another 15,000 public employees, among them high school teachers, school guards and municipal policemen.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Greece approves scheme to fire thousands of public workers|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-vote-idUSBRE96G1AP20130718|publisher=reuters.com|access-date=25 July 2015|date=17 July 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Greece Approves New Austerity Measures|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/world/europe/greece-approves-new-austerity-measures.html?_r=0|newspaper=nytimes.com|access-date=26 July 2015|date=17 July 2013}}</ref>

The next day, a general ban on demonstrations was enacted and 4,000 police officers mobilized to avoid larger protests in the Greek capital during [[Schäuble|Schäuble's]] visit.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/19/gree-j19.html|title=Greek government bans demonstrations in central Athens|work=[[World Socialist Web Site]]|last=Dreier|first=Christoph|date=2013-07-19|access-date=2014-12-30}}</ref>

On 11 June 2013, Simos Kedikoglou, the government's spokesman, at approximately 17:45 EEST announced the shutdown of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), which would make almost 3,000 employees reduntant.<ref name="ingr1162013">[https://www.in.gr/2013/06/11/greece/ksafniko-thanato-tis-ert-anakoinwse-i-kybernisi/ Ξαφνικό θάνατο της ΕΡΤ ανακοίνωσε η κυβέρνηση], www.in.gr, 11 Ιουνίου 2013</ref> This shutdown was characterized as illegal by the opposition and even the European Broadcasting Union.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jun/12/greek-journalists-close-state-broadcaster-ert|title=Greek journalists defy government order to close state broadcaster|last=O'Carroll|first=Lisa|date=2013-06-12|work=The Guardian|access-date=2017-09-14|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.ebu.ch/news/2013/06/ebu-urges-greek-government-to-re|title=EBU urges Greek government to reverse decision on ERT|publisher=EBU|date=11 June 2013}}</ref>

ERT was dissolved by a Common Ministerial Decision that was enacted by virtue of Article 14B of Law 3429/2005 (regarding the dissolution, merger and restructuring of public companies) as amended by an urgent government Legislative Ordinace (FEK 139/11.06.2013, Issue A').<ref>Article 44 of the Greek Constitution allows the President, upon the proposal of the Council of Ministers "under exceptional circumstances of extreme urgency and unforeseen necessity" to issue decrees that have immediate effect, but must be submitted to Parliament within 40 days and ratified within three months of submission.</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/pdfViewerForm.html?args=5C7QrtC22wHrZvzjsKBkq3dtvSoClrL8Z9DpXoFZ5_55MXD0LzQTLWPU9yLzB8V68knBzLCmTXKaO6fpVZ6Lx3UnKl3nP8NxdnJ5r9cmWyJWelDvWS_18kAEhATUkJb0x1LIdQ163nV9K--td6SIuVWsm5Fj2ble70gts0La2iLhHp9lXPU65fg2XfmfKaen|title=Νόμος υπ' αριθ. 3429 (ΦΕΚ A 314/2005)|publisher=[[Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως]]|date=27 December 2005}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.et.gr/idocs-nph/search/pdfViewerForm.html?args=5C7QrtC22wEaosRGzKxO6XdtvSoClrL8ndsiOD8jfQt5MXD0LzQTLWPU9yLzB8V68knBzLCmTXKaO6fpVZ6Lx3UnKl3nP8NxdnJ5r9cmWyJWelDvWS_18kAEhATUkJb0x1LIdQ163nV9K--td6SIuW8Lkl81i9F1pH6T3RCOwhK_m0yM-xGxeeQiVXVpCSPs|title=Τροποποίηση του νόμου υπ' αριθ. 3429 (ΦΕΚ A 139/2013)|publisher=[[Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως]]|date=11 June 2013}}</ref>

NET (the main channel) and ET1, which were based in Athens, interrupted programming. So did ET3, which is based in Thessaloniki. Thousands of people gathered in the Radio Hall, the building where ET1 and NET were based and practically ERT's main headquarters, and protested against the decision. This happened in Thessaloniki as well. Analog signal ceased at 22:54 EEST. The last (digital terrestrial television) ERT transmitters were closed at 23:17 EEST.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.tanea.gr/2013/06/12/greece/sok-stin-ert-seismos-stin-kybernisi/|title=Σοκ στην ΕΡΤ, σεισμός στην κυβέρνηση|accessdate=June 12, 2013|author=Νασόπουλος Διονύσης|date=June 12, 2013|publisher=Τα Νέα}}</ref> However, 20 seconds later, 902TV, controlled by the KKE, retransmitted the signal and as such got shut down as well.{{Citation needed}} Radio signals stopped at 23:22 EEST. Later on, the ERT World feed got shut down as well. On 12 June, all internet assets of ERT got erased from the Greek internet registry.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.tanea.gr/2013/06/12/greece/sok-stin-ert-seismos-stin-kybernisi/|title=Σοκ στην ΕΡΤ, σεισμός στην κυβέρνηση|accessdate=June 12, 2013|author=Νασόπουλος Διονύσης|date=June 12, 2013|publisher=Τα Νέα}}</ref> Massive strikes happened the same day.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.in.gr/2013/06/13/greece/plithos-kosmoy-diadilwse-gia-mia-akomi-imera-eksw-apo-tin-ert/|title=Πλήθος κόσμου διαδήλωσε για μία ακόμη ημέρα έξω από την ΕΡΤ|accessdate=2013-06-14|date=2013-06-13|publisher=IN.gr}}</ref>

However, with the help of EBU initially, ERT's employees, now integrated into the ERT Open initiative, continued to broadcast two of the three channels (NET and ET3) via Internet and satellite signals,<ref>[http://international.radiobubble.gr/2013/06/the-shutdown-of-ert-live-blog-12-june.html The shutdown of ERT - Live blog 12 June 2013]</ref><ref>[http://university-greece.blogspot.com/2013/06/live.html ΕΡΤ LIVE]</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.sevenart.gr/news-detail.php?catid=2&id=2872|title=Ζωντανή αναμετάδοση του σήματος της ΕΡΤ|accessdate=2014-01-03|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140103215619/http://www.sevenart.gr/news-detail.php?catid=2&id=2872|archivedate=2014-01-03|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.thepressproject.gr/live/44219/Louketo-stin-ERT|title=Η μάχη της ΕΡΤ: Live Blogging|accessdate=2018-03-18|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424101718/http://www.thepressproject.gr/live/44219/Louketo-stin-ERT|archivedate=2018-04-24|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Το πρόγραμμα της ΕΡΤ αναμεταδίδεται από την EBU|url=https://www.gossip-tv.gr/media-tv/story/264520/to-programma-tis-ert-anametadidetai-apo-tin-ebu|publisher=gossip-tv.gr|accessdate=2 Οκτωβρίου 2014|date=2013-06-12}}</ref> and even reopened some analog transmitters. On 21 August, EBU ceased its aid to ERT and as such most signals ceased. ERT continued to broadcast via Internet only.<ref>{{Web citation|title=ERT streaming to end as interim greek broadcaster launches news bulletin|url=https://www.ebu.ch/news/2013/08/ert-streaming-to-end-as-interim|publisher=EBU|date=19 Αυγούστου 2013}}</ref> On 7 November, police invaded the Radio Hall (prosecuting 4 people) and later that day, NET ceased broadcasting.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.in.gr/2013/11/07/greece/astynomiki-epembasi-gia-tin-ekkenwsi-tis-ert/|title=Αστυνομική επέμβαση για την εκκένωση της ΕΡΤ|ημερομηνία=2013-11-07|website=[[in.gr]]|language=el|accessdate=2024-01-06}}</ref> Until its reopening on 11 June 2015, ET3 and some radio stations were the only services that never stopped broadcasting.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://www.ertopen.com/radio|title=ΕΡΤ Open|accessdate=2015-08-09|archive-date=2015-08-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150813033808/http://www.ertopen.com/radio|url-status=}}</ref><ref name="typologies1">{{Web citation|title=Πιέσεις για την ertopen|url=http://typologies.gr/%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%AD%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%B9%CF%82-%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BD-ertopen/|accessdate=25 Ιουνίου 2015|newspaper=typologies.gr|date=25 Ιουνίου 2015}}</ref>

Democratic Left exited the coalition government because of this decision.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Η αποχώρηση της ΔΗΜΑΡ|url=https://www.kathimerini.gr/politics/43591/i-apochorisi-tis-dimar/|publisher=kathimetini.gr|accessdate=1 Φεβρουαρίου 2015}}</ref>

In place of ERT, a new organization, NERIT, was expected to start broadcasting on 29 August.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130615015511/http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/12/the-next-day-of-ert/ ERT: the day after]</ref> However, a transitional and terribly designed one, called Public Television was launched on 10 July<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3m0NJC8jQY Τα πρώτα λεπτά λειτουργίας της Ελληνικής Δημόσιας Τηλεόρασης]. YouTube (πρωτότυπο βίντεο), ξημέρωμα 10/7/2013 Ανακτήθηκε 2014-01-19</ref> instead and got replaced by NERIT on 4 May 2014.

It should be noted that Public Television changed its name within just the first day (as it was called Hellenic Public Television)<ref name=":21">[https://web.archive.org/web/20140407092402/http://pluswebtv.blogspot.gr/2013/07/blog-post_8559.html Το χρονικό της πρώτης ημέρας λειτουργίας της Δημόσιας Τηλεόρασης]. +PlusWebTv, Ανακτήθηκε 2014-01-19</ref><ref name="vima0108">{{Web citation|url=https://www.tovima.gr/2013/07/10/media/ekkinisi-me-elliniki-tainia-gia-to-programma-tis-ellinikis-dimosias-tileorasis/|title=Εκκίνηση με ελληνική ταινία για το πρόγραμμα της Ελληνικής Δημόσιας Τηλεόρασης|date=2013-07-10|accessdate=2013-08-01|website=[[Το Βήμα]]|publisher=Άλτερ Έγκο|last=Γραμμέλη|first=Αφροδίτη}}</ref><ref name=":23">{{Web citation|url=http://pluswebtv.blogspot.gr/2013/07/blog-post_8559.html|title=ΕΔΤ: Αναλυτικά το χρονικό της πρώτης ημέρας λειτουργίας|date=2013-07-21|accessdate=2014-01-19|website=Plus Web TV|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303231800/http://pluswebtv.blogspot.gr/2013/07/blog-post_8559.html|archivedate=2016-03-03|url-status=dead}}</ref> and changed logos 4 times during its first 2 months of operation. It started normal programming only on 21 August. Before then, the programming did not cover all 24 hours (akin to pre-1996 ERT). Due to the aforementioned poor quality of its services, the new broadcaster received a lot of backlash from citizens.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://tvxs.gr/news/media/edt-rezili-kai-toy-twitter/|title=ΕΔΤ: Ρεζίλι και του twitter|date=2013-07-11|accessdate=2019-06-29|website=tvxs.gr}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.iefimerida.gr/news/114162/%CE%B5%CE%BE%CF%89-%CF%86%CF%81%CE%B5%CE%BD%CF%8E%CE%BD-%CE%BF%CE%B9-%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BD%CE%B5%CF%82-%CF%83%CF%84%CE%BF-twitter-%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%B7-%CE%BD%CE%AD%CE%B1-%CE%B4%CE%B7%CE%BC%CF%8C%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BB%CE%B5%CF%8C%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%83%CE%B7-%C2%AB%CF%80%CE%AE%CE%B3%CE%B1-%CE%BD%CE%B1-%CF%80%CF%89-%CE%B5%CE%B4%CF%84-%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B9-%CE%B4%CE%AC%CE%B3%CE%BA%CF%89|title=Έξω φρενών οι Έλληνες στο twitter για τη νέα δημόσια τηλεόραση: «Πήγα να πω ΕΔΤ και δάγκωσα τη γλώσσα μου»|date=2013-07-10|accessdate=2019-06-29|website=iefimerida.gr}}</ref>

In fact, up until 7 November, Public Television broadcasted from a private studio and it also did not legally exist, as it did not have a VAT.<ref name=":21" /><ref name="vima0108" /><ref name=":23" />

===== 2014 =====
In 2014, a new austerity package was approved. The bill froze wages and pensions until 2018. It cut public sector expenses, such as the Ministry of Health. It provided that the primary surplus in 2014 would be 2.3% of GDP (€4.19 billion) 5.3% (€11.585 billion) in 2018.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Βουλή: Ψηφίστηκε το Μεσοπρόθεσμο 2015-18|date=9 May 2014|url=http://www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid=594314|publisher=tovima.gr|access-date=29 July 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=Greek parliament backs new bailout bill|date=9 May 2014|url=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/greek-parliament-backs-bailout-bill-164530710--finance.html|agency=APd|access-date=29 July 2015}}</ref>

On 4 May, NERIT was launched.<ref>[https://www.tanea.gr/2014/05/01/greece/tin-kyriaki-kai-oxi-ti-deytera-tha-ksekinisei-i-nerit/ Την Κυριακή και όχι την Δευτέρα θα ξεκινήσει η ΝΕΡΙΤ]</ref>

On 31 December, the Parliament was dissolved, after failing to elect a president for the republic two days prior.<ref name="aje29dec">{{Web citation|url=http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/12/greece-parliament-fails-elect-president-20141229104433854668.html|title=Greece parliament fails to elect president|publisher=Al Jazeera|date=29 December 2014|access-date=29 December 2014}}</ref>

==== Syriza Government and recovery (2015-2019) ====

==== Mitsotakis regime (2019–present) ====

===== Economic Policies =====
The New Democracy political party, in government since July 2019, has applied [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] and quasi-[[Fascism|fascist]] policies. It has made massive privatizations in tourism and natural resources<ref name=":13" />. Workers' rights have also been severely limited, with strikes being mostly prohibited and with employers having the right to fire employees without giving any notice prior or to give any reason. Collective agreements have been abolished as well.

===== Autocratization =====
During Mitsotakis' term, [[corruption]] and [[nepotism]] has heightened, <ref name=":110">{{Web citation|title=The Rot at the Heart of Greece Is Now Clear for Everyone to See|date=22 August 2022|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/opinion/greece-mitsotakis-predator-spyware.html|access-date=2 September 2022|website=New York Times}}</ref><ref name=":22">{{Web citation|title=Greek PM's Wiretapping Scandal Can't be Justified by Foreign Threats|last=Tsimitakis|first=Matthaios|date=2022-09-21|url=https://balkaninsight.com/2022/09/21/greek-pms-wiretapping-scandal-cant-be-justified-by-foreign-threats/|access-date=2023-04-30|website=Balkan Insight|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=efsyn.gr|title=Δείκτης Διαφθοράς 2023: Στον πάτο της Ε.Ε. η Ελλάδα με κρίση κράτους δικαίου|date=2024-01-30|url=https://www.efsyn.gr/politiki/kybernisi/420564_deiktis-diafthoras-2023-ston-pato-tis-ee-i-ellada-me-krisi-kratoys}}</ref> whereas [[freedom of speech]] has also become very limited, akin to [[fascist]] regimes. <ref name=":32">{{Web citation|title=How Greece became Europe's worst place for press freedom|date=8 August 2022|url=https://www.politico.eu/article/greece-became-europe-worst-place-press-freedom/|access-date=2 September 2022|website=Politico}}</ref><ref name=":42">{{Web citation|title=Greece: Media freedom under assault|date=23 April 2022|url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/4/23/greece-media-freedom-under-assault|access-date=2 September 2022|website=AlJazeera}}</ref><ref name=":52">{{Web citation|title=The worrying decline of press freedom in Greece|date=15 May 2022|url=https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/05/15/the-worrying-decline-of-press-freedom-in-greece_5983579_4.html|access-date=2 September 2022|website=Le Monde}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=efsyn.gr|title=Ακόμη ένα διεθνές «χαστούκι» στην κυβέρνηση για την Ελευθερία του Τύπου|date=2024-01-30|url=https://www.efsyn.gr/politiki/kybernisi/420563_akomi-ena-diethnes-hastoyki-stin-kybernisi-gia-tin-eleytheria-toy-typoy}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Κώστας Ζαφειρόπουλος|newspaper=efsyn.gr|title=Η διαπλοκή στα ΜΜΕ με αποδείξεις και ονόματα|date=2024-01-30|url=https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/koinonia/420519_i-diaploki-sta-mme-me-apodeixeis-kai-onomata}}</ref>

[[Censorship]] in media has been increased, with [https://rsf.org/en/index even pro-capitalist western organizations ranking Greece very low in press freedom] and with [https://www.v-dem.net/documents/30/V-dem_democracyreport2023_highres.pdf also pro-capitalist western organizations claiming Greece has a "democratic backsliding" and is becoming increasingly autocratic].

[[Kyriakos Mitsotakis]], the current Greek Prime Minister, has also put the National Information Service as well as the official Greek news agency under his complete control.<ref name=":14" /> New Democracy, with the support of the PASOK political party, amended a law (specifically 826/145 of the law 2472/1997), regarding wiretappings by the NIS, which practically removed citizens' right to be informed of their surveillance after it had been concluded.<ref name=":15" /> Ιn 2021 alone, 15,000 surveillance orders were issued.

This led to a spying scandal ignited in July 2022, when opposition leader Nikos Androulakis, leader of PASOK, revealed he was being wiretapped by Greek authorities by the illegal [[Predator]] software.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The New York Times|title=Senior European Parliament Member Targeted as Spyware Abuse Spreads|date=2022-07-27|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/world/europe/eu-spyware-predator-pegasus.html|retrieved=2023-04-27}}</ref> The case reached media spotlight, however there have been active efforts from the government to not come to a conclusion. The revelations were followed by the -almost simultaneous- resignations of the head of the National Information Service, Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the General Secretary of the Prime Minister and his nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis.

Protests also need government approval.

===== 2023 Tempi Train Crash =====
In the night of 28 February 2023, two trains collided with each other. The root cause of this tragic disaster was the lack of station masters (there was only one of them, near the crucial station of Larissa) and the lack of monitoring equipment for the trains. There has not been released any official document about the deaths, but the current information are 57 deaths and 53 missing, along with a lot more injuries.<ref name=":4">{{Web citation|author=Teddy Grant, Will Gretsky, Morgan Winsor, and Meredith Deliso|newspaper=ABC News|title=At least 57 dead, dozens more injured in Greek train derailment|date=2023-03-02|url=https://abcnews.go.com/International/16-dead-85-injured-trains-collide-derail-greece/story?id=97538779|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230301040059/https://abcnews.go.com/International/16-dead-85-injured-trains-collide-derail-greece/story?id=97538779|archive-date=2023-03-01|retrieved=2023-03-02}}</ref>

===== 2023 Natural Disasters =====
In July, Greece was struck by a 15-day [[Climate change|heatwave]] which was the longest in their recorded history,<ref name=":6">{{Web citation|author=Tasos Kokkinidis|newspaper=Greek Reporter|title=Greece Heatwave: Record-breaking 46.4°C Recorded|date=2023-07-24|url=https://greekreporter.com/2023/07/24/greece-heatwave-record-breaking-46-4-recorded/|archive-url=https://archive.ph/knjSz|archive-date=2023-09-25|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> with some areas reaching highs of 46 °C.<ref name=":7">{{Web citation|author=Helena Smith|newspaper=The Guardian|title=‘Everyone is indoors’: life on pause on hottest day of Greek heatwave|date=2023-07-26|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/26/life-at-a-standstill-on-hottest-day-of-greek-heatwave-mystras|archive-url=https://archive.ph/TGlrb|archive-date=2023-07-26|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> The country was, in the summer, the victim of severe wildfires, particularly in the Dadia national park, in which over 70,000 hectares were incinerated, one of the worst in Europe up to this point.<ref name=":8">{{Web citation|newspaper=Reuters|title=Greece wildfire 'worst on European soil in years', Copernicus says|date=2023-08-25|url=https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greece-wildfire-worst-european-soil-years-copernicus-says-2023-08-25/|archive-url=https://archive.ph/nhnxZ|archive-date=2023-08-25|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> Rhodes was particularly badly affected, with wildfires on [[Rhodes]] destroying towns and villages, resulting in the evacuation of nearly 20,000 people.<ref name=":5">{{Web citation|author=Anna Conkling|newspaper=Real News Network|title=Welcome to my burnt paradise’: Summer fires in Greece leave devastation in their wake|date=2023-09-19|url=https://therealnews.com/welcome-to-my-burnt-paradise-summer-fires-in-greece-leave-devastation-in-their-wake|archive-url=https://archive.ph/eY4mW|archive-date=2023-09-19|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> Throughout Europe, the wildfires burned nearly 470,000 hectares of European land.<ref name=":9">{{Web citation|newspaper=European Commission|title=Wildfires in 2023: 41 % of the burnt area in the EU within Natura 2000 protected sites|date=2023-09-08|url=https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/wildfires-2023-41-burnt-area-eu-within-natura-2000-protected-sites-2023-09-08_en|archive-url=https://archive.ph/fxmmB|archive-date=2023-10-01|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> In early September, [[Thessaly]] was then flooded after 18 months of rainfall fell in 24 hours due to Storm Daniel,<ref name=":10">{{Web citation|newspaper=World Metereological Organization|title=Storm Daniel leads to extreme rain and floods in Mediterranean, heavy loss of life in Libya|date=2023-09-12|url=https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/storm-daniel-leads-extreme-rain-and-floods-mediterranean-heavy-loss-of-life-libya|archive-url=https://archive.ph/g36j7|archive-date=2023-09-20|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> and in late September, central Greece was once again struck by flooding due to Storm Elias.<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|newspaper=TeleSUR|title=Central Greece Battered by Storm Elias|date=2023-09-28|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Central-Greece-Battered-by-Storm-Elias-20230928-0006.html|archive-url=https://archive.ph/9edce|archive-date=2023-09-28|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref> A quarter of Greece's agricultural yields were wiped out and will be degraded for several years due to silt and mud.<ref name=":12">{{Web citation|author=Roberta Harrington|newspaper=Business News Europe|title=Greek agriculture devastated for five or more years|date=2023-09-25|url=https://www.intellinews.com/greek-agriculture-devastated-for-five-or-more-years-293963/|archive-url=https://archive.ph/4HEGL|archive-date=2023-09-28|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref>[[File:"Israel" flag in the Hellenic Parliament building.png|thumb|The flag of the Zionist Entity in the Parliament building, Syntagma Square, Athens. |274x274px]]

===== Reaction to Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa =====
Mitsotakis has supported [["Israel"]] during the [[Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa]].

===== OPEKEPE scandal =====
The Greek government, mainly during the Mitsotakis period, has given farm subsidies to ND politicians and ND-aligned Greeks via the agricultural development organization (OPEKEPE), even if they do not actually possess agricultural land or resources. It is alleged that high-level ministers and party members are involved, but the government has actively blocked investigations and refusing EU calls for investigation.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Nektaria Stamouli|newspaper=Politico|title=Greece’s Mitsotakis blocks probe into ministers over massive EU farm funds fraud|date=2025-08-06|url=https://www.politico.eu/article/greece-mitsotakis-farm-funds-fraud-eppo-opekepe-agriculture-farmer-pasture/|retrieved=2025-08-07}}</ref>

== Politics ==
The Hellenic Parliament is the legislative authority in Greece. The body of the parliament consists of representatives, which are elected every four years.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Hellenic Parliament|title=The Institution|url=https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/en/Vouli-ton-Ellinon/O-Thesmos/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

In the current parliamentary body, which is a result of the June 2023 elections, the neoliberal centre-right party ''New Democracy'' has the majority of seats for second term in row, followed by Syriza, PASOK, the Communist Party and several right-wing parties.<ref name=":16">{{Web citation|newspaper=Ministry of Interior|title=Nationwide Elections - June 2023|url=http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/2023/june/v/home/en/parties/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width: 100%;"
|+Final results of the last elections (June 2023)<ref name=":16" />
!Political party
!Percent
!Votes count
!Parliament seats
|-
|'''''New Democracy (ND)'''''
|'''''40.56'''''
|'''''2,115,322'''''
|'''''158'''''
|-
|Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA)
|17.83
|930,013
|47
|-
|Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK)
|11.84
|617,487
|32
|-
|Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
|7.69
|401224
|21
|-
|Spartans<references group="Note"/><ref name=":17" group="Note">Right-wing political party</ref>
|4.68
|243,922
|12
|-
|Hellenic Solution<ref name=":17" group="Note" />
|4.44
|231,491
|12
|-
|Victory<ref name=":17" group="Note" />
|3.70
|193,124
|10
|-
|Sail of Freedom<ref group="Note">Left-wing nationalist party</ref>
|3.17
|165,523
|8
|-
|Other (not in parliament)
|6.07
|317,101
| -
|-
|'''Blank votes'''
|'''0.50'''
|'''26,273'''
|
|-
|'''Invalid votes'''
|'''0.61'''
|'''32,219'''
|
|-
|'''Valid votes'''
|'''98.89'''
|'''5,215,207'''
|
|-
|'''Turnout'''
|'''53.74'''
|
|
|}
=== Neoliberal parties ===

==== New Democracy (ND) ====
[[New Democracy (political party in the Hellenic Republic)|New Democracy]] (not to be confused with [[New Democracy|Mao's theory with the same name]]) is a neoliberal party in Greece currently led by Mitsotakis and is the currently governing one on its second term since the elections in July 2019.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Sputnik Globe|title=Former Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis' Party Wins Snap Elections|date=2023-06-25|url=https://sputnikglobe.com/20230625/former-greek-prime-minister-mitsotakis-party-wins-snap-elections-1111464393.html|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

==== Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA) ====
[[SYRIZA]] is a de jure social-democratic but de facto neoliberal party (since September 2023).

In September 2023, the party elected [[Stefanos Kasselakis]] as the leader of the [[Syriza|party]], to replace Alexis Tsipras. Kasselakis is a former shipping executive and [[Goldman Sachs]] trader, has worked for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and volunteered for [[Joe Biden]]'s 2008 presidential primary campaign.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Thomas Scripps|newspaper=World Socialist Web Site|title=Syriza elects Goldman Sachs banker Stefanos Kasselakis as party leader|date=2023-09-27|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/27/frzy-s27.html|archive-url=https://archive.ph/W9tVT|archive-date=2023-09-28|retrieved=2023-10-01}}</ref>

=== Social-democratic parties ===

==== Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) ====
[[Panhellenic Socialist Movement|PASOK]] is a social-democratic party, currently led by [[Nikos Androulakis]].

=== Communist parties ===
Communist parties in Greece include the [[Communist Party of Greece]], the [[Communist Organization of Greece]], the [[Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece 1918–55]], the [[Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece]] and the [[Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)]].

==== Communist Party of Greece (KKE) ====
The [[Communist Party of Greece]], abbreviated as KKE, is a [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] (but also [[Dogmatism|dogmatic]]) communist party in Greece. It is led by [[Dimitris Koutsoumpas]].

==== Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece ====
The [[Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece]], abbreviated as M-L KKE, is a Marxist-Leninist and [[Maoism|Maoist]] party formed after the death of [[Mao Zedong]] in 1976 triggered an internal conflict inside the Greek Organisation of Marxists-Leninists (OMLE), which resulted in a two-faction split.<ref name=":18">{{Web citation|newspaper=Μ-Λ ΚΚΕ|title=Η ιστορία του μ-λ κινήματος εργαλείο για μικροκομματικές σκοπιμότητες Συκοφαντικές επιθέσεις στελεχών του ΚΚΕ (μ-λ) βγαλμένες από τα «παλιά»|date=2022-08-11|url=https://www.m-lkke.gr/featured/%CE%B7-%CE%B9%CF%83%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%BC-%CE%BB-%CE%BA%CE%B9%CE%BD%CE%AE%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%82-%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B3%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%BF-%CE%B3%CE%B9/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref><ref name=":19">{{Web citation|newspaper=ΚΚΕ(μ-λ)|title=Για το μ-λ κίνημα και την πάλη ενάντια στο ρεβιζιονισμό|date=2022-06-24|url=https://www.kkeml.gr/%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%BF-%CE%BC-%CE%BB-%CE%BA%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B1-%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B9-%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BD-%CF%80%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%B7-%CE%B5%CE%BD%CE%AC%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%83%CF%84%CE%BF-%CF%81%CE%B5%CE%B2%CE%B9%CE%B6%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%B9%CF%83%CE%BC%CF%8C/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref> M-L KKE supports the [[Three Worlds Theory]]. It publishes the newspaper "Laikos Dromos" (The Popular Path).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=M-L KKE|title=Decisions of April 2022 nationwide conference|date=2023-12-10|url=https://www.m-lkke.gr/international-texts/decisions-of-april-2022-nationwide-conference/}}</ref>

==== Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist) ====
The [[Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)]], abbreviated as KKE (m-l), is a Marxist-Leninist and Maoist party. It was the second and largest faction that came out of the OMLE split. In contrast with M-L KKE, KKE (m-l) explicitly rejects the Three Worlds Theory.<ref name=":19" /><ref name=":18" /> It publishes the newspaper "Proletariaki Simaia" (The Proletarian Flag).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=ΚΚΕ(μ-λ)|title=Διαδρομή|url=https://kkeml.gr/%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%B1%CE%B4%CF%81%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%B7/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

==== Anti-Capitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow (ANTARSYA) ====
[[ANTARSYA]] is a coalition of Greek [[Communist party|communist]] and [[Anti-capitalism|anti-capitalist]] political parties, organisations and individuals.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ|title=Απόφαση της 1ης Πανελλαδικής Συνδιάσκεψης της ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ για τις οργανωτικές αρχές|date=2011-10-30|url=https://antarsya.gr/node/98|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref> As of 2024 it includes the following parties:<ref name=":20">{{Web citation|newspaper=ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ|title=Ποιοι είμαστε|url=https://antarsya.gr/node/8|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

* '''Communist Liberation youth (nKA)''' - Marxism<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Νεολαία Κομμουνιστική Απελευθέρωση|title=Τι είναι η νΚΑ|url=https://nka.gr/ti-einai-i-nka/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>
* '''Federation of Ecologists and Alternative Groups (OE)''' - [[Eco-socialism]]
* '''New Left Current for the Communist Liberation (NAR)''' - Marxism<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=ΝΑΡ|title=Ποιοί είμαστε|date=2017-12|url=https://narnet.gr/content/%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%AF-%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B5-0}}</ref>
* '''Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece - Spartacus (O.K.D.E. - Spartakos)''' - Trotskyism
* '''Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece (EKKE)''' - [[Maoism]]<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Επαναστατικό Κομμουνιστικό Κίνημα Ελλάδας|title=Θέσεις|url=https://ekke.net.gr/theseis|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>
* '''Socialist Workers' Party (SEK) '''- Trotskyism<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=ΣΕΚonline|title=Παλεύουμε για|url=https://sekonline.gr/article.php?id=46|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

==== Communist Organisation of Greece (KOE) ====
The Communist Organisation of Greece was a Marxist-Leninist and Maoist political party. Since 2017, it is a political organisation which supports its own revisionist version of Marxism that it calls "creatively located Marxism".<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=ΚΟΕ|title=Μαρξισμός και Αριστερά στον 21ο αιώνα|date=2017-03-02|url=https://koel.gr/marxismos-kai-aristera-ston-21o-aiona/|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Κομμουνιστική Οργάνωση Ελλάδας|title=Θέσεις για το 4ο συνέδριο της ΚΟΕ|date=2023-03-28|url=https://koel.gr/theseis-gia-to-4o-synedrio-tis-koe/#shmeio7|retrieved=2024-02-25}}</ref>

==== Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece (OKDE) ====
The [[Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece (OKDE)]] is a Trotskyist political party. It was one of the founding parties of ANTARSYA, but left the coalition soon after it was founded.<ref name=":20" /> A faction split off in 1985 to create the Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece - Spartacus (O.K.D.E. - Spartakos), a group that is today part of ANTARSYA.

==References==
<references />
[[Category:Countries]]
[[Category:Global north]]
[[Category:Imperialist countries]]
[[Category:European countries]]
[[Category:Countries targeted by CIA coups]]
== Notes ==
<references group="Note"/>

Liberation theology

2025-11-22T00:16:20Z

PuzzledFox99: More history

'''Liberation theology''' is a [[Left-wing politics|left-wing]] form of [[Christianity|Christian]] theology that originated in [[Latin America]] in the 1960s. It is centered around a communal life among the people, believing that theology must be done in accord with social reality. Liberation theology influenced the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front|Sandinista]] revolution in [[Republic of Nicaragua|Nicaragua]]. The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] targeted liberation theologists during the 1970s in [[Republic of El Salvador|El Salvador]], and Pope [[Karol Wojtyła|John Paul]] intervened in the Nicaraguan revolution to criticize progressive priests.<ref>{{Web citation|date=2022-12-19|title=Religious Fundamentalism and Imperialism in Latin America: Action and Resistance|url=https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-59-religious-fundamentalism-and-imperialism-in-latin-america/|newspaper=[[Tricontinental]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221222193617/https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-59-religious-fundamentalism-and-imperialism-in-latin-america/|archive-date=2022-12-22|retrieved=2023-01-05}}</ref>

==History==
Liberation theology emerged in Latin America in the 1960s in response to the social needs of the people living there. At the Second Latin American Synod in Medellín, Colombia in 1968, extensive discussions were held on issues such as peace, justice, poverty, development, and liberation. The concept of "liberation" was highlighted for the first time in the official conference documents.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Baidu Baike]]|title=解放神学|date=|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/解放神学|archive-url=https://archive.today/UQ8Ql|archive-date=2025-11-22}}</ref> In 1971, the [[Peru|Peruvian]] theologian [[Gustavo Gutiérrez]] published ''Theology of Liberation'', a comprehensive exposition of liberation theology.<ref name=":0" />

==Teachings==
Liberation theology emphasizes [[Praxis|practice]], the continuous interaction between thought and action. It also particularly affirms the status of the poor as "children of God" and stands on their side.<ref name=":0" /> Liberation theology also emphasizes that "acting on doctrine" is more important than "orthodoxy," meaning that practicing the truth with correct actions is more important than having correct dogma in and agreeing with the truth.<ref name=":0" />

== References ==
[[Category:Christianity]]
[[Category:Left-wing ideologies]]

Europe

2025-11-21T22:22:18Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Infobox country|name=Europe|area_km2=10,180,000|population_estimate=746,419,440|population_estimate_year=2018|largest_city=[[Moscow]]|image_map=Europe.png|map_width=260}}

'''Europe''' is a continent that is separated from [[Asia]] by the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. It is the sixth largest continent and the third most populated.<ref>{{Citation|author=|year=2019|title=World Population Prospects|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=|pdf=|city=|publisher=United Nations|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=|title-url=https://population.un.org/wpp/|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

As the continent where [[capitalism]] began development, Europe, especially Western Europe, overlaps with much of the [[imperial core]]. Through [[imperialism]], many parts of Europe have been enriched, with the poorer parts of Europe typically being the countries without imperialist histories. At the same time, however, Europe also saw some of the earliest [[socialist]] revolutions such as the [[Paris Commune]] and [[Soviet Union]]

== History ==
Between 1348 and 1350, the Black Death killed 30–60% of the European population, creating a [[labour]] shortage that weakened [[feudalism]] and began the rise of [[Wage slavery|wage labour]].<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Proletarian (newspaper)|Proletarian]]|title=Celebrating Shakespeare: a Marxist-Leninist perspective|date=2016-06-01|url=https://thecommunists.org/2016/06/01/news/culture/celebrating-shakespeare-marxist-leninist-perspective/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230208011255/https://thecommunists.org/2016/06/01/news/culture/celebrating-shakespeare-marxist-leninist-perspective/|archive-date=2023-02-08}}</ref>

== Geography ==
Europe has a 37,000 km coastline and is surrounded by the Baltic, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. It has numerous navigable rivers such as the Volga, Rhine, Danube, and Seine. The North European Plain is an open expanse stretching from Paris to Moscow.<ref name=":0222">{{Citation|author=Neil Faulkner|year=2013|title=A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals|chapter=European Feudalism|page=77–78|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedljwr5izotdclz23o3c5p4di4t3ero3ncbfytip55slhiz4otuls?filename=Neil%20Faulkner%20-%20A%20Marxist%20History%20of%20the%20World_%20From%20Neanderthals%20to%20Neoliberals-Pluto%20Press%20%282013%29.pdf|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=9781849648639|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=91CA6C708BFE15444FE27899217FBA8E}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Continents]]

Liberalism

2025-11-19T23:11:40Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Message box/Missing Sources}}{{Quote|First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the [[white people|white]] moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the [[African|Negro]]'s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the [[Ku Klux Klan|Ku Klux Klanner]], but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of [[revolution|direct action]]"|[[Martin Luther King Jr.]]|[[Library:Letter from Birmingham Jail|Letter from Birmingham Jail]]|1963}}
[[File:Losurdo tree liberalism.png|thumb|The liberal view of [[human rights]] is based on [[private property]] while the [[Marxism|Marxist]] view is based on [[self-determination]].<ref name="Boer">{{Citation|author=Roland Boer|year=2021|title=Sovereignty and Human Rights: A Comparison Between Western Liberal and Chinese Marxist Traditions|publisher=Political Theology 23(1–2), 13–28.|doi=10.1080/1462317X.2021.1932341}}</ref>]]
'''Liberalism''' is an [[Idealism|idealist]] [[ideology]] that promotes [[capitalism]], [[free market]] principles, [[individualism]], [[fundamental rights]] (also known as [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] privileges), [[separation of church and state]], [[popular sovereignty]], and [[rule of law]]. Liberalism emerged in the [[17th Century|17th century]] as the ideological component of [[capitalism]], and gained administrative power as a result of the [[Bourgeois revolution|bourgeois revolutions]] of the [[18th Century|18th]] and [[19th Century|19th centuries]] in [[North America]] and [[Europe]].<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=I. G. Nemanov|year=1973|chapter=Liberalism|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Liberalism|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=14|page=396-398|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т14_731.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref> Liberalism, the philosophy behind the [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]], has consistently changed over the centuries, as a result of advancement in the productive forces and the development of the [[Feudalism|feudal]] serfdom into the industrial [[proletariat]], and has now turned into [[neoliberalism]], as a result of the consolidation of capital into the hands of the few, and to protect the [[ruling class]] from [[socialism]], which is currently in the process of replacing capitalism as the primary [[mode of production]].

== History ==

=== Creation ===
[[File:Base-superstructure Dialectic.png|thumb|Diagram showing how the base and superstructure relate to each other in dialectics.]]
Liberalism developed as an ideology and was adopted by members of society as capitalism (or the premises of capitalism) developed. This is generally exemplified by the [[base and superstructure]]; as the material conditions develop and factories emerge, there is a need for the superstructure to provide the institutions required for the base to survive. Since capitalism requires the free market to exist, there needed to be a guiding ideology that would allow the free market to exist and justify the existence of capitalism, the base.

Early on, liberalism expressed the interests of the young bourgeoisie in Western Europe against feudalism, absolutism, and clericalism.<ref name=":0" /> Liberalism became codified during the [[Age of Enlightenment]], which lasted from about the mid 17th century to the late 18th century, and culminated perhaps with the bourgeois [[French Revolution]] of 1789.<ref name=":0" /> Some notable liberal theorists include [[René Descartes]], [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], or economist [[Adam Smith]].

In this sense, both [[Social democracy|social-democrats]] and classical liberals, who may seem at the opposite ends of a spectrum, are liberals since both will strive towards establishing capitalism.

=== Modern times ===
In modern times, liberalism remains the dominant ideology of the world at large. As it is inextricably linked to capitalism, and capitalism is the dominant mode of production, it follows that liberalism is the dominant guiding ideology in the world.

As the ideas of a society are the ideas of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie in capitalist societies), liberalism has become the only ''realistic'' ideology for most people living in a capitalism mode of production, as it permeates their lives from birth. It is indoctrinated into them via the media, the educational system etc.

Most people therefore do not realize that they are ideological, and that their ideology is liberalism. As they have lived their whole lives in capitalism, it is difficult for them to imagine another system (known as [[capitalist realism]]) and therefore that liberalism is the only existing or viable ideology.

== Idealist component ==
Liberalism is considered to be an [[Idealism|idealist]] ideology, as opposed to a materialist ideology, because it claims that ideas shape the material world, as opposed to the material world shaping ideas. In their pursuit for the cult of the individual, liberal philosophers used to embrace the Great Man theory of history, which states that progress is driven by great people who have high natural abilities. Therefore they had progressive ideas, and these ideas shaped the material world. As such, in classical liberal reasoning, [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] was instrumental in spreading capitalism and destroying the [[Feudalism|old order]].

Marxism, which is a materialist philosophy, understands that material conditions drive change (the [[Dialectics|dialectic]]) and will influence the ideas that people have and how they act on them. Marxism holds that capitalism was instrumental in creating a Napoleon Bonaparte and that, if he had not existed, someone else would have taken his place.

After the impact of [[scientific socialism]] in Europe, liberal thinkers started moving away from such idealist notions and co-opted some materialist theory so as to reinforce theirs and prevent communism from becoming a major ideology in the world. As such, even liberal theorists today have to admit that, to some extent, change is driven by ''forces'' at large. Liberals admit that the Industrial Revolution largely affected our daily life, in a way that completely modified it from what existed previously (e.g. the division of the work day and the importance it has in a worker's life as compared to the feudal journeyman's). However, they see this progress as an abstract, without relation to the base or superstructure, and would rather focus on the abstract consequences than the material causes. If life changed so much for the average worker after the introduction of the steam engine, it is precisely because the mode of production at large changed and required new policies to create more surplus value.

== Principles ==

=== Private property ===
Liberalism teaches that only private property, with guaruntees of freedom for certain people, can ensure social harmony and human progress. Within this is the underlying assumption that common welfare results from individuals realizing their personal goals.<ref name=":0" />

=== Free market ===
Perhaps best laid down by Adam Smith, though already existing before his work [[The Wealth of Nations|''The Wealth of Nations'']], free market policies encompass a large range of principles and laws that govern trade inside and outside a nation, so as to remove as many barriers as possible to trade.

Free trade was originally required by the bourgeoisie to destroy the old order of the nobility, who used to own monopolies and form cartels to reinforce their power. Today, free trade is also used as a vector for imperialism, notably in the [[Opium Wars]] that sought to dismantle [[Qing dynasty (1636–1912)|China]]'s protectionist trade policies in the late 19th century.

=== Individualism ===

=== Fundamental rights ===
Fundamental rights, in liberal philosophy, are rights with which all individuals are imbued with on the grounds of being human. They are more aptly described as privileges the bourgeois reluctantly allows the proletariat to enjoy.

== See also ==

* [[Neoliberalism]]
* [[Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]]
* [[Compatible Left]]
* [[Libertarianism]]
* [[Liberalism:Quotes]]

== Further reading ==

* ''[[Library:Liberalism: A Counter-History|Liberalism: A Counter-History]]''

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Political ideology]]
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]

Liberalism

2025-11-19T23:11:17Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Message box/Missing Sources}}{{Quote|First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the [[white people|white]] moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the [[African|Negro]]'s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the [[Ku Klux Klan|Ku Klux Klanner]], but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of [[revolution|direct action]]"|[[Martin Luther King Jr.]]|[[Library:Letter from Birmingham Jail|Letter from Birmingham Jail]]|1963}}
[[File:Losurdo tree liberalism.png|thumb|The liberal view of [[human rights]] is based on [[private property]] while the [[Marxism|Marxist]] view is based on [[self-determination]].<ref name="Boer">{{Citation|author=Roland Boer|year=2021|title=Sovereignty and Human Rights: A Comparison Between Western Liberal and Chinese Marxist Traditions|publisher=Political Theology 23(1–2), 13–28.|doi=10.1080/1462317X.2021.1932341}}</ref>]]
'''Liberalism''' is an [[Idealism|idealist]] [[ideology]] that promotes [[capitalism]], [[free market]] principles, [[individualism]], [[fundamental rights]] (also known as [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] privileges), [[separation of church and state]], [[popular sovereignty]], and [[rule of law]]. Liberalism emerged in the [[17th Century|17th century]] as the ideological component of [[capitalism]], and gained administrative power as a result of the [[Bourgeois revolution|bourgeois revolutions]] of the [[18th Century|18th]] and [[19th Century|19th centuries]] in [[North America]] and [[Europe]].<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=I. G. Nemanov|year=1973|chapter=Liberalism|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Liberalism|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=14|page=396-398|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т14_731.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref> Liberalism, the philosophy behind the [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]], has consistently changed over the centuries, as a result of advancement in the productive forces and the development of the [[Feudalism|feudal]] serfdom into the industrial [[proletariat]], and has now turned into [[neoliberalism]], as a result of the consolidation of capital into the hands of the few, and to protect the [[ruling class]] from [[socialism]], which is currently in the process of replacing capitalism as the primary [[mode of production]].

== History ==

=== Creation ===
[[File:Base-superstructure Dialectic.png|thumb|Diagram showing how the base and superstructure relate to each other in dialectics.]]
Liberalism developed as an ideology and was adopted by members of society as capitalism (or the premises of capitalism) developed. This is generally exemplified by the [[base and superstructure]]; as the material conditions develop and factories emerge, there is a need for the superstructure to provide the institutions required for the base to survive. Since capitalism requires the free market to exist, there needed to be a guiding ideology that would allow the free market to exist and justify the existence of capitalism, the base.

Early on, liberalism expressed the interests of the young bourgeoisie in Western Europe against feudalism, absolutism, and clericalism.<ref name=":0" /> Liberalism became codified during the [[Age of Enlightenment]], which lasted from about the mid 17th century to the late 18th century, and culminated perhaps with the bourgeois [[French Revolution]] of 1789.<ref name=":0" /> Some notable liberal theorists include [[René Descartes]], [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]], or economist [[Adam Smith]].

In this sense, both [[Social democracy|social-democrats]] and classical liberals, who may seem at the opposite ends of a spectrum, are liberals since both will strive towards establishing capitalism.

=== Modern times ===
In modern times, liberalism remains the dominant ideology of the world at large. As it is inextricably linked to capitalism, and capitalism is the dominant mode of production, it follows that liberalism is the dominant guiding ideology in the world.

As the ideas of a society are the ideas of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie in capitalist societies), liberalism has become the only ''realistic'' ideology for most people living in a capitalism mode of production, as it permeates their lives from birth. It is indoctrinated into them via the media, the educational system etc.

Most people therefore do not realize that they are ideological, and that their ideology is liberalism. As they have lived their whole lives in capitalism, it is difficult for them to imagine another system (known as [[capitalist realism]]) and therefore that liberalism is the only existing or viable ideology.

== Idealist component ==
Liberalism is considered to be an [[Idealism|idealist]] ideology, as opposed to a materialist ideology, because it claims that ideas shape the material world, as opposed to the material world shaping ideas. In their pursuit for the cult of the individual, liberal philosophers used to embrace the Great Man theory of history, which states that progress is driven by great people who have high natural abilities. Therefore they had progressive ideas, and these ideas shaped the material world. As such, in classical liberal reasoning, [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] was instrumental in spreading capitalism and destroying the [[Feudalism|old order]].

Marxism, which is a materialist philosophy, understands that material conditions drive change (the [[Dialectics|dialectic]]) and will influence the ideas that people have and how they act on them. Marxism holds that capitalism was instrumental in creating a Napoleon Bonaparte and that, if he had not existed, someone else would have taken his place.

After the impact of [[scientific socialism]] in Europe, liberal thinkers started moving away from such idealist notions and co-opted some materialist theory so as to reinforce theirs and prevent communism from becoming a major ideology in the world. As such, even liberal theorists today have to admit that, to some extent, change is driven by ''forces'' at large. Liberals admit that the Industrial Revolution largely affected our daily life, in a way that completely modified it from what existed previously (e.g. the division of the work day and the importance it has in a worker's life as compared to the feudal journeyman's). However, they see this progress as an abstract, without relation to the base or superstructure, and would rather focus on the abstract consequences than the material causes. If life changed so much for the average worker after the introduction of the steam engine, it is precisely because the mode of production at large changed and required new policies to create more surplus value.

== Principles ==

=== Private property ===
Liberalism teaches that only private property, with guaruntees of freedom for certain people, can ensure social harmony and human progress. Within this is the underlying assumption that common welfare results from individuals realizing their personal goals.<ref name=":0" />

=== Free market ===
Perhaps best laid down by Adam Smith, though already existing before his work [[The Wealth of Nations|''The Wealth of Nations'']], free market policies encompass a large range of principles and laws that govern trade inside and outside a nation, so as to remove as many barriers as possible to trade.

Free trade was originally required by the bourgeoisie to destroy the old order of the nobility, who used to own monopolies and form cartels to reinforce their power. Today, free trade is also used as a vector for imperialism, notably in the [[Opium Wars]] that sought to dismantle [[Qing dynasty (1636–1912)|China]]'s protectionist trade policies in the late 19th century.

=== Individualism ===

=== Fundamental rights ===
Fundamental rights, in liberal philosophy, are rights with which all individuals are imbued with on the grounds of being human. They are more aptly described as privileges the bourgeois reluctantly allows the proletariat to enjoy.

== See also ==

* [[Neoliberalism]]
* [[Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]]
* [[Compatible Left]]
* [[Libertarianism]]
* [[Liberalism:Quotes]]

== Further reading ==

* ''[[Library:Liberalism: A Counter-History|Liberalism: A Counter-History]]''

[[Category:Political ideology]]
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]

Charlie Kirk

2025-11-19T22:56:02Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Stub}}{{Infobox politician|name=Charles James Kirk|birth_date=14 October 1993|birth_place=[[Arlington Heights (Illinois)|Arlington Heights]], [[State of Illinois|Illinois]], [[United States of America|U.S.]]|death_date=10 September 2025 (aged 31)|death_place=[[Orem (Utah)|Orem]], [[State of Utah|Utah]], U.S.|death_cause=[[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|Assassination by gunshot]]|nationality=Statesian|political_orientation=[[Conservatism]] [[Christian nationalism]] [[Neo-fascism]] [[MAGA movement|Trumpism]]|political_party=[[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]|image=Charlie Kirk.jpg}}

'''Charles James Kirk''' (14 October 1993 in – 10 September 2025) was a Statesian [[Conservatism|conservative]] author, [[Podcast|podcaster]], and political [[Activism|activist]] who co-founded and directed the student organisation [[Turning Point USA]] (TPUSA) from 2012 until [[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|his assassination in 2025]].

==Views==
In the 12 October 2022 episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk said "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage."<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=CBC News|title=Some of Charlie Kirk's most controversial takes|date=2025-09-10|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charlie-kirk-controversies-1.7630859}}</ref>

In December 2023, at a TPUSA political conference, Kirk said that [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] was "awful" and "not a good person." He also said that "We made a huge mistake when we passed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act]] in the 1960s."<ref name=":0" />

In September 2024, in a [[Jubilee Media|Jubilee]] debate, when asked if he would want his 10 year old daughter to give birth if she was raped, Kirk said that "The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered."<ref name=":0" />

In July 2025, Kirk claimed that "Israel is not starving Gazans" during the [[Gaza genocide]] when Gazans were being starved.<ref name=":0" />

In August 2025, in response to celebrity [[Taylor Swift]], Kirk said "Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge."<ref name=":0" />

==References==
<references />

[[Category:1993 births]]
[[Category:2025 deaths]]
[[Category:2025 homicides]]
[[Category:Victims of assassination]]
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:Reactionaries]]
[[Category:Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian activists]]
[[Category:Statesian antisemites]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian nationalists]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian conservatives]]
[[Category:Statesian fascists]]
[[Category:Statesian homophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Islamophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian racists]]
[[Category:Statesian reactionaries]]
[[Category:Steasian transphobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Zionists]]

Gaza genocide

2025-11-19T22:52:17Z

PuzzledFox99: Redirected page to Israel-Gaza war and genocide

#REDIRECT [[Israel-Gaza war and genocide]]

Charlie Kirk

2025-11-19T22:48:37Z

PuzzledFox99:

{{Stub}}{{Infobox politician|name=Charles James Kirk|birth_date=14 October 1993|birth_place=[[Arlington Heights (Illinois)|Arlington Heights]], [[State of Illinois|Illinois]], [[United States of America|U.S.]]|death_date=10 September 2025 (aged 31)|death_place=[[Orem (Utah)|Orem]], [[State of Utah|Utah]], U.S.|death_cause=[[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|Assassination by gunshot]]|nationality=Statesian|political_orientation=[[Trumpism]] [[Christian nationalism]] [[Neo-fascism]] [[MAGA movement|Trumpism]]|political_party=[[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]|image=Charlie Kirk.jpg}}

'''Charles James Kirk''' (14 October 1993 in – 10 September 2025) was a Statesian [[Conservatism|conservative]] author, [[Podcast|podcaster]], and political [[Activism|activist]] who co-founded and directed the student organisation [[Turning Point USA]] (TPUSA) from 2012 until [[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|his assassination in 2025]].

==Views==
In the 12 October 2022 episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk said "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage."<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=CBC News|title=Some of Charlie Kirk's most controversial takes|date=2025-09-10|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charlie-kirk-controversies-1.7630859}}</ref>

In December 2023, at a TPUSA political conference, Kirk said that [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] was "awful" and "not a good person." He also said that "We made a huge mistake when we passed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act]] in the 1960s."<ref name=":0" />

In September 2024, in a [[Jubilee Media|Jubilee]] debate, when asked if he would want his 10 year old daughter to give birth if she was raped, Kirk said that "The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered."<ref name=":0" />

In July 2025, Kirk claimed that "Israel is not starving Gazans" during the [[Gaza genocide]] when Gazans were being starved.<ref name=":0" />

In August 2025, in response to celebrity [[Taylor Swift]], Kirk said "Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge."<ref name=":0" />

==References==
<references />

[[Category:1993 births]]
[[Category:2025 deaths]]
[[Category:2025 homicides]]
[[Category:Victims of assassination]]
[[Category:Antisemites]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:Reactionaries]]
[[Category:Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian activists]]
[[Category:Statesian antisemites]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian nationalists]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian conservatives]]
[[Category:Statesian fascists]]
[[Category:Statesian homophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Islamophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian racists]]
[[Category:Statesian reactionaries]]
[[Category:Steasian transphobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Zionists]]

Charlie Kirk

2025-11-19T22:48:18Z

PuzzledFox99: Adding views

{{Stub}}{{Infobox politician|name=Charles James Kirk|birth_date=14 October 1993|birth_place=[[Arlington Heights (Illinois)|Arlington Heights]], [[State of Illinois|Illinois]], [[United States of America|U.S.]]|death_date=10 September 2025 (aged 31)|death_place=[[Orem (Utah)|Orem]], [[State of Utah|Utah]], U.S.|death_cause=[[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|Assassination by gunshot]]|nationality=Statesian|political_orientation=[[Trumpism]] [[Christian nationalism]] [[Neo-fascism]] [[MAGA movement|Trumpism]]|political_party=[[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]|image=Charlie Kirk.jpg}}

'''Charles James Kirk''' (14 October 1993 in – 10 September 2025) was a Statesian [[Conservatism|conservative]] author, [[Podcast|podcaster]], and political [[Activism|activist]] who co-founded and directed the student organisation [[Turning Point USA]] (TPUSA) from 2012 until [[Assassination of Charlie Kirk|his assassination in 2025]].

==Views==
In the 12 October 2022 episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk said "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage."<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=CBC News|title=Some of Charlie Kirk's most controversial takes|date=2025-09-10|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charlie-kirk-controversies-1.7630859}}</ref>

In December 2023, at a TPUSA political conference, Kirk said that [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] was "awful" and "not a good person." He also said that "We made a huge mistake when we passed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act]] in the 1960s."<ref name=":0" />

In September 2024, in a [[Jubilee Media|Jubilee]] debate, when asked if he would want his 10 year old daughter to give birth if she was raped, Kirk said that "The answer is, yes, the baby would be delivered."<ref name=":0" />

In July 2025, Kirk claimed that "Israel is not starving Gazans" during the [[Gaza genocide]] when Gazans were being starved.<ref name=":0" />

In August 2025, in response to celebrity [[Taylor Swift]], Kirk said "Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not in charge."<ref name=":0" />

==References==
<references />

[[Category:1993 births]]
[[Category:2025 deaths]]
[[Category:2025 homicides]]
[[Category:Victims of assassination]]
[[Categories:Antisemites]]
[[Categories:Racists]]
[[Categories:Reactionaries]]
[[Categories:Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian activists]]
[[Category:Statesian antisemites]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian nationalists]]
[[Category:Statesian Christian Zionists]]
[[Category:Statesian conservatives]]
[[Category:Statesian fascists]]
[[Category:Statesian homophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Islamophobes]]
[[Category:Statesian racists]]
[[Category:Statesian reactionaries]]
[[Category:Steasian transphobes]]
[[Category:Statesian Zionists]]

Reactionary

2025-11-10T19:21:51Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Chinese anti-imperialist poster.png|thumb|"Imperialism and all reactionaries are all paper tigers."]]
'''Reactionary''' is an umbrella term for those whose political ideologies seek to conserve the current structures of power. In a [[Marxism|Marxist]] context this means the total opposition to any [[revolution|revolutionary]] movements and upholding [[capitalism]], [[liberalism]], [[imperialism]], [[fascism]], [[monarchism]] and/or [[feudalism]]. Reactionaries are the [[contradiction]] to [[Progressive|progressives]] (or simply progress), which [[Dialectics|dialectically]] tends towards socialism. Fascism is the most extreme form of reaction.<ref>{{Citation|year=1975|chapter=Reaction|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/reaction|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=21|page=524|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т21_740.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref>

Reactionaries are usually conservative and hold a certain bygone era in high regard. This includes the veneration of classical art, traditional culture and appeals to religious thought. Certain reactionaries oppose anything that can be considered modern, but where they draw the line is often wherever is most politically convenient. In regards to reactionaries, their stance against [[socialism]] and [[communism]] is of the highest concern, but reactionaries also aim their hostilities toward any other movements or beliefs that threaten the bourgeois cultural and economic hegemony. This means an opposition to racial and [[national liberation]] movements, [[Feminism|women’s liberation]], [[LGBT+|queer]] rights movements, [[Trade union|labor unions]], modern art/music, and cultural movements, among others.

==Reactionary anti-communism==
[[Mao Zedong|Mao]] described reactionaries as ''paper tigers'' to mean that they look terrifying but are not as powerful as they seem.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Mao Zedong]]|year=1946|title=Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong|quote=All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_13.htm}}</ref>

[[Liberalism|Liberals]], who do not always consider themselves conservative, are at risk of becoming reactionaries at any time as they ultimately support capitalism (even if they would like a "more humane" capitalism). This is the reason behind the expression "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds."

Thus we have to differentiate between two types of reactionaries: the "soft" reactionary who only opposes progress in theory (towards socialism and communism) and the "hard" reactionary, usually [[Fascism|fascists]], who will take up arms and fight to conserve the [[status quo]].

==Self-described reactionaries==
While most reactionaries do not identify as such, some on the far-right are self-aware enough to use "reactionary" as a self-descriptor. They are usually associated with the '''neo-reactionary''' ('''NRx''') movement, a mostly online trend spearheaded by [[Curtis Yarvin]] whose main object of critique is [[democracy]], both in its [[Bourgeois democracy|bourgeois]] and proletarian forms. The neoreactionaries have themselves been criticized for overestimating the stability of [[Monarchism|monarchy]] and for repackaging "scientific" [[racism]] as "human biodiversity."<ref>{{Web citation|author=Klint Finley|newspaper=Tech Crunch|title=Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries|date=2013-11-22|url=https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131201095333/https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/|archive-date=2013-12-01}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]
[[Category:Reactionaries]]

Anarchism

2025-11-08T20:31:10Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Anarchism.png|thumb|The letter A in a circle, a common anarchist symbol]]
'''Anarchism''' is political philosophy which is skeptical of authority and rejects coercive hierarchies, including the very existence of a [[state]]. While Marxists also advocate for a stateless society (a [[Communism|communist society]]), Marxists tend to criticize anarchism as [[Utopian socialism|utopian]] and unscientific for rejecting the transitionary phase of the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]. The philosophical basis of anarchism is [[individualism]], [[subjectivism]] and [[voluntarism]], which can be categorized as [[Petty-bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] deviations from [[Proletariat|proletarian]] struggle.<ref name=":0">Rosental, M.; e Iudin, P. (1973): ''Diccionario filosófico'' (p. 13). Buenos Aires: Universo, 1973.</ref><ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=G. N. Komoliets, V. V. Aleksandrov, N. M. Pirumova|year=1970|chapter=Anarchism|chapter-url=https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Anarchism|title=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] (3rd ed.)|volume=1|page=573-574|city=Moscow|pdf=https://ia804601.us.archive.org/2/items/B-001-032-507-748-ALL/БСЭ_3изд_т01_728.pdf|trans-title=Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref> Anarchism is a part of the broader trend of [[libertarian socialism]].

==Origin==
Anarchism emerged in Europe and parts of Latin America between the 1840s and 1870s.<ref name=":1" /> The advent of anarchism is tied to the names of Schmidt ([[Max Stirner|Stirner]]), [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon|Proudhon]], and [[Mikhail Bakunin|Bakunin]], whose utopian theories were subjected to criticism in the works of [[Marx]] and [[Engels]]. In the nineteenth century, anarchism spread through France, Italy and Spain.<ref name=":0" /> The social bases of anarchism are the petty bourgeoisie and the [[Lumpenproletariat]], with some strata of the revolutionary working class.<ref name=":1" />

== Variations of anarchism ==

=== Collectivist anarchism ===
*[[Anarcho-communism]]
*[[Anarcho-syndicalism]]
*[[Mutualism]]

=== Individualist anarchism ===
* [[Anarcho-capitalism]] (in name only){{refn|group=note|name=ancap|Contrary to its name, anarcho-capitalism is based in [[Right-libertarianism|right-libertarian]] principles and has nothing to do with anarchism. The leading theoretician and founder of anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, denied any identification with anarchism.<ref>{{Web citation| author = Murray N. Rothbard| newspaper = Mises Institute
| title = Are Libertarians "Anarchists"?| date = July 4th, 2022| url = https://mises.org/library/are-libertarians-anarchists| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230310021514/https://mises.org/library/are-libertarians-anarchists| quote = We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.}}</ref> Anarchists, libertarian socialists, and libertarian communists tend to associate with each other, whilst avoiding association with anarcho-capitalists.}}
* [[Egoism]]
*[[Market anarchism]]
* [[National anarchism]]

=== Post-classical and modern anarchism ===
* [[Anarcha-feminism]]
*[[Anarcho-pacifism]]
* [[Anarcho-primitivism]]
* [[Anarcho-transhumanism]]
* [[Post-leftism]]{{refn|group=note|name=postleft|Post-leftism and post-anarchism reject political philosophy altogether as a reactionary force, but they practically advocate for anarchism.}}
* [[Post-anarchism]]{{refn|group=note|name=postleft}}
*[[Queer anarchism]]

== Characteristics ==
Anarchism does not go beyond general phrases against exploitation, it does not understand what the causes of exploitation are, nor the [[class struggle]] as a creative force for the realization of [[socialism]]. The anarchist denial of political struggle contributes objectively to the subordination of the [[Proletariat|working class]] to [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] politics.

The most essential thing in the struggle against anarchism lies in the problem of how the [[revolution]] should proceed in relation to the [[State]] and in the problem of the State in general. Anarchists advocate for the immediate annihilation of the State. They do not recognize that it is possible to take advantage of the bourgeois State to prepare the proletariat for the revolution.

After 1917, anarchism in Russia became a [[counter-revolutionary]] tendency. Historically, Anarchism saw brief surges in popularity in [[Anarchist Catalonia (1936–1939)|Catalonia]], the [[Ukrainian Free Territory|Free Territory]] in [[Ukraine]] and in the Korean Peninsula. Today, it enjoys a certain influence in the United States and Europe.<ref name=":0" />

==Distinctions between Marxists and Anarchists==
The essential distinctions in the criteria of Marxists and anarchists were reduced by [[Lenin]] to three fundamental points:

*In that the first, whose end is the complete withering away of the State, acknowledge that this end can only be achieved after the socialist revolution has abolished classes as a result of the establishment of [[socialism]]. The latter, on the other hand, want to completely destroy the State overnight, without understanding the conditions in which this destruction can take place.
*They first acknowledge the need for the [[proletariat]], after conquering political power, to totally destroy the former State machine, replacing it with a new one. The latter advocate the destruction of the state machine and have an absolutely confused idea of what the proletariat must replace the machine with and how it will exercise revolutionary power. Anarchists reject even the use of state power by the revolutionary proletariat, their revolutionary dictatorship.
* The first demand that the proletariat prepare for revolution by taking advantage of the modern State, while anarchists reject it.<ref>Rumiántsev, A. (1981): ''Comunismo científico'' (diccionario), p. 14-17. Moscú: Progreso, 1981.</ref>
In the [[State & Revolution]], it has been clearly laid further when Marx emphasised of the "revolutionary and transient form" of the state that the proletariat still needs. Instead of immediately abolishing the state as the anarchists desire, the Marxist stance remains that the proletariat still needs the state as well as the resources and methods of state power to use against the oppressor class or exploiters. The keypoint here is "temporary", for eventually, the state will eventually wither away.

==Examples of anarchist experiments ==
* [[Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone]]
*[[Ukrainian Free Territory]]
*[[Anarchist Catalonia]]
*[[Korean People's Association in Manchuria]]

== See also ==

* [[Left-wing libertarianism]]
* [[Right-wing libertarianism]]
* [[Idealism]]

== Further reading ==

* ''[[Library:Anarchism or socialism?|Anarchism or Socialism?]]'' ([[Joseph Stalin]])

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Left-wing ideologies]]
[[Category:Utopian socialism]]

Fascism

2025-11-05T22:47:25Z

PuzzledFox99:

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1981-052-06A, Albert Speer spricht in Munitionsfabrik.jpg|thumb|The Roman Salute is commonly associated with Nazis and other Fascists.]]
'''Fascism''' is a [[Counterrevolution|counter-revolutionary]] [[reactionary]] movement led by finance [[capital]]<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1935|title=The fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the struggle of the working class against fascism|chapter=The class character of fascism|page=|quote=No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. '''Fascism is the power of finance capital itself'''. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Main Report delivered at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|title=Encyclopedia of Marxism|url=https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/a.htm#fascism}}</ref> and a form of [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]] which emerged during periods of [[economic crisis]] in [[Imperialism|imperialist]] countries.<ref>{{Citation|author=William I. Robinson|year=2019|title=Global capitalist crisis and twenty-first century fascism: beyond the Trump hype|quote=Fascism, whether in its classical 20th-century form or possible variants of 21st-century neo-fascism, is a particular response to capitalist crisis, such as that of the 1930s and the one that began with the financial meltdown of 2008. Global capitalism is facing an organic crisis involving an intractable structural dimension, that of overaccumulation, and a political dimension, that of legitimacy or hegemony that is approaching a general crisis of capitalist rule.|publisher=Science & Society, 83(2), 155–183|doi=10.1521/siso.2019.83.2.155}}</ref> In other words, fascism is [[capitalism]] in decay.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Rajani Palme Dutt]]|year=1935|title=Fascism and Social Revolution|chapter=Preface to the Second Edition|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocial0000rpal/page/n15/mode/2up|page=xiv|location=London|publisher=Martin Lawrence LTD|quote=Fascism is not merely the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final attempt to defeat the working-class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay.}}</ref> The [[Communist International (1919–1943)|Third International]] described fascism as the "open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most [[Chauvinism|chauvinistic]], and most imperialist elements of finance capital."<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Georgi Dimitrov]]|year=1935|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|chapter=Fascism and the Working Class|quote=Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm}}</ref>

Fascism abolishes [[bourgeois democracy]] without abolishing bourgeois rule itself. In contrast, [[socialism]] abolishes both in order to create a [[Democratic centralism|more substantive form of democracy]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[John Bellamy Foster]]|newspaper=[[Monthly Review]]|title=This Is Not Populism|date=2017-06-01|url=https://monthlyreview.org/2017/06/01/this-is-not-populism/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230718012353/https://monthlyreview.org/2017/06/01/this-is-not-populism/|archive-date=2023-07-18}}</ref>

Fascism usually promotes policies that favor the ever-expanding domination of capital. Its political aspect is marked by pervasive [[anti-communism]], a profound aversion towards [[democracy]], the justification and glorification of [[class society]] through [[class collaboration]], and chauvinistic tendencies, namely reactionary [[nationalism]], [[racism]], [[sexism]], [[xenophobia]], [[transphobia]] and [[ableism]]. Fascist ideologues usually promote [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]], irrational myths and manipulative distortions of truth to gather support of their popular base.

== Analysis ==

According to [[Georgi Dimitrov]], fascism is "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital,"<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital."}}</ref> taking vengeance against the [[Proletariat|working class]] and the revolutionary section of the [[peasantry]] and [[intelligentsia]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Fascism is not a form of state power "standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie," as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia."}}</ref> Both the development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country. In certain countries, principally those in which fascism has no broad mass basis and in which the struggle of the various groups within the camp of the fascist bourgeoisie itself is rather acute, fascism does not immediately venture to abolish parliament, but allows the other bourgeois parties, as well as the Social-Democratic Parties, to retain a modicum of legality. In other countries, where the ruling bourgeoisie fears an early outbreak of revolution, fascism establishes its unrestricted political monopoly, either immediately or by intensifying its reign of terror against and persecution of all rival parties and groups. This does not prevent fascism, when its position becomes particularly acute, from trying to extend its basis and, without altering its class nature, trying to combine open terrorist dictatorship with a crude sham of parliamentarism."}}</ref>

In foreign policy, fascism incites violent hatred of other nations, acting in the interests of the extreme imperialists, yet it presents itself to the masses in the guise of a champion of an ill-treated nation, and appeals to outraged national sentiments.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations."}}</ref> Within a country or nation, fascists are not the patriots they boast to be, as they engage in [[historical revisionism]] of cultures, a form of ethnocide, to promote their fascist ideology. Communists must urgently expose the way fascists in practice do not care about the proletariat's native cultures, and combat this revisionism, outshining fascists with a more genuine nationalism, adapting Marxism-Leninism to their own national conditions, and practice [[proletarian internationalism]]. The proletariat of colonized nations will not shy from national sentiments and struggle against the imperialism oppressing their native cultures, and the proletariat of imperialist nations will struggle against their own bourgeoisie's oppressor policies. Communists from oppressor nations must valorize the more noble, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, non-chauvinist aspects of their cultures.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1914|title=ON THE NATIONAL PRIDE OF THE GREAT RUSSIANS|title-url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/NPGR14.html|quote=Are we class-conscious Great-Russian proletarians impervious to the feeling of national pride? Certainly not. We love our language and our motherland; we, more than any other group, are working to raise its laboring masses (i.e., nine-tenths of its population) to the level of intelligent democrats and socialists. We, more than anybody are grieved to see and feel to what violence, oppression and mockery our beautiful motherland is being subjected by the tsarist hangmen, the nobles and the capitalists. We are proud of the fact that those acts of violence met with resistance in our midst, in the midst of the Great Russians; that this midst brought forth Radischev, the Decembrists, the intellectual revolutionaries of the seventies; that in 1905 the Great-Russian working class created a powerful revolutionary party of the masses.
We are filled with national pride because of the knowledge that the Great-Russian nation, too, has created a revolutionary class, that it, too, has proved capable of giving humanity great examples of struggle for freedom and for socialism; that its contribution is not confined solely to great pogroms, numerous scaffolds, torture chambers, severe famines and abject servility before the priests, the tsars, the landowners and the capitalists.
We are filled with national pride, and therefore we particularly hate our slavish past... and our slavish present, in which the same landowners, aided by the capitalists, lead us into war to stifle Poland and the Ukraine, to throttle the democratic movement in Persia and in China, to strengthen the gang of Romanovs, Bobrinskis, Puriskeviches that cover with shame our Great-Russian national dignity.|city=Moscow|publisher=Progress Publishers|trans-title=Sotsial-Demokrat No. 35|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="The fascists are rummaging through the entire history of every nation so as to be able to pose as the heirs and continuators of all that was exalted and heroic in its past, while all that was degrading or offensive to the national sentiments of the people they make use of as weapons against the enemies of fascism. Hundreds of books are being published in Germany with only one aim -- to falsify the history of the German people and give it a fascist complexion."}}</ref> The socialist revolution will be the "salvation" of nations, cultures and the people. Both the proletariat's international and diverse national interests will be defended. The cultures will be liberated from monopoly capitalism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="Communists who suppose that all this has nothing to do with the cause of the working class, who do nothing to enlighten the masses on the past of their people in a historically correct fashion, in a genuinely Marxist-Leninist spirit, who do nothing to link up the present struggle with the people's revolutionary traditions and past -- voluntarily hand over to the fascist falsifiers all that is valuable in the historical past of the nation, so that the fascists may fool the masses. No, Comrades, we are concerned with every important question, not only of the present and the future, but also of the past of our own peoples. ...to sneer at all the national sentiments of the broad masses of working people is far from being a genuine Bolshevik, and has understood nothing of the teaching of Lenin on the national question.
Comrades, proletarian internationalism must, so to speak, "acclimatize itself" in each country in order to strike deep roots in its native land. National forms of the proletarian class struggle and of the labor movement in the individual countries are in no contradiction to proletarian internationalism; on the contrary, it is precisely in these forms that the international interests of the proletariat can be successfully defended.
...the socialist revolution will signify the salvation of the nation and will open up to it the road to loftier heights. By the very fact of building at the present time its class organizations and consolidating its positions, by the very fact of defending democratic rights and liberties against fascism, by the very fact of fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, the working class is fighting for the future of the nation. The revolutionary proletariat is fighting to save the culture of the people, to liberate it from the shackles of decaying monopoly capitalism, from barbarous fascism, which is laying violent hands on it. Only the proletarian revolution can avert the destruction of culture and raise it to its highest flowering as a truly national culture -- national in form and socialist in content
Only by struggling hand in hand with the proletariat of the imperialist countries can the colonial peoples and oppressed national minorities achieve their freedom. The sole road to victory for the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries lies through the revolutionary alliance of the working class of the imperialist countries with the national-liberation movement in the colonies and dependent countries, because, as Marx taught us, "no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations."
Communists belonging to an oppressed, dependent nation cannot combat chauvinism successfully among the people of their own nation if they do not at the same time show in practice, in the mass movement, that they actually struggle for the liberation of their nation from the alien yoke. And again, on the other hand, the Communists of an oppressing nation cannot do what is necessary to educate the working masses of their nation in the spirit of internationalism without waging a resolute struggle against the oppressor policy of their "own" bourgeoisie, for the right of complete self-determination for the nations kept in bondage by it. If they do not do this, they likewise do not make it easier for the working people of the oppressed nation to overcome their nationalist prejudices.}}</ref>

Fascists gain their following from the petty bourgeoisie and certain sections of the proletariat through disingenuous appeals to their needs and demands, inflaming prejudices and playing on their sense of justice and even on their revolutionary traditions, their faith in revolution, their resentments, hatred of corruption, and the urge towards socialism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote=What is the source of the influence of fascism over the masses? Fascism is able to attract the masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands. Fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, but also plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice and sometimes even on their revolutionary traditions.}}</ref> Fascism promised many things: to fight corruption, "a fair wage," a great future for the youth; for the landless and indebted peasants, an end to debt bondage and rent, expropriation of the landed estates from usurers without compensation.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote=This, the true character of fascism, must be particularly stressed because in a number of countries, under cover of social demagogy, fascism has managed to gain the following of the mass of the petty bourgeoisie that has been dislocated by the crisis, and even of certain sections of the most backward strata of the proletariat.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="WHAT DOES FASCIST VICTORY BRING TO THE MASSES? Fascism promised the workers "a fair wage," but actually it has brought them an even lower, a pauper, standard of living. It promised work for the unemployed, but actually it has brought them even more painful torments of starvation and forced servile labor. In practice it converts the workers and unemployed into pariahs of capitalist society stripped of rights; destroys their trade unions; deprives them of the right to strike and to have their working-class press, forces them into fascist organizations, plunders their social insurance funds and transforms the mills and factories into barracks where the unbridled arbitrary rule of the capitalist reigns. Fascism promised the working youth a broad highway to a brilliant future. But actually it has brought wholesale dismissals of young workers, labor camps and incessant military drilling for a war of conquest. Fascism promised to guarantee office workers, petty officials and intellectuals security of existence, to destroy the omnipotence of the trusts and wipe out profiteering by bank capital. But actually it has brought them an ever greater degree of despair and uncertainty as to the morrow; it is subjecting them to a new bureaucracy made up of the most submissive of its followers, it is setting up an intolerable dictatorship of the trusts and spreading corruption and degeneration to an unprecedented extent. Fascism promised the ruined and impoverished peasants to put an end to debt bondage, to abolish rent and even to expropriate the landed estates without compensation, in the interests of the landless and ruined peasants. But actually it is placing the laboring peasants in a state of unprecedented servitude to the trusts and the fascist state apparatus, and pushes to the utmost limit the exploitation of the great mass of the peasantry by the big landowners, the banks and the usurers."}}</ref>

But actually, it brings them an even lower standard of living: destroys their trade unions, deprives them of the right to strike and to have their working-class press, forces the revolutionary movement underground, pressures them into fascist organizations, plunders their social insurance funds and transforms the mills and factories into prisons, where the unbridled arbitrary rule of the capitalist reigns. Fascism causes wholesale dismissals of young workers, labor camps and incessant military drilling for a war of conquest, places the peasants in unprecedented servitude to the usurers, landlords, and the fascist state apparatus. It supresses the democratic liberties of the working people, falsifies, curtails and intensifies the law. It commits unspeakable crimes against humanity in concentration camps and torture chambers, and through police brutality, sterilization and countless murders.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="I have before me a statistical summary drawn up by the International Red Aid [international organization of that time for aid to revolutionary fighters] regarding the number of killed, wounded, arrested, maimed and tortured to death in Germany, Poland, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In Germany alone, since the National-Socialists came to power, over 4,200 anti-fascist workers, peasants, employees, intellectuals -- Communists, Social Democrats and members of opposition Christian organizations -- have been murdered, 317,800 arrested, 218,600 injured and subjected to torture. In Austria, since the battles of February last year the "Christian" fascist government has murdered 1,900 revolutionary workers, maimed and injured 10,000 and arrested 40,000. And this summary, comrades is far from complete."}}</ref>

From the point of view of the colonized, fascism is very familiar. Fascism in the colonizing states is the exact violence that these colonialist-imperialist nations (e.g. Europe) unleashed upon the world turned inward.<ref>{{Citation|author=Aimé Césaire|year=1950|publisher=Monthly Review Press|title=Discourse on colonialism|title-url=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Discourse_on_Colonialism|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=36|quote=[W]e must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact…each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France and they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery (13).
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind-it’s Nazism, it will, pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack (14).|pdf=https://libcom.org/files/zz_aime_cesaire_robin_d.g._kelley_discourse_on_colbook4me.org_.pdf|city=France|publisher=Réclame|isbn=1583670254|doi=|lg=|mia=|trans-title=Discours sur le colonialisme|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Frantz Fanon|year=1961|title=Wretched of the earth|chapter=|section=|page=90|quote="what is fascism if not colonialism when rooted in a traditionally colonialist country?"|pdf=|city=|publisher=Grove Press|isbn=9780802150837|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=D2A7D155578D59565375286BA995A79D|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Fascism in the settler colonial countries translates to the acceleration of colonialist violence upon indigenous and marginalized groups, perpetrated largely by a collaboration between the settler population, the settler-colonial state, and indigenous compradors. Along with that, all the indignities of accelerated capitalism may be thrust upon not only the native, but also the settler population. With diminishing returns of [[primitive accumulation|primary capital accumulation]] as the colonialist project progresses, the bourgeoisie may enact increased demands and pressure on the settler proletariat. The effects of fascist [[propaganda]] results in its followers being inspired to violent [[terrorist]] actions against the blamed populations, and these terrorists are quietly or even loudly supported by fascist politicians.<ref>{{Citation|author=Mnar Adley|year=2023|publisher=Mint Press News|title=Manifestos of Hate: What White Terrorists Have in Common|title-url=https://www.mintpressnews.com/manifestos-of-hate-what-white-terrorists-have-in-common/261344/}}</ref> The murder of [[working class]] Muslims and Latin Americans, and the shooting and bombing of Mosques and Synagogues to fight "globalists" or "replacement" anxieties of the white man are examples of this.<ref>{{Citation|author=Weiyi Cai, Simone Landon|year=2019|title=Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections.|publisher=The New York Times|title-url=}}https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Natasha Lennard|year=2019|title=The El Paso Shooter Embraced Eco-Fascism. We Can’t Let the Far Right Co-Opt the Environmental Struggle.|publisher=The Intercept|title-url=https://theintercept.com/2019/08/05/el-paso-shooting-eco-fascism-migration/}}</ref>

In the preliminary stages, bourgeois governments adopt reactionary measures that facilitate the fascist acquisition of power. This is the time when fascism should be fought, or it will be too late. Fascism was able to come to power primarily because the working class succumbed to class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and was divided and disarmed in face of the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. The Communist Parties failed to form a united anti-fascist proletarian front with the Social-Democratic leaders, to struggle against fascism's poisonous ideology and its historical and cultural revisionism, this failure cleared the path to power for fascism. In order to defeat fascism, there needs to be an agreement to form a united anti-fascist proletarian front with the progressive non-Communists.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="All this, however, does not make less important the fact that, before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism. Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory."}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1952|title=Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|city=Moscow|section=2,part 2|page=81-82|url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC20.html|quote="If we establish a united front with the Communists, the petty bourgeoisie will take fright at the 'Red danger' and will desert to the fascists," we hear it said quite frequently. But does the united front represent a threat to the peasants, small traders, artisans, working intellectuals? No, the united front is a threat to the big bourgeoisie, the financial magnates, the junkers and other exploiters, whose regime brings complete ruin to all these strata.}}</ref> Humanity will inevitably take the next step towards progress. Fascism and the bourgeoisie are doomed to fail, and communism will succeed.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vladimir Lenin|year=1952|title=Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|city=Moscow|section=2,part 2|page=81-82|url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC20.html|quote=Acting thus, the bourgeoisie acts as all classes doomed by history have acted. Communists should know that the future, at any rate, belongs to them; therefore we can and must combine the most intense passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the coolest and most sober evaluation of the mad ravings of the bourgeoisie.}}</ref>

Take note however that this does not mean Communists and progressives must or will have complete political unity. In order to more formally unite under one big party, without ceasing to be revolutionary, these 5 conditions must be met:

# Complete independence from the bourgeoisie and dissolution of the alliance between progressives and the bourgeoisie;
# Preliminary unity of action;
# Recognition of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
# Refusal to support one's own bourgeoisie in an imperialist war;
# Building up the Party on the basis of democratic centralism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Georgi Dimitrov|year=1972|publisher=Sofia Press|title=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm|quote="First, complete independence from the bourgeoisie and dissolution of the bloc of Social-Democracy with the bourgeoisie;
Second, preliminary unity of action;
Third, recognition of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of soviets a sine qua non;
Fourth, refusal to support one's own bourgeoisie in an imperialist war;
Fifth, building up the Party on the basis of democratic centralism, which ensures unity of purpose and action, and which has been tested by the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks."}}</ref>

== Ideological origins ==

Rather than being a unified, cohesive ideology, Fascism has always been very eclectic and based in philosophical [[idealism]]. In fact, it is a core characteristic that fascists opportunistically recycle, adapt and twist narratives to fit their goals. However, the goals are always equally brutal. Therefore, it is necessary to outline fascism's ideological evolution by observing its noteworthy material impacts upon the world, not by discerning its myriad of overlapping, incoherent and obscure ideological tendencies and thinkers. The only uniting force behind fascism, in practice, is its defense of the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy, settler-colonialism and imperialist chauvinism. A disproportionate amount of influence, in fact, originated from European aristocrat ideologues.

The origins of fascism as a counter-revolutionary movement can be traced back to the [[French Republic|French]] far-right [[French Action]],<ref group="lower-alpha">French: ''Action Française''</ref> which was an openly anti-[[Marxism|Marxist]] political organization established in 1899 proposing an "integral nation" for French society through [[class collaboration]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Ernst Nolte|year=1966|title=Three faces of fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|page=|pdf=|city=New York|publisher=New American Library|isbn=9780451008619|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=082DBA3CA0FEE611DCDB8D2CC1DF350C|mia=|trans-title=Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Die Action française, Der italienische Faschismus, Der Nationalsozialismus|trans-lang=German}}</ref>

The term "fascism" comes from the [[Italian Republic|Italian]] National Fascist Party,<ref group="lower-alpha">Italian: ''Partito Nazionale Fascista''</ref> a party founded by [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1921; whose practices and ideology would later define this [[reactionary]] movement as a whole. Mussolini's fascism was constructed out of an admiration and romanticization of [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Roman civilisation]], which originated in modern-day Italy. Thus, the name fascism was based on the ''fasces'', an axe that is surrounded and bound to a bundle of sticks and was carried by officials (''lictors'') in political and military demonstrations. This was a symbol of power and authority that Mussolini repurposed for fascism.

Shifting blame away from [[capital]] is as old as fascism's birth. The oldest and most common example for such a distraction shared by fascists worldwide is [[antisemitism]]. The most widely circulated and influential myth since the late 19th century is a conspiracy theory that blames Jewish people for the world's problems, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<ref>{{Citation|author= JACQUES E. HALBRONN, LARISSA BLIMAN-HALBRONN, לריסה and ז'אק הלברון
בלימן הלברו|year=1997|title=THE TERM PROTOCOLS, FROM THE ZIONIST CONGRESSES TO "THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION" AND THE RECEPTION OF THE RUSSIAN "PROTOCOLS" IN CENTRAL EUROPE BEFORE 1917|publisher=האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות / World Union of Jewish Studies|title-url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/23535804}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Marisa Meltzer|year=2021|publisher=Washington Post|title=QAnon’s Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality|title-url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/}}</ref> This rag remains the most widely circulated book by fascists on the internet today.

==== Blavatsky, Cultural Appropriation and New Age Myths ====

The violent and shameless [[appropriation]] of the world's cultures has been wildly popular among Europeans since European colonialism began, and by the 19th century, their [[orientalism|orientalist]] gaze fixated upon Asia, or "the Orient".<ref>{{Citation|author=Edward Said|year=1978|title=Orientalism|publisher=Vintage Books|page=4|quote=To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental "experts" and "hands," an Oriental professorate, a complex array of "Oriental" ideas (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use -- the list can be extended more or less indefinitely. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did.}}</ref> These appropriations became extremely instrumental to fascist myth making. [[New Age]] occultism such as the bizarre "Theosophy" (not to be confused with the term used by Neoplatonists) was invented by 19th century German aristocrat, Helena Blavatsky<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie |year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref>, a lifelong traveler and [[settler]] in Russia, the United States of America and India. Theosophy used a patchwork of orientalist myths and interpretations of various indigenous cultures, such as Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Blavatsky was the inventor of the Atlantis myth, Lemurians, etc. Among the bizarre myths, Theosophy claimed that the mixing of races caused degeneration.<ref>{{Citation|author=Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|title=The Secret Doctrine Vols. I & II|publisher=Theosophy|title-url=libgen.li/file.php?md5=4722005421409000a2200f8f271a99a1}}</ref> Theosophy was influential in the 20th century German fascist regime's construction of the "Aryan" national myth through Guido von List's German adaptation of it into the spiritual and cultural framework of Nazism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie|year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=Springer|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref> That is why the Nazis appropriated the swastika from Buddhism.<ref>{{Citation|author=James M. Skidmore|year=2017|title=How Nazis twisted the swastika, a symbol of the Buddha, into an emblem of hate|publisher=Quartz|title-url=https://qz.com/india/1068860/how-nazis-twisted-the-swastika-a-symbol-of-buddhism-hinduism-jainism-into-an-emblem-of-hate}}</ref> It is important to emphasize that the fascists did not truly understand the cultures they were appropriating.

The way that early [[orientalism|orientalists]] treated the [[BIPOC]], often Asian, cultures they culturally appropriated is not much different from [[New Age]] followers today, in fact the fundamental idea of a [[New Age]] movement was coined and developed in 1970 by the theosophist David Spangler and maintains its orientalist and settler-colonial core and remains popular into the 21st century.<ref>{{Citation|author=J. Gordon Melton|year=2000-2023|title=New Age movement|publisher=Encyclopaedia Brittanica|title-url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement}}</ref> The term "New Age" is probably a reference to the magazine ''The New Age'' (1907-1922) which included Nietzschean and Theosophist writings. <ref>{{Citation|author=Robert Scholes|title=General Introduction to The New Age 1907-1922|publisher=The Modernist Journals Project (searchable database). Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing.|title-url=https://modjourn.org/general-introduction-to-the-new-age-1907-1922-by-scholes-robert/}}</ref>

==== Nietzsche ====
Historian and [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] philosopher [[Domenico Losurdo]] in his work ''Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel'', pointed out that [[Nietzsche]], who was an aristocrat, can be associated with a reactionary trend against the rise of the [[Paris commune]] in 1871.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=26|quote=[In The Birth of Tragedy,] Nietzsche’s preoccupation, or rather his anguish, about a danger not remote or hypothetical, but real and impending, is plainly evident. The reference to the Paris Commune is transparent, an event that a great part of the culture of that time experienced as the threatening announcement of a possible imminent end of culture.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Nietzsche's views were consistently anti-[[Liberalism|liberal]], anti-[[Socialism|socialist]], anti-democratic and even promoted racial hygiene, a tendency which would later inspire fascist movements.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=731|quote=Even a scholar that moves cautiously on ground alien to him, that of philosophical historiography, and clearly wants to avoid a critical confrontation with the hermeneutics of innocence is forced to acknowledge an essential point regarding Nietzsche interpretations: ‘Much in his work can be interpreted in terms of racial hygiene.’ Other authors are even clearer: with his insistence on the ‘degeneration’ and ‘physiological decline of European humanity’, the philosopher must be placed ‘in the context of the direct preparation of eugenics’. Indeed, in this context, he sadly occupies a privileged position: he represents the ‘turning point’ for the transition from the ‘idea of selection’ to ‘anti-degenerative activism’. The reconstruction of the history behind Hitler’s eugenic and genocidal practices cannot, in this view, ignore Nietzsche, who expressly and peremptorily demanded the ‘suppression of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate.’|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

==== Sorel ====
Georges Sorel (1847–1922) was a French syndicalist that contributed and inspired the rise of [[National Syndicalism]] in Italy and Spain. His most famous works centred around the idea of [[myth]], which he highlights as "forming the centre of man’s cosmology and world view in all ages".<ref>{{News citation|title=Georges Sorel and the Triumphant Return of the Myth|date=2020-10-15|url=https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/georges-sorel-and-triumphant-return-myth|journalist=Rodrigo Sobota}}</ref> In 1909, Sorel began to adopt the idea of Integral Nationalism, publishing an article praising the far-right group [[French Action]] in ''Divenire Sociale''—the leading journal for Italian Syndicalists at the time. It received immense praise by French Action; being reprinted under the name "Antiparliamentary Socialists”, and in 1910, he joined the group. During this time, he developed further reactionary ideals, leading him to support Catholic Patriotism and further embedding himself in fascist ideology.<ref>{{Citation|author=Zeev Sternhell|year=1994|title=THE BIRTH OF FASCIST IDEOLOGY|chapter=1–3|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceavi2ziwuqzadtp7fjcw24uvkoix4wzybsibskpjmfbksjcxwblyg?filename=Zeev%20Sternhell%2C%20Mario%20Sznajder%2C%20Maia%20Asheri%20-%20The%20Birth%20of%20Fascist%20Ideology_%20From%20Cultural%20Rebellion%20to%20Political%20Revolution-Princeton%20University%20Press%20%281994%29.pdf|isbn=0-691-03289-0|lg=http://library.lol/main/10886BD4A08A7180CDA3D8B3BED5ADD1}}</ref> Mussolini looked up highly to Sorel and claimed he was his "foremost teacher".<ref>{{News citation|title=A Premature Fascist? ― Sorel and Mussolini|date=1950-03-01|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106591295000300102?journalCode=prqa&|journalist=James H. Meisel}}</ref>

== Fascism in Europe ==

===Italian fascism===
The Italian fascist government of 1922 was the first known historical example of large-scale privatizations of state-owned enterprises.<ref>{{Citation|author=Germà Bel|year=2011|title=The first privatization: Selling SOEs and privatizing public monopolies in Fascist Italy (1922-1925)|chapter=|page=|quote=Italy’s first Fascist government applied a large-scale privatization policy between 1922 and 1925. [...] These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatization episodes in the Western world.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=10.1093/cje/beq051|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

===German fascism===
{{Main article|Nazism}}
The most extreme form of fascism was German fascism, which called itself National Socialism despite being supported by finance capitalists.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=[[Georgi Dimitrov]]|year=1937|title=The United Front|page=10–11|chapter=The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International|title-url=http://marx2mao.com/Other/TUF35i.html|city=San Francisco|publisher=Proletarian Publishers|chapter-url=http://marx2mao.com/Other/TUF35i.html#c1}}</ref> Bourgeois magazine ''The Economist'' introduced the euphemism ''privatization'' in 1936, to describe [[German fascism|Nazi Germany]]'s economic policies,<ref>{{Citation|author=Germà Bel|year=2006|title=Retrospectives: the coining of “privatization” and Germany's National Socialist Party|chapter=|page=|pdf=|city=|publisher=Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(3), 187–194|isbn=|doi=10.1257/jep.20.3.187|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=|quote=}}</ref> which from a Marxist perspective is the selling out of state infrastructure to the highest bidder.

German fascism was most known for its [[Genocide|genocidal]], [[Expansionism|expansionist]], [[Imperialism|imperialist]] and [[Colonialism|colonialist]] rule under the [[National-socialist German Workers' Party|Nazi Party]] from 1933 to 1945, culminating in the deaths of at least 30 million people, including 26.6 million Soviets.<ref>{{Citation|author=Lieutenant Colonel S.B. Eremenko|year=|title=On the issue of losses of the opposing sides at the Soviet-German front during the Great Patriotic War|chapter=|page=|quote=Today we can state with a certain degree of probability that losses of the Soviet Union amounted to 26.6 million people, including losses of the Armed Forces amounted to 8,668,400 servicemen. The total statistical figure includes not only those killed in action and those who died from wounds and illnesses, but also civilians killed during bombing, artillery shelling and punitive actions, prisoners of war and underground fighters shot and tortured in camps, and those sent away for forced labor in Germany.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=|title-url=https://encyclopedia.mil.ru/encyclopedia/history/more.htm?id=11359251@cmsArticle|chapter-url=|trans-title=К вопросу о потерях противоборствующих сторон на советско-германском фронте в годы Великой Отечественной войны: правда и вымысел|trans-lang=Russian}}</ref> While the word "Nazi" is short for "National socialist", they were capitalists, the term "socialist" being nothing more than a ploy to gain working-class support. Not only did the German fascists allow the virulent [[exploitation]] of the working people and concentration of capital,<ref>{{Citation|author=Sidney Merlin|year=1943|title=Trends in German economic control since 1933|chapter=|page=207|quote=The party, moreover, facilitates the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires by its foremost members and collaborators through "privatization" and other measures, thereby intensifying centralization of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite.|pdf=|city=|publisher=The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 57|isbn=|doi=10.2307/1882751|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> they adopted a [[Settler colonialism|settler-colonial]] model coupled with exploitation, colonialism, and mass terror applied to the [[Europe|European continent]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Thomas Kühne|year=2013|title=Colonialism and the Holocaust: continuities, causations, and complexities|chapter=German colonialism and German peculiarities|page=343|quote=Hitler's writings and speeches, public and private, left no doubt that Lebensraum, or living space, was to be gained on the continent rather than overseas. The German equivalent of British India or French Algeria was not Cameroon, Togo or German Southwest Africa but central and east Europe, as some scholars have reminded the advocates of the salt water colonial paradigm.|pdf=|city=|publisher=Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 15|isbn=|doi=10.1080/14623528.2013.821229|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> The ideological justification for colonization of European peoples by Nazis was promoted as ''[[Lebensraum]]'',<ref group="lower-alpha">English: ''Living space''</ref> and was directly influenced by [[United States of America|Statesian]] genocide of native peoples through [[Manifest Destiny]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Robert J. Miller|year=2020|title=Nazi Germany's race laws, the United States, and American Indians|chapter=|page=14|quote=Many of the Lebensraum justifications that Hitler and Nazis used directly echoed the justifications given for American Manifest Destiny. (...) National Socialists took on the mantle of noble colonizers who were fighting against ignoble savages. Not surprisingly, scholars recognize that these Nazi ideas on Lebensraum were largely modeled on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century understandings of American expansion.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=http://librarian.libgen.gs/ads.php?md5=77a60b95047d1913f026368bbf9a3225&downloadname=10.2139/ssrn.3541009|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

The Nazi Party was beaten into dissolution by the [[Soviet Union]] after the Battle of Berlin in May 1945.

=== Portuguese fascism ===
From 1933 to 1974, [[Portugal]] was ruled by the ''Estado Novo'' ("New State"), headed by [[António de Oliveira Salazar]]. Under Salazar's dictatorship, the Portuguese [[working class]] was subjugated to [[reactionary]] [[Christianity|Christian]] doctrine, as well as a [[Third Positionism|corporatist]] economy. The Salazarist regime was also militantly [[imperialist]], repressing calls for independence and self-determination in [[Republic of Angola|Angola]] and [[Republic of Mozambique|Mozambique]]. The Estado Novo would finally fall in 1974, after a progressive military coup and later a popular revolution that was left unfinished. By the end of the 1970s, Portugal had returned to being a bourgeois democracy.<ref>{{Citation|author=Howard J. Wiarda|year=1977|title=Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dHFaAAAAIAAJ|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=9780870232213|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

Portugal, at the time a Fascist dictatorship, was one of the founding members of the [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization]].

===Spanish fascism ===
Following the victory of the Spanish [[Popular Front]] in 1936, a fascist revolt led by [[Francisco Franco]] broke out, whose ambitions were assisted by invading Germany and Italy, and silently backed by the rest of the allies. A [[Spanish Civil War|civil war]] lasting three years followed, culminating in the crushing of Republican forces. The regime went on to last three more decades, and it is said that the current "reformed" Spanish state is a continuation of the same regime. Notably, Franco reintroduced the king of Spain in 1956 (whose parent was deposed in 1931). To this day, Spain remains a monarchy.

=== British Fascism ===
{{Main article|Oswald Mosley}}

== Fascism in the Americas ==

=== United States ===

[[File:USA capital photo jan. 2021.jpg|thumb|Many neo-fascist groups were involved in the [[2021 United States Capitol riot|2021 United States Capitol coup attempt.]]]]

After World War II, the settler-colonial United States of North America began to be the new pioneer of orientalism,<ref>{{Citation|author=Edward Said|year=1978|title=Orientalism|publisher=Vintage Books|page=4|quote=From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did.}}</ref> and, unsurprisingly, many Fascist currents are initially developed there before being replicated internationally.<ref>{{Citation|author=Alex Ross|year=2018|publisher=The New Yorker|title=How American Racism Influenced Hitler|title-url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler}}</ref> Contemporary fascists such as the [[White House]] cabinet member and close advisor to [[Donald Trump]], Steve Bannon, have publicly quoted Julius Evola.<ref>{{Citation|author=Jason Horowitz|year=2017|title=Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists|publisher=The New York Times|title-url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Morgan Jones|year=2022|title=How Julius Evola Became the Internet’s Favorite Fascist|publisher=Jacobin|title-url=https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-bronze-age-pervert}}</ref> Evola was an Italian fascist ideologue, spiritualist, and orientalist, influenced by theosophy and Nietszche, who (like Mussolini) called for a restoration of the ancient Roman empire, but fully rejected [[modern]] Western society and predicted its [[accelerationism|accelerationist]] collapse and the return of pre-"rational", "feudal", "mystic" society in his own Esoteric Fascist theory.<ref>{{Citation|author=Julius Evola|year=1934|publisher=Inner Traditions|title=Revolt Against the Modern World|trans-title=Rivolta contro il mondo moderno|page=341|quote=Conversely, it has rightfully been suggested that the feudal system is that which characterizes the majority of the great traditional eras and the one most suited for the regular development of traditional structures. In this type of regime the principle of plurality and of relative political autonomy of the individual parts is emphasized, as is the proper context of that universal element, that unum quod non est pars that alone can really organize and unify these parts, not by contrasting but by presiding over each one of them through the transcendent, superpolitical, and regulating function that the universal embodies (Dante). In this event royalty works together with the feudal aristocracy and the imperial function does not limit the autonomy of the single principalities or kingdoms, as it assumes the single nationalities without altering them.|trans-lang=Italian}}</ref> Fascist New Agers have been found storming the capitol building of the United States of North America.<ref>{{Citation|author=Susannah Crockford|year=2021|publisher=Religion Dispatch|title=Q Shaman’s New Age-Radical Right Blend Hints at the Blurring of Seemingly Disparate Categories|title-url=https://religiondispatches.org/q-shamans-new-age-radical-right-blend-hints-at-the-blurring-of-seemingly-disparate-categories/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Angus Greig|year=2021|publisher=The Washington Post|title=QAnon’s Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality|title-url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/}}</ref>

The term "alt-right" refers to a loose grouping of far-right extremists, largely based on the internet. Alt-righters are often "white nationalists" ([[Racism|white supremacists]]), [[Neo-Nazism|neo-nazis]], highly [[Sexism|misogynistic]], and otherwise chauvinist. Many alt-righters claim to be promoting a form of [[identity politics]], that is, for the support of white people or white males, against perceived repression from ethnic minorities and females. Many other alt-righters are openly white-supremacist, and otherwise seek to create a white ethno-state, often motivated by bloated and fear-mongering reports of "illegal aliens" (non-white people) that come from the [[Statesian]] [[Bourgeois media|capitalist news]].<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Southern Poverty Law Center|title=Ideology: Alt-right|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right}}</ref>

A cult of personality developed around multi-billionaire president [[Donald Trump]], whose rise to infamy was cheered on by a wave of reactionary nationalism, xenophobia, and populism. Such trends were marked by increased membership in neo-fascist paramilitary groups such as the [[Proud Boys]], [[Three Percenters]], and [[Oath Keepers|Oathkeepers]].

Trump’s rule ended in an [[2021 United States Capitol riot|attempted putsch of the American government]], mainly done by the Far-right paramilitary groups mentioned above. The putsch (often referred to in the capitalist media as the “Jan. 6 insurrection" or riot), was motivated by false conspiracy theories about the [[2020 United States presidential election|2020 election]] being rigged in favor of the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]], as well as Trump’s personal agitation.

=== Latin America ===

{{Main article |Pinochet}}
{{Main article |Alberto Fujimori}}
{{Main article |2019 Bolivia Coup Attempt}}

== Fascism in Asia ==

===Japanese fascism===
Japanese fascism, also known as Shōwa Statism, was based on a number of [[imperialist]] and [[Ultranationalism|ultranationalist]] political ideas from various Japanese thinkers. Japanese fascism manifested itself in extreme militarism, monarchism, and expansionism in [[Asia]].

== Post-World War II ideological trends of fascism ==

After World War II, fascism was in retreat. It has since taken on a more international character, borrowing from many sources. Similar to the fascists of the 20th century, neo-fascism is born as a reaction to changing social climates, as well as growing economic hardships among the [[Petty bourgeoisie|petit-bourgeoisie]]. The term "neofascist" is often vauguely defined, and besides its usage as a mere pejorative, "neo-fascism" better refers to an entire grouping of [[far-right]] trends that appeared after [[Italian fascism|classical fascism]] largely died as a power-holding ideology after World War 2.<ref>{{Citation|author=Anna Cento Bull|year=2012|title=The Oxford Handbook of Fascism|title-url=https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34510/chapter-abstract/292835413?redirectedFrom=fulltext|chapter=Neo-fascism|page=586–605|quote=The term neo-fascism defines primarily those political and ideological groups and parties that operated after 1945, especially in Europe, and which were directly inspired by the experience of the inter-war fascist and Nazi regimes in Germany, Italy, and other European countries. These groups were often made up of remnants of fascist and Nazi activists who were not prepared to give up their political militancy or indeed to renounce their ideologies despite military defeat. Many held radical and uncompromising views, emphasizing the revolutionary nature of fascism rather than its more ‘reassuring’nationalist or statist version. This article analyses neo-fascism after the Second World War; neo-fascism and anti-communism in the United States; neo-fascism during the Cold War; the second-generation neo-fascists after 1968; the extreme right today; and the neo-fascist legacy.|publisher=Oxford university press|doi=https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199594788.013.0032|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

With the rise of [[neoliberalism]], and the increasing concentration of capital into fewer-and-fewer hands, neo-fascism has gained new popularity among many nations, particularly because of [[climate change]] and economic problems (the results of [[capitalism]]).<ref>{{Citation|author=Marc-André Argentino, Blyth Crawford, Florence Keen, Hannah Rose|year=2021|title=Far From Gone: The Evolution of Extremism in the First 100 Days of the Biden Administration|title-url=https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ICSR-Report-Far-From-Gone-The-Evolution-of-Extremism-in-the-First-100-Days-of-the-Biden-Administration.pdf|publisher=London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.|trans-lang=English}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|newspaper=EuropeNow|title=Understanding the Rise of the Far Right: The Need for a Historical Approach|url=https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/11/09/understanding-the-rise-of-the-far-right-the-need-for-a-historical-approach/|retrieved=2022-6-20}}</ref>

==== Neo-Nazism ====
{{main article|Neo-Nazism}}

Neo-nazism, by its most general meaning, refers to the post-World War Two adherence to [[nazism]]. Neo-nazis are highly [[Racism|racist]], often of the white supremacist and anti-semitic type, [[Conspiracy theory|conspiratorial]], and [[reactionary]]. Neo-nazism is heavily linked with the "[[alt-right]]", and can be viewed as a particular form of neo-fascism. Neo-nazis goals range from preforming terrorist actions against perceived racial enemies to starting a race war and creating a Fourth Reich.

==== Strasserism or Nazbolism ====
[[File:Black Front Flag.png|thumb|200x200px|Flag often used by strasserists.]]
[[Strasserism]] is a [[Third positionism|third positionist]] ideology based on [[Nazism]]. Strasserism is based on the works of Gregor and Otto Strasser, who were both associated with the [[National Socialist German Workers' Party]]. The main difference between Strasserism and their [[Nazi]] counterparts is that Strasserism calls for a more [[Proletariat|worker]]-based and socialistic form of regular Nazism. Much like [[National Socialism|Nazism]], Strasserism is greatly [[Antisemitism|anti-semitic]], but in the case of Strasserism, its racist conspiracy theories are built on economic anti-semitism, a form of anti-semitism in which the reason why Jewish people are used as a scapegoat for economic ills is because they are supposedly of a higher economic status than the "racially-pure" worker.<ref>{{Citation|author=Christopher T. Husbands|year=2020|title=Militant neo-Nazism in the 1990s|title-url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780429060076-3/federal-republic-germany-christopher-husbands|isbn=9780429060076|trans-lang=English}}</ref>

==== Ecofascism ====

Cooptation of the aesthetics of existing popular movements through [[entryism]] remains a common strategy for fascist self-promotion, solely to capture popularity. Thus, as the climate crisis unfolds in the 21st century, [[ecofascism]] has strongly emerged as a right-wing deviation of environmentalism, shifting blame from [[fossil fuel]] [[capital]] to [[immigrants]] and nations of the [[global south]] -- in practice, promoting fascist policies through [[greenwashing]]. One prominent politician of ecofascist policies is Marine Le Pen.<ref>{{Citation|author=Laurent Hubert and Jean-Noël Geist|year=2022|publisher=EuroNews|title=Why Marine Le Pen’s environmental agenda is greenwashing|title-url=https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/22/why-marine-le-pen-s-environmental-agenda-is-greenwashing}}</ref> [[Population control]], [[anti-immigrant policies]], and [[ethnocide]] become the alternatives pushed instead of facing capital's responsibility for ecological destruction.

Ecofascism, outside its derogatory usage by reactionaries to insult anybody who accepts the existence of man-made [[climate change]], refers to the ideological trends that combine hard-line [[environmentalism]] with reactionary nationalism and xenophobia. Ecofascists view [[Earth]] as a [[Malthusianism|Malthusian]] battleground between racial and ethnic groups, and think that ecological harmony is tied with ethnic or racial monodominance. To combat climate change, ecofascists believe not only in things such as [[eugenics]], but also in the purging of ethnic minorites, by means of forced relocation or [[Genocide|otherwise]].<ref>{{News citation|author=Alistair Walsh|newspaper=Deutsche Welle|title=Eco-fascism: The greenwashing of the far right|date=2022-5-19|url=https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-eco-fascism-the-greenwashing-of-the-far-right-terrorism-climate-change-buffalo-shooter/a-61867605|retrieved=2022-6-21}}</ref>

Ecofascism is greatly inspired by nazism, particularly the "blood and soil" idea, which states that a race is attached with the land it inhabits. Many ecofascists are New Age [[Neo-pagan|neo-pagans]], mostly worshiping the norse pantheon, largely because they are perceived by ecofascists as being "racially" pure "heroes" of "white people". In online ecofascist groups, the algiz rune "ᛉ" is often used. The algiz rune symbolizes life, that is, in the case of ecofascists, life for nature and white people. The algiz rune was also a symbol for [[lebensraum]]; the nazi plan for the enslavement and extermination of the Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe, and colonization by ethnic Germans.<ref>{{News citation|author=Sarah Manavis|newspaper=The Newstatesman|title=Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online|date=2018-9-21|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/09/eco-fascism-ideology-marrying-environmentalism-and-white-supremacy}}</ref>

==== New Age and Esoteric Fascism ====
Esoteric fascism refers to any form of fascism that integrates racialism into a mystical or theological system. The most infamous Esoteric Nazis often view the "aryan" race as having come from some otherworldly place, often the legendary land of [[hyperborea]]. Esoteric Nazis also are often neo-pagans, commonly nordic or greco-roman pagans. Esoteric Nazis also subscribe to other pseudoscientific or pseudohistorical theories, often entailing UFOs Nazi bunkers in [[Antarctica]], among similar things.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Southern Poverty Law Center|title=Former neo-nazi explains ‘Esoteric Nazism’|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/former-neo-nazi-explains-%E2%80%98esoteric-nazism%E2%80%99}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|newspaper=BBC|title=Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right|date=2017-10-29|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41757047|retrieved=2022-6-21}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Neoliberalism]]
* [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Greater German Reich]]
* [[Far-right politics]]
* [[Genocide]]
* [[Neo-Nazism]]
* [[Populism]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group="lower-alpha" />
[[Category:Political ideology]]
[[Category:Fascism]]
[[Category:Extremism]]
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]
[[Category:Anti-communism]]
[[Category:Imperialism]]

Library:Fascism and Social Revolution

2025-11-04T18:03:37Z

PuzzledFox99: /* CHAPTER IX: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FASCISM */

{{Library work|title=Fascism and Social Revolution|author=Rajani Palme Dutt|publisher=International Publishers|published_date=1935|published_location=New York|type=Book|source=https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocial0000rpal (2nd ed.) https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocialrevolution (3rd ed.)|pdf=https://www.marxists.org/archive/dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-2.pdf (2nd ed.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-3.pdf (3rd ed.)}}

==PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION==
The issue of a second edition of this book provides the opportunity for a short note on the
development of Fascism and Anti- Fascism in the six months since May 1934.
The outstanding development in the world of Fascism during this period has been the signs
of the first stages of a gathering crisis of Fascism-most sharply expressed in the events of June
30 in Germany, but also reflected in the desperate murder-coup fiasco against Dollfuss on July
25, in the extreme German-Italian war-tension, and in the Arpinati episode in Italy, and still
further reflected (in the countries not yet conquered by Fascism) in the setback to the Fascist
advance in France during the months immediately succeeding the February offensive, in the
setback to Mosley in Britain as shown by Olympia and Hyde Park and by the formal
disassociation of Rothermere from Mosley, and in the strength of the Spanish workers’ resistance
to Fascism. While it would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of particular events and
fluctuations in a long-drawn and profound world-conflict, it is evident that there has been during
this period an increase in the inner contradictions and difficulties of Fascism and an awakening
and gathering of the mass forces of resistance to Fascism.
The central point of this process for Fascism has been the events of June 30 in Germany,
which marked a turning point of international significance. The leaders of the fighting forces of
German Fascism, the principal leaders of the Storm Troops, within fifteen months of the
accession of Fascism to power had to be shot down by the leader of German Fascism, Hitler, as
the representative and agent of the demands of German Finance-Capital and of its direct
instrument, the Reichswehr. The majority of the Storm Troops had to be liquidated. We see here
the classic demonstration of the process of Fascism after power, the alienation and
disillusionment of the petit-bourgeois and semi-proletarian elements which were made the tools
and dupes of Finance-Capital and now find all their aspirations thwarted with the denial of “the
second revolution,” the consequent narrowing of the social basis of the Fascist regime, and the
ever more open demonstration of its real character as the terrorist dictatorship of FinanceCapital. While a warning must again be uttered against exaggerating the tempo of development
and rate of growth of mass opposition, it is evident that a single chain unites the phases of the
factory elections in the spring of 1934, with their unfavourable results for the Nazis, the intensive
campaign against the “critics and carpers,” the alleged “revolt” and its bloody suppression on
June 3o, and the results of the plebiscite in August, when (after the declaration of Goebbels on
the eve of the poll that the loss of a single vote in comparison with the previous November would
be a disaster) the direct No vote rose from 2.1 millions in November, 1933, to 4.3 millions in
August, 1934, and reached an average of 20 per cent. in the main industrial towns. Parallel with
this process has gone forward the steadily worsening economic situation, the mounting adverse
trade balance in place of the previous exports surplus, the sharp cutting down of imports of
essential raw materials, and tightening Organisation on a war basis of rationing and hardship
(reflected in the tone of Hitler’s Buckerberg speech of September 30, 1934: “Never will they
bring us to our knees,” “if the worst comes to the worst” etc.. The whole concentration of Nazi
policy becomes more and more openly directed to the most intensive preparation of war as the
sole path forward.
On the other side, the examples of Germany and Austria have led to a widespread awakening
of working class and general popular opposition to Fascism in all countries; and this has led to a
rapid advance of the united working class front, and, in particular, the united front of the
Socialist and Communist Parties, against the fascist and war menace in a number of leading

countries. This extending development of the united working class front is the most important
and the most hopeful development of 1934. In this advance the French working class has led the
way. The united front pact of the French Socialist Party and of the French Communist Party was
finally signed on July 27, 1934; and the powerful influence of this common front is stimulating
and mobilising the entire working class, and spreading confidence and fighting spirit, has been
the decisive factor in delaying the planned rapid offensive of Fascism in France during 1934.
With the fall of the Doumergue-Tardieu Cabinet of National Concentration in November, with
the combined demand of all the bourgeois forces for anti-democratic constitutional changes, and
with the Fascist groupings preparing renewed offensives, heavy tests are now in front for the
fighting strength of the united working class in France.
At the same time in Austria the lessons of the February battles have produced a far-reaching
transformation in the working class. The illegal Communist Party has advanced to the position of
a mass party with the absorption of the left Social Democratic and Schutzbund elements, many
organisations in leading working-class districts coming over en bloc.
The Revolutionary Socialist Committees, composed of former Social Democratic elements
and later setting up the United Socialist Party, have maintained the old forms and contact with
the emigrant leadership and with the Second International but have proclaimed the aim of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and denounced the old “democratic and reformist illusions” (“The
Fascist dictatorship in Austria has dispelled all democratic and reformist illusions among the
workers” – letter of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Vienna to Bauer
and to the Second International on May 20, 1934). In July a united front was established by the
Communist Party, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, and the
Committee of Action of the Schutzbund, with a joint manifesto for “the revolutionary
dictatorship of the working class” and for “a united revolutionary class party of the Austrian
proletariat.”
The united front of the Socialist and Communist Parties was also established in Italy, in the
Saar and (in September) in Spain. Among the working class youth organisations in all countries
the advance of the united front was even more marked.
On the other hand, the British Labour Party and a number of other Social Democratic Parties,
notably the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Belgian, the Swiss and the Czecho-Slovak, actively
opposed the united front and even developed extended disciplinary measures to prevent its
realisation. In October, 1934, the Communist International approached the Second International
for common action in support of the Spanish workers. A meeting took place, at which the
representatives of the Second International, Vandervelde and Adler, while declaring themselves
unable to agree to any immediate common action or to commit their constituent parties, agreed to
continue the negotiations with a view to reaching a basis of common action analogous to that in
France. The British Labour Party, on the other hand, which is the largest section of the Second
International, and which had just at its Southport Conference passed draconian decisions against
any form of united front or even “loose association” with Communism, expressed strong
disapproval of any negotiations taking place. At the same time the Spanish Socialist Party,
equally a section of the Second International, had not only reached a united front with the
Communist Party, but was taking direct part in armed civil war under the slogan of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
This extreme and extending division and disparateness of policies among the parties of the
Second International is a symptom of the profound process of transformation going forward
among the Social Democratic workers under the influence of the object-lesson of Fascism. The

further development of this situation in the international working-class movement is of critical
importance.
The Spanish revolutionary mass struggle, reaching in October 1934, to the stage of open civil
war against the advancing Fascist offensive of the combined reactionary clerical-militaristlandlord-bourgeois forces, and in the province of Asturias reaching to the formation of Soviets,
has immeasurably raised the whole international working-class movement, even more than the
battles of Vienna in February. It has revealed a far higher degree of mass-participation and unity,
and of consciousness of revolutionary aim, even though not yet reaching the conditions of
Organisation and leadership for final victory. The formation of the Soviet regime in Asturias at
the outset of the struggle, and the prolonged and tenacious resistance against all the forces of the
Spanish Government, reaches a point of revolutionary struggle unequalled in Western Europe
since the days of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet Republics in 1919. The lesson endeavoured
to be drawn by the reformists, of the inevitable failure of armed struggle against the military
resources of modern governments, is the exact opposite of the reality; for the prolonged
resistance of the workers of Asturias, facing alone the entire forces of the Spanish Government
and its African levies, has abundantly shown that, if the workers of the other principal regions,
and especially Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, had been fighting at the same time, with equal
tenacity and leadership, the forces of the Government would have been powerless to cope with
the situation, and a Soviet Spain would have been already won. The Spanish revolutionary
struggle at the end of 1934, following on Vienna at the beginning, is the signal of the future in
Europe.
But the heaviest struggles are still in front. In the face of the present international situation of
the increasing difficulties, desperation and discrediting of Fascism, the weakening of its mass
basis in the countries where it has won power, and the gathering of mass forces of resistance in
the countries where it has not yet won power, a new illusion has begun to be widely spread in
Liberal and Social Democratic circles-the illusion of the retreat of Fascism. It is said that
Fascism has passed its zenith, is on the downgrade, that the heaviest danger of Fascism is
passing. The extreme pessimistic defeatism of a year and a half ago is giving place to a no less
baseless and illusory optimistic complacency. A year ago the prophecies were all of an “epoch of
Fascism” lasting for decades. To-day a Citrine can declare that “dictatorship in every land has
passed its peak; there was an appearance of stability about the regime in Germany, but he was
satisfied that even there a change would gradually but surely come, and that ultimately the
democratic rights of the people would assert themselves” (speech to the International Clothing
Workers’ Conference, August, 1934).
Underlying this outlook of a section of the Social Democratic leadership is undoubtedly the
belief that Fascism, faced with increasing internal difficulties and mass discontent, may yet be
compelled to turn to Social Democracy for assistance, and that a renewed sphere of permitted
activity may open out for the Social Democratic and trade union leadership within Fascism (as
was already hoped for and sought by German Social Democracy in the initial period of the Hitler
regime by the May 17 vote for Hitler and the trade union bureaucracy’s courting of the Nazis).
Nor are signs of this possibility lacking. The well-informed Manchester Guardian special
correspondent (always in close touch with Social Democratic circles) reported in August that
Hitler, in view of the failure of the Labour Front and the Nazi factory cells to win the support of
the workers, had approached former Social Democratic leaders with a view to the formation of
“non-political trade unions”; the proposal had been referred to the Executive at Prague, and
“Wels was in favour of further negotiations” (the subsequent formal denial issued by Wels, to the

effect that he had not met any representative of Hitler-the intermediary was in fact a Social
Democrat- left the essence of the Manchester Guardian report unrefuted). Similarly may be noted
Bauer’s suggestion in the August Kampf that the Schuschnigg Clerico-Fascist Government
might extend its basis to the left by “an understanding with the working class.” In Italy during
the same period Mussolini made his approach to the former Socialist leaders, Caldara and
Schiavi, for their collaboration and even for the issue of a permitted “Socialist” journal in Milan.
These are only signs so far; but the possibility is not excluded that Fascism in difficulties may
turn to the collaboration of a section of the Social Democratic and old trade union leadership (as
was done by De Rivera in Spain, by Pilsudski in Poland, by Bulgarian Fascism, etc.)*
These hopes of a section of the old Social Democratic leadership, however, bear no relation
to the real process of transformation taking place in the main body of the Social Democratic
workers and rapid advance to militant struggle and working class unity.
No illusion could be more dangerous than the illusion that Fascism can be in retreat without a
decisive struggle, that Fascism can ever be finally overcome save by the working-class
revolution and the establishment of the working-class dictatorship. It is equally necessary to fight
the illusion of the inevitability of Fascism, or of the inevitable long-term power of Fascism in the
countries where it has won power, as it is necessary to fight the illusion that a temporary
fluctuation can mean the retreat and ultimate disappearance of Fascism, or disappearance of the
menace of Fascism in the countries where it has not yet conquered, without a decisive
revolutionary struggle. On the contrary, the greater the difficulties of Fascism, the more
desperate and ruthless will be its fight for existence. The massing of the working-class united
front does not yet mean the defeat of Fascism; it means only the massing of the forces for the
struggle against Fascism and for the final revolutionary struggle.
It has been the essential purpose of the present book to establish that Fascism is not merely
the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is
the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final
attempt to defeat the working- class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay. This
tendency runs through all modern capitalist countries without exception, and the advent of open

Fascism to power is only its final and completed expression. The drive against the workingclass, the strengthening of executive and police powers (Sedition Bill in England, constitutional
reforms in France, new emergency dictatorship forms in the United States), the attempt to
paralyse the working-class organisations from within upon a basis of enforced class-co-operation
and war against all revolutionary elements (social fascism), the drive to war and increasing
Organisation of the entire economic social and political structure for war, go rapidly forward in
all countries, including the formally “democratic” countries, Britain, France and the United
States. The fight against Fascism is the fight against this entire process of modern capitalism. In
particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist forms of organisation and
preparation of war within each country, becomes the more and more dominant character of the
present stage.
The supreme task now is to build up the widest United Front against Fascism and War.
Widespread anti-Fascist and anti-war feeling exists on all sides. But the essential need is
organisation. The resistance to the united front must be overcome. No separate and sectional
interests can be allowed to stand in the way of this. The all- inclusive united working-class front,
drawing in its wake the mass of the petit-bourgeois and unorganised elements, requires to be
built up in every country. Only the widest common front can defeat Fascism. And for the victory
of the struggle it is essential to understand the true character of the issues, the final necessity of
the revolutionary alternative, which can alone defeat Fascism and war by the victory of the
socialist revolution.
In the six months since this book was published, the urgency of these issues has become still
greater.
November, 1934. R. P. D.

==PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION==
The Seventh Congress of the Communist International has
brought in a new stage of the struggle of Fascism and Anti-
Fascism. The period of the division of the working class
forces, of the holding back of the majority of the workers
from a common class front by the policies of reformism, which
alone has made possible the temporary victories of fascism in
a number of countries, is drawing to its close. The period of
the united working class front, and of the drawing together of
all the working masses in a wide anti-fascist people’s front, is
now opening. The directives of the Seventh Congress of the
Communist International, on the basis of the historic report of
Georgi Dimitrov on Fascism and the United Front, will have
played a decisive role in developing this new stage, which opens
the way to the defeat of Fascism.

The present study of Fascism was originally written in the
latter part of 1933 and the early months of 1934 and was pub-
lished in England and America in the summer of 1934. It thus
represents a study of Fascism at the height of the wave of the
second Fascist offensive, based on the whole development and
history of Fascism in Italy, in Germany and in Austria, on the
beginnings of the Fascist offensive in France, in England and
the United States, and on the beginnings of the united front
of resistance to Fascism in France in 1934. An appendix brings
the record up to date to the beginning of 1935.

A general theoretical study of Fascism on an international
scale as a phenomenon of post-war capitalism is still lacking.
In the meantime this book represents a first attempt in this
direction. The main aims of the book are fourfold:

First, to analyse the essence and role of Fascism in the his-
tory of capitalism as a phenomenon of extreme capitalist decay
and of the intensified general crisis of capitalism, and in par-
ticular to relate it to the general economic and political tenden-
cies of post-war capitalism in the most recent period.

9

10 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Second, to show the causes of the victory of Fascism in a
number of countries, on the basis of a historical examination
of the transition to Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria,
with special reference to the decisive role of Social Democracy
in facilitating the victory of Fascism.

Third, to expose the actual character, ideology, programme
and practice of Fascism as the open, terrorist dictatorship of
the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist
elements of finance capital, endeavouring to mask its real aims
by the most extreme and shameless social and national dema-
gogy, and in this way seeking to build up a basis of support in
the population, especially among the petty-bourgeoisie and
backward workers, but in reality exercising the heaviest op-
pression and intensified exploitation against all the working
masses and lower and middle strata in the interests of monopoly
capital, and driving forward to war as its necessary outcome.

Fourth, to show the conditions of the fight against Fascism,
and in particular the decisive importance of the united working
class front and of the broad anti-Fascist front of the working
masses for the successful fight against Fascism; and in this
connection to deal with the relations of bourgeois democracy
and Fascism, the question of the defence of bourgeois demo-
cratic rights and liberties against the Fascist offensive, and at
the same time to show the necessity of the dictatorship of the
proletariat and of the Socialist revolution as the only final
alternative to Fascism and the only guarantee of final victory
over Fascism.

Since the book originally appeared, many new developments
have taken place, among the most important of which are the
new processes taking place in the Social Democratic Parties,
offering hopes of a healing of the split in the working class
and of the passing over of the majority of the workers to the
revolutionary camp. The sections on Social Democracy,
analysing its role in the period 1918 to 1933, must therefore
be read historically.

The decisive battles against Fascism, the most malignant
and barbarous expression of modern capitalism in decay, are
still before us. The two camps are forming with ever clearer
alignment on a world scale. The menace of Fascism and the
menace of war, both the expression of the present stage of

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION It

the intensification of all antagonisms, overhang the existing

world situation. The decisive battles between the forces of
the old decaying society and the rising new social forces will

be fought in the coming period.

capitalism in the period of the intensified general crisis and of |

R. P. D.
August, 1935. |
|

INTRODUCTION

A vErY sharp issue confronts present society.
Events move with great speed. The traditional forms of
thought still cling to the remnants of past periods.

The victory and advance of Fascism over an extending area
has come as a brutal shock to millions. Yet Fascism is no sud-
den growth. For a decade and a half the whole post-war social
development has been incubating Fascism.

To all those who have hitherto accepted as unquestioned the
existing social forms and their continuity, and above all to
those who have looked to the possibility of peaceful progressive
advance within those existing social forms, and who have dis-
missed the revolutionary outlook as the fantasy of a minority,
Fascism, and more especially the victory of Fascism in an
advanced industrial country such as Germany, has come as a
brutal shock. It may yet prove a salutary shock, if it can open
their eyes to the real issues of our period.

With every year, and with every month, that the long over-
due social revolution in Western Europe and America, for
which the world war of 1914 already gave the signal—that is,
the ending of the private ownership of the means of production
which inevitably produces the increasing contradictions,
anarchy, destruction and barbarism of the present day—is
delayed, denied and postponed, the world situation grows more
desperate, and the whole future of society is brought into
question.

The world war of 1914, the opening of the world socialist
revolution in 1917, the partial revolutions and civil struggles
succeeding the war, the post-war chaos, the world economic
crisis since 1929, the victory and ever growing strength of
Socialist construction in the Soviet Union along side the decline
of the capitalist world, and now the advance of Fascism in the
capitalist world and approach to a second world war—these are
the successive warnings of the real issues of the present stage.

Fascism has already been the subject of an enormous dis-
cussion and literature over twelve years, and above all over the
13

14 INTRODUCTION

past two years. Yet the treatment of Fascism has hardly yet
brought out its full significance.

On the one side, Fascism has been widely treated as simply
the expression of brutality and violence, of militarism and sup-
pression, of national and racial egoism, of the revolt against
culture, against the old slogans of liberty, equality and brother-
hood.

On the other side, Fascism has been treated as the expression
of national rebirth, of the emergence of youth, of the end of
decadent liberalism and intellectualism, of the advance to a
balanced and organised social order.

In order to get closer to the true character of Fascism, it is
necessary to go deeper, to see Fascism in relation to the whole
character of modern social development, of which Fascism is
an expression and reflection, and above all to get down to the
basic movement and driving forces of economy and technique,
of which the social and political forms, including Fascism, are
only the reflection.

Such an examination will reveal beyond dispute that the
modern development of technique and productive powers has
reached a point at which the existing capitalist forms are more
and more incompatible with the further development of pro-
duction and utilisation of technique. There is war between
them, increasingly violent and open since 1914, and entering
into a new and extreme stage in the world economic crisis and
its outcome. This basic conflict underlies all the social and
political problems of the present period, and in particular the
advance of capitalism to Fascist forms.

Only two paths are in fact open before present society at
the existing stage.

One is to endeavour to maintain at all costs the existing
class domination at the expense of the requirements of pro-
ductive development as well as at the expense of all human
cultural values. This means in practice to strangle the powers
of production, to retard technical development, to destroy
material and human forces, to crush the development of ideas
and thought, and to concentrate the entire society on organisa-
tion for war, leading in turn to still greater destruction and
decay. This is the path of Fascism, the path to which the
bourgeoisie in all modern countries where it rules is increas-
ingly turning, the path of human decay.

INTRODUCTION I5

The other alternative is to organise the new productive
forces as social forces, as the common wealth of the entire
existing society for the rapid and enormous raising of the
material basis of society, the destruction of poverty, ignorance
and disease and of class and national separations, the unlimited
carrying forward of science and culture, and the organisation
of the world communist society in which all human beings will
for the first time be able to reach full stature and play their
part in the collective development of the future humanity.
This is the path of Communism, the path to which the working
masses who are the living representatives of the productive
forces and whose victory over capitalist class domination can
alone achieve the realisation of this path, are increasingly turn-
ing; the path which modern science and productive develop-
ment makes both possible and necessary, and which opens up
undreamt-of possibilities for the future development of the
human race. The concrete realisation of this path has already
begun to be demonstrated with daily more gigantic victories
of new construction and new culture in the Soviet Union, in
one-sixth of the world, showing the way forward for the rest
of the world.
Which of these alternatives will conquer? This is the sharp
question confronting human society to-day.
Revolutionary Marxism is confident that, because the pro-
ductive forces are on the side of Communism, Communism will
conquer; that the victory of Communism, which is expressed in
the victory of the proletariat, is ultimately inevitable as the
sole possible final outcome of the existing contradictions; that
the nightmare of the other alternative, of the “Dark Ages”
whose creeping shadow begins already to haunt the imagination
of current thinkers, will yet be defeated, will be defeated by the
' Organised forces of international Communism.
But this inevitably is not independent of the human factor.
On the contrary, it can only be realised through the human
factor. Hence the urgency of the fight against Fascism, and
for the victory of the proletariat, on which the whole future of
uman society depends. The time grows shorter; the sands
are running through the glass.

To many, the alternative of Fascism or Communism is no
Welcome alternative, and they would prefer to deny it and to
Tegard both as rival, and in their view even parallel, forms of

INTRODUCTION

extremism. They dream of a third alternative which shall be
neither, and shall realise a peaceful harmonious progress with-
out class struggle, through the forms of capitalist “democ-
racy,” “planned capitalism,” etc.

This dream of a third alternative is in fact illusory. On the
one side, it is the echo of the conceptions of a past period, of
the period of liberal capitalism, which was already perishing
with the advent of imperialism, and which cannot be revived
when the conditions that gave rise to it have passed away, in
the stage of the extreme decay of capitalism and of the extreme
intensification of the class struggle. Even the caricature of
democratic forms which is still precariously maintained in the
imperialist states of Western Europe and America is increas-
ingly supplemented and displaced by more and more open
dictatorial and repressive methods (increase of executive pow-
ers, diminution of the role of Parliament, growth of emergency
powers, extension of police action and violence, restriction of
the rights of speech and meeting, restriction of the right to
strike, violent suppression of demonstrations and strikes, com-
bined with the typical methods of social demagogy of the
millionaire Press, stampede elections, etc.). The trend of
capitalism in all countries towards fascist forms is unmistak-
able, and is wider than the question of a Mussolini or a Hitler.

On the other side, the dream of a “planned capitalism” is
already an unconscious groping after Fascism without facing
its logical implications. For in practice the endeavour to
realise the self-contradictory aim of a “planned capitalism”
can only be pursued along the path of Fascism, of repression of
the productive forces and of the working class.

Thus the myth of a third alternative is in fact no alternative,
but in reality a part of the advance towards Fascism.

Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary stage
of capitalist development through which all countries must
pass. The social revolution can forestall Fascism, as it has
done in Russia. But if the social revolution is delayed, then
the menace of Fascism becomes urgent.

Fascism can be fought. Fascism can be fought and defeated.
But Fascism can only be fought and defeated if it is fought
without illusions and with clear understanding of the issues.
The causes of Fascism lie deep-rooted in existing society.
Capitalism in its decay breeds Fascism. Capitalist democracy

INTRODUCTION 17

in decay breeds Fascism. The only final guarantee against
Fascism, the only final wiping out of the causes of Fascism, is
the victory of the proletarian dictatorship.

Fascism offers no solution of a possible stable social organisa-
tion to replace the existing society in dissolution. On the con-
trary, Fascism carries forward all the contradictions of existing
class society, because Fascism is only a form, a means of
capitalist class rule in conditions of extreme decay. Not only
that, but Fascism carries forward the contradictions of existing
class society to their most extreme point, when the contradic-
tions are laid bare in open civil war and the organisation of the
entire capitalist state upon the basis of permanent civil war.
Fascism is thus society at war within itself. On this basis,
Fascism, so far from being a solution of existing social prob-
lems, represents their extreme intensification to the point of
final disruption. The only final outcome can be the victory of
Communism, because Communism alone contains within itself
the solution of the contradictions.

But in the interim period of struggle and transition, if it is
prolonged, if Fascism succeeds for a period in organising its
basis of civil war and violent reactionary dictatorship, an
enormous consequent destruction of material wealth, of human
lives and of culture, can take place, and increasingly threatens.
Therein is the desperate urgency of the fight, not only for the
ultimately inevitable victory of Communism, but for the rapid
victory of Communism.

The urgency of the present issues needs no emphasis. All
sense the gathering storms. A host of issues, of war, of arma-
ments, of Fascism, of the economic chaos, are taken up. But
none of these issues can be taken in abstraction. It is neces-
Sary to see them in relation to the whole social development, to
the basic issue underlying all these forms, the issue of the rule
of the bourgoisie or of the proletariat, of capitalism or social-
ism, on which the future of the human race depends.

Present society is ripe, is rotten-ripe for the social revolution.
Delay does not mean pacific waiting on the issue. The dialectic
of reality knowns no standing still. Delay means ever-extending
destruction, decay, barbarism. The words of Lenin on the eve
of October apply with gathering force to the present world
Situation: “Delay means death.”

May, 1934. R. P. D.

FASCISM
AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

==CHAPTER I: TECHNIQUE AND REVOLUTION==

In the issue of the Automobile Engineer for March 1931, ap-
peared an article on “The Machine Tool: An Analysis of the
Factors Determining Obsolescence.”

This article was not written as a criticism of existing society.
It was written, with considerable detail statistical calculations,
to assist employers or their technical managers to determine
under what conditions the installation of new high-production
machinery can be profitable. Nevertheless the conclusions
reached were in the highest degree revolutionary.

The first conclusion was to the effect that, quoting the words
of a paper of Mr. H. C. Armitage to the Institute of Auto-
mobile Engineers: “high-production machines that are being
developed in America cannot be economically used in this
country.” The reason given was “because existing British
plants can already produce more rapidly than the products can
be disposed of. . . . The statement has been made many
times that American factories in the main industries could more
than supply the world’s needs, even if all other supply sources
Closed down.” On this ground, objection was taken to
the common complaint of “uninformed critics of British
industry” that British employers had fallen behind in the race

use of maintaining “hopelessly out-of-date factory equip-
ment.”

On the contrary, in fact, the British capitalists knew very
Well what they were doing when they left their German and

imerican rivals during the decade after the war to install
Bigantic modern equipment of large-scale production at heavy
€xpense, requiring heavy maintenance costs and an enormous
Market, while they themselves preferred mainly to concentrate
©n speeding up and driving harder their labour on relatively
Older machinery, requiring less maintenance costs and a smaller
Market; on this basis they have been better able to meet the

frisis than their German and American rivals.
21

22 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The second conclusion went even further and declared that
this principle now applied also to American industry:

The time has now arrived when Mr. Armitage’s remarks may be
widened to a statement that the latest machine tools now being
developed in America cannot even be economically used in the United
States.

That is to say, the most modern developments of technique
can no longer be utilised in even the most advanced countries
of capitalism.

The third conclusion provides the complement to the first
two. One market, it is pointed out, still remains for the most
advanced machine tools. That market is the Soviet Union.

American machine-tool makers, having a range of equipment
sufficient to meet the needs of the American production plants, have
supplied to Russia machine tools outside this range, specially de-
signed to obtain still faster production. An excessive price has
been demanded for these special machines on the ground that, while
the tools show an improvement in output speed on their standard
lines, they have no immediate prospects of finding other customers
for them, there being no demand outside Russia for faster production
than can be obtained with existing models.

Thus, according to the testimony of this technical engineering
journal, the most modern developments of technique, making
possible the most extensive and rapid production with the
minimum of labour, can no longer be utilised in the countries of
capitalism, where they have originated, but can only be utilised
to-day in the country of socialist construction, in the Soviet
Union.

The significance of this present stage of technique and society
here revealed—and this example is only one of ten thousand
constantly arising in every direction in the present period—
requires no emphasis. Here, as in a single crystal, is expressed
the whole present stage of the general crisis of capitalism, of the
exhaustion of the possibilities of productive advance within the
fetters of the old private property ownership, and the necessity
of the socialisation of production as the sole condition for
further development.

In the situation that this picture reveals lies the real root of
the issue of Fascism or Communism. In this situation lies the
basic cause why precisely at the present stage of social develop-

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE. FORCES 23

ment the issue of Fascism or Communism inescapably confronts
existing society.

1. The Growth of the Productive Forces.

A century ago, Robert Owen, on the basis of his experience
as a successful manufacturer, noted the contradiction between
the new social productive labour and the private appropriation
of the fruits:

The working part of this population of 2,500 persons (in New
Lanark) was daily producing as much real wealth for society as, less
than half a century before, it would have required the working part
of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself, what became of
the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and
that which would have been consumed by 600,000?
(Robert Owen, The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the
Human Race, 1849.)

The contradiction of capitalism was thus already clearly seen
by Owen on the basis of his conduct of the model factory of
New Lanark from 1800 to 1829. But the criticism remained
an idealist criticism. For capitalism in this period, despite all
the cruelty and poverty involved in its process, was still ascend-
ing; it was still able to organise and develop the productive
forces; it was still a progressive factor, carrying through the
transformation from wasteful and uneconomic small-scale pro-
duction to modern large-scale production, and thus preparing
the material basis for the future society. The critique of capi-
talism in this period by Owen and others remained utopian.
The answer to this type of critique of capitalism was pro-
vided by Marx in his discussion of a similar line of argument of
Proudhon:

In 1770 the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
Was fifteen millions and the productive population three millions.
The scientific power of production would about equal a population
of twelve more millions; thus making a total of fifteen millions of
Productive forces. Thus the productive power was to the population
as I is to 1, and the scientific power was to manual power as 4 is to 1.

In 1840 the population did not exceed thirty millions; the pro-
ductive population was six millions, while the scientific power
amounted to 650 millions, that is to say, it was to the whole popula-
tion as 21 to 1, and to manual power as 108 to I.

24 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In English society the day of labour had thus acquired in seventy
years a surplus of 2,700 per cent. of productivity, that is to say that
in 1840 it produced twenty-seven times as much as in 1770. Accord-
ing to M. Proudhon -it is necessary to put the following question:
Why is the English workman of 1840 not twenty-seven times richer
than the workman of 1770?

In putting such a question one would naturally suppose that the
English had been able to produce these riches without the historical
conditions in which they were produced—such as: the private
accumulation of capital; the modern division of labour; the auto-
matic workshop; anarchic competition; the wage system, and, in
fine, all that which is based upon the antagonism of classes—having
to exist. But these were precisely the necessary conditions for the
development of the productive forces and of the surplus of labour.
Thus it was necessary, in order to obtain this development of the
productive forces, and this surplus of labour, that there should be
some classes which thrive and others which perish.

(Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, I, 3.)

This basic conception of the capacity of development of the
productive forces as the measure of a progressive or reactionary
social order is no less strongly expressed in Marx’s praise of
Ricardo:

The reproach moved against him, that he has an eye only to the
development of the productive forces regardless of “human beings,”
regardless of the sacrifice in human beings and capital values in-
curred, strikes precisely his strong point. The development of the
productive forces of social labour is the historical task and privilege
of capital. It is precisely in this way that it unconsciously creates
the material requirements of a higher mode of production.

(Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Kerr edition, p. 304.)

The Marxist critique of capitalism thus basically differs from
the utopian school still surviving in the so-called “English
Socialism.” The Marxist critique recognises the historical role
of capitalism in the development of the productive forces. But
the Marxist critique laid bare, already nearly a century ago
when no other economists or thinkers had the slightest glim-
mering of the future line of development, that the inner laws of
capitalist development would inevitably lead to a stage at which
capitalism could no longer organise the productive forces, but
could only result in successively more violent crises, stagnation
and decay, and at which only the new social class, the pro-
letariat, freed from the limitations of private property, could

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 25

alone organise the social productive forces to a higher level.
This is the heart of Marxism, whose political expression is the
dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary condition of the
solution of the problems of the present epoch.

It is this culminating stage of capitalism that we are at pres-
ent living througk—the stage of imperialism or capitalism in
decay, and, more particularly now since 1914, the stage of the
general crisis of capitalism, or final phase within imperialism,
when the forces of production are in ever more violent conflict
with the cramping fetters of the existing property relations of
production, when capitalism in more and more obvious decay
is faced with the advance of victory of the proletarian social
revolution, and when capitalism in decay is resorting to every
device and expedient to maintain its power.

Let us note first the gigantic growth of the productive forces
since the early criticisms of a century ago.

The following table gives the growth of industrial machine-
power, omitting motor-transport power, in the past century,
in millions of horse power (one horse power is commonly
calculated as equivalent to the muscular power of six men).

GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL MACHINE POWER.
(in million horse power)

Extra-
European
United countries (other

Kingdom France Germany U.S.A. than U.S.) World
1835 0.3 0.02 0.01 0.3 0.01 0.65
1875 6 3 4 7.8 1.9 26.5
1913 28.5 12.5 21 86 31 211
1928 37 18.5 32 162 93 390

(Hausleiter, Revolution in der Weltwirtschaft, 1932, published
in English under the title The Machine Unchained, 1933.)

A century ago, we have seen, it was already complained that
Productive power had increased twenty-seven times over in
England in the previous seventy years without any correspond-
ing improvement in the standards of the workers.

But in the century since 1835 industrial machine power
Multiplied a further hundred times over in England, and six
hundred times over in the whole world—and has ended in mass
Starvation and unemployment without equal.

In the decade and a half alone between 1913 and 1928
industrial machine power in Europe has increased 50 per cent.,

26 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

in the United States roo per cent., and in the extra-European
countries other than the United States 200 per cent.

The inclusion of all forms of power would bring the world
total to something like 1,500 million horse power.

On this basis Stuart Chase in his Machines and Men (1929)
has estimated the machine power of the world as representing
the muscular power of 9,000 million additional men, or equiva-
lent to five slaves for every man, woman and child of the
human race.

Between 1913 and 1927 electrical power production, accord-
ing to the report on “Power Resources of the World,” pre-
sented to the World Power Conference in 1930, increased from
47,000 million units to 200,000 million units. Between the first
and second World Power Conferences in 1924 and 1930, elec-
trical output doubled from 150,000 million units to 300,000
million units (Economist, 21 June, 1930).

This expansion of productive power has most strongly affected
manufacturing industry, but has also affected agriculture and
the output of raw materials, not in equal degree, but far out-
stripping the growth of human population.

Already by 1890, according to Hausleiter (op. cit.) the costs
of agricultural production in the great Grain Circle (United
States, Canada, Argentine, Australia) had been reduced by
mechanisation to one quarter of the costs of the old production
by hand-labour in 1830.

Between 1890 and 1921, according to the report of the Senior
Trade Commissioner in Canada for May 1930, further
mechanisation of agriculture and extension of the area of cul-
tivation had multiplied the yield of wheat per agricultural
worker fivefold:

Mr. Field lays great stress on the rapidity with which power-driven
machinery is displacing labour in Canadian agriculture. Whereas in
1890 1314 bushels of wheat were grown for each rural dweller, there
were seventy in 1921; and as the most revolutionary machine, the
combined reaper and thresher was only introduced in 1924, the out-
put per worker must now be a great deal higher. Moreover, the
scope for the mechanisation of agriculture has by no means yet been
fully exploited.— (Economist, September 8, 1930).

Between 1920 and 1929 the number of tractors in the United
States increased from 246,000 to 843,000 (U. S. Yearbook of
Agriculture, 1930).

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 27

Between 1900 and 1924-8 the harvests of all cereals in-
creased in Australia 104 per cent., in the Argentine 172 per
cent., and in Canada 330 percent. Between 1913 and 1928 the
volume of world grain exports increased 147 per cent. In the
same period world population increased 11.6 per cent.

The old ignorant Malthusian notions of absolute “over-
population,” or the modern lugubrious chants of birth-control
as the necessary solution of poverty, are thus abundantly
exploded by facts. It is worth noting that this reactionary
propaganda is still maintained, not only in clerical and con-
servative quarters, but also by the would-be “progressive”
(actually, as we shall have occasion to see, one of the real
bulwarks of conservatism in England) Labour Party. The
Labour official organ writes:

The figures published by the League of Nations show that the
world population, already 2,012,000,000, is increasing by 20,000,000
a year.

That means that unless the rate of increase is checked, it will have
doubled in far less than a century; for the increase is, as it were, at
compound interest.

There is not the least reason for assuming that the “march of
progress” will automatically provide ways and means of feeding and
supporting that doubled population.

There is only too much evidence—in India and China for example
—that the overcrowding of a too big population brings with it
appalling conditions of misery.

Either an unendurable suffering, or the ‘natural checks” of
famine and pestilence and a high death rate. Or, on the other hand,
a deliberate and conscious lowering and controlling of the birth rate.

Those are the alternatives that face humanity.

(Daily Herald editorial, August 8, 1932.)

Fortunately, these are not the alternatives that confront
humanity to-day. The alternatives that confront humanity
to-day are serious enough; but they are alternatives of the
destruction and anarchy of capitalism, involving still greater
Poverty and misery in the midst of abundance and rising pro-
ductive power, or the social organisation of production, bringing
abundance for all. The “overpopulation” (like the simul-
taneous “overproduction”) is only relative to the capitalist
Conditions of production. Against this reactionary and vicious
Propaganda, concealing under cover of obsolete clerical super-
Stitions the true social causes of poverty and misery (concealing

28 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

also, characteristically enough, the role of imperialism in India
in creating poverty) may be quoted the opinion of the leading
international statistician, Sir George Knibbs, who estimated
that even with present resources and technique the earth could
easily maintain four times the present population at a good
standard.

The late Sir George Knibbs . . . estimated after a careful survey
that the earth could well support a population four times as great as
at present, or about eight thousand million.

(Dr. R. A. Fisher, of the Statistical Department of the
Rothamstead Experimental Station, Spectator, March 7, 1931.)

The facts of the crisis show a very different picture to the
cant of “overpopulation” outstripping natural resources.
Already by 1925, according to the reports presented to the 1927
International Economic Conference at Geneva, despite the
destruction of the world war, world production of foodstuffs
and raw materials had risen over pre-war by 16 to 18 per cent.,
against an estimated increase of population by 5 per cent.
Between 1913 and 1928, according to the League of Nations
Economic Section, world production of foodstuffs and raw
materials had increased by 25 per cent., of foodstuffs by 16
per cent., of raw materials by 40 per cent. (of industrial prod-
ucts enormously more), against an estimated increase of world
population by ro per cent.

World stocks of primary products, on the basis of 1923-5 as
100, increased by the end of 1926 to 134, by 1928 to 161, by
1929 to 192, by 1930 to 235, by 1931 to 264, and by the end of
1932, despite all the destruction of stocks, still stood at 263, or
more than two and a half times the volume of eight years before
(Economist, May 6, 1933). World stocks of manufactures
showed a less overwhelming accumulation only because “the ex-
istence of a large volume of unemployed but immediately avail-
able factors of production” has the same effect in the sphere of
manufactures “corresponding to that exercised by enormous
stocks of primary products” (ibid., May 13, 1933).

The growth of production in every direction, whether of
foodstuffs, raw materials or manufactures, has thus greatly
exceeded the growth of world population. And the increase of
productive power, which has only been partially and incom-
pletely used under capitalist conditions, with many artificial

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 29

limitations and restrictions, has been in reality enormously
greater than the actual growth of production.

But this gigantic increase of productive power has outstripped
the capacity of capitalism to organise it.

The outcome of this gigantic increase of productive power has
been world crisis, stagnation and closing down of production,
mass unemployment, mass impoverishment and the lowering of
standards, on a scale without parallel since the beginning of
capitalism, accompanied by growing social and political dis-
turbance and recurrent war.

This problem is the basic problem confronting present-day
society.

2. The Conflict of the Productive Forces Against Existing
Soctety.

This is the world situation which reveals that the system of
capitalist relations, the capitalist class ownership of the means of
production, has outlived its progressive role, and has become a
fetter on the organisation of production.

The world war was the beginning of the violent explosion of
this conflict, of the conflict between the ever-growing productive
forces and the limits of existing property-society. Since 1914
we have entered into a new era, the era of the general crisis of
capitalism and of the advance of the world socialist revolution.

The world economic crisis which opened in 1929 has brought
these issues of the present stage of society, and of the basic
economic contradictions underlying them, more sharply to the
general consciousness than ever before. But the significance of
this world economic crisis is commonly seen through too narrow
spectacles. It is seen as a special temporary disorganisation
breaking in on an otherwise harmonious and smoothly working
economic mechanism. Alike in the pessimistic and the optimis-
tic readings of its significance the proportions have tended to be
lost. Just as the extreme low depths of depression produced
almost universal utterances of pessimism and apocalyptic
gloom from the leaders and professors of capitalism, so the first
Signs of an upward movement produced a universal sigh of relief
and reprieve, as if the worst were over and all might yet be well
again. In fact, “the devil was sick.”

But the real significance of the world economic crisis, which
has so greatly exceeded in its scope all previous economic crises,

30 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

can only be correctly understood in relation to the whole
development of capitalism, and in particular the development of
capitalism during the last two decades—that is, in relation to
the general crisis of capitalism which opened in 1914.

The general crisis of capitalism should not be confused with
the old cyclical crises of capitalism which, although demon-
strating the inherent contradictions of capitalist relations, never-
theless constituted an integral part and direct factor in the
ascent of capitalism. The cyclical crises, as illustrated in
1920-1 and 1929, continue, but take on a new and intensified
character in the period of the general crisis.

The old cyclical crises were, according to Marx, “always but
momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions,
violent eruptions, which restore the disturbed equilibrium for a
while” (Capital II],p.292). Their characteristic feature was to
solve the contradictions, albeit by anarchically violent and
destructive means, to restore the equilibrium, and permit of the
resumption of production on a higher plane. They weeded out
the smaller and less efficient concerns; they wiped out a portion
of capital values in order to save the remainder; they effected a
concentration of capital; they compelled a drive to open up new
markets. On this basis they permitted, after a relatively short
period, the resumption of capitalist production at a higher level.

Elements of this character can also be traced in the post-war
world economic crisis; but these “progressive” elements are
overshadowed by the major, negative effects of the whole pro-
cess of the development of the cyclical crisis on the basis of the
general crisis of capitalism, in the consequent destruction of
stabilisation and hastening of revolutionising processes.

For the general crisis of capitalism admits of no such solution.
The domination of the imperialist Powers has already been ex-
panded to its maximum extent throughout the world; monopoly
capitalism, which had already divided up the greater part of
the world by the beginning of the twentieth century, and by
1914 was at war over its re-division, is now faced with a still
sharper situation of contradictions, not only between the
imperialist Powers, but also between imperialism and socialism.
So far from there being available new regions to open up, one
sixth of the world has passed out of the sphere of capitalism into
that of the social revolution; the colonial peoples are rising in
revolt; the world available for capitalist exploitation has begun

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 31

to contract. At the same time the growth of productive power
is greater than ever, the extreme crisis, competition and war
forcing forward technical development and the process of
capitalist rationalisation. Under these conditions there is no
room for a harmonious solution, but only for ever more violent
conflict. The upward movements within the general crisis be-
come ever shorter; depression becomes the normal, broken by
short upward movements and violent social and political ex-
plosions; the recurrence of the old cyclical crisis within the
general crisis takes on a new intensity.

The general crisis of capitalism has now continued for twenty
years without a break, only changing one form for another.
The violent explosion of the world war only gave place to the
still more profound struggle of revolution and counter-
revolution throughout the world. The defeat of the revolution
in the countries outside the Soviet Union brought no solution
and peaceful development, but only laid bare the post-war
chaos of capitalism. The temporary stabilisation and upward
movement of the middle ’twenties proved only a false and
illusory stabilisation; “the prosperity of the period 1923-29
was to a large extent illusory; andthe seeds of future trouble
had already been sown” (British Government Note to the
United States, December 1, 1932). Its only outcome was the
new form of the basic contradiction expressed in the extreme
world economic crisis which began in 1929 and continues now
in its fifth year. This in its turn breaks out into new and violent
explosions in the spread of Fascism and the visibly approaching
second world-war.

Already in the closing years of his life Engels noted the
approach of a new era: “there is now no doubt that the position
has changed fundamentally by comparison with formerly”;
“we have entered upon a period much more dangerous for the
old society than that of the ten-year cycles”; “the crises
become chronic” (Engels, letter to Bebel, January 20, 1886).
In 1909 Kautsky, writing then as a Marxist theorist, in his
Path to Power, exposed the revisionist illusions of gradual and
Peaceful progress, and demonstrated the now close entry of
Capitalism into a period of violent explosions. In 1916 Lenin
In his Imperialism laid bare the foundations of the new period as
the period of monopoly capitalism, in which all the contradic-
tions come to a head, of decaying capitalism, of the eve of the

32 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

socialist revolution, the period which broke into violent
explosion in 1914.

Up to 1913 capitalist production, despite the increasing
tendencies of decay already visible in imperialism, was still
able to maintain an almost continuous ascending line.

For many decades before the war, world production, according to
the best estimates available, increased with remarkable regularity of
trend, broken only in minor degree by successive crises. This trend
of increase ran through both the period of declining prices from 1873
to 1895, and the period of rising prices from 1895 onwards.

(League of Nations World Economic Survey 1932-3, p. 68.)

Between 1860 and 1913, according to the tables presented in
this publication, world production of basic commodities
ascended in an almost continuous line and multiplied from four
to five times. World industrial production ascended in an
almost continuous line and multiplied over six times.

But the twenty years since 1914 reveal a different picture.

If the line of trend from 1860 to 1913 is extended to 1932, the
rather startling conclusion is reached that the index of world pro-
duction, on the hypothesis that nothing had occurred to alter its
regular upward trend for the fifty preceding years, would to-day be
rather more than twice as great as it actually is. (#bid., p. 82.)

The present world economic crisis is without precedent:

There is no precedent for such a marked decline. Statistical series
ranging back to 1860 fail to reveal any previous period in which the
decline in either raw material production or manufactures has been
sO precipitate or so severe. Independent estimates agree that in
1932 the level of industrial production in the world as a whole fell
below that of 1913. (ibid., p. 82.)

Thus the war and post-war period, taken as a whole, reveals
the first large-scale absolute setback of capitalist production.

The attempt is often made, on the basis of the above facts
and figures, to argue that, since 1914 appears as the great
dividing point, therefore the war is the cause of all the present
maladies. Comparisons are sometimes made to the post-
Napoleonic period of unsettlement, revolutionary unrest and the
industrial revolution; and the inference is drawn that the
troubles of the present period are also troubles of post-war
unsettlement and of the “second industrial revolution,”

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 33

heralding a no less great expansion within the forms of
capitalism.
This very superficial approach to the real historical move-
ment of two entirely different periods, and to the crux of modern
world problems, is demonstrably incorrect both in fact and in
reasoning.

In the first place, no comparison is possible between the
post-Napoleonic period of young and ascending capitalism and
the twentieth century period of old and declining capitalism.
Fifteen years after the Napoleonic wars, production, trade and
employment were gigantically above the pre-war level;
capitalist society was bounding forward. Fifteen years after
the war of 1914-18 production, trade and employment are
actually below the pre-war level; capitalist society is in a greater
dilemma than ever, greater than even in the period succeeding
the war. The dislocation, instead of diminishing as the war
recedes, actually increases; it is greater fifteen years after the
war than it was ten years after the war. It is obvious that some
deeper factor is at work than the disturbances consequent on the
war. At the same time, the social and political issues of the two
periods are basically different. The issue of the first half of the
nineteenth century was still the issue of the bourgeois revolu-
tion, which swept forward through the processes of the
Napoleonic wars and after, despite the seeming victories of
reaction. The issue of the first half of the twentieth century is
the issue of the proletarian social revolution, which began its
advance in the conditions of the war of 1914-18, and which
Maintains its growing strength in the midst of the capitalist
reaction.

In the second place, it is not correct that the division between
before 1914 and after 1914 is a simple and absolute division
between the ascent and the descent of the level of production.
On the contrary, the actual level of production in 1927-9 was
for the short period of the boom higher than the pre-war level;
the real growth of the contradictions, which was to find expres-
Sion in the subsequent slump falling below the pre-war level,
lay elsewhere. The true measure of the decline and bankruptcy
of the existing capitalist order lies, not in any simple arith-
Metical figures of the level of production, but in the growth of
the contradictions of the existing society to bursting point, in
the growth of the contradiction between the potential pro-

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ductive power and the actual production, between the con
ditions of existence of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat,
between the rival imperialist Powers, and the consequent
expression of these in social and political explosions. It is in
this sense that the general crisis of capitalism dates from 1914,
but its causes lie in the whole conditions of the imperialist epoch.
Finally, and in consequence of the above, the world war of
1914-18, so far from being the cause of the crisis of capitalism,
was on the contrary itself only an expression and breaking out of
the crisis—a link in the chain of imperialist development. The
war was no arbitrary, accidental, unforeseeable first cause, sud-
denly breaking in from nowhere to change the whole course o
development. It was the direct consequence of the condition
of imperialism, which was itself the direct outcome of th
previous nineteenth-century capitalist epoch. It was full
foreseen, and even predicted in detail for years beforehand, a:
the outcome of the growing tensions of imperialism. Its out
break coincided with the gathering industrial crisis which w
already beginning in America in 1913, and spreading therefro
to hover menacingly over Europe. As the war-leader, Lloy:
George, confessed nearly twenty years after, the war appear
as the way out from the gathering crisis, which he is now con
vinced would have in any case developed, even had the war no
broken out at that point:
If we had not had a great war, if we had gone on as we were goin
I am sure that sooner or later we would have been confronted wi
something approximately like the present chaos. There must
something fundamentally wrong with our economic system, beca
abundance produces scarcity.
(Lloyd George, speech at Cambridge, Manchester Guards
Weekly, April 7, 1933

The fact that the dynamic of capitalist development, even aft
the direct destruction caused by the first world-war has b
repaired, only reverts to the recurrence of still more gigant
economic crisis and the visible approach to a second world-wa'
shows how little of “accident” there was in the basic develo
ment of capitalism through imperialism to world war, howev
large the role of “accident” may appear to be in the particul
historical manifestations of the process.

In order to understand the problems of the present epoch
the general crisis of capitalism, it is essential to be able to

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 35

deeper than the immediate surface manifestations and episodes,
whether of the world war of 1914 or the world economic crisis
of 1929, and to understand these in relation to the general line
of development, of which they are expressions. The general
crisis of capitalism, the conflict of the productive forces against
the existing relations of production, expresses itself in a whole
series of successively growing conflicts and explosions, up to the
final victory of the proletarian social revolution. It is in relation
to this development of the general crisis of capitalism that
Fascism is a further stage and episode.

3. Productivity and Unemployment.

The development of the productive forces has rendered the
old class-society obsolete.

Already before the end of the war the leading trust magnate,
Lord Leverhulme, estimated that, if the then existing produc-
tivity were organised, one hour’s work per week of all citizens
would provide the necessaries of life for all:

With the means that science has already placed at our disposal, we
might provide for all the wants of each of us in food, shelter and

clothing by one hour’s work per week for each of us from school age
to dotage.

(Lord Leverhulme: Preface to Professor Spencer’s
Wealth from Waste, Routledge, 1918.)

That was fifteen years ago. In the intervening decade and a
half, according to the engineer, J. L. Hodgson, in his paper on
“Industrial and Communal Waste” before the Royal Society
of Arts on June 20, 1932, in the course of which he quoted and
accepted Lord Leverhulme’s statement, “since that date our
average potential productivity has nearly doubled.” One half-
hour’s work per week should thus provide a minimum standard
a all, and one hour’s work per week an overwhelming abun-

ance,

Why should this almost immeasurable increase in productive
Power and the possibility of universal abundance result in
Universal impoverishment and lowering of standards?

This is the question that confronts the whole human race,
that is becoming a life and death question for the nineteen
hundred million human beings of the capitalist world outside
_ the Soviet Union, to which these hundreds of millions must find
the answer or go down in catastrophe.

36 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

It is evident that what is here in question is no natural or
technical causes, but only social causes—that there is no social
organisation of production.

This question is sharpened by the contrast of the productive
increase in the Soviet Union alongside the actual decline of
capitalist production. Between 1925 and 1932 industrial pro-
duction in the Soviet Union (on the base of 1925-9 as 100)
increased from 59 to 240; the corresponding figure for the
United States decreased from 95 to 58, for Britain from 99 to
86, and for Germany from 89 to 66 (League of Nations World
Production and Prices 1925-1932, p. 49). Between 1929 and
1932 industrial production in the Soviet Union increased by
65 per cent. and in the capitalist world as a whole decreased by ©
37 percent. (League of Nations World Economic Survey, 1932-
1933, pp. 85 and 71).

The most glaring and direct living expression of this present
stage of the contradiction between the growth of the productive
forces and existing society is the spread of mass unemployment
throughout the capitalist world, already before the onset of the
world economic crisis, and reaching a total at the height of the
world economic crisis, in 1932, according to official figures, of
thirty millions, and according to unofficial figures of fifty
millions.

Britain, the oldest capitalist country, and the most advanced
in decay, first reached this basis of permanent mass unemploy-
ment. This situation revealed itself in the winter of 1920-21,
and has continued up to the present without a break; in the
beginning of 1933 the Chancellor of the Exchequer staggered
the House of Commons by announcing that he calculated on
the continuance of such mass unemployment for the next ten
years. The other countries in the succeeding years reached a
similar and even more extreme basis (running at the highest
point to eight millions in Germany and fourteen millions in the
United States).

Unemployment at a certain level has always been present in
capitalism. The development of production in capitalist con
ditions has always displaced workers and independent pro
ducers, and thus created the industrial reserve army which was
indispensable to meet the fluctuations of capitalist production
and to maintain the proletariat in subjection. But this indus
trial reserve army was a part of the machinery of expanding

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 37

capitalist production; the absolute number of productive
workers employed successively grew. It is only since the war
that the new phenomenon appeared of a permanent unem-
ployed army, grudgingly kept just alive at the lowest level of
subsistence by the bourgeoisie, while the absolute number of
productive workers employed has directly decreased.

Of the possibility of such a stage of chronic unemployment
and absolute decline of the productive workers, Marx wrote:

A development of the productive forces which would diminish
the absolute number of labourers, that is, which would enable the
entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time,
| would cause a revolution, because it would render the majority of
I

a <a

the population superfluous.
(Marx, Capital, HI, p. 309.)
Engels wrote in 1886:

America will smash up England’s industrial monopoly—whatever
there is left of it—but America cannot herself succeed to that monop-
oly. And unless ome country has the monopoly of the markets of the
world at least in the decisive branches of trade, the conditions—
relatively favourable—which existed here in England from 1848 to
1870, cannot anywhere be reproduced, and even in America the
condition of the working class must gradually sink lower and lower.
For if there are three countries (say, England, America and Ger-
many) competing on comparatively equal terms for the possession of
the world market, there is no chance but chronic overproduction,
one of the three being capable of supplying the whole quantity
required.

(Engels, letter to Mrs. Wischnewetzky, February 3, 1886,
reprinted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Cor-
respondence, London and New York, 1935, p. 443.)

_ To-day we are face to face with this situation. The position
m America is reported as follows:

The United States Commissioner for Labour Statistics recently
Stated that if 200 out of the 1,357 boot and shoe factories in the
country worked full time, they could satisfy the whole existing
mand, and the remaining 1,157 establishments could be closed

Own. Similarly, 1,487 out of the 6,057 bituminous coal mines
Could produce all the coal that was needed.

(H. B. Butler in the International Labour Review, March 1931.)

Between 1919 and 1927 factory output in the United States
/T0se from 147 to 170, on the basis of 1914 as 100, while the

38 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

employment index fell from 129 to 115 (Times, March 8, 1930).
Between 1919 and 1929 the Federal Reserve Board index of
industrial production (1923-5 as 100) rose from 84 to 119;
while the number of industrial wage workers fell from 9,039,000
to 8,742,000 (United States Statistical Abstract, 1932). This
absolute decline in employment was before the collapse, during
the great upward boom.

Britain reveals a similar picture. Between 1913 and 1928
the increase in output per head of workers employed in thirty
principal industries in Great Britain was 33 per cent., but the
increase in employment was 2.2 per cent., or less than the
increase in population (Times Trade Supplement, July 23, 1932).
Still more marked is the process if the post-war period is taken
alone. Between 1923 and 1928 the number of insured workers
in employment fell from 8,368,000 to 7,898,000; the index of
production (London and Cambridge Economic Service, based
on 1913 as 100) rose from 88.7 to 96.3. Production rose 7.6 per
cent.; employment fell 5.6 per cent. And all this before the
world economic crisis began to make the heaviest effects of the
process felt.

What is to happen to the “superfluous” workers? For long,
the old theory of “alternative employment” was. still
endeavoured to be put forward as applicable to this situation.
The decline in the industrial productive workers was to be
“compensated” by the increase of auxiliary “services” and
luxury occupations (clerical, distributive, advertising, com-
mercial, and luxury services). Certainly, a very considerable
increase in these auxiliary and in the main non-productive
occupations is to be traced in the United States, Britain and
other countries during the post-war period, thus providing the
basis of the rapid expansion of the so-called ‘new middle class,”
which became one of the breeding-grounds of Fascism; just as
the growth of the permanent unemployed army provided a
further breeding-ground. The expansion of the rentier class
on the one side, and of luxury services and endlessly multiplied
“salesmanship” services on the other, is a measure of the
degeneration of capitalism.

The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand en-
forcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand
begets by its anarchical system of competition the most outrageou
squandering of labour power and of the social means of production

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 39

not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments at
present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
(Marx, Capital, I, p. 540.)

Nevertheless, this supposed “compensation” was soon
revealed as a doubtful solution. In the first place, it was
manifestly no solution for the millions of miners and heavy
industry workers thrown out of work. In the second place, the
extent of “compensation” had obvious limits which were soon
reached. For in these occupations, too, rationalisation begins
to get to work and to repeat the process of throwing off the
superfluous workers. Mechanisation transforms clerical work,
and begins increasingly to replace clerks by more and more
elaborate calculating and book-keeping machines; centralisa-
tion cuts down the number of competing businesses; staffs are
reduced. The “white-collar workers” also find themselves
increasingly thrown on the market alongside their industrial
brothers.

Increasing doubts of the whole process and its outcome, as
well as of the stock explanations and solutions, found expression
in an editorial of the London Times in 1930 on “American
Unemployment” (characteristically endeavouring to treat the
problem as an “American” problem, but in fact describing
equally unemployment in Britain) :

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that unemployment must
henceforth be counted as a permanent American (!) problem. To
ascribe its occasional recurrence in an acute form to some special
event is no less delusive than to explain it as a merely “seasonal”
manifestation. . . . The experience of recent years has gone to
prove that recovery is less and less complete after each crisis, and to
show that forces other than the seasonal and the accidental are at
work. There is little reason to doubt that permanent unemploy-
ment is to-day the lot of an always growing number of American (!)
Men and women.

On this basis doubt is expressed of the whole system of “mass
Production,” i.e., of capitalis: large-scale production:
The advantages residing in a system which relies on the mass

Production of standardised articles deserve more critical examination
than they have yet been given.

The current answers of “the apologists of the system,” that the
reduced costs of production and therefore reduced price means

40 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

increased demand and consequent re-absorption of the unem-
ployed, are “no longer altogether convincing”’:

It is still doubtful whether the increased production can always
be absorbed; it is a very large question whether new industries are
created quickly enough to employ the displaced workers. In other
words, it remains to be seen how perilously the machine has run
ahead of man, and whether some re-adjustment of social condition
may not ultimately be imperative. The question drives like rain to
the roots of American (!) life. (Times editorial, March 8, 1930.)

Under the thin disguise of “America” it is obvious that “the
question drives like rain to the roots” of capitalism in all
countries, and not least in Britain, with its longest record of
permanent mass unemployment.

What prevents capitalism from carrying out the alternative
solution universally proposed by all the myriad schools of
reformers of capitalism (reformist socialists, social credit
theorists, currency reformers, etc.)—i.e., the general raising of |
the standards of the workers to a point compatible with the
consumption of the increased production alongside higher
profits for the capitalists? The answer why capitalism is unable
to carry out this apparently simple solution, but is in fact
actively engaged in carrying out the opposite, lies in the whole
character of capitalism. The reformist dream of grafting on
to the capitalist mode of production an entirely different and
incompatible system of distribution (whether by legislative
means, raising wages, social services, a “national dividend,”
or the like) only reveals its advocates’ failure to understand the
elementary workings of capitalism and the necessary conditions
of the capitalist mode of production. The reformists apply in
their fantasy the conceptions of an organised society directly
to the jungle of capitalism, which, by the very conditions of
private property and production for profit, cannot follow the
principles of an organised economy, but can only follow entirely
different laws. In fact, even the very limited measure of social
reform which could be achieved, under the pressure of the
working class, in the conditions of ascending capitalism become
increasingly circumscribed and even in part diminished and
withdrawn in the conditions of declining capitalism and of the
capitalist crisis.

The realities of capitalism are both in fact and in iron neces-
sity entirely different. The greater the crisis, the greater

i

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 41

becomes the need of the rival capitalist concerns to lower the
costs of production, to increase the rate of exploitation, to drive
the dwindling number of employed workers harder, to attack
the workers’ standards and the social services, in order to com-
pete more successfully for the dwindling market. At the same
time the growth of unemployment facilitates these attacks. The
development of the crisis has been accompanied in every
country by successively renewed and intensified attacks on
the workers’ standards. The authentic voice of capitalism is the
voice of the American capitalist magnate, Owen D. Young, the
sponsor of the Young Plan, when he declared: ‘‘Let no man
think that the living standards of America can be permanently
maintained at a measurably higher level than those of the other
civilised countries” (Economist, April 12, 1930.)

The Roosevelt “experiment,” which has skilfully utilised
the reformist propaganda of higher standards as the solution
of the capitalist crisis, but utilised it in fact for the exactly
opposite purpose to carry through intensified exploitation
and lowered standards (just as President Wilson of old utilised
pacifist propaganda for the purposes of war), is proving in
practice, as we shall later have occasion to see, only a more
complete demonstration of this reality.

The growth of productivity has been accompanied, not by
an increase of the workers’ share, but by a decrease of the
workers’ share. Between 1913 and 1928 the percentages of the
national income going to wages fell in the United States from
36.4 to 36, and in the United Kingdom from 42.7 to 40.9
(World Economic Survey, 1932-3, p. 101). Inthe United States,
between 1921 and 1927, the value of the product of industry
rose from 18.3 thousand million dollars to 27.5 thousand
million dollars (U.S. Department of Commerce, Census of
Manufactures); but in the same period the percentages 6f the
value of the product of industry going to wages and salaries fell
from 58.7 per cent. in 1921 (54.2 per cent. in 1914) to 51 per
cent. in 1927 (P. H. Douglas, Real Wages in the United States).
In Great Britain, between 1924 and 1930, according to Colin
Clark’s The National Income 1924-31, the output per person
employed rose from 100 to 113, while the proportion of wages
to home-produced income fell from 41.5 per cent. (42.5 per
cent. in rg11) to 38 per cent.

The effect of the world economic crisis has been, not to

42 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reverse this process, but to carry it enormously further forward.
The drive to rationalisation, to speeding up, to extracting a
still higher output per worker for less return, has been inten-
sified under the conditions of the crisis. Between 1929 and
1932 the output per man-hour has actually been forced up by
12 per cent. in the United States, alongside twelve million
unemployed!

Labour costs per unit of output have been substantially reduced
by an improvement in productive efficiency. The output per man-
hour in the United States increased by about 12 per cent. between
1929 and 1932.—( Economist, May 5, 1933.)

It is obvious that the effect of this is still further to intensify
the contradiction which already led to the economic crisis.

In the face of these facts increasing doubts begin to assail the
capitalists whether there can ever be full-scale employment
again, even if the extreme intensity of the crisis of 1929-33
should give place to a considerable upward movement. ‘Thus
it is reported from America:

American employment reached its highest point in 1918, American
production in 1929, and it is carefully and accurately computable
to-day that if by some magic a return could be made to the pro-
ductive maximum of three years ago, there would still be no work
for 45 per cent. of the present twelve million unemployed.

(Washington Correspondent of the London Times,
November 2, 1932.)

From Britain comes the same tale:

Tf the 24 millions of unemployed were absorbed in factory occupa-
tions, the national output of manufactured articles would be on such
a scale that the available buying markets . . . would be inadequate
to absorb it. Hence, if such a method of labour absorption could
and did take place, it would only precipitate a new crisis.

(Times Trade Supplement, July 23, 1932.)

Such are the alternatives which begin to be seen by the
capitalists, even if the present crisis should give place to the
most extensive upward movement.

Either continued mass unemployment of millions, even if
“by some magic” the record level of the previous production
boom could be attained.

Or, if all the unemployed are absorbed into productive
labour, then inevitably the immediate precipitation of a new
crisis.

—

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 43

As this new situation begins to be realised, the beckoning
phantom of a new world war as the only “solution” to utilise
the productive forces and wipe off the “superfluous” popula-
tion begins to exercise a visibly increasing attraction on
capitalist thought and policy as the final gamble.

Nearly a century ago Engels wrote of the necessary con-
sequences of the inevitable future breakdown of the British
capitalist monopoly: “Should English manufactures be thus
vanquished . . . the majority of the proletariat must become
forever superfluous and has no other choice than to starve or to
rebel.” (Engels: Condition of the Working Class in England in
1844, Ch. xi.)

In 1932, eighty-seven years later, the British Prime Minister
spoke in the House of Commons of the prospect, even if trade
should recover and prosperity return, of having to find “great
| bodies of men and women, perhaps even amounting to a couple
of millions, to be, to all intents and purposes, in our society,
superfluous scrap.”’ (J. R. MacDonald in the House of Com-
mons, November 22, 1932.)

' In 1933 the leader of British Conservatism had to make the
same melancholy admission:

There is the great core of unemployment. We do not know what
the numbers may be. There may be a million, a million and a half,
or less than a million; but there will be a vast number for whom there
is but little hope of employment being found in this country. The
gates of migration are closed against us. What can we do? That
is a problem that has baffled the country completely up to now.

(Stanley Baldwin in the House of Commons, November 27, 1933.)

“What can we do?” This is the final answer of what was
once the most powerful capitalism in the world, when faced to-
day with the problem of millions who seek only to work and live.

There could be no sharper expression of the bankruptcy of
Capitalism than when, in the midst of wealth and unexampled
Productive power, it can no longer even find the means to
exploit a growing proportion of its slaves, and is compelled to
proclaim millions of human beings, living, strong, and able and
willing to labour, as “superfluous scrap.” The time draws
close for the second half of the alternative—‘“to rebel”—as the
Only solution for the extending millions of producers cut off
from production, no less than for the millions whose growing
output is accompanied by growing poverty.

44 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The Alternative—Social Revolution or Destruction.

The alternatives which confront society at the present stage
are thus clear.

Capital can no longer utilise the productive forces. Capital
can no longer utilise the full labour-power of the productive
population. Monopoly capitalism is more and more visibly
choking the whole organisation of production and exchange.

The working masses can no longer find even the former
limited conditions of existence within the conditions of capital-
ism. Increasing millions are thrown aside as “superfluous.”
The standards of all are successively attacked. Intensification
of labour of the dwindling numbers employed is accompanied by
worsening of standards.

The class struggle grows more intense. New forms of
widening mass struggle develop. New and intenser methods of
repression and coercion are brought into play by the ruling class.

Against this situation the knowledge and understanding,
which begins to grow more and more widely spread, of the
scientific and technical possibilities of unlimited production
and abundance for all, confronts existing society like a mockery
and a torment: creating on the one side, among a growing
section of the dispossessed, revolutionary anger and determina-
tion; creating on the other side, among the doomed possessing
classes, growing desperation and recklessness, the revolt against
science, the revolt against mechanical technique, and readiness
to embark on ever more frenzied courses of destruction.

Two alternatives, and only two, confront existing society at
the present stage of development of the productive forces and
of social organisation.

One is to throttle the development of the productive forces in
order to save class-society, to destroy material wealth, to destroy
millions of “superfluous” human beings in the slow rot of
starvation and the quick furnace of war, to crush down the
working-class movement with limitless violence, to arrest the
development of science and culture and education, and to turn
to ever more destructive war as the supreme aim of each im-
perialist bloc striving to find a way out for itself at the expense
of its rivals, and thus to seek to save for a while the rule of
the possessing classes at the expense of a return to barbarism
and spreading decay. This is the path which finds its most
complete and organised expression in Fascism.

THE ALTERNATIVE—REVOLUTION OR DESTRUCTION 45

The other is to organise the productive forces for the whole
society by abolishing the class ownership of the means of pro-
duction, and building up the classless communist society
which can alone utilise and organise the modern productive
forces. This is the path of Communism, of the revolutionary
working class.

The issue of these two paths is the issue of the present epoch.

It is to the former of these two alternatives that the existing
capitalist world is to-day moving at an increasing pace, and to
which it will more and more visibly develop in the period ahead,
if the revolutionary working class does not succeed in time in
saving the whole future of civilisation and of human culture.

ad a

==CHAPTER II: THE END OF STABILISATION==

THE technical and economic situation described in the previous
chapter finds its social and political expression in the storms of
the present epoch, in the world war, in the revolutionary
struggles, in the world economic crisis, in the advance to
renewed world war and in Fascism.

The objective conditions for the social revolution were ripe
already from the beginning of the period of imperialism, and
more particularly since the opening of the general crisis of
capitalism in 1914.

But the living human factor was not yet ready. The minds of
men were still dominated by the conceptions of the past epoch.
The bursting of the contradictions in the world war and after
broke on the majority of men like a natural catastrophe. The
first aim was widely proclaimed on all sides to resume the
broken thread of pre-war continuity.

The proletariat in the leading capitalist countries, although
advancing to social revolution, was not yet strong enough, not
conscious enough, not organized enough, to overthrow the rule
of the capitalist class. The revolts of the proletariat after the
war, although drawing close to success and profoundly trans-
forming the political situation, were finally defeated in all
countries outside Russia.

The capitalist class, having overcome the immediate menace
to its rule, set itself the aim to restore the shaken mechanism of
capitalist production and exchange, to return to “pre-war” or
“normalcy.”

The proletariat, following the leadership of Social Democracy,
after the defeat of the revolution, sought to win improved con-
ditions within the capitalist restoration.

On this basis was built up the capitalist restoration or tem-
porary “stabilisation” of 1923-9. The illusory character of
this basis, which sought to resurrect the vanished conditions of
the old pre-war capitalism, was not at first realised by any
save the Marxists.

46

ee lee a
eu ¥

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 47

Only when a new cycle of capitalism on this basis had resulted
with extreme speed in a more intense crisis than ever before,
shattering one by one al! the pillars of “stabilisation,” did the
recognition begin to become universal on all sides that the old
conditions were passed beyond resurrection, and that funda-
mental issues of social, economic and political organisation
would have to be faced.

From this point stabilisation ends, and a transformation
begins to develop in the whole of capitalist policy and in the
consciousness of the proletariat. Social Democracy, which
had shared in the boom of capitalist restoration, goes through a
series of inner crises, and weakens before Communism. Fascism
which had previously developed only in an experimental stage
in a secondary capitalist country, now comes to the front as a
world factor, dominating directly a major capitalist country,
as well as in greater or less degree a whole series of other
countries, and revealing itself as the most typical expression of
modern capitalist policy.

1. The Last Attempt to Restore Pre-war Capitalism.

The basis of the attempted capitalist restoration after the
war was the defeat of the proletarian revolution outside Russia.

To this objective the principal concentration of world
capitalist policy was directed in the period immediately after
the war. This primary preoccupation was true, not only of the
governments of Central Europe, where the revolution came
closest to victory, but above all of the governments which held
the world leadership of capitalism, of Britain, France and the
United States. Thus Hoover declared in 1921—

The whole of American policies during the liquidation of the
Armistice was to contribute everything it could to prevent Europe
from going Bolshevik or being overrun by their armies.

(Hoover, letter to O. Garrison Villard, 1921, reprinted in
the New York Nation, December 28, 1932.)

In the same way, for Britain, Sir William Goode, British
Director of Relief in Central Europe, wrote on ‘European
Reconstruction” in 1925, quoting from his official report in
1920:

Food was practically the only basis on which the Governments of
the hastily created States could be maintained in power. . . . Half

48 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of Europe had hovered on the brink of Bolshevism. If it had not
been for the £137 million in relief credits granted to Central and
Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1921, it would have been imposi-
sible to provide food and coal and the sea and land transport for
them. Without food and coal and transport, Austria and probably
several other countries would have gone the way of Russia... .
Two and a half years after the Armistice the back of Bolshevism in
Central Europe had been broken, largely by relief credits... .
The expenditure of £137 million was probably one of the best
international investments from a financial and political point of view
ever recorded in history.

(Sir William Goode, Times, October 14, 1925.)

Subsequently, the Dawes Plan, Locarno and the flow of
American credits and loans to Europe carried forward the same
process of capitalist restoration at a higher stage.

What was the basis of the defeat of the proletarian revolution
and the rebuilding of capitalism in the years immediately fol-
lowing the war? Fascism at this time did not exist as a factor
save in Italy. The main weapons of capitalism were threefold.

The first was direct civil war and counter-revolution—the
wars of intervention against Russia, the White Terror in Fin-
land, Hungary, Poland, etc., the military aid to Poland in 1920,
the permission of the counter-revolutionary military organisa-
tions, officers’ corps, Orgesch, etc., in Germany (which helped
to build up the basis of the subsequent Fascism in Germany),
and the like. This was of decisive importance at the immediate
critical points of struggle, but it could not provide the main
basis, as it had no mass support and could only build on the
narrow ranks of the ex-officers and direct reactionary classes;
the failure of the Kapp Putsch demonstrated this weakness. It
was only later that Fascism was to find the way towards a
temporary solution of the problem of the combination of
counter-revolution with winning a wide measure of mass sup-
port.

The second weapon was Social Democracy and the granting
of temporary concessions to the workers. Social Democracy
because of its mass basis, was the main weapon of capitalism in
the years immediately after the war for the rebuilding of
capitalism. The advance of the workers to the struggle for
power, the immediate onrush of which after the war was too
powerful to be successfully defeated in direct battle, was
circumvented by a strategical ruse—the placing of Social

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 49

Democratic governments, presidents and ministers in office,
thus appearing to surrender to the workers the seats of power,
while the realities of power remained with capitalism. Only
in this way, by the alliance with Social Democracy, by hiding
capitalism under a Social Democratic front, was the capitalist
state saved after the war. Social Democracy united with
capitalism to defeat the workers’ revolution. A great show of
concessions to the workers was made; promises were lavishly
broadcast; Socialisation Commissions, Nationalisation Com-
missions, Sankey Commissions were set up; wages were
increased and hours shortened.*

Subsequently, as soon as the power of capitalism was thus
successfully re-established, a reverse action took place. The
concessions were withdrawn; inflation wiped them out in the
European countries; the capitalist offensive drove back the
workers even below pre-war levels; the Social Democrats, while
still occasionally used as governments, were increasingly
relegated to the role of “opposition.” At the same time, the
consequent growth of disillusionment of the workers with the
whole process and with Social Democracy led to the necessity
of capitalism discovering a further basis of power, and the
development of Fascism as the parallel instrument of capitalism
alongside Social Democracy. But this development only took
place on a wider scale as the stabilisation began to break down
in the world economic crisis.

The third weapon of capitalism in the re-establishment of its
power and of its economic system was the drawing on the
colgssal reserves of the still unshaken centre of world capitalism
—American capitalism. American loans and credits poured
into Europe to bolster up and rebuild the shaken fabric of
European capitalism. On this basis the restoration of the gold

* The character of this period was revealingly described, with reference to the
Sankey Coal Commission, by Evan Williams, President of the Mining Association,
in his evidence before the Mining Court of Inquiry in 1924:

“Tt was an atmosphere charged with the emotions of the time in which the
Commission sat. There were fears throughout the whole country as to what
might happen, and it was felt that the miners’ position ought to be met in order
to maintain peace. That was the atmosphere of the Commission. The atmos-
Phere was an unreal one altogether, and conclusions were arrived at without any
real foundation. Two of my colleagues, mineowners and myself,” went on Mr.
Williams with a smile, “actually signed a report which recommended a reduc-

tion in the hours of work in mines.” (Daily Herald report, April 26, 1924.)

e “smile” is the comment of capitalism on its own ruse, after the ruse has
Succeeded.

5° FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

standard took place. The triumph of stabilisation was cele-
brated by the bankers of the world. It was obvious that this basis
was a false one, and would involve a boomerang outcome, as
was predicted at the time by Marxists.*

On this basis was built the restoration of capitalism after the
war, and subsequent upward movement and boom of 1927-9.

It is evident to all to-day that this basis of stabilisation was
a hollow and rotten one.

In the first place, the direct counter-revolutionary fighting
organisation was still built on the narrow circle of privileged
strata and their immediate range of influence, and had no wider
mass basis. The masses were still only reached by Social
Democracy or Communism.

Second, the weapon of Social Democracy was more and more
blunted by each successive use. Widespread disillusionment
grew with the failure of Social Democracy, not only to lead any
fight for socialism, but even to fight to maintain existing con-
ditions or defend the daily interests of the workers. The more
and more desperate use of ever extending disciplinary and
coercive measures by the Social Democratic leadership to main-
tain their power could not check this growing discontent. In
the European countries as a whole during this period the vote
of Social Democracy declined, and that of Communism
increased.

Third, the American Colossus, whose support and subsidies
facilitated the restoration of capitalism, was a colossus with
feet of clay. As rapid as was its expansion and apparent
prosperity and power in the war and post-war period, no less —
rapid was the bursting of the contradictions of its capitalist
structure into a more gigantic economic crisis than any pre-
viously experienced in any country of capitalism. But just:
as American capitalism had facilitated the rebuilding of

* See, for example, the Labour Monthly for February 1925, on “The Restoration
of Europe,” and for March 1925, on “The Gold Standard,” where it was pre-
dicted that, as soon as the flow of new loans and credits should begin to dry up,
and be exceeded by the necessary return movement of interest and amortisation,
requiring an enormous expansion of European exports in the overcrowded world
market, this would necessarily precipitate a new crisis, leading to the shattering
of the gold standard. To-day this analysis, made in 1925, and fully realised
years later, provides an instructive comparison of the effectiveness of the Marxi
line in contrast to the complacent contemporary statements during that period 0}
all the leaders and professorial experts of capitalism on the success of stabilisa
tion and of the return to the gold standard.

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 51

capitalism throughout the world, so the American crash brought
with it the crash of the whole structure of stabilisation through-
out the world.

Fourth, the very success for the moment of stabilisation, of
rationalisation, of the enormous expansion of the productive
structure, brought with it the intensification of all the problems
and conflicts of capitalism, and only resulted in the more rapid
and complete shipwreck. The gigantic productive mechanism
required a no less gigantic expansion of the market; unless it
could maintain its mass output at full working, its very much
heavier maintenance costs made it actually less economical than
more primitive technical forms.

The presuppositions of the attempted restoration and stabili-
sation of capitalism after the war had been the return to the
conditions of pre-war capitalism (which had in reality already
been undergoing far-reaching modifications and transforma-
tions already before the war), to the free market regulation of
supply and demand, to the automatic gold standard, etc. But
in fact monopoly capitalism had already before the war trans-
formed these conditions of classic capitalism beyond recognition,
and led to the growing disequilibrium which found expression
in the war. After the war, monopoly capitalism was enor-
tmously further developed, not only in the scale of the trusts
and in the concentration of the financial oligarchies, but in
the ever closer unification of the financial oligarchies and the
State machine, in the growing State economic intervention and
control, in the utilisation of direct political means for economic
“ ends (reparations, debts, loan policies, colonial policies), and the
rising network of tariffs, subsidies, quotas, licenses, and all forms
of restrictions to maintain the closed monopolist areas. The
whole resulting structure was top-heavy. The crash was
inevitable. Capitalism under these conditions was more and
more revealing itself, no longer as a “working system,” but as a
clogging fetter on production and exchange, with vast con-
centrations of conflicting and irresponsible power at strategic
Points, which could rock the whole system.

When the crash came with the world economic crisis, the
Conditions of monopoly capitalism still further prevented the

“normal” working out of the crisis, and intensified and pro-
longed the crisis. The great capitalist monopolies were able to
maintain relatively high profits in the midst of the depression,

52 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

by artificial measures of restriction, by maintaining monopoly
prices above the general price-level, and by passing on the
burden of the depression to the working masses, to the petit-
bourgeoisie and to the colonial peoples. The prices of cartel-
lised goods in Germany in the beginning of 1933 had only fallen
20 per cent. below the level of the first half of 1929, whereas the
price of non-cartellised goods had fallen 55 per cent. (League
of Nations World Production and Prices,p.109). The prices of
manufactured goods in the imperialist countries were main-
tained above the pre-war level, at the same time as the prices
of the raw-material products of the colonial peoples were
depressed to an average of half the pre-war level. But this
meant to intensify the contradictions at the root of the crisis.
In this way the workings of monopoly capitalism hindered the
“normal” solution of the crisis after the methods of “healthy”
capitalism.

Thus it became more and more evident, both from the
circumstances leading to the crisis, and from the further
development of the crisis, that the “restoration of capitalism”
of the pre-war type was no longer possible; that its breakdown
was not due to any particular, isolated, accidental causes
(reparations, debts, gold supply and distribution, etc., as was
at first suggested), but was inherent in the whole nature of the
attempt in relation to modern conditions of production and
economic organisation; and that in fact, as began to become
increasingly recognised in informed capitalist quarters, the
whole attempt at “restoration” during the nineteen-twenties
had been in reality a chase after an illusion.

As the recognition of this begins to spread within the capitalist
world, the conscious direction of capitalist policy begins to
change more and more openly—the decisive point of change
from the old to the new may be marked in 1933 with the advent
of Roosevelt in the United States, with the advent of Hitler in
Germany, and with the breakdown of the World Economic
Conference—and moves to new types of policy in accordance
with the changed conditions, and to corresponding new types
of economic and political organisation.

2. The Collapse of the Illusions of the Stabilisation Period.

The short-lived “stabilisation” and upward movement of |
capitalism in the nineteen-twenties gave rise to a host of myths |

COLLAPSE OF THE ILLUSIONS 53

and illusions as to the possibilities of permanent capitalist
prosperity, of a new era of harmonious capitalist advance, of
“organised capitalism,” of “super-capitalism,” of improving
standards for all without the need of class struggle or revolution.

These illusions were important at the time as the means by
which capitalism sought to maintain its hold on the masses
and to counter the issue of the social revolution, which con-
cretely confronted the world since 1917.

The collapse of these illusions with the world economic crisis
was of decisive importance in the development of capitalist
ideology to Fascism.

The main forms taken by these illusions were twofold, both
closely connected.

The first was the myth of American Capitalism as a new type
of capitalism, which had overcome the contradictions and crises
of the old capitalism, which had “ironed out the trade cycle,”
and found the key to permanent prosperity and the abolition
of poverty through continuously rising standards of the workers
alongside continuously rising profits. American Capitalism was
held out as the triumphant refutation of Communism. “Ford
versus Marx” was the common popularisation of this theme.

The second, closely connected with the first, was the con-
ception of “Organised Capitalism” as the new type of capital-
ism developing throughout the world, and building up under
capitalist leadership a rational productive world order, which
would eliminate the evils, poverty and discords of the old
nineteenth-century capitalism and replace them by unparal-
lelled universal prosperity. This conception found its final
expression in “Ultra-Imperialism,” or the conception that
Capitalist development was working towards a unified world
capitalist order, eliminating war and the divisions of imperialism
under the beneficent and pacific control of international
finance.

There is no doubt that these illusions were to some extent
shared by a portion of the leaders of capitalism during this
Period, who were dazzled by the apparent rapid recovery from
the war and the unparallelled advance in production, trade
and profits, and looked forward to a period of ever-growing
prosperity. Thus President Hoover declared on July 27, 1928:
“The outlook of the world to-day is for the greatest era of
commercial expansion in history.” And again, on August 11,

— ———-~

54 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

1928, in a speech accepting the Republican re-nomination for
President:

Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing.
We in America to-day are nearer to the final triumph over poverty
than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is
vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but
given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years,
and we shall soon with the help of God be within sight of the day
when poverty will be banished from this nation.

(New York Nation, June 15, 1932.)

Similarly Keynes in 1925, addressing the Liberal Summer
School under the title, “Am I a Liberal?” distinguished three
periods of economic development: the first, of scarcity, up to
the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; the second of abundance,
represented by the nineteenth century; and the third, of
“stabilisation,” now opening:

But we are now entering on a third era, which Professor Commons
calls the period of stabilisation, and truly characterises as “the actual
alternative to Marx’s Communism.”

(Keynes Am I a Liberal? 1925, reprinted in Essays in
Persuasion, 1931.)

The principal channel of these illusions throughout Western
Europe and America was Social Democracy. Through Social
Democracy these illusions were transmitted to the masses. The
“American Model” and “Ford versus Marx” became the
battle-cry of Social Democracy and the Second International in
the fight against Communism. Government-paid missions of
labour leaders were sent from Britain, Germany and other
countries to the United States to bring back the new gospel
from the Holy Land of Capitalism. It is unnecessary now to
repeat (although it would be profitable for those who come
newly to these questions to study this record of capitalist and
social democratic illusion and ignorance on the basic questions ,
of our epoch) the more fantastic utterances of all the principal
Labour Party, trade union and social democratic leaders and
theorists on the American Miracle and the triumph of capitalism
over Marxism.*

* Reference may be made to the present writer’s Socialism and the Living Wage,
published in 1927, for a collection of some of the typical British Labour expressions
—Labour Party, trade union and Independent Labour Party—in adoration of the
American Mammon, Fordism, the New Capitalist Era, Rationalisation, etc. It

COLLAPSE OF THE ILLUSIONS 55

What is important is that capitalism in this period, through
Social Democracy, was able to build up a powerful propaganda
in the working class of expectation of a new capitalist era, of
rising prosperity, of the unshakable strength of capitalism,
and of the refutation of revolutionary Marxism. The entire
machine of reformist socialism, in control of the working class
organisations, spread this propaganda.

Thus Snowden on behalf of the Labour Party declared:

He did not agree with the statement of some of their socialist
friends that the capitalist system was obviously breaking down.
He believed that we were to-day in a position very much like the
industrial revolution that took place about 120 years ago. Then the
steam age was ushered in.

Now we are entering in, I believe, the new age of electricity and
an age of chemistry. Wide-awake capitalists are seeing this, and they
are taking steps to appropriate for private profit and private owner-
ship the exploitation of these great forces. If they succeed in doing
that, then the capitalist system will be given a new and long and
more powerful lease of life.

(Snowden, Daily Herald report, April 17, 1926.)

Citrine, on behalf of the Trades Union Congress, defending
the policy of “Mondism” or alliance with capitalism, explained
that the policy of co-operation with the employers
aims at using the organised powers of the workers to promote effec-
tive co-operation in developing more effective less wasteful methods
of production, eliminating unnecessary friction and unavoidable
conflict in order to increase the wealth produced and provide a
steady rising standard of social life and continuously improving
conditions of employment for the workers.

(Citrine, in the Labour Magazine, October 1927.)

In this way the expectation of “‘a new and long and more
powerful lease of life” of capitalism, and of “a steady rising
Standard of social life and continuously improving conditions
of employment for the workers” within capitalism was
‘reached by Social Democracy.

Similarly the theorist of German trade unionism, Tarnov,

~ Wrote that Marxism was now refuted by modern capitalism:

We must distinguish two epochs in the development of capitalism;

may be noted that Labour Press reviews of this book, which in 1927 exposed the
clay feet and impending crash of the American Colossus, rejected its reasoning on
the grounds that it was based on the “obsolete” theories of Marxism, which only

ad reference to nineteenth-century capitalism and were refuted by modern
Capitalism, as demonstrated in America.

56 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the epoch of British capitalism, which was limited in its possibilities
of expansion, and the epoch of American capitalism, which on the
basis of the latest technical advances can unendingly expand and
develop.

For the first epoch, Marx and Lassalle were typical. They main-
tained that wages are determined by certain economic laws, that
they depend on the cost of labour-power, etc. For the second epoch,
Ford is typical. He proved that capitalism can prosper, while the
worker need not at the same time remain poor.

Along the same lines another leading theorist of German trade
unionism, Naphthali, wrote:

Cyclical development, under which there was a regular succession
of prosperity and crisis, of which Marx and Engels wrote, applies
to the period of early capitalism.

A younger theorist of the Labour Party wrote in a book
appearing as late as 1931:

There are grounds for thinking that the situation is changing for
the good. The wave of world revolution, on which the advance of
Communism is depending, has subsided. Capitalism has been suc-
cessful up to a point in stabilising itseli—though at the price of
admitting into its structure socialist elements which will ultimately
supersede it. . . . There is a good deal in the classic Communist pic-
ture of a world in the grip of ineluctable conflict that is out of date.

(A. L. Rowse, Politics and the Younger Generation, 1931,

Pp. 294.)

This writer argued further that the most modern capitalist

monopolies were showing an enlightened and _ benevolent

tendency of scientific world organisation which held out the

prospect of an ultimate “synthesis of common aims” with

socialism. Unfortunately for the writer, he chose as his example

of this progressive tendency of modern monopolist capitalism
and potential ally with socialism—Kreuger.

It is noteworthy that one of the greatest and most progressive of
modern finance corporations, the Swedish Kreuger and Toll Co.,
in a brilliant review of world conditions comes to conclusions not
dissimilar. (A quotation from their report follows):

When a great capitalist concern speaks in these terms, one seems
to see a glimpse of the future in which the existing conflict between
socialism and it is resolved in a synthesis of common aims. :

(Ibid., pp. 46-7.)

The Preface of this book was dated 29 July, 1931. The collapse -

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 57

and exposure of Kreuger and his swindles took place within
eight months. This writer for the “younger generation” was
belated in his repetition of social democratic propaganda of a
preceding period, which had already reached its climax and
completed its main currency in 1927-9.

What was the effect of this dominant line of propaganda and
policy of Social Democracy during the short-lived boom period
of post-war capitalism?

First, it completely concealed the real character of post-war
capitalism, the real issues of the period, and the real struggle
confronting them, for the working class. Thus the workers were
left confused and unprepared for the gigantic issues which faced
them, and which the crisis laid bare.

Second, the subsequent collapse of all these theories and of
the entire line of leadership with the advent of the world
economic crisis produced a tremendous disillusionment through-
out the petit-bourgeoisie and the section of the working class
who had followed the promises of Social Democracy. All the
hopes which had been built up collapsed.

Thus the path was laid open for the advance of Fascism in
the petit-bourgeoisie and in certain strata of the working class.

3. After the Collapse.

At first the full extent of the collapse involved in the world
economic crisis was not understood by the leaders of capitalism.
It was attempted at first to regard the crash of the autumn of
1929 asa crisis of speculation on the American Stock Exchange,
unrelated to the general economic situation.

On 29 October, 1929, President Hoover affirmed that “the
fundamental business of the country is on a sound and pros-
perous basis.” The Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Dr.
Klein, explained that “a decline in security prices does not
greatly affect the buying power of the community ... the
industrial and commercial structure of the nation is sound.”
On November 24 Dr. Klein stated that American business was
“healthy and vigorous and promises to be more so.” On
December 3 Hoover announced: ‘We have re-established con-
fidence. .. . A very large degree of unemployment which
would otherwise have occurred has been prevented.” On
January 1, 1930, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon, pro-
phesied: “I have every confidence that there will be a revival

58 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of activity in the spring.” On January ro Dr. Klein pro-
phesied: “I believe that the turn will come about March or
April.” On March 8 Hoover prophesied that the crisis would
be over in sixty days. On May 10, the Secretary of State,
Lamont, prophesied that “normal conditions should be
restored in two or three months.” On May 1, 1930, Hoover
announced: ‘‘We have now passed the worst.”

And so on, continuously, right into 1932. A similar list
could be compiled for the Labour Government and National
Government in Britain.

As late as 1930 appeared the well-known report of the Hoover
Committee on “Recent Economic Changes,” still celebrating
the American Miracle and the “economic balance” achieved
and concluding: “Our situation is fortunate, our momentum
is remarkable.” And indeed had not all the professors proved
that the “prosperity” must be permanent? Thus Professor
Carver, of Harvard, answering the question “How long will this
diffusion of prosperity last?” replied:

There is absolutely no reason why the widely diffused prosperity
which we are now witnessing should not permanently increase.

(Professor N. Carver, This Economic World, 1928, p. 396.)

Similarly another of the professors of economics had declared:

There is no fundamental defect in the organisation of the indus-
trial system which would prevent business enterprises being operated
constantly at a profit. Under the present industrial system, it is not
only desirable to have, and to maintain constantly, profits, industrial
progress and prosperity, but it is possible to attain this goal.

(Professor A. B. Adams, Progress, Profits and Prosperity, 1927.)

Very different was the tone of President Hoover’s next
Research Committee into Modern Trends, which reported in
the end of 1932, and found that:

In the best years millions of families are limited to meagre living.
Unless there is a speeding up of social inventions or a slowing down
of mechanical invention, grave mal-adjustments are certain.

The American standard of living for the near future must decline
because of lower wages caused by unemployment.

As the deeper and more lasting character of the crisis began
to be recognised, the attempt began to be made to seek for
some specific major cause, such as reparations and debts, the
gold supply, tariffs, etc. These questions came to the front, as

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 59

the intensity of the crisis began to centre in Europe in 1931, with
the Austrian bank crash and the inability of German debts pay-
ments. In the summer of 1931 the Hoover Moratorium post-
poned all reparations and debt payments for one year. This
did not prevent the collapse of the pound sterling in the autumn.
In the summer of the following year the Lausanne settlement
ended reparations.

With the collapse of the Dawes and Young Plans, and with
the collapse of the gold standard in Britain and other countries,
the two main pillars of the stabilisation period had fallen.

But the ending of reparations and debts payments did not
mitigate the crisis. On the contrary, it grew more intense in
1932, thus demonstrating that there were deeper factors at
work. A panic tone now began to pervade capitalist expression
in 1932. Already by the end of 1931 the economist, Sir George
Paish, had prophesied that “nothing can prevent a complete
breakdown within the next two months” (Manchester Guardian,
December 10, 1931).

In May 1932, the Conservative politician, L. S. Amery,
prophesied: ‘We are likely to have a complete collapse in
Europe within the next few months” (Times, May 28, 1932).
In the same month Lloyd George declared at Llandudno:
“Without some action international trade would collapse, and
there would be famine in the midst of plenty” (Manchester
Guardian Weekly, May 27, 1932).

In October 1932, the Governor of the Bank of England,
Montagu Norman, made his famous declaration that “the dif-
ficulties are so vast, the forces are so unlimited, precedents are
so lacking, that I approach the whole subject in ignorance and
in humility. It is too great for me. . . . I will admit that for
the moment the way, to me, is not clear” (Times, October 21,
1932). And his possibly apocryphal alleged declaration to the
Governor of the Bank of France was widely reported in the
Press to have prophesied collapse of the capitalist system
within twelve months.

The expectations of the bourgeoisie, in their moment of
panic, of a sudden automatic collapse of capitalism were no
more correctly founded than their previous expectations of a
rapid automatic recovery. However unlimited the destruction
that capitalism in decay and in crisis can cause, its final collapse
can only take place through the action of the proletariat in

60 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

overthrowing it. But in these expressions of the bourgeoisie
we can see the ideological reflection of the end of stabilisation,
and the preparation of the ground for the transition to the
desperate measures of Fascism.

The subsequent upward movement of 1933 and 1934,
although limited, revived new hopes of “recovery.” But in
fact the deeper changes and problems only became more
sharply laid bare by the peculiar character of this limited
upward movement. The crisis had passed from the lowest
point of 1932 to the phase of depression which should normally
mark the transition to a new cycle and advance to a new boom.
In fact, however, the development of this upward movement
on the basis of the general crisis of capitalism enormously
complicated the process and produced a situation without
parallel in the old “normal” capitalism. The limited upward
movement of production, and more rapid upward movement
of profits, still left a heavy proportion of the means of produc-
tion unused, still left mass unemployment in all the leading
countries, and was not accompanied by any corresponding
upward movement of world trade; the dislocation of inter-
national trade, currency and credit relations continued in even
intensified forms, with increasing State regulatory measures,
discriminations and trade war; the economy of each imperialist
Power was transformed more and more towards a type of war
basis. In this situation the “limits of recovery” became
widely recognised also by the leaders and spokesmen of the
bourgeoisie; all the contradictions of capitalism, both within
each country and internationally, were laid bare as sharpened
and not diminished in the new stage, which began to reveal
itself more and more, not as the herald of the transition to
economic recovery, but as the herald of the transition to new
tension and war.

Already in the third and fourth years of the crisis, that is, as
it had approached its lowest point, and as all the attempted
remedies and hopes of recovery had proved deceptive, attention
had begun to be increasingly concerned on the deeper issues
of the whole advance of technique and its obvious outstripping
of the existing forms of social organisation. The expression
“technological unemployment” had found increasing currency
during this period as a seemingly scientific explanation which
could be used to account for everything without raising the

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 61

sharp problem of property relations. Typical of this period was
the short-lived episode of ‘“technocracy,” which was boomed
throughout the world capitalist Press during the last quarter of
1932 and the beginning of 1933. The advocates of ‘“techno-
cracy” (whose leaders were in reality former camp-followers of
the labour movement and had drawn such inspiration as they
had from incompletely digested crumbs from the table of
Marxism) brought a wealth of evidence to show the advance of
productive power and its conflict with existing social forms. But
they drew therefrom the incorrect conclusion that the problem
is consequently a technical problem, to be solved under the expert
guidance of technicians through new utopian forms of com-
modity valuation (@ Ja Proudhon) within existing property
society. Thus, while their evidence of the conflict of the ad-
vance of technique with existing society was based on familiar
and in the main indisputable facts, they remained economically
and politically at sea. They failed to understand that the
social organisation of technique is incompatible with the capi-
talist class monopoly in the means of production, and that
consequently the basic problem of the present period is not a
technical problem, but a political problem—the breaking of the
capitalist class monopoly by the power of the working class.

The minds and thoughts of the leaders of capitalism, as the
development of the crisis was making increasingly clear the
basic contradictions confronting them and the basic conflict
between the advance of technique and the maintenance of class-
society, were moving in a different direction. They were
drawing with increasing clearness and consciousness the neces-
sary conclusions for the maintenance of class-society and the
restriction of the advance of technique. The old conceptions
of the “restoration” of capitalism of the pre-war pattern, of
“international capitalism,” of all the traditional theories of
the older schools of capitalist economists, who wrung their hands
at the new developments, were becoming more and more
clearly and consciously abandoned. In their place came to the
front the conceptions of so-called “national planning,” of the
closed monopolist area, of state economic control, of regulated
and in many cases restricted production, the whole society
becoming more and more organised for war as the necessary
path forward.

==CHAPTER III: THE NEW ECONOMICS AND POLITICS==

A WELL-KNOWN statement of Lenin in 1920 with reference to
the post-war crisis gave warning against the illusion that there
is “absolutely no way out” for capitalism; on the contrary,
“there are no absolutely hopeless situations.”

The meaning of this statement is often misunderstood,
because it is commonly quoted out of its context. Lenin was in
fact giving warning against “two widespread errors’: first,
the error of the “bourgeois economists,” who fail to see the
basic character of the crisis and regard it as a temporary
“unsettlement”; and second, the error of the passive revolu-
tionists, who expect an automatic collapse of capitalism.
Against the latter he pointed out that the “proof” of the col-
lapse of capitalism can only be, not any abstract logical
demonstration, but the successful action of the proletariat in
overthrowing it. Until then, capitalism remains in power,
drags on somehow, finds its own “way out” each time, no
matter what disturbances it passes through. In other words,
capitalism does not escape from the general crisis into which it
has fallen since 1914, and which is inevitable in the present stage
of conflict between the forces of production and the existing
relations of capitalist property ownership; it only passes from
one stage of crisis to another; there is no question of a temporary
“unsettlement.” But capitalism does not finally fall until the
proletariat overthrows it. This is the dialectic of the general
crisis of capitalism which Lenin was concerned to demonstrate.

The subsequent fourteen years have abundantly confirmed
the truth of this analysis. On the one hand, so long as the pro-
letariat is not ready and strong enough, capitalism remains in
power; on the other hand, capitalism does not recover from its
mortal sickness. It passes from one stage of crisis only to fall
into a new stage. At each stage, if the proletariat is not yet
ready to deal the death-blow, there remains a capitalist “way

out” which prevails. But the capitalist “way out” is no
62

a

2 ees

ces

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 63

harmonious solution, no simple restoration of order to a tem-
porary “ unsettlement.” The capitalist “way out” is at each
stage a way of increasing destruction, of mass-starvation, of
violence, of war, of decay. This is the lesson of the two decades
since the outbreak of the war. And this is the character of the
present stage of the economics and politics of capitalism result-
ing from the world economic crisis, and carrying to an extreme
point the whole development of imperialist decay.

Destruction in place of construction; restricted production in
place of increased production; closed “national” (i.e.,
imperialist) economic blocs in place of the formal objective of
international interdependence; social and political repression
in place of liberalism—these are the characteristic watchwords
of capitalism in the present period.

1. The Destruction of the Productive Forces.

The most direct, elementary and typical expression of the
present stage of capitalist policy is the organised collective
destruction of wealth and of the productive forces.

The purposeful destruction of commodities for economic
reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism, but an integral
part of its daily working from the beginning. It was in 1799
that Fourier first became convinced of the necessity of a new
form of social organisation when he found himself entrusted
with the task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a
quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food
till it had become unfit for use. Nevertheless, this rice had at
any rate been held back in the hope of sale, and was only
destroyed because it had become unfit for use. This was not
yet the modern principle of the wholesale destruction of good
rice, good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.

In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit
stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise prices is
inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in commodity economy
from the beginning. As Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of
Nations:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment
and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
public or in some contrivance to raise prices.

(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 10, Part ii.)

64 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the original voice
of classic capitalism, as an offence against the principles of
capitalist production, as “a conspiracy against the public.”
It has remained for our day that all the capitalist governments of
the world should meet together in the World Economic Con-
ference to proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most
enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the economists, the
supreme aim to restrict production and to raise prices. Thisisa
measure of the extreme stage of decay of capitalism.

The distinctive modern stage of capitalist policy for the
destruction of wealth and of the productive forces is marked by
three outstanding characteristics.

The first is the gigantic scale of destruction, conducted over
entire principal world areas of production, and calculated in
relation to world stocks.

The second is the direct government organisation and sub-
siding of such destruction and restriction of production by all
the leading imperialist governments.

The third is the extension of destruction, not only to the
destruction of existing stocks of commodities, but to the destruc-
tion of the productive forces, the ploughing up of crops and sown
areas, the artificial limitation of production, the dismantling of
machinery, as well as holding unused the labour power of
millions of workers.

The examples of this process throughout the capitalist world
are too familiar to require repetition. The burning of millions
of bags of coffee or tons of grain, in the midst of mass starvation
and poverty, have horrified the world. But all this has been
no accidental or exceptional happening through the action of
individuals, but on the contrary directly organised by all the
capitalist governments of the world, and in the forefront by the
most “progressive” governments, by the Roosevelt Government
in the United States, by Social Democratic governments, etc.

It is a tragic irony that men and women in New York should be
suffering the tortures of hunger while tens of thousands of pigs in
farrow are being slaughtered in Iowa by the command of the Gov-
ernment, and farmers in Kansas or Nebraska are burning their
grain. (News-Chronicle, October 17, 1933.)

The expenditures account recently published of the Agricul-
tural Adjustment Administration under the Roosevelt regime

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 65

affords a pretty picture of modern capitalism (Economist,
December 30, 1933):

EXPENDITURES UNDER THE A.A.A.

Allocation Approximate Sum
Cotton Acreage ploughed up 110 million dollars
1934 Cotton Acreage Reduction 150 |” y
Emergency Pig-Sow Slaughter 33 de
Corn-Hog Production Control 350) 2 2
Wheat Acreage Reduction 102 ” i
Tobacco Acreage Reduction ate oo? ee

This inspiring combination of Mammon and Juggernaut, let it
be remembered, is the worshipped idol of the Labour Party and
of the Trades Union Congress, as proclaimed at their meetings
at Hastings and Brighton in 1933.

From Denmark it was reported in November 1933 that cattle
were being slaughtered in the Government abattoirs at the rate
of 5,000 a week, for the carcasses to be burnt in the incinerators.
The Government established a special destruction fund; but
so great was the cost of destruction that Parliament had to be
approached for further credits for the construction of new
slaughter houses. This was under a Social Democratic Govern-
ment.

In the same way the British Labour Government had already
carried the Coal Mines Act for the limitation of the output of
coal——with such success that in the beginning of 1934 a London
firm actually ordered a consignment of coal from abroad, on
the grounds, as they stated, that owing to the limitation schemes
it was impossible to secure a delivery from British sources with
sufficient speed.

In Britain in 1930 the company “National Shipbuilders
Security, Limited” was formed, with power to borrow up to
three million pounds, for the purpose (according to the
Memorandum of Association) “to assist the shipbuilding
industry by the purchase of redundant and/or obsolete ship-
yards, the dismantling and disposal of their contents, and the
re-sale of their sites under restrictions against further use for
shipbuilding.” Within a few months its successful activities
were reported in the Press:

National Shipbuilders Security, Limited, has purchased Dalmuir
Shipbuilding Yard, owned by William Beardmore and Co., and in

66 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

consequence it is to be closed down by the end of the year. This
shipyard was one of the largest on the Clyde, employing six thousand
men during the war. Negotiations for the purchase and closing
down of other shipyards are in progress.

Up to the end of 1933 this new type of capitalist company had
bought up and closed down one hundred shipbuilding berths.
In the twelve months to June 1933, the world tonnage of
merchant shipping showed a net decrease of 1,814,000 tons,
more than half this decrease being in tonnage owned by
Britain.

Similarly, in the woollen textile industry the Woolcombers
Mutual Association, Limited, was formed early in 1933 “to
assist the woolcombing industry by the purchase and dis-
mantling of redundant and obsolete mills, plant and machinery
for re-sale under restrictive covenants against their further use
for woolcombing.”

The principal copper producers of the world entered into an
agreement at Brussels in December 1931, to limit production
during 1932 to 26 per cent. of the capacity of their mines.

The National Coffee Council of Brazil, from which country
comes two-thirds of the world’s coffee, decided in December
1931 to destroy twelve million bags of coffee. During 1932-3
9,600,000 quintals (equivalent to 1,248 million pounds weight)
were destroyed, an emergency tax being imposed on coffee
exports to finance the purchase and destruction of surplus
coffee (League of Nations World Production and Prices 1925-32,
p. 28). Up to the end of 1933 no less than 22,000,000 bags of
coffee had been disposed of by burning or dumping in
the sea.

The Governors of Texas and Oklahoma called out the
National Guard to take possession of the oil-wells and prevent
production.

The United States Department of Agriculture in the summer
of 1933 announced bounties of seven to twenty dollars per acre
to farmers for the destruction of the cotton crop. This was
successful in securing the ploughing in or mowing down of
11 million acres out of a total of 40 millions:

The Government hoped to take ten million acres out of production
by paying growers $7 to $20 per acre (according to the yield of their
land) for ploughing under or mowing down cotton already growing.
. . . The scheme was immediately successful in restricting acreage,

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 67

over 11 million acres being ploughed in or mown down, reducing
the estimated acreage from 40.8 to 29.7 million acres.
(World Economic Survey 1932-3, pp. 313-4.)*

To the modern bourgeois mind and outlook this process of
wholesale destruction and restricting of production, in the midst
of poverty, appears as a natural and self-evident necessity.
Without sense of contradiction they proclaim it in the same
breath that they proclaim the necessity of “economy” and
“cuts” to the masses; and correctly they feel no contradiction,
since both are indispensable to the maintenance of capitalism
at the present stage. They preach to-day the policy of restric-
tion of production with the same sense of obvious correctness
and common sense with which they preached after the war the
policy of “increased production” as the path to prosperity.
Thus in the summer of 1933 we find the British Chancellor of
the Exchequer answering the “theorists” who imagine restric-
tion of production to be “a bad thing”:

To allow production to go on unchecked and unregulated in these
modern conditions when it could almost at a moment’s notice be
increased to an almost indefinite extent was absolute folly.

(Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, June 2,

1933: Times, June 3, 1933.)
In the same way the Economist was able to report with satis-
faction:

While there was an enormous over-expansion of productive
capacity before 1929, investment in capital equipment has been
severely curtailed since then, and a substantial proportion of existing
plant and machinery has become obsolete or has been scrapped.
There can be little doubt that substantial progress has already been
made in the re-adjustment of productive capacity to the lower level
of demand for consumers’ goods.—( Economist, May 13, 1933.)

“Productive capacity” must be “re-adjusted” to the “lower
level” of consumption of the impoverished masses. Such is the

* The practical execution of the scheme, however, was not without difficulties,
as witness the following item from the American Press on August 9, 1933:
SOUTHERN Motes Batx at PLowinc up Cotton.

Paul A. Porter of the Administration, just back from the South, reported to-
day that many farmers had complained they found difficulty in getting their
mules to “act right” while plowing up the cotton. It is not the mule’s fault at
that, Mr. Porter explained. All these years he has been lambasted if he walked
atop the cotton row. Now it is the reverse, and he is being asked to trample
down stalks he was carefully trained to protect.

The honours go to the mules rather than to President Roosevelt.

68 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

bed of Procrustes (who was also a bandit, but a less skilled and
large-scale bandit) to which modern capitalism in its extreme
stage of decay seeks to fit the tortured body of humanity.
The more obvious and glaring expressions of this process, the
burning of foodstuffs, the dismantling of machinery that is still
in good condition, strike the imagination of all. But all do not
yet see the full significance of these symptoms: first, the expres-
sion through these symptoms of the extreme stage of decay of
the whole capitalist order; second, the inseparable connection
of this process of decay with the social and political pheno-
mena of decay which find their complete expression in Fascism;
and third, the necessary completion and final working out of
this process in war. For war is only the complete and most
systematic working out of the process of destruction. To-day
they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life.
To-morrow they will be burning living human bodies.

2. The Revolt against the Machine.

But this revolt of modern capitalism against the productive
forces, against the development of technique, and for the arti-
ficial restriction of production, goes further. It begins to turn,
ideologically, and even in certain concrete propositions and
experimental attempts, into a direct revolt against the machine.

A century ago, in 1831, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge published a brochure, The Results of Machinery,
addressed to the working men of the United Kingdom. ‘The
little book gives a glowing picture of the glories of invention, of
the permanent blessings of machinery, of the triumphant step
that man takes in comfort and civilisation every time that he
transfers one of the meaner drudgeries of the world’s work from
human backs to wheels and pistons. The argument is developed
with great animation and vigour, and the writer, as he
skirmishes with the workman’s prejudices, travels over one
industry and one country after another” (J. L. and B. Ham-
mond, The Town Labourer, p. 17).

To-day the tables are turned. It is no longer the bourgeoisie
who are teaching the ignorant workers, displaced and starving
in millions through the advance of machinery under capitalist
conditions, the blessings and advantages of machinery in the
abstract. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie, now that they no
longer see rising profits through the advance of machinery, but

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 69

instead see their whole position and rule more and more visibly
menaced by its development, change their tune; they deplore
the evils of the too rapid advance of machinery; their tone
becomes increasingly one of hostility, fear and hatred to the
machine. It is the working class who, despite their still heavy
sufferings through the advance of the machine under capitalism,
now become the conscious champions of the machine, recognis-
ing in it the powerful ally of their fight for a new order, and
seeing with clear understanding its gigantic future beneficent
role once it becomes liberated for social use under the leader-
ship of the working class and in communist society.

Even the scientists and technicians, the inventors of new
machinery and technical processes in the service of capitalism,
begin increasingly, with the exception of a small and courageous
minority, to turn against their own children, and to discuss, in
technical and scientific conferences and journals, the necessity
of arresting the advance of invention, of artificially restricting
the output of new inventions.

Thus the working class is revealed as the sole consistent pro-
gressive force of present society. The capitalists are the modern
Luddites.

This tendency of the capitalist reaction against the machine
is not confined to the social philosophers and speculators; to a
Bertrand Russell, with his idealisation of the decaying Chinese
pre-capitalist civilisation in the moment of its dissolution before
the advancing mass revolution; to a Spengler, the favourite
and most-quoted philosopher of Fascism, with his unconcealed
hatred of machine-civilisation and worship of his mythical
“primitive man roosting solitary as a vulture... without
any communal feeling, in complete freedom, with no ‘we’ like
a herd of mere generic specimens . . . strong, solitary men”
(see his revealing book Der Mensch und die Technik—Man and
Technique); or, for the matter of that, to a Gandhi and his
spinning-wheel, the adored of the Western European intel-
ligentsia, and true prototype, not of a young bourgeoisie, but of
a bourgeoisie born old without ever having known youth, the
consistent expression of one aspect of capitalism in decay (the
Passive reactionary), just as Spengler is the expression of the
other aspect (the sophisticatedly bloody, combatant reaction-
ary).

But this same tendency reveals itself increasingly in the states-

7° FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

men and politicians, in the journalists and publicists, in the
scientists and technicians. We have already seen how a Times
editorial in 1930 could discuss “how perilously the machine
has run ahead of man” and query “the advantages residing
in a system which relies on the mass production of standardised
articles” (March 8, 1930); or how the Hoover Research Com-
mittee in 1932 could speak of the possible necessity of a “slow-
ing down of mechanical invention.”*

In the same way Sir Alfred Ewing, delivering the Presidential
address in 1932 to the British Association, the annual gathering
of recognised, conventional bourgeois science, could declare:

In the present-day thinkers’ attitude towards what is called
mechanical progress we are conscious of a critical spirit. Admiration
is tempered by criticism; complacency has given way to doubts
doubt is passing into alarm.

An old exponent of applied mechanics may be forgiven if he
expresses something of the disillusion with which, now standing out-
side, he watches the sweeping pageant of discovery and invention
in which he used to take unbounded delight. It is impossible not
to ask, Whither does this tremendous procession tend? What after
all is its goal? What its probable influence upon the future of the
human race?

Man was ethically unprepared for so great a bounty. . . . More
and more does mechanical production take the place of human
effort. So man finds that, while he is enriched with a multitude of
possessions and possibilities beyond his dreams, he is in great measure
deprived of one inestimable blessing, the necessity of toil. . ..

He has lost the joy of craftsmanship. . . . In many cases un-
employment is thrust upon him, an unemployment that is more
saddening than any drudgery.

* As an example of the popularisation by finance-capital of this reactionary
propaganda in its most fantastic form may be noted an article prominently pub-
lished in the millionaire-owned Sunday Express under the title, “Make Way for the
Small Man,” denouncing the illusion of “Progress” and the failure of “mass
production,” and calling for the return to “the small owner” as the ideal:

“The unit of the State is the self-supporting farm with first thoughts for sub-
sistence and only second thoughts for the market—which might be mainly next
door and consist of craftsmen supplying the needs of neighboring farms.

“This simple farm-and-craft relationship is essential to the health and wealth
of any civilisation. . . . We should try to recover it.” (Sunday Express, Janu-
ary 15, 1933.)

Naturally the finance-capitalists would be highly indignant if this infantile
propaganda, which they broadcast by the most highly developed ‘“mass-
production” machinery, for the befogging of their readers, were suggested to be
seriously applied to their mammoth undertakings, including their mammoth Press.
The preaching of monopoly-capital against monopoly is an old story.

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 71

And the world finds itself glutted with competitive commodities,
produced in a quantity too great to be absorbed. . . .

Where shall we look for a remedy? I cannot tell.

(Sir Alfred Ewing, Presidential Address to the British

Association, 1932: Daily Telegraph report, Sept. 1, 1932.)
This is the confession of bankruptcy of official bourgeois science
before the modern world situation. Not the social conditions
which lead to the abuse of the results of science and invention
are seen as the problem, but instead the gifts of science and
invention appear to this modern monk as gifts of the devil, for
which man was “ethically” unprepared—as if “ethics” were
independent of the social conditions from which in fact they
take their character. For solution, this leader of modern bour-
geois science confesses his impotence and ends characteristically
with a prayer to “God.”

Not only the leaders of bourgeois science, but the financial
and political leaders of capitalism move in the same direction.
An outstanding demonstration of this was the speech of the
most “progressive” and “advanced” financier-politician of
French capitalism, Joseph Caillaux, on the World Crisis in the
spring of 1932 before the Press Association in Paris, and given
also in less complete form before the Cobden Club in London
(the following citations are from the report of his Paris speech
in the Déepéche Economique et Financiere). His theme was that
“the machine is devouring humanity” (“la machine dévore
l’homme): “It is necessary to take control of technique. It is
necessary to prevent inventions suddenly upsetting production.”
How? He makes two concrete propositions. First, to set up “in
every State, Departments of Technique, to discipline inventions,
paying compensation for them, and not allowing them to come
into use save in proportion as existing plant is amortised.”

The second alternative is “taxation”: “to impose heavy
taxes on all inventions of machinery.” “Science must be ham-
strung (“il faut que la science soit jogulée”). This is not the
language of an escaped lunatic, but of a cool, far-seeing
politician and skilled financier of capitalism.*

* Another example of the current tendency is afforded by the recent book of the
leader of the “Young Conservative” politicians, Lord Eustace Percy, under the
title, Government in Transition. In this book, whose programme shows strong
Fascist influence, “Lord Eustace ends his inquiry in a purely utopian vein: he pre-
sents us to a society which has emerged out of the vices of the machine age and is
Prepared to resort to the simple crafts of the pre-machine age.” (Times, January
19, 1934.) Here Conservatism in decadence looks longingly backward to the tra-
ditions of the pre-capitalist feudal reaction.

72 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Nor is this tendency confined to theoretical expression; there
are not wanting the first signs of experiments in practice. At
Philadelphia, for example, the attempt was made to meet
unemployment by substituting manual labour for machines in
some departments of municipal work:

At Philadelphia the city has decided to abandon the use of a
large number of machines in some departments of municipal work
and use manual labour instead.

(New York Correspondent of the London Times,
December 12, 1930.)

Thus the final outcome of the most advanced centre of capitalist
machine-development is to return to manual labour. The
lesson of Philadelphia, the third greatest manufacturing city of
the greatest manufacturing country of the capitalist world, is a
sign and portent of where decaying capitalism would ultimately
reach, if only it had the power to arrest development and
stabilise.

In German Fascism this tendency is strongly to the front, and
receives official encouragement by the Government. Thus the
Thuringian Government in July 1933, prohibited the use of
machinery for glass-blowing. The Acht Uhr Abendblatt, com-
menting on this decision with approval, declared:

This is the first example in modern times of the State stopping the
metallic arms of the machine. Its steel limbs, by accomplishing the
work which formerly gave nourishment to hundreds of human
hands, have made the machine the mother of working-class
misery.

On July 15, 1933, the Reich Government issued an Act pro-
hibiting the installation of any further machines for rolling
tobacco leaves and the re-starting of any established machinery
which had ceased working.

The preamble to the Act states that the progressive mechanisation
of the cigar industry was in process of destroying the livelihood of
the population of certain districts. . .. Machinery has rendered
superfluous about 80,000 workers, or five-sixths of the present labour
force. . . . It is stated that the output of rolling machines is about
1,000 to 1,200 cigars an hour, while that of a handworker is only
70. . . . The power given by the Act to the Ministers concerned

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 73

to limit production in mechanised undertakings is expected to ensure
a gradual return to handwork. (Manchester Guardian, Sept. 15, 1933.)
In the beginning of 1934 it was reported from Germany:

The official policy towards the use of machinery is confused;
special tax exemption was last year granted on installation of indus-
trial machinery; but the party ideology rejects machinery; and
Government prohibitions against its use increase. This week the
instalment of automatic machines in the hollow-glass industry was
forbidden; and production was limited. In the cement branch...
the opening of new or expansion of old works has been forbidden.
. . . Forbidding the use of machinery, the express aim of which is
to keep production costs high in the interest of craftsmen producers,
hampers export. The restriction policy is disliked by the more
enterprising manufacturer.—(Economist, February 24, 1934.)

Return to handwork! Return to the Stone Age! Such be-
gins today to appear as the highest teaching, and even in
isolated instances the practical working out, of the most ad-
vanced capitalism and fascism.

In fact, the drive of capitalist competition prevents its reaiisa-
tion. Thus even in the German Government law for the pro-
hibition of new machinery in the cigar-making industry, an
exception was explicitly made in respect of production for
export; and the contradiction underlying the whole policy is
still more sharply brought out in the last extract cited above.

But wherever capitalism is able to reach towards fully secured
close monopoly, which is the whole tendency and aim of modern
capitalism (though never fully realised), and the whole essence
of the economics of Fascism, the inevitably inseparable tendency
to retrogression of technique and decay is at once visible
(compare the frequent examples of buying up and suppression
of new inventions by strongly established trusts). In the
abstract theoretical hypothesis of capitalism being able to con-
solidate into a single world monopoly, such general decay would
inevitably follow and indeed be the condition of its existence
(virtual prohibition of extended reproduction of capital). Only
in socialist monopoly does the incentive to improvement of
technique remain, since every improvement of technique means
an increase in general standards and diminution of labour.

The revolt of modern capitalist ideology against the machine
can never be realised in practice; on the contrary, the capitalists
are compelled to fight each other with ever sharper weapons,

74 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But this ever-growing, though unrealisable, aspiration of
modern monopoly capitalism towards the retardation of
development of technique, is a symptom of an economic order
in decay. Fascism, with its propaganda of the return to the
primitive and the small-scale, alongside actual service in
practice to all the requirements of the most highly concentrated
finance-capital, is the complete and faithful expression of this
profoundly reactionary character of modern monopoly capital-
ism, and of the deep contradiction at its root.

3. The Revolt against Science.

The more and more conscious reactionary role of modern
capitalism, and the growing ideological revolt against the
machine and sense of antagonism to the development of tech-
nique, necessarily expresses itself on a wide front in the entire
ideological field. A transformation in the dominant trends of
capitalist ideology becomes more and more conspicuous. This
transformation expresses itself in the growing revolt against
science, against reason, against cultural development, against all
the traditional philosophical liberal conceptious which were
characteristic of ascendant capitalism; in favour of religion,
idealistic illusions, denial of the validity of science, mysticism,
spiritualism, multiplying forms of superstition, cults of the
primitive, cults of violence, racial charlatanry (“‘blood” and
“Aryan” nonsense) and all forms of obscurantism.

This tendency was already visible from the outset of the
imperialist epoch, and especially before the war. It has enor-
mously increased in the post-war period.

The relationship between science and the bourgeoisie has
never in fact been an easy one. Only in the first revolutionary
period of the bourgeoisie (in seventeenth-century England or in
later eighteenth-century France) has there been real enthusiasm.
In the nineteenth century, with the bourgeoisie in power,
although the enormous profits to be won from the results of
science led to universal official recognition, laudations and a
somewhat stingy financial support, the suspicion was always
present that the development of the scientific outlook might
undermine the social foundations. Hence the gigantic battles
of the nineteenth century over each advance of science. The
leaders of nineteenth-century bourgeois science were still
warriors in the midst of a widely hostile social camp. Educa-

THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE 75

tion was still in general jealously guarded on pre-scientific lines
and under clerical control.

But what is conspicuous about the present period is that the
offensive against science is to-day led, no longer merely by the
professional reactionaries and clericalists, but above all by the
majority of the more prominent, officially recognised and highly
placed leaders of bourgeois science. The main bulk of the
officially distinguished, be-knighted and decorated scientists of
the bourgeoisie have openly joined the clerical camp. They
proclaim with wearisome iteration the reconciliation of science
and religion, the overthrow for the thousandth time of the errors
of materialism, the limitations of scientific knowledge, and the
supremacy of the “higher” aspects of life which cannot be
approached along scientific lines. In a spate of lectures, essays,
treatises and books, whose popular, vulgarising and often
grossly unscientific character betrays their propagandist aim,
they endeavour to utilise each new advance of research and dis-
covery, not in order therefrom to reach a more scientific under-
standing of reality, but in order to throw doubt on the whole
basis of science, and on this ground to proclaim the vindication
of the particular tribal gods of their locality.

“ These utterances, still further vulgarised, are broadcast a
millionfold by all the machinery of capitalist publicity as the
“last word of science.” In this way, at the same time as for
technical and for strategical purposes science has to be more and
more widely employed in practice, a basically reactionary and
even anti-scientific outlook is endeavoured to be pumped into
all the capitalist-controlled forms of “popular culture.”

This transformation in outlook on the part of the responsible
leaders of bourgeois science (with the honourable exceptions of a
small and courageous minority) was recently illustrated in the
treatment of the fiftieth anniversary of Darwin’s death in 1932.
This anniversary provided the opportunity for the entire forces
of capitalist culture to proclaim, either the complete obso-
lescence of the theories of the hated Darwin, or alternatively,
the complete reconciliation of Darwinism with the religious
conceptions which he fought, and the final refutation of the
atheism to which he secretly (Darwin’s letter to Marx) ad-
hered. The distinguished scientist and leading authority on
Darwinism in England, Sir J. A. Thomson, wrote for general pub-

L lic consumption in the Daily Telegraph (April 19, 1932) under

76 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the singular title: “Darwin Fifty Years After: We Now Accept
Evolution, Yet Believe in a Creator”:

There are some changes in our ideas since the hot-headed days
that followed the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.

Thus many of us are clear that there is no inconsistency in
accepting the evolution idea and yet believing in a Creator who
ordained the original Order of Nature in some very simple form.

The evolution theory does not try to “explain” things in the
deeper sense. Evolutionists . . . leave to philosophy and religion
all questions of purpose and meaning. This is a change for the
better.

The shamefaced “agnosticism” of the nineteenth-century sci-
entists has given place in the twentieth century to proclamation
of “a Creator.” This is an excellent example of the “progress
backwards” of capitalism in decay.

A further example of the transformation was afforded by an
inquiry into “The Religion of Scientists” conducted by the
Christian Evidence Society and published under this title in
1932. A questionnaire was sent to all Fellows of the Royal
Society; replies were received from 200. The results on some of
the principal questions showed the following proportions:

. Do you credit the existence of a Spiritual Domain?
Favourable, 121; Intermediate, 66; Unfavourable, 13.

. Is belief in evolution compatible with belief in a Creator?
Favourable, 142; Intermediate, 52; Unfavourable, 6.

. Does Science negative the idea of a personal God as taught by

Jesus Christ?
Favourable (to Christianity), 103; Intermediate, 71; Un-
favourable, 26.

Thus, omitting the intermediates, a “Spiritual Domain” (the
expression is explained in the book as having been intended to
mean the denial of materialism) wins by 9 to 1. “God” (“a
Creator”) wins by 23 to1. Christianity wins by 4to1. These
are the answers of a representative group of distinguished
bourgeois scientists in 1932.

We are not here concerned with the philosophical or theo-
retical significance of this transformation. What is important
for present purposes is the social significance and role of this
development.

The general fact of this avowed transformation of outlook of
the majority of outstanding official representatives of bourgeois

== —* ee Se

THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE Tad

science, the loudly heralded movement against “materialism”
and “the limitations of science,’’ towards ‘‘idealism’’ and
religion, is familiar ground. How far this alleged movement of
opinion is really true of the best bourgeois scientists, or of the
mass of younger working rank-and-file scientists, is less impor-
tant than the fact that the dominant official influences both in
the bourgeois scientific world, and in general bourgeois discus-
, sion, actively support, foster, patronise, encourage and in every
possible way advertise and press forward this trend.

What is not equally clear to all is the direct connection of this
ideological trend with the whole process of capitalism in decay.
It is at once its reflection, and helps to carry it forward. The
revolt against science, which bourgeois society to-day en-
courages in the ideological sphere, at the same time as it
utilises science in practice, is not only the expression of a dying
and doomed social class; it is an essential part of the campaign
of reaction. This is the basis which helps to prepare the ground
for all the quackeries and charlatanries of chauvinism, racial
theories, anti-semitism, Aryan grandmothers, mystic swastikas,
divine missions, strong-man saviours, and all the rest of the
nonsense through which alone capitalism to-day can try to

~ maintain its hold a little longer.

All this nonsense may appear on a cool view, when some par-
ticularly wild ebullition of a Hitler or a Goebbels about blood
and the joy of the dagger and the Germanic man and the
primeval forest, is produced, as highly irrational and even
insane. But in fact it is as completely rational and calculated,
for the present purposes of capitalism, as a machine-gun or a
Zinoviev Letter election. There is method in the madness. For
capitalism can no longer present any rational defence, any pro-
gressive role, any ideal whatever to reach the masses of the
population. Therefore it can only endeavour to save itself on
a wave of obscurantism, holding out fantastic symbols and
painted substitutes for ideals in order to cover the reality of the
universally hated moneybags. Fascism is the final reduction

of this process to a completely worked out technique.

In unity with this revolt against science goes the general
cultural reaction, the revolt against culture, the revolt against
education, the cutting down of education in all capitalist
countries, the increasing reactionary discipline and militarisa-
tion in the universities and schools, and—the final and complete

78 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

symbol of the culminating stage revealed by Fascism—the
burning of the books.*

4. The Revolt against “Democracy” and Parliament.

This economic, social and ideological process finds also its
political reflection.

From the outset of the imperialist era liberalism and parlia-
mentarism has in fact been on the wane.

Parliamentary democracy was essentially the form through
which the rising bourgeoisie carried through its struggle against
feudalism and against old privileged forms, carrying the working
class in their wake in this struggle. On this basis was built
up liberalism in its heyday in the nineteenth century. The
workers were drawn in the tow of bourgeois liberal politics.
It was the achievement of Marxism to cut through this bond-
age. In Britain, where the capitalist world monopoly gave the
bourgeoisie superior resources and the possibility to create a
privileged section of a minority of the workers, Marxism made
the slowest progress, and liberal-labour politics survived longest.

As the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
began to replace the old struggle against the pre-bourgeois
forms, a political shifting followed. The old Liberal Parties
began to wane before Social Democracy; the bourgeoisie
increasingly coalesced with the remnants of the older (monarch-
ist, militarist, landowning) forces. Nevertheless, parliamentary
democracy remained as the most useful basis of the bourgeoisie
for the deception of the masses and holding in of the class
struggle, so long as this means of restraining the workers was
adequate.

To-day, when the intensification of the class struggle can no
longer be held in by these forms, the bourgeoisie increasingly

* A sidelight from another angle of the anti-intellectual movement of capitalism
in decline is afforded by the following extract from the technical journal, The
IRustrated Carpenter and Builder:

“Nowadays admission to many factories depends on passing ‘intelligence
tests.’ . . . These tests are not always designed to select the most intelligent of
applicants; for in a certain Continental factory the management admit that they
use intelligence tests to eliminate the alert and intelligent among the applicants,
because the work is so sub-divided and mechanised that its monotony has the
effect of turning intelligent workers into Communists.”

It is a striking indication of the social and cultural decay inherent in the final
stages of capitalism, when elaborate scientific methods begin to be used, no longer
to promote, but to eliminate intelligence from among the workers, because intel-
ligent workers become Communists.

THE REVOLT AGAINST “DEMOCRACY” AND PARLIAMENT 79

turns its back on parliamentary democracy in favour of more
direct and open forms of coercion and the authoritarian state.
This is a measure of the weakening of the bourgeoisie.

The era of imperialism, of centralised monopoly capitalism,
already increasingly made the parliamentary democratic
forms a caricature. While in appearance the extension of the
suffrage was increasing “democracy,” in reality the governing
role was being directly removed from parliament and concen-
trated in the executive, into the Cabinet, and from the Cabinet
into the Inner Cabinet, and even into extra-parliamentary
forms (Committee of Imperial Defence, etc.) wholly removed
from “democracy,” (so the preparation of the war of 1914:
compare the statement of the Conservative, Lord Hugh Cecil,
that the war was decided “not by the House of Commons or by
the electorate, but by the concurrence of Ministers and Ex-
Ministers,” letter to the Times, April 29,1916.) Corresponding
to the realities of monopoly capitalism, the routine of govern-
ment was in fact in the hands of an increasingly strengthened
and centralised bureaucracy; effective power and the decision
of policy lay with the handful of leaders of finance-capital;

.while the puppet-show of parliament, responsible Ministers,
elections and nominally opposing parties, became increasingly
recognised as a decorative appendage of the Constitution for
purposes of window-dressing. This was equally conspicuous
in the ‘‘democracies” of the United States, France and Britain.

Nevertheless, Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in the
earlier or pre-war period of imperialism—but in the new form
of Liberal imperialism with its deceptive programme of
“social reform.” The super-profits of imperialism provided
the means in the imperialist countries to endeavour to buy off
the revolt of the advancing workers with a show of meagre con-
cessions to a minority. Bismarck had already shown the way
to utilise “social reform” legislation, alongside coercion, in order
to endeavour to stem the advance of Socialism. On the basis of
imperialist exploitation was built up the short-lived twentieth-
century renaissance of Social Reform Liberalism of the Lloyd
George era, which tried to stem the rising tide of working-class
revolt with a loudly advertised show of concessions and con-
cern for the “condition of the people,” and with noisy cam-
Paigns of denunciation of the landlords and the aristocracy,
while the real aims of imperialism and war-preparation were

80 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

pressed forward, and all the forces of the State were employed
against the militant working-class struggle.

The Social Democratic and Labour Parties after the war
tried to carry forward the role of Social Reform Liberal
Imperialism, but under basically changed conditions—in a far
more advanced stage of the class struggle, and in the midst of
the crisis and decline of capitalism. Therefore they could not
attain any corresponding measure of success; the appeal they
could make to the masses on behalf of parliamentary reformism
no longer evoked enthusiasm; the reforms they could achieve
were limited by the economic crisis, the weakening national
finances, and the weight of the war-debts they had to carry;
the repressive and coercive measures they had to exercise
against the class struggle were far heavier.

But even the limited measure of social reform concessions
began to break down and dwindle under the pressure of the
economic crisis. With the rising colonial revolts, the basis of
imperialism began to weaken. The stream of super-profits
diminished; the conflict of the rival monopolist capitalisms
became more intense. Thus a reverse movement set in, no
longer to the extension of social concessions, but on the con-
trary to the cutting down and withdrawal of concessions already
granted. This process received its powerful demonstration in
the history and fall of the Second Labour Government and the
crisis of 1931.

From this point the class struggle is forced increasingly into
the open, bursting through the thin cover of liberal and parlia-
mentary democratic illusions. Even Social Democracy is forced
to speak of the “collapse of reformism” and the “end of social
reform,” and the consequent inevitability of a “frontal”
attack on capital (so the general propaganda line of the
Leicester Labour Party Conference in 1932), at the same time
as it merges in practice still more completely into alliance with
monopoly capitalism and repression of the workers (the “Public
Corporations” line, etc.). The confrontation of the working
class and capitalism can no longer be covered by liberal and
reformist pretences of improving conditions under capitalism.

From this point the demand becomes increasingly strong
from the representatives of capitalism for the throwing aside or
modification of the old parliamentary democratic forms, which
no longer serve their purpose, and the establishment of open

THE REVOLT AGAINST “DEMOCRACY” AND PARLIAMENT 81

and strengthened forms of repression and dictatorship. The
revolt against “democracy” and “parliament,” which was
already marked in bourgeois circles before the war, but was
still confined in direct expression to the narrower reactionary
circles, now become general in all current expression. The
demand of an Owen Young for a “holiday of parliaments”
(“If a holiday of armaments is good, a holiday of parliaments
would be better,” speech at the Lotus Club, New York, on
December 6, 1930); or of a Sir William Beveridge for “a world
dictator” (Halley Stewart lecture in February 1932); or the
announcement of a Gordon Selfridge to the American Chamber
of Commerce in London on his return from the United States
that ‘as an American he spoke to fifty representative men in
America, and did not find one who disagreed with his view that
democracy in that great country could not possibly succeed as a
system of government . . . a country should be managed as
a great business was managed” (Times, June 22, 1932): these
and a thousand similar expressions are typical of the present
outlook of the representatives of finance-capital, and are paral-
leled by the sceptical tone of the parliamentarians themselves,
the openly anti-parliamentary tone of the Press, or of the once
“progressive” literary intelligentsia (Shaw, Wells), no less than
the direct attack of a Churchill, Lloyd or Tardieu.

The Social Democratic and Labour Parties, moving parallel
with capitalism, undergo a similar transformation of outlook,
and begin to speak increasingly of the “limitations of parlia-
ment” and the necessity of strengthening “discipline” and
“authority” in the State (‘“‘Neo-Socialism” in France, the
Socialist League propaganda in England; see also Laski’s De-
mocracy in Crisis, 1933, and Vandervelde’s L’ Alternative, 1933,
for the weakening of the old abstract-democratic assumptions ).

The practice of modern capitalism moves increasingly away
from parliamentary-democratic forms to strengthened and more
open coercion and class-dictatorship. This applies not only to
the directly Fascist states, but also to the diminishing number
of imperialist states which still remain nominally “democratic.”
The Roosevelt emergency powers, and the National Govern-
ment in Britain, represent stages and phases of a process of
transformation, corresponding in some respects to the Briining
stage in Germany. Modern legislation increases the powers of
the executive, of the bureaucracy and of the police, and more

82 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and more restricts the limits of the legal working-class move-
ment, of the right of meeting and association, and of the right
to strike. This process of the “transformation of democracy”
in the Western imperialist countries, and preparation of the
ground for Fascism, is further examined in a later chapter.

The stream against parliamentary democracy is rising on all
sides, although this does not mean that capitalism has yet
exhausted its uses. But the real issue is commonly confused by
the vulgar propagandist treatment that the attack on ‘‘democ-
racy” is a parallel attack of Communism and Fascism. On the
contrary. The critique of Communism or Marxism against
capitalist democracy is not that it is “too democratic,” but
that it is “not democratic enough,” that it is in reality only a
deceitful cover for capitalist dictatorship, and that real democ-
racy for the workers can only be achieved when the proletarian
dictatorship breaks the power of the capitalist class. The move-
ment of modern capitalism, on the other hand, against parlia-
mentary democracy is a movement to strengthen repression of
the working class and establish the open and violent dictator-
ship of monopoly capital. The reality of this issue between
oligarchic dictatorship and working-class freedom breaks
through the old illusory trappings of parliamentary democracy.

5. “National Self-Suficiency.”

A no less strongly marked expression of the modern ten-
dencies of capitalism is the movement towards so-called
“national self-sufficiency,” ‘“autarchy,” “national planning,”
“fsolationism,” etc. This tendency has come most strongly to
the front since the world economic crisis, and the breakdown
of the World Economic Conference revealed its strength.
This development is the logical working out of imperialist
decay.

Of this tendency as the dominant tendency in the latest phase
of world politics the League of Nations economic expert, Sir
Arthur Salter, wrote in his standard work Recovery in 1931:

World trade may be restricted to small dimensions, through every
country excluding imports of everything which (at whatever
expense) it can make or produce at home. Along this line of
development, America might withdraw within herself, arresting
and almost abandoning her foreign investments, sacrificing her
export trade, and cultivating an isolated self-sufficiency on the

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 83

lower level of prosperity which this would necessitate. As the
world closed against her, Great Britain might be forced to sup-
plement such preferential trade with the Dominions and India
as may be practicable, with a policy of exploiting and closing in
her non-self-governing Empire from the rest of the world, against
all the traditions and principles of her history. This line of
development would mean loss to every country, impoverishment
to countries like Switzerland which have no similar resources, and
an organisation of the world into separate units and groups which
would soon be dangerous and ultimately fatal to world peace. It is
along this path that the world is now proceeding.

(Sir Arthur Salter, Recovery, pp. 192-3.)

This description, although faithfully reflecting one side of
the tendency, and to some extent indicating the possible out-
come, is not a fully correct description of the actual process.
For, while the propaganda speaks in terms of internal self-
sufficiency, the reality of the policy remains the fight of the
imperialist powers, on the basis of this strengthened internal
organisation, for the world market.

In fact, the movement towards the closed monopolist area is
not in itself new, but is inherent in the whole development of
imperialism, whose essential character is the denial and ending
of free trade. What is new is only the extreme intensity with
which this monopolist policy is now pursued, and the com-
plexity of the weapons which are now brought into play for its
realisation.

Not only the old tariff weapons, which are now brought to
unheard of heights, but a host of new weapons—surtaxes
variable at a moment’s notice, quotas, embargoes, exchange
restrictions, currency control, complex trade alliances, State
subsidies, and direct State economic control—are now brought
into play by the imperialist giants in their ever more desperate
conflict for closed markets, for privileged areas of exploitation,
and for control of the sources of raw materials.

The intensified conflict of the imperialist Powers for the
shrinking world market makes this development to new and ever
flercer weapons of economic warfare, and essentially reactionary
choking of the channels of free world trade, not merely some
foolish and mistaken policy of particular statesmen, but the
inevitable development and working out of the inner laws of
imperialism. In vain the theoretical economic experts of the
League of Nations throw up their hands in distress and deplore

84 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the universal “loss” and “impoverishment” caused by such
politics; in vain the international conferences of economic
experts, as at Geneva in 1927, pass unanimous resolutions con-
demning the destructive barbarism of such intensified economic
warfare and calling for its reversal. The reality moves in the
opposite direction to the resolutions. For there is no world
capitalism as a whole to adopt the “enlightened” policies so
patiently and incessantly held out by the economic theorists
and would-be reformers of capitalism; just here is the cardinal
error of the Salters and all their company.* There is only the
conflict of the rival imperialist powers; and in the conditions
of this conflict the statesmen and leaders of finance-capital,
however much they may regret the cost and the losses involved,
see no alternative to the policies they find themselves com-
pelled to pursue if they are not to go under. In the words of
the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the eve of the World
Economic Conference, explaining the necessity of maintaining
economic warfare:

Much as all of us regretted the economic warfare which had arisen
between us and other countries, we must maintain that warfare as
long as it was the other countries which had taken the aggressive.

(Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, June 2,

1933.)

“We must maintain that warfare;” the fault lies with “the
other countries.” This is the keynote of all the imperialist
powers.

The most important expression of this transformation of

* It is characteristic of this whole school that, after recording a hundred previous
disappointments, Sir Arthur Salter concludes his Preface to the Seventh Edition of
Recovery on January 1, 1933, with the hopeful statement:

“The World Economic Conference affords the next occasion for a great con-
structive effort.”
The history of 1933 provided the comment. Indeed, even the professional opti-
mists of capitalism begin to lose heart. Salter writes further in the same Preface:
“The whole system under which our rich heritage of Western civilisation has
grown up is at stake. Its fate depends, not only upon deliberate and concerted
governmental action, but also upon constructive reform by those who organise
and direct policy through every main sphere of economic activity. The sands
are running out; but it is still not—quite—too late.”
This was at the beginning of 1933 before the further aggravation of the issues
during 1933. In fact, it was always “‘too late” from the outset for the imagined
“constructive reform by those who organise and direct policy through every main
sphere of economic activity,” because in the conditions of post-war imperialism
such “constructive reform” never was, and never could be, other than a Liberal
civil servant’s myth.

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 85

policy in the present period was the passing of British Imperial-
ism in 1932 from the old free-trade basis to a general tariff and
the policy of the closed Empire. The long survival of free trade
in Britain reflected the remnants of the old commercial and
financial world domination. The Chamberlain propaganda in
the beginning of the imperialist era, and the strongly reinforced
Empire Economic Unity propaganda after the war showed the
pressing forward of the new forces. As late as 1926 the Bankers’
Manifesto issued in that year still called for a general move-
ment towards lower tariffs and free trade. The Bankers’ Mani-
festo of 1930, signed by all the most important financial leaders,
marked the decisive turn, and the end of the last remains of the
old era, with its declaration:

The immediate step for securing and extending the market for
British goods lies in reciprocal trade agreements between the nations
constituting the British Empire.

As a condition of securing these agreements, Great Britain must
retain her open market for all Empire products, while being pre-
pared to impose duties on all imports from all other countries.

The Ottawa Conference of 1932 showed the attempt to carry
out this policy. Although in relation to the Dominions heavy
concessions from Britain have only won small and doubtful
gains, in relation to India and the Crown Colonies the policy
is being pressed forward at full strength. The subsequent
elaborate trading negotiations for exclusive agreements, the
agricultural quota arrangements, and the use of the currency
weapon to endeavour to organise a “sterling bloc,” all mark
the development of the new system.

Attempts are frequently made to present the new phase of
intensified monopolist conflict in idealist form under cover of
the slogans of “national planning,” “national self-sufficiency,”
etc., or to compare it with the entirely opposite process of
socialist construction of the Soviet Five-Year Plan. The mani-
fest economic breakdown of the capitalist anarchy, contrasted
with the simultaneous gigantic advance of the Soviet Five-Year
Plan, led to an outburst of talk of “planning” in the capitalist
world. A World Planning Congress was held at Amsterdam in
1931. A myriad abortive schemes for Five-Year Plans, Ten-
Year Plans and Twenty-Year Plans were put forward in all the
Capitalist countries. The Trades Union Congress in 1931, true

86 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

to its line of alliance with capitalism and worship of “organised
capitalism,” adopted a resolution which declared:

This Congress welcomes the present tendency towards a planned
and regulated economy in our national life.
(Belfast Trades Union Congress resolution, 1931.)

Needless to say, this description of the real process which is
taking place is a complete deception. The conditions of private
ownership of the means of production, and of production for
profit, negate the elementary conditions for any real scientific
economic planning, which requires a single ownership of the
means of production and the organisation of production for
use. The reality which is described under the euphemism of
“a planned and regulated economy in our national life’ is
intensified monopolist organisation in a given imperialist area
(not national area) for the purposes of sharpened world
imperialist conflict and increased exploitation of the workers.

The complete passing over of the previous progressive
elements in capitalism to the new reactionary policies is illus-
trated by the conversion of the former leading Liberal economic
theorist, Keynes, in his articles on ‘‘National Self-Sufficiency”
(New Statesman and Nation, July 8 and 15, 1933). Keynes
writes:

I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect Free Trade not
only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person
could not doubt but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded
departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an
outrage. I thought England’s unshakable Free Trade convictions,
maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation
before man and the justification before heaven of her economic
supremacy. As lately as 1923 I was writing that Free Trade was
based on fundamental truths “which, stated with their due qualifi-
cations, no one can dispute who is capable of understanding the
meaning of words.”

Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundamental
truths which I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet
the orientation of my mind is changed; and I share this change of
mind with many others.

He then sets out the drawbacks of which he has become aware
in the working out of the system of international capitalism,
and reaches the conclusion:

I sympathise therefore with those who would mimimise, rather

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 87

than those who would maximise economic entanglements between
nations. . . . I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition
is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and
economic isolation between countries than existed in 1914 may tend
to serve the cause of peace rather than otherwise.

More fully, he declares:

We wish to be as free as we can make ourselves from the inter-
ferences from the outside world. . . . Ideas, knowledge, art, hos-
pitality, travel—these are the things which should of their nature be
international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably
and conveniently possible, and above all let finance be primarily
national.

It will be seen that the outlook of Keynes has begun to
approximate to that of Hitler. This is a valuable measure of
capitalism in decay.

The reality behind the phraseology of a Keynes or other
capitalist “national planners” must not be misunderstood. The
belated discovery by Keynes of the naive, subjective and un-
critical assumptions on which the old traditional “economic
science” of the bourgeoisie, especially in its centre in England,
was always based, does not here concern us. Marx long ago—
in the middle nineteenth century—before, not after the event—
laid bare the local, temporary and insular character of the
free trade economic theory as only the reflection of the his-
torically caused British capitalist supremacy; and showed also
how this phase would necessarily pass, how British capitalist
supremacy would disappear, and with it the accompanying free
trade theory, and liberal free trade capitalism would pass into
monopolist capitalism and the period of decay. However, the
empiricist can only learn from the behind-side of history; only
the impact of the event compels the bourgeois professors of
economics to begin to grope for the source of their errors.
Keynes, the faithful believer in the divine ordainment of free
trade and British economic supremacy until 1923, in 1933 an-
nounces his disillusionment with the pride of a pioneer.

What is important, however, is that this disillusionment or
“change of mind” which he “shares with many others” is
only the reflection of the change of capitalism, which he trans-
lates into universal conclusions in exactly the same subjective
and uncritical way as the old free trade theory which he now
condemns. For in fact, the issue is no longer between inter-

88 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

national free trade capitalism and monopolist capitalism in its
modern forms. That issue has long been settled in practice.
At the present time history has placed on the order of the day a
different issue, of which he is unaware. The daring “advance”
which he believes himself to have made in his thought, with
his conversion from old liberal fetishes to “national self-
sufficiency,” leaves him in reality still well in the rear of events
as the faithful servitor of the ruling class; he has simply passed
from being the servitor of one phase of capitalism to becoming
the servitor of the next.

In reality, “national self-sufficiency” is only the ideal cover
for the modern forms of monopolist capitalism, extreme inten-
sification of antagonisms, and advance to Fascism and war.

Just as the imperialist blocs cover their predatory wars for
the spoils of the world under cover of the slogan of “national
defence,” so they seek increasingly to-day to cover their
monopolist economic organisation and warfare under cover of
the slogan of “national self-sufficiency.”

It is this advance to war which is the essential significance .
concealed behind the slogan of “national self-sufficiency.”

6. War as the Final “Solution.”

The culmination and final working out of all the new
policies of capitalism under the stress of the world crisis is the
advance to the second world war.

The effects of the world economic crisis enormously intensi-
fied all existing international antagonisms. The “pacific”
“internationalist” language of the stabilisation period (Locar-
no, Briand-Stresemann, Kellogg Pact) gives place to in-
creasingly open national-chauvinist language and _ policies.
International conference after international conference breaks
down. Even such limited success as attends the measures of
internal reorganisation, of strengthening and tightening up
of monopolist economy and aggressive power, within each
imperialism, only leads to the intensification of world
antagonisms. There is a renewed and ever more feverish
pressing forward of armaments on all sides, and of industries
connected with armaments. The World Disarmament Con-
ference breaks down. Japan and Germany withdraw from
the League of Nations. The issue of “disarmament” passes
into the issue of “re-armament.” Alliances and counter-

WAR AS THE FINAL “SOLUTION” 89

alliances are actively built up on every side. The Naval
Limitation Treaty passes into the melting-pot.

Alongside the limited “revival” of world production in 1933
and 1934—and, indeed, as an important element in this “re-
vival”—the armaments industries leapt forward; their shares
and profits rapidly rose. According to the calculations of the
German Institute of Economic Research (Institut fir Kon-
junkturforschung), the proportions of world armaments ex-
penditure and of world production, on the basis of 1928 as 100,
showed the following significant picture:

Armaments expenditure World production
1913 64 54
1929 104 104
1930 106 87
1932 107 56

The total world armaments expenditure in 1934, according
to the same authority, amounted to £2,500 millions, or three
times the level of 1913. 1935 showed a still steeper rise.

The expression now begins to become open in capitalist
circles that the only final “‘solution” of the crisis is war. In
The Means to Prosperity, issued in 1933 Keynes noted the
trend:

Cynics . . . conclude that nothing except a war can bring a major
slump to its conclusion.

The New York financial journal, the Annalist, wrote in the
spring of 1933:

That there is a large possibility of a European war in the very
near future can hardly be denied recognition. . . . We were lifted
from a business depression in 1914 by the outbreak of a great war.
It would be a curious repetition of function if another war should
again come to our industrial rescue. (Annalist, March 17, 1933.)

For the wolves and jackals of finance-capital, war represents
“our industrial rescue.”

The gathering expectation of the close approach of war finds
increasingly frequent expression in the speeches of the states-
men of all countries. Typical was Mussolini’s “War To-
Day” declaration in his speech to the officers at the Italian
army manceuvres in August, 1934:

War is in the air and might break out at any moment. We must
prepare, not for a war for to-morrow, but for a war of to-day.

go FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In July, 1934, Marshal Pétain declared in his speech to the
Reserve Officers’ Conference at St. Malo that the next war
would break out like a “lightning flash.” Baldwin, in advo-
cating the new British air programme in the House of Com-
mons in July, 1934, reported

a greater sense of uneasiness, of malaise, in Europe than we have
hitherto experienced.

The propaganda of war spreads. War begins to be presented
as the heroic alternative, the last hope, the “way out” from
the unending nightmare of economic crisis, misery and unem-
ployment. Fascism, the most complete expression of modern
capitalism, glorifies war. The filthy sophism “War means
Work” begins to be circulated by the poison agencies of im-
perialism, and filters down to the masses. It is a measure of
the stage reached by capitalist civilisation that to-day, before
the leading capitalist countries—other than Japan—are yet
directly involved in war, while there are still nominally condi-
tions of peace, it is possible for such an argument to be seri-
ously presented and widely repeated and actually discussed,
that murder is the only way to provide men and women with
work and livelihood.

All to-day see the ever more visible approach of war. Rising
alarm is expressed in many quarters of bourgeois opinion who
see the ruin and destruction of the entire existing society in-
volved in the menace of renewed world war. But these sections
of anti-war opinion see only the question of war in isolation,
and concentrate their efforts on capitalist “machinery” to avoid
war, without realising that such machinery of imperialism can
only function as machinery to organise the future war in the
name of “ideal” symbols. Bourgeois pacifism, which, in the
name of these symbols, preaches support of the various im-
perialist states, becomes an indispensable part of the war-
preparations of imperialism. The success of the fight against
war depends on the strength of the mass struggle, and cannot
be separated from the fight against imperialism.

War is only the continuation and working out of the crisis of
capitalism and of the present policies of capitalism. It is
inseparable from these, and cannot be treated in isolation.
All the policies of capitalist reorganisation, all the policies of
Fascism, can only hasten the advance to war. This is equally

WAR AS THE FINAL “SOLUTION” gI

true of the line of a Roosevelt, a MacDonald or a Hitler. War
is no sudden eruption of a new factor from outside, a vaguely
future menace to be exorcised by special machinery, but is
already in essence implicit in the existing factors, in the existing
driving forces and policies of capitalism.

All the existing policies of capitalism are policies of ever-
sharpening war: of ever more formidably organised imperialist
blocs; of tariff-war, of gold-war, of currency-war; of war with
every possible economic, diplomatic and political weapon. It
is no far step from these to the final stage of armed war.

All the existing policies of capitalism are more and more
dominantly policies of destruction. The capitalists are to-day
the destructive force in human society. All their most typical
modern policy, from super-tariffs and debt-enslavement of
whole states to burning foodstuffs and devastating cotton
plantations, from dismantling plant and machinery to throwing
millions of skilled and able workers on the scrap-heap of
starvation, is a policy of destruction of human effort and labour,
strangling of production, destruction of life. War is only a
continuation of this policy. It is no far step from spending
millions of pounds to buy up machinery in order to destroy it,
to spending millions to produce guns and warships and muni-
tions to be blown up into the air. It is no far step from con-
demning millions of human beings to the death-in-life of
unemployment as “superfluous,” to the final solution of dis-
posing of their lives and bodies by bomb and gas and chemical,
for the greater profit of whatever group of capitalists can gain
most in the redivision of the world by the holocaust.

But this does not mean that war, any more than Fascism,
presents the final “solution” of the crisis of capitalism. On
the contrary. War, like Fascism, is to-day the outcome of the
intensified contradictions of capitalist society in decay; but
neither solve those contradictions. On the contrary, both bring
out those contradictions to the most extreme point, organise
upon their basis, and lay bare the deep disintegration of existing
society, both internally and internationally, to the point of
destruction. The crisis extends and develops through these
forms to yet greater intensity, and thereby only reveals the more
sharply that the sole final solution lies in the social revolution.

==CHAPTER IV: WHAT IS FASCISM?==

Wuat is Fascism?

In the first three chapters of this book attention has been
deliberately concentrated on the developing tendencies of
modern capitalist society as a whole since the war, in place of
limiting attention to the distinctively “Fascist” countries—
Italy, Germany, etc.

Such a survey has revealed how close is the parallel which
can be traced in every field, economic, political and ideological,
between the increasingly dominant tendencies of theory and
practice of all modern capitalism since the war and the pro-
fessedly peculiar theory and practice of Fascism.

Fascism, in fact, is no peculiar, independent doctrine and
system arising in opposition to existing capitalist society.
Fascism, on the contrary, is the most complete and consistent
working out, in certain conditions of extreme decay, of the most
typical tendencies and policies of modern capitalism.

What are these characteristics which are common, subject to
a difference in degree, to all modern capitalism and to Fascism?
The most outstanding of these characteristics may be sum-
marised as follows:

1. The basic aim of the maintenance of capitalism in the
face of the revolution which the advance of productive tech-
nique and of class antagonisms threatens.

2. The consequent intensification of the capitalist dictator-
ship.

3. The limitation and repression of the independent working-
class movement, and building up of a system of organised class-
co-operation.

4. The revolt against, and increasing supersession of,
parliamentary democracy.

5. The extending State monopolist organisation of industry
and finance.

6. The closer concentration of each imperialist bloc into a
single economic-political unit.

92

THE CLASS-CONTENT OF FASCISM 93

7. The advance to war as the necessary accompaniment of
the increasing imperialist antagonisms.

All these characteristics are typical, in greater or lesser degree,
of all modern capitalist states, no less than of the specifically
Fascist states.

In this wider sense it is possible to speak of the development
towards Fascism of all modern capitalist states. The examples
of the Roosevelt and Briining regimes offer particular illus-
trations of near-Fascist or pre-Fascist stages of development
towards complete Fascism within the shell of the old forms.
Nor is it necessarily the case that the development to Fascism
takes the same form in detail in each country.

The sum-total of the policies of modern capitalism provide
already in essence and in germ the sum-total of the policies of
Fascism. But they are not yet complete Fascism. The com-
pleted Fascist dictatorship is still only so far realised over a
limited area. What is the specific character of complete Fas-
cism? The specific character of complete Fascism lies in the
means adopted towards the realisation of these policies, in the
new social.and political mechanism built up for their realisation.

This is the specific or narrower significance of Fascism in the
sense of the Fascist movements or the completed Fascist dicta-
torships as realised in Italy, Germany and other countries.
Fascism in this specific or narrower sense is marked by definite
familiar characteristics: in the case of the Fascist movements,
by the characteristics of terrorism, extra-legal fighting forma-
tions, anti-parliamentarism, national and social demagogy,
etc.; in the case of the completed Fascist dictatorships, by the
suppression of all other parties and organisations, and in
particular the violent suppression of all independent working-
class organisation, the reign of terror, the “totalitarian” state,
etc.

It is to this specific sense of Fascism, that is to say, to fully
complete Fascism, that we now need to come.

1. The Class-Content of Fascism.

What, then, is Fascism in this specific or narrower sense?

The definitions of Fascism abound, and are marked by the
greatest diversity and even contradictory character, despite the
identity of the concrete reality which it is attempted to describe.

Fascism, in the view of the Fascists themselves, is a spiritual

94 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reality. It is described by them in terms of ideology. It repre-
sents the principle of “duty,” of “order,” of “authority,” of
“the State,” of “the nation,” of “history,” etc.

Mussolini finds the essence of Fascism in the conception of
the “State”:

‘
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its

character, its duty and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as

an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are
relative. . . . Whoever says Fascism implies the State.

(Mussolini’s article on “Fascism” in the Enciclopedia

Italiana, 1932, published in English under the title “The

Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” 1933.)

We further learn that ‘Fascism believes in holiness and in
heroism”; “the Fascist conceives of life as duty and struggle
and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for one-
self, but above all for others”; “Fascism combats the whole
complex system of democratic ideology”; “Fascism believes
neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace’;
“the Fascist State is an embodied will to power”; ‘“‘the Fascist
State is not indifferent to the fact of religion”; “for Fascism
the growth of Empire is an essential manifestation of virility”;
“Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a
possibility”’—and similar profound, and hardly very original
philosophisings in an endless string, the ordinary stock-in-trade
of all Conservatism.

Luigi Villari, the semi-official exponent of Fascism in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, writes:

The programme of the Fascists differs from that of other parties,
as it represents for its members not only a rule of political conduct,
but also a moral code.

Mosley in his Greater Britain, the official handbook of British
Fascism, explains:

The movement is Fascist (1) because it is based on a high con-
ception of citizenship—ideals as lofty as those which inspired the
reformers of a hundred years ago; (2) because it recognises the
necessity for an authoritative State, above party and sectional
interests.

The Fascist, the organ of the Imperial Fascist League, defines
Fascism (in its issue of August 1933):

Fascism is defined as a patriotic revolt against democracy, and

=

a ——

ee ee

THE CLASS-CONTENT OF FASCISM 95

a return to statesmanship. Fascist rule insists upon the duty of
co-operation.

Fascism itself is less a policy than a state of mind. It is the
national observance of duty towards others.

It is manifest that all this verbiage is very little use to bring
out the real essential character of Fascism.

In the first place, all these abstract general conceptions which
are paraded as the peculiar outlook of Fascism have no dis-
tinctive character whatever, but are common to a thousand
schools of bourgeois political philosophy, which are not yet
Fascist, and in particular to all national-conservative schools.
The generalisations of “duty of co-operation,” “duty towards
others,” “life as duty and struggle,” “a high conception of
citizenship,” “the State above classes,” “the common interest
before self” (motto of the German National Socialist Pro-
gramme), are the dreary commonplaces of all bourgeois
politicians and petty moralisers to cover the realities of class
domination and class-exploitation. The professedly distinctive

philosophy of the idealisation of the State as an ‘“‘absolute end”
transcending all individuals and sections is only the vulgar-
isation of the whole school of Hegel and his successors, con-
stituting the foundation of the dominant school of bourgeois
political philosophy. In all these conceptions there is not a
trace of original or distinctive thought.

In the second place, it is in fact incorrect to look for an
explanation of Fascism in terms of a particular theory, in
ideological terms. Fascism, as its leaders are frequently fond of
insisting, developed as a movement in practice without a
theory (“In the now distant March of 1919,” says Mussolini in
his encyclopedia article, “since the creation of the Fascist
Revolutionary Party, which took place in the January of 1915,
I had no specific doctrinal attitude in my mind”), and only
later endeayoured to invent a theory in order to justify its
existence. {Fascism, in fact, developed as a movement in
practice, in the conditions of threatening proletarian revolution,
as a counter-revolutionary mass movement supported by the
bourgeoisie, employing weapons of mixed social demagogy and
terrorism to defeat the revolution and build up a strengthened
Capitalist state dictatorship; and only later. endeavoured to
adorn and rationalise this process with a “theory.” It is in
this actual historical process that the reality of Fascism must be

96 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

found, and not in the secondary derivative attempts post festum
at adornment with a theory.

No less unsatisfactory are the attempted anti-Fascist inter-
pretations of Fascism in terms of ideology or abstract political
conceptions. The conventional anti-Fascist ideological intér-
pretations of Fascism see in Fascism only the principle of
“dictatorship” or “violence.” This approach, which is the
hallmark of the liberal and social democratic schools of thought
in relation to Fascism, sees Fascism as the parallel extreme to
Communism, both being counterposed to bourgeois ‘“demo-
cracy.”’ Fascism is defined as “Dictatorship from the Right”
in contrast to Communism as “Dictatorship from the Left”
(this line is characteristically expressed in the Labour Party
Manifesto of March 1933, on “Democracy versus Dictator-
ship” in explanation of the Labour refusal of the united working-
class front against Fascism).

It is evident that this definition of Fascism is equally
useless as an explanation of the real essential character of
Fascism.

“Dictatorships from the Right” have existed and can exist
in hundreds of forms without in any sense constituting Fascism.
Tsarism was a “Dictatorship from the Right.” But Tsarism
was not Fascism. The White Guard dictatorships immediately
after the war for crushing the revolution were ‘“Dictatorships
from the Right.” But these White Guard dictatorships were
not yet Fascism, and only subsequently began to develop Fascist
characteristics as they began to try to organise a more per-
manent basis (subsequent evolution in Hungary and Finland).
Fascism may be in fact a reactionary dictatorship. But not
every reactionary dictatorship is Fascism. The specific charac-
ter of Fascism has still to be defined.

Wherein, then, lies the specific character of Fascism?

The specific character of Fascism cannot be defined in terms
of abstract ideology or political first principles.

The specific character of Fascism can only be defined by
laying bare its class-basis, the system of class-relations within
which it develops and functions, and the class-role which it
performs. Only so can Fascism be seen in its concrete reality,
corresponding to a given historical stage of capitalist develop-
ment and decay.

As soon, however, as we endeavour to come to the class-

a“

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? 97

analysis of Fascism we find ourselves confronted with a
diametrical opposition of two viewpoints.

In the one viewpoint Fascism is presented as an independent
movement of the middle class or petit-bourgeoisie in opposition
to both the proletariat and to large-scale capital.

In the other viewpoint Fascism is presented as a weapon of
finance-capital, utilising the support of the middle class, of the
slum proletariat and of demoralised working-class elements
against the organised working class, but throughout acting as
the instrument and effective representative of the interests of
finance-capital.

Only when we have cleared this opposition, and what lies
behind it, can we finally come to the real definition of Fascism.

. Middle-Class Revolution or Dictatorship of Finance-Ca pital?
/ Fascism is commonly presented as a “middle-class” (i.e.,

‘ petit-bourgeois) movement.

There is an obvious measure of truth in this in the sense that
Fascism in its inception commonly originates from middle-class
(petit-bourgeois) elements, directs a great deal of its appeal to
the middle class, to small business and the professional classes
against the organised working class and the trusts and big
finance, draws a great part of its composition, and especially
its leadership, from the middle class, and is soaked through with
the ideology of the middle class, of the petit-bourgeoisie under
conditions of crisis. So far, there is common agreement as to
the obvious facts.

But Fascism is also often presented as a middle-class move-
ment in the sense of an independent movement of the middle
class, as a “third party” independent of capital or labour, in
opposition to both the organised working class and large-scale
capital. The Fascist dictatorship is accordingly presented as a
“conquest of power” by the middle class in opposition to both
the organised working class and to the previous domination of
finance-capital.

This conception is common in liberal and social democratic
treatment of Fascism.

Thus the liberal-labour New Statesman and Nation writes
(October 28, 1933):

The collapse of capitalism does not at all necessarily lead to the
seizure of power by the proletarians, but more probably to the

98 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

dictatorship of the middle class. This is surely the Achilles heel of
Communist theory.

Brailsford, the leading theorist of English Social Democracy,
writes: us

If the Marxist conception of history be sound, somewhere surely
on the surface of this stricken planet the increasing misery of the
workers should have produced some aggressive stirring. That is
nowhere the case.

There is, however, an aggressive class which has made in one great
industrial country its revolutionary stroke. The German Nazis are
emphatically the party of the small middle class... .

This class rose and captured the machinery of the State, because
it was “miserable” and desperate. It shrank in terror from the
menace of large-scale commerce.

(H. N. Brailsford, “No Hands Wanted,” New Clarion,
July 8, 1933.)
And again:

A militant middle class, with its dare-devil younger generation to
lead it, faces the organised workers. If on both sides there has
developed a distrust in parliamentary procedure, and a contempt for
its dilatory and irresolute ways, the issue between them can be
decided only by force.

The class which first decides to organise itself for this new phase
will enter the contest with an overwhelming advantage.

(H. N. Brailsford, “Will England Go Fascist?” News-
Chronicle, November 28, 1933.)

The Socialist Review in January 1929 published an article
entitled “The Third Nation,” arguing that “the assumption
at the root of all Communist theory” of a basic division between
the capitalists and the proletariat as the decisive issue of modern
society was false:

Apart from the capitalists and the proletariat—and between them
—there is a third class. Here, then, is the fundamental question for
Marxists: Does this class exhibit the characteristics of a subject
class, about to make a bid for supremacy?

A possible answer is that, in one country—Italy—they have
already emerged as a revolutionary class. The Fascist revolution
was essentially a revolution of the third class.

The American would-be “Marxist” journal, the Modern
Monthly, says in an editorial on “What is Fascism?”’:

The first task of the Fascist dictatorship was to wrest state power

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? 99

from the hands of the private bankers, industrialists and landlords
who possessed it... .

The Fascist dictatorship, it is clear, then, became possible only
because of the two factors above noted: first, the crisis in imperialism
and the consequent collapse of ruling-class power and policy, and,
secondly the rise of a belligerent lower middle-class which provided
a mass basis for its assumption of power.

(V. F. Calverton in the Modern Monthly, July, 1933.)

Even Scott Nearing’s otherwise fruitful and valuable study
of “Fascism” is marred by this same basic theory of Fascism
as a petit-bourgeois revolution:

At the centre of the Fascist movement is the middle class, seeking
to save itself from decimation or annihilation by seizing power and
establishing its own political and social institutions. It therefore
has the essential characteristics of a social revolutionary movement,
since its success means the shift of the centre of power from one class
to another... .

Fascism arises out of the revolt of the middle class against the
intolerable burdens of capitalist imperialism.

(Scott Nearing, “Fascism,” Vanguard Press, New Bat
Pp. 42.

This separation of Fascism from the bourgeois dictatorship
reaches its extreme point in the official Labour Party and
Trades Union Congress organ, the Daily Herald, which, on
May 2, 1933, after the full demonstration of the real character
of Hitlerism in practice, still looked hopefully towards it to
carry out some form of “socialist” programme against big
capital:

The “National-Socialists,” it is essential to remember, call them-
selves “Socialist” as well as “National.” Their “Socialism” is
not the Socialism of the Labour Party, or that of any recognised
Socialist Party in other countries.

But in many ways it is a creed that is anathema to the big land-
lords, the big industrialists and the big financiers.

And the Nazi leaders are bound to go forward with the “Socialist”
side of their programme.

(Daily Herald editorial on ‘“Hitler’s May Day,” May :

1933-
Thus Fascism in the view of the Labour Party is almost a wing
of Socialism, a rather unorthodox variety of Socialism, but
“anathema to the big landlords, the big industrialists and the
big financiers” (who, curiously enough, maintained it in funds

roo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and finally placed it in power). The same day that this article
appeared in the British Labour and trade union organ, this party
whose creed was “anathema to the big landlords, the big
industrialists and the big financiers” seized and closed down the
workers’ trade unions in Germany.

It is evident that this view of Fascism as a petit-bourgeois
revolution against the big bourgeoisie is incorrect in fact, and
dangerous in the extreme to any serious understanding of the
real character of Fascism and of the fight against it.

That it is incorrect in fact is manifest from the most elemen-
tary survey of the actual history, development, basis and prac-
tice of Fascism. The open and avowed supporters of Fascism
in every country are the representatives of big capital, the
Thyssens, Krupps, Monds, Deterdings and Owen Youngs.

Fascism, although in the early stages making a show of
vague and patently disingenuous anti-capitalist propaganda to
attract mass-support, is from the outset fostered, nourished,
maintained and subsidised by the big bourgeoisie, by the big
landlords, financiers and industrialists.*

Further, Fascism is only enabled to grow, and is saved from
being wiped out in the early stages by the working-class move-

* See Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, 1933, p. 117, for a characteristic
report of a private conversation of a leading Jewish banker in Berlin who “to a
somewhat bewildered gathering in a drawing-room in plutocratic Berlin unctuously
explained how for years he had been a heavy subsidiser of the National Socialists.”
The financial backing of Hitler by big industry was already laid bare in the Hitler-
Ludendorff trial of 1924 and in the Bavarian Diet Investigation Committee. ‘In
later years the list of the alleged financial patrons of the National Socialist Move-
ment became extremely long. Factory owners, managers, general counsel
(syndici) were as thick as they might be on the subscription list of the Republican
National Committee in the United States” (Mowrer, p. 144). Foreign supporters
were stated to include Deterding, Kreuger and Ford. Paul Faure stated in the
French Chamber of Deputies on February 11, 1932, that the foreign financial
backers of the Nazis included the directors of the Skoda armaments firm, controlled
by Schneider-Creusot. The reader should consult Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over
Europe (1934) for the most detailed examination of the financial backing and
control of National Socialism since 1927 by the Ruhr Steel Trust elements domi-
nated by Thyssen: “Thyssen persuaded the two political centres of German Ruhr
capital, the ‘Bergbauverein Essen’ and the ‘Nordwestgruppe der Eisen-und
Stahlindustrie’ to agree that every coal and steel concern had, by way of a par-
ticular obligatory tax, to deliver a certain sum into the election funds of the
National Socialists. In order to raise this money, the price of coal was raised in
Germany. For the Presidential elections of 1932 alone Thyssen provided the
Nazis with more than 3 million marks within a few days. Without this help the
fantastic measures resorted to by the Hitler agitation in the years 1930-1933 would
never have been possible” (pp. 11-12). For the general policy, see the statement
of the Deutsche Fiihrerbriefe, or confidential bulletin of the Federation of German
Industries, quoted in the next chapter.

/

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? Ior

ment, solely through the direct protection of the bourgeois
dictatorship. Fascism is able to count on the assistance of the
greater part of the State forces, of the higher army staffs, of
the police authorities, and of the lawcourts and magistracy,
who exert all their force to crush working-class opposition,
while treating Fascist illegality with open connivance (banning
of the Red Front alongside permission of the Storm Troops).*
/ Finally, has Fascism “conquered power” from the bourgeois
tate dictatorship? Fascism has never “conquered power” in
any country. In every case Fascism has been placed in power
from above by the bourgeois dictatorship. In Italy Fascism
was placed in power by the King, who refused to sign the
decree of martial law against it, and invited Mussolini to power;
Mussolini’s legendary “March on Rome” took place in a
Wagon-Lit sleeping-car. In Germany Fascism was placed in
power by the President, at a time when it was heavily sinking
in support in the country, as shown by the elections.

The bourgeoisie, in fact, has in practice passed power from
one hand to the other, and called it a “revolution,” while the
only reality has been the intensified oppression of the working
class.

After the establishment of the full Fascist dictatorship, the
policy has been still more openly and completely, despite a

* For the protection of Fascism by the lawcourts and police, and savage vin-
dictiveness against all working-class defence, see Mowrer, of. cit., Ch. xviii. For
the same process in Italy, see Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, Vol. I. Salve-
mini relates (p. 71) how in 1920 the Liberal Giolitti Cabinet, with Bonomi, the Re-
formist Socialist, as Minister for War, “thought that the Fascist offensive might be
utilised to break the strength of the Socialists and Communists” and “therefore
allowed the chiefs of the Army to equip the Fascists with rifles and lorries and
authorised retired officers and officers-on-leave to command them.” The “March
on Rome” was led by six Army Generals (p. 153). The pro-Fascist Survey of
Fascism, 1928, admits that Fascism in Italy grew up “not without a certain tolera-
tion and even some assistance from high quarters” (p. 38). Mowrer confesses him-
self unable to understand why the pre-Fascist governments in Germany tolerated
the growth of Fascism. “It is inconceivable that any German Chancellor, even a
clerical militarist like Heinrich Briining, should have allowed the constitution and
training of such a force, armed or unarmed. Why he did so has never been satis-
factorily settled—perhaps never will be” (p. 277). There is no mystery, no more
with Briining than with Giolitti, once the class realities of bourgeois policy and
Fascism are clearly understood. In Germany, the officers who led the Kapp Putsch
were never sentenced; a worker who shot a Kapp rebel was sentenced to fifteen
years hard labour. Hitler, for his armed revolt against the State in 1923, was
given a light sentence of detention, and released in a few months. The beginnings
of the same process of discrimination by the lawcourts, with leniency to the early

hooliganism of the nascent Fascist movements and savage sentencing of workers’
attempts at self-defence, are already visible in Britain.

102 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

show of a few gestures of assistance to small capital, the most
unlimited and ruthless policy of monopolist capital, with the
whole machinery of Fascism mercilessly turned against those of
its former supporters who have been innocent enough to expect
some anti-capitalist action and called for a “‘second revolution.” *

Fascism, in short, is a movement of mixed elements,
dominantly petit-bourgeois, but also slum-proletarian and
demoralised working class, financed and directed by finance-
capital, by the big industrialists, landlords and financiers, to
defeat the working-class revolution and smash the working-
class organisations.

* The argument sometimes put forward that the elimination of Hugenberg from
the Nazi-National Government represented a breach between the Nazis and Big
Capital, and the defeat of the latter, is a childishly superficia] attempt to substitute
the fate of an individual for the really decisive social forces. Hugenberg was
removed from the Nazi-National Government, not because he was a big capitalist,
but because he was the leader of the National Party, and the completed Fascist
system cannot tolerate the existence of two parties. Certainly, this reflects an
undoubted and sharp division within the bourgeoisie, between the alternative
methods of maintaining bourgeois rule, between the old traditional National
Party mechanism and the new Nazi Party mechanism, to the necessity of which a
great part of the bourgeoisie have only reconciled themselves with many mis-
givings and much anxiety for the future. But the Nazi method remains a method,
although a hazardous one, of maintaining the rule of finance-capital. Finance-
capital remains supreme, as was abundantly shown by the composition of the
Provisional Supreme Economic Council appointed under the aegis of the Nazi
Government. Its leading members included;

Herr Krupp von Bohlen, armaments king; private fortune, £6,000,000;
capital represented, £15,000,000.

Herr Fritz Thyssen, steel king; private fortune £6,000,000; capital
interests German Steel Trust, £140,000,000.

Herr F. C. Von Siemens, electrical king; private fortune, £6,500,000;
capital represented, £12,500,000.

Prof. Karl Bosch, Dye Trust millionaire; private fortune, £2,000,000;
capital represented, £55,000,000.

Dr. A. Vogler, German Steel Trust; private fortune, £6,000,000;
capital represented, £40,000,000.

Herr A. Diehn, director Potash Syndicate; capital represented,
£10,000,000,

Herr Bochinger, director Maximilian Steel Works; capital, £1,500,000.

Herr F. von Schroeder, banker.

Herr A. von Finck, banker.

Herr F. Reinhart, banker.

This glittering galaxy of the leaders of German finance-capital is sufficient proof
of the relations of the Nazis and finance-capital. The subsequent further
reorganisation of German industry, announced in March 1934, in twelve industrial
groups, under the control of the principal large capitalists in each group, and under
the genera! leadership, for heavy industry and also for industry as a whole, of Herr
Krupp von Bohlen, has still more conspicuously illustrated this process of system-
atisation of Nazi rule as the most complete and even statutory domination of
Monopoly Capital.

THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PROLETARIAT 103

3. The Middle Class and the Proletariat.

This question of the role of the middle class or petit-
bourgeoisie, in relation to the working class and to the big
bourgeoisie, is so important for the whole dynamic of present
capitalist society and the social revolution, that it deserves fuller
clearing.

The controversy over the role of the middle class, or many
and varied intermediate strata between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat (small business men, small and middle peasantry,
handicraftsmen, independent workers, small rentiers, liberal
professions, technical, managerial and commercial employees)
is no new one. In the nineteenth century Marx had dealt very
fully with the economic and political situation and tendencies
of these elements. He had shown how these middle elements
were increasingly ground between the advance of large capital
and of the proletariat, with growing numbers from their ranks
falling into proletarian or semi-proletarian conditions; he had
shown their vacillating and unstable political role, now siding
with the bourgeoisie and now with the proletariat, torn between
their bourgeois prejudices, traditions and aspirations, and the
actual process of ruination and proletarisation at work among
them; and he had shown how the proletariat should win the
alliance of the lower strata of the peasantry and urban
petit-bourgeoisie under its leadership in order to conquer
power.

In the beginning of the imperialist era the question of the
middle class was anew raised sharply to the forefront by Bern-
stein and the Revisionists in the last years of the nineteenth
century and the first years of the twentieth. The Revisionists
challenged Marx’s teaching of the increasing proletarisation of
the middle strata and consequent increasing sharpness of the
issue between capitalism and the proletariat. On the contrary,
they argued that the middle class was growing, and pointed to
the figures of income returns, property returns and shareholding,
to prove the growth of the middle class. On this basis they
denied Marx’s revolutionary teaching, saw instead the increas-
ing harmony of classes and democratisation of capital, and looked
to the gradual peaceful advance towards socialism through
capitalist reorganisation, social reform and State intervention.

What the Revisionists really represented, as is now abun-
dantly clear, was the growth of the “new middle class” of

104 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

salaried employees of capitalism. In fact the process predicted
by Marx was abundantly realised through the course of the
nineteenth century. The concentration of capital went forward
at an increasing pace. Large-scale capital pressed small-scale
capital to the wall. The former small owners and independent
workers became, as Marx said, “overseers and underlings.”
In this way a “new middle class” came more and more to the
front, based on the increasing disappearance of the old indepen-
dent small owners. This new middle class resembled the old in
its two-faced position and outlook, between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, and its dreams of occupying an “indepen-
dent” position above the class struggle; but it was already
dependent for its livelihood on employment under large capital,
and no longer primarily on its own property. Thus the
development of this new middle class was in fact a stage in the
process of proletarisation, in the increasing divorce of the ever-
widening mass of the population from an independent property
basis; and its lower strata began to draw closer to the proletariat
and to the proletarian movement (beginnings of “middle-
class” trade unionism, recruiting to social democracy). The
distinctive outlook of this new middle class was typically
expressed in England by Fabianism and the leadership of the
Independent Labour Party.

Against the Revisionists, the Marxists were easily able to
show, not only that the development of this new middle class
increasingly replacing the old was in reality a phase of the pro-
cess of proletarisation, but that further economic development
was in turn affecting the position of this new middle class, and
creating a crisis in its ranks and a new stage of proletarisation.
The overstocking of the professional market, the turning out
from the universities and technical schools of increasing num-
bers beyond the possibilities of employment, and the cutting
down of personnel through the further concentration of
businesses, was already before the war creating a more and more
sharp crisis of the new middle class.

This crisis of the middle class (both old and new) has been
carried enormously forward in the post-war period. The
operations of finance-capital—inflation, currency and exchange
manipulations, share-juggling, monopoly prices and heavy
taxation—have played havoc with small savings and invest-
ments, and with the old stability of middle-class incomes. At

THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PROLETARIAT I0§

the same time unemployment and redundancy in all the pro-
fessions has reached desperate heights.

“Throughout the Continent,” wrote Keynes in his Treatise on
Monetary Reform (p. 16), “pre-war savings of the middle class,
so far as they were invested in bonds, mortgages or bank
deposits, have been largely or entirely wiped out.” The
German property valuation returns showed that the number of
those owning from thirty to fifty thousand marks worth of
property (£1,500 to £2,500) fell from over 500,000 in 1913 to
216,000 in 1925; owners of from fifty to a hundred thousand
marks (£2,500 to £5,000) fell from nearly 400,000 in 1913 to
136,000 in 1925. Although, despite the disillusionment of the
wiping out of their savings by inflation, the middle class began
hopefully to save anew after stabilisation, the total of savings
rapidly began to fall after the economic crisis, and is now
threatened anew by the new wave of world inflation. In
Britain, a marked decline in small savings is noticeable in the
post-war period even before the world economic crisis. Thus
while in 1909-13 the Post Office Savings Bank accounts regis-
tered a net increase of £12 million, in 1923-7 they registered a
net decrease of £17 million, as well as a net decrease of
government securities standing to their holders’ credit by
£18 million, or a total decline of £35 million; Trustee Savings’
Banks showed a net decline of £12 million; after allowing
against this, the net increase in National Savings Certificates in
the same period by £14 million, there is still left a total loss
in these main forms of small savings between 1923-7 of £33
million (Economist, February 23, 1929).

If the impoverishment of the small middle class alongside the
enrichment of monopoly capital is thus a characteristic feature
of the post-war period, even more so is the increasingly des-
perate situation of overcrowding in the professions. The world
economic crisis brought this situation to an extreme point.

In Germany, it was reported that of 8,000 graduates from
the technical colleges and universities in 1931-2, only 1,000
found employment in their professions. According to a state-
ment issued by the Prussian Minister of Education, of 22,000
teachers who completed their training in 1931-2, only 990 found
posts. “Engineers have become mere wage-earners; while of
the technical school engineering graduates only one in five
found any job at all” (H. H. Tiltman, Slump, 1932, p. 75).

106 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

R. Schairer in Die Akademische Berufsnot, 1932, reported that
45,000 graduated students were unemployed, and that this
figure, it was estimated, would, in the absence of remedial
measures, reach 105,000 by 1935. Here we can see a large part
of the social basis for the desperate armies of Fascism.

The impoverished and desperate middle class is driven from
its former philistine slumbers into political activity. But this
political activity takes on a new character. Whereas the
Bernsteinian dreams had seen in the middle class a stabilising
and harmonising factor in the social structure, wedded to
liberalism and social reform, and smoothing over the antagon-
ism of classes, the new dispossessed and ruined middle-class
elements break out as an extremely unstable, violent force
potentially revolutionary or, alternately, ultra-reactionary,
without clear social basis or consciousness, but recklessly seeking
any line of immediate action, which may offer a hope of
immediate relief (relief from debts, State aid to small businesses,
smashing the large stores, etc.) or the prospect of jobs (the new
bureaucracy, mercenary fighting forces, displacement of Jews,
war).

In what direction, however, can these middle-class elements
turn their political activity? They can in practice only line up
in the service of either finance-capital or of the proletariat.
The myth of their “independent” role, of the “third party,”
is still endeavoured to be hung before them. The Liberal
Yellow Book, characteristically enough, endeavoured to make
much of “the third party in industry” as the force of the future.
But these dreams are soon shattered by reality. For the owner-
ship of the means of production is decisive, and to this the
middle class can never aspire. Either finance-capital, owning
the means of production, can seek to make the middle class its
auxiliary, giving a measure of employment, if diminishingly in
production, then at any rate increasingly in the tasks of violent
coercion of the working class (fascist militia, police-officer class,
fascist bureaucracy). Or the proletariat, socialising the means
of production, can at last give full scope to all the useful trained
and technical abilities within the middle class in the gigantic
tasks of social reconstruction. These are the only two alterna-
tives before the middle class. The first is the line of Fascism.
The second is the line of Communism.

The true interests of the majority of the middle class, of all the

THE DEFINITION OF FASCISM 107

lower strata of the middle class, lie with the proletariat, with
the line of Communism. Finance-capital is the enemy and
exploiter of both sections. The line of Fascism of service with
finance-capital against the working class, means in fact no
solution for the economic crisis of the middle class; alongside
privileges and rewards for a handful, it means intensified
servitude, oppression and spoliation of the majority of the
middle class at the hands of the great trusts and banks.

Where the working-class movement is strong, follows a
revolutionary line, and is able to stand out as the political
leader of the fight of all oppressed sections against large capital,
there the mass of the petit-bourgeoisie is swept in the wake of
the working class. This was the general situation in the post-
war revolutionary wave of 1919-20. During this time Fascism
could win no hold.

But where the working-class movement fails to realise its
revolutionary role, follows the leadership of Reformism and
thus surrenders to large capital, and even appears to enter into
collaboration with it, there the discontented petit-bourgeois
elements and declassed proletarian elements begin to look else-
where for their leadership. On this basis Fascism is able to win
its hold. In the name of demagogic slogans against large capital
and exploiting their grievances, these elements are drawn in
practice into the service of large capital.

4. The Definition of Fascism.

Fascism is often spoken of as a consequence of Communism.
“Reaction of the ‘Left,’ declared the Labour Manifesto on
“Democracy and Dictatorship” in 1933, “is displaced by
triumphant reaction of the ‘Right.’” With strikingly similar
identity of outlook to the Labour Party, the Conservative
leader, Baldwin, also declared: ‘Fascism is begotten of Com-
munism out of civil discord. Whenever you get Communism _
and civil discord, you get Fascism” (House of Commons,
November 23, 1933).

This picture is a fully misleading picture. Undoubtedly, the
parallel advance of the forces of revolution and counter-
revolution represents in fact the two sides of the single process
of the break-up of capitalism; the continuous interaction of the
opposing forces of revolution and counter-revolution was long
ago described by Marx. But the inference attempted to be

108 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

drawn from this that, if the working class follows the line of
Communism, then Fascism will triumph, is the direct opposite
of historical experience. The reality shows the exact contrary.

The examples are now sufficient to make certain a generalisa-
tion beyond possibility of dispute.

Where the majority of the working class has followed the
line of Communism (the Soviet Union), Fascism has not been
able to appear.

Where the majority of the working class has followed the line
of Reformism (Germany, Italy, etc.), there at a certain stage
Fascism has grown and conquers.

What is the character of that stage? That stage arises when
the breakdown of the old capitalist institutions and the advance
of working-class movement has reached a point at which the
working class should advance to the seizure of power, but when
the working class is held in by reformist leadership.

In that case, owing to the failure of decisive working-class
leadership to rally all discontented strata, the discredited old
regime is able to draw to its support under specious quasi-
revolutionary slogans all the wavering elements, petit-bour-
geoisie, backward workers, etc., and on the very basis of the
crisis and discontent which should have given allies to the
revolution, build up the forces of reaction in the form of
Fascism. The continued hesitation and retreat of the reformist
working-class leadership at each point (policy of the “lesser
evil’’) encourages the growth of Fascism. On this basis Fas-
cism is able finally to step in and seize the reins, not through
its own strength, but through the failure of working-class
leadership. The collapse of bourgeois democracy is succeeded,
not by the advance to proletarian democracy, but by the regres-
sion to fascist dictatorship.*

We are now in a position to reach our general definition of
the character of Fascism, the conditions of its development and
its class-rule. This definition has received its most complete

* Reference may be made to the present writer’s suggested definition of the
conditions of the advance to Fascism, written in 1925:

“Fascism arises where a powerful working-class movement reaches a stage
of growth which inevitably raises revolutionary issues, but is held in from
decisive action by reformist leadership. . . . Fascism is the child of Reform-
ism” (Labour Monthly, July 1925).

The subsequent events in Germany have abundantly illustrated the truth of
this.

THE DEFINITION OF FASCISM 109

scientific expression in the Programme of the Communist Inter-
national in 1928:

Under certain special historical conditions the progress of the
bourgeois, imperialist, reactionary offensive assumes the form of
Fascism.

These conditions are: instability of capitalist relationships; the
existence of considerable declassed social elements, the pauperisation
of broad strata of the urban petit-bourgeoisie and of the intelligent-
sia; discontent among the rural petit-bourgeoisie, and, finally, the
constant menace of mass proletarian action. In order to stabilise
and perpetuate its rule the bourgeoisie is compelled to an increasing
degree to abandon the parliamentary system in favour of the fascist
system, which is independent of inter-party arrangements and com-
binations.

The Fascist system is a system of direct dictatorship, ideologically
masked by the “national idea” and representation of the “‘pro-
fessions” (in reality, representation of the various groups of the
ruling class). It is a system that resorts to a peculiar form of social
demagogy (anti-Semitism, occasional sorties against usurer’s capital
and gestures of impatience with the parliamentary “talking shop”)
in order to utilise the discontent of the petit-bourgeois, the intel-
lectual and other strata of society; and to corruption through the
building up of a compact and well-paid hierachy of Fascist units,
a party apparatus and a bureaucracy. At the same time, Fascism
strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most back-
ward strata of the workers to its ranks, by playing upon their dis-
content, by taking advantage of the inaction of Social Democracy,
etc.

The principal aim of Fascism is to destroy the revolutionary labour
vanguard, i.e., the Communist sections and leading units of the
proletariat. The combination of social demagogy, corruption and
active White terror, in conjunction with extreme imperialist aggres-
sion in the sphere of foreign politics, are the characteristic features
of Fascism. In periods of acute crisis for the bourgeoisie, Fascism
resorts to anti-capitalist phraseology, but, after it has established
itself at the helm of State, it casts aside its anti-capitalist rattle, and
discloses itself as a terrorist dictatorship of big capital.

Alongside of this may be placed the parallel analysis of Fascism
in the Resolution on the International Situation of the same
Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928:

The characteristic feature of Fascism is that, as a consequence of
the shock suffered by the capitalist economic system and of special

IIo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

objective and subjective circumstances, the bourgeoisie—in order
to hinder the development of the revolution—utilises the discontent
of the petty and middle, urban and rural bourgeoisie and even of
certain strata of the declassed proletariat, for the purpose of creating
a reactionary mass movement.

Fascism resorts to methods of open violence in order to break the
power of the labour organisations and those of the peasant poor,
and to proceed to capture power.

After capturing power, Fascism strives to establish political and
organisational unity among all the governing classes of capitalist
society (the bankers, the big industrialists and the agrarians), and
to establish their undivided, open and consistent dictatorship. It
places at the disposal of the governing classes armed forces specially
trained for civil war, and establishes a new type of State, openly
based on violence, coercion and corruption, not only of the petit-
bourgeois strata, but even of certain elements of the working class
(office employees, ex-reformist leaders who have become govern-
ment officials, trade union officials and officials of the Fascist Party,
and also poor peasants and declassed proletarians recruited into the
Fascist militia).

Finally, the short definition given by the Thirteenth Plenum
of the Executive of the Communist International in 1933, and
repeated in the Resolution of the Seventh Congress in 1935,
may be given:

Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary,
most chauvinist and most imperalist elements of finance capital.

The further characteristics of Fascism indicated in the above
analysis, both in respect of its advance to power, and of its
programme and practice after power, it will now be necessary
to examine.

==CHAPTER V: HOW FASCISM CAME IN ITALY==

In the light of this general understanding of the character
and role of Fascism, and of the conditions of its development, it
is now possible to examine more closely the concrete historical
manifestations of Fascism, and, in particular, its development in
Italy and Germany.

For this purpose it is necessary first to review the conditions
of the transition to Fascism in these countries. It is then neces-
sary to examine more closely the programme and practice of
Fascism, especially as demonstrated in these two leading
countries.

1. The Priority of Italian Fascism.

Why did Fascism, the outstanding development of modern
capitalist policy, develop its first distinctive and complete form
in Italy, a secondary capitalist country?

The question bears a certain analogy to the question often
asked why the world proletarian revolution should have con-
quered first, not in the most advanced capitalist country, but
in the relatively less-developed Russia.

In both cases a general world development of the imperialist
epoch first reached its specific form, not at the main centres of
world imperialism, but at that point where the complex of con-
ditions, of extreme contradictions, made its appearance first
possible, and only more slowly spread beyond the original
country.

The reasons for the opening of the world socialist revolution
in Russia have long been cleared. Russia was the weakest link
of world imperialism: it represented the combination, on the
one side, of the weakest bourgeoisie and of the greatest corrup-
tion and collapse of the old regime; and on the other side, of the
most politically developed proletariat, of the highest proportion
of the proletariat in large-scale industry and of the most con-
scious and highly trained revolutionary party of the proletariat

in established leadership of the majority of the workers.
Iir

II2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The case of Italy and Fascism is more complex. In fact,
embryonic forms of Fascism already developed in other
countries before Italy, notably in Finland, Hungary, Poland
and Germany. But it was in Italy that Fascism was first
elaborated into a complete system and became during the suc-
ceeding decade the recognised principal model. Why was this?
We have seen that Fascism develops where the proletarian
revolution draws visibly close, but is held in by reformist leader-
ship. This was certainly the case in Italy after the war. But
in the immediate post-war period did not the proletarian revolu-
tion far more closely threaten in Germany than in Italy? Why
then the difference, and the very much later development of
Fascism in Germany?

The answer lies, not only in the very much greater strength
and long-drawn resistance of the German proletariat, but in
the basic difference of conditions of the revolutionary movement
in the two countries. In Germany a mass-revolution took
place; but the Social Democracy was able to retain control of the
main body of the working-class movement, and to rob the
revolution of its fruits. In Italy, on the other hand, there was
only the menace of a revolution; but the old Social Democratic
leadership lost effective control of the mass movement. In
consequence, the methods of the bourgeoisie in the two coun- |
tries necessarily differed.

In Germany the proletarian revolution actually overthrew
the old regime in 1918; but the workers were robbed of the
fruits of their victory by the Social Democratic leadership.
The task of the bourgeoisie in the first stage became to limit
the successful revolution, whose victory could not for the mo-
ment be questioned. For this purpose the direct governmental
leadership of Social Democracy was essential to the bourgeoisie
as the sole salvation. Only later, as the influence of Social
Democracy weakened, and the menace of the proletarian
revolution grew, in spite of and against Social Democracy,
did the German bourgeoisie require to bring into play the
additional weapon of Fascism against the working class.

In Italy, on the other hand, no revolution took place after
the war, but only a mass revolutionary wave of great power—
the highest mass revolutionary wave of those countries (the
victor countries) where the war was not followed by revolution. |
There was no question of strangling an already victorious

SOCIALISM IN ITALY II3

mass revolution by setting Social Democracy in power as tne
supposed leadership and voice of the triumphant revolution.
The government remained throughout directly in the hands
of the bourgeoisie. But the old Social Democratic leadership
lost control of the mass movement, which was rapidly advanc-
ing to revolution. The task for the bourgeoisie became to
prevent the menacing proletarian revolution. For this purpose
Social Democracy could serve as the brake to disorganise the
workers’ forces. But to smash the workers’ forces Fascism was
necessary. In contrast to Britain and France, the mass revo-
lutionary wave after the war in Italy was so high as to make
the bourgeois democratic forms inadequate; extraordinary
forms had to be brought into play. But it was not so high
as to reach to open insurrection and overthrow of the govern-
ment, and to the necessity of the bourgeoisie making a show
of surrendering power. The bourgeoisie only required to
change the forms and methods of its power. For this reason
Italy, despite the lower level of revolutionary development
than Germany, gave the first example of the new Fascist
dictatorship, to which Germany only reached later. Italian
Fascism revealed Fascism as a species of preventive counter-
revolution.

2. Socialism in Italy.

The relatively backward economic development of Italy
meant that the industrial proletariat, especially in large
industry, was proportionately much weaker than in the leading
industrial countries, such as Germany, Britain and the United
States. Of the 16.8 million occupied persons recorded in the
1911 census, 9 millions, or 54 per cent., were recorded as
engaged in agriculture and fisheries; 243,000 industrial estab-
lishments were recorded as employing 2.3 million workers.
The 1927 Census of Industries reported 2.9 million industrial
workers in manufacturing production; but 1.5 millions of these
were employed in establishments of less than 10 workers; only
695 factories had over 500 workers, with a total of 692,000
workers,

Nevertheless, the dominant numerical strength of the indus-
trial and agricultural proletariat combined, especially together
with the poor peasantry, should not be under-estimated. On
the basis of the 1911 census statistics it was calculated that of

114 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the 16.8 million occupied persons the agricultural proletariat
numbered 6.2 millions, and the proletariat in industry and trans-
port 4 millions, or a total of over 10 millions or over 60 per cent.

Further, Socialism, on the basis of a revolutionary pro-
gramme, reached an overwhelming mass support after the war.
The Italian Socialist Party, previously weak and dominated by
reformism and collaborationist policies until 1910, began to
move to the left in the fight against the Tripoli war in 1911; in
1912 it strengthened itself by expelling the chauvinist reformists,
under Bonomi and Bissolati, at the Reggio Emilia Congress;
thereafter the membership, previously dwindling from 36,000
in 1906 to 24,000 in 1910, shot up from 27,000 in 1912 to
48,000 in 1914. Thus strengthened, and with the added
advantage of a delayed entry of Italy into the war only after a
protracted dispute which divided also the bourgeoisie, the
Italian Socialist Party was not swept in the wake of the war,
but took the Zimmerwald line; it emerged from the war with
an increased membership of 70,000 and high popularity and
prestige.

The revolutionary wave after the war reached very great
heights in Italy, affecting all strata, the industrial workers, the
demobilised soldiers, the agricultural proletariat and the poor
peasantry. A widespread strike movement developed, both
economic and political, land seizures by the peasantry, etc.
The Socialist Party affiliated to the Communist International
in March 1919, by executive decision, which was confirmed by
an overwhelming majority at the Bologna Congress in October.
On this basis the Party went to the elections in November 19109,
on a Communist programme of dictatorship of the proletariat
and soviets, and for this programme won over one-third of the
total vote of the whole population, emerging as the strongest
party with 156 seats out of 508—at the same time as Mussolini
and his Fascists were unable to win a single seat. The member-
ship of the Party rose to 200,000, and of the Confederation of
Labour, which was allied to the Party, to two millions. At the
municipal elections in 1920 the Party won control of over 2,000
Communes, or one-third of the total. At the height of the
revolutionary wave the Government was powerless to act, as
shown in its passivity during the occupation of the factories in
1920, since it could not count on the support of the military
forces. The expectation of the social revolution was general.

SOCIALISM IN ITALY 11s

Nevertheless, no revolution took place, because there was no
decisive revolutionary leadership. As the Executive Committee
of the Communist International wrote in October 1920:

The P.S.I. (Italian Socialist Party) acts with too much hesitation.
It is not the Party which leads the masses, but the masses which push
the Party. . . . In Italy there exist all the necessary conditions for
a victorious revolution except one—a good working-class organisa-
tion.

The truth of this was abundantly shown in 1919-20. No Com-
munist Party existed until 1921, when the main revolutionary
wave had passed. Anarchist and syndicalist tendencies and
confusions on the one side, reformism in control of the principal
mass organisations on the other, and a passive, hesitating centrist
leadership between—this constituted the main picture of the
leadership of the Italian working class during the revolutionary
wave. Although the Italian Socialist Party had affiliated to
the Communist International in 1919, it retained at the very
heart of the leadership, in control of the most strategic points,
convinced enemies of Communism, the old reformist leadership
under Turati and D’Aragona, who had dominated the party
until 1910. These had no longer more than a small following
among the workers, as Congress votes showed; but they were
strong at the centre, dominating the parliamentary group and
controlling the official machinery of the Confederation of
Labour. They remained in the party, despite the adoption of
the Communist programme, openly in order to defeat the
revolutionary line. As one of their leaders, Prampolini,
explained at the Conference of the reformist wing in September
1922:

By remaining in the Party we were able to fulfil our duty
as Socialists. It would have been quite impossible for us to
ea accomplished outside the Party the task we accomplished
inside.

It was manifest that if the party were to achieve its task of
revolutionary leadership, the first necessity was to remove the
enemies of the revolution from the strategic leading positions and
replace them by revolutionaries. On this demand the Executive
Committee of the Communist International, under the leader-
ship of Lenin, conscious of the impending danger in Italy if this
were not carried out, exerted the whole of its pressure and

.

116 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

authority. The Executive long urged, and finally by the sum-
mer of 1920, when the matter was too serious for further parley-
ing, demanded in the name of the whole international move-
ment, the expulsion of Turati and the reformist leadership.
But the centrist leadership under Serrati refused, and the fate
of the Italian revolution was sealed for many years to come.
The issue came to a head at the Second Congress of the Com-
munist International in August 1920; Serrati set himself in
opposition to Lenin and to the whole international leadership,
preferring unity with Turati and the reformists to unity with
International Communism; and the bulk of the party under his
leadership passed out of the International. The break followed
at the Livorno Congress in January 1921; Serrati and the
centrists had a following of 98,o00, Turati and the reformists
14,000, and the Communists 58,000, who thereon formed the
Italian Communist Party. Serrati and his wing, who styled
themselves “unity Communists,” were appealed to by the
Communists to unite with them in a single Communist Party,
which would have thus constituted go per cent. of the old
party, freed from reformism; but they preferred unity with the
14,000 reformists to unity with 58,000 Communists. Thus the
workers’ ranks were broken.

Two years later, on the very eve of Mussolini’s coming to
power, Serrati was compelled to recognise his fatal error; at the
Rome Congress of the now weakened and dwindled Socialist
Party in the beginning of October 1922, the Serrati leadership
finally carried through the expulsion of Turati and the
reformists, now grown to nearly half the membership, and
applied for re-admission to the Communist International.
“Our fault,” declared Serrati at this Congress, “is that we
never sufficiently prepared ourselves for the events that have
overtaken us. . . . To-day we believe it essential to abandon
the democratic illusion, and to create a combative, active and
audacious Party.” But it was then too late; the irreparable
harm had been done; within four weeks Mussolini was in power.
As the message of the Communist International to the Rome
Congress declared:

He cannot be called a leader of the proletarian masses who with
great effort and after the lapse of several years comes to a correct
conclusion, but rather he who can detect a tendency at its birth and
can warn the workers in time of the peril that menaces them.

WAS REVOLUTION POSSIBLE IN ITALY? 137

3. Was Revolution Possible in Italy?

This understanding of the inner situation of Italian Socialism
during the critical years 1919-1922 is essential for the under-
standing of the failure of the Italian revolution during those
years, despite the favourable conditions and the readiness and
self-sacrifice of the masses, and the resulting advance and victory
of Fascism.

The revolutionary wave of 1919-20 spent itself in a confusion
of unorganised partial struggles and demonstrations without
decisive leadership or concentrated aim. The Socialist Party
leadership gave out the watchword: “The Revolution is not
made. The Revolution comes.” Under cover of this fatal non-
Marxist conception the responsibility of leadership was in fact
abandoned. The energy and self-sacrifice of the masses went
to waste in fruitless unco-ordinated actions.

The final climax of the revolutionary wave was reached with
the occupation of the factories in Northern Italy in September
1920. This action of the workers was undertaken in response
to a lock-out begun by the employers and threatening to be
made general. Beginning from the metallurgical industry in
Milan at the end of August, it spread to all industries until by
September 3 half a million workers were in unchallenged
occupation of the factories, establishing their own workers’ com-
mittees and armed guards. The government and employers
were powerless. The troops could not be counted on to act
against the workers. The classic conditions of revolution were
present. The Prime Minister, Giolitti, temporised. The
extra-legal Fascist formations were then only an impotent hand-
ful, and found it more prudent to applaud the workers’ move-
ment from a distance, proclaiming noisily their “sympathy”
for the occupation in which they had no part, and which
Mussolini declared in his journal to be “a great revolution”
(Popolo d’ Italia, September 28, 1920).

The bourgeoisie in this situation could only count on the
reformist leadership to save them. But the reformist leadership
did not fail them. It was obvious that the occupation of the
factories, if it remained a passive economic movement, with
political power remaining in the hands of the bourgeoisie, could
only end in stultification and failure. The condition of victory
was that the movement begun by the occupation of the factories
should be extended to the conquest of political power by the

118 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

workers, which the bourgeoisie was then powerless to resist.
Just this the reformists resisted, insisting on confining the move-
ment as “purely an economic movement” (the same tactics
as in the British General Strike in 1926), and negotiating with
the Government for a settlement. The critical decision was
taken on September 11 at a combined conference of the
Socialist Party and the Confederation of Labour; by a vote of
591,245 to 409,569 control was placed in the hands of the Con-
federation of Labour, that is, of the reformist leadership. The
reformist leadership entered into immediate negotiations with
Giolitti; and on September 19 a settlement was reached, by
which evacuation of the factories was conceded in return for a
20 per cent. wage increase and a promise of a share of ‘workers’
control” in industry (the promise went the way of all such
promises; the subsequent joint commission established to work
out the details of the scheme broke down; finally, the Govern-
ment in 1921 introduced an emasculated Bill of Labour Control,
similar to the German Works Councils Act). The essence of the
settlement was the evacuation of the factories. The reformist
leaders ordered the workers to leave the factories. What
neither the employers, nor the Government, nor the police,
nor the armed forces could effect, this was effected by the
reformist leadership—to get the workers out of the factories
and hand them back to capitalism.

Was the victory of the working-class revolution in Italy
possible in the situation of September 1920? Of this there can
be no doubt in the united evidence of all parties. The liberal
anti-fascist historian, Salvemini, who is mainly concerned for
the purposes of his argument to minimise the revolutionary
issues of the situation in Italy before Fascism in order to deny
this bourgeois “justification” of Fascism, nevertheless writes
of this period:

Had the leaders of the General Confederation of Labour and of
the Socialist Party wished to strike a decisive blow, here was the
opportunity. . . . The bankers, the big industrialists and big land-
lords waited for the social revolution as sheep wait to be led to the
slaughter. If a Communist revolution could be brought about by
bewilderment and cowardice on the part of the ruling classes, the
Italian people in September, 1920, could have made as many Com-
munist revolutions as they wished.

(G. Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, 1928, Vol. 1, p. 41.)

WAS REVOLUTION POSSIBLE IN ITALY? 11g

The leading Italian journal, the Corriere della Sera, wrote at the
time in its issue of September 29, 1920:

Italy has been in peril of collapse. There has been no revolution,

not because there was anyone to bar its way, but because the
General Confederation of Labour has not wished it.
The reformist leadership themselves boasted of having averted
revolution by their action, and thereafter, in exactly the same
way as the German reformists later, complained bitterly of the
ingratitude of the bourgeoisie in repaying their services by the
blows of Fascism:

“But after we had the honour,” stated the Secretary of the
General Confederation of Labour in a speech delivered two years
after the occupation of the factories, “of preventing a revolutionary
catastrophe—Fascism arrived.” (Daily Herald, April 12, 1928.)

Thus in the agreed testimony of the bourgeoisie and of the
reformists alike, the Communist revolution was fully possible
in Italy in September 1920, and was only prevented by the
reformist leadership. Fascism played no part in this.

It was only after the revolution was already defeated, after
the working-class ranks were disorganised and disillusioned by
the reformist betrayal, after this had begun to show itself in a
rapid collapse of membership and organisation, that then
Fascism stepped forward to show its prowess in beating the
already defeated workers.

The surrender of the factories took place in September 1920.
From that point the Italian working-class movement went
downwards. “After the occupation of the factories in Sep-
tember 1920, the idea spread among the people that the revolu-
tion had failed, and they grew discouraged” (Salvemini, op.
cit., p. 43). The membership of the party and of the trade
unions began rapidly to fall (the party membership fell from
216,000 in 1920 to 170,000 in January 1921).

In November 1920, the first Fascist terrorist action of blood
and fire against the workers was launched at Bologna.

The sequence of dates is obvious. The Fascist jackal strikes
only the already wounded proletarian lion. Fascism was not
the weapon of defence of the bourgeoisie against the advancing
proletarian offensive, but the vengeance of the bourgeoisie
against the retreating proletariat, after reformism had broken
the workers’ ranks, to follow up the victory by smashing the
working-class organisations.

120 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The Growth and Victory of Fascism.

Fascism had existed in germ in Italy since the beginning of
1919—in fact since the hired interventionist campaign of 1915.
The former Socialist Party agitator, Mussolini, who had
throughout his career performed a doubtful role of advocacy of
bomb attentats, Hervéist extravagance, etc., changed his coat
with the usual celerity of social chauvinists, and passed within
a few weeks from editing the Socialist anti-war Avanti, wherein
he had denounced the “bourgeois war” during August and
September, to founding, with French Government funds, the
interventionist Popolo d’Italia in November. The Fasct di
Azione Interventista, which he founded at Milan in 1915, were
the nucleus of future Fascism. After the war Mussolini and his
followers, their previous campaigning basis gone with the end of
the war, sought for a new one, and founded the first Fascio di
Combattimento at Milan in March 1919, on a confused chauvin-
ist, republican and revolutionary-sounding programme. This
was the official starting-point of Fascism. The Fasci were con-
stituted a political party in December 1920.

During 1919 and up to the autumn of 1920, that is, during
the revolutionary wave, Fascism had no strength or popular
support. The official authorities encouraged it; the Popolo
d’Italia was distributed by the Army authorities free among the
troops in 1919 and 1920. But Fascism could win no support.
At the elections in November 1919, Fascism could not win a
seat; Mussolini received 4,795 votes in Milan against the
Socialist 180,000. The total membership throughout the
country was small. Fascism had to swim with the revolu-
tionary stream. Its programme called for the abolition of the
monarchy and nobility, confiscation of war profits, inter-
national disarmament, abolition of the stock exchanges, the
land for the peasants, workers’ control of industry, etc. Its
propaganda glorified strikes, food riots, calling for the hanging
of speculators, the seizure of land by the peasantry, occupations
of factories by the workers (Dalmine), and denounced the State
as the enemy—“Down with the State in all its forms!”
(Popolo a’Italia, April 6, 1920).

During this period Fascism was still in preparation and had
no important place among the weapons of the bourgeoisie to
meet the proletarian offensive. In the face of the strength of
the revolutionary wave the bourgeoisie had to use other

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM I2I

methods. So far as an attempt was made to build up an alterna-
tive new party to counter and outbid the Socialist Party, this
attempt was concentrated on the Catholic “Popular Party,”
which was constituted in 1919 with a demagogic programme,
and was utilised to split the rural proletariat and peasantry,
winning 100 seats in 1919 against the Socialist 156. But the
main method of the bourgeoisie was the method of liberalism
and concessions, so long as their forces were unprepared, the
granting of shorter hours, wage increases, the Labour Control
Bill and similar legislation. This was the line of the successive
governments of Nitti, Giolitti, Bonomi and Facta. They cal-
culated on the reformist socialist leadership to break the
revolutionary offensive. Meanwhile, under cover of this policy
of seeming “weakness” and retreat, they were preparing the
armed counter-revolution. The gendarmerie, or Carabinieri,
were increased from 28,000 at the end of the war to 60,000 by
the summer of 1920. A new special force, the Royal Guard,
was created, 25,000 strong. At the same time the Fascist hooli-
. gan bands were being equipped and armed by the authorities.

Thus the transfer from the policy of a Giolitti to the policy of
a Mussolini was no sudden volte-face of the Italian bour-
geoisie. They were the two halves of a single policy; Mussolini
was the foster-child and creation of Giolitti, just as Hitler was
the foster-child of Briining. The task of Giolitti and the
“liberal” “democratic” governments was to fool the pro-
letariat with sham concessions, so long as the proletarian
forces were too strong to be defeated, and assist the reformist
leadership to break them up from within. Meanwhile these
“liberal” “democratic” governments were secretly equipping
and arming Fascism. When this first stage was completed, and
the proletarian forces had been disorganised by reformism, the
violent counter-revolution was let loose. The violent offensive
of Fascism was carried forward under the benevolent protection
of Giolitti and his successors. This second stage continued from
the autumn of 1920 to the autumn of 1922. Reformism con-
tinued to retreat and trust in parliamentarism for defence.
When the second stage had done its work, and the proletarian
forces had been smashed and beaten up, the final transference
to open Fascism was accomplished. Giolitti and his successors
peaceably made way for Mussolini. The cycle was complete.
The continuity of policy runs in practice right through.

ee ee

|

—s

122 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

This mechanism of the transition to Fascism, exactly repeated
in Germany, is the essential key to the correct understanding
of the real relationship of bourgeois democracy and Fascism.

Fascism grew up and grew strong after the autumn of 1920,
and was able to exercise its wholesale violence, only under the
direct protection and assistance of the bourgeois democratic
governments, of the military authorities, of the police, of the
magistracy and of the big bourgeoisie. From the autumn of
1920 the big landlords and the big industrialists poured support
to the Fascist bands to exercise terrorism against the peasantry
and the proletariat. The membership shot up, according to
Mussolini, from 20,000 in 1920 to 248,000 in 1921. The army
authorities supplied arms. Professional officers trained the
bands and directed operations. The General Staff issued a cir-
cular (October 20, 1920) instructing Divisional Commanders to
support the Fascist organisations. The workers and peasants
were rigorously disarmed; the Fascists carried arms with
impunity. The police and gendarmerie either directly assisted
the Fascists or remained passive. The magistracy habitually
subjected to savage sentences workers who attempted to defend
themselves, while releasing Fascists.

The conscious policy of Giolitti and Bonomi in permitting
and supporting Fascist violence has been already noted (p. ror).
The semi-official spokesman of Fascism, Luigi Villari, in his
Awakening of Italy (p. 123) notes that Giolitti “refused to inter-
fere with the repressive actions of the Fascists, illegal though
they were.” The pro-Fascist A. Zerboglio, in his standard
Il Fascismo, 1922, wrote:

The Government more or less openly made use of Fascism.

The Socialist Press are piling up proofs of Government tolerance
towards the Fascists, and it cannot honestly be disputed that some
of this evidence appears convincing.

The leading American journalist, Mowrer, recorded:

In the presence of murder, violence and arson, the police remained
“neutral.” ... When armed bands compelled the Socialists to
resign from office under pain of death, or regularly tried, and con-
demned their enemies to blows, banishment or execution, the
functionaries merely shrugged their shoulders. . . . Sometimes
Carabineers and Royal Guards openly made common cause with
the Fascists, and paralysed the resistance of the peasants. Against
the Fascists alone the latter might have held their own. Against

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM 123

the Fascists and the police together they were helpless, and their
complaints merely caused the authorities to arrest them as guilty of
attempting to defend themselves. Socialists were condemned for
alleged crimes committed months, years before. Fascists taken red-
handed were released for want of evidence.”

(E. A. Mowrer, Immortal Italy, p. 361.)

And again:
From the army the Fascists received sympathy, assistance and
war material. Officers in uniform took part in the punitive expedi-

tions. The Fascists were allowed to turn national barracks into their
private arsenals.—(Jbid., p. 144.)

Similarly the notorious advocate of Fascism, Odon Por, notes in
his Fascism (p. 111) that “the Fascists had been equipped
largely on the quiet, from the regular army.” Another
American journalist who was in Italy in 1921, J. Carter, reports:

The Fascisti had carte blanche to beat up their opponents through-
out Italy, while the Government pretended to be neutral.
(J. Carter, New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1927.)

One of the standard writers on Fascism, generally sympathetic,
G. Prezzolini, in his Le Fascisme, 1925, writes (p. 97):

They could organise themselves in armed corps and kill right and
left, with the certainty of impunity and with the complicity of the
police. It is thus no overstatement to recognise that the Fascists
fought with 99 chances out of 100 of gaining the victory.

The Fascist offensive of terrorism, destruction and murder,
which was launched at Bologna in November 1920, with the
overthrow of the newly elected Socialist Town Council and
sacking of the Chamber of Labour, was thereafter systemati-
cally developed and extended, with the manifest planning of a
military campaign, through the industrial region, and with
wholesale sporadic violence in the agricultural areas. Socialist,
trade union and co-operative buildings, painfully erected by
millions of sacrifices of a generation of workers, were burned and
sacked; workers’ newspapers and printing presses were des-
troyed; socialist municipal councils were expelled from office;
militant workers and peasants were beaten up or murdered.
All this went forward with the connivance of the civil authori-
ties, who normally followed up each Fascist coup expelling a
duly elected socialist municipal council by appointing a Special
Commissioner in its place. The normal procedure when a

124 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

workers’ building was threatened by the Fascists would be for
a special force of armed police or Royal Guards to appear
first to “protect” it; these would search for and remove any
arms, disarm the workers in it, and prevent any workers’
demonstration approaching it; the Fascists would then arrive
with full arms, and machine-guns; the police forces would then
declare resistance impossible and retire; and the Fascists would
be left free to work their will on the defenceless building and
disarmed workers.

Between January and May 1921, according to figures pub-
lished by the Italian Socialist Party at the time, the Fascists
destroyed 120 labour headquarters, attacked 243 socialist
centres and other buildings, killed 202 workers (in addition to
44 killed by the police and gendarmerie), and wounded 1,144.
During this period 2,240 workers were arrested by the police;
162 Fascists were arrested. During 1921-2, up to the Fascist
dictatorship, 500 labour halls and co-operative stores were
burned, and goo socialist municipalities were dissolved.

How did Reformism and Centrism, in control of the majority
of the working class, meet this offensive of the bourgeoisie?
They preached to the workers to put their trust in legal and
pacific methods and the use of the ballot. In May 1921,
Giolitti held a general election, hoping that the reign of
violence would have already broken the workers’ forces. The
total Socialist and Communist vote, nevertheless, actually
exceeded the 1919 total, reaching 1,861,000, against 1,840,000
in 1919; 122 Socialists and 16 Communists were returned,
totalling 138, as against only 35 Fascists. The workers were
endeavouring to use the ballot in their defence. The Socialist
organ, Avanti, in illusory triumph, proclaimed: “The Italian
proletariat has submerged the Fascist reaction under an
avalanche of red votes.” The reality was otherwise. The
“avalanche of red votes” made no difference to a situation of
civil war. The violence, in place of being diminished, was
increased. ‘

The next step of the reformist leadership was to spread even
more disastrous illusions as to the real character of the struggle.
They endeavoured to enter into a formal treaty of peace with
Fascism. On August 3, 1921, the Fascist-Socialist Treaty was
signed, proclaiming an end to all acts of violence. This was
signed by Mussolini and his colleagues on the one side; on the

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM 125

other by the Executive of the Socialist Party, of the Socialist
Parliamentary Group and of the General Confederation of
Labour. The Communist Party refused to take part in this
criminal comedy. The agreement was not worth the paper it
was written on. The Fascist violence went forward; and
Mussolini explained the violation of his pledge by declaring
that he had been “overridden” by his supporters.

The final step of the reformist leadership was to endeavour
to enter into a parliamentary ministerial combination. After
the resignation of Facta in July 1922, Turati as the Socialist
parliamentary leader saw the King. When the attempt to
secure agreed terms for a ministerial coalition was unsuccessful,
the Reformist leadership conceived the idea of calling a general
strike at this late stage as a weapon of extra-parliamentary
pressure to bring about the formation of a coalition government.
The general strike was called on August 1, wholly without
preparation, and was explained by Turati to be a strike ‘in
defence of the State.” Under these conditions the general
strike was inevitably a failure, reaching only a section of the
membership of the Confederation of Labour, and winning no
general response, because of the utter lack of serious preparation
or fighting lead. The effect was only to play into the hands of
the Fascists, who intensified their attack.

The conditions were now complete for the final step of the
open transmission of power by the bourgeoisie into the hands of
the Fascists. This took place in October. The transmission
was carried through by the combined action of the King, the
army chiefs and the Facta Cabinet. A theatrical “March on
Rome” of Fascists was organised for October 28. This march
was in fact organised under six army generals; and the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army addressed an enthusiastic Fascist
gathering on the evening of October 27. The Facta Cabinet
went through the form of proclaiming martial law; this only
had the effect that the civil authorities handed over their
powers to the military throughout the country, who promptly
allowed the Fascists to occupy the public offices, railways, postal
and telegraphic offices, etc. After this had been successfully
achieved, the King announced on the morning of October 28
that he retused to sign the decree of martial law; martial law
was accordingly withdrawn; it was in consequence declared
impossible to “defend” Rome against the Fascists. The Facta

126 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Cabinet, which had already been in negotiation with the Fas-
cists, resigned. Mussolini was invited to form a Ministry, and
arrived at Rome on October 30 in a sleeping-car. Such was the
so-called Fascist “revolution,” which was in fact carried through
from start to finish by the bourgeois dictatorship from above.

‘The full forms of the Fascist dictatorship were not im-
mediately decided and carried through, as in Germany eleven
years later, because the methods were still being experimentally
discovered. At first, a show of parliamentary forms and per-
mission of opposition parties and Press was maintained, along-
side wholesale governmentally maintained violence and terror-
ism in practice. It was not until 1926 that the completed
Fascist dictatorship was finally established, with complete
suppression of all other parties, organisations and Press, the
workers’ trade unions being officially incorporated in the Fascist
syndicates, and the principal Reformist trade union leaders,
including D’Aragona, passing over to Fascism.

The Italian example provides the classic demonstration of
the transition to Fascism. The lines of development, the réles
of the different elements, the successive stages of this tragedy of
the working class stand out clear and sharp for all to learn.
What are the principal conclusions that stand out?

First, the revolutionary wave in Italy was broken, not by the
bourgeoisie, not by Fascism, but by its own inner weakness and
lack of revolutionary leadership, by Reformism.

Second, Fascism only came to the front after the proletarian
advance was already broken from within and disillusionment
had been spread. Fascism appeared on the scene after the
battle in order to play the hero (under police and military pro-
tection ) in harassing and slaughtering an army already in retreat.

Third, the transition to open Fascist dictatorship was no sud-
den abrupt break and reversal of bourgeois policy, but a con-
tinuation of bourgeois policy into new forms. Fascism was
prepared and fostered within the conditions of bourgeois democ-
racy (alongside a show of “liberalism” and concessions, so
long as the bourgeois forces were unprepared), to be placed in
power when the conditions were ripe.

All these lessons were demonstrated in the classic example of
Italian Fascism. Nevertheless, they were not yet learnt by the
international working class. They were to be demonstrated
anew on a yet wider scale in the next decade in Germany.

==CHAPTER VI: HOW FASCISM CAME IN GERMANY==

THE victory of Fascism in Germany opened a new page in the
whole development of Fascism.

Up to that time the view had still been generally expressed,
in liberal democratic and social democratic circles, that Fas-
cism and “dictatorship” in general was a phenomenon of
backward countries, of industrially less developed countries
without a strong industrial proletariat, of Southern and Eastern
Europe.

But Germany was the country with the most highly-advanced
and concentrated industrial development in Europe, and with
the most highly-organised and politically conscious industrial
proletariat in the whole capitalist world. Yet the most brutal
and barbarous Fascist dictatorship yet known, leaving the
Italian in the shade, triumphed in Germany in 1933.

How was this possible? How did it arise? This question is
of vital concern to the countries of Western Europe and
America, with their closely parallel conditions.

The answer is to be found, not simply in the events of 1933,
but in the whole fifteen years’ development of the German
Revolution. The establishment of the Fascist dictatorship was
only the culminating step of a long process, which began already
in 1918 when Ebert and Hindenburg drew up the terms of their
treaty of alliance against the proletarian revolution.

Superficial critics, with their eyes only on the events of 1933,
speak often of the “sudden collapse,” of the inglorious “defeat
without a battle” of the powerful and highly-organised German
working class. They speak of the “ease” with which Fascism
won its victory, and of the “incapacity” of the German
working class to fight.

This picture is a false one, as the whole past history of the
German Revolution has already proved, and as its future will
still more abundantly prove. The battle of the German working

class against the advancing counter-revolution lasted for fifteen
127

128 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

years before the Fascist dictatorship could be established; in
that battle tens of thousands of German workers gave their lives
under the bullets of the enemy; and if in the end the working-
class forces had to retreat and could not prevent the establish-
ment of the Fascist dictatorship, this was not due to any superior
fighting strength of Fascism, but was solely because the action
of the workers was paralysed and prevented by their own
majority leadership, and by their own mistaken discipline and
loyalty under that leadership. But the speed with which the
vanguard of the working class has adapted itself to the new
conditions, and taken up the struggle with renewed force under
the leadership of the Communist Party in the face of all the
terrorism and suppression, is the surest guarantee that the Hitler
dictatorship will be only an episode in the long-drawn battle of
the German working class and in its advance to the final victory
of the proletarian revolution.

1. The Strangling of the 1918 Revolution.

The seeds of Hitler’s victory were sown in 1918. The Ger-
man workers had overthrown the old State, and power was in

their grasp. The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils were for a
short period the strongest power throughout the country. The
bourgeoisie and the old militarist class were unable to offer any
resistance. All the conditions were present for building an
impregnable Soviet Republic—save that no revolutionary
party existed to lead the workers (the Communist Party of
Germany was only formed in December 1918). ‘The strength
of the proletariat at the beginning of the revolution, before
Social Democracy had squandered and destroyed that strength,
is attested by the principal social democratic witnesses:
The military collapse brought the whole power of the State into
the hands of the proletariat at one stroke.
(H. Strobel, The German Revolution, p. 1.)
In November, 1918, the Revolution was the work of the proletariat
alone. The proletariat won so all-powerful a position that the
bourgeois elements at first did not dare to attempt any resistance.
(Kautsky, Introduction to the Third Edition of
The Proletarian Revolution, 1931.)
How was this absolute power of the proletariat turned in
fifteen years into its exact opposite—into the absolute power of
the bourgeoisie and militarist class, and the absolute subjection

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION I29

of the working class? The answer to this question, in which is
contained the tragedy of the German Revolution of 1918, is
comprised in two words—Social Democracy.

The German Social Democratic Party was built upon a long
and glorious revolutionary past. Its early years had been
watched over by Marx and Engels, and led by Bebel and the
elder Liebknecht. It had refused to vote the war credits in
the war of 1870, and had fought and defeated during the
eighties Bismarck’s twelve-year attempt at its suppression. It
had stood for the programme of revolutionary Marxism, and
on this programme had built up the mass organisations of the
working class. But in the imperialist era, opportunism and

/corruption had made increasing inroads in the leadership
especially in the reformist trade-union leadership. In their
closing years Marx and Engels had already given warning of
the danger and called for asplit. Their warnings were ignored;
and their messages and programme-criticisms were held back
from the membership. The party and trade union apparatus
grew in practice more and more closely bound up with the
capitalist State. 1914 completed the process; the Social
Democratic Party leadership openly united with the Kaiser,
the militarists and the bourgeoisie in support of the imperialist
war, against the working class. The scattered opposition
elements, under heavily difficult conditions of combined war-
censorship and party-censorship, gathered their ranks for the
fight, in the revolutionary illegal Spartacus League, founded in
1916, and in the Independent Socialist Party, founded in 1917.
Through these forces the 1918 revolution was organised.

The Social Democratic Party had no part in the victory of
the 1918 revolution, but was on the contrary opposed to it
from the first. As Scheidemann declared in his libel lawsuit
in Berlin in 1922: “The imputation that Social Democracy
wanted or prepared the November revolution is a ridiculous,

stupid lie of our opponents.”” When the revolution broke out,

the Social Democratic leaders were Ministers in the Coalition

Government of Prince Max; in the critical days their Executive

issued call after call to the population against revolution; when
they found themselves compelled to press for the abdication of
the Kaiser, they did so, according to Scheidemann (Vorwarts,

December 6, 1922), in the hope to save the monarchy; the

trade union leaders were negotiating a Treaty of Alliance with

130 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the employers, which was actually signed on November 15,
1918.

Nevertheless, the main body of the workers, soldiers and
sailors, who were in fact carrying through the revolution against
the Social Democratic leadership, were at the same time
organised in the Social Democratic Party and under its leader-
ship. This was the fatal contradiction of the November
revolution, which led to its downfall.

As soon as the revolution had triumphed on November 9,
the Social Democratic leaders hastened to the revolutionary
leaders, to Liebknecht and the Independents, to beg to take
part in the leadership of the victorious revolution and form a
joint government. It was at this point, already on the morning |
of November 9, that Centrism, in the shape of the Independent |
or Left Social Democratic leaders, took the disastrous step
which sealed the fate of the revolution. Liebknecht correctly |
rejected such a coalition with the open agents of the bourgeoisie,
which could only serve to restore their prestige and enable them |
to strangle the revolution. Had the Independents followed the
lead of Liebknecht, and stood firm in a revolutionary bloc,
excluding the social imperialists, at the head of the triumphant
revolution (the Spartacists and Independents controlled the
majority of the Berlin Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council), it is
doubtful whether the discredited Social Democratic leadership,
hopelessly identified with the overthrown old regime, could have
prevented the victory of the revolution.

But the Independents in the name of “unity” chose the
alternative course. They allied themselves with the Social
Democratic enemies of the revolution in an equal coalition
government. In this way, where all other channels had failed,
bourgeois influence was re-established at the heart of the new
order. (Within less than two months the Independents found
themselves compelled to withdraw from the coalition govern-
ment; but the work had been done; the bourgeois-militarist
regime had been re-established under the protecting shell of
Social Democracy.)

A Council of People’s Commissars, responsible to the |
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, was appointed, consisting of
three majority Social Democrats, and three Independents. |
The forms which had thus to be adopted revealed how com-
pletely the pressure and demand of the masses in the moment |

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION 131

of revolution was towards the Soviet Republic. But the leaders
of the new formally soviet order were its sworn enemies whose
only thought was to overthrow it.

If the November revolution were to maintain itself, it is
obvious that its first task was to destroy the bases of power of the
old regime, which was momentarily defeated, but still fully in
being: to replace at all strategic points the old reactionary
bureaucracy, military caste and magistracy; to break up the
landed estates; to take over the banks and large enterprises; to
build up the workers’ armed guards for the defence of the
revolution. Had this been done, when there was full power to
do it, Fascism could never have raised its head in Germany.

But the Social Democratic Government did the opposite.
At every point it confirmed and protected the old regime; main-
tained the bureaucracy and all reactionary institutions;
appointed bourgeois Ministers for War, the Navy, Foreign
Affairs, Finance and the Interior; ordered the disarming of
the workers; and armed and equipped special counter-revolu-
tionary corps under the most reactionary monarchist officers.
Through these White Guard corps, authorised, financed and
equipped by the Social Democratic Government, the workers’
revolution was drowned in blood; Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg were murdered, the officers who murdered them
going scot free and openly glorying in their crime under the
Social Democratic Government; the resistance of the workers
was steadily suppressed with systematic terror through the end
of 1918 and through 1919.

Thus the 1918 revolution was defeated by Social Democracy.
Only so was the basis for subsequent Fascism laid.

What led the Social Democratic leadership to act in this
fashion, which could in the end only mean the destruction also
of their own positions? By 1920 the Social Democratic
Ministers were already fleeing from Berlin in the night before
the same officers they had themselves armed and equipped, and
only the action of the workers saved them; by 1933, when the
resistance of the workers had been still further broken and
the power of the counter-revolution built up, their organisation
was formally dissolved, and they passed into exile.

Blindness, folly, stupidity is the common answer of those who
still seek to apologise for them, in the face of the terrible sequel
of their acts.

132 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But in fact the Social Democratic leaders acted with full
consciousness of what they were doing, and could not act other-
wise on the basis of their whole line. For their one thought in
1918-19, as their subsequent memoirs have abundantly shown,
was to “save Germany from Bolshevism,” that is, in fact, to
save the capitalist regime—always in the name of “democracy.”
But they could only accomplish this in alliance with the most
reactionary and militarist classes as the sole force to crush the
working class. Therefore they entered into alliance with the
bourgeoisie, with the militarists, with the old General Staff,
with the White Guards—always in the name of “democracy.”
In a revolutionary period the class struggle knows no half-
measures: either the victory of the working class revolution, or
the victory of complete reaction; either Kornilov or Bolshevism;
either Hindenburg or Communism. The class-realities tore
through the “democratic” pretences. Only two courses were
open in post-war Germany: either the victory of the working-
class revolution or the complete victory of reaction. In their
hostility to the former the Social Democratic leadership chose
the latter. They entered into formal alliance with the repre-
sentatives of the old regime.

The direct alliance of Hindenburg and President Ebert, the
leader of Social Democracy, was formally sealed in an exchange
of letters. Hindenburg wrote to President Ebert in December
1918 (the letter was quoted by the son of Ebert in February
1933, in a published appeal to Hindenburg, begging for the
toleration of Social Democracy under Fascism in view of its
past services):

I address you because I have been told that you, too, as a true
German, love the Fatherland above everything, suppressing personal
opinions and desires just as I had to do because of the plight of the
Fatherland. In this spirit I have concluded an alliance with you to
save our people from a threatening collapse.

General Groener, Chief of the German General Staff at the
time of the November Revolution, gave the same evidence in
the course of a libel case at Munich in November 1925, that an
“alliance” was concluded between the old monarchist General
Staff and Social Democracy to defeat Bolshevism. He stated:

On November 10, 1918, I had a telephone conversation with
Ebert, and we concluded an alliance to fight Bolshevism and
Sovietism and restore law and order. -. . .

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION 133

Every day between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. the staff of the High Com-
mand talked to Ebert on a special secret telephone. From Novem-
ber ro our immediate object was to wrest power in Berlin out of the
hands of the Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

Thus the seeds of Fascism and of the victory of the counter-
revolution were planted by Social Democracy. From the
beginning of the revolution continuously, while the workers
were most stringently disarmed and subjected to heavy penalties
if any were found in possession of arms, the illegal, armed
counter-revolutionary corps and formations, which were the
first forms of Fascism, were protected and tolerated by Social
Democracy and by the Entente. “Disarmament” was never
applied to these; the Fascist murder-gangs worked their will
with impunity throughout the so-called “democratic republic,”
as shown conspicuously in their murders of Erzberger and
Rathenau. The tolerance of the Entente for these formations,
in deference to the insistence of German statesmen that they
were essential for the defeat of the revolution, is illustrated in
the diary of the British Ambassador in Berlin, Lord D’Abernon,
who as late as the autumn of 1920, two years after the armistice,
is still recording “long conversations” without result on the
issue.

Berlin, October 22, 1920. A long conversation with Dr. Simons
at the Foreign Office. Regarding Disarmament, Dr. Simons said
that the demands of the Entente for the dismemberment of various
Einwohnerwehr and Orgesch (Fascist) organisations was equivalent
to delivering up the orderly section of the population to their greatest
foes. Without organisation the bourgeois element cannot resist the
Reds, who are a real danger.

In fact, effective disarmament was never carried out. Through
all the varying forms and phases of the Einwohnerwehr, the
Orgesch, the Ehrhardt Brigade and its successors, the Organisa-
tion Consul, the Black Reichswehr, the so-called Labour Corps,
and finally the Stahlhelm and Storm Troops, the counter-
revolutionary formations were maintained under the egis of
Social Democracy and the “democratic republic” right up to
the final triumph of Fascism. But the workers’ attempt at
self-defence, the Red Front, was ruthlessly suppressed by
Social Democracy (by Severing as Minister of the Interior in
1929).

On this basis was built up the Weimar Republic, which lasted

134 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

from 1918 to 1932 on the basis of the coalition of the bourgeoisie
and Social Democracy. Throughout these years Social Democ-
racy was in governmental office: during the greater number of
them in the Federal Government (from 1918 to 1925 under the
presidency of Ebert, and from 1928 to 1930 in the Miller
Cabinet); during all of them in Prussia, through the Braun-
Severing Cabinets, governing the majority of the German popu-
lation; and the principal Police President posts were held by
Social Democrats. Thus Fascism grew to power under the
protection of Social Democracy.

The Weimar Republic was on paper “the freest democracy
in the world.” In reality, it covered the maintenance and
protection of the reactionary institutions of the old regime,
combined with the violent suppression of the workers and con-
stant recourse to martial law and emergency dictatorship
against the workers (the bloody suppressions of 1918-19; the
terror in the Ruhr after the Kapp Putsch in 1920, when the
workers who had defended the republic were sentenced by
military tribunals composed of officers who had taken part in
the revolt; the Horsing terror in Saxony in 1921; the military
overthrow by the Reich of the elected Zeigner Government in
Saxony in 1923; the von Seeckt dictatorship and martial
law throughout Germany; the shooting down of the workers’
May Day demonstrations under Severing in 1929; the emer-
gency dictatorship from 1930 to 1933).

Of this “democratic republic” the leading American bour-
geois journalist, Mowrer, with no revolutionary sympathies,
could only write:

A virgin Republic that appeals to old-time monarchists and gen-
erals to defend it against Communists! Inevitably it falls into the
enemy’s hands. .. .

What can be said for a republic that allows its laws to be inter-
preted by monarchist judges, its government to be administered by
old-time functionaries brought up in fidelity to the old regime; that
watches passively while reactionary school teachers and profes-
sors teach its children to despise the present freedom in favour of a
glorified feudal past, that permits and encourages the revival of the
militarism which was chiefly responsible for the country’s previous
humiliation?

What can be said for democrats who subsidise ex-princes who
attack the regime; who make the exiled ex-Emperor the richest man
in deference to supposed property rights. ... This remarkable

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 135

Republic paid generous pensions to thousands of ex-officers and
civil servants who made no bones of their desire to overthrow it.”
(E. A. Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, pp. 17-19.)

He further notes that in 1914 30 per cent. of the officers’ corps
were of aristocratic lineage; in 1932 21 per cent. were of aris-
tocratic lineage—an indication how little the real regime was
changed under the so-called “democratic republic.”

These were the conditions within which Fascism grew to
power in Germany in the midst of bourgeois democracy.
Fascism was able to utilise the growing discontent, the economic
distress and the widespread anger against the slave treaty of
Versailles and its tribute. But it was only able to utilise these,
and to build a mass following on this basis, because Social
Democracy, the majority leadership of the working class, had
surrendered any leadership on these issues, and had on the
contrary identified itself with capitalism, with Versailles and
the tribute, and with the whole regime of oppression of the
masses. And Fascism was only able to build up its strength on
these issues, and to build up its armed formations, because it
was protected and assisted at every point from above, by the
State machine, by the police and military, by the judicature
and by the big capitalists, right up to its final placing in power.

2. The Growth of National Socialism.

Fascism grew up in Germany, even more than in Italy, under
the guidance and fostering care of the old regime, and, in par-
ticular, of the military authorities. The old General Staff
remained the real centre of the State behind the outer demo-
cratic forms. The early counter-revolutionary formations,
which were the precursors of Fascism, were mainly composed of
officers and ex-officers. Feder, the theoretical founder of
National Socialism, was a Reichswehr instructor. Hitler was
put through an intensive political course by the Army authorities
before being launched as a mass agitator. As he has since
recounted in his autobiography, he first came in contact with
the National Socialist Party (then in its first form as the
“German Labour Party” in 1919) under orders from Army
headquarters. The semi-professional military organisation of
the Storm Troops was organised on lines closely parallel to the
Reichswehr.

But Fascism, to conquer, requires to develop a mass move-

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136 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ment. The early attempts of the counter-revolution, signalised
in the Kapp putsch, based solely on the officers, junkers and
bureaucracy, could only end in failure. The Ludendorff-
Hitler putsch of 1923, although preceded by longer agitation,
also ended in immediate ignominious collapse. The leniency
with which these armed revolts against the State were treated
shows the semi-official protection under which the counter-
revolution was being built up. The Kapp rebels went un-
punished, while workers who had resisted them were subjected
to heavy sentences. Ludendorff went unpunished; Hitler, an
alien who had taken up arms against the State, was given a few
months’ detention and then allowed to continue his agitation.
But the failure of these putsches showed that it was necessary to
build deeper roots of a mass party, alongside military terrorist
organisation. On this task Fascism concentrated its attention
in the succeeding years.

The mass agitation of German National Socialism was built
up on the basis of the Twenty-Five Points Programme originally
adopted in 1920 (see Chapter IX), and was especially developed
under Hitler, and later under Goebbels and Gregor Strasser,
to direct its appeal, not only to the peasantry and urban petit-
bourgeoisie, but to the working masses in the industrial dis-
tricts. Whereas Italian Fascism early dropped any pretence of
connection with “socialism,” German Fascism could only
reach a mass basis by professing to stand for “socialism.”
National Socialist propaganda distinguished itself by its wild
and frenzied character of combined anti-Semitism, anti-
capitalism, and chauvinist denunciation of Versailles and of the
subjection of Germany. Its contradictions, unscrupulousness
and demagogy were far more blatant than in the Italian
example. As Hitler declared in Mein Kampf (in a sentence
subsequently deleted since the twelfth edition in 1932): “The
German has not the slightest notion how a people must be
misled, if the adherence of the masses is to be sought.” Hitler
took as his model the British war-time propaganda, which he
admired as the finest example of the art of demagogic lying.

Fascism can, however, as the Italian example had already
shown, only reach a mass basis after Social Democracy has fully
exposed itself and created widespread mass disillusionment in
the midst of growing economic crisis and gathering revolu-
tionary issues. This is the general background for the growth

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 137

of Fascism. A first wave of advance to such a basis was reached
in the end of 1923 and the beginning of 1924, after the inflation-
ruin of the petit-bourgeoisie and the failure of the proletariat in
the revolutionary situation of 1923; in the elections of May 1924
National Socialism reached a vote of 1.9 millions (against 6
millions for Social Democracy and 3.6 millions for Com-
munism). But the subsequent stabilisation period, and the
widespread promises of Social Democracy of a new era of
“organised capitalism” and “economic democracy,” led to
new hopes in Social Democracy and the dream of the peaceful,
reformist “democratic” path to Socialism. By December
1924, the Nazi vote fell to goo,ooo. Four years later, in the
1928 elections, it had fallen to 800,000 (against 9.1 millions for
Social Democracy and 3.2 millions for Communism). Only
when the world economic crisis and the Briining hunger-regime
had exposed the final bankruptcy of all the promises of Social
Democracy, only then Fascism leapt forward in the headlong
advance which was revealed at the elections of September 1930,
in a vote of 6.4 millions (against 8:5 millions for Social Democ-
racy and 4.5 millions for Communism). This was carried for-
ward in the Presidential elections of April 1932, to 13.4 millions,
and in the elections of July 1932 (the highest point), to 13.7
millions.

What led to this sudden expansion of Fascism in Germany in
1930 to 1932? The world economic crisis, which undermined
the basis of stabilisation and of the Weimar Republic, under-
mined equally the position of Social Democracy which was
closely linked up with these. Capitalism in Germany required
to advance te new methods in face of the crisis. It required to
wipe out the remainder of the social gains of the revolution, in
respect of social legislation, hours and wages, which had con-
stituted the main basis of influence of Social Democracy in the
working class and its stock-in-trade to point to as the fruits of
its policy. In place of the concessions of the early years of the
revolution, capitalism required now to advance to draconian
economic measures against the workers. For this purpose new
forms of intensified dictatorship were necessary. Social Democ-
Tacy was thrust aside from the Federal Government, and the
Briining dictatorship was established in the summer of 1930,
ruling without parliament by emergency decree—but with the
Support of Social Democracy. On this basis the famous Hunger

I 38 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Decrees were carried through. Between 1929 and 1932,
according to official figures, the total wages and salaries paid
by the employers fell from 44.5 billion marks to 25.7 billion
marks; unemployment rose to eight millions; unemployment
benefit was cut to an average of slightly over 9 marks. All this
dictatorship and offensive was carried through with the
support of Social Democracy. These were the conditions that
made possible the rapid growth of Fascism.

Had Social Democracy been prepared to join forces with
Communism in resisting the Briining dictatorship and the
hunger offensive, there is no question that the heavy capitalist
attack need not have weakened the working-class front and
played into the hands of Fascism, but would have on the con-
trary intensified the class struggle and strengthened the working
class front and the widest mass mobilisation on this basis,
leaving no room for Fascism to win a hold. But Social Democ-
racy, rather than join forces with Communism, preferred to
support the Briining dictatorship, to support the Hunger
Decrees, and to help to carry through the attack on the workers,
in the name of the policy of the “lesser evil.” This was the
crucial weakness in the proletarian camp in the decisive years of
the preparation of Fascism. This support of the Briining dicta-
torship by the majority working-class organisation, controlling
the trade unions, disorganised and shattered the proletarian
ranks. It was only through this disorganisation of the proletarian
ranks that the initiative in the critical years 1930-32, and
the main gains from the universal distress, which should
have strengthened the working-class front, passed instead to
Fascism.

The leaders of German capitalism were well aware (as the
revealing ‘Fihrerbriefe”’ or confidential bulletins of the
Federation of German Industry during the period, quoted in
the next chapter, make abundantly clear) that the policy they
were compelled to pursue in the economic crisis, with the attacks
on all sections of the workers, including those who had gained
by the previous social legislation, inevitably meant the weaken-
ing of the basis of Social Democracy, their main support in the
working class, and the strengthening of Communism. The
weakened and discredited Social Democracy could no longer
hold back the growing Communist advance. The Weimar

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 139

Coalition basis was bankrupt. The German capitalists clearly
recognised that it was necessary to advance to a new political
system, and to build up, alongside Social Democracy, a parallel
new system of mass organisation, to defeat the Communist
advance, against which Social Democracy was no longer
adequate, and to disrupt and smash the working class.

In consequence, it was from this period, from the time of
the Briining dictatorship, that the overwhelming support of the
main body of German capitalism and landlordism began to be
placed at the disposal of the hitherto only partially supported
National Socialism, the instrument found ready to their hand.
Unlimited funds, not only from German bourgeois, but also
from foreign bourgeois sources, were poured into the National
Socialist coffers. An overwhelming, all-sided, lavish agitation
without parallel in political history was conducted during these
years; while the terrorist bands received abundant police and
judicial protection to break up working-class agitation, the
hand of the government dictatorship was heavy on all militant
working-class organisation and agitation. The gigantic, artifi-
cial expansion of National Socialism during this period (it had
begun to sink again as rapidly already by the autumn of 1932
was a highly organised product of the entire mechanism of the
capitalist dictatorship. All the politically backward dis-
contented elements of the population, petit-bourgeois, declassed
elements and backward workers, were swept into the National
Socialist net.

The class-conscious workers who became disillusioned with
Social Democracy passed to Communism. The politically
backward elements passed to Fascism. This process is shown
by the successive voting figures. Between 1930 and 1932 Social
Democracy lost 1,338,000 votes, while Communism gained
1,384,000 votes. Thus the Communist gains almost exactly
approximated to, slightly exceeding, the Social Democratic
losses. Thanks to the existence of a strong Communist Party,
the losses from Social Democracy did not pass—as in England,
in the National Government elections of 1931—to abstention
or the class enemy, but to the militant working-class front. The
gigantic Nazi gains were essentially derived from the previous
voters for the old bourgeois parties, who lost many millions of
votes, and from those who had not previously voted at all.

I40 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. The Crucial Question of the United Front.

In spite of all the highly subsidised, and violently supported,
Nazi agitation, the combined working-class forces, if they had
been united, were immeasurably superior to the Fascist forces.
Even in the merely numerical test of the electoral votes, they
were throughout superior, with one exception. If we add
together the Social Democratic and Communist votes as an
indication of the potential combined working-class vote (which
would have at once become immensely higher if there had been
the enormous stimulus of a united fight against the capitalist
dictatorship), this total exceeded the Nazi total on every
occasion, save July 1932. On that occasion it totalled
13,229,000 against 13,732,000 for the Nazis. But already
within four months, by November 1932, it totalled 13,241,000
against 11,729,000 for the Nazis. This, however, is merely in
respect of the electoral counting of heads. In every real social
and political test, in organisation, in homogeneity, in their
social role, in political consciousness and in fighting power, the
working-class forces, if they had been united, were im-
measurably superior to the Nazi electoral miscellany.

The decisive question was thus the question of the united
working-class fight. To this the Communist Party devoted all
its efforts. As the issue grew more and more urgent, the Com-
munist Party issued appeal after appeal for the united working-
class front against Fascism and the capitalist attack, both to
the mass of the workers and specifically to the Social Demo-
cratic Party and to the General Trade Union Federation.

The first nation-wide appeal for the united front was
launched in April 1932, by the Communist Party and the Red
Trade Union Opposition, who called for a combined action of
ali labour organisations against the then impending general
wage offensive. This appeal won a measure of response among
the lower trade union organs and social democratic member-
ship, but was rejected by the Social Democratic and trade
union leadership, who maintained a ban on the united front.

The second appeal for the united front was made on July 20,
1932, after the von Papen dictatorship had expelled the Social
Democratic Government of Prussia. The Communist Party
directly addressed itself to the Executives of the Social Demo-
cratic Party and of the General Trade Union Federation, pro-
posing the joint organisation of a general strike for the repeal of

THE CRUCIAL QUESTION OF THE UNITED FRONT I4I

the emergency decrees and the disbanding of the Storm Troops.
The Social Democratic leadership rejected this appeal for a
united front, branding any call for a general strike as a provoca-
tion, and declaring that the only method to oppose Fascism was
the ballot.

The third appeal for a united front was made on January 30,
1933, after Hitler had been installed as Chancellor. This
appeal won such wide response that, though the Social Demo-
cratic leadership made no official answer, it was compelled to
explain its refusal in its Press and put forward tentatively
alternative suggestions of a “non-aggression pact” (i.e., ab-
stention from verbal criticism), but specifically excluding any
action against Hitler on the grounds that he was legally in
power and should not be opposed.

The fourth appeal for a united front was made on March 1,
1933, after the burning of the Reichstag and the unloosing of
the full Nazi terror. This appea! was left unanswered by the
Social Democratic and trade union leadership, who were
endeavouring to come to an understanding for the toleration of
Social Democracy under Fascism.

Alongside these direct appeals for the united front, the Com-
munist Party endeavoured to the utmost of its power to build
the united front from below with the Social Democratic, trade
union and unorganised workers throughout Germany. This
won a wide measure of response, as shown in increasing mass
demonstrations and partial strikes and actions; but it was
heavily handicapped from reaching effective strength by the
official ban of the Social Democratic and trade union leader-
ship, who excluded all active members and organisations that
took part in the united front.

In the face of this record, it is impossible for any impartial
judge to reach any other verdict than that the united working-
class front, which could alone have defeated Hitler, was ren-
dered impossible solely by the official ban of the Social Demo-
cratic and trade union leadership. This was the decisive con-
dition which made possible the victory of Fascism in Germany.

Social Democracy rejected the united working-class front
because it was pursuing an alternative line, which it declared to
be the correct line for defeating Fascism—the line of unity with
the bourgeoisie and support of the bourgeois State, even under
conditions of dictatorship. This was the so-called line of the

142 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“lesser evil.” What was this conception of the “lesser evil”?
The existing bourgeois dictatorship, even after democratic
forms had been flung aside, even under Hindenburg, Briining,
von Papen or von Schleicher, was declared to be a “lesser
evil” than the victory of Fascism. Therefore it should be sup-
ported, and every blow against the workers accepted passively
without struggle (the same line was subsequently pursued by
Austrian Social Democracy in the support of Dollfuss). But
these forms of dictatorship were only preparing the ground for
complete Fascism, destroying the resistance of the workers step
by step, and, as soon as their work was complete, handing over
the State to Hitler. Thus the line of the “lesser evil” meant
the passive acceptance of every stage of development to com-
plete Fascism. And even when Hitler came to power, his rule,
on the grounds that he was “legally” in power, was proclaimed
a “lesser veil” to an “illegal” Nazi terror, and therefore not to
be opposed. Thus the line ran continuously without a break
to the complete Nazi terror and suppression of all working-class
organisations. In this way the line of Social Democracy ensured
the victory of Fascism in Germany without a struggle.

The first step in this policy was the “toleration” of the
Briining dictatorship since 1930.

The second decisive step was the support of Hindenburg as
President in 1932. Social Democracy urged that the victory
of the reactionary Hindenburg was necessary to defeat Hitler
(as against the Communist warning to the workers that “a
vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler”). As soon as Hin-
denburg was installed as President by the support of Social
Democracy, before a year was out, he placed Hitler in power.

The third decisive step was the passive acceptance in July
1932, of the forcible ejection of the constitutional Social Demo-
cratic Government of Prussia by von Papen.

All over Germany Socialists who read the news of the ignominious
dismissal of Braun and Severing waited for the inevitable answer—
the general strike—and waited in vain.

(Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, p. 7.)

The Social Democratic Ministers, instead, appealed to the
Supreme Court at Leipzig, which indulged in some very delicate
legal discussions as to the legal status of the dismissed Ministers
in relation to the Commissar imposed in their place—until the

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 143

completion of the Fascist dictatorship rendered further discus-
sion unnecessary.

This was in fact the culminating point already in July 1932.
From this point it was clear to the bourgeoisie that the complete
Fascist dictatorship could be put through without resistance
from Social Democracy, which would only exert its powers to
hold in the workers.

4. The Causes of the Victory of Fascism.

Although the effective building of the united working-class
front was thus prevented by the official ban and active opposi-
tion of Social Democracy, there was a growing measure of
partial united front development from below through the
initiative and leadership of Communism. During 1932 a rising
wave of resistance developed among the workers. This showed
itself in the rising strike movement in 1932, led by the Com-
munists, and the overwhelming mass demonstrations against
von Papen, culminating in the Berlin transport strike of
November 1932. The Berlin transport strike was led by the
Red Trade Union Opposition, after an overwhelming majority
vote of the men for a strike (14,000 out of 18,000 voting and
21,000 eligible to vote) had been turned down by the trade
union officials; it was completely effective in stopping all
traffic, and was only broken by wholesale Government violence,
arrests and shootings. At the same time the November elections
reflected the rising wave: the Nazi vote fell by over two mil-
lions, the Social Democratic vote fell by 700,000, while the
Communist vote rose by 700,000 to nearly six millions.

This situation, as revealed both in the Berlin transport strike
and in the elections, opened up the prospect of the effective
leadership of the working class passing rapidly in the near future
to Communism, while the Fascist tide was visibly ebbing.
Urgent measures had to be taken by the bourgeoisie. Von
Papen had to resign on November 17. Long negotiations
followed between Hindenburg and Hitler. It was clear, how-
ever, that, in view of the rising working-class resistance, it
was necessary first to temporise and manceuvre for a short
space. The “social General” von Schleicher was accordingly
installed as Chancellor for a couple of months, during which he
relaxed some of the emergency decrees, especially with regard
to the freedom of the Press and assembly, proclaimed his main

144 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

concern with the “social question,” negotiated for an alliance
with Leipart and the trade union chiefs, who accordingly praised
him highly in their Press, and in general sought to lull the
workers’ resistance. (At the same time, strong police protection
was given to the Nazis, as in their provocative demonstration in
the Biilow Square on January 25, 1933.) Then, when the
ground seemed adequately prepared, Hitler was installed as
Chancellor on January 30.

The ebbing of the Fascist tide in the elections of November
1932, had been universally hailed by Social Democracy as the
end of the Fascist danger. The Social Democratic Press spoke
of “the final annihilation of Hitler.” The leading Second
International organ, the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung wrote: “One
thing is now clear: Germany will not be Fascist.” The British
Labour publicist, Laski, wrote in the Daily Herald:

I think it is a safe prophecy that the Hitlerite movement has passed
its apogee, and that it is unlikely to retain much longer the appear-
ance of solidity it had a few months ago. Hitler or some of his
partisans may enter the von Papen Cabinet; but in that case they
will be rapidly submerged by the forces of the Right... . The day
when they were a vital threat is gone. . . . All that remains of his
movement is a threat he dare not fulfil. . . . He reveals himself as a
myth without permanent foundation.

(H. J. Laski, Hitler: Just a Figurehead, in the Daily Herald,
November 19, 1932.)

Such was the wisdom of Social Democracy on the very eve of
Hitler’s dictatorship. At the same time the Communists were
giving the warning with regard to the election defeats of the
Nazis: “However great the defeat of National Socialism may
have been, it would be criminally foolish to talk of the smashing
up of the mass-movement of Fascism” (Communist International
December 1, 1932).

Once again the Communist diagnosis proved correct, as in
the case of the election of Hindenburg, and on issue after issue
in the whole development to Fascism, and the Social Demo-
cratic diagnosis proved hopelessly incorrect. The electoral
retreat of the Nazis in November, so far from meaning the
annihilation of Fascism, meant the opposite. Just the evidence
of waning mass support hastened the decision of the bour-
geoisie to place Fascism in power, before its stock should have
hopelessly sunk and Communism grown to full strength in the

ee ————

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 145

working class, in order that on the basis of State power Fascism
should be able to rebuild its strength and smash all opposition.*

If the coming to power of Fascism in Italy was already the
opposite of a “revolution,” being entirely carried out under the
guidance and protection of the higher authorities, this was still
more ignominiously the case with the coming to power of
Fascism in Germany. There was no pretence of a “march on
Rome.” There was no question of a parliamentary majority
or combination. There was no question of a conflict with
the existing ruling authorities. So far from Fascism com-
ing to power on the crest of a popular wave, as the myth is
attempted to be created after the event, Fascism was heavily
ebbing in mass support, and its leaders were actually discussing
(according to the expelled Otto Strasser in his Black Front) the
danger of the rapid disintegration of their movement. It was
just because of this menace of decomposition of the last reserves
of defence for bourgeois rule that the bourgeois dictatorship
decided to take the plunge and place Fascism in power as the
final measure. Fascism was placed in power by the grace of a
social-democratically-elected President.

The significance of placing Hitler in power was above all the
amalgamation of the already existing dictatorial State machine,
prepared by Briining and von Papen, and the extra-legal Fascist
fighting forces to create a single unparalleled instrument of

* Interesting confirmation of this analysis of the situation preceding the advent
of Hitler to power is afforded by the American observer, C. B. Hoover, in his
book Germany Enters the Third Reich (1933). Arriving in Germany in the latter
part of 1932, he found the situation following the November elections as follows:

“During this period the writer discussed the political situation with indus-
trialists, editors, bankers, political leaders, university professors, labour leaders,
economists, and others. Almost without exception they insisted that Hitler had
missed his hour. . . . In spite of the fact that the writer had come to Germany

in September 1932, with the fixed belief that Hitler’s coming to power was a

virtual certainty, the fact that nowhere could there be found anyone outside the

National Socialist movement who would even entertain the possibility finally

shook this conviction” (p. 64).

He admits that alone the Communists judged the situation more accurately:

“With the possible exception of the Communists, the opposition parties and
classes had been living in a fool’s paradise. . . . ‘Responsible opinion’ was
unanimous that the process of disintegration in the National Socialist Party was

Progressing at an accelerated pace” (p. 88).

He notes further that just this disintegration of the Nazi movement convinced the
big bourgeoisie of the necessity to take immediate steps to counteract this:

“After the losses of the National Socialists in the Reichstag elections of

November, German ‘Big Business’ decided that the immediate danger was that

the National Socialist Party might disintegrate too rapidly” (p. 83).

146 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

terror for war on the working class. Whereas in Italy the great
part of the work of terror and material destruction was carried
out already before the conquest of power, in Germany this was
not possible to anything approaching a similar degree, owing
to the superior strength of the working class; and the over-
whelming terror and destruction, the unleashing of all the furies
of lawlessness, only took place after the Nazis were safely
ensconced in State power. As the American bourgeois observer,
Calvin Hoover, writes:

It must be emphasised that there was no revolution at all in the
sense of seizure of the State power against resistance from the armed
forces of the State or from any other force. Von Papen had com-
pleted taking over the State without resistance in July 1932, and had
passed the State power on to von Schleicher, who in turn had
handed it over to Hitler. Consequently, the assaults which took
place were against unarmed and unresisting individuals. . . . The
extraordinary skill of Hitler in paralysing the will to resist of his
opponents had, strictly speaking, made all these acts of violence
unnecessary except as a means of satisfying the blood-lust of the
S.S. and S.A. detachments.

(Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, 1933,

pp. 111-2.)

The “extraordinary skill” was not necessary; the “paralysing
the will to resist” was accomplished, not by Fascism, but by
Social Democracy.

The question is often asked why the advent to power of Hitler
and the unleashing of the Nazi terror did not immediately
release a universal movement of resistance of the powerful
German working class. The question reveals a failure to under-
stand the conditions. The control of the majority of the
working class, and in particular of the overwhelming majority
(nearly nine-tenths, according to the factory councils elections)
of the employed industrial workers, and of the entire trade
union machine, lay with Social Democracy. The traditions of
the German working-class movement are, more than in any
country, the traditions of a disciplined movement. The decision
as to the action or otherwise of the German working class in
the face of Hitler lay primarily in the hands of the Social
Democratic and trade union leadership.

But the policy of Social Democracy was to “tolerate” Hitler,
and even (especially in the case of the trade union leadership)

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 147

to seek to reach an accommodation with him. Already in 1932
the Social Democratic leadership were speaking favourably of
the prospect of a Hitler Government. Thus Severing declared
in April 1932: “The Social Democratic Party, no less than the
Catholic Party, is strongly inclined to see Herr Hitler’s Nazis
share the Governmental responsibility.” And the party organ
Vorwaris wrote in the same period: “Apart from constitutional
considerations it is a precept of political sagacity to allow the
Nazis to come to power before they have become a majority.”
Let Hitler come to power; Hitler’s coming to power is inevit-
able; Hitler’s coming to power will be the quickest way to
expose him: this was the fatal line of thought of Social Democ-
racy. Only the Communists were opposing this line and pro-
claiming in the same period (Rote Fahne, April 26, 1932): “We
shall do everything to bar Hitler’s way to Governmental
power.” But the Communists were in the minority.

When Hitler came to power on January 30, the Social
Democratic leadership rejected the Communist appeal for a
united struggle. They declared that Hitler had come to power
“constitutionally” and “legally” (i.e., by the appointment of
Hindenburg from above), and therefore should not be opposed.
The only course was to await the elections on March 5. Mean-
while Hitler armed the Storm Troops and incorporated them
in the State as “auxiliary Police” with special control of the
“policing” of the elections, suppressed the entire Social Demo-
cratic and Communist Press, forbade all working-class meetings
and propaganda, arrested all leading militants, and let loose the
terror, and under these conditions held his “elections.”

Even the conservative Times was compelled to declare that
such conditions, already a fortnight before the burning of the
Reichstag and before the full terror and suppression, “render
the holding of normal elections impossible” (London Times,
February 15, 1933). On the eve of the poll the Daily Herald
wrote (March 4, 1933): “The people of Germany go to the
polls under the shackles of a vile terrorism. . . . The result of
the poll will be no index of the thought of the nation.” The
figures of the polling, which in some districts exceeded the
number of electors, revealed also the falsification of the poll, in
addition to the terror.

Yet after the terror elections the entire Social Democracy
seized eagerly on the plea that Hitler had now a “democratic

148 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

mandate,” and that it would be indefensible to oppose him save
as a “loyal parliamentary opposition.” Stampfer, the former
editor of Vorwarts, wrote in the party bulletin after the elections:

The victory of the Government parties makes it possible to govern
strictly in accordance with the Constitution. .. .

They have only to act as a legal Government, and it will follow
naturally that we shall be a legal opposition; if they choose to use
their majority for measures that remain within the framework of the
Constitution, we shall confine ourselves to the role of fair critics.

Kautsky wrote:

The Dictatorship has the mass of the population behind it.
(Kautsky, What Now? Reflections upon March sth.)
The Diplomatic Correspondent of the Daily Herald, W.N. Ewer,
wrote:

The triumph of Hitler, everyone is saying, is a heavy defeat for
democracy. Yet it is really nothing of the kind. It is a victory of
democracy, or at any rate of demagogy. He (Hitler) has come to
power by the most strictly constitutional means. He is Chancellor
of Germany under the Weimar Constitution, and by virtue of the
Weimar Constitution.

Of course there was a certain amount of intimidation at the
elections. There always is. But it was under the circumstances

curiously small. . . . The figures indeed are proof that the election
was practically free.

(W. N. Ewer, “Why Hitler Triumphed,” Plebs, April 1933.)
The Chairman of the Independent Labour Party, Maxton,
wrote:
The brutalities do not make my statement false that Hitler first
contrived to get a popular mandate for setting up his regime.
(J. Maxton, New Leader, December 29, 1933.)
Thus Social Democracy endeavoured to cover its subser-
viency and bootlicking to Fascism by the transparent devise of
ignoring the terror preceding the election, and thereafter arguing
that the mock “election” conducted under the terror con- |
stituted a “democratic mandate.” The victory of Fascism was,
in the Labour and Social Democratic view, a “victory of
democracy.” There was a “certain amount of intimidation at
the elections,” but “curiously small.” The complete sup-
pression of the Communist and Social Democratic Press; the
arrest of the Communist deputies; the raids on Communist and
Social Democratic buildings; the armed occupation of the Com-

a ee

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 149

munist headquarters; the suppression of all freedom of speech
and meeting; the beating up and imprisonment of thousands of
the most active Communist and Social Democratic workers:
all this is a “curiously small” amount of “intimidation at the
elections.” ‘The election was practically free.” Such is the
Labour Party conception of “democracy,” which throws a
revealing light on their pose as champions of “democracy” or
their claim through it to bar the way to Fascism.

The line of Social Democracy after the elections, in the face
of the full operations of the Fascist dictatorship and terror,
continued this degradation and subserviency to the extreme
point, in the endeavour to win favour with Fascism. The
speech of the leader, Wels, at the opening of the Reichstag on
March 23, was the signal expression of this line of endeavour-
ing to win the favour of Fascism. Wels, as leader of the party,
publicly resigned from the Executive of the Second Inter-
national, in protest at the spreading of “atrocity stories” by
the latter against the Nazis. The trade union leadership pro-
claimed their readiness to co-operate with Fascism, acclaiming
in their Press the Fascist “revolution” as a triumphant “con-
tinuation” of the 1918 revolution, urging that the common
enemy was Communism, and that their “socialism” also was “a
German affair” (Sozial Demokratischer Pressedienst, March 9,
1933). On this basis the trade union central executive officially
called on the workers to participate in Hitler’s May Day.
“The union leaders,” declared the Labour Daily Herald
(April 24, 1933), “have sealed their reconciliation with the new
rulers of Germany.”

Nevertheless this subserviency did not win for the reformist
leadership the hoped for position of a recognised and tolerated
adjunct to Fascism. A large proportion of the workers in the
big enterprises refused to obey their leaders’ instructions and
held off the Nazi May Day demonstration. As soon as it was
thus clear that the hold of the reformist leadership on the
workers was insufficient to serve the purposes of Fascism,
immediately on the next day, on May 2, the Nazis took over
the trade unions, incorporating them into their Labour front,
and threw the leaders into prison, replacing them by Nazi
Officials. ‘The Leiparts and the Grassmanns,” declared Dr.
Ley, the leader of the Nazi Labour front, “may profess their
devotion to Hitler; but they are better in prison.”

:

Igo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The Social Democratic Party trod the same path of
ignominious capitulation, followed by dissolution. On May 17
the entire Social Democratic Party in the Reichstag voted for
the Fascist Government’s resolution, and joined in the unani-
mous acclamation of Hitler. This also did not avail them. The
entire property of the Social Democratic Party was con-
fiscated, and on June 22 the organisation was formally declared
dissolved.

If the attempt of Social Democracy to become an officially
recognised and tolerated adjunct of Fascism thus failed (in
fact, a considerable number of the functionaries, state and
municipal officials, police presidents, trade union organisers,
etc., directly joined the Nazis and continued in their posts, as
also the Reichstag leader, Loebe, and the former Minister
of the Interior, Severing, later declared their support of the
Nazis), this was manifestly not for any lack of trying on the
part of the leadership, but only because Fascism had no con-
fidence in their power to control the workers and no use for any
form of independent working-class organisation, however sub-
servient the leadership. Social Democracy was thus forced by
the bourgeoisie, in spite of all its pleadings, to perform its task
of disruption under the conditions of illegality, under which
conditions it could be of more use to the bourgeoisie in the event
of a rising revolutionary wave in the working class than if it
were openly identified with Fascism.

The opposition to Fascism thus rested throughout with the
Communist Party alone, which was the sole political force in
Germany to maintain the fight against Fascism unbroken
through all the terror. But the Communist Party was not yet
at the moment of the Fascist coup in a strong enough position
to lead the working class in the face of the opposition of the
Social Democratic and trade union machine. The figure of six
million Communist electors is a deceptive measure of the real
fighting strength, because the fighting strength of the working
class depends on the employed industrial workers in large-scale
industry, and just there Communism was weak. In 1930 at
enterprises employing 5,900,000 workers, the reformist trade
unions had 135,689 factory committee members, or 89.9 per
cent. of all factory committee members. The proportion of
Communist influence was thus inadequate to draw the working
class into the struggle. The Communist call for the general

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 151

strike against Hitler remained without effective response; the
majority of the workers remained faithful, to their own heavy
cost and subsequent disillusionment, to Social Democratic
discipline. In this situation for the Communist Party to have
attempted an insurrection as a minority, in isolation from the
majority of the working class, would have been an indefensible
putsch, resulting only in the destruction of the vanguard of the
working class and ensuring Hitler’s power for a generation.
The Communist Party was compelled in consequence to pursue
the difficult course of postponing the decisive struggle, to main-
tain its organisation, to spead an ever-widening network of
agitation and organisation in the midst of conditions of unparal-
leled terror, and in this way to build up the illegal revolu-
tionary movement and the leadership of the working class and
to prepare the final decisive struggle for the overthrow of
Hitler and the victory of the working-class revolution. The
speed, tenacity, heroism and self-sacrifice with which this task
is being accomplished—on a scale unparalleled in working-
class history under conditions of illegality and terror, as testified
even by all bourgeois observers—is the guarantee of future
victory.

The decisive causes of the temporary victory of Fascism in
Germany thus stand out sharply and clearly:

First, the strangling of the 1918 revolution, the destruction of
the power of the working class in the name of “democracy”
and the restoration of the capitalist dictatorship and the pro-
tection of the reactionary institutions of the old regime under
the cover of Weimar “democracy.”

Second, the support of the Briining dictatorship, and of the
successive stages of emergency dictatorship in preparation of
Fascism, by Social Democracy and the trade unions.

Third, the rejection of the united working-class front, and
active ban on the united working-class front, by Social Democ-
racy and the trade unions.

Fourth, the refusal of Social Democracy and the trade union
leadership to resist Hitler on his accession to power or on the
opening of the Nazi terror.

The experience of Germany from 1918 to 1933 is the classic
demonstration before the international working class of how a
working-class revolution can be destroyed and squandered and
brought to the deepest abyss of working-class subjection. It is

1§2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the classic demonstration before the international working class
of where the path of bourgeois “democracy” leads, step by
step to its inexorable conclusion.

History has produced in the two great post-war revolutions,
the Russian Revolution and the German Revolution, the
gigantic demonstration of the two main paths in our epoch and
where they lead. The Russian October Revolution and the
German November Revolution occurred within twelve months
of each other; but they followed divergent paths. The one
followed the path of the proletarian dictatorship, of the Com-
munist International. The other followed the path of bour-
geois “democracy,” of the Second International. The theo-
retical expression of that divergence was contained in the
controversy at the time of Kautsky and Lenin. To-day, a
decade and a half later, we can see where those two paths have
led.

The path of the proletarian dictatorship, of Lenin, of
the Communist International, has led to the ever-greater
strengthening of the workers and the triumphant building of
Socialism.

The path of bourgeois “democracy,” of Kautsky, of the

Second International, has led to the victory of Fascism.

==CHAPTER VII: HOW FASCISM CAME IN AUSTRIA==

Harp on the heels of the victory of Fascism in Germany came
the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship of Dollfuss in
Austria during 1933-4.

The rising of the Austrian workers in February 1934, against
this Fascist dictatorship, opened a new stage in the struggle of
the international working class against Fascism, at the same
time as it finally completed the German experience in exposing
the illusions of “‘democratic socialism.”

The lesson of Austria is even clearer and sharper in many
respects than that of Germany.

1. The Significance of the Austrian Experience.

In the first place, Austria revealed a conflict between two
rival forces of Fascism, the Heimwehr and the Nazis, openly
reflecting the battle for domination of rival imperialist and
Fascist Powers over the living body of the Austrian people.
There could be no more striking demonstration of the real role
of Fascism as the chauvinist predatory policy of particular
groupings of finance-capital, belying all the “national,”
“popular” and “pacific” pretences. The battle of Fascist
Germany and Fascist Italy over the body of Fascist Austria
provides a foretaste of the “majestic peace of World
Fascism.” Both these forces were in fact equally united against
the working class, but sharply in conflict between themselves
for the dominant position. In the initial stage the Clerical-
Fascism of Dollfuss, subordinate to Italian Fascism, has con-
quered; but the further development of events may still bring
a change of combinations and the possible ultimate dominance
of the Nazis and Pan-German Fascism. In this situation the
fatal policy of the working-class organisations under Social
Democratic leadership was to endeavour to support one Fascist
group against the other, Dollfuss against the Nazis, as the
“lesser evil,’? and thus to smooth the way at every stage for
the advance and victory of Fascism.

153

tae tn |

154 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Second, the Fascist dictatorship of Dollfuss grew directly out
of bourgeois democracy under Dollfuss, even more clearly
than the parallel Hindenburg-Hitler process in Germany.
Dollfuss was acclaimed throughout Western Europe as the
“champion of democracy against Fascism” (i.e., against the
German Nazi menace), and on this basis was supported and
tolerated by Social Democracy, at the same time as in fact he
was carrying through the transition to Fascism. Up to the
last, on the very eve of the workers’ rising, Social Democracy
was offering to accept and support an emergency dictatorship
of Dollfuss, the suspension of the parliamentary regime, and
institution of a form of Corporate State, on condition of being
permitted to exist under these conditions—the clearest, most
conscious expression of the line of Social Fascism. The policy
of Social Democracy, of the “lesser evil,”’ here receives its crush-
ing exposure no less heavily than in Germany.

Third, the Austrian working class was the most highly
organised in the capitalist world. In a population of six
millions the paying membership of the Social Democratic
Party numbered six hundred thousand, and the voting strength
one and a half millions, or 70 per cent. of the electorate in
Vienna and 40 per cent. of the electorate in the whole country.
There was no question of a “split” in organisation. The Com-
munist Party, although playing a role of great significance in
the fight (it alone gave the call for the general strike on Feb-
ruary 10, which was forced by the workers on the reformist
leadership on the 11th), and in the actual launching of the fight
(Linz, where the united front of the Communist and Social
Democratic workers had been established in defiance of the
reformist leadership, and the fight was opened against the
express orders of the reformist leadership), was nevertheless
extremely weak in numbers. The attempt to explain the
advance and victory of Fascism by the “split” in the working
class through the existence of Communism is thus exploded once
and for all by the example of Austria. Social Democracy
boasted of its sole complete control of the working class, and
thereby admits its sole responsibility for the outcome. ‘There
was no split in the Austrian Labour Movement; the Com-
munists were merely an insignificant minority. The fact that
so powerful a party should have been completely smashed is
now naturally engaging the attention of Socialists in all

————E——————— —

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AUSTRIAN EXPERIENCE I55

countries” (Otto Bauer on “Tactical Lessons of the Austrian
Catastrophe”). In reality, the Austrian workers were split,
and therefore defeated; but the split was within Social Democ-
racy, between the workers and the leadership, and through the
action of the leadership. The real question of the split in the
working class through the existence of a Social Fascist leader-
ship is thus laid bare beyond the possibility of concealment.
Fourth, Austrian Social Democracy was, despite the small-
ness of the country, in its theoretical role and in the high degree
of organisation and supposed “practical results,” the leading
party and the “model party” of international Social Democ-
racy, and in particular of Left Social Democracy. Where
German Social Democracy or British Labourism was far more
glaring and shameless in its virtual or specific repudiation
of Marxism and acceptance of capitalism, the corruption of the
Austrian Social Democratic leadership was covered under the
subtle sophistries of ‘“Austro-Marxism.” Further, many of the
leaders were obviously “sincere” in their democratic-pacifist
betrayal of the struggle; even though by their policy they did
everything to assist the strengthening of capitalism and the
advance of Fascism, even though by their policy they made the
defeat of the struggle certain, though they failed to prepare it,
to organise it or to lead it, and did everything to prevent it,
nevertheless, when the workers launched it in spite of them,
some of them took part and suffered. This is commonly ac-
counted to the Austrian Social Democratic leadership for virtue
and for rebuttal of the charge of “Social Fascism.” On the con-
trary, just this makes the real role of political treachery of the
whole line of Social Democracy far more clear and unmistakable.
The question of politics is not a simple question of subjective
“sincerity.” Long ago, at the Second Congress of the Com-
munist International, when Serrati endeavoured to defend the
reformist Turati as “sincere,” and argued against the Twenty-
one Conditions on the grounds that it was impossible to produce
a “sincerometer” or test of sincerity, Lenin replied: “We have
no need of such an instrument as a ‘sincerometer’; what we
have is an instrument to test political directions.” And it is
in this sense that the role of Austrian Social Democracy is
revealed with unexampled clearness, with a completeness and
relative absence of complicating factors unequalled elsewhere,
as a role of direct service and assistance to the victory of Fascism.

156 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Fifth, the armed rising of the Austrian workers, both in its
strength and in its weaknesses, has marked out and lit up the
future line of the fight of the international working class against
Fascism. To the experiences and lessons of this struggle, alike
political, strategic and tactical, it will be constantly necessary to
recur in every country in the further development of the struggle
against Fascism.

The Second International endeavours to draw two lessons
from the Austrian events. On the one hand, they endeavour to
exploit the fight of the Austrian workers, launched in the face of
the express warnings and prohibitions of the Social Democratic
leadership, as a vindication of the “honour” of Social Democ-
racy after the German exposure, and a proof that Social Democ-
racy can and does fight. On the other hand, they endeavour
simultaneously to prove that the Austrian outcome has shown
the policy of armed struggle to be impossible and foredoomed to
failure; that against modern artillery nothing can avail, and
that the Austrian rising was only a “heroic gesture,” nothing
more (“No one doubted that the military forces of the Govern-
ment were much stronger than the power of the workers, and
that the workers could not succeed in struggle against the
Government.”’—Bauer).

Thus Social Democracy seeks to prove two opposite con-
clusions. They wish simultaneously to cover their real policy of
surrender with the stolen glory of the rising which they pro-
hibited, and in the next breath to prove the correctness of their
policy of surrender, that struggle is impossible, and that the
victory of Fascism is consequently inevitable.

Both conclusions are false. The Austrian workers fought, not
through the initiative and leadership of Social Democracy, but
against the express instructions of Social Democracy.

The victory of the workers is not impossible. The lesson of
Austria shows the exact opposite, how closely victory was
within reach of the workers, had there been leadership and
organisation, had the full forces of the working class been
brought into play, had there not been division and chaos at
every strategic point of the leadership, and had the struggle
been entered on at the right time, with clear political aims and
with the tactics of the offensive. Victory was only made impos-
sible by the policy of Social Democracy. It can be, and will be,
achieved under revolutionary leadership.

———— =e _~

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION 157

2. The Betrayal of the Central-European Revolution.

As in Germany, so in Austria the issue of the workers’ struggle
cannot be judged solely on the basis of the final stage of the
Fascist coup, of the days of February 1934, but must be seen in
relation to the whole line of development of 1918-1934. Just as
the strangling of the 1918 revolution in Germany by Social
Democracy laid the basis for the ultimate victory of Fascism, so
also in Austria.

The victory of the proletarian revolution in Austria was fully
in the grasp of the workers in 1918-19, and was only prevented
by Social Democracy. This is common ground, and is admitted
by the Social Democratic leaders themselves. Otto Bauer
describes the situation at the end of the war in his book The }
Austrian Revolution of 1918:

There was deep ferment in the barracks of the people’s army. }
The people’s army felt that it was the bearer of the revolution, the
vanguard of the proletariat. .. . The soldiers with arms in hand
hoped for a victory of the proletariat. . . . “Dictatorship of the
proletariat!” “All Power to the Soviets!” was all that could be
heard in the streets.

He continues:

No bourgeois government could have coped with such a task. It if
would have been disarmed by the distrust and contempt of the ‘
masses. It would have been overthrown in a week by a street f
uprising and disarmed by its own soldiers. f
Only the Social Democrats could have safely handled such an \
unprecedentedly difficult situation, because they enjoyed the con-
fidence of the working masses. ... Only the Social Democrats
could have stopped peacefully the stormy demonstrations by negotia- |
tion and persuasion. Only the Social Democrats could have guided
the people’s army and curbed the revolutionary adventures of the
working masses. . . . The profound shake-up of the bourgeois social tH
order was expressed in that a bourgeois government, a government 1
without the participation in it of the Social Democrats, had simply |
become unthinkable.

The role of Austrian Social Democracy was thus in fact exactly
parallel to that of the German. The power of the workers’ |
revolution was deliberately destroyed by Social Democracy in
the name of bourgeois “democracy.” The bourgeois order y
was only saved by the Coalition Government from 1918 to 1920
of Austrian Social Democracy and the bourgeois parties, with lt

158 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Bauer as Foreign Minister and Deutsch as Minister for War.
This is the background which lies behind the victory of Fas-
cism.*

Austrian Social Democracy argued at the time in defence of
its policy that, although the proletarian revolution was cer-
tainly and easily possible in Austria in 1918-19, it could not
hope to maintain itself in so small, dependent and isolated a
state, in the face of the forces of imperialism. Yet in fact the
Soviet Republic was achieved in Hungary and Bavaria; the
drive was strong throughout Germany and Italy. Had Soviet
Austria stood in with Soviet Hungary and Bavaria, an un-
shakable power could have been built up in Central Europe;
the whole history of post-war Europe would have been different.
Instead, Austrian Social Democracy abandoned Soviet Hun-
gary to its fate, and then, when the White Terror raged in Hun-
gary, pointed to it to prove the fate from which it claimed to
have saved the Austrian workers. To-day the event has proved
that the Austrian workers were not saved from White Terror;
they were only robbed of the possibility of victory when it was
in their grasp.

But at the time Austrian Social Democracy held out before
the workers, not the real alternative which events were to
demonstrate, but an imaginary golden alternative of peaceful

* The British Labour spokesman, Laski, writes of the role of Otto Bauer in his
“Salute to Vienna’s Martyrs” (Daily Herald, February 17, 1934):

“Austrians themselves acknowledge that without his influence there would
have been civil war in Vienna when the peace of 1919 came. That there was
half a generation of peace in this troubled country Austria owes to him more
than to any man.

“The privileged class has rewarded him not only by bombarding his accom-
plishment to pieces, but by making certain in the years that lie ahead the bloody
revolution he strove with all his great powers to avert.”

The “ingratitude” of the bourgeoisie to Social Democracy for having saved it is
the only lesson that the Labour publicist is able to draw even after this demon-
stration of the iron logic of the class struggle. That the first events, the refusal and
active preventing of the path of the proletarian revolution and of civil war, when
it could have been achieved with the greatest success and the minimum of
suffering, is the cause of the second, the subsequent crushing, after capitalism has
recovered its strength and prepared its armed forces, of the workers in blood, he
is unable to see. He admits that the path of “bloody revolution” now becomes
inevitable—after fifteen years of suffering, after the maximum strengthening of the
class enemy, and therefore now involving far heavier sacrifice and bloodshed, that
the so-called ‘‘peaceful” path is thus proved to involve in the end, not the avoid-
ance of bloodshed, but the maximum of bloodshed. But he refuses to recognise the
plain conclusion that the whole Labour and Social Democratic theory is thereby
exploded.

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION 159

advance to socialism through “democracy.” Bauer wrote in
his Bolshevism or Social Democracy? (1921):

In a modern highly-civilised society, where all classes take part
in public life, no other form of class-rule is any longer durably pos-
sible save one which permits the subject classes freedom to influence
“public opinion,” participation in the formation of the collective
will of the State, and control over its working: a class-rule, therefore,
whose basis rests on the social factors of influence of the ruling class,
and not on the use of mechanical instruments of force” (p. 116).
Such was the bourgeois-liberal wisdom of “Austro-Marxism,”
now mercilessly exposed by the event, when Bauer and Deutsch
have themselves had the opportunity to make the acquaintance
at first hand of the “mechanical instruments of force” of the
ruling class.

In this way, while the Austrian workers suffered and went
short under the “democratic republic,” the magnificent apart-
ment buildings erected in Vienna for a portion of their numbers
became the “symbol” of reformist “achievement,” of the sup-
posed “alternative” to Bolshevism—in reality, of the tem-
porary buying off of the workers’ revolt, while the bourgeoisie
was not yet strong enough to defeat them, preliminary to
smashing them. The Second International Manifesto on the
Austrian events declares:

The fate of the wonderful municipal houses of Vienna is a symbol.

The constructive work of the Socialists created them; the guns of
Fascism have reduced them to smoking ruins.
The “symbol” goes very much further than the Second Inter-
national appears to realise. It was not only the apartment
buildings that were struck by the guns; it was the illusions of
reformism, of the “alternative” path to Bolshevism.

The Russian journalist, Ilya Ehrenburg,* has related how in
1928 he visited these municipal buildings in all their glory, con-
ducted by a proud representative of Social Democracy. He
admired these buildings, their planning, their construction,
their beauty, their organisation, even though he could not fail to
see alongside the playing fountain in the beautiful garden an
unemployed worker, weak with hunger. But he asked his
guide: “You have indeed constructed wonderful houses. .. .
But have you not the feeling that these houses are built on the
land of another? Has not the example of our country taught
that the worker must pay with his blood for every foot of ground

* A Soviet Writer Looks at Vienna, London, 1934-

160 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

that he conquers? We had to destroy much—to destroy in
order after victory to construct. You have begun, not with the
machine-gun, but with the compass and the rule. With what
will you end?” His companion smiled and replied: ‘We shall
end with the pacific victory of socialism. Do not forget that
at the last elections seventy per cent. of the population of Vienna
voted for us. That was in 1928. In February 1934, Ilya
Ehrenburg revisited these buildings. He saw the battered walls,
the gaping holes, the débris under which people said corpses
still lay, the trembling, cowering women and children, hunger
and misery, and the flags of the Heimwehr fiying from the
towers. He had witnessed the “pacific victory” of socialism.

Out of the conditions of bourgeois democracy, in Austria as
everywhere, Fascism was bred. The bourgeoisie, under the
protecting egis of Social Democracy, under cover of the mag-
nificent apartment buildings, built up its strength anew and
prepared its armed forces for the struggle.

But Fascism was not bornina night. It took fifteen years for
it to grow to full strength. The workers, seeing what was afoot,
insisted on the organisation of their Defence Corps. The leaders
promised that if democracy should once be threatened, they
would act; they developed their famous “defensive theory of
violence,” that violence should only be used by the workers
in defence of democracy. Meanwhile they took no action.
Fascism grew unchallenged.

In 1927 the anger of the workers at the growth of Fascism and
open connivance of the State authorities broke all bounds.
Following the acquittal of a Fascist who had murdered a worker,
they rose and stormed the lawcourts of Vienna; Vienna was in
their hands, if their leaders had been ready to lead. But their
leadership, in control of the municipal administration of
Vienna, sided with the bourgeoisie, with the police, with the
State authorities, and thus in fact with Fascism, against the
workers. The workers’ rising was crushed in blood, with the
connivance of Social Democracy.

Dr. Deutsch, the commander of the Republican Defence Corps,
has reminded the world that at the time of the Vienna disorders of
1927, when an excited mob burned down the Palace of Justice, not
one military weapon of the many thousands at their command was
issued to the Republican Defence Corps. There are photographs on
record showing that Burgermeister Seitz and other Socialist leaders

ee ———k———— ee

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION I61

at the risk of their own lives went out into the midst of the angry
mob to calm them. Ninety-five men and women were killed by
police bullets on that occasion, and only five police—figures which
speak for themselves. Why did not these bloodthirsty revolutionaries
seize their opportunity, when the Heimwehr were in their infancy,
the army largely socialist, democracy unchallenged in Europe, and
the Clerical Party comparatively weak? . . . It is that the Austrian 4
Social Democratic Party has established by its whole history the
right to the description of democratic and pacific” ( New Statesman
and Nation, February 24, 1934). "i
Thus the approval of the bourgeois-liberal journal. The
working class will take a different view of 1927, when Austrian
Fascism could have been wiped out in its infancy. The cost of
this bourgeois-liberal approval for the “democratic” “pacific” }
Social Democratic leadership has been the sacrifice of the lives
of the best of the Austrian workers, the suppression of the
organised working-class movement and the victory of Fascism.

Meanwhile Austrian Social Democracy held out to the
workers the illusory prospect of the defeat of Fascism by
“democracy.” After the 1930 elections had returned the Social
Democratic Party as the largest party, with 72 representatives,
against only 8 representatives for the Heimwehr, the party
leadership triumphantly reported:

Democracy has inflicted a crushing defeat on the Heimwehr and
its promoters. . . . The Heimwehr movement, which until recently
believed itself to be on the eve of the final victory, is in a state of
rapid decline. . . . The purely political problems have ended with
the complete victory of the working class.

(Report of the Austrian Social Democratic Party to the

Vienna Congress of the Second International, July 1931.)
Such was the degree of prevision of the Social Democratic
leadership, reposing peacefully in the supposed security of
paper ballots, while paralysing the real struggle of the workers.
The illusions of the Italian reformist leadership, after the success
of the elections of May 1921, as having “submerged the ; |
Fascist reaction under an avalanche of Red votes,” or of the
German reformist leadership after the elections of November
1932, as marking the “final annihilation of Hitler,” were thus it
exactly paralleled in Austria. In reality Fascism was pre-
paring its final coup, when the issue would depend, not on
paper ballots, but solely on the mass struggle and the organisa-
tion of class force.

162 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. The Fascist Dictatorship and the February Rising.

It was only as the sequel of the whole above chain of develop-
ment that came the culminating stage since March 7, 1933,
when Dollfuss finally threw aside the mask and proclaimed
open dictatorship and the suspension of parliament.

Now, if ever, was the time to act even for the “democrats.”
Now was the time for the famous “defensive theory of violence”
to demonstrate its meaning in practice. But the Social Demo-
cratic leadership still found reasons to put off action. Social
Democracy was engaged in the policy of the “toleration” of
Dollfuss as the “lesser evil” against German Nazism, and was
seeking to negotiate an agreement with Dollfuss.

The Social Democratic Party did not reply with forcible resistance.
On the contrary, right down to the last it made every effort to enter
into negotiations with the Dollfuss Government. . . . This peace-
ful and waiting attitude of the Social Democratic Party only
encouraged the Dollfuss-Fey Government to adopt more and more
antagonistic measures against the working class and against the
Social Democratic Party.

(“International Information,” bulletin of the Second
International, February 18, 1934.)

Why, after all the loudly repeated declarations over many
years concerning the action that would be taken “if”? democ-
racy were once attacked, was no action taken when on March 7,
1933, Dollfuss carried through his coup d’etat and suspended
democratic institutions?

Basically, because all these typical Social Democratic
asseverations of future action “if” democracy is attacked, “if”
the bourgeoisie attempt, etc., are inherently and inevitably
valueless, and worse than valueless, when the present policy is
the policy of class-co-operation. The present policy determines
the future action. It is not possible, even if there were the will
(and in fact there was not the will) at a moment’s notice to trans-
form a deeply enroutined machine and large-scale organisation
of class-co-operation, pacifism and legalism within twenty-four
hours into an organ of class struggle and revolution. Only
when the united front of struggle has been effectively estab-
lished in the preceding period, when the leadership and training
and practice and organisation of struggle and militancy on all
issues has been already established, only then can there be
readiness when the Fascist coup strikes. Otherwise inevitably,

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 163

whatever the previous promises and threats and boasts, when
the time comes, there will be enormous hesitation, sense of over-
whelming “difficulties,” yearnings for a “peaceful” settle-
ment, prudent counsels to postpone the struggle, to save what
can be saved of the organisation and not hazard all upon a
single battle, desperate efforts for some “way out” without a
struggle, hopes against hopes that it is not yet the final issue.

This is what happened to Austrian Social Democracy.
Bauer writes of March 7, 1933, and the following eleven
months:

What was to be done now? The Social Democrats knew very well
that it would be very difficult for a general strike to succeed in a
period of unprecedentedly severe and prolonged unemployment.
The Social Democrats made every imaginable effort to avert a
violent issue. Over a period of eleven months we tried again and
again to establish negotiations with Dollfuss. . . . Again and again
we offered to agree to extensive constitutional reforms and to the
granting of extraordinary powers to the Government for a period of
two years, all that we asked in return being the most elementary
legal freedom of action for the Party and the trade unions. . .

We over-estimated the possibility of reaching a peaceful settle-
ment.

(Bauer, “Tactical Lessons of the Austrian Catastrophe,”
International Information, March 8, 1934.)

Thus “democracy” went by the board. Just as German
Social Democracy supported the Briining emergency dictator-
ship, and sought to come to terms with the Hitler dictatorship,
so Austrian Social Democracy was fully prepared to support
a Dollfuss emergency dictatorship, in return for a permitted
existence of its organisation under the dictatorship (while the
Communist Party was suppressed). Such was the humiliation
of ‘“Austro-Marxism’—a humiliation which did not even
attain its object.

The Social Democratic leadership at the party conference in
October 1933, had laid down four conditions in the event of
any one of which to launch the struggle against the Fascist
dictatorship: (x) if a Fascist constitution were proclaimed
without consulting parliament; (2) if the Vienna municipal
administration were superseded; (3) if the Party were sup-
pressed; (4) if the trade unions were suppressed. In fact this
widely advertised strategy of the four conditions never came

164 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

into operation in practice to launch the struggle. The
Fascist dictatorship was steadily engaged in consolidating its
position, in disarming the workers, in arresting the local
leaders, in arming its forces, and in sapping the workers’
positions in detail, until at last the workers found themselves
compelled to resist if they were not to be already completely
wiped out before the four conditions came into operation.
Thus the four conditions were not a method to prepare the
struggle, but in reality a mechanism to paralyse the struggle.

What was the consequence of this whole line of successive
surrender and protracted attempts at negotiation? Did it
succeed even in “averting a violent issue’? On the contrary.
It only ensured that that violent issue should develop under the
conditions most favourable to Fascism and most unfavourable
to the proletariat. Fascism was able to strengthen and prepare
its forces, while the workers were weakened. Bauer continues,
in the statement already quoted:

But during the eleven months that we were trying to secure a
peaceful dénouement, the military strength of the Government
considerably increased, the Heimwehr was supplied with arms, and
on the other hand, large sections of the working class—especially the
railwaymen—were discouraged, crushed and robbed of their fighting
spirit by the oppressive tactics of the Government.

He is accordingly compelled to make the significant admission
(italics added) :

If we had launched our attack at an earlier stage, our action would
have been on a greater and more universal scale, and the prospects of
victory would have been brighter.

Consequently, if we did make a mistake, our mistake consisted in
unduly prolonging our efforts for a peaceful settlement and in unduly
postponing the decisive struggle. There is no need for us to feel
ashamed of this mistake! We made it because we wanted to spare
the country and the working class the disaster of a bloody civil war.”

Similarly in his pamphlet “Der Aufstand der Oesterreichis-
chen Arbeiter,” published in English under the title “Austrian
Democracy Under Fire,’ Bauer writes of the critical days of
March, 1933:

The masses of the workers were awaiting the signal for battle.
The railwaymen were not yet so crushed as they were eleven months
later. The Government’s military organisation was far weaker than
in February 1934. At that time we might have won. But we shrank

———— -——™

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 165

dismayed from the battle. We still believed that we should be able to
teach a peaceful settlement by negotiation. Dollfuss had promised
to negotiate with us at an early date—by the end of March or the
beginning of April—concerning a reform of the Constitution and of
the Parliamentary agenda, and we were still fools enough to trust a
promise of Dollfuss. We postponed the fight, because we wanted to
spare the country the disaster of a bloody civil war. The civil war,
nevertheless, broke out eleven months later, but under conditions that
were considerably less favourable to ourselves. It was a mistake—
the most fatal of all our mistakes.

Did they “spare the working class a bloody civil war”?
No; they only ensured its defeat. He admits that “the pros-
pects of victory would have been brighter,” “we might have
won,” if they had only acted in March 1933, just as 1927
would have been more favourable than 1933, and 1918-19
than 1927. The “pacific” policy did not avert civil war in
the end: it only made the conditions the most unfavourable
for the working class and ensured the heaviest defeat in place
of victory. “Austro-Marxism” stands condemned out of its
own mouth.

The waiting policy meant that Fascism was step by step able
to prepare its positions. The Defence Corps was declared
illegal. The Communist Party was declared illegal. The
Heimwehr was strengthened and fully equipped with arms.
Arms of the workers were searched for and seized wherever they
could be found. Local leaders were arrested. At strategic
points, particularly among the railwaymen, militants were
removed and “patriotic” agents installed. All this, of decisive
importance for the future struggle, went forward without
resistance. The workers pressed more and more for resistance,
but the Social Democratic leadership held them back, thus
performing its indispensable service to Fascism. The “First
Report” of “a Leader of the Austrian Social Democratic
Party,” published in the Second International bulletin on Feb-
ruary 18, 1934, declares:

The embitterment of the working class regarding the Govern-
ment’s policy continually increased. .. . The embitterment of the
workers was directed more and more against the policy of the Party
Executive, which was to wait and be prepared for agreement.
Growing numbers of members of the Party demanded with increas-
ing force that the offensive should be taken. . . . For months past
it has been increasingly difficult for the Party Executive to make the

166 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

embittered workers understand the necessity for this waiting
policy.

Here is seen the real split in the Austrian working class—
between the workers (the united front between the Social
Democratic and Communist workers was growing in the
localities ) and the Social Fascist leadership.

When the final struggle at last broke out on February 11,
1934, it broke out én spite of and against the orders of the Social
Democratic leadership. The official “Report” already quoted
makes this clear:

During the last week there were growing signs that the Govern-
ment was preparing for the decisive blow. . . . These events caused
the workers to take the following view: ‘“. . . In this situation we
can no longer allow ourselves to be disorganised by the arrests of
Schutzbund leaders and by the confiscation of stores of arms, unless
we are to confront a Fascist coup d’etat defenceless and unable to
fight within a very few days.”

In spite of this the Party Executive still adhered to its line. It
considered it to be necessary for the workers to wait for the results of
the negotiations between the Federal Chancellor and the Provincial
Governments with regard to the demands of the Heimwehr, and that
they should not take the offensive until one of the four cases should
arise in which a defensive struggle for the defence of the Con-
stitutional order would according to the decision of the Party be
unavoidable. On Sunday (February 10) officers of the Party Execu-
tive gave instructions on these lines to comrades who reported on the
agitation among the workers, and urgently warned them against
taking the initiative on their own account.

But the agitation among the masses had reachéd such a pitch that
these warnings from the Party Executive were not heeded.

Thus the honour of the Austrian rising rests wholly with the
workers, and not with the Social Democratic leadership. The
role of the leadership was only to disorganise the struggle at
every stage.

The struggle of the Austrian workers was not defeated by the
superior forces of the enemy. It was defeated by the dis-
organising role of the Social Democratic leadership. This was
clear in all the events leading up to the struggle. It was no less
clear in the actual struggle.

Instead of being able to enter the struggle with the full
strength of their organised force on a strategic plan, with the
maximum mobilisation of the masses, and with a clear political

Dee

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 167

lead the workers had to enter the struggle by local initiative
from below, sporadically, partially, against hampering opposi-
tion from above, losing the possibility of the initiative, losing
the possibility of the offensive, and thus yielding all the strategic
advantage to the enemy.

Many people believe that the Socialists would have won control
in Austria if all sections of the working class had supported them.

In many places the workers were split among themselves and
reached decisions too late.

Several leading trade unions refused to give instructions to strike
to the factories they controlled. (Daily Herald, February 16, 1934.)

The general strike was first vetoed, and, even when the
workers compelled the call to be given, after the struggle had
already begun, the call never reached the majority of the
workers, and a great part of the trade union machine made no
attempt to make it effective. The railwaymen continued to
carry the Government troops, thus giving to them full liberty
of movement and concentration. The struggle of the Defence
Corps was fatally cut off from the masses, instead of being
developed as a mass struggle, and even the majority of the
Defence Corps were never mobilised or brought into the
struggle. There was no political mass lead to positive aims
of the struggle, but only halting apologetic explanations of
“defence of the Constitution.” Because the initiative was lost
through disorganisation, through the absence of any central
leadership beginning and organising the struggle, the possibility
of the offensive and of seizing the main public buildings of the
centre at the outset was lost; the Government was able to com-
plete its cordon of the inner city and artillery preparations
before the struggle began; the fight was turned from the first
into a defensive fight.

Yet even under all these heaviest disadvantages a position
was achieved by the second day in which the Government
forces weakened and the issue was in doubt:

On the Government side the troops are reported to be exhausted
and disheartened. According to the Vienna correspondent of the
Berliner Tageblatt, sections of the Fifth Infantry Regiment have
deserted to the Socialists. Deprived of a bully’s “walkover,” the
Fascist Heimwehr showed they had little stomach for a real fight.
Many have flung down their arms, and the rest may be withdrawn
to barracks (Daily Herald, February 14, 1934).

168 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Bauer himself is compelled to admit that, despite all the
Government’s artillery, the victory could have been won by
the working class, had the struggle been developed as a mass
struggle:

After four days’ fighting the workers of Vienna were defeated.
Was this result inevitable? Could they conceivably have won?
After the experience of those four days we can say, that if the rail-
ways had stopped running, if the general strike had spread through-
out the country, if the Schutzbund had carried with it the great
mass of the workers throughout the country, the Government could
hardly have succeeded in suppressing the rising.

(Otto Bauer: Austrian Democracy Under Fire, p. 34.)

The closer the analysis of the tactical conditions and organisa-
tion of the struggle, no less than of the conditions leading up to
the struggle, the clearer stands out the conclusion that the
Austrian rising, the first great battle of the workers against
Fascism, has not shown the impossibility of the victory of the
workers in armed struggle under modern conditions, as the
Social Democratic leaders in all countries now endeavour to
argue. On the contrary, it has shown the certainty of future
victory, once the united front is built up, once revolutionary
leadership has replaced Social Democratic treachery, once the
poison of pacifist-democratic reformism has been replaced by
the revolutionary aims, tactics and organisation of the working-
class fight.

==CHAPTER VIII: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM==

Tr is evident from the previous survey of the historical develop-
ment of Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria that the role of
Social Democracy is of decisive importance in the development
to Fascism. The understanding of these two closely-related
phenomena of the post-war period, of modern Social Democracy
and of Fascism, is of key importance for the whole under-
standing of post-war capitalist politics. The whole question,
however, is ringed round with controversy, and requires very
careful further analysis, if the real issues of Fascism, and the
conditions of the growth of Fascism are to be understood.

It should be explained that the term “Social Democracy”
is here used only to cover the post-war phenomenon, the post-
1914 Social Democratic Parties which subsequently united to
form the post-war Second International or “Labour and
Socialist International.”” It should further be noticed that
the policy of Social Democracy is here used only to
denote the policy of collaboration with capitalism as preached
and practised by the post-war Second International. Al-
though the tendencies of opportunist parliamentary corrup-
tion and absorption into the capitalist State was already strong
and growing before the war throughout the imperialist epoch,
even while the nominal programme of international revolution-
ary Marxism remained, and were increasingly fought by the
revolutionary wing within these parties since the beginning of
the twentieth century, it was only the decisive test of the im-
perialist war in 1914 that brought these tendencies to their full
working out and openly revealed these parties as having passed
over to capitalism. The direct passing over in this way since
1914 of large organisations of the working-class movement in
all the imperialist countries, and especially of the parliamentary
and trade union leadership, to open unity with capitalism and
with the capitalist State, is a big historical fact; and the subse-
quent evolution of these parties since the war has played a
large role, in the early years in the defeating of the working-
class revolution, and in the subsequent years in the growth of

Fascism.
169

r70 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

This latter role was already showing itself in very marked
preliminary forms in those secondary states where White
dictatorships were established, in Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria
etc. In the period of the reconstruction and partial stabilisation
of capitalism with the aid of Social Democracy, and still more
since the development of the world economic crisis and the
shattering of the basis of capitalist reconstruction, this character
has become increasingly marked throughout Social Democracy.
A process of “fascisation” in a whole variety of forms and
stages, as well as of playing directly into the hands of Fascism,
can be traced.

Nevertheless, although many disillusioned Social Democrats,
especially after the glaring example of Germany and the con-
sequent crisis throughout the Second International, are in-
creasingly coming to recognise the role Social Democracy has
in practice played in the development of Fascism, yet the
Communist analysis of “Social Fascism” as the more and more
dominant character of Social Democracy in the process of lead-
ing up to the victory of Fascism in Germany, has often aroused

indignant resentment and much misunderstanding.
It is therefore necessary to examine more fully the relation-
ship of Social Democracy and Fascism.

1. The Capitalist View of Social Democracy and Fascism,

It will be most useful to begin the examination of this question
with a consideration of the view of modern finance-capital on
the roles of Social Democracy and Fascism.

The view of finance-capital is to be found expressed with
exemplary clearness in the Deutsche Fiuhrerbriefe already re-
ferred to, or confidential bulletin of the Federation of German
Industry during the critical year 1932. These “Fuhrerbriefe”
or “Letters to Leaders” ccnstitute a “political-economic pri-
vate correspondence,” originally issued for confidential circu-
lation to the heads of finance-capital, organised in the Federation
of German Industry. Nos. 72 and 75 of September 16 and 20,
1932, contained a study of “The Social Reconsolidation of
Capitalism,” which is a revealing expression of the outlook
of the dominant financial groups.

The writer sets out from the basic viewpoint that the main-

J Le

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM I7I

tenance of capitalist rule depends on the splitting of the working
class:

The necessary condition for any social reconsolidation of bour-
geois rule possible in Germany after the war is the splitting of the
workers’ movement. Any united workers’ movement springing up
from below must be revolutionary, and this rule would not be able
to hold out against it for long, not even with the means of military
power.

The main danger is thus the united working-class front: against
this even military force could not long prevail. Capitalism
accordingly requires a social basis outside its own ranks and
splitting the working class. This has been provided in the post-
war period by Social Democracy.

The problem of consolidating the bourgeois regime in post-war
Germany is generally determined by the fact that the leading bour-
geoisie, who have control of the national economy, have become too
small in order to uphold their rule alone. They require for this rule,
if they do not wish to rely on the extremely dangerous weapon of
purely military force, an alliance with strata which do not belong
to them socially, but which render them the indispensable service of
anchoring their rule in the people, and thereby being the actual and
final bearers of this rule. This last or “outermost bearer” of bour-
geois rule was, in the first period of post-war consolidation, Social
Democracy.

So far the analysis is simple. Social Democracy had pro-
vided the basis for the maintenance of capitalist rule and split-
ting the working class. But what has made it possible for Social
Democracy to split the working class? What is the social basis
of Social Democracy? Here the analysis of the spokesman of
finance-capital comes very close to Lenin’s analysis of the causes
of the split in the working class in imperialist countries. The
writer finds the basis of Social Democracy, and of its splitting
of the working class, in the privileged conditions, based on social
legislation and concessions, of a favoured, organised section of i
the working class:
In the first reconstruction era of the bourgeois post-war regime,
in the era from 1923-4 to 1929-30, the split in the working class was
founded on the achievements in regard to wages and social policy {
into which Social Democracy capitalised the revolutionary upsurge. ,
Thanks to its social character as being originally a workers’ party, |
Social Democracy brought into the system of reconstruction at that |
|

172 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

time, in addition to its purely political force, something more
valuable and enduring, namely the organised working class, and
while paralysing their revolutionary energy chained them fast to the
bourgeois State.

It is true that November socialism was also an ideological mass
flood and movement, but it was not only that, for behind it there
stood the power of the organised working class, the social power of
the trade unions. This flood could ebb, but the trade unions
remained, and with them, or more correctly stated, thanks to them,
the Social Democratic Party remained.

On this basis the main body of the organised working class
was “chained fast to the bourgeois State” through Social
Democracy and the trade unions, while Communism was kept
outside as by a “sluice mechanism”’:

These (the achievements in regard to wages and social policy)
functioned as a sort of sluice mechanism through which, in a falling
labour market, the employed and firmly organised part of the
working class enjoyed a graduated, but nevertheless considerable
advantage compared with the unemployed and fluctuating mass of
the lower categories, and were relatively protected against the full
effects of unemployment and the general critical situation on their
standard of living.

The political frontier between Social Democracy and Communism
runs almost exactly along the social and economic line of this sluice-
dam; and all the efforts of Communism, which, however, have so far
been in vain, are directed towards forcing a breach into this pro-
tected sphere of the trade unions.

This system worked well enough until the world economic
crisis began to destroy the basis of stabilisation. The economic
crisis compelled capitalism to wipe out the “achievements” of
wages and social policy, and thereby to undermine the basis of
Social Democracy. But this raised the danger of the working-
class forces passing to Communism. Therefore it was necessary
to find a new instrument for splitting the workers—National
Socialism:

The process of the transition which we are undergoing at present,
because the economic crisis necessarily destroys these achievements,
passes through the stage of acute danger that, with the disappearance
of these achievements, the mechanism of disrupting the working
class which is based upon these achievements will cease to operate,
with the result that the working class will begin to turn in the direc-
tion of Communism and the bourgeois rule will be faced with the

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM 173

necessity of setting up a military dictatorship. This stage would
mark the beginning of the phase of the incurable sickness of bour-
geois rule. As the old sluice mechanism can no longer be suffi-
ciently restored, the only possible means of saving bourgeois rule
from this abyss is to effect the splitting of the working class and its
tying to the State apparatus by other and more direct means.
Herein lie the positive possibilities and the tasks of National
Socialism.

The new conditions mean, however, a change of the form of
state. The tying of the organised working class to the State
through Social Democracy requires the parliamentary mechan-
ism; conversely, the liberal parliamentary constitution can
only be acceptable for monopoly capitalism provided Social
Democracy successfully controls and splits the working class.
If capitalism is compelled to destroy the basis of Social Democ-
racy, then it is equally compelled to transform the parlia-
mentary constitution into a non-parliamentary “restricted”
(i.e., Fascist) constitution.

The tying of the trade union bureaucracy to Social Democracy
stands and falls with parliamentarism. The possibility of a liberal
social constitution of monopoly capitalism is determined by the
existence of an automatic mechanism which disrupts the working
class. A bourgeois regime based on a liberal bourgeois constitution
must not only be parliamentary; it must rely for support on Social
Democracy and allow Social Democracy adequate achievements.
A bourgeois regime which destroys these achievements must sacri-
fice Social Democracy and parliamentarism, must create a sub-
stitute for Social Democracy, and must go over to a restricted social
constitution.

The solution of the problem of the maintenance of capitalism
in crisis the writer accordingly finds in National Socialism and
the establishment of a “restricted” or Fascist regime. The
writer finds in the role of National Socialism in the present period
a remarkable parallel, in his view, to the role of Social Democ-
racy in the preceding period.

The parallelism is indeed really striking. The then Social
Democracy (from 1918 to 1930) and present-day National Socialism
both perform similar functions in that they both were the grave-
diggers of the preceding system, and then, instead of leading the
masses to the revolution proclaimed by them, led them to the new
formation of bourgeois rule. The comparison which has often been
drawn between Ebert and Hitler is also valid in this respect.

174 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Both appeal to the anti-capitalist yearning for emancipation;
both promise a new “social” or “national” commonwealth.

From this the final conclusion is drawn:

The parallelism itself shows that National Socialism has taken over
from Social Democracy the task of providing the mass support for
the rule of the bourgeoisie in Germany.

Such is the exposition of the private thought of the finance-
capitalist oligarchy on the role of its two instruments, Social
Democracy and Fascism. We have so far reproduced this
exposition without criticism, because it has independent value
as an authoritative statement, all the clearer through not having
been written for public consumption, of the real viewpoint of
finance-capital. It is a valuable political document which may
be recommended for the study of disciples both of Social
Democracy and of Fascism. It will be noted that this remark-
ably candid and clear-headed statement of the real case for
Fascism, as seen by its actual paymasters and controllers, shares
none of the mystical, national, racial, “corporative,” chauvinist
nonsense with which Fascism is presented for public consump-
tion, but is thoroughly rational and hard-headed. To this it
will be important to return in considering the so-called “theory”
of Fascism.

The actual analysis, however, although a useful starting-
point of discussion on the question of Social Democracy and of
Fascism, requires in certain respects criticism. The writer sees
correctly the mechanics of capitalist post-war rule on the basis
of Social Democracy. But he writes as if Fascism ‘has taken
over from Social Democracy the task of providing the mass sup-
port for the rule of the bourgeoisie.”” Yesterday Social Democ-
racy performed this role; to-day it is Fascism; each has its
period. Social Democracy and Fascism are thus seen as per-
forming an essentially identical role, only in differing periods,
and under different conditions, and therefore with differing
methods and forms of state constitution. This is, however, too
simple, and is not correct. Both exist together; and each per-
forms a distinctive role, supplementing one another. Fascism
bases itself primarily, for its social basis, on the miscellaneous
petit-bourgeois strata, the peasantry, the declassed elements and
backward workers. Social Democracy bases itself on the upper
strata of the industrial workers. The bourgeoisie builds its rule

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM 175

on the support of both, bringing now one, now the other, to the
forefront, and utilising both for its support. Fascism can never
become the main basis of the bourgeoisie in the same sense as
Social Democracy (although it may become its main and sole
governmental instrument when the crisis requires the coercion
of all the workers, and the hold of Social Democracy is in
danger of weakening), because Fascism never wins the main
body of the industrial workers with traditions of organisation—
the sole power that can overthrow capitalism. Here the role
of Social Democracy remains of decisive importance, even
after the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship. This is
seen with obvious clearness in those countries, e.g., Poland,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain under De Rivera, etc., where Social
Democracy is tolerated under a Fascist dictatorship. But it
is also in a different sense true in those countries of fully com-
pleted fascist dictatorship—Germany, Italy—where Social De-
mocracy as an organisation is formally suppressed and the trade
unions absorbed into the Fascist front. In these countries also
the reactionary wing of Social Democracy or the old reaction-
ary Social Democratic leadership stands ready, if the Fascist
dictatorship weakens, to come to the rescue of capitalism, and
strives in every possible way, through the readjustment of
forces in the bourgeois camp, to reestablish its position as the
main social basis and direct instrument of the capitalist dic-
tatorship.

The distinction of Social Democracy and Fascism is no less
important to understand than the parallelism.

Both are instruments of the rule of monopoly capital. Both
fight the working-class revolution. Both weaken and disrupt
the class organisations of the workers. But their methods differ.

Fascism shatters the class organisations of the workers from
without, opposing their whole basis, and putting forward an
alternative “national” ideology.

Social Democracy undermines the class organisations of the
workers from within, building on the basis of the previous
independent movement and “Marxist” ideology, which still
holds the workers’ traditions and discipline, in order more
effectively to carry through the policy of capital and smash all
militant struggle.

Fascism accordingly requires for its full realisation the
“totalitarian” terroristic class-State.

176 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Social Democracy controls the workers most favourably and
successfully in the liberal-parliamentary class-State, utilising
its own “internal” methods of discipline, and occasional State-
coercion, for the suppression of all militant struggle.

Fascism operates primarily by coercion alongside of decep-
tion.

Social Democracy operates primarily by deception, alongside
of coercion.

It is this combined relationship of difference in method and
parallelism in basic aim and role that underlies Stalin’s
definition, given already in 1924 (“‘Main Factors of the Present
International Situation,” Communist International, English edi-
tion 1924, No. 6), that “Social Democracy objectively repre-
sents the moderate wing of Fascism.” It should be borne in
mind that this definition was directed to a specific phase in the
history of Social Democracy, most sharply shown in a specific
period of post-war capitalism.

2. The Germs of Fascism in Social Democracy.

Fascism not only historically draws its origin in large part
from Social Democracy in the sense that many of its principal
leaders spring from Social Democracy: Mussolini, former edi-
tor of the Italian Socialist central organ Avanti; Pilsudski,
former leader of the Polish Socialist Party; Mosley, former
Minister of the second MacDonald Labour Government.

Fascism also draws its ideology mainly from the lines already
worked out by Social Democracy.

The attempt can be made to trace earlier strands and ten-
dencies in pre-war non-Marxist forms of Socialism already giv-
ing hints of aspects later developed in Fascism: e.g., Lassalle’s
“national” type of socialism (the Lassallean party’s deputies,
it may be noted, voted the war credits of 1870, while the
Marxists abstained), Prussian tendencies and coquetting with
Bismarck; Proudhon’s credit-fallacies and opposition to the
class struggle; Sorel’s cult of violence, “social myths” for mass-
deception, and denunciation of democracy in the abstract; the
Syndicalist cult of “occupational” lines of division; Fabian
super-class State glorification; Hyndman’s already pre-war
social chauvinism and big navy agitation. The Fascist writers
seek to trace their spiritual ancestry from three main sources:
Mazzini (the old liberal democrat would turn in his grave),
Proudhon and Sorel. But this is mere myth-making. Fascism

rs cer

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 177

is essentially a product of the post-war general crisis of
capitalism, and has no spiritual ancestry. Fascism is in practice
an abortion consequent on the miscarriage of the proletarian
social revolution.

It is from 1914, when Social Democracy directly abandoned
Marxism and internationalism, that the characteristic trends of
ideology akin to Fascism begin. A study of the principal
extreme expressions of the war-socialists, especially of Lensch,
Parvus and Cunow in Germany, Hervé in France, or Blatch-
ford in England, would reveal many striking resemblances with
subsequent Fascism. “In this world war,” wrote Lensch in
1916, “Germany completes its revolution” (the typical use of
“Tevolution” to cover the most extreme monopolist dictator-
ship and chauvinism); ‘at the head of the German Revolution
stands Bethman-Hollweg.” Cunow declared that Social
Democracy must adapt itself to imperialism and throw over-
board the remains of liberal-democratic ideology about “the
right of nations to political independence.” “England in the
war” wrote the war-socialist Hanisch “represents the reaction-
ary, and Germany the revolutionary principle.” All these
illustrate the use of “revolutionary” phrases and denunciation
of obsolete “liberal-democratic” superstitions to cover in
practice complete subservience to monopolist capitalism and
chauvinism. Denial of internationalism, advocacy of class-
unity or the “sacred truce,” and service of the capitalist State
in the name of “socialist” or “revolutionary” phrases—
these are the common starting-point of modern Social Democ-
racy since 1914, and, in a more developed form, of Fascism.

’ But it is in the post-war period that the ideology of Social
Democracy becomes the real breeding-ground for Fascism.
Social Democracy emerged from the war with two clearly

‘ marked characteristics: first, close unification of each party
with its own “national,” i.e., imperialist State, and denial of

| any save the most formal “letter-box” internationalism;
second, class-co-operation, in the forms of coalition minis-
terialism and trade union collaboration, to help to build up
capitalist prosperity as the necessary condition of working-class
prosperity. It will be seen that these basic principles are
already close to the basic principles of “National Socialism.”

Social Democracy after the war was faced with two tasks: \
first to defeat the working-class revolution; second, to help to

178 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reconstruct the shattered structure of capitalism. The first
brought the Social Democratic leadership into close alliance
with the reactionary, militarist and White Guard circles, and
trained it in undertaking governmental responsibility in shoot-
ing down the militant workers. The second task of capitalist
reconstruction, after the period of direct civil war was closed,
required ever closer collaboration of Social Democracy and the
trade unions with monopoly capitalism.

This collaboration of Social Democracy with capitalism in
the period of reconstruction and stabilisation required the
development of a corresponding new ideology. The war-time
ideology of the “national danger” and the necessity of unity
against “the common enemy” could no longer serve in peace
time. In the period of reconstruction and stabilisation a new
theoretical basis had to be developed. The collapse of capital-
ism, it was argued, was not in the interest of the working
class; the working class required a prospering capitalism as the
basis of the advance to socialism; “it is useless to socialise
misery,” as Kautsky declared, pointing to the “economic ruin”
of Russia as the warning of the consequence of the alternative
path. Capitalism had not yet exhausted its development; it
had still before it the advance to a new flourishing era of
“organised capitalism”; this was the path to socialism. The
task of the workers was to help to rebuild capitalism, increase
production, and help to develop the new rationalised “organ-
ised capitalism,” with increasing participation economically
through the trade unions (“economic democracy,” Mondism)
and politically through Social Democracy in the Government;
this was the true path of advance as against the “catastrophic”
policies of Communism. In the period of stabilisation, rational-
isation and the short-lived boom of 1927-9 this new ideology
of Social Democracy reached its highest development.

Marxism began to be more or less openly thrown overboard,
especially by the trade union leadership, even though it re-
mained formally on the programme. The leading German trade
union theorist, Tarnov, came out openly at the Breslau Congress
of the German Trade Union Federation:

Marxism as a leading ideology of the working-class movement has
outlived itself. But as a real great mass movement cannot exist
without a corresponding ideology, therefore we, the leaders of the
trade unions, must create a new ideology.

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY I79

The essence of the “new ideology” was in fact the very old
pre-Marxist (originally Liberal, later Fabian and finally Fascist)
theory of the identity of interests of the working class and
capitalism. As another leading theorist of the German trade
unions declared:

One must not lose sight of the fact that the working class is a part
of the capitalist system, the downfall of which system is its own down-
fall; and therefore the great historical duty of the working class is
to obtain by means of the regulation of its place in that system the
improvement of the whole social structure, which is again equivalent
to the betterment of its own social situation.

The same line of thought was expressed by the General Council
of the British Trades Union Congress in its Report to the
Swansea Congress in 1928, when it analysed three possible
courses before the trade unions, and advocated the third (the
Mondist line of collaboration with capitalism) as the best:

The third course is for the trade union movement to say boldly
that not only is it concerned with the prosperity of industry, but that
it is going to have a voice as to the way industry is carried on, so
that it can influence the new developments that are taking place.
The ultimate policy of the movement can find more use for an
efficient industry than for a derelict one, and the unions can use their
power to promote and guide the scientific reorganisation of industry
as well as to obtain material advantages from the reorganization.

Social Democracy and the trade unions under its leadership
thus become, in the Social Democratic theory, constituent parts
of modern capitalist organisation and of the capitalist State
(the Webbs had in fact fully worked out this theory long before
the war; and this theory is the underlying thread of their
History of Trade Unionism, as indeed of all their work). “Social
Democracy to-day,” affirmed Hilferding at the Kiel Congress of
the German Social Democratic Party in 1927, “is an indispen-
sable element of the State.” ‘Without the trade unions,” wrote
Citrine, “industry under modern conditions could not function
effectively”? (W. M. Citrine, “Trade Unionism—the Bulwark
against Chaos,” Reynolds’ News, September 4, 1932).

Every development of organisation and strengthening of
monopoly capitalism and its dictatorship is thus hailed as the
advance of “Socialism.” Characteristic of this is the Labour
Party’s advocacy of the “public corporation” (i.e., State-
protected capitalist trust, with guaranteed dividends for the

180 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

shareholders) as the form of modern socialism—exemplified by
the London Passenger Transport Act, which was introduced by
a Labour Government and carried through by a Conservative
Government, and hailed by the Labour Party as a triumph
of “Socialism.” On this the conservative Times declared:

The principal objections which have been raised may be grouped
under three main heads—namely that the Bill is a “Socialist”
measure; that it creates a dangerous monopoly; and that it will
raise the cost of transport. None of these criticisms will really bear
very prolonged examination. It is true that the Bill in its original
form was produced by a Socialist Government, and that the then
Minister of Transport, Mr. Morrison, nearly succeeded in damning it
for ever by claiming it as a triumph of Socialism. But where in fact
does the Socialism come in? On what point of principle will the
new transport undertaking differ from the Central Electricity Board
or from Imperial Communications Company, both of which were
created by a Conservative Government? Like them indeed it is a
statutory monopoly, and therefore subject to a certain degree of
public control; but it is privately, not publicly owned.

(Times editorial, “The London Traffic Bill,” December 1,
1932.)

It is obvious that the “public corporation” of the Labour
Party and Social Democracy bears certain analogies in prin-
ciple to the Fascist “corporation” as the system of organisation
for industry.

On this basis Social Democracy upholds the modern develop-
ments of monopolist capitalism as already the advent of
“Socialism.” As the German Social Democratic leader, Ditt-
mann, declared at the Magdeburg Congress of the Social
Democratic Party:

We are no longer living under capitalism; we are living in
the transition period to socialism, economically, politically,
socially. . . .

In Germany we have ten times as many socialist achievements
to defend as they have in Russia.

The world economic crisis dealt a heavy blow to this ideology.
But Social Democracy adapted itself to the crisis by an exten-
sion of its theories. It was now necessary, it declared, to
“save” capitalism from the menace of chaos and proletarian
revolution. The Leipzig Congress of the German Social Demo-
cratic Party in 1931 gave out the watchword: ‘We must be the

ail

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 181

physicians of ailing capitalism.” Vandervelde, the Chairman
of the Second International, proclaimed in the Belgian Cham-
ber of Deputies in 1932:

The capitalist system is cracking in all its parts. It can only
be saved by serious and urgent measures. We are at the eleventh
hour. Take care that the proletariat, like Samson, does not bring
crashing down the columns of the temple.

(E. Vandervelde, Le Peuple, May 7, 1932.)
And the French Socialist, Montel, had indeed already pro-
claimed before the crisis (République Sociale, November 15,
1928): “The Socialist Party will present itself as the only party
capable of saving bourgeois society.”

Through the whole of this line and propaganda it is evident
that Social Democracy was in practice preparing and smoothing
the way for Fascism and for the conceptions of Fascism. And
indeed even after the victory of Fascism Leipart, the leader of
German trade unionism, directly used the same line of argu-
ment to prove that the trade unions could be accepted by
Fascism as subservient instruments of the Fascist dictatorship:

The trade unions have come into being as the organised self-help
of the working class; and in the course of their history through
natural causes have become more and more fused with the State
itself,

The social tasks of the trade unions have to be fulfilled no matter
what the form of the State regime is. . . .

The trade unions are fully prepared, even beyond the field of
wages and working conditions, to enter into permanent co-operation
with the employers’ organisations.

A State supervision over such collaboration could in certain
circumstances be conducive towards raising its value and rendering
its execution more easy.

The trade unions do not claim to influence directly the policy
of the State. Their task in this respect can only be to direct the just
claims of the workers to the attention of the Government with
reference to its measures of social and economic policy and legis-
lation, and also to be of service to the Government and Parliament
through its knowledge and experience in this field.

This was the official declaration of German trade unionism in
March 1933, offering its alliance to the Fascist dictatorship.
It was received with expressions of pain and indignation in the
non-German Social Democratic Press as a “shameful capitula-
tion.” Yet the line expressed is exactly identical with the line

'
}
4
|
}

182 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of argument, on the question of trade unionism and the State,
employed by a Citrine in Britain, a Green in the United States,
or a Jouhaux in France.

With this may be compared Mussolini’s suggestion in 1921
of a possible alliance of reformist Social Democracy and Fas-
cism:

In the field of social legislation and of improvement in the standard
of life of the working classes, the Socialists may find unexpected allies
within Fascism. The salvation of the country may be assured, not
by the suppression of the antithesis between Fascism and Socialism,
but by their reconciliation within Parliament. A collaboration with
the Socialists is quite possible, especially at a later stage, after the
clarification of ideas and tendencies, under which the Socialist
Party at this moment labours, is ended. It is evident that the
co-existence of Intransigent and Reformist Socialists in the same
party will in the course of time become impossible. Either revolution
or reform resulting from participation in the responsibilities of

PORER. (Mussolini, Popolo d’Italia, May 22, 1921.)

The course of events rendered this direct alliance unnecessary;
but Mussolini subsequently took the reformist trade union
leaders, D’Aragona and his colleagues, into his service.

Social Democracy thus prepared the way ideologically for
Fascism: first, by the abandonment or corruption of Marxism;
second, by the denial of internationalism and attaching of the
workers to the service of “their own” imperialist State; third
by the war on Communism and the proletarian revolution;
fourth, by the distortion of ‘Socialism” or the use of vaguely
“socialist” phrases (“the new social order,” the “common-
wealth,” “industry as a public service,” etc.) to cover monop-
olist capitalism; fifth, by the advocacy of class-collaboration
and the unification of the working-class organisations with the
capitalist State. All this provides the ideological basis and
groundwork of Fascism, which represents the final stage of the
policy of the complete absorption of the working class, bound
hand and foot, into capitalism and the capitalist State. This
whole propaganda and line of Social Democracy confused,
weakened and battered down the class-conscious socialist out-
look of those workers who were under its influence, prevented
the spread of revolutionary Marxist understanding, fostered
semi-Fascist conceptions of nationalism, imperialism and class-
collaboration, and thus left the masses an easy prey to Fascism.

HOW SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ASSISTS FASCISM TO POWER 183

3. How Social Democracy Assists Fascism to Power.

In the historical examination of the Italian, German and
Austrian examples in the previous two chapters we have seen in
practice how Social Democracy assists Fascism to power. It is
therefore only necessary now to summarise these results of
what historical experience has demonstrated.

First, Social Democracy disorganises the proletariat and the
proletarian struggle. The Social Democratic and trade union
leadership act as an agency of the employers and of the ruling
class within the working-class ranks, preaching defeatism and
opposition to struggle, and, where the outbreak of working-class
struggle becomes inevitable, directly disrupting the struggle
from within.

This is most clearly seen in the role of Social Democracy in
strikes. A conspicuous example of this process, in view of the
subsequent revelations, was afforded by the great munitions
strike in Germany in January 1918, which nearly brought
Germany out of the war. The Social Democratic leaders,
Ebert, Braun and Scheidemann, by decision of their Execu-
tive, took over direction of the strike, even calling on the
workers to disobey mobilisation orders. Yet their object in
coming on the strike committee, as declared by them many
years later, was to strangle the strike. In 1924 Ebert
brought a libel suit against the charge of treason for having
led the strike of January 1918. In this trial he made known
that the Executive had passed a secret resolution instructing
them to take over the leadership of the strike in order to
bring it to an end. Ebert stated in court (Times, December
II, 1924):

The Socialists had been requested to take control of the strike in
order to avoid the worst. Herr Ledebour had told the strikers that
the strike would be lost if the Majority Socialists came on to the
Strike Committee, and at this point he (Herr Ebert) had joined it
in order to restore the balance. ... He declared that he had
entered the Strike Committee to bring the strike to an end as soon
as possible.

Scheidemann stated in the same trial (Times, December 13,
1924):

The strike broke out without our knowledge. We joined the
Strike Committee with the firm intention of putting a speedy end
to the strike by negotiating with the Government. There was a

184 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

great deal of opposition to us in the Strike Committee: we were
known as “the strike stranglers.”

Exactly the same process was conducted by the Labour
Party and Trades Union Congress General Council leadership
in the British General Strike of 1926, which was only called,
according to MacDonald (Socialist Review, June 1926), because
“Gf no general strike had been declared industry would have
been almost as much paralysed by unauthorised strikes.”
J. H. Thomas explained subsequently in the capitalist journal
Answers, that, although opposed to the strike, he “did not
resign because I felt certain that I could do far more good by
staying in than by going out.” The object of the leadership, he
explained to the House of Commons on May 13, 1926, was to
prevent the struggle “getting out of the hands of those who
would be able to exercise some control.” The Conservative
Home Secretary, Joynson-Hicks, analysing the causes of the
defeat of the General Strike, put forward as the main cause that
“the responsible trade-union leaders retained their hold upon
the trade unions, and took the constitutional course of admit-
ting the general strike was illegal and called it off” (Joynson-
Hicks, letter to the Twickenham Conservative Association,
August 14, 1926).

The same process was demonstrated in Italy over the occupa-
tion of the factories, where the reformist leadership achieved
what all the Government forces had to confess themselves unable
to achieve—the restoration of the factories to capitalism.

But this direct strike-breaking (examples of which on a
greater or lesser scale are familiar every year and almost every
month to the workers in every country) is only the plainest and
simplest expression of a universal process of disorganisation and
disruption of the working-class front, preaching of confidence
in capitalism, close alliances with the class enemy, and war on
the militant workers.

It is only after conspicuous and repeated disruption of the
working-class front after this fashion by Social Democracy from
within, and consequent weakening and discouragement of the
workers, that the way is opened for Fascism to advance.

The betrayal of the General Strike was followed by Mond-
ism—a first step towards Fascism, and welcomed as such by
the Italian Fascist Press (it may be noted that Mond openly
declared his sympathy for Fascism).

HOW SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ASSISTS FASCISM TO POWER 185

The surrender of the factories in Italy was followed im-
mediately by the Fascist offensive, opening at Bologna and
going continuously forward to the establishment of the Fascist
State in 1922.

The second Labour Government’s assistance to the offensive
against the workers was followed by the landslide of the
National Government vote of 1931 and the first beginnings of a
serious Fascist movement in Britain.

The Social Democratic support of the Brining dictatorship
and hunger-offensive was immediately followed by the sweep-
ing advance of Fascism in Germany.

This is the principal way in which Social Democracy assists
the advance of Fascism to power—by disorganising the working-
class front, by breaking strikes, by denunciation of the class
struggle, by preaching legalism and trust in capitalism, by
expulsion of all militant elements and splitting of the trade
unions and working-class organisations.

The war on Communism is placed in the forefront by Social
Democracy. The German example has shown to what lengths
of direct alliance with the militarist and White Guards Social
Democracy will go in order to crush the revolutionary workers.*
But the slogan of the war on Communism is the slogan of Fas-
cism. Social Democracy and Fascism offer, in effect, rival
services to the bourgeoisie for the slaying of Communism.

With the further development of the post-war period Social
Democracy heips forward the advance towards Fascism more
and more positively by assisting the strengthening of the capital-
ast mechanism and of the capitalist dictatorship. Social Democ-
racy assists to carry through the economic measures for the
strengthening of capitalist monopoly (rationalisation, etc.); it
supports all the Briining and Roosevelt types of intensified capi-
talist dictatorship, and itself helps to introduce and operate
measures of intensified dictatorship. This was signally shown
by the second Labour Government of 1929-31, with its Coal
Mines Act and London Traffic Bill, its imposition of textile wage
cuts by arbitration awards, its arrest and sentencing of hundreds
of workers under the Trade Union Act, and its lathi-rule and

* Compare the statement of the first British Labour Prime Minister, Mao-
Donald, over the forged Zinoviev letter in 1924:
“Who is it that has stood against Bolshevism? Liberals have contributed
nothing, Tories nothing. . . . All the work has been done by Labour Leaders
and Labour Party leaders.”

186 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

imprisonment of sixty thousand in India. In the same way
Severing as Minister of the Interior shot down the workers’
May Day demonstrations in Berlin in 1929. Similarly, the
Prussian Social Democratic Government actually boasted in
its own defence, when removed by von Papen, that it “had
caused more deaths on the Left than on the Right”:

The Prussian Government is in a position with police-statistics
to prove that police interference has caused more deaths on the
Left than on the Right, and that police measures have caused more
wounds on the Left than on the right.

(Braun-Severing Memorandum to Hindenburg, protesting
against deposition: B. Z. am Mittag, July 19, 1932.)

In the final stage, as the Fascist movement advances closer
to direct power, Social Democracy gives its final and decisive
assistance by opposing and banning the united working-class
front against Fascism—the sole means to prevent Fascism
coming to power—and concentrating hopes in illusory legal
defences, the ballot, “democracy,” moderate bourgeois govern-
ments and finally even the support of pre-Fascist and near-
Fascist dictatorships (Briining, Dollfuss) as the “lesser evil.”

It is the Social Democratic Minister Severing that bans and
dissolves the Red Front, while permitting the Storm Troops.

It is Social Democracy that refuses the repeated urgent
appeals of Communism for the united front during the critical
year of 1932 and the first quarter of 1933.

This policy brought the temporary victory of Fascism.

4. The Question of the Split in the Working Class.

The crucial importance of the united working-class fight
against Fascism is seen by all to-day, especially after the
German example of the disastrous consequences of disruption.

Nevertheless, in spite of the German example, the reaction-
ary wing of Social Democracy continues to refuse and op-
pose the united front and holds back its realisation in a
number of leading countries. At the same time, alongside this
direct refusal of the united front, the cause of the split in the
working class is often attempted to be misrepresented by many
Social Democratic leaders as due to Communism and the Com-
munist International, which are accused of dividing the work-
ing-class forces.

It is therefore necessary to give further consideration to this

EEE ——

THE QUESTION OF THE SPLIT IN THE WORKING CLASS 187

all-important question of the split in the working class and its
causes.

The analysis of the split in the working class as due to Com-
munism and the Communist International is both historically
and in current practice incorrect.

The causes of the split in the working class developed long
before the Communist International existed. These causes lay
in the growth of opportunism in the leadership of the Social
Democratic Parties, which was itself a reflection of the process
of imperialist corruption of the upper stratum of the working
class and consequent division of the workers in the imperialist
countries. This made necessary the sharpened fight of the
revolutionary wing against the policies of opportunism or
union with capitalism. Marx and Engels in their closing years
had already indicated the necessity of this sharpened fight and
of an eventual split. The line of Marx and Engels was carried
forward by Lenin. The first clear and consistent organisa-
tional expression of the split with opportunism was given by
the separation of Bolshevism from Menshevism in the early
years of the twentieth century. Only this clear demarcation
and independent organisation of Bolshevism made possible the
victory of the Socialist revolution in Russia and the final com-
plete unification of the Russian working class, in contrast to
the still continuing divisions in all other countries. In the
other leading countries the fight of the revolutionary wing
against opportunist corruption did not take definite organised
form until the war of 1914-18. But 1914 brought the issue to
a head. The dominant official leadership of the Social Demo-
cratic Parties abandoned their pledges and obligations before
the International, directly contravened the principles on which
their Parties were built, and passed to open unity with capi-
talism. The split took formal shape when this leadership ex-
pelled those deputies who voted against the war credits, in
accordance with their international obligations, and the sec-
tions who supported them. All this took place already during
the war, before the Communist International existed.

The split deepened as the issue of the imperialist war de-
veloped into the issue of the working-class revolution or the
support of the White Guards in shooting down the workers’
revolution. The Mensheviks united with the Tsarists and
foreign imperialism to take up arms against the workers’ rule;

188 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the German Social Democratic leaders armed the counter-
revolutionary officers’ corps to shoot down the revolutionary
workers. The breach of 1914 had widened to civil war, with
Social Democracy on the capitalist side of the barricades. A
deep barrier was thus created—as unbridgeable as the division
of the classes. All this process of 1914-19 had already de-
veloped, revealing to the full the fact of the division of the
working-class owing to the existence of an imperalist wing in
the working-class camp, before the revolutionary sections finally
organised the Communist International in 1919. To regard
the Communist International as the cause of the split is to
mistake the effect for the cause. j

Lenin gave the call for the formation of the Communist
International already in the autumn of 1914, only after the ik
majority Social Democratic leadership had destroyed the old
Second International, trampled international socialism under
foot, and openly united with capitalism. There was no other
way to continue the struggle for international socialism.

It is obvious that the responsibility of the split lies wholly
with those sections that abandoned the party programme and
united with capitalism, and not with those sections that stood
by the party programme and continued to fight capitalism.
It is the unity of the Social Democratic leadership with capital-
tsm that inevitably splits the working class and is the cause of
the split. This is the root of the question of the split.

But given this split of the working-class organisations, which
can only be finally overcome by the re-union of the mass of
the workers (through the experience of the struggle, through
ideological controversy, through conviction by their own ex-
perience) on the basis of the class struggle against capitalism,
that is, finally on the basis of Communism, the immediate
urgent question becomes that of the present common fight
against the capitalist and Fascist offensive. It is evident that
in this situation the need is for all workers and working-class
organisations, whatever their political outlook, to combine in a
common front for the immediate fight on the maximum possible
agreed basis of fight. This is the meaning of the united front,
for which the Communist international has consistently striven
since 1921.

But it is here that Social Democracy, after causing the
original split, perpetuates and deepens the split of the working

THE QUESTION OF THE SPLIT IN THE WORKING CLASS 189

class by opposing the united front, expelling all sections that
support it, and even wrecking the working-class organisations
to maintain its domination.

This is shown with conspicuous clearness in the decisively
important question of the trade unions. The Communist line
is for a single united trade union organisation, embracing all
workers, independent of their political views, within which the
revolutionary workers conduct propaganda for their view-
point or proposals, according to the. principles of trade union
democracy. Social Democracy rejects this viewpoint, and seeks
to make membership of a trade union, or active membership
(delegate positions, official positions) dependent on holding
reformist views, on subscribing to the Labour Party programme,
etc. To achieve this purpose the Social Democratic trade union
leadership habitually expels, not only individual trade unionists
(often outstanding militants with long records in the struggle
and elected at the top of the polls by their fellow members)
but whole sections and organisations and even majorities, if
these express a revolutionary viewpoint, in order to maintain
the domination of Social Democracy.

It is evident that this system of Social Democracy in the
unions means the smashing of the unions as the united organisa-
tions of the workers. Reference is often made by Social Demo-
crats to the existence of “Red Unions” as evidence of the role
of Communism in splitting the trade union movement. But it is
not realised by many who hear these charges in good faith that
the Red Unions, in the countries with a divided trade union
movement, have developed historically as the consequence of
the Social Democratic policy of expulsions and denial of trade
union democracy. The case of the Scottish Mineworkers is the
classic example of this process in Britain, where the majority
of the members of the union constitutionally elected a new
executive and officials with an overwhelming revolutionary
majority, but the old reformist executive and officials refused
to vacate office, and proceeded to expel one of the two largest
districts, the Fife district; after exhausting every constitutional
effort for unity, the revolutionary majority were thus com-
pelled to form the United Mineworkers of Scotland. Similarly
in France the C.G.T.U. or Unitary Confederation of Labour
(revolutionary) only came into existence at the end of 1921
after the revolutionary trade unionists had won a constitutional

190 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

majority in the old Confederation of Labour, and the old
reformist leadership had met this majority by a series of
expulsions to convert it into a minority; the Congress con-
stituting the C.G.T.U. was actually attended by a majority
(1,564) of the unions belonging to the old C.G.T. The respon-
sibility for the split rests with the reformists. In Germany, in
particular, where the revolutionary movement was strongest,
the Social Democratic policy of wrecking the unions by whole-
sale expulsions to maintain control was carried to extreme
lengths, and played a large part in the disruption of the work-
ing class and opening the way to the victory of Fascism. This
is the parallel to the general policy of the refusal of the united
front.

There remains the question whether Communism in Ger-
many, as is sometimes urged by critics, over-emphasised the
policy of the “united front from below,” that is, the appeal to
the lower organisations of Social Democracy and the trade
unions and to the organised and unorganised workers generally
to combine in the single front against Fascism, and only in the
last two years, since April 1932, and more especially since
the expulsion of the Braun-Severing Government in July 1932,
developed alongside of this the policy of “the united front from
above,” that is, the direct party-to-party appeal. The criticism
of this line is based on a lack of understanding of the condi-
tions. The policy of the united front from above, alongside the
united front from below, has never been ruled out in principle
by the Communist International, and has been repeatedly ap-
plied, when suitable occasion offered; but regard has had to be
taken to the conditions in differing periods and situations.
When Severing as Social Democratic Minister of the Interior
was shooting down the workers’ May Day demonstrations in
1929, to have appealed to the Social Democratic Party leader-
ship for a united front against the attack on the workers would
have been worse than meaningless. So soon as the expulsion of
the Braun-Severing Government by von Papen offered an oc-
casion, the Communist Party immediately made its proposal
for a united front directly to the Executives of the Social Demo-
cratic Party and of the General Trade Union Federation. The
refusal of the united front by these bodies sealed the victory of
Fascism.

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM I9QI

5. The Adaptation of Social Democracy to Fascism.

As capitalism developed the forms of its state power towards
Fascism, Social Democracy (in the sense of the theory and
practice of collaboration with capitalism) went through a cor-
responding process of adaptation. This process of “facisation”
of Social Democracy showed itself in the increasing support of
open forms of dictatorship (Briining, Emergency Powers, Ordi-
nance rule in India), the use of armed violence against the
workers, not only in civil war as in the early post-war years,
but against unarmed workers in conditions of peace (Berlin
in 1929, India under the Second Labour Government), and
the increasing suppression of democracy within the working-
class organisations.

Already since the war a whole series of examples of direct
alliance of Social Democracy with White Governments of
counter-revolutionary terror against the working class have
shown themselves in country after country, and have continued
to-day into Fascist forms.

In Hungary under the White Terror Social Democracy
entered into a written Treaty of Alliance with the White Gov-
ernment. This Treaty was signed on December 22, 1921, be-
tween the Prime Minister, Bethlen, and the Social Democratic
Party, affiliated section of the Second International. By the
terms of this Treaty it was laid down that

The Social Democratic Party will consider the general interests of
the nation as of equal importance to the interests of the working class.

In respect of foreign policy the Hungarian Social Democratic
Party

will carry on an active propaganda on behalf of Hungary, among the
leaders of the foreign Social Democratic Parties, with the foreign
governments, etc., and for this purpose will co-operate with the
Hungarian Foreign Ministry ... will adopt the Magyar stand-
point . . . before all, in its organ Nepszava adopt an impartial
attitude and loyally express in this paper the collaboration with
bourgeois society.

In respect of home policy the Social Democratic Party will
“co-operate with the bourgeois classes in the economic sphere,”
prevent strikes, conduct “no republican propaganda” and “shall
not extend its agitation among the agricultural workers.” The
Treaty concluded with the pledge:

1g2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The delegates of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party declare
that they agree to the wishes expressed by the Prime Minister both
with regard to foreign and home policy, and give assurance of
fulfilment on their part. They nominate on their part a delegate
who maintains contact with the Foreign Ministry.

In return for this Treaty, Social Democracy was to be officially
protected by the White Government, while Communism was
ruthlessly suppressed. When the terms of this Treaty became
known three years later, and a scandal was raised, com-
pelling even a Commission of Enquiry in the Second Inter-
national (the Commission of Enquiry, under Kautsky in 1925,
ended in a complete whitewashing verdict, recognising the
“good faith” of the Hungarian Social Democrats, and accepting
their assurance that the Treaty would not be continued fur-
ther), the Hungarian semi-governmental organ, the Neues
Pester Journal commented in its issue of January 1, 1925:

The Treaty does not contain anything which every Socialist
Party of the world—if we disregard the Third International—would
not have recognised, or at least realised by its practical attitude. ...
The Treaty has been fully observed, and both parties have honestly
fulfilled its provisions.

The bourgeois organ is correct. The Bethlen-Social Democratic
Treaty is only peculiar in that it sets down in writing the
practice of all Labour and Social Democratic Parties, what-
ever their formal programme. The underlying principles of
Fascism and its “Labour Front” are thus in many respects
anticipated by Social Democracy.

Bulgaria afforded a further example of the same process.
The elections of 1923 had resulted in a vote of 437,000 for the
Peasants’ Party under Stambulisky, 252,000 for the Commu-
nist Party, 219,000 for the Bourgeois Bloc, and 40,000 for the
Social Democrats. The Stambulisky Government was carrying
through a programme of agrarian reforms, the impeachment
and trial of the former war-ministers, and other measures un-
popular with the reaction. The reactionary parties in June,
1923, carried through a military coup d’état, engineered by
army officers, overthrew the Peasant Party’s Government by
force and murdered the Prime Minister, Stambulisky. On
this basis was set up the White Terror regime of the butcher,
Tsankov, under whom, according to the statement of Vander-

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM 193

velde, Chairman of the Second International, 16,000 Bulgarian
workers and peasants were murdered in eighteen months
(Humanité, May 18, 1925). In this Tsankov Government of
White Terror the Social Democratic Party, affiliated section of
the Second International, was officially represented; its Min-
ister, Kasassov, sat alongside the representatives of the Fas-
cist “Officers’ League” and of the bourgeois parties.

In Poland in 1926 the Pilsudski coup d’état, overthrowing
parliamentary democracy, and establishing a type of Fascist
dictatorship, was carried out with the support of the Polish
Socialist Party, section of the Second International; its repre-
sentative, Moraszevski, sat in Pilsudski’s Government.

In Spain the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship gave its pro-
tection to the Spanish Socialist Party and the reformist General
Union of Labour, while suppressing the revolutionary workers’
movement.

In Italy D’Aragona and the reformist leaders of the General
Confederation of Labour entered into the service of Mussolini
and declared the Confederation dissolved in 1926.

™ In Austria the Dollfuss dictatorship was built up step by step
with the passive support of Social Democracy as the “lesser
evil” in relation to the Nazis; in the beginning of 1934 the
Social Democratic Party was making a direct offer of alliance
to Dollfuss at the same time as the Government offensive was
turning on its organisations and Press; and even when the
workers finally rose in their heroic struggle, it was against
express orders of the Party, which on the very eve of the strug-
gle was sending urgent messages for submission and expressing
readiness to Dollfuss to accept an emergency dictatorship and
a form of Corporate State.

In Czecho-Slovakia the Social Democratic Party participated
in the Coalition Government of all the bourgeois parties, which
in 1933 was suppressing the Communist Press and preparing
the conditions of intensified dictatorship.

In Japan the following situation was complacently reported
in the British Labour organ Forward on March 20, 1930, under
the title “Labour in Japan,” with reference to the elections:

One’s impression is that the proletarian parties have been given
a much fairer field than before. It is true that since the last election
there have been two great police round-ups of the so-called dan-
gerous thinkers. This might be urged to have had a weakening

I94 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

effect, but the opposite is more probably the case. Those that
remain have been given as it were an official cachet. By inference
they are certified free from Communism. There is no longer that
bogy to frighten away possible supporters.

The “official cachet” to Social Democracy from an extreme
reactionary militarist Government, which is savagely suppres-
sing Communism with tens of thousands of arrests, is regarded
with high favour by the British Labour organ as a most for-
tunate advantage. A short time after, in the spring of 1932, the
leadership of this Japanese Social Democratic Party, headed
by the Secretary, Akamatsu, and half the Executive Committee
openly moved over and transformed themselves into an
avowedly Fascist “‘National Socialist Party.”

Social Democracy has thus throughout the world shown itself
ready to adapt itself and enter into alliance with every counter-
revolutionary, White Terrorist and Fascist Government, even
entering directly into such Governments. Where Social
Democracy has not been accepted into such open alliance, but
has been forced under, carrying out its role of disruption of
the working class under the form of opposition, this has not
been for lack of trying on the part of the Social Democratic
leadership, who have invariably exhausted every manceuvre to
endeavour to be admitted to the favoured circle under the pro-
tection of Fascism.

The signal example of the latter process has been Germany.
The significance of the German experience has been dealt with
in the previous chapter.

If German Fascism rejected the offers and pleadings of Social
Democracy for an open alliance, it was because German
Fascism had no confidence in the existence of any form of
workers’ organisation, however servile the leadership, save
under its direct control, because it had no confidence in the
power of a permitted Social Democracy to maintain control of
the workers, because it was determined to hold all apparatus
positions for itself and permit no other forms of organization.
The role of the remaining representatives of the traditional
official line of Social Democracy (as represented by the Prague
Executive of the German Social Democratic Party, with their
refusal of the Communist offers of the united front continuing
even into 1935) thus becomes in practice, under the completed
Fascist dictatorship, to continue its disruption of the working-

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM 195

class front in new forms, to carry forward its fight against the
united front and against Communism, to confuse the revolu-
tionary struggle with the deceitful aim of Weimar democracy
which made possible the victory of Fascism, and to stand ready,
in the event of the weakening of the Fascist dictatorship and
the advance of the working-class offensive, to come to the
rescue of capitalism and save the capitalist State, as in 1918,
against the working-class revolution. But this policy meets
with rising resistance within the ranks of Social Democracy;
among the illegal Social Democratic groups which have main-
tained existence or come together to carry on the struggle under
Fascism, an increasing proportion moves towards the united
front with Communism.

The collapse of German Social Democracy created a crisis
in the Second International. Numbers of workers who had
followed its leadership began to have their eyes opened to the
realities of the struggle, and to move towards increasing sym-
pathy with Communism and towards the line of the united
front. But the effect of the crisis on the leading strata was to
hasten the process of “‘fascisation.” The slogan was given
out to rally on the basis of “democracy,” that is, on the basis of
the existing capitalist state. Therefore the line was proclaimed
to combat still more fiercely the united working-class front, to
strengthen the authority of the State, if necessary, in “emer-
gency” forms, to unite with the “moderate” elements of the
bourgeoisie, forming left blocks and coalition governments
to save the State, and even to support the war-propaganda of
the bourgeoisie in the name of “democracy.” The Left Cartel
policy in France, the toleration of Dollfuss in Austria, the
coalition policy in Czecho-Slovakia, the support of Roosevelt
by the reformist leadership in Britain and America, illustrated
this line. An increasingly influential school developed which
openly drew the “lessons” of Fascism as the need to concen-
trate more on a “national,” as opposed to an international,
basis, to abandon the conception of the working-class conquest
of power and direct the appeal increasingly to the petit-bour-
geoisie, and to seek to build a “strong, authoritarian State” in
the conditions of crisis. These conceptions were openly ex-
pressed by ‘“Neo-Socialism” in France. A variant of a similar
tendency was revealed by the Socialist League wing of the
Labour Party leadership, which also came forward with pro-

196 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

posals for an intensified dictatorship within the capitalist State.
It is evident that this whole line of propaganda in practice
chimes in with and assists the increasing development of capi-
talism in all modern states towards fascist forms.

On the other hand, a strong current developed within the
Social Democratic ranks towards the united front with Com-
munism. In some countries, as in France and Spain, where
the Fascist menace was intense, the mass-pressure was suffi-
ciently powerful to overcome the resistance of the Socialist
Party leadership and to compel a united front of the Socialist
and Communist Parties. Through all the Social Democratic
Parties a left section, striving towards the united front and the
path of active struggle against Fascism, developed a growing
role. Thus a process of extreme differentiation advanced in
Social Democracy as a consequence of the Fascist offensive;
and this process is of critical importance for the whole future
of the international working class movement.*

Social Democracy—modern post-1914 Social Democracy—
takes its starting-point and origin in the conception of co-opera-
tion with capitalism and with the capitalist State. This line is
presented as the line of safe and peaceful, harmonious, “demo-
cratic’ advance towards Socialism, as opposed to the dangers
and destruction of the path of violent revolution. The whole
experience of 1914-1933 has demonstrated with inescapable
clearness that this line leads, not to Socialism, nor to peaceful
progress, nor even to the maintenance of democratic forms in
the most limited sense, but to unexampled violence against the
working class and strengthening of the capitalist dictatorship
and, in the final culmination, to the victory of Fascism, of
imperialist war and of all the forces of destruction, against
which only the proletarian revolution can avail to save the
world. This is the lesson of the episode of post-war Social
Democracy in working-class history, an episode which is be-
ginning to draw to its close, as the workers increasingly awaken
from reformist illusions, through the experience of Fascism, to
the revolutionary struggle.

*For the further development of the crisis in Social Democracy and the
advance of the united front, see Appendix.

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==CHAPTER IX: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FASCISM==

ON a superficial view the theory and practice of Fascism might
appear to resemble closely Gibbon’s famous definition of the
theory and practice of the medieval Catholic Church—
“defending nonsense by violence.” But in fact, as there has
already been occasion to emphasise, there is a highly rational
method in the nonsense, no less than in the violence. Behind
the ranting megalomaniacs, bullies, drug-fiends and broken-
down bohemians who constitute the outer facade of Fascism,
the business heads of finance-capital who pay the costs and pull
the strings are perfectly cool, clear and intelligent. And it is
with the real system of Fascism in this sense, rather than with
the imaginary ideology created to gull the innocent, that we are
here concerned. The second, the professed fantastic ideology,
is only of importance in relation to the first, the real working
system for the maintenance of capitalism in conditions of
extreme crisis and weakening.

1. Is There a “Theory” of Fascism?

The first illusion that requires to be cleared out of the way is
the illusion that there is a “theory” of Fascism, in the same
sense that there is a theory of Liberalism, Conservatism, Com-
munism, etc.

Many intellectuals, while “deploring” the “excesses” of
Fascism, allow themselves to be fascinated and drawn into
elaborate speculative discussion of the “philosophy” of
Fascism—and are soon lost in the Serbonian bog of alternating
“socialism,” capitalism, corporatism, strong-man worship,
high moral adjurations, and platitudes, anti-alien agitation,
appeals to “unity,” glorifications of war, torture-gloating,
deification of primitive man, denunciations of big business,
idolisation of captains of industry, kicking of the dead corpse of
the nineteenth century and “liberal-democratic humanitarian
superstitions,” exhumation of the considerably more putres-

197

198 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

cent corpses of mercantilism, absolutism, inquisitorial methods
and caste-conceptions, racial theories of the inferiority of all
other human beings save the speaker’s own tribe, anti-semitism,
Nordicism and all the rest of it.

The innocent may solemnly and painstakingly discuss at face
value these miscellaneous “theories” provided to suit all tastes.
But in fact their importance is rather as symptoms and by-
products of the real system and basis of Fascism than as its
origin and raison d’étre. The reality of Fascism is the violent
attempt of decaying capitalism to defeat the proletarian revolu-
tion and forcibly arrest the growing contradictions of its whole
development. All the rest is decoration and stage-play, whether
conscious or unconscious, to cover and make presentable or
attractive this basic reactionary aim, which cannot be openly
stated without defeating its purpose.

For this reason the real scientific theory underlying Fascism
can better be studied in such a document as the Deutsche
Fihrerbriefe or confidential bulletins of the Federation of Ger-
man Industries, already quoted in the previous chapter (pp. 170-
174), rather than in the propaganda statements for public
consumption concerning its professed “theories” by the Fascist
leaders themselves. The confidential statement of the heads of
finance-capital defines plainly and without disguise the objective
essence and purpose of Fascism as seen by its actual paymasters
and controllers, and is therefore of primary scientific and theo-
retical importance for the real understanding of Fascism. Sucha
statement makes plain that Fascism is solely a tactical method of
finance-capital—in exactly the same way as the support of
democratic forms and of Social Democratic Governments was
also a tactical method, either being supported with equal
readiness according to circumstances—to defeat the proletarian
revolution, to divide the exploited population, and so to main-
tain capitalist rule. All the propaganda “theories,” mytho-
logical trimmings, supposed “‘new school of political thought,”
etc., only constitute a smokescreen to cover this aim.

We have already seen, in the course of the enquiry “what
is Fascism?” in the fourth chapter, how empty and meaning-
less are all the infinite attempted definitions of Fascism by its
leading exponents. The more these definitions are examined
and analysed, the more they resolve themselves into a string
of commonplaces and platitudes by no means peculiar to

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 199

Fascism: “the common interest before self” (basis of the
German National Socialist Programme); “duty,” “heroism,”
“the conception of the State as an absolute” (Mussolini); “an
organic and historical conception of society’ (Rocco); “a
conception which leans neither to the Right nor to the Left,”
“the co-operation of all classes,” “the co-ordinated develop-
ment of all national resources for the common good” (Villari) ;
“a high conception of citizenship,” “the Modern Movement,”
“the faith of those who ever since the war have realised that
the old system was dead and that a new system must be
created,” “the system of the next stage of civilisation,” “the
creed and morality of British manhood” (Mosley); “orderly
government, national discipline,” ‘‘co-ordinated progress,”
“a creed of Justice and Solidarity,” “Social Christianity”
(The Blackshirt); “a return to statesmanship,” “the national
observance of duty towards others,” “less a policy than a state
of mind” (The Fascist), etc., etc. These and the like wind-
filled phrases revolve without end through all the propagandist
explanations of Fascism. There is, it is true, one professedly
definite and specific content put forward, namely, the much
advertised “Corporate State”; but further analysis in a sub-
sequent section will show that this conception is actually as
empty and hollow as the rest.

This vagueness and ambiguity of conventional common-
places to describe its basic aims is not accidental in Fascism,
but inherent and inevitable. This terminology is the standard
vague and deceitful terminology of all capitalist parties to
cover the realities of class-rule and class-exploitation under
empty phrases of “the community,” “the national welfare,”
“the State above classes,” etc. It is the familiar terminology
of a MacDonald, a Henderson or of Fabianism in the Labour
movement to defeat the aims of Socialism and cover servitude
to capitalism. It is the familiar terminology of a Baldwin or a
Lloyd George, of a Tardieu or a Laval, of a Hindenburg or a
Wels. In the use of these threadbare clichés of capitalist politics
to describe its aims Fascism differs not a whit from the other
capitalist parties, from Conservatism, Liberalism or Labourism,
all of which would readily accept all the formulas quoted above.
By this identity Fascism not only reveals its theoretical poverty
and emptiness, but also reveals its basic identity of aims with
the other capitalist parties. Fascism differs from the other

200 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

capitalist parties only in its particular methods, in its practice, to
realise the same basic aims.

There is, in short, despite all the inflated claims and attempts
to the contrary, no distinctive “theory” of Fascism in the
sense of a distinctive, scientific system of doctrines and world-
outlook. There is only a practice: and, to cover this practice, a
medley of borrowed plumes of any and every theory, principle
or institution which may serve the purpose of the moment,
often with the utmost consequent theoretical contradiction
(e.g., in racial theories) between one Fascism and another. To
mistake the borrowed plumage for the bird means to fail to
understand the essence of Fascism. Or, to vary the metaphor,
the warning may be addressed to those who seek in all innocence
to study the highly “ideal” and “spiritual” explanations of
the “theoretical basis” of Fascism, that to mistake the sheep’s
hide for the wolf means to reveal oneself in truth a sheep and
fit prey for the wolf.

Fascism grew up in historical fact as a movement without a
theory—that is to say, it grew up in reality as a negative move-
ment (employing mixed national-chauvinist and pseudo-
revolutionary slogans) in opposition to the proletarian revolu-
tion, and mainly distinguished by the use of violent and extra-
legal methods against the proletarian movement. Only later,
after over two years of existence, when it became clear that in
order to appear fully dressed and equipped as a party and move-
ment, it required to have a “philosophy,” in 1921 the Fascist
leadership gave orders for a suitable “philosophy” to be
created. In August 1921, in preparation for the 1921 Congress,
Mussolini wrote:

Italian Fascism now requires, under pain of death, or worse, of
suicide, to provide itself with a “body of doctrines.”. . .

The expression is a rather strong one, but I would desire that
within the two months between now and the National Congress the
philosophy of Fascism must be created.

(Mussolini, letter to Bianchi, August 27, 1921, reprinted in
Message et Proclami, Milan, 1929, p. 39.)

“Within two months the philosophy of Fascism must be
created.” The new “philosophy” is ordered as simply as a
waggon-load of blacksticks. The spirit of this is no doubt
magnificent in the style of a Selfridge’s or Whiteley’s emporium,
ready to provide anything at a moment’s notice, including even

aera

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 201

a brand-new “philosophy” is desired. But it is not the spirit
of a genuine or serious movement with roots.

In the same way we may note Hitler’s explanation that a new
““world-theory” was necessary as the sole means to combat the
world-theory of Marxism.

Every attempt to combat a world-theory by means of force comes
to grief in the end, so long as the struggle fails to take the form of
aggression in favour of a new intellectual conception. It is only
when two world-theories are wrestling on equal terms that brute
force, persistent and ruthless, can bring about a decision by arms in
favour of the side which it supports.

It was on this side that the fight against Marxism had failed up to
that time. It was the reason why Bismarck’s legislation regarding
Socialism failed in the end in spite of everything, and was bound to
fail. It lacked the platform of a new world-theory to establish which
the fight might have been fought; for only the proverbial wisdom of
high State officials could find it possible to imagine that the twaddle
about so-called “State authority” or “order and tranquillity” are
a sufficient inducement to fight to the death.

In 1914 a contest against Social Democracy was in fact con-
ceivable, but the lack of any practical substitute made it doubtful
how long such a contest could have been maintained successfully.
In that respect there was a serious blank.

(Hitler, Mein Kampf, English translation, pp. 78-9.)

Hitler, or the writer of this passage, is here perfectly correct in
placing his finger on the weakness of the fight against Marxism.
But his correctness is the correctness of a cunning tactician, not
of a world thinker or historical leader. Marxism is strong and
invincible because of its world-theory; therefore we must also
create a world-theory in order to defeat it: such is the reasoning.
Once again only the negative approach to Marxism dictates the
ideology and the demand for it; Marxism remains the sole posi-
tive, dominating force. It is obvious that no world-theory comes
into existence in this fashion, but only a substitute for one.
The sensation of a “new ideology” which intoxicates the
more fanatical and emotional adherents of Fascism, giving
them the illusion of a liberation from old superstitions and a new
dynamic power, represents in reality no new ideology distinct
from the general ideology of capitalism, but only the typical
ideology of the most modern phase of capitalism, that is to say,
the sharpened expression of all the tendencies of imperialism or
capitalism in decay, in the period of the general crisis. The

202 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

contempt for constitutional and legalist forms, the glorification
of violence, the denial of all liberal, egalitarian and humani-
tarian ideas, the demand for the strong and powerful
State, the enthronement of war as the highest form of human
activity—all these are the typical expressions of modern mono-
polist capitalism. They are not peculiar to Fascism; they are
only expressed with greater brutality by Fascism. In the poems
of a Kipling, in the Boer War agitation of a Daily Mail, in the
war dictatorship of a Lloyd George riding roughshod over con-
stitutional forms and driving to the aim of a “Knock-out Blow,”
the spirit of Fascism is already present inembryonic forms. And
indeed Fascism grew historically out of war agitation, and under
the guiding inspiration of the Army authorities, in both Italy
and Germany.

There is nothing original or creative in Fascism. Not
one single creative idea or achievement can be traced to
Fascism. The critique of liberalism and of liberal capitalist
democracy, with its hollow contradiction between the formal
sovereign “citizenship” and the reality of wage-slavery is
borrowed from Marx. But Marx’s conclusion, which alone
justifies the criticism by pointing the path forward to the stage
when the abolition of classes will make the formal citizenship
real, is omitted; for in Fascism the hollow contradiction be-
tween the formal “citizenship” and the reality of wage-
slavery remains, just as in Liberalism, save with heavier
coercion and subjection to maintain it.

The pseudo-revolutionary trappings, the sham staged ‘“‘con-
quest of power,” the new form of government based on a single
party running throughout the entire population, is twisted,
with servile imitation, from a caricature of the Russian Revolu-
tion, turned upside down. But even the caricature cannot be
reproduced in the end; for, while the idea of a single party
leadership is borrowed (but of an autocratic, not a democratic
party), the key of the system, the Soviets or drawing of the
masses directly into the work of government through their own
elected organs from below, cannot be copied even in caricature;
on the contrary, even the previously elected municipal councils
have to be abolished and replaced by the arbitrary rule of the
nominated Podesta or Prefect, or in Germany by the nominated
State Commissary imposed from above and overruling even
nominal elected forms.

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 203

The theory of economic state regulation of privately owned
industry and of class-collaboration in the “Corporate State,”
that is, of syndicated state-controlled capitalism with a dash of
sham “labour representation,” is borrowed from the entire
modern development of monopolist capitalism in all countries.
In particular, these are the typical theories of modern Liberal-
ism and Social Democracy, with their “Organised Capitalism,”
“National Planning Boards,” “National Economic Councils,”
“Joint Industrial Councils,” and all the rest of the apparatus of
theories and institutions which have developed continuously
and increasingly in the imperialist era, and more especially
since the war, before Fascism ever existed.

Finally, the national-chauvinist ideology, the anti-semitism
and the racial theories are all borrowed, without a single new
feature, from the stock in trade of the old Conservative and
reactionary parties, as utilised by a Bismarck or Tsar Nicholas,
and made familiar in the propaganda of the Pan-Germans or
Pan-Slavists.*

* Modern Anti-Semitism developed from Germany and Austria in the eighteen-
seventies, that is, as capitalism was beginning to pass from the liberal epoch to-
wards the imperialist epoch. In 1873 appeared Marr’s Der Sieg des Judentums uber
das Germantum, or, The Victory of Jewry over Germanism, “It is impossible to
doubt,” writes Lucien Wolf, former President of the Jewish Historical Society in
England, “that the secret springs of the new agitation were more or less directly
supplied by Prince Bismarck himself.” It is worth noting that a “Christian Social
Working Men’s Union” (worthy forerunner of the National Socialist Workers’
Party) was founded in this period by Stécker, a Court Chaplain, which preached a
programme of so-called “Christian Socialism,” in practice Anti-Semitism, dished
up with denunciations of financial corruption, and organised street riots and blood-
shed. It was with reference to this movement that the elder Liebknecht spoke of
Anti-Semitism as the “Socialism of Fools.” The Anti-Semite agitation spread
from Germany to Russia in the beginning of the ’eighties, again directly inspired
and stimulated from above. “The modern Anti-Semitic element,” writes Lucien
Wolf, “came from above. It has been freely charged against the Russian Govern-
ment that it promoted the riots in 1881 in order to distract attention from the
Nihilist propaganda. This seems to be true of General Ignatiev, then Minister
of the Interior, and of the secret police.” The conscious anti-revolutionary, anti-
socialist and officially inspired character of the movement thus stands out in every
case. In France, Drumont’s La France Juive appeared in 1886, and the anti-
Dreyfus scandal, promoted by all the high military and bureaucratic authorities
with wholesale forgeries, dragged from 1894 to 1906. Only British Capitalism,
which in its period of stability could make a Conservative Jew Prime Minister and
ennoble Jewish millionaires in abundance, had for long no use for the primitive
devices of Anti-Semite demagogy; but to-day the signs begin to spread in Britain
in close association with the spread of Fascism. Thus The Blackshirt (1933, No.

204 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The whole outlook and ideology of Fascism is in short nothing
but a ragbag of borrowings from every source to cover the
realities and practice of modern monopolist capitalism in the
period of crisis and of extreme class-war. There is not a single
creative idea. Capitalism in its time, in its early progressive
days achieved a great constructive work, and carried enor-
mously forward the whole of human culture in every field.
The French Revolution spread a new life and a new under-
standing throughout the world, the outcome of which we can
to-day be proud to inherit, even though we are to-day able to
understand that its bourgeois basis inevitably set a limit to
what it could achieve. The Russian Revolution opened a new
era on a scale exceeding every previous change in human his-
tory, the full extent of which is still only beginning to be realised.
But Fascism has produced nothing, and can produce nothing.
For Fascism is the expression only of disease and death.

2. Demagogy as a Science.

Bolshevism is knocking at our gates. We can’t afford to let it in.
We have got to organize ourselves against it, and put our shoulders
together and hold fast. We must keep America whole and safe
and unspoiled. We must keep the worker away from red literature
and red ruses; we must see that his mind remains healthy.

(Al Capone.)

The above quotation from Al Capone is a suitable intro-
duction to the anti-Communist ideology of Fascism. The
earnestness of this appeal of a thief and gangster to maintain
existing society “unspoiled” in face of the Communist menace
might appear at first blush comic; but in fact it is purely
reasonable. None have more sincere concern and zeal than
thieves to maintain the institution of private property, without
which their profession would come to an end, and they would
find themselves faced with the unpleasant alternative of having
to work for their living. On the other hand, they cannot
publicly proclaim the principles of thievery and gangsterism as
the basis of their stand; for public purposes, they have to pro-

23) prints on its front page under the heading “Britain for the British: The Alien
Menace”:

“The low type of foreign Jew, together with other aliens who are debasing the
life of this nation, will be run out of the country in double-quick time under
Fascism.”

Anti-Semitism, the typical degrading expression of a tottering system, is developed
by Capitalism in its decaying stage in proportion as the class struggle grows acute.

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 205

claim the most high moral principles, to maintain existing society
“unspoiled” and to keep “the mind” of the worker “healthy.”
This high moral tone runs through all Fascist propaganda
and accompanies their gangster exploits. Nor should this be
thought a contradiction; the two characteristics invariably run
together in periods of decay. As Plechanov has remarked:

Marx said very truly that the greater the development of antagon-
ism between the growing forces of production and the extant social
order, the more does the ideology of the ruling class become
permeated with hypocrisy. In addition, the more effectively life
unveils the mendacious character of this ideology, the more does the
language used by the dominant class become sublime and virtuous
(see Saint Max). This shrewd remark is confirmed by what is going
on to-day in Germany. The spread of debauchery disclosed by the
Harden-Moltke trial proceeds hand in hand with the “revival of
idealism” in sociology.

(Plechanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism, English
edition, 1929, p. 82.)

The process noted by Plechanov has gone considerably further
in Germany and in all capitalist Society to-day. The fact that
many of the principal leaders of German Fascism are not only
notorious drug-fiends and perverts, but express themselves in
their writings with highly jocular gusto over their exploits of
tortures of women and particularly revolting murders (see for
example the Ernstes und Heiteres aus dem Putschleben of von
Killinger, who was appointed by Hitler Commissar for Saxony
and Minister-President), while in their programme they
demand the protection of “the morals and sense of decency of
the German race,” is no contradiction, but only a further
exemplification of the general rule.*

*“Von Killinger was made Commissar for Saxony and later Minister-
President, and he consequently was in charge of ‘Gleichschaltung’ in this State.
He had previously written a little book, Ernstes und Heiteres aus dem Putsch-
leben, in which he recounts, among other incidents, how in the campaign against
the Soviet Government in Munich he had a soldier whip a young ‘wench’ with
a horsewhip ‘until there was not a white spot left on her backside.’ He also
recounts how, after a Communist street agitator had made an impudent reply
to a threat, he had a soldier toss a hand grenade at the man. He recounts with
gusto the gory details of the man’s death” (Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters
the Third Reich, 1933, Pp. 113). : ; Hts
Leaders of this type have invariably been given especially high position in German
Fascism. Many similar exploits could be recounted of the notorious “Rasses”
of Mussolini in Italy, of Finnish Fascism, of Hungarian Fascism, etc. This
characteristic is a general characteristic of Fascism, and follows inevitably from
the type of work it has to do.

206 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The mystical and openly non-rational character of Fascist
ideology and propaganda is only the inevitable expression of
its class-role to maintain the domination of a doomed and
decaying class. The present situation of world capitalism is
in the highest degree irrational. It is not rational that food-
stuffs should be destroyed, while millions are undernourished,
that building workers should be unemployed, while housing
becomes more and more overcrowded and inadequate; that
the masses should have to economise and go short, because
there is too much plenty; or that learned economists should
discuss anxiously the “menace” of a good harvest or the
“hopes” of a bad harvest. But all this is inherent in the present
stage of capitalism. Therefore capitalism can no longer defend
itself on rational grounds, as it used to do in its early days, when
it argued that its system, though cruel, meant the maximum
development of natural resources and the maximum material
well-being. To-day such arguments are dimissed as low,
materialistic, utilitarian, merely rational arguments unworthy
of higher human nature, characteristic of the exploded nine-
teenth-century outlook and long replaced by twentieth-century
“spirituality” and the “revival of idealism.” To-day
capitalism defends itself on mystical grounds. “Race,” “the
nation,” “Christianity,” “spirituality,’ “the mystery of
patriotism,” “faith’—this is the language of the modern
defenders of capitalism, and, in particular, of Fascism.

Thus Mussolini, in defining Fascism, speaks with contempt of
“doctrine” and exalts “faith”:

Doctrine, beautifully defined and carefully elucidated, with
headlines and paragraphs, might be lacking; but there was to take
its place something more decisive—faith.

(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, p. 10.)
Gentile, the philosopher of Fascism, defines the Fascist State
as “a wholly spiritual creation.” Hitler defines the State as
“nothing to do with any definite economic conception or
economic development,” but
the organisation of a community homogeneous in nature and feeling,
for the better furtherance and maintenance of their type and the
fulfilment of the destiny marked out for them by Providence.

(Hitler, Mein Kampf, English edition, p. 69.)
The British Union of Fascists, in its short definition of Fascism,
declares:

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE

We believe in the co-operation of all classes, in the solidarity
of all units of a nation, and in justice. And in the mystery of
patriotism. (The Blackshirt, No. 34, 1933-)

Bottomley in his wartime speeches and articles had many
similar exalted passages.

This type of “ideal” “spiritual” language is the familiar
language of all scoundrels, rogues, war-profiteers, gangsters,
Kreugers, Al Capones, Morgans, MacDonalds, Mussolinis,
Hitlers, Romanoffs and all who live by preying on their fellow
human beings and cannot face a plain, rational, materialist
examination of their role and of the organisation of society.

On this exaltation of mystical “feeling” above reason—
whether national “feeling,” religious “feeling,” racial “feel-
ing,” etc.—as the ultimate basis, Hegel (himself philosophically
an idealist, but of a more solid type, and therefore by his system
laying the groundwork for the subsequent dialectical material-
ism), wrote with incisive contempt in Phenomenology of Mind:

By referring to his feelings, his inward oracle, he thinks he has a
sufficient answer to those who do not agree with him; he must
declare that he has nothing more to say to those who do not share the
same feelings—in other words, he tramples under foot the roots of
humanity. For the nature of this is to seek agreement with others,
and it exists only in the community of consciousness that has been
brought about. The inhuman, the brute consists in being guided
only by feeling and being able to communicate only through feelings.

“He tramples under foot the roots of humanity”—this preg-
nant saying applies to all the racial, mystical, non-rational,
anti-humanitarian, anti-international ideologies of Fascism.
And the result in every case is the same—to lead only to “the
inhuman, the brute.”

The truth is, the propaganda of Fascism is essentially dema-
gogy carried to its most extreme point of development. It
might indeed be said that, if Marxism represented the develop-
ment of Socialism from Utopia to science, Fascism represents
the development of capitalist demagogy from amateurdom to
science. Already before Fascism the precursors of the modern
age, Northcliffe, Lloyd George, Bottomley, Hearst and others
had done much to point the way and lay down the general
lines and methods; but these were still erratic and individualist
in character, and never solved completely the complicated and
contradictory problem of building up a reactionary mass move-

208 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ment, at once “popular” in form and anti-popular in content.
Hitler expresses generously his gratitude to his predecessors,
especially Northcliffe, Lloyd George and British wartime pro-
paganda, which he acknowledges as his model that he learnt
from, admiring its “psychological superiority”; he admires
particularly the idea of pretending to fight for “the freedom of
little nations” as a far superior motive to “lead men to their
death” rather than telling them the real aims of the war; he
praises Lloyd George highly as a “great demagogue,’”’ whose
“primitiveness” is “proof of towering political capacity.”
But in fact Fascism was to leave these models far behind in its
systematisation of playing on every backward feeling, instinct
and ignorance in the population, in the unscrupulousness of
its programmes thrown out to appeal to any and every section
without pretense of regard for consistency, and in the brazen-
ness of its sudden changes of front and repudiation of its own
programmes.

What is demagogy? The ruling classes will apply the epithet
“demagogue” to every revolutionary leader of the masses who
awakens them to the struggle to overthrow their oppressors, as
realised at its highest in a Lenin or a Liebknecht. Such appel-
lation is a glaring misuse of language; for the relation of the
revolutionary leader to the masses is based on the strictest
regard for objective truth, whether popular or unpopular, and
the most consistent and unwavering prosecution of the interests
of the mass struggle for liberation against all opposition, how-
ever powerful. Demagogy, on the other hand, is the art of
playing on the hopes and the fears, the emotions and the
ignorance of the poor and the suffering for the benefit of the rich
and the powerful. It is the meanest of the arts. This is the art
of Fascism.

An examination of the programmes of Italian and of German
Fascism will show the systematisation of this method, which
is being painstakingly copied to-day by British Fascism.

It is unnecessary to go into the earlier record of Mussolini
himself, as when in 1910 he declared that “the proletariat has
no fatherland, nor in truth has the bourgeoisie; in case of war
we Socialists will not go to the front—we will raise insurrection
within our own borders,” or when in 1912 he denounced
Bissolati for treason in having acclaimed the King whose
servitor he was himself to become. This is only the common

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 209

record of all the corrupt Western European Social Democratic
politicians, of the Millerands and Briands, of the MacDonalds
and Snowdens. It is more important to begin with the early
programme of Italian Fascism in 1919-22 before power.

The early programme of Italian Fascism was, in the words of
an official spokesman of Fascism, Professor G. Volpe (Professor
of Modern History in the University of Milan), in the Yearbook
of the International Centre of Fascist Studies for 1928, “a nebu-
lous programme at first . . . somewhat demagogic and revolu-
tionary.” It contained items of the following type:

Abolition of the Monarchy, Senate and Nobility.

Republic, and Universal Suffrage to elect a Constituent Assembly
as Italian Section of the International Constituent Assembly of the
Peoples.

International Disarmament and Abolition of Compulsory Military
Service.

Confiscation of Church property.

Confiscation of war super-profits, and capital levy; abolition of
the Stock Exchange and dissolution of limited liability Companies
and banks;

Land for the peasants.

Transference of control of industry to syndicates of technicians

and workers.
Italian Fascism systematically applauded the occupation of
factories by workers, food-riots, strikes, peasant land-seizures,
etc. and called for the hanging of speculators from lamp-posts
and similar measures.

It is only necessary to examine this programme of Fascism in
comparison with its record in power to understand the meaning
of demagogy. In comparison with Fascism, the average “old
gang politician’s” record of election promises and subsequent
violation is innocent child’s play and almost honest by contrast.
Political history in all its range from a Machiavelli to a Tam-
many Hall knows no parallel of brazen dishonesty to equal
Fascism.*

* The examples of this record in every field are too abundant and commonplace
to be worth detailed review. Thus on the question of Republicanism Mussolini
wrote in the Popolo d’Italia on May 24, 1921:

“J shall not allow Fascism to be altered and made unrecognizable by changing
from republican in tendency, as I founded it, and as it ought to remain, to a
monarchical, nay more, a dynastic movement. Our symbol is not the scutcheon
of the House of Savoy. ... It is not permissible to preach one thing and
practise another.”

On the very next day, when the controlling capitalist and landed elements in

210 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The programme of German National Socialism surpassed
that of Italian Fascism in unblushing demagogy. Here, in the
more advanced stage of development of Germany, it was neces-
sary for Fascism to proclaim the aim of “Socialism.” The
Krupps and the Thyssens, the Deterdings and the Hohenzol-
lerns paid out their money to spread the propaganda of
“Socialism.” The Twenty-Five Points Programme, adopted
in 1920, and proclaimed by the 1926 Congress to be “‘unalter-
able,” set out the following aims among its miscellaneous
medley of items:

Abolition of Unearned Income (11).

Breaking of Interest-Slavery (11).

Confiscation of all war profits (12).

Nationalisation of all trusts (13).

Profit-sharing in large concerns (14).

Confiscation without compensation of land for communal pur-
poses (17).

Death penalty for usurers and profiteers (17).

The meaning of these high-sounding “revolutionary” and
“socialistic” aims was left deliberately obscure. It is reported
that two earnest students and devotees of National Socialism
having approached Goebbels for an explanation how the
famous Eleventh Point on the “Breaking of Interest-Slavery”
would be accomplished received the reply that the only “break-
ing” likely to take place would be of the heads of those who
tried to understand it.

“Interpretation” was, however, at a later stage brought
into play in reference to one point, the Seventeenth Point on the
confiscation of land without compensation. This demand had

Fascism insisted on the withdrawal of this republican declaration, Mussolini at
once obediently wrote (Popolo d’Italia, May 21, 1921):

“Fascism is superior to monarchy and republic. . . . The future is uncertain,
and the absolute does not exist. .. . Those who would draw the conclusion
that Fascism espouses the republican cause, and regards the setting up of the
republic as a prime necessity, reveal a lamentable want of understanding.”

On the question of religion Mussolini wrote on April 3, 1921:
“Fascism is the strongest of all heresies that strikes at the doors of the churches.
. .. Away with these temples that are doomed to destruction; for our tri-
umphant heresy is destined to illumine all hearts and brains.”

In his Encyclopedia article on Fascism in 1932 he wrote:

“In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of the deepest manifestations

of the spirit of man, thus it is not only respected, but defended and protected.”
These examples could be continued indefinitely, and are only of importance as the
demonstration that Fascism cannot be interpreted in terms of its own alleged
political “theories,” but only in terms of its service to finance-capital.

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 2Ir

evidently caused alarm to the more stupid large landlords, who
required an assurance in writing, while the more wily heads of
big business and finance remained wholly unperturbed at the
terrible Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads in the
shape of the “Nationalisation of All Trusts,” “Abolition of
Unearned Income” and the “Death Penalty for Profiteers.”
Accordingly, the following explanatory addition was officially
inserted in the “unalterable” programme in 1928:

It is necessary to reply to the false interpretation on the part of
our opponents on Point 17 of the programme.

Since the National Socialist German Workers’ Party admits the
principle of private property, it is obvious that the expression ‘“con-
fiscation without compensation” merely refers to possible legal
powers to confiscate, if necessary, land illegally acquired or not
administered in accordance with national welfare. It is directed in
the first instance at the Jewish companies which speculate in land.

This specimen exercise in official “interpretation” speaks
volumes for the real character of the whole programme.

At the same time, occasional assurances had in fact also to
be given to some of the more hesitating capitalists. An official
letter of this type from the district party leadership in Dresden
to a Weimar capitaiist, who had hesitated to give financial
support owing to the “anti-capitalist” propaganda conducted,
and to whom it was officially explained that he should not be
alarmed at the anti-capitalist ‘“catchwords,” since these were
only adopted “for reasons of diplomacy,” fell into the hands
of the opponents of the Nazis in 1930 and was published. The
text of this indiscreet letter ran:

Do not let yourself be continually confused by the text of our
posters... . Of course there are catchwords like “Down with
Capitalism!” etc.; but these are unquestionably necessary, for
under the flag of “German national,” or “national” alone, you
must know, we should never reach our goal, we should have no
future. We must talk the language of the embittered socialist work-
men ... or else they wouldn’t feel at home with us. We don’t
come out with a direct programme for reasons of diplomacy.

(Letter of Dresden party leader to the industrialist, Fritsche,
in Weimar: reprinted in Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock
Back, p. 150.)

This illuminating letter makes further comment on the real
meaning of Fascist “demagogy” and its purpose superfluous.

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. Capitalism, Socialism and the Corporate State.

Fascism differs from Socialism chiefly in this—that in the Cor-
porate State you will be left in possession of your business.

(“Fascism Calling . . . to the Industrialists and Business
Men,” The Fascist Week, January 19-25, 1934.)

Fascism endeavours to present itself as a third alternative
distinct from either Capitalism or Socialism. To the workers
Fascism insists that it does not stand for Capitalism. To the
employers Fascism insists that it does not stand for Socialism.
For its supposed distinct positive conception it remains
extremely vague. Only after several years of existence Italian
Fascism worked out the formula of the “Corporate State” to
cover its aim. German Fascism worked out the formula of
“National Socialism.” Both these formulas are intended to
represent the supposed “third alternative” to Capitalism or
Socialism.

This supposed “third alternative’—the will o’ the wisp
dream of petit-bourgeois ideology ever since the development of
Capitalism and the class struggle—remains a myth and can
never be other than a myth. It is in fact nothing but a repeti-
tion of the old petit-bourgeois dream of a class-society without
class-contradictions or class-struggle, but this time used to
cover in reality the most violently coercive class-state and class-
suppression. The “Corporate State” is in fact the transparent
masquerade-dress of modern Capitalism, with developed state
organisation of industry, and complete suppression of all
independent workers’ organisation and rights.

Economically, there can only be Capitalism or Socialism in
the conditions of modern society based on large-scale industry.
What is Capitalism? Capitalism is marked by (1) production
for profit, (2) class ownership of the means of production, (3)
employment of the dispossessed workers or proletariat for wages.
What is Socialism? Socialism is marked by (1) common
ownership of the means of production by the workers, con-
stituting the entire society, (2) production for use. The current
fashionable vulgar talk of all bourgeois journalists and politi-
cians about “the disappearance nowadays of the line of dis-
tinction between Capitalism and Socialism” is only based on
the confusion that Capitalism is identified with the old liberal
laisser-faire relatively small-scale Capitalism or individualism
of the nineteenth century, while Socialism is identified with

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 213

State intervention. Hence the most typical characteristics of
modern Capitalism or Imperialism, with the increasing role of
the State in its organisation, are described as “Socialism,”
while the realities of wage-labour, profits and class-division are
unchanged and even intensified. This muddle-headed con-
fusion, which is common to all capitalist, Labourist and Fascist
ideology, and is the breeding-ground for all the demagogic
attempts of Fascism to conceal its capitalist character, becomes
impossible as soon as the class-analysis of Capitalism is under-
stood.

Fascism by all the above tests is economically identical with
Capitalism, representing only a special method to maintain its
power and hold down the workers. Fascism is profit-making
society, is class-society, is society based on exploitation. Alike
in Italy and in Germany, production is carried on for profit;
the means of production are the property of a small
minority, the upper strata of whom draw large incomes
through their ownership; the mass of the workers are
cut off from ownership, and work for a wage, producing
surplus-value for the owners, or are left unemployed, if it is
not profitable to employ them. All these are the familiar
characteristics of capitalism in all countries, as are equally the
crisis, depression, decline of production and mass unemploy-
ment. The Fascist countries show no difference from the other
capitalist countries in any of these respects. Fascist Italy and
Fascist Germany are no better off than non-Fascist France and
non-Fascist Britain (in fact worse off, but for reasons not neces-
sarily connected with Fascism); they are all economically in
the same boat, in the capitalist boat. The only contrast is
provided by the land of socialist construction, the Soviet Union,
with its ending of unemployment and gigantic rise of production
alongside the decline in all Fascist or other capitalist countries.

It is necessary at the outset to insist on these very elementary
facts, before examining more closely the specific economic _
institutions of Fascism, because Fascist propaganda, which is
characterised by brazenness of assertion rather than any attempt
at objective or scientific character, is so insistent on denying
the capitalist basis of Fascism that it may easily confuse those
who mistake words for facts. As this plea is at the heart of
the economic apologies for Fascism, it will be necessary to
examine more closely, first, the Fascist line of expression on

214 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Capitalism; second, the Fascist line of expression on “Socialism,”
as exemplified in “National Socialism’; and finally, the
positive economic principles and practice of Fascism, as
exemplified in the Corporate State or in the German Labour
Code.

The Fascist line of expression on Capitalism is marked by
extreme self-contradiction. According to Hitler, there is no such
thing as the “capitalist system.” He writes:

There does not exist a capitalist system. The employers have
worked their way up to the top by their industry and efficiency.
And by virtue of this selection, which shows that they belong to a
higher type, they have the right to lead. Every leader of industry
will forbid any interference by a factory council.

According to Mussolini, however, in his speech to the Council
of Corporations on November 14, 1933, the present crisis is
“a general crisis of capitalism.” He defines Capitalism as
follows:

Capitalism in its most highly developed form is a mass production
for mass consumption, financed nationally and internationally by
anonymous capital.

Having thus brilliantly “defined” Capitalism in terms of
“capital” (he is compelled to tie himself up in this way, for if
he were to attempt to analyse capital, he would be compelled
to lay bare the capitalist basis of Fascism), he proceeds to dis-
tinguish three periods of capitalism, the period of free com-
petition from 1830 to 1870, the “static” or “stagnating”
period of the great trusts from 1870 to 1913, and the period of
“decadence” since the war (here we have only a very confused
and mangled borrowing from Lenin’s /mperialism). He then
poses the question:

The crisis which has held us in its clutches for four years—is it a
crisis in the capitalist system or of the capitalist system?

And he reaches the answer that the crisis which has held “us”
(Fascist Italy) in its clutches for four years is “‘a crisis of the
capitalist system” (which Hitler says does not exist). But having
reached this important admission, he then endeavours to argue
that Italy is “not a capitalist country.” Upon what does he
base this argument? On the plea that in Italy there is a
majority proportion of agriculture and small industry (as if
this made any difference to the dominance of the capitalist class

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 215

and of capitalist exploitation, which knows very well how to
suck the labours, not only of the industrial workers, but also of
the peasants and small producers). But if this structure makes
Italy “not capitalist,” this structure applied equally to Italy
before Fascism, and Italy was accordingly “not capitalist” also
before Fascism. But if Italy was “not capitalist” before
Fascism, what was it? Again he can give no answer which
would not undermine his whole attempt to present Fascist Italy
as any different in its essential capitalist basis from pre-Fascist
Italy. Finally he argues that, since the corporate system has
admittedly failed to save Italy from the crisis of capitalism
“which has held us in its clutches for four years,” therefore the
corporate system may be recommended to other capitalist
countries to save them equally:

We come to the last question: Can the corporative principle be
applied in other countries? There is no doubt about it. As there is
a general crisis of capitalism, solution by the Corporate State seems
to be necessary in other countries.

However, in that case he would need to show that “solution by
the Corporate State” has applied to Italy, which has suffered

as heavily from the capitalist crisis as any other capitalist
country. But when the crisis broke on Italy in 1929-30, what
was his line? Did he argue that “solution by the Corporate
State” would save Italy? On the contrary, he argued that
Fascist Italy was helpless to do any more about the crisis than
any other capitalist country. In his speech of October 1, 1930,
he declared:

The situation has grown considerably worse throughout the
world, including Italy. ... The State cannot perform miracles.
Not even Mr. Hoover, the most powerful man in the world in the
richest country in the world, has succeeded in putting his house in
order.

“The State” (i.e., the Fascist State) “cannot perform
miracles.” It cannot hope to do more than other capitalist
countries. Quite right, and very honestly said for once. But
in that case what happens to the boasted superiority of Fascism
and the supposed emancipation of Fascism from capitalism and
its contradictions?

It is evident that we have here a mere tangle of confusions
and self-contradictions (which could be endlessly further

4
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216 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

exemplified from the statements of all the principal Fascist
leaders in all countries), without attempt at serious thinking.
Let us now turn to the Fascist line on “Socialism.” According
to Mussolini, in his speech on January 13, 1934, “Socialism”
is condemned outright as “the bureaucratisation of economy.”
According to German Fascism, “Socialism” is the ideal,
provided it is “National Socialism.” But what do they mean
by “Socialism”? The definitions given by the leaders of
German Fascism afford an instructive variety of choice.

The thirteenth point of the official party programme calls
for “the nationalisation of all trusts.”’ However, the official
economic theorist of the party, Feder, explains in his Manifesto
on the suppression of interest-slavery:

Every honest politician knows that general socialisation means
economic collapse and the absolute bankruptcy of the State. Our
watchword must be, not “socialisation,” but ‘“desocialisation.”

Goebbels in his Little A.B.C. of the National Socialists, states:

The Socialisation of all the means of production is absolutely
unachievable.

Addressing a group of business men at Hamburg on December
15, 1933, Feder won their applause by declaring that “the
State must not engage in business itself as a competitor,” and
adding, ‘Don’t be afraid your enterprises will be nationalised.”

Where then is the “Socialism”? Explanations are forth-
coming in abundance. Gregor Strasser, speaking on the radio
on behalf of the party on June 14, 1932, gave the following com-
prehensive definition:

By socialism we understand governmental measures for the pro-
tection of the individual or the group against any sort of exploitation.
The taking over of the railways by the State, of the street-cars,
power plants and gas works by the municipalities; the emancipation
of the peasants by Baron von Stein, and the incorporation of the
guild system into the State; the Prussian officers’ system of selection
by achievement; the incorruptibility of the German official; the
old walls, the town hall, the cathedral of the free Imperial city—
these are all expressions of German Socialism as we conceive and
demand it.

“Socialism,” after passing gently through the stages of gas-and-
water Fabianism and an admixture of “guilds,” thus comes to

NN ee

a —

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 217

rest at last in the solid ground of “the old walls,” “the
cathedral” and “the Prussian officers’ system.”

Goebbels is still more explicit in his brochure Prussia Must
Become Prussian Again:

Socialism is Prussianism (Preussentum). The conception “Prus-
sianism” is identical with what we mean by Socialism.

And again in a speech in East Prussia:

Our Socialism is that which animated the kings of Prussia, and
which reflected itself in the march-step of the Prussian Grenadier
regiments: a Socialism of duty.

It is impossible not to recall Marx’s comments on “German
Socialism” (despite all the differences) nearly a century ago:

German Socialism recognised its own calling as the bombastic
representative of the petit-bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the
German petit-bourgeois Philistine to be the typical man. To every
typical meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher,
“socialist” interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character.
It went to the length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive”
tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and im-
partial contempt of all class struggles.

But this old “German Socialism,” which Marx thus castigated,
was by comparison the noblest-hearted idealism if set against
the conscious and open filth of their “German Socialist”
descendants of the twentieth century, the bootlickers of reaction
and murderers of the workers, dressing up the hated Prussian,
militarist, absolutist corpse as “Socialism.”

It is obvious that the Fascist conceptions on “Socialism”
are even less worthy of serious discussion than their conceptions
on “Capitalism.” It remains to consider their supposed
“new” and “distinctive” programme: the Corporate State
“the greatest constructive conception yet devised by the mind
of man” (Mosley).

What is the Corporate State?

The basic official document of principles, the Italian Labour
Charter, published in 1927, lays down the following (§7):

The Corporate State considers that in the sphere of production
private initiative is the most effective and valuable instrument in
the interests of the nation.

Since private enterprise is a function of national concern, the

218 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the manage-
ment of its production. From the fact that the elements of pro-
duction (labour and capital) are co-operators in a common enter-
prise, reciprocal rights and duties devolve upon them. The
employee, whether labourer, clerk or skilled workman, is an active
collaborator in the economic enterprise, responsibility for the
’ direction of which rests with the employer.

These principles are tolerably familiar in all capitalist countries.

The standard semi-official work on the question, Fausto
Pitigliani’s ‘The Italian Corporative State” (P. S. King,
1933, written “in close contact with the Ministry of Corpora-
! tions’’) declares:

=

—

The idea of the sovereignty of the State and of national unity is
; the primary motive underlying the Fascist theory of govern-
ment... .

Parallel to this unifying principle . . . there is to be noted another
concept implicit in the State system which Fascism desires to build
up, namely, the economic collaboration of the various categories
engaged in production.

This new economic departure may be said to lie somewhere
between Liberalism . . . and Communism. .. .

The different categories of producers are represented officially
by various Occupational Associations. ... These Occupational
Associations, consisting solely of employers or of workers or of
persons belonging to one or other of the liberal professions, are
grouped in Corporations for purposes of protection and development
of some specific branch of production. These advisory bodies are
organs of State, and they embody all the elements involved in a
given branch of production, namely, capital, labour and technical
direction. It is precisely from the character of these institutions—
so distinctive a feature of the new political and economic order in
Italy—that the epithet of “corporative” is derived, which serves to
differentiate the Fascist State in its particular characteristics from
other State types.

Paul Einzig in his pro-Fascist “Economic Foundations of
Fascism” (1933) describes the Corporate State as “a new
economic system that differs fundamentally from Liberal
Capitalism and Communism”’:

In the Corporate State private property is respected just as in any
capitalist country. There is no expropriation without compensation.
The State reserves the right, however, to limit and guide the employ-
ment of the means of production, and to intervene in the process of

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 219

distribution in accordance with public interest. It does not aim at
owning the means of production any more than in a capitalist
country. Private ownership is the rule, and State ownership the
exception. Individual initiative is not superseded by State inter-
vention. But the Government reserves the right to supplement
individual initiative whenever this is considered necessary; to pre-
vent it from developing in directions detrimental to public interest,
and to guide it so as to obtain the maximum benefit for the com-
munity as a whole.

Mosley in his Fascism in Britain describes the Corporate State
as follows:

Our policy is the establishment of the Corporate State. As the
name implies, this means a State organised like the human body.
Every member of that body acts in harmony with the purpose of
the whole under the guidance and driving brain of the Fascist
Government. This does not mean that industry will be conducted
or interfered with from Whitehall, as in Socialist organisation. But
it does mean that the limits within which interests may operate will
be laid down by Government, and that those limits will be the welfare
of the nation as a whole. To that interest of the nation as a whole,
all lesser interests are subordinate, whether of Right or of Left,
whether they be employers’ federation, trade union, banking or
professional interests. All such interests are woven into the
permanently functioning machinery of Corporate Government.
Within the Corporate structure interests such as trade unions and
employers’ federations will no longer be the general staffs of
opposing armies, but the joint directors of national enterprise. Class-
war will give place to national co-operation, All who pursue a
sectional and anti-national policy will be opposed by the might
of the organized State. Profit can be made provided that the
activity enriches the nation as well as the individual. Profit may
not be made at the expense of the nation and of the working class.
The Corporate State will secure that the nation, and the workers
who are part of the nation will share fully in the benefits and rewards
of industry.

The Corporations, it should be noted, are “advisory” bodies
(Pitigliani). Control rests with the private employer in his
enterprise, and with the State above him, as in all capitalist
countries. The Corporations are joint-committees of employers’
representatives and so-called “workers’ representatives” (after
the destruction of all independent workers’ organisation).
Only the “workers’ organisations” recognised by the Fascist
State, not those chosen by the workers, are admitted, the only

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;

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220 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

legal requirement being that they should represent one-tenth
of the workers in an industry to secure sole recognition as
representing all the workers in the industry. The functions of
the Corporations (Article 44 of the Decree of July 1, 1926) are:
(i) conciliation; (ii) encouragement of measures “to co-
ordinate production and improve its organisation”; (iii) estab-
lishment of labour exchanges; (iv) regulation of training and
apprenticeship.

The purely nominal stage-dressing character of the Corpora-
tions is shown by the fact that up to 1933, eleven years after the
establishment of the Fascist regime, not a single Corporation
had yet been established, except for the amusement “industry”
(in 1930).

The work will be done directly by the Minister of Corporations,
and hence these largely nominal bodies will be not merely “organs
of the State,” as the theory demands, but really mere additional
powers for present politicians. As a result, not a single corporation
has been formally created.

(H. W. Schneider, Making the Fascist State, 1928.)

In 1933 Pitigliani, in his semi-official work already quoted, in
the fourth chapter on “Corporative Organisation,” coming to
his third section under the grandiose title “The Corporations in
their Actual Working,” is compelled to write under that title
(like the famous chapter on Snakes in Iceland):

It is impossible to judge in the light of any practical results how
the system is actually working in the corporative field properly
so-called. Reference has already been made to the fact that only a
single corporation, viz., that of the stage, has so far been established
in Italy.

Not until February 1934 was the law on the Constitution and
Functions of the Corporations passed. On November 10,
1934, the twenty-two Corporations were inaugurated. On this
occasion Mussolini declared:

It is as yet premature to say what developments the Corporative
system may have in Italy and elsewhere from the point of view of
the production and distribution of goods. Ours is a point of de-
parture and not of arrival. Yet since Fascist corporativism repre-
sents the social content of the Revolution, it categorically obliges all
men of the regime—wherever and however they are organised—to
guarantee its development and fruitful continuance.

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 221

The vagueness of this language is worthy of a Mac-
Donald.

What, then, does the Corporate State, as so far described in
the terms of its own advocates, actually represent? Its prin-
ciples, according to these descriptions, amount in fact to the
following:

1. Maintenance of the class-structure of society, and of
class-exploitation, under cover of phrases about
“organic unity,” etc.;*

Maintenance of capitalist ownership, “private enter-
prise,” “profits,” etc.;

Moderate State intervention or regulatory role, where
necessary ;
Compulsory conciliation committees or joint industrial
councils of capital and labour.
But so far this is identical with the principles of all modern
capitalist states. The cool effrontery of attempting to present
this as something “new” is only based on the naive trick of

* The transparent deception, which is at the root of the “(Corporate State,” of
maintaining class-division in fact and denying it in words, is strikingly expressed
by Rossoni, writing as President of the National Confederation of Fascist Syndi-
cates on “The Significance of Fascist Syndicalism” in the Yearbook of Fascist
Studies, 1928:

“The conception of Fascist Syndicalism changes the outlook of all those
engaged in industry, and takes from Socialism all that it has of value. Even the
old terminology of ‘masters’ and ‘men’ is changing. The word ‘master’ has
an offensive meaning and implies the servitude of labour, a servitude which is in
direct contradiction to modern progress. The Italian scheme of Corporations
brings about a much-needed co-operation between the directors and the
executors of an undertaking, and is the only present-day conception which
entails equilibrium and economic justice.

“Tt should be emphasised that it was these very Fascist organisers who were
the first to insist that the old expressions ‘masters’ and ‘men’ should be
abolished, and this because master supposes servant. Nowadays we are no
longer able to concur with the old absurd idea of class-distinctions, nor do we
hold that there is by nature any moral inferiority between men. On the con-
trary, it is fully recognised that all men have the same right to citizenship in the
national life.”

It will be seen that the “absurd idea of class-distinctions” is regarded as solely a
question of “terminology.” Hence, while Socialism aims at overcoming the class-
division of society by the abolition of classes and thus achieving for the first time
real social unity, Fascism proposes a verbal liquidation of classes, while the reality
remains. Employers and wage-earners remain; the whole system of profits and
exploitation remains; but these are to be covered by the new terms “directors”
and “executors” of an undertaking (or in the German Labour Code, “leaders”
and “followers’”), and thereafter it is assumed that the class struggle should end.
This is typical of the “idealist” outlook of Fascism—or, to speak more frankly, of
its humbug.

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

making the comparison with the long-ago defunct, pre-
imperialist, “laisser-faire,” capitalist epoch. Ever since the
imperialist epoch all modern capitalism has developed increas-
ing state regulation and control, co-ordination and cartellisation
under state guidance, and a hundred thousand experiments
and devices in joint industrial councils and every other possible
mechanism for the collaboration of capital and labour. As for
the conception of industry as a “public service,’ and the
approval of profit-making only in so far as it is consistent with
“national welfare,” it really does not need a Fascist “revolu-
tion” in order to be able to repeat the wisdom of a Callisthenes.
The practical meaning of the Fascist “revolution” and its
“Corporate State” lies elsewhere, as we shall shortly see.

Take, for example, pre-Fascist Germany, where the State
already held in its hands one-tenth of industrial production,
held the dominating shares in the big banks, in shipping and in
the Steel Trust, and where industry and capital-labour relations
were covered by a network of regulating councils. C. B. Hoover
writes in his book already quoted:

Cartellisation had been carried to further limits than in any other
country. In 1932 there were some 3,000 of these cartels. In the coal
and potassium mining industry syndication was compulsory, and
complicated regulating councils known as the Federal Coal Council
and the Federal Potassium Council had been set up. Upon these
Councils the operators, labourers, consumers and coal merchants
were represented. There was a Federal Economic Council, but its
regulatory functions had failed to develop.

This Federal Coal Council, based on compulsory syndication,
representing employers, workers, consumers and coal mer-
chants, with wide regulatory powers, was already a very much
more developed “Corporation” than anything produced by
Fascism. But this was only an advanced example of the ten-
dency of modern capitalist development throughout the world.
Here Fascism brings nothing new.

“The idea of a National Council,” writes Mosley in his
Greater Britain, with the complacency of an infant peacock,
“was, I believe, first advanced in my speech on resignation
from the Labour Government in May 1930. The idea has
since been developed by Sir Arthur Salter and other writers.”
The history of Capitalism since the war is littered with “the
idea of a National Council” (i.e., National Economic Council

a

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 223

or National Council of Industry) in every country. Clemenceau
in 1918 proposed the formation of a National Economic Coun-
cil, and the proposal only broke down on the opposition of the
Confederation of Labour. Rathenau in his new proposals for
state organisation put in the centre the formation of a repre-
sentative State Economic Council. Millerand in 1920 proposed
the incorporation of a National Economic Council, including
representatives of the trade unions, in the state. Caillaux
made the same proposal in his Oz va la France, ou va l’Europe?
The National Industrial Conference in Britain in 1919 put
forward similar proposals for the establishment of a permanent
representative National Industrial Council.

The whole trend of post-war Liberalism, Labourism and
Social Democracy, in particular, is closely parallel to the Fascist
line and propaganda of the Corporate State—i.e., the general
line of combination of state control and private enterprise,
co-ordination through a network of regulating councils, class-
collaboration and so-called workers’ representation, in short,
the whole myth of “Organised Capitalism.”” The great part
of the Liberal Yellow Book, of Labour and the Nation and of the
Fascist Labour Charter could be interchanged without notice-
able difference.

Nevertheless, there is a “new” and distinct feature in the
Fascist Corporate State. All the Liberal-Labour proposals are
based on the incorporation of the existing workers’ organisations
into the capitalist state, with the maintenance of the formal
independent rights of organisation and the right to strike.
The Fascist policy of the Corporate State is based on the violent
destruction of the workers’ independent organisations and the
complete abolition of the right to strike. This is the sole new
feature of the Fascist Corporate State, to which modern Capital-
ism elsewhere has not yet dared to advance, although develop-
ing in this direction as rapidly as it is able.

The Italian Law of Syndicates of April 3, 1926, the basis of
the Corporate State, lays down in Article 18:

Employees and labourers who in groups of three or more cease
work by agreement, or who work in such a manner as to disturb its
continuity or regularity, in order to compel the employers to change
the existing contracts, are punishable by a fine of from 100 to 1,000
lire.

The chiefs, promoters and organisers of the crimes mentioned

224 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

above are punishable by imprisonment for not less than one year,
nor more than two years, in addition to the fines prescribed above.

Here is the real heart of the Fascist Corporate State; all the
rest is window-dressing. The meaning of this is expressed with
simple delight by the financial publicist, Einzig, in his Economic
Foundations of Fascism (a book written for the business
public):

Strikes and lock-outs were outlawed from the very outset of the
Fascist regime (p. 11).

In no country was it so easy as in Italy to obtain the consent of
employees to a reduction in wages (p. 31).

Thanks to the establishment of industrial peace, wages in Italy
are more elastic than in any other country (p. 73).

“In no country was it so easy to obtain a reduction in wages.”
Here is the essence of the Corporate State. Similarly Augusto
Turati, Secretary-General of the Fascist Party, wrote in 1928:

The year 1927 was one of widespread economic depression... .
It was necessary for the Government of the Fascist Party to take
steps with the object of bringing about a general reduction of wages
from ro to 20 per cent. . . . It was then that the Labour Charter
showed itself to be the one secure point of reference in the negotia-
tions which followed.

In the ungrateful task of reducing wages, not one of the principles,
solemnly enunciated in the Labour Charter, was violated.

(A. Turati, Secretary-General of the Fascist Party, on “The

Labour Charter,” in the International Yearbook of Fascist

Studies, 1928.)

And the prominent Fascist trade union official, Olivetti,
declared at the Fascist Trades Union Congress in 1928:

It was an illusion to presume that the existence of class-war had
been finally abolished. It has been abolished . . . for the workers.
On the other side, class-war is being continued.

The German Labour Code, brought into force on May 1,
1934, reveals the same picture. Its essence is the wiping out of
all the collective contracts which have hitherto regulated
German industry, and the establishment of the absolute power
of the employer, called “the leader of the factory,” over his
workers, called “followers.”

In the factory the employer, as the leader of the factory, and the

workers and clerical employees as his followers, work jointly to
further the aims of the factory in the joint interests of the people

————

>

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 225

and of the State. The decision of the leader of the factory is binding
on his followers in all factory matters.

In place of the previous elected works councils, the new factory
councils are to be appointed by the employer in agreement with
the Nazi leader in the factory, and to meet only when called
by the employer. All collective agreements for industries or
trades as a whole, or even for districts, are annulled; wages are
to be fixed separately by each firm according to the conditions
of “profitableness.’””’ The last word rests with the “Labour
Trustees” or district dictators on all questions of wages and
labour conditions, appointed by the Nazi Government. The
character of these “Labour Trustees” can be judged from the
fact that the big industrialist, Krupp, has been appointed
“Labour Trustee” for the Ruhr area.

The destruction of all independent workers’ organisation, the
complete slave-subjection of the workers to the employers, the
abolition of the right to strike, and intensified exploitation—this
is the sole and entire reality of the Corporate State for the work-
ing class.

4. The Outcome of Fascism in the Economic Sphere.

Fortunately the Italian people is not yet accustomed to eat several
times a day. Its standard of living is so low that it feels scarcity and
suffering less.

(Mussolini, speech to the Italian Senate on December 18,
1930, Corriera della Sera, December 19, 1930.)

The principal reasoned claim put forward by Fascism on its
own behalf, on the rare occasions when it descends from
emotional chauvinist and spiritual verbiage to endeavour to
make a reasoned claim, is that Fascism provides a solution of
the economic crisis of modern capitalist society and ensures
economic harmony, prosperity and progress. Fascism in its
propaganda promises the solution of unemployment, rising
production and consumption, higher wages, higher profits,
and in general the end of all the contradictions of capitalism
without ending capitalism.

The decisive test of this claim is the test of facts—the facts of
the economic situation in every country where Fascism rules,
and above all in Italy, the land of the “Corporate State,”
where the Fascist regime has had twelve years to show its
results.

That the world crisis of capitalism has hit Italy as hard as any

226 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

other capitalist country, with colossal unemployment, falling
production and trade, and lowered wages, so that Fascism has
brought no immunity whatever from the common ills of capital-
ism, even the official apologists of Fascism are compelled to
admit. But in fact the economic crisis hit Italy before the world
crisis, while the rest of the capitalist world was enjoying a boom,
and then became further intensified by the world crisis.
The pro-Fascist Einzig writes in his Economic Foundations of
Fascism:

Between 1926 and 1930 the depression prevailing in Italy pre-
sented a discouraging contrast with the prosperity of most other
countries. But that prosperity has since been proved to be fictitious,
so that we are now in a position to say that Italy has missed little
by failing to share it. Moreover, during her period of depression
Italy became hardened to face the subsequent crisis.

If this is the best that a supporter of Fascism on economic
grounds can claim, it is scarcely an advertisement. The only
“consolation” for the failure of Italy under Fascism to share
in even the limited upward movement of other capitalist
countries between 1926 and 1930 is found in the fact that in
consequence even the world crisis could hardly make things
much worse than they were already in Italy.

According to the League of Nations World Economic Survey
1932-3, the national income in Italy fell from 94 billion lire in
1928 to 60-70 billion lire in 1931, or a drop of one-third. In
the same period in the Soviet Union, according to the same
authority, the total income rose from 18.6 billion gold roubles
to 31.2 billions, or an increase by two-thirds. Foreign trade in
1932 was less than half the volume of 1930; and the tonnage of
goods cleared at the ports in 1932 was actually less than in
1913, when the population was six millions fewer. Italy keeps
no general index of production; but the production of pig iron
which was 603,000 tons in 1913, was 461,000 tons in 1932.
The production of steel was raised to 2.1 million tons in 1929,
but fell to 1.4 millions in 1932. 1933 saw a slight upward
movement as in other countries, but foreign trade continued to
fall from 15.1 million lire in 1932 to 13.3 million in 1933.
The Budget deficit rose from 504 million lire in 1930-31 to
3,687 millions in 1932-3. The floating debt rose from 1,618
million lire in June 1928, to 8,912 millions in June 1933.

5

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 227

Bankruptcies in 1931 reached the record in Europe, exceeding
21,000, or five times the British total.

The unemployment record is still more revealing. The total
of industrial and commercial wage-earners was returned in
1933 at 4,283,000, or about one-quarter of the British total.
Yet the official return of wholly unemployed for 1933, monthly
average, stood at 1,018,000, and in January 1934, the latest re-
turn available at the time of writing, stood at 1,158,000 in
addition to about a quarter of a million returned as partially or
seasonally unemployed. As for unemployment insurance, “the
amount of unemployment insurance is moderate, even for the
low standard of living prevailing, and it is paid only for a short
period” (Einzig, Economic Foundations of Fascism). For forty
weeks’ contributions only three months’ benefit is paid, at a
maximum of 3.75 lire or 11d. a day; there is no transitional
benefit. In December 1931, of 982,321 registered unemployed,
only 195,454 were receiving benefit. Between 1919 and 1929
the Unemployment Fund received 1,275 million lire in con-
tributions from the employers and workers, the State con-
tributing nothing, and paid out only 413 millions in benefits
the State constantly raiding the Fund for its own purposes.
Truly a halcyon state of affairs from the capitalist point of
view, at which even the skinflints of the National Government
might look with despairing envy. It may be noted that the
social services expenditure in Italy is among the lowest of any
leading country in Europe, amounting to 3 per cent. of the
total national budget, as against 7 per cent. in Belgium or
9 per cent. in Britain.

The wage-cutting record gives the final stamp on the
realities of Fascist economics. Between 1929 and 1932 the
total pay-roll of wages and salaries fell from 6,040 million lire
to 4,100 millions (World Economic Survey 1932-3). In the same
period, according to a Report of the Director of the Inter-
national Labour Office in June 1933, “the purchasing-power
of the wage-earners fell by 19 per cent.”’ Cuts had been heavy
already before the world crisis:

Between June 1927 and December 1928, wages fell by about
20 per cent. as a result of agreements between masters and men in
connection with the stabilisation of the lira. A further drop of
approximately ro per cent. took place in 1929, and in November
1930 there was a general downward movement, in some cases not

228 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

exceeding 18 per cent., but in particular instances involving as much
as 25 per cent. Moreover we must not overlook the fact that many

other adjustments were made in 1931.
(Biagi, Secretary of the National Confederation of Fascist
Syndicates, Corriera della Sera, March 26, 1932.)

This makes successive cuts, first of 20 per cent., then of 10 per
cent., then of 18-25 per cent., in addition to “many other
adjustments.”” The Department of Overseas Trade Report on
Economic Conditions in Italy 1933, states:

While the cost of living with an index figure of 93.78 in 1927 has
fallen in 1932 to 78.05, a difference of 15.73 per cent., industrial
wages have been reduced by much larger proportions. . . .

Cuts have been made ranging from 16 to 18 per cent. in the
sheltered printing and woodworking trades, 25 per cent. in the metal
and chemical industries, to 40 per cent. in the cotton industry. ...

To the above must be added arbitrary reductions affected by
various means without negotiation, such as the re-grading of work-
staff and the systematic reduction of piece-work rates.

Examples are given of the percentage cuts in the various
industries:

Chemicals ..... 20-25% Silk Weaving ..... 38%
Rayon ........ 20% Jute: esheets 30%
Rayon (Turin). 38% Metal trades...... 23%
Glass ......... 30-40% Building ......... 30%
Cotton ........ 40% Mining .......... 30%
Wool ......... 27%

This process has been carried still further with the extensive
all-round wages and salaries cuts proclaimed by Government
Order in April, 1934. The importance of the Fascist
“Corporate” system, making strikes a penal offence, is
obvious.

If we turn to Germany, it is clear that one year’s experience
is not yet sufficient to achieve the imposing completeness of the
Italian results in depressing the conditions of the workers and
spreading poverty; but the signs of the direction are already
abundant.

Foreign trade in 1933 fell by 13 per cent. in comparison with
1932, exports by 16 per cent. and the export surplus by 40 per
cent. The volume of production rose by 12 per cent.; but this
rise was mainly in industries (iron and steel, dyes and chemicals,
artificial silk, electro-technical, motors) connected with war

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 229

needs, and was actually accompanied, as will be seen, by a fall
in the general standard of living. The rise in output was not
accompanied by any rise in the total pay-roll until the third
quarter. “This means that fresh employment was only found
at the expense of those already occupied, by cutting down their
hours of work and reducing their wages accordingly” (Econ-
omist, December 30, 1933).

Retail sales, the measure of internal trade and of the standard
of living, fell heavily, even compared with the low level of
1932:

Retail sales of the first ten months of 1933 were 8 per cent. below
those of the very depressed corresponding period of 1932, depart-
ment store sales declining 20 per cent. on a like comparison, and
later reports indicate substantial further decline.

(New York Annalist, January 19, 1934.)
This reflects a lowered standard of life. The German Institute
for Economic Research reported a decline of 10 per cent. in
the consumption of the principal foodstuffs during the first
and second quarters of 1933, in some articles of even 30 per
cent., and “stabilisation” at this lower level in the third
quarter. For the whole of 1933 it reported a decline of 7 per
cent. in the turnover of retail commodities, compared with
1932. Prices rose steadily, especially of foodstuffs, through
special legislation, e.g., the Fat Monopoly and raising of the
price of margarine by 175 per cent., the raising of the price of
wheat to 182 marks per ton or four times the world price, etc.

Nazi propaganda tries to make much of the rise in the volume
of production by 12 per cent. during 1933, and of the decline
in the official figure of registered unemployed by 2 millions on
the previous 6 millions (actually by 1.7 millions from 5,773,000
in December 1932, to 4,058,000 in December 1933). Both
claims are misleading. The rise in production was, as explained
in great part connected with the war industries. It was not a
rise peculiar to Germany, but was part of a world movement
during the same period. Between January and December, 1933,
the German index of industrial production (on the basis of 1928
as 100) rose from 62.9 to 72.8, the United States index from 58.6
to 67.6, the French from 78.7 to 83.5, the Japanese from
117.2 to 139.4 (November), the Canadian from 52.8 to 72.2, the
Swedish from 83.7 to 97.1 (League of Nations Monthly Bulletin
of Statistics, March 1934).

230 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The figures of the alleged decline in unemployment are still
more misleading. The official figure is given of a decline in the
registered unemployed from 6,014,000 in January 1933, to
3,715,000 in November 1933, and to 2,798,000 in March,
1934. But the total of employed workers in Novem-
ber 1933, according to the health insurance statistics,
Was 14,020,000, making with the 3,715,000 registered unem-
ployed a combined total of 17,735,000 workers. In August
1929, that is, before the crisis, the same combined total of
employed and unemployed workers numbered 20,400,000.
Thus, since 1929, 2.3 million workers have dropped clean out of
the German official statistics, being neither entered as employed,
nor as unemployed—alongside an increase in population! “The
actual number of unemployed is admitted to be considerably
larger than the number registered. The ‘invisible unem-
ployed’ are now reckoned at about 1,500,000” (Manchester
Guardian Weekly, January 12,1934). “Most signs tend to show
that the volume of unrecorded unemployment has increased”
(Economist, March 3, 1934).

This contradiction was strikingly brought out when in
March, 1934, the official figure for unemployment was returned
at 2,798,000, and in the very same month Hitler, momentarily
forgetful of the official figure, in his speech at Munich on
March 21, spoke of the necessity during the coming year to
endeavour to bring into employment 5,000,c00 of those at
present unemployed.

The official decline in registered unemployed in fact
reflects a series of factors. Married women have been
driven out of industry without being registered as
unemployed, consequent on the Nazi law forbidding the
employment of married women where their husbands are
employed, and thus disappear from the official records. The
same applies to the prisoners in concentration camps, and to
the Jewish and political refugees. Several hundreds of
thousands of workers (estimated at 680,0o00o—Basel Rundschau,
November 18, 1933), have been drafted into the militarised
labour camps, agricultural service and other works schemes,
and are thus counted as “employed,” but in fact receive no
normal wage, but either only food and a few marks a week or
a very low subsistence allowance equivalent to unemployment
relief. Finally throughout industry, by a series of devices

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 231

offering inducements for this process to employers, workers have
been given part-time work by spreading existing work, with re-
duced hours and weekly wages, that is, at the expense of other
workers, and of a general lowering of standards. On the whole
process the British financial journal, The Statist, comments,
with reference to Hitler’s anniversary speech to the Reichstag:

As regard economic affairs he had not very much to say, perhaps
because there is not much to report. He claimed, as the figures
show, a reduction in unemployment of 21% millions to about 3.7
millions. But this is obviously not a reliable guide to the trend of
industrial conditions, since, apart from labour immobilisation in
labour camps and concentration camps, the effect of the tax certi-
ficate system has been to spread employment out over the work
available rather than to succeed in creating new work. There has,
however, been some improvement in production, particularly in
iron and steel, in 1933 as compared with 1932, and doubtless this
has meant some real decrease in unemployment. The improvement
in employment is therefore only partly due to a net increase in the
demand for labour, and it arises mainly from spreading out employ-
ment. This may be a good thing psychologically, but economically
it results in lower wages and even in lower real wages. In addition
to this lowering of the standard of living, there must be counted the
numerous “voluntary” contributions which have to be deducted
from the weekly wages. It is possible as a result that the beneficial
political effect of spreading employment may be lost in the lowering
of the standard of living, and probably for this reason Herr Hitler
did not devote much of his speech to economic affairs.

(Statist, February 3, 1934.)

This process of effective wage-reduction and lowering of the
standard of living, already revealed in the statistics of falling
consumption during 1933, is further borne out by the available
information on the movement of wages. The official statistics
claim that the total of wages plus salaries for the third quarter
of 1933 exceeded the corresponding total for 1932 by 4 per
cent., alongside an increase in the number employed by 7 per ,
cent.; it is obvious that even these figures, which do not take
into account the heavily increased deductions from wages,
nevertheless betray a net reduction in the wage per worker. It
may be noted that the total return from the tax on wages,
which reached 65 million marks for the monthly average in
1932, fell to 61.3 millions in July 1933, and 59.6 millions in
August 1933—the very.period of the supposed “increase”

232 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION ]

(Jahrbicher fiir Nationalokonomie und Statistik, December
1933). A correspondent in the Manchester Guardian reports:

Wages fell considerably in Germany in 1932, and there was a
further fall last year. At present the average hourly wage is about
20 per cent. lower than in 1931.
The fall in wages has been accompanied by a great increase in
the deductions for income tax, unemployment insurance, sickness
insurance, etc., which have more than doubled. In 1932 these
deductions amounted to between 12 and 13 per cent. of the wages.
They now amount to nearly 27 per cent., including “voluntary”
contributions . . . which are voluntary only in name. q
According to calculations made by a very competent statistician,
the net average wage of workmen employed in German industry
last September was 21.65 marks a week. . . . If agricultural workers
were included, the average net wage would be much lower.
The “real wages” (purchasing power) of the German industrial
workers have fallen since April rather more than the money wages,
as general prices, which in the first four months of last year were lower
than the average of 1932, have risen about 3 per cent. since April,
and prices of primary necessities have risen about ro per cent. The
average real wage in September 1933, was about 31 per cent. lower
than in 1900.—(Manchester Guardian Weekly, January 12, 1934.)
On April 9 Dr. Ley, head of the “Labour Front,” declared in
a speech at Cologne that the German worker “‘to some extent was
being paid starvation wages in the interest of the reconstruction of
the nation,” but that he must, while the State “was finding bread i
and work for 7,000,000 unemployed, renounce wage increases and 4
such like things.”—(Times, April 10, 1934.)

This is already before the Labour Code, with its abrogation :
of all existing collective contracts, came into force on May 1, ;
1934.

It is sufficiently clear that the economic process of Fascism
in Germany goes the same path as in Italy, the path of the
extreme depression of the standards of the workers and inten-
sification of exploitation. The lesson of facts in Italy and
Germany should put all on their guard against the empty
economic promises and programmes of Fascism before power in
Britain and other countries.

5. Fascism and War.

Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of per- q
petual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all i

FASCISM AND WAR 233

human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who
have the courage to meet it.
(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.)

In eternal warfare mankind has become great—in eternal peace
mankind would be ruined.—(Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 149.)

The chauvinistic warlike character of Fascism is its most
obvious external characteristic. The war-role of Fascism can,
however, only be correctly understood in relation to its general
social role as the expression of the extreme stage of imperialism
in break-up.

On the question of Fascism and war very much nonsense has
been written.

On the one hand, bourgeois critics of Fascism in Western
Europe and America express their shocked indignation as if
Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy were the first and only
countries to go in for jingoism, wholesale war-incitement and
war-preparation, and as if England, France and the United
States were innocent angels of peace.

On the other hand, supporters of Fascism in these countries
endeavour to accept at face-value the transparently hypo-
critical “peace speeches” occasionally turned out by the Fascist
leaders for foreign consumption, in open and glaring contradic-
tion to their main utterances, and seek to soothe an alarmed
public with fanciful reassurances, as if Fascism were really a
doctrine of world peace.

Both these lines of treatment are an absurd flying in the face
of facts.

Because Fascism is the leading expression of modern imperial-
ism, of capitalism in decay, of the most violent policies of
capitalism in crisis, therefore necessarily Fascism means
war. Fascism, with its violent suppression of all socialist,
pacifist and internationalist agitation, with its militarisation of
labour and centralised dictatorship, as well as with its ceaseless
sabre-rattling agitation, is a direct part of capitalist war pre-
paration. Its methods and policies reproduce the conditions
of a country at war, as seen in all the belligerent countries in
the last war, but already in the pre-war period. In the same
way the final outcome of all the policies of Fascism, of all its
chauvinist, nationally exclusive, aggressive and domination-
seeking policies, can only be war, as indeed its leaders in all

234 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

their principal and most authoritative utterances to their own
followers openly declare.

But these tendencies are not peculiar to Fascism. They are
common, in greater or less degree, to all imperialist states.
They only receive their most extreme expression in Fascism.

Fascism in Britain, where there is no such immediate easy
basis for war agitation as Versailles provided in Germany and
also in Italy, and where mass anti-war feeling is strong,
endeavours to hide for the moment the war-role of Fascism and
even to put on a pacifist dress and present Fascism as a doctrine
of world peace. Thus Mosley writes:

Fascist organisation is the method of world peace among nations
bound together by the universal Fascism of the twentieth century.
(Mosley, Fascism in Britain, p. 7.)

This blatant attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the credulous is
exposed by the entire propaganda of Fascism. Mosley, who
professes to proclaim the aim of “world peace” through Fas-
cism, will need to fight it out with his masters, Mussolini and
Hitler, who denounce in round terms the whole conception of
world peace as incompatible with Fascism. “Fascism,” pro-
claims Mussolini, “believes neither in the possibility nor the
utility of perpetual peace.” “In eternal peace,” proclaims
Hitler, “mankind would be ruined.” ‘Fascism issued from
war,” writes the Fascist, Carli, ‘and in war it must find its
outlet.” This is the dominant voice of Fascism. The tem-
porary pretence of British Fascism to put on a peace advocate’s
dress is only a typical example of Fascist demagogy.
International Fascism is a contradiction in terms. The
foreign policies of Fascist states can only be the foreign policies
of extreme aggressive imperialist states, with all the consequent
antagonisms heightened to the most extreme point. The
identity of counter-revolutionary policy produces no identity
of foreign policy. This is strikingly illustrated, as soon as the
first three fully completed Fascist states, Germany, Italy and
Austria have come into existence, by the extreme tension
immediately following, even to the point of veiled war-threats,
between Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy over the body of
Fascist Austria. The conception of a Bloc of Fascist States on
the basis of a common policy of Fascism is a myth; an alliance
between such States can only be formed where an identity of

FASCISM AND WAR 235

immediate aims of the foreign policy of the imperialist group-
ings concerned would have in any case made an alliance
possible, whatever the political form. But if the Fascist type
became generalised for all the leading imperialist Powers, this
would only mean an immediate accentuation of the
antagonisms and hastening of the advance to war.

The extreme tensity of war-preparations and inculcation of
the war spirit in Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy has been
equally noted by observers of all political colours. For the
evidence of the developments in Germany, especially, reference
may be made to Wickham Steed’s Hitler: Whence and Whither?,
to the American journalist Leland Stowe’s Nazi Germany
Means War, and to Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over Europe.

This does not mean that Fascist Germany, any more than
Fascist Italy, aims at immediate war. To this extent, and no
further, the peace speeches are sincere, in so far as they are
calculated to gain time and cover the necessary process of
re-armament. Unless the situation is precipitated by un-
expected events, a preliminary period is sought for the necessary
heavy war-preparations, as well as for the diplomatic pre-
paration of a favourable situation. The present balance of
power is unfavourable to Germany, and the position of Italy
is also weak. But there is no question of the goal to which policy
is being directed. As Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mussolini’s
speeches make abundantly clear, the full aims of the Fascist
programme of territorial and colonial expansion can only be
finally achieved by war.

England, France and the United States, whose statesmen and
publicists indulge in expressions of shocked surprise at the
militarism of Fascist Germany or of Japan, are in fact far more
heavily armed than Germany, Italy or Japan, spend more on
armaments, and have bigger records of plunder and armed
violence all over the world. But the difference in the present
situation of these two sets of Powers (which partly accounts
also for the more rapid development of Fascist forms in the
latter group) lies in the fact that England and France (the
position of the United States, owing to its special continental
situation, is in a category by itself and shares characteristics
with both groups) are relatively “sated” imperialist groups,
gorged with world-plunder and seeking above all to hold what
they have, therefore strongly interested in questions of

236 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“security,” while Germany, Italy and Japan are “hungry”
imperialist Powers, without an equivalent share in the partition
of the world proportionate to their strength or potential
strength, and therefore intent on an aggressive policy of expan-
sion. This is the working of the law of unequal capitalist
development which underlay the last war and drives to the next.

What, however, is conspicuous in the present international
situation is the relative complacency and even conciliatory at-
titude with which the other imperialist powers, especially
Britain, have treated the question of the re-armament of
Germany. In particular, Britain has directly supported and
assisted the German rearmament, both materially and finan-
cially, and also diplomatically, as shown notably in its line
over the German Military Law of March 1935, and in the
Anglo-German naval agreement.

What underlies this attitude of British imperialism in rela-
tion to the open war preparations of German fascism? Apart
from the general aims of British policy to counterbalance and
weaken the previous French hegemony in Europe, two further
dominating factors may be traced.

The first is the recognition of Fascism as the bulwark against
social revolution, and the anxiety not to weaken in any way the
position of Fascism and thereby open the way to the fall of
the Hitler Government and to the proletarian revolution in
Germany. As Lloyd George frankly declared in his speech on
September 22, 1933:

If the powers succeeded in overthrowing Nazism in Germany,
what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal
regime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their
objective. A Communist Germany would be infinitely more formid-
able than a Communist Russia. The Germans would know how
to run their Communism effectively. That was why every Com-
munist in the world from Russia to America was praying that the
Western nations should bully Germany into a Communist revolution.
He would entreat the Government to proceed cautiously.

(Times, September 23, 1933.)

The National Government needed no such entreaties, but
has acted throughout as the broker for Fascist Germany.

FASCISM AND WAR 237

The second factor is the widespread hope of imperialist
circles, especially in Britain, to use a re-armed Fascist Ger-
many, in unity with Japan, for war on the Soviet Union.

The objective of an expansionist war to the East, directed
against the Soviet Union, and with the support, if possible,
of Britain, France and Poland, is continuously expressed in
all official statements of Nazi foreign policy, notably in Hit-
ler’s Mein Kampf, in the writings of Rosenberg, the official
chief of the Nazi foreign political department, whose line is
fully and openly set out in his book The Future Path of a
German Foreign Policy (Der Zukunftsweg einer Deutschen
Aussenpolitik), and also in the formerly withdrawn Hugenberg
memorandum.

Hitler writes:

For Germany the only possibility for the carrying out of a sound
territorial policy lay in the winning of new land in Europe itself.
. . . When one would have territory and land in Europe, this could
in general only happen at the cost of Russia.

(Mein Kampf, pp. 153-4.)

We stop the eternal march to the south and west of Europe and
turn our eyes towards the land in the East. . . . If we speak of land
in Europe to-day we can only think in the first instance of Russia,
and her border States—(Mein Kampf, p. 743.)

The American publicist, Calvin Hoover, reports the follow-
ing as his impression of the prevailing tendencies in the event
of a possible agreement between Western Europe and Fascist
Germany:

In such a case the Western European Powers might be glad to
allow Germany a free hand in the Slavic East and South for the
satisfaction of any further expansionist aims. .. .

There is evidence that the idea of the “reorganisation and
restoration of Russia” under German tutelage is again very much
to the fore.

(Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, pp. 226-7.)

238 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

British imperialism above all encourages up to the present
with moral and material support both Germany and Japan, and
influential circles hope for a combined attack of both Powers on
the Soviet Union. At the same time German-Japanese relations
are drawn extremely close.

It is unnecessary here to discuss the powerful resistance which
such an attempt would meet, not only from the Soviet Union,
but from the whole international working class, leading to the
unloosing of revolutionary struggle and civil war above all in
Germany itself. Just this prospect leads the imperialist and
Fascist forces still to hesitate.

The final direction of Fascist war still lies in the womb of
events. What is already manifest is that the advance of Fas-
cism has enormously accelerated the advance to war on every
side.

6. Fascism and the Women’s Question.

In no direction does the contrast of the two worlds of Fas-
cism, or Capitalism in extreme decay, and of Socialism, as
demonstrated in the Soviet Union, express itself more clearly
and sharply than in the status of women.

The position of women has often been referred to as one of
the surest measures of the level of a civilisation. By this meas-
ure the Soviet Union stands out as the first fully-developing
civilisation in history, where for the first time men and women
participate with full equality, While Fascism is revealed in its
most undisguised reactionary charactert

The subjection of women has always been inseparably bound
up with class-society, and is one of the indispensable foundations
without which private-property society could not maintain
itself. Capitalism has taken over from the preceding period
and adapted to its own purposes the social institutions built on
the subjection of women. While revolutionising and organising
production and trade on a gigantic scale throughout the world,
it maintained, preserved and even intensified in a still more
limited and narrow form the primitive and anarchic
basis of the small-scale individual household, of the family and
its ties, and sought to make of this pre-capitalist institution its
most powerful conservative pillar of support. Only on
this basis could capitalism, with its complete individualist
cash-nexus repudiation of all social obligations and ties, never-
theless successfully maintain itself, and through the institution

FASCISM AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION 239

of the family throw off its own shoulders all social responsibility
for the proper conditions of motherhood, of the bringing up of
children, of the support of the sick and the aged, as well as the
enormous volume of so-called “domestic labour”—all socially
necessary labour indispensable for the maintenance of society,
but offering no profit for capitalism to organise, and thrown off
as unpaid labour on to the shoulders of the working-class wives
and mothers to be performed in the heaviest, dirtiest, most
unproductive and wasteful pre-machine conditions alongside
highly organised large-scale machine industry in the world
outside. The consequent economic and social institutions,
involving the subjection of women and the forcible compulsion
of the majority of women to economic dependence on marriage
as their sole means of livelihood, are bound up with the existence
of private-property socicty, and can only be ended with com-
munist social organisation.

Nevertheless, capitalism in its progressive phase performed
also a progressive role in relation to the position of women by
offering for the first time the possibilities and conditions of a
new economic form of organisation. Capitalism in its search
for ever more and cheaper supplies of labour-power draws
increasingly millions of women and young persons into industry,
until to-day about one-third of the total labour force in modern
capitalist states consist of women and girls. Despite the brutal
conditions of exploitation, more heavy than for the male workers
(an inequality defended in the name of the sacred “family,”
on the basis of the illusory theory that the average woman
worker is supposed to have no “dependents’’), yet this means
that millions of women have for the first time the beginnings of
possibility of an independent economic existence and active
citizenship, in place of the compulsion of dependence on a male
earner as their sole possibility of livelihood and existence
Marx discerned at an early stage the significance of this process:

However terrible and disgusting the dissolution under the capi-
talist system of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern
industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process
of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young
persons and to children of both sexes, creates a new economical
foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relation
between the sexes. (Marx, Capital, I., Ch. 15, para. 9.)

The realisation of this possibility of emancipation, for which

240

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

capitalism has thus laid the preliminary conditions, depends on
the advance to a Communist society: since the drawing of
women into industry, so long as the old property conditions and
burden of the individual household remain unreplaced by social
organisation, only in fact adds to the burden of women instead
of liberating them. Only by the full introduction of women into
equal partnership in social production, with the consequent
necessary equal education and training, and the destruction of
the old wasteful unorganised domestic economy inseparably
connected with the private property system, can the old position
of the economic dependence of women be ended, and their
equality and freedom be realised, not only in form, but in living
reality. This standpoint was expressed by Engels in his well-
known declaration in the Origin of the Family:

The emancipation of women and their equality with men are
impossible, and remain so as long as women are excluded from
social production and restricted to domestic labour. The emancipa-
tion of women becomes feasible only then when women are enabled
to take part extensively in social production.

The dependence of the solution of the women’s question upon
the realisation of a Communist society was constantly
emphasised by Lenin:

The full liberation of woman and her real equality with man
requires a communist economy, a common social organisation of
production and consumption and the participation of woman in
general production. Only through this will woman take the same
place in society as man.

(Lenin, Speech to Moscow Conference of Working Women.)

The Soviet Union illustrates the advance towards this position,
where for the first time in the world’s history the real equality of -
women is being built up and established among all the peoples
in its territory.

But capitalism in the period of the general crisis begins to
reverse the engines and move in the opposite direction. It is
no longer hunting for new reserves of labour-power to exploit.
On the contrary, it can no longer find employment for the |
existing labour force. Hence the cry begins to be sounded
increasingly, always from the beginning voiced by the clerical-
reactionary forces, but now increasingly taken up by modern
capitalism as a whole, to drive women out of industry and thus
assist to “solve” unemployment by increasing the number of

FASCISM AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION 241

dependents to be maintained on each wage (the process can
be observed in England in the operation of the Anomalies Act
and of the barbarous Family Means Test).

This cry is taken up in its sharpest and most undisguised form
by Fascism, here as in every sphere voicing the most reactionary
tendencies of capitalism in extreme decay. Back to the home!
Back to economic dependence on marriage as the sole career
for women! Cut down women’s education! Expel women
from employment and give the jobs to men! Back to pots and
pans! Produce more cannon-fodder for war! Back to kitchen-
slavery! This is the line of Fascism on the women’s question.

Hitler writes:

In the case of female education the main stress should be laid on
bodily training, and after that on development of character and
last of all, on intellect. But the one absolute aim of female education
must be with a view to the future mother.—(Mein Kampf, p. 163.)

It may be noted that the new German Government regulations
for cutting down university education and establishing a rigidly
limited student quota for all forms of higher education
(and that also dependent on political ‘national reliability”)
restricts women to 10 per cent. of the quota of 15,000o—i.e., only
1,500 women for the whole of Germany to be permitted in a
given year to proceed to any form of higher education, whether
universities, technical colleges or other institutions. In 1931
there were 19,700 women students in Germany: taking an
average three-year course as basis, representing an average pre-
Fascist annual entry of 6,000 to 7,000 women students, this
represents a cut by Fascism of women’s higher education by
75-80 per cent.*

* The drastic cutting down of university education, previously the pride and
greatest strength of German civilisation, is a typical expression of the general cul-
tural reaction of Fascism, equally illustrated in the burning of the books, etc. The
Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reported in the beginning of
1934:

“Of the total number of matriculated students in the whole of Germany
only 15,000 are to be allowed to enter universities, technical colleges or other
institutes of higher education in the coming year. . . . Some 23,000 matricu-
lated students will be unable to proceed to higher education in consequence of
the new regulations.”

At the same time the Soviet Union educational authorities were reporting that the

total number of university and technical college students in the Soviet Union in

1933 Was 415,000 as against 203,000 in 1926-7, and 130,000 under Tsarism. In

the face of these facts even the dullest should be able to see that Communism, with

its basis in science, is bound to conquer the world, while Fascism, with its denial
of science, is doomed to decay and death.

ee
7

242 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Spengler writes in his Years of Decision:

Let German women breed warrior men and take pleasure in
breeding them.

Woman is to be neither comrade, nor beloved, but only mother.

The American observer, Calvin B. Hoover, reports the Nazi
attitude to the women’s question:

The attitude of the National Socialists towards women is an
integral part of their belief in the desirability of a return to a system
of life and morals characteristic of an agricultural rather than an
industrial society. The Party is determined that the place of women
shall once more be in the home. ...In a word, the National
Socialist conception of women in the scheme of things is that they
should bear many strong sons to serve the State in peace and war.

(Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, p. 165.)

It is an error to suppose that the reactionary Fascist attitude
to women is simply a reflection of a religious-reactionary out-
look and yearnings for a pre-industrial type of civilisation.
The fact that the policy of minute bonuses (not in cash, but in
orders on the large shops, and repayable) for marriage, on the
condition that the woman passes out of industry, and the violent
propaganda for more births, are accompanied at the same
time by the policy of wholesale sterilisation of the alleged unfit
or mentally weak (i.e., of those likely to produce offspring unfit
for military service or of those politically unreliable), this latter
practice being extremely offensive to traditional religious
sentiment, is sufficient evidence that the policy as a whole is not
simply the policy of religious-reactionary romanticism, but the
conscious reactionary policy of modern capitalism in its most
extreme decay. Modern capitalism, while freely exploiting
women in industry at sweated rates so far as it has use for their
labour, kicks the remainder out of industry whom it cannot
employ, bidding them become dependent on male wage-earners
and thus save its total bill for wages or unemployment relief,
and at the same time calls on them to perform their service in
producing plenty of recruits for the increasing needs of the
slaughterhouses of imperialist war. This is the viewpoint of
modern capitalism in extreme decay, or Fascism, on the role
of women. In this key question of the role of women, as in its
attitude to culture, or in its use of torture and re-introduction
of barbaric beheadings, Fascism reveals typically its degraded
social, political and cultural level.

==CHAPTER X: THE ESSENCE OF FASCISM—THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY==

Fascism, developing since little over a decade, has no long past
behind it, and in all probability—from the very nature of its
reactionary role, from its violent inner contradictions, and from
the whole character of its desperate attempt to throw up a
dam against the advancing social revolution—is likely to have
no long future before it. Fascism is likely to be remembered
only as an episode in the long-drawn class war advancing to the
final victory of the Socialist revolution.

But zf Fascism were able to have the opportunity to continue
over a longer period, were able to maintain its power and to
dominate, as it dreams, a whole phase of social history, then
it is evident from the whole foregoing analysis what its his-
torical role would be, and what kind of society it would pro-
duce.

Fascism claims to bring “rejuvenation” to the existing de-
clining society, to represent the principle of “new birth” and
“new life” in place of the existing decay, to represent the
principle of organisation and order in place of the existing
capitalist anarchy,

The exact contrary is the case. Because the roots of the
existing decay and anarchy lie in the capitalist class ownership
of the means of production, the only new life and new birth
can come from the victory of the proletariat and the socialist
reorganisation of society. This has been demonstrated on a
world historic scale by the Soviet Union, where alone trium-
phant advance in every sphere of human activity and culture
confronts the increasing decay and barbarism of the capitalist
world, equally in the Fascist and in the non-Fascist countries.

What Fascism organises and carries forward is in reality
nothing other than the process of increasing decay and bar-
barism of the capitalist world in the culminating stage of the

243

244 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary and chau-
vinist elements of finance capital.

Fascism endeavours violently to suppress and overcome the
ever-growing contradictions of capitalist society. As Goering
stated in a speech to the Pomeranian Landbund on March 17,

1933:

The regime of national concentration will with iron fist bring the
opposing interests of the different strata of society into that harmony
which is so essential to the prosperity of the German people.

Forcible (“‘iron fist”) suppression of the “opposing interests of
the different strata of society” into “harmony,” that is to say,
in short, “iron-fist harmony’’—that is the essence of Fascism.

But what does this involve? For in fact just the contradic-
tions and consequent conflicts are the mainspring and driving
force of social development in class-society, that is to say,
until society becomes a true collective by the liquidation of
classes. Until then, the path of class conflict is the path of
social development. To attempt on the one hand to maintain
the contradictions unresolved, and on the other to suppress
forcibly their expression, would mean, even if it could be
imagined as successful, that society would cease to develop
and would pass, on the most favourable hypothesis, to a Byzan-
tine or Old-Chinese hieratic ossification. But such a society
requires in fact an entirely different economy from capitalism.
In reality, the driving force of the laws of finance capital, which
govern Fascism, leads necessarily to an entirely different out-
come, to an intensification of all contradictions, both internal
and external, to the point of explosion.

Just by its attempt to suppress forcibly, in place of resolving,
the contradictions of modern society, Fascism reveals most
profoundly its reactionary role.

First, Fascism seeks to suppress the class struggle, not by the
abolition of classes, but by the violent permanent subjection of
the exploited class to the exploiters and crushing of all resis-
tance. This means, even if it could be for a period successful,
a condition of permanent inner war within society, with
consequent extreme waste of social forces and increasing
destruction of all possibility of collective achievement. Its
stabilisation would mean the replacement of liberal capitalism
by a caste or statutory servile system. As the nineteenth

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 245

century liberal capitalist system of formal “free contract” in-
creasingly disappears under modern conditions of large scale
industry, its breakdown raises ever more sharply the two
immediate alternatives: either Socialism, that is, the common
ownership of the means of production and common obligation
of all citizens to labour and sharing of the fruits; or the Servile
State (State Capitalism), that is, the statutory compulsion
and regulation of the labour of the wage earning class for the
profit of the property owning class under a general framework
of state control, with the abolition of the right to strike. The
Fascist state represents the second alternative, that is, the
Servile State.

Second, Fascism seeks to suppress and overcome the con-
tradictions of capitalist economy brought about by the advance
of technique and the development of mass production and pro-
ductive power. As before, it seeks, not to resolve the contra-
dictions in the higher form of socialisation of the already social
forms of production, but to overcome them within the limits
of the fettering capitalist relations. This can only mean in
practice, however, either to endeavour to restrict artificially the
productive forces, throttling down production to fixed limits
suitable to monopolist capital, checking new development and
clamping on state bureaucratic control for the purposes of this
limitation; or in the final analysis, since such limitation is
finally incompatible with the requirements of the expansion of
capital, to move to the only alternative and endeavour to blast
by violence a way out from the impasse, that is, to endeavour
by war to secure a new division of the world and an enlarged
outlet for the one particular finance-capitalist bloc at the ex-
pense of its rivals.

Third, and in consequence of the above, Fascism necessarily
leads to war on an extending scale. Fascism already enor-
mously carries forward the process of shattering the basis of
international economy and of the international division of
labour built up in the previous period, and moves instead to the
line of organisation of closed-in “isolationist”? economic blocs,
the line of so-called “national self-sufficiency” or ‘“autarchy,”
which is in fact only the preparation for intensified war for
the world market. This openly retrograde line means the cut-
ting down of international trade and communications, the rais-
ing of the costs of production, the lowering of the standard of

—

246 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

living, and the increasing “Balkanisation” of the capitalist
world. In its final working out the intensified economic war
necessarily leads to open armed struggle. War becomes the
open avowed and glorified aim of every Fascist society.

Fascism reveals itself more and more in every aspect of its
policy as organisation and mobilisation of the entire economy,
political structure and population as a whole, for war. This
sharply expresses the profoundly reactionary role of Fascism,
which in this way directs its main organisation, even where it
appears to carry forward the highest organisation and technical
development, for destruction, objectively hastening forward the
decline and decay of capitalism. Just this demonstrates the
significance of the role of Fascism as the typical system of
organisation of capitalism in extreme decay, seeking to over-
come the decay and contradictions by intensified organisation
and strengthening of the capitalist dictatorship, but in fact only
able to lead by its very organisation to intensified contradic-
tions, war, and the acceleration of capitalist decay.

Thus Fascism, so far from representing a counter-force to
the process of decay of existing capitalist society, is in reality
the sharpest expression and an accelerating factor of the whole
process of capitalist decay, of increasing destruction and the
drive to barbarism. This is the reality of the “alternative”
which Fascism offers to Socialism.

The sense of the decline of civilisation, the overpowering
atmosphere of pessimism, even though accompanied by formal
expressions of hope of revival through Fascism, overwhelmingly
dominates all Fascist expression, and betrays its innermost
essence.

We have no belief in programmes or plans, in saints or apostles.
Above all, we have no belief in happiness, in salvation or in the
promised land.—(Mussolini, Popolo d'Italia, January 1, 1922.)

Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a pos-
sibility —(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.)

In the gloom of to-day and the darkness of to-morrow the only
faith that remains to us individualists destined to die is the at present
absurd but ever-consoling religion of anarchy.

(Popolo d’Italia, April 6, 1920.)

Hopeless we may be, yet we have the hope of doomed men.
(Blackshirt, September 16-22, 1933.)

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 247

Fully aware of the decline of cultures and civilisations before us,
we still demand the right of every proud warrior—to fight for a
cause though that cause seem lost.

(Fascist Week, January 12-18, 1934.)

“But it is not a lost cause.” Such is the hasty addition ap-
pended, without attempt at grounds other than a mystic faith,
to the last quotation, to save appearances and justify the Fas-
cist fight. But the addition rather confirms than changes the
basic outlook revealed. The basic tone and outlook remains
that of a dying civilisation fighting against odds to continue
defiantly in the face of all the evidence of the doom of history
proclaimed against it.

Characteristic of this whole outlook is the dominating influ-
ence of Spengler on Fascism. The favourite, the most quoted
and the dominating philosopher and teacher of the Fascist
“theorists” remains Spengler, the shallow journalistic-smatterer
philosopher of the inevitability of decline and of the collapse
of civilisation, even though his conclusions are so downright
black and hopeless in their pessimism that they are compelled
formally to deny them, while accepting his premises. The
recent official book of British Fascism (Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir
Oswald Mosley and British Fascism) fills its pages with endless
excerpts from Spengler, declaring:

Spengler’s interpretation of world history is a colossal monument
to the European mind. . . . His interpretation of past history re-
mains valid, and constitutes a base from which modern man may
begin to interpret his own present and to modify his own future.

What is the teaching of this “colossal” prophet? He writes:

Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is
cowardice. We are born into this time and must bravely follow the
path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to
hold on the last position, without hope, without rescue. . . . The
honourable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.

What is the comment of The Fascist Week on this common-
place maudlin posturing of all dying civilisations?

His words are a magnificent example of dauntless nobility in the
face of inevitable annihilation—(Fascist Week, January 12-18,

1934.)

ae

A I i

a RF

248 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The Fascist organ thereafter endeavours to plead that perhaps
man may be “in some ways free of natural laws” and thus
escape the doom. But even the final conclusion of the Fascist
organ runs:

For those who make the choice, the very least of their destinies
will be an honourable end.

In the same way the official book on Mosley and British
Fascism, already quoted, glories in the breakdown of civilisa-
tion and the return to the primitive:

The powers of the blood, unbroken bodily forces, resume their
ancient lordship (p. 198).

Out of the night of history, old shadows are appearing which
menace their complacency. . . . Sir Herbert Samuel, a Liberal of
singular perspicacity, believes that Europe is returning to the con-
ditions of the twelfth century. Professor Laski wails against these
new men who have “no inhibitions.”

The figure of the leader . . . comes out into the stark day—
in the grim serenity of Mussolini, in the harsh force of Hitler. And
behind them stride the eternal condottieri—the gallant, vivid Balbo,
the ruthless Goering (pp. 42-3).

(Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir “Oswald Mosley and British Fascism.)

With this typical glorification of the ‘“condottieri,” of the return
of the brigand Balbo and the gorilla Goering, of the law of the
jungle, we may leave the Fascists to their Neronian pleasures,
until such time as the strong hand of the proletarian dictator-
ship shall end their blood-orgies and establish civilised order
and progress throughout the world. What speaks here through
the mouth of the Fascists is nothing but the typical decadent
parasitic glorification of blood and the cave-man (already
visible in its first signs in the invalids Nietzsche, Carlyle and
other sick types, or later represented in the Ethel M. Dells and
Hemingways of literature). Fascism in its ideology is nothing
but the continuation of fin-de-siécle decadence into its neces-
sary outcome in blood-lust and barbarism. All this is only the
death-rattle of the dying bourgeois civilisation.

Against all this pessimism, decline, decay and filth, tragic
destinies, self-heroisings, idolisation of death, returns to the
primitive, mysticism, spiritualism and corruption, the revolu-
tionary proletarian movement of Communism, of Marxism, the

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 249

heir of the future, proclaims its unshakable certainty and con-
fidence in life, in science, in the power of science, in the possi-
bility of happiness, proclaims its unconquerable optimism for
the wholefuture of humanity, and in this sign, armed with the
weapons of scientific understanding, of dialectical materialism,
of Marxism, will conquer and sweep from the earth the dregs
of disease and decay which find their expression in Fascism.

The Threat of World War

The experience of both Italian Fascism and German Fascism,
as also of the military Fascism of Japan, has overwhelmingly
demonstrated that Fascism drives towards war.

Italian Fascism, after concentrating its entire organisation
and economy on preparation for war, led the way as the first
of the European powers to open large-scale war in the new
period since the world crisis by its attack on Ethiopia in 1935.
The open and cynical character of this aggression on a people
technically backward and deprived of arms by the action of the
imperialist powers, and the no less contemptuous disregard of
all the professions of the Kellogg Pact and of the League of
Nations Covenant, aroused universal awakening to the true
character of Fascism as the instigator of war. The Ethiopian
adventure of the Italian Fascists was declared by their friend
and admirer, Churchill, to be a “deadly trap.” But in fact this
whole policy, the growing crisis of their economy, as well as the
inner weakening of the regime, could find no other outcome.
The advance of Italian Fascism to war was continuously pre-
dicted by Mussolini, and even dated by him for 1935, in his
speeches as far back as 1927. In this respect, and in this re-
spect alone, the event has fully borne out the proposals of
Fascism.

The experience of German Fascism, though shorter, is of
even more far-reaching significance. In the case of German
Fascism it is manifest to all observers, and it is unnecessary to
recapitulate the detailed evidence (given, for example, with
ample documentation in Dorothy Woodman’s Hitler Rearms),
that the entire organisation, not only of technique and econ-
omy, but of the whole life of the people, has been directed to
war on a scale that has never before been equalled. Behind
Hitler stands the General Staff. The estimate, given currency

250 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

by Churchill in 1935, that the expenditure of Germany on war-
preparation has attained the colossal figure of £800 millions
annually, a sum exceeding the total figure of the British budget,
reveals not only the extreme degree which this process has
reached, but also the extreme instability of its whole basis and
the impossibility of continuing this process for any prolonged
period without reaching the final outcome in war.

These tendencies of extreme and heavy rearmament and of
the increasing mobilisation of the whole population and econ-
omy for war, are not confined to the Fascist countries. In
greater or less degree they are common to all the imperialist
countries. But they are carried to an extreme point without
parallel elsewhere in the Fascist countries. The Fascist dicta-
torship provides the means for this enormous compulsory mo-
bilisation and regimentation in a way that arouses the envy of
the statesmen of the parliamentary democratic countries.

Where, however, does this process lead? Ji is manifest that
there can be here no question of stability. On the contrary,
the artificial stimulus to economic life through this process of
rearmament, which leads to the illusory picture of a short-term
revival through Fascism, compels a constant acceleration and a
continually greater economic instability. On the one side, the
pyramid of long-term and short-term debt for unproductive
expenditure rises steadily higher. On the other side, the sac-
rifices and privations imposed on the population, both through
the myriad forms of heavy taxation to meet the rising demands
of state expenditure, and through the restrictions and cutting
off of normal foreign sources of supply, as well as the limitation
of home sources of supply for the purpose of war needs and war
stocks, lead to a'situation in which the population is reduced to
the level of extreme wartime conditions and virtual blockade
already before the outbreak of war.

Thus a situation is reached which received its most typical
expression in respect of Japan, when the Times Tokyo corre-
spondent had occasion to declare that if the war industries were
for a moment interrupted, the whole economic structure would
collapse. Such an artificial position belongs to the conditions
of war-time but not of peace-time. It is obvious that such a
process as is going forward in Germany cannot long continue
in conditions of peace. It must inevitably in a relatively short
period of time lead to its outcome in war, as the only alterna-

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 251

tive to its own inner collapse. This becomes more and more
evidently the whole direction of German policy, just as Italian
policy has already reached this outcome. But the gamble of
war in fact eventually sharpens all the contradictions and inner
weakness of the whole regime. The process of capitalist decay
reaches its most extreme and violent expression in Fascism.

==CHAPTER XI: TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA==

Untit the last few years Liberalism and Social Democracy
denied the possibility of Fascism in the “civilised” countries of
Western Europe and America.

As early as 1922, immediately after the victory of Fascism
in Italy, while current discussion still treated this as an
“Italian” phenomenon, the Communist International at its
Fourth Congress gave the warning for every country:

The menace of Fascism lurks to-day in many countries—in
Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary, in nearly all the Balkan countries, in
Poland, in Germany (Bavaria), in Austria and America, and even
in countries like Norway. Fascism in one form or another is not
altogether impossible even in countries like France and England.

But even as late as 1928 the Second International still clung
to its theory of “the two Europes” and of “dictatorship” as
only possible in “backward” countries. Vandervelde, Chair-
man of the Second International, declared at its Brussels Con-
gress in 1928:

A great captain of industry . . . recently said to us: “If without
taking into account political frontiers you trace an imaginary line
from Kovno to Bilbao, passing through Cracow and Florence, you
will find before you two Europes—the one in which horse-power
dominates, the other where it is the living horse, the one where there
are parliaments, the other where there are dictators.” It is in
reality exclaisively in the latter economically and politically back-
ward Europe that dictatorships more or less brutal, more or less
hypocritical, abound, whether veiled or no by a sham national
representation.

Three years later, in 1931, the Second International had to
admit the incorrectness of this theory. In its report to the
Vienna Congress in 1931 the Executive declared:

Fascism has overstepped the limits which but a few years pre-
viously appeared to be drawn for it by the development of modern
technique. Whereas it was believed at that time that Fascism was
confined to those countries in which “instead of horse-power the

252

TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA 253

living horse dominates,” the Fascist danger has now also penetrated
to countries in which industry is highly developed.

The three further years since 1931 have seen the establish-
ment of complete Fascist dictatorships in Germany and Austria,
the growth of influentially supported Fascist movements in
France and England, the development of the Spanish Revolu-
tion to the point of extreme menace of Fascism,* and the
first signs of semi-fascist movements and tendencies.

It is now clear to all that the theory of Fascism as a
phenomenon only of “backward” “agrarian” countries is
false, and that the Communist analysis of Fascism as the
characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be
brought into play in the most highly developed industrial
countries when the stage of the crisis and of the class struggle
requires it, has been proved correct by facts. Events daily and
hourly reinforce the truth that the international working class
throughout the world, in every capitalist country, has to fight
the menace of Fascism.+

* The question of Spain, which is basically different in type from the leading
Western Imperialist countries, is not further dealt with in this chapter; any treat-
ment would require a detailed separate analysis of the whole development of the
Spanish Revolution since 1931, its strangling by the left-democratic Liberal-Social-
ist bloc at the time of the height of the mass revolutionary wave, and the conse-
quent passing of power to the Right and rapid growth of Fascism, approaching the
prospect of an intense struggle of Fascism and the mass movement in the coming
period. (Since the publication of the first edition of this book, these issues have
come to a head in the civil war which broke out in Spain in October, 1934.)

f The corresponding revision of Fascist expression, from the time when Mussolini
declared that “Fascism is not an article for export” to the time when Mussolini
declared (1930) that Fascism is “universal” and looks forward to “a Fascist
Europe,” has accompanied, but has not caused, this development. Apart from the
interchanges between Fascist movements, the attempts of Fascism at rudimentary
forms of international propaganda are still—inevitably from the very nature of
Fascism—feeble so far. A journal Antieuropa is issued from Rome with the sub-
title “Rassegna del 1’ espansione fascista nel mondo” (‘‘Review of fascist expansion
throughout the world”), and, while mainly Italian, has printed contributions from
Hitler, Mosley and others; there is also the similar journal Ottobre. The word-
ing of the official announcement of Antieuropa (issue of September 30, 1933,
containing article of Mosley on “Modem Dictatorship and British History”) is
worth reproducing as a curiosity:

“Our organ is really the Worldcentrum of fascist intelligence, furthers exten-
sion, illustrates relationship and controls the fascist-intelligence development in
the world.

Means of propaganda—Antieuropa, monthly review.

Ottobre—paper of the Universal Fascism.

Documentate yourselves by means of Nuova Europa.”

The striking English of this effusion is sufficiently revealing of the very weak
“international” basis of this attempt of Italian Fascism to figure as a ‘“World-
centrum.”

254 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

1. The Basis for Fascism in Britain, the United States and France.

In 1890 William Morris, in his penetrating imaginative
anticipation of the process of the social revolution in Britain,
given in his “News from Nowhere” (Ch. XVII, How the Change
Came) wrote:

Whatever the Government might do, a great part of the upper and
middle classes were determined to set on foot a counter-revolution:
for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed quite unen-
durable to them. Bands of young men, like the marauders in the
Great Strike of whom I told you just now, armed themselves and
drilled, and began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with
the people in the streets. The Government neither helped them, nor
put them down, but stood by, hoping that something might come
of it. :

These “Friends of Order,” as they were called, had some suc-
cesses at first, and grew bolder; they got many officers of the regular
army to help them, and by that means laid hold of munitions of war
of all kinds. . . . A sort of irregular war was carried on with varied
success all over the country; and at last the Government, which at
first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting,
definitely declared for “the Friends of Order.”

The poet of late nineteenth century Britain—whose insight
was strengthened above his contemporaries of literature by
his acceptance of the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism and
direct participation in the mass struggle—here comes remark-
ably close to a forecast of Fascism. This passage is of interest,
not only as one of the earliest direct anticipations of the specific
character of Fascism (not merely of counter-revolution in
general) in revolutionary socialist literature, but also precisely
because it sprang from observation of British conditions and
experience of the struggle in Britain. While the blind liberals
and reformists three decades later, with facts staring them in
the face, were still to be proclaiming Fascism “alien” and
“unthinkable” in Britain, it was precisely the observation of
British conditions that first awoke in a keen mind, which had
drawn nourishment from Marxism, one of the earliest direct
anticipations of Fascism.

The illusion of the “alien” character of Fascism in the
“democratic” countries of Western Europe and America is
commonly presented as based on the supposed peculiarities and
uniqueness of the “national character” and “institutions”
in these countries. “Britain” (or alternatively, according to

i i

BASIS FOR FASCISM 255

the speaker, “the United States,” or “France”) “will never
tolerate Fascism; it is foreign to our whole traditions and out-
look.” The same myth was also current in Germany, where
up to the last the formula that “Germany is not Italy” was
unweariedly repeated.

What underlies the conception of the “different” character
of Western Europe and America and the undoubted fact of
the deeper rooting of parliamentary-democratic institutions in
these countries? In reality this situation, and the ideology
accompanying it, is only the reflection of the wealthier, more
powerful, privileged situation of Western imperialism with its
vast colonial possessions and world domination. The earlier
accession to power of the bourgeoisie in these countries brought
parliamentary institutions, the instrument of their fight against
feudalism, earlier to the front; and these parliamentary in-
stitutions continued to be maintained, after the fight against
feudalism was fully completed and the serious meaning had fully
gone out of them, for the deception of the working class and the
camouflage of the real rule of the narrowing plutocracy. The
strength and resources of capitalism in these metropolitan

| countries made it possible to pursue a liberal policy of conces-
sions to the workers, and thus to draw the working class in the
wake of capitalism and hinder the growth of independent class
consciousness. Hence the long domination of liberal and social
reformist politics in the working class in Britain, France and
the United States right into the twentieth century, and the

. slow growth of class-conscious Socialism, in contrast to Central

. and Eastern Europe. And hence the solid basis for the longer
successful maintenance of parliamentary institutions of decep-
tion in these countries, when these same institutions, transferred
to other countries, could find little root. The “democratic
freedoms” of Western imperialism have been built on the
foundation of colonial slavery; as was strikingly demonstrated
when the Labour Government, the champion of “democracy,”
brought in a reign of terror to maintain despotism in India and
jailed sixty thousand for the crime of asking for democratic
rights.

But just this basis of parliamentary-democratic institutions
in the Western imperialist countries is increasingly undermined
by the crisis of capitalism. The monopoly of the world market
breaks down; the colonies revolt; the world tribute diminishes;

256 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the bourgeoisie in the metropolitan countries is compelled, in
place of concessions and reforms, to withdraw those already
granted and launch ever-increasing attacks on the workers.
But this inevitably brings a new intensity of the class struggle
in these countries and a widening revolutionary awakening
of the working class. For a period the apparatus of Labourism
still serves to canalise the discontent of the workers and keep
them attached to capitalism; but Labourism is compelled by
the crisis increasingly to expose itself and assist the capitalist
offensive against the workers; and disillusionment grows. As
this situation develops, the bourgeoisie is compelled to look to
new forms to maintain its rule. The movement of bourgeois
policy begins to turn away from the exhausted and discredited
parliamentarism towards open dictatorship, towards Fascism.
This movement, after developing first in the more poverty-
stricken and backward countries, reaches its first major
imperialist state in Germany, the Power which has been stripped
of its colonies and weakened in its world imperialist position,
and only finally begins to develop in the dominant imperialist
Powers, Britain, France and the United States, and their
satellites (Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland).

But so soon as this situation develops, it becomes clear that
Fascism, so far from being alien to the Western imperialist
states, has an extremely strong potential basis in their whole
social, economic and political structure.

What are the general conditions favouring the growth of
Fascism? They may be briefly enumerated: (1) intensification
of the economic crisis and of the class struggle; (2) widespread
disillusionment with parliamentarism; (3) the existence of a
wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat,
and sections of the workers under capitalist influence; (4) the
absence of an independent class-conscious leadership of the
main body of the working class.

Are these conditions present in Britain, France and the
United States? The answer must be given that they are all
strongly present.

If we take Britain first, and ask the question whether there is
a basis for Fascism in Britain, a consideration of the social
forces and structure in the country will show that there is every
basis.

In the first place, there is a very large proportion of inter-

BASIS FOR FASCISM 257

mediate strata of the population, of petit-bourgeois elements
with very narrow and easily controlled political interests, and of
a parasitic proletariat closely allied to their masters and
virtually unorganisable to the working-class movement. This
proportion is larger in Britain than in other countries. The
1921 census showed ten millions of the population engaged in
direct productive industries and transport, and seven millions
in “services” of very varying degrees of productive value,
often of no productive value, but parasitic in character and
tied up with the processes of exploitation. Of these seven
millions over four millions are classified under Commerce,
Finance and Personal Service. This classification, however, is
to some extent misleading without further analysis. More
important is the proportion of salaried workers to wage
workers. In 1924, according to Bowley and Stamp (The
National Income 1924, published in 1927), the number of sala-
ried workers was 2.8 millions against 15.4 million wage earners,
or 15 per cent. of the employed population.*

Further, of the wage-workers, some two-thirds are un-
organised; and these two-thirds are not an outside margin in all
industries, but mainly represent the workers outside the big
productive industries.

At the same time the Labour Party and trade union leader-
ship, by their denial of the class struggle and preaching of the
“community above classes,” by their alliance with the em-
ployers (Mondism) and capitalism, and by their ban on the
united front, disorganize the independent class action of the
workers and pave the way for Fascism.

An indication of the potential Fascist forces is provided by
the monster circulations, approaching two millions, of journals
of the type of the Daily Mail, circulating mainly among petit-
bourgeois elements, and in its whole character since its incep-
tion a real forerunner of Fascism more than twenty years
before the name existed (since 1934 openly Fascist).

If we turn to the policy and tactics of the bourgeoisie in

* It is noticeable that the proportions of the salariat have considerably increased
in the period of the imperialist decline. The 1907 Census of production estimated
the salaried at 7 per cent. and the wage-earners at 93 per cent. For 1911 Bowley
and Stamp (op. cit.) estimate the numbers at 1.6 millions and 15.6 millions respec-
tively, or over 9 per cent for the salariat. The 1924 figure gives over 15 per cent.
The increase between 1911 and 1924 is by more than 1.1 million or 68 per cent. In
the same period, according to this estimate, the number of wage-earners decreased
by 250,000.

258 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Britain, it is obvious that these not only do not exclude Fascism,
but are on the contrary most closely prepared and adapted for
Fascism by all the developments of the imperialist period.
On the one hand the State machine—with the famous
“unwritten Constitution” which can be turned in any direc-
tion desired at a moment’s notice to suit the emergency needs
of the bourgeois dictatorship—is far more exactly fitted than
in any democratic republic for all the purposes of intensified
dictatorship and Fascism. On the other hand, the British
bourgeoisie is trained for generations on the basis of its rule of
India, Ireland and the colonial empire to methods of violence
and despotic domination, at the same time as on the basis of
parliamentary and electioneering humbug in Britain to the
technique of mass-deception—the two together constituting the
perfect combination for Fascism. The words of the American
Ambassador in London during the war years, W. Page, a
shrewd and admiring observer, on the technique of the Die-
hards may be recalled:

They call these old Tories “Diehards.” It’s a good name.
They use military power, social power, financial power, eloquence,
learning, boundless impudence, blackguardism—everything—to hold
what they have; and they fight—fight like tigers, and tire not.

Or as Lloyd George (the “Liberal” founder of the “Black and
Tans’’) declared in a speech in 1925: ‘Scratch a Conservative,
and you will find a Fascist.” For those who are still chloro-
formed by the sedulously instilled myths of law and order, it
would be well to study a little the history of the British bour-
geoisie for the past three centuries, which in bloody violence
could hardly be equalled by any ruling class since the Roman
Empire, as well as the action of this same bourgeoisie as a
ruling class in the Empire outside Britain to-day. They would
speedily learn the mailed fist basis which lies behind the velvet
speeches of a Baldwin or a MacDonald. It is sufficient to
recall the technique of the Boer War jingo agitation, the Ulster
rebellion, the Amritsar massacre, the “Black and Tans” in
Ireland, or the organisation for countering the General Strike,
to see the full basis for Fascism.

The Ulster movement, with its open defiance of Parliament,
organisation of private armies, and direct support by the Army
chiefs, the Court and high society, and ignominious capitulation

BASIS FOR FASCISM 259

of the Liberal Government, is of especial interest as an em-
bryonic precursor of Fascism. Lenin wrote of it at the time:

The significance of this revolt of the landlords against the “all-
powerful” (as the Liberal blockheads, especially the Liberal scholars,
think and have said a million times) English Parliament is extraor-
dinarily great. March 21, 1914, will mark a world-historical turning-
point, when the noble landlords of England, smashing the English
Constitution and English law to atoms, gave an excellent lesson in
class struggle... .

These aristocrats behaved like revolutionaries from the Right, and
by that tore up all conventions, tore down all the veils that pre-
vented the people from seeing the unpleasant, but undoubtedly real,
class struggle.

That was revealed to all which was formerly concealed by the
bourgeoisie and the Liberals (the Liberals are hypocritical every-
where, but it is doubtful whether their hypocrisy goes to such lengths
and to such refinement as in England). Everybody realised that the
conspiracy to break the will of Parliament had been long prepared.
Real class-rule has always been and still lies outside of Parliament.
. . . And the petit-bourgeois Liberals of England, and their speeches
about reforms and about the power of Parliament, with which they
lull the workers, proved to be in fact frauds, straw men put up in

order to fool the people, who were quickly torn down by the aristoc-
racy with power in their hands.
(Lenin, The Constitutional Crisis in England, 1914.)

Indeed the Fascists in Britain to-day directly look to the Ulster
movement as their predecessor:

Just before the war the widespread movement directed against
Parliament, in sympathy with the Ulster loyalists, assumed formid-
able proportions within two years of its initiation. That movement,
psychologically limited as it was, and directed only to the safe-
guarding of certain limited objectives, would—had not the war in-
tervened—have developed into a formidable revolt against the whole
theory and system of Democracy in Britain. The Ulster movement
was in fact the first Fascist movement in Europe.

(W. E. D. Allen, Fascism in Relation to British History and
Character, B.U.F., 1933.)

If we turn to the United States, an examination of the social
composition of the population would also show the basis for
Fascism. Of the 49 million occupied persons returned in the
census of 1930, 19 millions were classified under manufacturing
industry, mining and transport, ro millions under agriculture,

260 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

6 millions under trade, 3 millions under the professions, 4 mil-
lions under clerical occupations, and 5 millions under domestic
and personal service. In addition to the urban petit-bourgeoisie
and very wide expansion of the salariat, salesmen, etc., the
farming population, with some six million separate farms, con-
stitutes roughly one quarter of the total population. Extreme
economic pressure has powerfully radicalised all the poorer
farmers; but until a strong proletarian leadership succeeds to
establish the alliance—all-powerful, once it is achieved—of
the industrial workers and small farmers, there is every danger
of demagogic Fascist movements winning their hold here. At
the same time, the organisation of the industrial workers is
weak. Trade union organisation, even after the increases
accompanying the present crisis and the Roosevelt Codes
(which have mainly in fact encouraged company unions—
the initial basis for Fascist organisation in industry), only
reaches about one-fifth of the workers; it is mainly confined to
the privileged, skilled workers on a craft basis, leaving out the
unskilled workers; and, apart from railroads and to some extent
mining, has won little hold yet in the basic productive industries.
The class-collaboration policy of the American Federation of
Labour leadership is more open and extreme than in Europe,
and still so far opposes any form of political party of the workers,
although the development of the crisis may compel a change in
this respect. The reformist labour leaders have taken the role
of direct allies and lieutenants of the Roosevelt emergency
regime. Here again, therefore, a strong social basis exists for
the development of full Fascism, if this should become necessary
to the bourgeoisie.

The traditional tactics and methods of domination of the
American bourgeoisie are equally adapted to Fascism, in
proportion as occasion arises. If they have not had the same
experience as the British bourgeoisie in the domination of
colonial peoples, save more recently and on a smaller scale,
they have had plenty of experience in their own domain in the
suppression of the twelve million Negroes within the United
States and of the heavily exploited immigrant populations.
The combination of violence, lawlessness and corruption for
the maintenance of capitalist domination has reached classic
heights in the United States. It is only necessary to recall the
Chicago hangings, Homestead or Dearborn, Sacco-Vanzetti

BASIS FOR FASCISM 261

or Scottsboro, the exploits of the Pinkerton gangs, the methods
in the coalmining and steel areas, the private armies of the
employers, the judicial murders, the lynchings and gangsters,
the Anti-Red drive of the Department of Justice after the war,
or the waves of sudden expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and
similar organisations, to see the plentiful basis for Fascism in
American bourgeois traditions.

If Britain and the United States are both classic lands of
semi-Fascist methods of bourgeois domination long before
Fascism, France has long been considered the classic land of
“pure democracy.” Yet in fact just the overwhelming petit-
bourgeois social basis (preponderant small industry and
peasantry, with a layer of finance-capital at the top, but
relatively less developed large industry or foreign trade) which
underlay the “pure democracy” of formal social-radical repub-
licanism and actual unlimited corruption and rule of the finan-
cial cliques, to-day, when the new stage develops, becomes
equally the basis for Fascism.

Not only is the majority of the population in France still
rural (the proportion of the population in towns of over 5,000
inhabitants was 44 per cent. in 1928, as against 54 per cent. in
Germany, 58 per cent. in the United States and 79 per cent.
in Britain), but the preponderance of petty industry in the
industrial field is still extreme. According to an investigation
of de Ville-Chabrolle on the basis of official statistics (see
Economist, September 30, 1933), out of a total of 6,167,647
establishments in 1926, 5,983,075 consisted of five persons or
less (2,981,521 single-handed concerns). Out of 17.8 million
occupied persons, 11.8 millions were occupied in concerns of
five persons or less, and only 1.5 million workers were employed
in concerns of over 500 workers, that is, in large-scale industry.
Trade union organisation, reaching to a few hundred thousands
in each of the two rival Confederations, is extremely weak,
although militant traditions and class-consciousness are strongly
developed in the big industrial centres.

The parliamentary republic has maintained a sometimes
precarious hold for two generations; but the open reactionary
forces which seek to change the regime increase in strength.
The experiences of Boulangism, of the anti-Dreyfus agitation,
or of the Action Francaise movement have shown the ground
that there is for Fascist agitation; and the offensive of the recent

262 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Fascist demonstrations of the beginning of 1934, leading to the
hasty withdrawal of the “Left” Government and instalment of
a Government of National Concentration, have shown how
rapidly the advance to Fascism may develop in France.

All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop
and conquer in these Western countries. Its success or failure,
as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and
militant resistance of the proletariat. But it is folly to be blind
to the reality of the danger, or to the many favouring factors
that Fascism can marshal to its side in precisely these countries.
Above all, it is worse than folly to place a blind confidence, as
the liberal and reformist leaders preach, in the “democratic
institutions” of these countries. The bourgeoisie will use any
and every instrument of struggle as occasion arises. It is for
the working class and its allies to be prepared for the fight in
front.

2. The Significance of the National Government in Britain.

The development of the world economic crisis has brought a
sharp break in the political development in the countries of
Western Imperialism, and in so doing has brought the question
of Fascism increasingly to the front also in these countries.

In England the break took place in the autumn of 1931 with
the financial crisis and the establishment of the National
Government.

In the United States the break took place in the spring of
1933 with the inauguration of the Roosevelt regime amid
extreme financial crisis and the establishment of emergency
powers.

In France, where the effects of the economic crisis have
operated more slowly, the break came with the Paris revolu-
tionary and counter-revolutionary demonstrations of February
1934, and the formation of the Government of National Con-
centration under Doumergue.

All these reveal a common process of concentration of the
bourgeois forces in the crisis, establishment of intensified forms
of dictatorship and emergency powers, diminution of the role
of parliamentarism, and, in general, advance to types of the
pre-Fascist stage which characterised the Briining regime in
Germany.

What was the significance of the formation of the National

SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 263

Government in Britain, and of the stage of the crisis which
gave rise to it?

In the first place, it marked the heavy discrediting of the
Labour Party. The Labour Government, which had been
placed in office by eight million votes on a programme of
promises of socialism and of the solution of unemployment,
had looked on impotently while unemployment rose under its
rule from 1.1 millions to 2.7 millions, and had proved itself
only the ally of capitalist rationalisation against the workers.
The hopes which had been preached throughout the post-war
period of the peaceful democratic Labour path to socialism
as the alternative to revolution, and which had won a steadily
rising Labour vote from 2 millions in 1918 to 8 millions in 1929,
received a heavy blow. Disillusionment in the masses was
rising. But the Labour Party had in reality represented the
safety-mechanism of bourgeois rule in the post-war period, like
Social Democracy in Germany, the social-conservative force
which, while seeming to voice the socialist aspirations of the
masses, had served to attach them through parliamentarism
to the bourgeois regime. This was now in danger of collapsing
and giving place to the rising process of revolutionisation. The
bourgeoisie was quick to sense the danger. Already in the
spring of 1930 Lloyd George voiced the menace to the tradi-
tional bourgeois institutions through the discrediting of the
Labour Party. Describing how the workers had originally put
their hopes in the Liberal Party and lost faith in it, he con-
tinued:

Millions consequently threw in their lot with a new party. To
them this party was the party of the last hope. It is now rapidly
becoming the party of lost hope. Speakers and agents of all parties
returning from the last by-election in a great industrial constituency
had the same tale to tell. It was one of the gloom and despair which
had fallen on this working class district owing to the failure of the
Government they had helped at the last General Election to put into
power to bring any amelioration into their conditions and prospects.
If Labour fails this time, confidence in parliamentary institutions
will for a period disappear in myriads of loyal British homes and
hearts.

(Lloyd George, article in the Daily Express, March 18, 1930.)

The bourgeoisie manceuvred to meet this critical situation.
The step, previously only attempted in wartime, was taken of

264 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

creating a Coalition Government from all the parties, the
National Government, under the nominal leadership of
MacDonald and Snowden, and under the actual control of
Conservatism, to win anew the confidence of the masses under
this new cover. The manceuvre succeeded for the moment, by
playing on the very intensity of the disgust of the masses with
the Labour Government. The Labour vote fell for the first
time since the war, by the heavy fall of two millions. But this
disillusionment did not go to the benefit of the small revolu-
tionary vote, which only slightly increased. Many former
Labour voters abstained. The benefit of the process of dis-
illusionment went to the “National” vote, which swept the
country with 14% millions.

It is clear that we have here a special form of the same pro-
cess which was demonstrated in Germany. The betrayal by
Social Democracy thrusts millions of workers and former petit-
bourgeois supporters into the reactionary camp, which is
skilful to put forward a new flag in order to win them. This is
the heart of the process of Fascism. It is revealed in its first
rudimentary form in the “National” manceuvre in Britain.
The “National” vote of 1931 was the warning-signal of the
danger of Fascism.

Second, the National Government marks the process of bour-
geois concentration and intensified dictatorship for the carrying
through of measures of an increasingly Fascist character. The
consciousness of this role of the National Government, as
directly analogous to that of Nazism or Fascism, was openly
expressed by the Prime Minister, MacDonald, in his speech to
the National Labour Committee on November 6, 1933:

The secret of the success of dictatorships is that they have managed
somehow or other to make the soul of a nation alive. We may be
shocked at what they are doing, but they have certainly awakened
something in the hearts of their people which has given them a new
vision and a new energy to pursue national affairs.

In this country the three parties in co-operation are doing that,
and our task must be to get the young men with imagination, hope
and vision behind us.

The National Government thus avowedly sets itself the task to
achieve the same objects as those of Hitlerism in Germany,
whose “dictatorship” it publicly praises as representing a
“new vision” and a “new energy” to “make the soul of a

SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 265

nation alive.” This direct praise of Fascism comes from the
man who was till 1931 the accepted Leader of the Labour
Party, and who indeed gave similar praise to Italian Fascism,
while still Leader of the Labour Party.

A still more complete and conscious expression of the new
policy has been provided in the more recent declarations of the
Cabinet Minister, Elliot, Secretary for Agriculture, a former
Fabian. Elliot, who came to the front as the most active
exponent of the new economic policy in respect of the whole
system of quotas, licences, subsidies, controlled and restricted
production, etc., has increasingly underlined the political
significance of the process. In his broadcast speech under the
title “Whither Britain?” on March 27th, 1934, he spoke
of the transition to the “New State,” of the necessity to “give
up a certain amount of liberty,” of the need of “economic
self-discipline,’ “psychological self-discipline,” etc., and
directly compared the role of the National Government to that
of the Hitler Government in Germany. To-day Elliot stands
out as the principal governmental representative of the new
Fascist tendency.

The development to Fascism does not necessarily take the
same form in every country. The general tendencies of the
new economic and political policies which receive their most
complete expression in Fascism are common in greater or less
degree, as has been already pointed out, to all modern capital-
ism. But the first steps towards Fascism commonly develop in
and through the decaying forms of the old bourgeois demo-
cracy. This is above all the significance of the National Govern-
ment, which itself carries forward tendencies already visible
in the whole post-war capitalist development.

On the one hand, the National Government carries forward
the new lines of economic policy (increasing State regulation
of production, tariffs, quotas, import boards, the striving
towards empire economic unity) and the active increase of war
preparations.

On the other hand, the National Government carries forward
the process of the transformation of bourgeois democracy from
within—the development of new forms of intensified capitalist
dictatorship and increasing restriction of democratic rights.

This process is already visible in the whole post-war period,
notably in such measures as the Emergency Powers Act and in

266 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the Trade Union Act of 1927. It is carried very markedly
forward under the National Government. This is shown in
such measures as:

1. The increasing separation of governmental action from
parliamentary forms, and extension of government by
administrative order or by Orders in Council (the
Economy cuts and Means Test were put through by
Orders in Council, and only referred to Parliament
after they were already in operation) ;

The reorganisation of the police under increasingly
centralised and military forms, and rapid increase of
police expenditure;

Increasing restriction of the rights of free speech and
assembly, prohibitions of meetings (e.g., bannings of
meetings of unemployed at labour exchanges), imprison-
ment without charge of any offence committed (Tom
Mann case), etc.;

Active political repression against the workers (in the two
and a half years of the National Government up to the
spring of 1934 over 1900 arrests for political offences
have taken place, over 600 sentences for a total of
1,613 months imprisonment, and some 850 fines for a
total of £2,540, police interference with strikes,
etc.;

Increasing police violence against the workers, baton
charges, etc.

The Unemployment Bill, bringing the unemployed,
who have outrun the short period of regular benefit,
under the control of a centralised autocratic Board,
not responsible to Parliament, with power to establish
camps and “training centres” (‘concentration camps”
in the Home Secretary’s phrase), subjecting them to a
semi-military regime and forced labour without pay or
for purely nominal rates of pay—any worker who
resists this slavery and smashing of trade union rates and
conditions being liable to be sent to prison;

The Incitement to Disaffection Bill, nominally directed
against anti-militarist propaganda, but in fact very
much wider and so worded, in its original form as
presented, as to make the mere possession of any
revolutionary socialist or anti-war literature an offence

THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 267

punishable with two years imprisonment, and giving to
the police unlimited powers of search and confiscation.
All this may be described as the process of “encroaching
Fascism’ within the old forms, which precedes and prepares the
full Fascist attack. An examination of the experience of the
Briining regime in Germany, or of the successive earlier stages of
Dollfuss in Austria (when he was still loudly hailed as the
“champion of democracy” by all the liberal and_ social
democratic forces of the West), will abundantly show the
significance of this process, which has definitely begun its first
stages in Britain.

3. The Roosevelt Emergency Regime.

The Roosevelt emergency regime in the United States offers
a still clearer demonstration of the whole process.

From the moment of his inauguration the new President
demands and is granted emergency powers “as in wartime.”

I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet
the crisis—broad executive power to wage war on the emergency as
great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe.

(President Roosevelt’s Inaugural, March, 1932.)

We do not expect to have to resort to the drastic steps taken during
the war. But we have the same kind of a situation.

(General H. S. Johnson, speech at Chicago.)

What is the essence of the “New Deal,” if we strip from it
the sentimental philanthropic ballyhoo?

The “New Deal,” the policy of the Roosevelt regime
expressed in the National Industrial Recovery Act and
associated measures, represents the most comprehensive and
ruthless attempt of finance-capital to consolidate its power with
the entire strength of the State machine over the whole field
of industry, to hold the workers in subjection under extreme and
intensified exploitation with a universal lowering of standards,
to conduct on this basis and on the basis of the depreciated
dollar a world campaign for markets, and to prepare directly
the consequent inevitable war.

The signal marks of the Roosevelt policy are:

1. State-Controlled Capitalism.—tThe process of trustifica-
tion in the United States was previously still hampered by

268 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the remains of the old anti-trust legislation surviving from the
pre-war epoch. The New York correspondent of the London
Times (June 6, 1933) stated the first and principal reason for
big business support of the Industrial Recovery Act: “What
big business desires above all things is relief from the antiquated
Anti-Trust Laws.” By one stroke all anti-trust legislation is
swept away. The Preamble of the Industrial Recovery Act
openly proclaims the aim “‘to remove obstructions to the free
flow of inter-State commerce which tend to diminish the amount
thereof, and to promote the organisation of industry for the
purpose of co-operative action among trade groups.” <A
gigantic process of consolidation of the big monopolies, and
extermination of the small producers and independent firms in
the leading industries (“Ten million retailers protest against
the Blue Eagle: they maintain they cannot do business on a
basis of shorter hours, more wages and practically the same
prices” —Daily Telegraph, August 25, 1933), already begun by
the effects of the crisis, the credit-smash and the operations of
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, is now carried to its
logical conclusion. Every leading industry is established under
direct State organisation, with regulation of labour conditions,
price-fixing, restriction of production and guaranteed profits.
This is the ideal of capitalist society in decay, seeking to chain
the productive forces which have outgrown capitalism.

2. Inflation—The ostensible purpose of inflation is pro-
claimed as to give a stimulus to recovery (a stimulus whose
artificial character is rapidly revealed, as in the heavy decline
in the autumn of 1933 following the short-lived summer boom),
and to relieve and reduce the load of debts of agriculture and
industry, which were threatening to bring the whole structure
crashing. Its actual operation reveals it as one of the familiar
weapons of finance-capitalist brigandage in periods of crisis.
It means in the first place a direct robbery of all small owners
and of all small savings, the partial expropriation of the petit-
bourgeoisie. Second, it serves as the basis for colossal share-
speculations and manipulations, as well as processes of price-
raising, for the profit of finance-capital. Third, it effects a
universal reduction of the real wages of all workers, such as to
make the guaranteed wage standards, already fixed at very low
levels, in practice the cover for a general lowering of wage-
standards, as even the American Federation of Labor has now

—eeeeEEEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEE——————— =

THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 269

begun to complain. Fourth, it opens the way in the inter-
national sphere to a price-cutting campaign on the basis of the
depreciated dollar, to wipe out competitors and swamp the
already depressed world markets.

3. Servitude and Intensified Exploitation of Labour.—The
new Industrial Codes establish an authoritative regime of the
subjection of the worker under the direct union of the employers
and the State, with Government-fixed wages, hours and condi-
tions of labour, virtually compulsory arbitration by the Govern-
ment, and increasingly open offensive on the right to strike and on
independent workers’ organisation. While the social fascist
organs are drawn directly into the governmental apparatus, a
full offensive is let loose on all independent militant unions.
The inauguration of the new industrial regime is accompanied
by the shooting of miners on strike in Western Pennsylvania
and the proclamation of martial law against strikers in Utah
and New Mexico. “The A. F. of L. has voluminous evidence,”
declared its president, William Green, on January 15, 1934, ata
hearing on the lumber code, “that drastic reduction has taken
place in the wages of skilled workers since the adoption of the
code, and that the minimum wages tended to become the
maximum wages paid.” In the name of the N.R.A. the
employers endeavour to proclaim all strikes and picketing
illegal. At the same time in the Labour Camps some 350,000
young workers are placed under semi-military conditions.

| 4. War-Preparations.—The Industrial Recovery Act specifi-

cally provides for the building of “naval vessels, airplanes and
mechanisation or motorisation of the army tactical units.”
235 million dollars of the special appropriations for Public
Works are devoted to the Navy. The Secretary for the Navy,
Swanson, states:

I know of no more effective and praiseworthy way of giving our
industrial life that country-wide stimulus which it so sorely needs
than by devoting a portion of the money and energy which is to be °
used for public construction to this vital arm of our national defence.

(New York Times, June 16, 1933.)
The war character of the whole system of State organisation,
mobilisation of industry and semi-conscription of labour, is
obvious.

To what outcome does the new American system lead? Its
economic outcome can be no more successful in solving the

270 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

crisis than the similar methods of Fascism elsewhere. The
emptiness of all the promises of renewed prosperity, of the
solution of unemployment and of the achievement of higher
standards all round, has been already demonstrated. The
speculative production boom of the summer of 1933 only led to
a small increase in employment, and yet was followed by a rapid
collapse, showing the impossibility of absorbing the present
increased productive power under existing conditions, save
through the final “solution” of war. The Federal Reserve
Board index of industrial production (reduced to the base of
1928 as 100) which rose from 54.1 in March 1933, to go.1 in
July, fell to 65.8 in November, and had only risen to 68.5 by
January 1934. The “stagger” system of reducing the nominal
figure of unemployment, as in Germany, by spreading the
existing employment means no real increase in the volume of
employment.

The Civil Works schemes, while pouring out colossal sums of
money to give temporary employment and thus assisting the
process of inflation, only intensify the problem when, owing to
the enormous rising volume of debt, they have to be diminished
and come to an end, throwing millions again into the unemployed,
while no permanent channels of employment have been found.
The level of real wages has been lowered owing to the rapid rise
4 in prices. The American Federation of Labor is compelled to
report in its official organ in January 1934:

Since the bank crisis, the average worker’s weekly income has
risen 7.4 per cent. (to October), but prices the worker has to pay for
his living expenses have risen much more than this. Food prices
are up 18 per cent. (to November 21), prices of clothing and fur-
nishings are up 26.3 per cent. (to November).

Thus the worker who had a job right along is worse off than he
was when the year began. His pay envelope may be larger, but it
buys less. His real wage is smaller.

(The American Federationist, January, 1934.)

In January 1934, the President of the American Federation of
Labor, William Green, complained that there were still nearly
twelve million workers not absorbed into normal employment,
and that “workers are steadily losing by price increases”:

Our estimate shows that there are 11,690,000 persons wanting

work, but unable to find employment in our normal industrial
production services. ... Unemployment is still above the 1932

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THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 271

level by 1,500,000. . . . Workers are steadily losing by price
increases, and we must expect their living standards to be further
reduced as prices go on upward.

But while all the social-reformist “progressive” camouflage
of the Roosevelt ‘New Deal” thus rapidly fades away, the
reality of the new Fascist type of system of concentrated state
capitalism and industrial servitude remains. As Roosevelt
declared in his Message to Congress in January 1934:

We have created a permanent feature of our modernised industrial
structure, and it will continue under the supervision, but not the
arbitrary dictation, of the Government itself.

Roosevelt’s Secretary for Agriculture, Wallace, still further
brought out the implications of this process in his pamphlet
entitled ‘‘America Must Choose’, issued in the spring of 1934.
In this pamphlet, in the course of which he advocates that
America must “annually and permanently retract of our good
agricultural land some 25,000,000 acres”’, he states:

The new types of social control that we have now in operation are
here to stay, and to grow on a world or national scale... .

As yet, we have applied in this country only the barest beginnings
of the sort of social discipline which a completely determined
nationalism requires. ... We must be ready to make sacrifices
to a known end.

The significance of the Roosevelt regime is above all the
significance of the transition to Fascist forms, especially in the
economic and industrial field. As the Associate Editor of the
Current History Magazine of the New York Times, E. F. Brown, |
writes:

The new America will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor will
it be Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards Fascism, it
will be an American Fascism, embodying the experience, the tradi-
tions and the hopes of a great middle-class nation.

(Current History Magazine, July, 1933.)

But in fact this stage is still a transition. As the failure of the
plans of economic recovery becomes manifest and gives place
to new forms of crisis and widespread mass discontent, and
| above all as the advance to war implicit in the whole Roosevelt y
policy develops, the demand for corresponding political forms \
of Fascism will inevitably come to the front in the United f
States.

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272 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The February Days and the National Concentration
Government in France.

In France the development of the effects of the economic
crisis appeared at first more slowly. But in the latest period
the situation has gone forward with extreme rapidity, and the
question of Fascism has become a burning issue.

The events of February 6-12, 1934, and the fall of the
Daladier Government, leading to the formation of the tran-
sitional Doumergue Government of National Concentration,
have brought to the front the whole question of Fascism and
the increasing signs of advance to a direct armed struggle.

These events are of vital importance for the Western “demo-
cratic” countries, because in these events are set out with
crystal clearness the two alternative paths, the path of the
“left bloc” or bourgeois-liberal democracy, leading in fact
to Fascism, or the path of the united working-class front of
struggle, which can alone defeat Fascism.

What was the situation on the eve of the events of February
6-12? The national-chauvinist, Fascist and Royalist forces in
France—at all times active beneath the democratic-republican
exterior—developed extreme activity in the gathering crisis,
and especially since the advent of Hitlerism, with the open
alliance and assistance of the police authorities in Paris and
of the big press, that is, of the State and finance-capital. At
the same time the governmental forms were showing the same
increase of executive powers and repression of the workers
common to all capitalist governments in the present period.
Even The Times on February 5, that is, before the decisive
events, was compelled to note:

A contrast has been drawn between the severe repression of
Communist manifestations and the comparative immunity from
punishment of Royalist demonstrators and the Royalist newspaper
which directly incites its readers to riot in the streets.

This was under a “Left” bourgeois Government, main-
tained in office in practice by the support of the Socialist
Party. The majority in Parliament was a “Left Cartel”
majority, consisting of the Socialist Party and of the “Left”
bourgeois groupings.

This “Left” bourgeois Government (previously under
Chautemps, then under Daladier) was heavily discredited by

EEE —EE————— ee

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 273

one of the typical recurrent financial and police scandals, the
Stavisky scandal, which was being utilised by the reactionary
forces to raise agitation against the parliamentary regime and
to prepare a Government of National Concentration, just as
the crisis of the franc was similarly used in 1926. After the
dismissal of the police chief, Chiappe, who was notoriously
hand-in-glove with the Royalist and Fascist elements, pre-
parations were openly made—without interference—and pro-
claimed in the big press for a jingo riot on February 6, which
was to serve as a preliminary trial of strength and spear-head
for the Fascist advance.
What was the line of the Daladier Government and of “left
democracy” in the face of this challenge? The Socialist Party
voted its confidence in the Daladier Government, in the
“Left” bourgeois Government, as the defender of “demo-
cracy” against Fascism. On the basis of their support the
Daladier Government received a substantial parliamentary
majority of 360 to 220 on the critical evening of February 6.
As against this line the Communist Party, which had approached
the Socialist Party for the united front against Fascism in
March 1933, and been refused, called for the united front
from below, called the workers to the streets against the
Fascist attack, and through the unions began to make agitation
for a general strike against the Fascist menace. The two lines
were now to receive their practical demonstration in the events
that followed. {
The Daladier Government massed heavy military forces in (
Paris in the days preceding February 6. But did it act against
Fascism? The leaders of the Fascists and Royalists were
allowed to carry on their preparations in complete freedom.
Previously, on the eve of a Communist May Day demon-
stration, three thousand Communist leaders had been arrested
in Paris in order to cripple the organisation of the demon-
stration. On the eve of this reactionary demonstration not a
single Fascist or Royalist leader was touched. The organisers
of the reaction were given freedom of the streets to burn,
destroy, set fire to Government buildings, and advance on the
Chamber of Deputies; no adequate forces were placed against (
them; the police were inactive; the “Gardes Republicaines”
| and “Gardes Mobiles” were steadily commanded to retreat
and give way before the bourgeois mob; only at the last

274 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

moment, when the Chamber was nearly reached and the
bourgeoise demonstrators began to fire with their revolvers,
the ‘“‘“Gardes Mobiles,” not on the order of their officers, but
in instinctive self-defence, fired back, and about a dozen of the
dupes of the reaction and onlookers were killed. The subse-
quent Commission of Enquiry established that the shooting |
was begun by the Fascist demonstrators and maintained for
half an hour before any answering fire took place on the side
of the Government forces; and that even so no order to fire
was given by any officer, but that the rank and file of the
“Gardes Mobiles” began spontaneously to fire in self-defence
and were immediately ordered to stop by their officers.

The sequel to this incident is instructive for the whole
future of parliamentary democracy. Immediately following
this incident, on the very next day, on February 7, the Daladier
Government, which had just received an overwhelming
parliamentary majority, resigned; and there was installed,
amid the plaudits of the millionaire press, the Doumergue
Government of National Concentration, with the semi-fascist-
Tardieu in a strategic position in its midst.

How did this happen? Why this sudden surrender of the
legal Government with a parliamentary majority before the
first Fascist street-offensiver This question is of crucial import-
ance for all the Western “democratic” countries, where
confidence in “democratic institutions” as the defence against
Fascism is still preached.

Why did Daladier, “champion of democracy” and chosen
representative of French Socialism, immediately resign before
the Fascist extra-parliamentary offensive? Where, then, was
the “sovereignty of Parliament,” “Jaw and order,” the
“will of the electors,” and all the paper paraphernalia of
bourgeois democracy? Flown to the winds, as soon as finance-
capital gave the order in the opposite direction. The parlia-
mentary majority might vote one thing; but finance-capital
ordered another, and finance-capital was obeyed, including ©
by the representatives of that parliamentary majority.

The Daladier Government issued an explanation that it
resigned “to avoid further bloodshed”’:

The Government, while responsible for the maintenance of order,
declined ta ensure it by the employment of exceptional means,
which might result in severer repressive action and further blood-

_ ee .

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 275

shed. The Government had no wish to use soldiers against the
demonstrators, and for that reason had laid down office.

The transparent hypocrisy of this “explanation” is manifest.
As if any French bourgeois Government had ever hesitated to
use the utmost violence against working-class demonstrators,
not merely using soldiers against them, but organising complete
military operations against them, as was done on the night
of the far more serious fighting of February 9, amid the applause
of the entire bourgeois press.

Daladier resigned, not because he was a pacifist, but because
he was a puppet of finance-capital and could do no other.
Daladier resigned because he was compelled by the real ruling
forces of the State, in relation to which a parliamentary major-
ity was mere stage-play. What else could he do? Even had
he had the will to fight, he had no forces. The police belonged
to the reaction; the General Staff belonged to the reaction;
it was reported that the old Marshal Lyautey threatened to
lead the army on Paris if there should be any attempt at
resistance by the parliamentary majority. He was as con-
temptible a helpless puppet as Asquith over Ulster.

Had he wished to fight, he could only have done one thing,
to have publicly exposed the whole plot, and to have called
on the proletarian masses, on the rank and file of the soldiers,
to resist. But this would have meant to unloose the proletarian
revolution, which he feared as much as any of the Bloc National
or the Fascists. At bottom he was one with these; all the
liberal-democratic pretence was no more than electoral
humbug. He knew his duty. He went quietly.

Therewith the whole card-castle of bourgeois democracy, of
| the “democratic” defence against Fascism, of “democracy versus
dictatorship,” of the whole Social Democratic line, came tum-

bling down. The line of the “Left Cartel,” of the French Socialist
Party, of the parliamentary-democratic “defense” against
Fascism, was proved once again only to have smoothed the way
for the advance of Fascism, for a Government of the Right, for
intensified dictatorship. A rapid awakening of the entire
working class to the united fight against Fascism developed.
The general strike of February 12 brought out four million
workers. A united front pact of the French Socialist Party
and the French Communist Party against Fascism was finally
signed on July 27, 1934.

276 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In his speech of apologia to his constituents on April 8
Daladier admitted that he was aware that a full counter- —
revolutionary coup was being prepared for February 6:

The Fascist organisations were mobilised to force an entry into
the Chamber, to proclaim the fall of parliament and to impose a
dictatorship. Authentic documents proving this, direct appeals to —
insurrection, have been placed in the hands of the Commission of
Enquiry.
Why, then, did the Left-Democratic Government, with this
information in its hands, take no action? Why did these
“democrats,” so merciless and rigorous against the slightest
sign of Communist activity, making arrests and suppression
right and left, not lay a finger on the Fascist press which was
openly calling to insurrection? He has no answer. On the
contrary, he is anxious to show that no serious measure of
defence was taken:

It has been established that at no point was any order to fire
given by the Government. Not a single machine-gun, not a single
repeating-rifle was in the hands of the “Gardes Mobiles” or of the
police.
Why did the Government, chosen by the parliamentary
majority, take no steps to maintain itself against Fascism, but
instead resign at once, despite its parliamentary majority?
He admits that this question is perplexing “republican
opinion”’:

Republican opinion is amazed that the Government should have
resigned on February 7 instead of maintaining itself in power, since
it had the majority in parliament.
He has no answer. He fumbles and stumbles over the question.
He accuses fellow-ministers of having wanted to give way.
He accuses the President of having insisted on his resignation.
He hints at legal difficulties in the way of taking any effective
measures, of making arrests, of proclaiming martial law:
would the President have signed the decrees, or would parlia-
ment have supported him? As if there should have been a
moment’s difficulty or hesitation to carry through any steps
whatever, if it had been workers, and not Fascists, who had
advanced in armed formation to burn down Government
buildings, invade the Chamber and proclaim a dictatorship.
Finally he ends with the old lame excuse:

It seemed better to resign than to risk any further spilling of blood.

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 277

Thus the swan song of parliamentary democracy, the regime
of blood against the workers, of bloodshed unlimited in
imperialist war, but toothless and helpless against Fascism and
reaction.

The Fascist-Royalist demonstrations of February 6 were in
reality only the preliminary offensive of the reaction to conceal
and defeat the real rising movement of mass-discontent, the
rising movement of the working class, against which a Govern-
ment of intensified dictatorship was required. Hence the
peculiar character of the mancuvre which installed the
Government of National Concentration.

The full significance of this process—first, the preliminary
preparations under cover of the “Left”? Daladier Government,
and the military massing of artillery and troops by this Govern-
ment with the support of the Socialists, and then, at the critical
moment, the replacement of this Government by a Right
Government of National Concentration—was laid bare in the
days following February 6, as the working class came increas-
ingly into action.

The battles of Friday, February 9, when the Communist
demonstration had been banned by the Government, and the
workers fought for possession of the streets, enormously exceeded
in their range February 6, and were turned into a full military
operation by the Government. 23,000 troops and 14,000 police
were called into action against the workers.

In contrast to Tuesday night (February 6), when the police
offered only half-hearted resistance to the Fascist and Royalist
rioters till it was too late, the city was turned into an armed camp.
(Daily Herald, February 10, 1934.)

The capitalist dictatorship had no scruples now to “employ
exceptional means” or “use soldiers against the demon-
strators.” But the strength of the working-class resistance
was such that it was successful to give pause to the first wave
of the Fascist attack.

This was still further shown in the country-wide General
Strike of February 12. The Communist slogan for the 24 hours
general strike received such wide mass support that the
reformist unions were compelled formally to take it up, even
though they tried to sabotage its execution, going so far as to
turn it in their actual instructions (the railwaymen) into a

278 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“fifteen minutes” or even “one minute” strike. But the
strike and the accompanying united front demonstrations won
overwhelming support throughout the country. The true
path of the struggle against Fascism was thus shown. The
rising strength of the united working-class front of struggle in
France was laid bare as the sole power of the fight against the
rising Fascist offensive of French finance-capital.

The Government of National Concentration in France is
thus revealed as a typical transition Government of the advance
to Fascism. Its functions may be summed up: first, by the
| i. concentration of all forces to counter and defeat the rising
my wave of working-class discontent; second, in view of the
Q, strength of the working-class resistance, to cover the too open
Fascist designs with a show of “appeasement” and “safe-
i) guarding” of parliamentary democratic institutions; third, to
4 carry through the heavy offensive against the working, class
required by finance-capital, as shown in the cuts campaign;
and fourth, to provide the cover under which the Fascist forces
can carry forward their preparations for a further assault.

Nevertheless, the Doumergue Government fell before the
strength of the united working class front, and had to be re-
placed by the Flandin Government in November 1934. The
French bourgeoisie had to manceuvre more cautiously. Mean-
while the Fascist and Royalist forces are actively carrying
forward their armed preparations. The signs point to critical
conflicts in the near future in France.

5. The Beginnings of Fascist Movements

In 1905 Milner, one of the more far-seeing leaders of the
older British imperialism, described in a private letter the only
hope that he could see for the salvation of bourgeois rule:

Perhaps a great Charlatan—political scallywag, buffoon, liar,
stump orator, and in other respects popular favorite—may some
day arise who is nevertheless a statesman—the combination is not
impossible—and who, having attained power by popular acts may
use it for national ends. It is an off-chance, but I do not see any
other. (Letter to Lady Edward Cecil, The Milner Papers, Vol. 11.)

Here we see the bourgeoisie consciously groping for the
forms of Fascism long before Fascism existed. The fact that so
lifelike a description of Hitler or Mussolini could have been —
penned a decade before these began to play their role is
striking confirmation of how little it is personality that creat

ne

ee ee ee ee ee = a

pape t <item

oy wae

FN eee

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 279

history, and how much rather history calls forth the personality
that it requires at a given stage. Fascism does not come into
existence because a “leader” arises. On the contrary, because
the bourgeoisie requires Fascism, a “leader” is created from
such materials as can be found.

This is particularly important with regard to the development
of Fascist movements in Britain, France and the United States,
where there is still some difficulty in finding a suitable “leader”
with sufficient popular qualifications (in Britain, a definite
candidate exists, but drawn from the plutocracy). The develop-
ment of a specific Fascist movement is a complicated process,
involving a considerable “trial and error” of rival movements,
before the successful technique is found. Only fools will laugh
at the awkwardnesses of these embryonic stages, and not realise
the character of the serpent that is being incubated. The
crystallisation of Fascism into a single main movement has
taken over ten years in Britain, and may not have yet reached its
final form; the position in France is complicated by the exist-
ence of the older Royalist “Action Francaise” alongside the
newer direct Fascist organisations, and by the multiplicity of
Fascist organisations; in the United States the situation is still
that of the early stages of confusion.

More important in this initial stage than the specific Fascist
movements are the direct tendencies within leading circles of
the bourgeoisie towards open Fascism, and therefore towards
the creation of a Fascist movement or towards the support of the
most effective Fascist movement already existing. These
direct expressions of support for Fascism are to be found in
abundance among the leaders of the bourgeoisie in Britain,
France and the United States.

The close connections of leading British bourgeois circles with
| Italian Fascism and with Hitlerism are notorious. Mussolini
| had scarcely completed his coup d’etat before he was osten-
tatiously honoured by the British King in 1923 with the Order

of the Grand Commander of the Bath as a reward for his ser-
vices to the counter-revolution (corresponding to»the similar
title of a lower grade conferred on the unsuccessful Denikin).
The intimate relations of Chamberlain and Mussolini were
repeatedly expressed. with a fervour which was not solely
dictated by the requirements of foreign policy. The connections

280 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of envoys of Hitlerism with British Conservative headquarters —
were reported already before its advent to power. Churchill ©
openly declared, speaking in the Mecca of Rome in 1927, his
support for Fascism:

If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been entirely
with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle —
against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.

(Churchill, Address to the Roman Fascists, January 1927,
quoted in Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, p. 20.)

Mond, the patron saint of the Trades Union Congress and joint
author of the Mond-Turner Reports for class-co-operation, was
no less open in his recognition of Fascism and explicit avowal
that his purpose in the industrial peace negotiations with the
Trades Union Congress was directed towards the same aim as
Fascism. His avowal, made also in Rome (the shrine where the
hearts of British Conservative statesmen are to-day opened) in
1928, was indeed so explicit, as reported in the British Press,
that he subsequently endeavoured to disavow it and allege an
“abridged” and “incorrect version” of his remarks; ‘my
references to Fascism,” he wrote, “were entirely restricted to
its application to Italy.” The report, as printed in the Daily
Herald, ran:

“T admire Fascism because it is successful in bringing about social
peace,” said Sir Alfred Mond in an interview in Rome yesterday,
reported by the Exchange. “I have been working for years towards
the same peace in the industrial field in England. . . . Fascism is
tending towards the realisation of my political ideals, namely, to make
all classes collaborate loyally.” (Daily Herald, May 12, 1928.)*

The Rothermere and Beaverbrook press support of Hitler
and Mussolini, and demands for “a British Hitler,” are
notorious, culminating in the direct support accorded by the
Rothermere press to the British Fascist movement.

Of especial importance are the recent developments of the
Diehard and right-wing revolt within the Conservative Party,
represented by Churchill, Lloyd and others, and also, in varying
forms by Rothermere and Beaverbrook. Under the form of the

*See Trades Union Congress Report, 1928, p. 215, or Mond’s partial denial,
and p. 412 for Citrine’s amazing defence of Mond’s right to be a Fascist and in
favour of the trade union alliance with Mond, even if Mond were a Fascist: “Sup-
posing that the statement had been true, and that he had associated himself with

Fascism, would that have been a logical ground on which to break down dis-
cussion ?”’

rien TT

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 281

battle against Baldwin, and especially over the issue of India,
is fought the battle of more and more open opposition to
parliamentary democratic institutions; and the Conservative
headquarters is hard pressed to maintain control within the
party for the present more cautious stage of official bourgeois
policy (it may be noted that between 1933 and 1934 the
Diehard or opposition vote on the Indian issue at the Central
Council of Conservative Associations rose from below one-
third to over three-fifths). Churchill, speaking before the
Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform in
October 1933, and opposing the extension of even the farcical
sham “democratic” institutions proposed for India, seizes the
opportunity to refer to democratic institutions as “now
falling into general disrepute in the Western world.” The
Times, writing of the revolt against Baldwin in the Conservative
Party, notes both its anti-democratic line and the possibility
of its victory: :

That “Baldwinism” would be followed by some form of “Die-
hardism”—whether dictatorial or bureaucratic or purely commercial
—is hardly open to question if these malcontents were to have their
way. They may have it yet. (Times, October 17, 1930.)

This development is of especial importance to note because,
when the issue comes to a head, it is far from certain that a
Churchill or a Lloyd will allow the leadership to pass to a
Mosley.*

Similar tendencies and expressions looking more or less
openly towards Fascism may be observed among the statesmen
and industrialists in the United States and France. Thus
Gary, the United States Steel King, declared at the
International Chamber of Commerce Congress in 1923
(Observer, April 1, 1923):

We should be the better for a man like Mussolini here too.

* On the other “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie is worth noting the advo-
cacy of Liberal Fascism by H. G. Wells, and G. Bernard Shaw’s active agitation on
behalf of Fascism, which has led him to be hailed as their patron by the British Fas-
cists (see The Fascist Week, February 23-March 1, 1934, on “G.B.S. on the Brink
—Will He Ever Wear a Blackshirt ?” and the quotation from Shaw in praise of
Mosley as the motto of the official book B.U.F.: Oswald Mosley and British Fas-
cism). The older agitation of the Belloc-Chesterton school (against parliamentar-
ism, against financiers, against Marxism, against pacifism, against Jews; for nation-
alism, for small property, etc.) was fully Fascist in an academic fashion; although
the subsequent coming to life of their entire programme with literal exactitude
in the Catholic Hitler has not been appreciated by these virulent anti-Prussians.

282 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

And the former United States Ambassador to Berlin, J. W.
Gerard, declared in praise of Hitler:

Hitler is doing much for Germany; his unification of the Germans,
his destruction of Communism, his training of the young, his crea-
tion of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his curbing of
parliamentary government, so unsuited to the German character,
his protection of the right of private property are all good; and, after
all, what the Germans do in their own territory is their own business,
except for one thing—the persecution and practical expulsion of the
Jews. (New York Times, October 15, 1933.)

Abundant examples could also be quoted from the right wing
press in France of an envious admiration of Hitlerism.

If we turn from these gathering tendencies to the specific
and organised Fascist movements, it is to be noted that in the
recent period direct Fascist movements have rapidly developed
to prominence in Britain and France, as well as in the smaller
countries, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. In
the United States the process of the Roosevelt development is
still preparing the ground of Fascism; and the question of
direct fascist organisation is still at the time of writing mainly
a question of confused tendencies and beginnings, such as the
“Silver Shirts,” “Khaki Shirts,” Ku Klux Klan revival, the
Fascist movement of Dennis, etc.; from these tendencies more
developed Fascist organisation can rapidly emerge. But
the situation in Britain and France is already consider-
ably more advanced; and at the present stage the situa-
tion in Britain and France is of crucial importance for
the future development of Fascism in the Western imperialist
countries.

In France we have already seen how the events of February
1934, leading to the fall of the Daladier Government and the
establishment of the Government of National Concentration,
have brought the question of Fascism sharply to the front and
led to a rapid growth of the Fascist organisations. The situ-
ation is complicated in France by the parallel existence of the
Royalist ‘Action Francaise” and of the newer directly Fascist
organisations.

The older “Action Frangaise,” with its subsidiary hooligan
bands, the “Camelots du Roy,” was originally founded in
1898 as a nationalist and anti-semitic organisation, and later
became Royalist. With its close connections with right-wing

——————_—_—_____ or

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 283

Conservatism and semi-official protection for its violent and
unrestrained agitation, it has considerable strength among the
forces of the Right; but it is a rigidly doctrinaire reactionary
Royalist body, explicitly separating itself from the principles
of Fascism, although closely similar in general outlook and
practice, and not accepting its typical social-demagogic
technique.

The numerous directly Fascist organisations have not yet
coalesced into a single party. The previous attempt to found
such a party, the “Faisceau,” established by Georges Valois
in 1925, was not successful. To-day the principal more or less
explicitly Fascist organisations are the “Jeunesses Patriotes,”
founded by Taittinger in 1924, and the semi-military “Croix
de Feu” (nominally an ex-servicemen’s organisation, but in
fact recruited from all sources), under Colonel de la Roque,
founded in 1927 with subsidies from Coty, in its early years
numbering only a few thousands, but since the February days
claiming 150,000 members. There are also a number of minor
organisations and groups, such as the “Mouvement National
Populaire” around the “Action Nouvelle.” Of the fighting
strength of these organisations the Paris correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian reports:

The Croix de Feu, the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Action Frangaise
and other reactionary organisations have probably not more than
25,000 to 30,000 “fighting members” in Paris. Nevertheless, if this
force were armed, it would be sufficiently impressive, though even
then it could do little if it had the police and the army against it.
But there is just a danger that at the critical moment both the
police and the army might be on their side, or at any rate neutral.
(Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 23, 1934.)

At the same time from the “Socialist” side has developed an
organisation, the ‘‘Neo-Socialists,” or, as they have termed
themselves, the “Socialist Party of France,” led by Marquet.
This group was until the autumn of 1933 a right wing within
the Socialist Party; under the influence of the victory of °
Hitlerism it came forward with a new programme, attacking
the old conceptions of internationalism and of the proletarian
basis of socialism, insisting on the need to build on the basis
of “the nation,” and to appeal to the middle class and to
“youth,” and stressing the necessity of “authority,” of the
“strong State,” of “order,” of “discipline,” of “action,” etc.

284 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

. Its outlook was thus, although in fact only developing and

stating more explicitly the basic social democratic outlook, ©
marked by strong fascist influence; and the development of ©
this tendency was universally recognised as a development —
towards Fascism. In the autumn of 1933 this group broke
away from the French Socialist Party to found the Socialist
Party of France; its leader, Marquet, joined the Government —
of National Concentration on its formation.

In Britain the situation has not yet reached the same degree
of intensity as in France; but a fully formed Fascist Party and
organisation, even though not yet strong, has been constituted
since 1932 in the British Union of Fascists under Mosley. The
rival smaller organisations are to-day of minor importance;
note may be taken of the markedly anti-semitic Imperial
Fascist League, and of the “Greenshirts,” originally a currency
movement of more or less fascist character, though denying
Fascism.

The British Union of Fascists, although not yet necessarily
the final form, has to-day established its position for two
reasons: firstly and mainly, because of its overwhelming
financial support from influential sources, support by the
million-tentacled Rothermere Press, etc.; and secondly, because
of its historical origin from the heart of the Labour Party and
Independent Labour Party, whereas the previous attempts
had remained movements purely of retired generals and
suburban reactionaries.

The earlier movement of the “British Fascisti” originated
in 1923, from the circles around the Duke of Northumberland’s
journal The Patriot, and received its legal recognition from the
first Labour Government:

The legality of their organisation was officially recognised by the
late Labour Government by the granting to them of their Articles of
Association as “The British Fascisti, Ltd.”

(General Blakeney, President of the British Fascisti, in The
Nineteenth Century, January 1925.)

Brigadier-General R. B. D. Blakeney, its President, had been
general manager of the Egyptian State Railways. Its Com-
mander for the London area was Brigadier-General Sir
Ormonde Winter, K.B.E., and its Vice-President was Rear-
Admiral J. C. Armstrong. (The subsequently attempted
United Empire Party, launched with the support of the

——E————————

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 285

Rothermere and Beaverbrook Press in 1930, was equally over-
weighted with generals: “the Council is almost entirely com-
posed of military officers, and their experience of political
matters or organisation is, with two exceptions, negligible,
Morning Post, September 13, 1930). These earlier would-be
fascist organisations had no understanding of the necessary
Labour connections and social-demagogic technique of Fascism.
The British Fascisti proclaimed in all simplicity the objective
“to render practical, and, if necessary, militant defence of
His Majesty the King and the Empire.” A further circular
explaining the role of its two branches, Men’s Units and
Women’s Units, stated:

In times of peace both branches carry on propaganda, recruiting
and counter-revolutionary organisation. Should Revolution or a
General Strike be threatened, Men’s Units would form the Active
Force, and the Women’s Units the Auxiliary Force.

It is obvious that on this basis of ingenuous “counter-revolu-
tionary” honesty no mass Fascist movement could be built up.
The movement won a certain degree of attention in the period
preceding the General Strike, mainly owing to its semi-official
police recognition, its members being accepted in certain areas
for recruitment into the special constabulary in a body under
their own officers. It achieved no political influence, and after
the General Strike fell into obscurity.

The first significance of the Mosley movement was its direct
origin from within the Labour Party. Mosley, after having
been a Conservative Member of Parliament, entered the Labour
Party in 1924. On the basis of his great wealth and influential
connections, he advanced with an extreme rapidity unattain-
able to ordinary working-class members of the Labour Party,
to a commanding position in that party, which is always
notoriously open to the power of money and of bourgeois con-
nections, and where seats are often offered as at an auction to
the highest bidder (no less than fifty seats were offered to
Mosley in the same year that he joined). Within three years he
was elected to the Labour Party Executive in 1927 with a
higher vote than Herbert Morrison, and in 1928 was
re-elected, polling 2,153,000 votes. He was appointed a
Minister of the Labour Government of 1929, and in 1930
resigned on the grounds of inactivity to deal with unemploy-

286

ment. As a Minister he had produced the Mosley Memoran- —
dum, which was the first outline towards a Fascist policy, that
is, an active, openly non-socialist, far-reaching policy of
capitalist reconstruction. This policy, not because of its non- —
socialist character, but because of its active character, was
unwelome to the conservative do-nothing line of the Labour
Government, which accordingly sat on it and endeavoured to
bury it. Mosley appealed to the Labour Party Conference in
1930 and won 1,046,000 votes against 1,251,000 for the
Executive. He was re-elected to the Labour Party Executive,
and thus in fact passed straight from the Labour Party Executive
to the organisation of his New Party or Fascist Party in
1931.

For the original wider political basis and influence of Mosley
(in contrast to the unsuccessful generals of the previous Fascist
attempts), and his launching into the front ranks of politics, it
is thus necessary to thank the Labour Party and Independent
Labour Party, which in this way characteristically performed
the role of Social Fascism. While the Communist Party alone
from the outset correctly gave warning of the Fascist tendencies
implicit in Mosley (which he at first endeavoured to deny), the
Left Labour politicians rallied to his support and assisted his
campaign. The New Leader, the organ of the Independent
Labour Party, wrote of the Mosley Memorandum:

In the main, as is known, his scheme followed I.L.P. lines.
(New Leader, October 10, 1930.)

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Brockway wrote:

In the ideas of the I.L.P. Group and the smaller Mosley Group
there is a good deal in common. . .

Before long we may expect to see a revolt by the younger members
of all three parties against the methods and spirit of the older
generation.

(Brockway, “The Ferment of Ideas,” New Leader, Novem-

ber 7, 1930.)

The Mosley Manifesto of December 1930, which already
formally disclaimed Socialism (‘the immediate question is
not a question of the ownership, but of the survival of British
industry”) and demanded a Dictatorship of Five to carry out
an aggressive capitalist programme, was signed by seventeen
Labour M.P.s, including five I.L.P. M.P.’s, together with

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 287

A. J. Cook.* When the New Party, the first definite step
towards the formation of a Fascist Party, was formed in the
spring of 1931, it was formed of six Labour M.P.’s and one Con-
servative M.P., and made its appeal to “the mass of patriotic
men and women who are determined upon action.”

The final evolution from the womb of Social Fascism to
open Fascism developed in 1931. After the unsuccessful Ashton
by-election fight of the New Party in April 1931, writes
Strachey (Menace of Fascism, p. 161), “Mosley began more and
more to use the word Fascism in private.” In May 1931,
according to the Daily Express (May 18, 1931), Mosley at a
meeting at the headquarters of the New Party “spoke of the
need for discipline: it was generally agreed that there were
many lessons to be learned by the New Party from Hitlerism.”
Major Baker, political secretary of Mosley, in an interview to
the same journal declared:

It is true that the young men who are gathering round us are
Oxford students and graduates. They are mostly athletes. ...

The men around us are in many instances the owners of motor-
cars. They will form themselves into flying squads to descend sud-
denly on a place.

According to the Daily Herald (June 6, 1931), 2 mission, con-
sisting of Major Thompson, D.S.O., and L. J. Cumming
(formerly propaganda secretary of the West London Federation
of the I.L.P.) was sent to Germany to study the methods of the
Nazis. Mosley, The Times (March 2, 1931) reported, ‘“‘has, it
is understood, collected a considerable fund—not, of course,
from Socialists.”

The details of this development are only important as showing
in a classically clear form the close connection of Social Fascism
and Fascism. The last step in the process took place in 1932
when the Fascist name was openly adopted, and the New Party
(as the Communists had prophesied from the outset) was
transformed into the British Union of Fascists. The statement
of policy, Mosley’s Greater Britain was issued, which repeats in
very summary form the familiar features of Fascist economics

* The names of the seventeen Labour M.P.’s, signatory of the Mosley Manifesto,
which became the starting point of British Fascism, were, in addition to Mosley
and his wife: Oliver Baldwin, Aneurin Bevan, W. J. Brown, Dr. R. Forgan, J. F.
Horrabin, M. Phillips Price, E. J. Strachey, J. Batey, W. G. Cove, J. Lovat

Fraser, S. F. Markham, J. McGovern, J. J. McShane, H. T. Muggeridge, and
C. J. Simmons.

288 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and politics discussed in previous chapters, with the main stress _
on the economic policy (“Corporate State,” compulsory
arbitration, “scientific protection,” regulation of production,
trade, wages, prices and investments—the old illusions of
“planned capitalism”), and with the necessarily unpopular
political features of repression smoothed over under vague
phrases or even omitted from mention.*

In the autumn of 1932 the Fascist Defence Force was estab-
lished, and in 1933 Fascist barracks-headquarters, of the type
of the Brown Houses in Germany, began to be set up. The
growth of violence in 1933 in connection with the “wearing of
political uniforms” (i.e., of the Fascists—no Workers’ Defence
Force as yet exists) was reported as follows by the Home Secre-
tary in Parliament on February 20, 1934:

The growing danger of public disturbances which the police
attribute to the wearing of what may conveniently be called political
uniforms is shown by the fact that the Commissioner of Police for
the Metropolis reports that for the first six months of 1933 there were
in the Metropolitan police district 11 disturbances of a political
character attributed to this cause, while in the last six months of the
year there have been no less than 22 such disturbances.

In the beginning of 1934 Fascism was endowed with a large-
scale Press organisation by the resources of the millionaire
Rothermere Press being placed at the service of the British
Union of Fascists in order that it might represent

a well-organised party of the Right ready to take over responsibility
for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of
method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed.

(Rothermere in the Daily Mail, January 15, 1934.)

The policy of the Government in relation to the growth of
Fascism was stated in Lord Feversham’s reply on behalf of the
Government in the House of Lords on February 28, 1934. He
declared that the British Union of Fascists was gaining ground,

* The penal suppression of strikes under the Corporate State is not mentioned.
The violent suppression and dissolution of any form of socialist working-class
movement is not mentioned. On the electoral system it is blandly stated (p. 34) that
“Such electoral principles (i.e. of the Corporate State) are designed not to limit
the powers of electors, but rather to increase their real power by enabling them to
give a well-informed vote,” without stating that in fact in Fascist Italy and Ger-
many the electors are presented with a single ready-made list to give their assent
to, with no permission of any alternative candidates. But the whole book is marked

by the glaring disingenuousness customary to Fascist propaganda before power.

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 289

but that the policy of the Government was not to interfere to
restrict its growth.

As long as a majority were able, with the assistance or lack
of assistance of a Government, to maintain peace and order in
this country, it was unnecessary for any great action to be
taken to restrict such parties.

In the second half of 1934 the question of Fascism came in-
creasingly to the forefront, but the anti-Fascist forces at the
same time markedly increased in strength. The Fascist demon-
stration at Olympia on June 7, 1934, with its systematically
brutal manhandling of the anti-Fascists and even of non-par-
tisan spectators who protested, and with the connivance and
assistance of the police in this brutality, produced widespread
awakening to the Fascist menace. This was further shown at
the Fascist demonstration at Hyde Park on September 9,
1934, when the Fascist demonstration, numbering 2,500, was
protected by 7,000 police, while the anti-Fascist demonstration
numbered, according to the hostile press reports, from 100,000
to 150,000. From this heavy exposure the illusion began to
develop that Fascism had already passed its climax and was
bound to decline. There could be no more dangerous illusion.
The direct support of the authorities for Fascism was imme-
diately afterwards shown in a series of significant law court
cases, in one of which the Lord Chief Justice went out of his
way to pay an official tribute to Mosley as ‘a public man of no
mean courage, no little candour and no little ability.” The
growing strength and active offensive of the Right Conserva-
tives, under Lloyd and Churchill, and their close co-operation
with the open Fascists, is also an important indication of the
developing tendencies in the British ruling class; while from
another angle the recent Lloyd George “New Deal” campaign,
with its call for “national unity for action,” a “strong line” |
and a “War Cabinet” of Five, illustrates the new tendencies
gaining ground. As the class struggle develops in Britain, and
the situation of the bourgeoisie requires stronger measures, the
question of Fascism, both through veiled forms and also
through open forms, will inevitably come increasingly to the
front; and the strength of resistance will depend on the power
of the working class movement to achieve united action.

==CHAPTER XII: FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION==

Wuat is the future of Fascism? What is the future of the fight
against Fascism?

Fascism is a historical phenomenon, arising in a con-
crete historical situation. It is useless to discuss abstractly
as in a schoolroom alternative social forms of ‘Fascism,”
“Democracy,” “Dictatorship,” etc., without regard to the
actual situation and general line of capitalism in the present
period.

Fascism is the outcome of modern capitalism in crisis, of
capitalism passing into the period of the proletarian revolution,
when it can no longer maintain its power by the old means,
but is compelled to resort to ever more violent methods for the
suppression of all working-class organisation, and also for the
attempted authoritarian economic unification and organisation
of its own anarchy, in a last desperate effort to maintain its —
existence and master the contradictions that are rending it.

More specifically, Fascism is the consequence of the delay of
the proletarian revolution in Western and Central Europe in ©
the post-war period, when the whole objective situation calls —
for the proletarian revolution as the only final solution and —
ever more visibly raises the issue of the struggle for power, but
when the working-class movement is not yet strong enough and
ready owing to being disorganised and paralysed by reformism, "
and thus lets the initiative pass to capitalism. “Fascism,” as —
Klara Zetkin declared in 1923, “ts the punishment of the pro-
letariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia.”
Fascism is the abortion consequent on a miscarriage of the
proletarian revolution. But Fascism cannot solve the contra-
dictions or prevent the collapse of capitalism. On the contrary, ©
Fascism carries the contradictions, both within the capitalist
world, and between the two worlds since 1917, the capitalist |
world and the socialist world, to the highest point; Fascism
brings an extreme intensification of the class struggle and of
the process of revolutionisation.

290

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 291

Fascist tendencies are not peculiar to the countries of com-
pleted Fascist dictatorship, to Germany, Austria and Italy, or
to Poland, Hungary, etc. Fascist tendencies are common in
greater or less degree to all modern capitalism, including West-
ern Europe and America, wherever the process of decay and the
advance of the class struggle have reached a certain point, and
advance in proportion as working-class resistance is paralysed
or weakened by reformism.

1. The Dialectics of Fascism and Revolution.

The victory of Fascism in Central Europe, and the advance of
Fascist tendencies in Western Europe and America, in 1933-4,
represents the highest point yet reached by the Counter-Revo-
lution since the war. But this victory of the Counter-Revolution
does not represent the growing strength of capitalism. On
the contrary, it is the direct result of the extreme aggravation
of the world crisis and of the instability of capitalism, of
the shattering of Versailles and all the peace settlements,
of the growth of social contradictions and mass discontent,
bursting all peaceful and legal forms: that is to say, of the
very advance of all the forces which finally make for the
victory of the proletarian revolution, since the proletarian
revolution alone can solve these contradictions, which Fascism
can only intensify.

Capitalism can no longer maintain its power by the old
means. The crisis is driving the whole political situation at an
accelerating pace. All social and international contradictions
are brought to a new and greater sharpness by the successive
developments of the crisis of capitalism. All strata of the
population are affected by the crisis. The bourgeois regime is
driven to ever more desperate expedients to prolong for a
while longer its lease of life.

For the decade and a half since the war the bourgeoisie has
maintained its power mainly on the basis of Social Democracy
as the governing instrument to hold in the workers and prevent
the working-class revolution. In return for disciplining the
workers and preaching myths about “democracy” and the
“peaceful path to Socialism,” Social Democracy has been
given ministerial posts, patronage and pickings. This process
of being drawn into the capitalist machine has been held up
to the workers as evidence of the gradual, peaceful conquest of

292 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“power” by the working class. How much this “power” was
worth, when it came to the test, or rather, where the real
power lay, has been abundantly shown by the event in Ger-
many, Austria and elsewhere.

But this system, or particular mechanism of capitalist rule in
the post-war crisis, is not eternal—as the Labour leaders, on
the flood-tide of Mondism and successive Labour Governments,
have fondly hoped. The crisis drives to sharper political issues,
to intensified class struggle, to the need of new forms of capitalist
rule, to rapid and desperate emergency measures. The basis
of widening social reforms and concessions, hastily granted in
the post-war period to stave off revolution, and constituting the
mechanism of Social Democratic influence and ascendancy in
the working class in the Western Imperialist countries, breaks
down under the strain of the economic crisis, and gives place
to the withdrawal and cutting down of social reforms and
increasing attacks upon the workers. With this process a new
alignment of political forces develops.

On the one hand, the hold of Social Democracy upon the
workers begins to weaken, as shown in its declining numbers,
its increasing use of Social Fascist disciplinary measures and
violence, and in the growth of Communist influence. In
the face of this growing revolutionisation of the workers,
the bourgeoisie hastens to act, while there is yet time,
before Communism has yet won its visibly approaching
majority position in the working class, while the dis-
organisation of the workers by Social Democracy can
still prevent successful resistance, and brings into play the
dangerous hazard of Fascism to smash the advance of the
working class.

On the other hand, the working class, tied to capitalism by
the reformist leadership inherited from the preceding period, is
paralysed from being able to play its decisive role as political
leader in the developing crisis and draw all the discontented
strata of the population under its leadership for the overthrow —
of capitalism. On the contrary, since there is no standing still,
the exact reverse process takes place in the early stages. As the
crisis develops, the working class under reformist leadership
appears to grow, not stronger, but weaker. The policy of”
coalition with capitalism has steadily demoralised and sapped
the strength of the old working-class organisations, brought

errr rrr

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 293

membership lower and lower every year to the lowest point
since the war, and destroyed the confidence of the workers in
their organisation and leadership. The class struggle goes
forward, but in disorganised forms, since the new fighting
leadership has not yet won the majority of the working class,
and has to fight simultaneously the forces of capitalism and
the throttling stranglehold of the reformist machine. In con-
sequence, the working-class forces are weakened and divided
at the very moment of the heaviest capitalist attack, not because
of the militant workers who remain true to the class struggle,
but because of the alliance of the reformist machine with
capitalism. This weakening of the workers’ forces in the face of
the Fascist attack is the price of the path of bourgeois “democ-
racy,” of Social Democracy.

At the same time as the organised working-class forces are
thus temporarily weakened, the way is opened for alternative
forces, which could otherwise play only a subordinate part, to
come to the front. The mixed intermediate strata or so-called
middle classes, who can play no independent political role, but
can only act in practice as the ally of either the working class

or capital, come to the front, in proportion as the active role
of the working class is weakened. They are sharply affected
by the crisis and by all the operations of finance-capital. Their
lower strata are the natural ally of the working class in the
war on finance-capital. But they see from their point of view
the modern parliamentary state as a coalition of Big Capital
(“international financiers”) and Labour bosses, with them-
selves left out, and feel themselves squeezed by ever-increasing
taxation for the benefit of big business and the system of social
services to the workers, that is, the system of social reformism.
Nor can the reformist Labour propaganda, which dare not
touch the roots of finance-capital, expose to them the real
reasons of their plight, or give them the revolutionary lead for
which they are groping, to mobilise them against their real
enemy. Thus they become easy prey for the demagogic
propaganda of finance-capital to give them a sham “revolu-
tionary” lead, exploiting to the full the weaknesses and corrup-
tion of Labourism or Social Democracy, and organise them as
a counter-force against the working class, in contradiction to
their own interests. Capital is able for the first time to organise,
no longer a mere mercenary army for its support, but a

«

294 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

mass movement, built on disgust with Reformism, built
out of those intermediate strata and unstable, discontented,
disillusioned, working-class elements, against the organised
working class. From the ruins and discredit of Reformism
Fascism springs.

The old liberal parliamentary-democratic method of main-
taining bourgeois rule on a basis of social reforms increasingly
breaks down before the realities of the crisis and the sharpening
of the class struggle. On all sides the bankruptcy of the old
social, economic and political system becomes recognised, and
the demand for a complete change of the social system replaces
the old cry for reforms. Capitalism has to meet this new situa-
tion in which its whole regime begins to be questioned and
denounced, no longer only by the few, but by the overwhelming
majority of the population, and the call for “socialism” and
“revolution” sounds on all sides. An extreme example of this
process is revealed in Germany on the eve of Fascism, where in
the elections of the summer of 1932 no less than 74 per cent. of
the voters gave their votes for parties proclaiming the aim of
“socialism,” and all the parties which declared their support
of capitalism could not win more than a quarter of the electors.
In this situation capitalism is only able to save its power for
one further lease by the final desperate expedient of staging
a sham “revolution” with the nominal aim of “socialism,”
but in fact designed to maintain its power—the ‘National
Socialist Revolution” or Fascism. The poison, from the point
of view of capitalism, of the “revolutionary” and “socialist”
propaganda which can to-day alone win a mass hearing, is
skilfully rendered harmless by the antidote of the “national”
idea.

Thus the final mask of this ultimate masquerade of capitalism
staging a “socialist” “revolution” to maintain its power
becomes the old “national” label. What is the significance of
this? Does it mean that the “national” appeal is in fact
stronger to the masses than the socialist? Not at all. The
Nationalist Party in Germany, on the basis of the pure
“national” appeal, could only win two million votes, where,
by the skilful addition of “socialism,” the ‘National Socialist”
Party could win thirteen millions. But the “national” label
becomes the final device for distorting and defeating the
meaning of socialism, when the defence of capitalism can no

maf ae

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 295

longer be openly proclaimed. The whole drive of the present
situation, as all are increasingly compelled to recognise, is
towards the necessity and inevitability of collective social organ-
isation, that is, towards socialism. The “national” principle,
on the other hand, represents in reality the rule of a given capi-
talist grouping, in opposition to other capitalist groupings. But
the “national” principle is falsely presented to appear as the
expression of the collective, social principle against private ego-
ism, individualism, capitalism. In this way the historical move-
ment towards collective social organisation, when it becomes
too strong to be any longer directly resisted, is attempted to
be distorted from its common, human basis into an exclusive
group-assertive basis, which becomes in fact the cover for the
maintenance of the rule of the capital class. This is the
significance of “National Socialism” or Fascism.

But what is the historical outcome of this process? The
advance to Fascism as the final defence means the destruction
of legality, not by the revolutionaries, but by the bourgeoisie,
and the laying bare to all of the class struggle as a direct con-
flict of force. In order to hold off the revolution, the bourgeoisie
is compelled to play at revolution, and to seek to “outbid the
revolution.” They are compelled to preach to the masses con-
tempt for peace and legality, which were formerly their best
protection. To prevent the working-class revolution, they are
compelled to stage their masquerade revolution, and even to
dub it a “socialist revolution.” The junkers, barons and
industrial magnates, in order to maintain their power, are
compelled to place themselves at the head of bandit hordes with
cries of “Down with Interest-Capital!” ‘Down with Un-
earned Income!” ‘“Nationalisation of the Trusts!” ‘“Nation-
alisation of the Banks!” ‘“‘Socialisation of all enterprises ripe
for socialisation!” etc. The modern Black Hundreds have to
proclaim themselves “socialists” and enemies of “capitalism”
in order to win a hearing and save capitalism. Such is the
measure of the strength of capitalism revealed in the temporary
victory of the Fascist Counter-Revolution.

It is manifest that we have here not a strengthening, but in
reality and in the final outcome, an extreme weakening of
capitalism. The further examination of the development of
the fight against Fascism will reveal the inevitable final
working out of the dialectics of this process.

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296 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

2. The Fight Against Fascism.

What, then, of the future of the fight against Fascism?

Fascism, it is evident from the above analysis, develops out of
the decay of bourgeois democracy and reformism in the con-
ditions of the capitalist crisis. Indeed, Fascism develops in the
first place in and through the forms of bourgeois democracy,
step by step strengthening the state coercive apparatus and
emergency powers and restricting the rights of the workers,
in proportion as the workers’ resistance is paralysed by
reformism and trust in constitutionalism; and only when the
ground has been thus fully prepared within the shell of ““democ-
racy,” and the workers’ forces disorganised to the maximum,
only then the final blow is struck and the complete and open
Fascist dictatorship is established. Germany and Austria are
the outstanding examples of this process, where all the pre-
liminary stages for the victory of Fascism were carried through
by a Briining or a Dollfuss in the name of the defence of
“the constitution” and with the support of the Social Demo-
cratic leadership on this basis.

In consequence, the fight against Fasctsm cannot be conducted
on the basts of trusting to bourgeois “democracy” as the defence
against Fascism. To do this means to invite and to guarantee
the victory of Fascism. The fight against Fascism can only
be conducted on the basis of the united class fight of the
workers (leading all the exploited strata) against all the
attacks of finance-capital, whether these attacks are conducted
through nominal “democratic” forms or through open Fascist
forms. The stronger the fight of the workers in the early
stages, within the still nominally maintained “democratic”
forms, the less easy becomes the advance of the bourgeoisie
to the further stages, to the open Fascist forms. Hence the
importance of the united working-class front. The strength
of the working-class fight is also decisive for winning the
wavering petit-bourgeois sections.

The bourgeois democrats and reformists argue that Fascism
is the consequence of Communism. “The fear of the dictator-
ship of the working class has evoked the iron dictatorship of
Capitalism and Nationalism. Reaction on the ‘Right’ has
bred reaction on the ‘Left.’ Reaction of the ‘Left’ is displaced
by triumphant reaction of the ‘Right’” (Labour Manifesto
on “Democracy versus Dictatorship,” March 1933). From

ree

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 297

this they draw the conclusion, expressed in many Labour
speeches: “To defeat Fascism, root out Communism.” This
line is expressed in the abstract slogan “Democracy versus
Dictatorship,” presented without reference to class-relations:
that is, in practice, defence of the existing capitalist state (with
its increasing Fascist tendencies) against the working-class
revolution, under cover of the plea of defence against the Fascist
danger.

This line of the Labour Party is also the line of the big bour-
geoisie in its present propaganda. Thus the Conservative leader,
Baldwin, declared in a speech at Glasgow on June 24, 1932.

In Europe you find these Communistic methods were tried in
Italy. What was the result? Something very near civil war, when
the Right beat the Left, and you got a dictatorship, not of the Left,
but of the Right... .

I say that a dictatorship of no kind will we have in this country,
either of the Right or of the Left, at any time.

What is important here is not the glaring travesty of the actual
facts: namely, that in Italy the Communists were in a minority,
that the Reformist Socialists in Italy were defeated, not because
they adopted Communist methods, but because they specifically
refused to adopt Communist methods, because they refused to
seize power in 1920 when by the admission of all it was theirs
for the taking, because they clung to passive parliamentary and
industrial strike tactics, and therefore Fascism conquered; and
that, finally, the only country where the working class has
adopted Communist methods, the Soviet Union, is the only
country where Fascism has not been able to show its face. All
this has been long demonstrated by history; and the Con-
servative-plus-Labour propagandists are only hoping to play on
the ignorance of their hearers when they thus endeavour to con-
ceal the real facts. But what is here important is the exact
unity, even to a literal identity of phrasing, revealed between
the line of the Labour Party and the line of the Conservative
Party, that is, of the ruling party of the bourgeoisie. This
identity should already awaken the alertness of any working-
class supporter of the Labour Party to the fact that the line here
expressed represents no defence of working-class interests or
real fight against Fascism.

The whole dialectics of revolution and counter-revolution,
of vital importance for the understanding of the present period,

tl,

.

298 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

lies concealed and distorted behind this treatment. The con- ©
ception of Communism as the cause of Fascism is as shallow in
understanding of the real working of social forces as it is
illusory in fact. The growth of the working-class revolution
(Communism), and the growth of violent capitalist repression,
are in reality both equally the consequence and outcome and
expression of the growing crisis and break-up of capitalism.
They develop as parallel parts of the single process of the
gathering revolutionary crisis. To fmd in one symptom the
cause of the other symptom is worthy of the shallowest quack.
In fact the example of Austria, where the Communist Party was
still very weak and where Social Democracy boasted of the
completeness of its control of the working class, has shown how
little the bourgeoisie has need of the pretext of Communism to
advance to the Fascist dictatorship.

“Before the war,” declared Lenin (speech to the All-Russian
Conference of the Bolshevik Party in May 1917), “England was
the freest country in the world. There was freedom in England
because there was no revolutionary movement there.” Does
this mean that the masses in pre-war England were fortunate
because they had no revolutionary movement? On the con-
trary. The formal “freedom” was only the mirror, the
counterpart, of the real subjection. The “freedom” was con-
ditional on the masses accepting passively their servitude and
looking only for the crumbs of reforms. But so soon as the
workers begin to stir against their servitude and to fight con-
sciously for their liberation, the “freedom” rapidly disappears
and gives place to the whip. And that is the meaning of Fas-
cism. Fascism marks the extreme intensification of the capital-
ist dictatorship and offensive against the working class; but it
marks thereby at the same time the growth of capitalist con-
tradictions and the growth of the revolutionary awakening of
the working class.

If to-day in England and the other Western countries the
traditional “freedoms” are being steadily eaten into and cut
down, if police expenditure is trebled since the war and the
police are being centralised and militarised, if freedom of
agitation and assembly and demonstration is being more and
more cut away, if the trade union machine on top is absorbed
into unity with capitalism and the State, and the price of
criticism of Labour leaders is assessed at seven thousand pounds

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 299

by the capitalist courts, all this is only a measure of the awaken-
ing of the working class. The awakening of the working class
pricks the myth of “freedom” and lays bare the lash of the
despot. The degree of violence, the degree of coercion and
restriction of rights, the variation of methods between open
complete Fascism and partial developing forms of Fascism
beneath a decaying “democratic” cover, corresponds to the
degree of development of the working class and of the relations
of the class struggle.

Does this mean that, so long as the forms of bourgeois democ-
racy remain, bourgeois democracy provides the best defence
of the workers against Fascism? Just here it is necessary to
see with absolute clearness the real conditions of the struggle
against Fascism. The workers fight, and need to fight, tena-
ciously for every democratic right of organisation and of agita-
tion within the existing regime. Against the attack of Fascism
on bourgeois democracy, the workers will fight to defend bour-
geois democratic liberties. But they cannot afford for one
moment to be blind to the fact that bourgeois democracy is
only a cover for the capitalist dictatorship, and that within
its forms the advance to Fascism is steadily pushed for-
ward.

Bourgeois democracy breeds Fascism. Fascism grows organi-
cally out of bourgeois democracy. At what point did Dollfuss,
“champion of democracy in Europe,” become Dollfuss,
champion of Fascism? The process developed through such a
series of stages that up to the very last Social Democracy was
offering alliance to Dollfuss to “save the constitution,” at the
same time as Dollfuss was proclaiming the complete principles
of Fascism and preparing to turn his guns upon the workers.
The more the workers place their trust in legalism, in con-
stitutionalism, in bourgeois democracy, the more they make
sacrifices to save the existing regime as the “lesser evil” against
the menace of Fascism, the heavier become the capitalist attacks
and the more rapid the advance to Fascism. To preach con-
fidence in legalism, in constitutionalism, in bourgeois democ-
racy, that is, in the capitalist state, means to invite and to
guarantee the victory of Fascism. That is the lesson of Ger-
many and of Austria. And this is the reality which blows to
smithereens the deceitful and disastrous slogan of “Democracy
versus Dictatorship.”

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300 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Yet in face of the deadly lessons of Germany and of Austria
the British Labour Party leadership and Social Democracy in
Western Europe are to-day repeating to the last detail the fatal
line of German Social Democracy. All that German Social
Democracy and the German trade unions preached and prac-
tised, the British Labour Party and the British trade unions are
preaching and practising to-day. How then can they expect the
same policy to lead to a different outcome? They preach up and
down the country in favour of democracy and constitutionalism
and legality. So did German Social Democracy. They de-
nounce Communism; they refuse the united front; they expel
all militant workers; they set up a network of discipline to
maintain the safety of their organisations for capitalism. So
did German Social Democracy. They are faithful pillars of
capitalism and of imperialism. So was German Social Democ-
racy. They are treading the same road. Only the action of the
workers, learning the lessons in time, refusing to follow their
teaching, breaking their bans and building up the common front
against capitalism, can change the outcome.

What have they to offer the workers if their policy leads to
the same outcome as confronted German Social Democracy?
Nothing. What is their answer? They have no answer.
Citrine, leader of British trade unionism, speaking of the Trades
Union Congress in September 1933, on the situation that con-
fronted German Social Democracy, could only say: “I hope
to God we are never put into a similar position. I hope we
never have to face that position.” And again, with regard to the
growth of mass unemployment as the visible “common factor”
both in Britain and in Germany.

If that gets worse, I cannot answer for the consequences.

“Hope to God.” “Cannot answer.” Such is the final lead of
British Labourism in the face of Fascism. Of one thing only

Citrine is sure. It is impossible to fight. If it comes to a ° |

fight, the workers will be beaten.
If we go in for the metnod of force, we shall be badly beaten.
And again:
If we try to organise by force of arms, we shall be beaten.

“We shall be beaten.” ‘We shall be badly beaten.” Such is

the litany of defeat before the battle, by which the reformist
leaders seek to drill into the workers the sense of their own

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 301

impotence. This is the open invitation to capitalism to launch
the attack on the workers’ organisations; the workers are
defenceless and cannot resist; Social Democracy, as the Chair-
man of the Trades Union Congress declared on the same
occasion, is “peaceful, law-abiding, and shrinks from fratricidal
conflict,” and therefore is inevitably, as he finds, at the mercy
of its bloodthirsty enemies:

One of the tragic lessons of events in Germany was that the
enemies of democracy were willing to shed blood to destroy liberty,
and did not shrink from murder, arson and lawless action; but Social
Democracy was peaceful, law-abiding, and shrank from fratricidal
strife.

The very heart of reformism is here laid bare. Capitalism
is all-powerful. The workers are powerless against it. The
workers must only hope to get what capitalism permits them
through the legal forms capitalism permits. Let us cling to what
capitalism may grant us through the forms of ‘‘democracy”
(which were in fact only won by violent struggle) and “hope
to God” that, if we are docile, capitalism may not strike us
further. Such is the voice of the beaten, trembling slave, which
expresses itself as the philosophy of reformism.

Does, then, the advance of Fascism mean the end of all
things, that there is no hope for the working-class movement,
that there is no hope for the victory of socialism? On the con-
trary. The poet, William Morris, in his imaginative picture
already quoted of the path of the socialist revolution in England
(in the chapter “How the Change Came,” of News from
Nowhere), describes how the Government proclaimed martial
law and appointed a well-known general who with modern
artillery carried through a terrible massacre of thousands of
unarmed workers. The following dialogue then ensues between
the narrator and his informant, old Hammond:

I wondered that he should have got so elated about a mere

massacre, and I said:
“How fearful! And-I suppose that this massacre put an end to

the whole revolution for that time?” :
“No, no,” cried old Hammond, “it began it. . . . That massacre

began the civil war.”

“It began the civil war.” It destroyed the myths and illusions
of legality and passive slavery, and laid bare the civil war which,
once begun, could only finally end with the victory of the

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302 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

masses. And that above all is the significance of Fascism. The —
old poet is’a hundred times right against the trembling modern
reformists, who solemnly declare that modern artillery and
technique have made revolution impossible. Once the myths
and illusions of legality and pacifism have fallen, once the united
mass of the workers enter into the struggle, with the scales fallen
from their eyes, there is no question of the ultimate outcome.
The exploiters know this well; hence their anxiety to build up
the final rampart of a national-fascist ideology of deception in
the masses, alongside the direct violence and coercion; and
hence also the importance, on the workers’ side, of carrying
through the ideological-political fight of exposure against Fas-
cism alongside the direct preparation of the mass struggle and
final armed struggle.

The example of Austria has shown how much even a
courageous minority of the workers, shackled and held back
at every point by their reformist leaders, when all the previ-
ous favourable opportunities had been squandered and the
enemy had been allowed to entrench himself over the whole
field before the struggle began, when the great part of the mass
organisations of the workers were directly held back from the
struggle by their chiefs, could nevertheless accomplish to shake
and bring to a critical position the whole Fascist regime and
awaken an answering spirit of struggle throughout the whole
world. The bands of hundreds of Schutzbundler who fought
their way to freedom across the frontier, are reported to have
cried out as they reached the other side: “Long live the
Soviet Union!” and some “Long live the Communist Inter-
national!”’ Their lesson was learned.

How much more will the final outcome of the struggle be cer-
tain, when the whole working class will fight as a united force
under revolutionary leadership, when Fascism will be weakened
and disorganised by its own internal contradictions and by the
fiasco of its regime and of its promises, and when disillusion-
ment and discontent and rising sympathy with their fighting
working-class brothers will spread through the lower Fascist
ranks. Tsarism also fell despite all its machinery of repression.
Far more certainly and rapidly will the card-castles of the
modern Fascist dictatorships fall, when the time comes.

The laying bare of the civil war at the root of class-society, the
explosion of all the illusions of peace and legality—that is, above

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 303

all, the historical role of Fascism. Fascism attempts to organise
society on the basis of permanent civil war, no longer merely
with the old state forces, police and military, of repression, but
with permanent special armed legions of class-war to hold down
the workers. That fact is the most complete expression of the
final bankruptcy of capitalism and of the certainty of its col-
lapse. The eyes of all are being opened to the realities of class
society and to the real character of the war confronting the
working class. The necessity of the workers’ dictatorship as
the sole means to crush the counter-revolution is becoming
understood. The crisis within the post-war Second Interna-
tional since Fascism in Germany is only the expression of this
process. As we enter more and more directly into a period of
revolutionary conditions, when the working-class movement can
only be carried forward by revolutionary methods and under
illegal conditions or go under, the will-o’-the-wisp lights of
so-called “democratic socialism,” that is, of “socialism by per-
mission of the bourgeoisie,” inevitably go into eclipse and leave
the workers in the bog; only the clear light of revolutionary
socialism burns stronger than ever and shows the path forward.
The issue becomes more and more clearly no longer even in
appearance a question of two tendencies, of two paths for the
working-class struggle; in the sight of all, the Communist
International alone leads the working-class struggle.

In this situation even the Second International was com-
pelled in form to recognise the necessity of “revolutionary”
methods and the “error” of its past policies. German Social
Democracy in its latest Executive Manifesto of January 1934,
proclaims the “error” of its path in 1918:

The political transformation of 1918 ended up in a counter-revo-
lutionary development. . . . The Social Democratic Party . . . took
over control of the State without opposition, sharing it as a matter
of course with the bourgeois parties, the old bureaucracy and even
with the reorganised military forces. That it should have taken
over the old machinery of government virtually unchanged was the
great historical error committed by a German Labour Movement
which had lost its sense of direction during the war.

(“The Battle of Revolutionary Socialism and its Objec-
tive”: Manifesto of the Executive of the German Social
Democratic Party, published in the Karlsbad Neuer

Vorwarts, January 28, 1934.)

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304 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“The great historical error.’”’ Fifteen years ago the centre of
controversy of the Second and Third Internationals, expressed
in the controversy of Kautsky and Lenin, turned precisely on
this point, when Lenin, with Marx, declared that it was neces-
sary for the workers’ revolution, not to take over, but to smash
the existing capitalist state machine and establish its own
dictatorship instead, and the Second International denied this.
Now fifteen years too late, after the harm is done, after the
German working class is reduced to the uttermost limit of sub-
jection by their methods, the Second International blandly pro-
claims that its policy was an “error”’—and then proceeds
again in fact to recommend the path of bourgeois democracy,
“the new organisation of the State on the basis of freedom by
the convening of a National Assembly elected by universal,
equal, direct and secret suffrage.” Once again, despite all the
attempts to make a show of a great “change of heart,” this is
in reality the old Weimar path. But the German workers have
had their experience of the Weimar path and its outcome and
have no intention to repeat it.

Similarly, the Second International in its Paris Resolution of
August 1933, on “The Strategy and Tactics of the International
Labour Movement during the Period of Fascist Reaction,”
admits the necessity of “revolutionary struggle” after Fascism:

Where the bourgeoisie has renounced democracy in order to throw
itself into the arms of Fascism and has deprived the working class of
the democratic means of struggle, the only means of emancipation
left is that of the revolutionary struggle. .. .

In the countries in which Fascism has prevailed, the dictatorship
can only be overthrown by a revolution of the people. When they
have gained their victory over Fascism, the revolutionary forces will
not confine themselves to breaking its power; they will destroy the
great capitalist and landowning forces which are its economic
foundation.

By this declaration the whole line of the 1918 Revolution,
of Weimar democracy, is implicitly condemned. In the con-
troversy of those days between Kautsky and Lenin, between the
line that the revolutionary working class in the moment of
victorious overthrow of the old regime must confine itself to
setting up “pure” democracy and then await a majority in
the Constituent Assembly or Parliament before proceeding
further, and the line that the revolutionary working class in

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THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 305

the moment of victory must at once use its power, without
waiting for parliamentary majorities, to overthrow capitalism,
the Second International is now compelled, fifteen years late,
in a half-hidden unclear fashion, to admit that Lenin was )
right. The revolutionary working class, it is now declared,
in the moment of overthrow of the old regime must at once,
without waiting for Constituent Assemblies or parliamentary
majorities, proceed to “destroy the great capitalist and
landowning forces.” Excellent. If this were seriously
meant, it would mean the workers’ dictatorship. But in
fact this phrase—thrown in as a sop because in relation to
Germany to-day it would be impossible openly to advocate
the return to the completely exposed Weimar democracy—
is used as a fine-sounding phrase without any attempt to face
what it practically involves, and is made completely meaning-
less by the rest of the resolution. Further—notable precaution
—it is to be applied only to countries where Fascism has al-
ready conquered.
What, therefore, does this line mean in practice? First,
the working class must let itself be bull-dozed by Democracy,
paralysed and divided by reformism, smashed and butchered
by Fascism. Then, when their forces have been thus heavily
broken up and weakened, when Fascism has completely or-
ganised and established without resistance its apparatus of
armed pretorian guards over the disarmed workers, then
the workers are graciously permitted by the Second In-
ternational to carry through the socialist revolution (though
if there were the slightest signs appearing of their succeeding
in this, these gentlemen, as the Karlsbad Manifesto of j
German Social Democracy has made clear, would be the first
to hurry forward to wave again the banner of “pure democ-
racy” and thus endeavour again to save the bourgeoisie \
as in 1918). \
But where “democracy” still exists, the workers must still
tread the fatal path of “pure democracy,” abstaining from any
revolutionary initiative, until Fascism has conquered them.
Such are the final confusions and contortions of the leadership
of the Second International in the present epoch. |
|
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Against this line the revolutionary working class line of

306 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Communism declares: The workers’ dictatorship is the only
alternative to the capitalist dictatorship, which at present is
increasingly passing from the older “democratic” to Fascist
forms. The workers’ dictatorship is the only guarantee against
the victory of Fascism, against the victory of the capitalist
counter-revolution and the unlimited subjection of the working
class. The path of bourgeois democracy ends in Fascism. The
battle for the workers’ dictatorship must be fought, not merely
after Fascism, but before Fascism, as the sole means to prevent
Fascism. Social Democracy says: First Fascism, then Revolu-
tion. But Communism says: Revolution before Fascism, and
preventing Fascism. Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism only
becomes inevitable if the working class follows the line of
reformism, of trust in the capitalist state, of refusal of the united
front, and thus lets itself be struck down by the class enemy.
But if the working class follows the line of the united front, of
the rising mass struggle, of the building of its Communist Party
and fighting mass organisation to the final victory of the revolu-
tion and establishment of the workers’ dictatorship, then the
working class can defeat and crush Fascism and pass straight
to the socialist order with no costly and shameful Fascist inter-
lude. This is the path to defeat Fascism.

Equally in those countries where the Fascist dictatorship has
won the temporary upper hand, the only path forward and
object of the workers’ struggle requires to be, no longer the
restoration of the old illusory “democracy” which only pre-
pared the way for Fascism, but the workers’ dictatorship and
the establishment of the Soviet regime. The German working-
class revolution is not defeated, despite the temporary retreat
of 1933 made inevitable by the whole role of Social Democracy.
On the contrary, Germany is nearer to the final victory of the
proletarian revolution than any country in the capitalist world.
The fact that the German workers are going through the
extremest hell of Fascism is the reflection of the fact, not that
their movement is more backward, but that it is relatively more
advanced and closer to the revolution.

The liberals and reformists see only the surface completeness
of the Fascist victory. They can never understand the dialec-
tical process. They see the immediate victory of Fascism. But
they do not see the negative side. They do not see the disin-
tegration of all capitalist stability that that represents. They do

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THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 307

not see that the very ferocity of the capitalist attack is the
measure of the growing revolutionary advance. They do not
see the significance of the crushing exposure of the line of
reformism and laying bare of the real battle. They do not see
that the Communist Party of Germany—with unbroken ranks
and organisation, and over one hundred thousand members
active under the most extreme terror, a record without parallel
in working-class history—is in reality stronger than it has ever
been, closer to the winning of the unquestioned leadership of
the majority of the working class, closer to the victory of the
proletarian revolution.

The mournful pessimists and fainthearts who see a long period
of Fascist dictatorship and unshaken reaction in front do not
understand the whole character of the present period of the
destruction of capitalist stability, a period in which rapid
changes throughout the world and gigantic revolutionary
struggles are before us.

The bourgeoisie dream through Fascism to exterminate
Marxism, that is, to exterminate the independent working-
class movement and the fight for Socialism. The attempt is not
anew one. A hundred years ago “all the Powers of old Europe
have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise the spectre of
Communism: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French
Radicals and German police-spies.” The collapse of 1848 was
heralded as the collapse of Socialism. In the decade after the
Commune, on the basis of thirty thousand corpses, Thiers
boasted that “we have heard the last of Socialism.” In the
following decade Bismarck set himself to stamp out Marxism
in Germany with all the power of the most highly organised
Prussian police and bureaucratic system, and after twelve years
had to recognise that he had met his master. Down the long
gallery of the years the ghosts of the past, Cavaignac and
Gallifet, Thiers and Bismarck, Pobiedonostsev and Stolypin,
Kornilov and Kolchak, the hangmen and butchers and jailers
of bourgeois rule, may welcome with a spectral sneer the new
accessions to their ranks, Hitler and Goering and Goebbels,
taking their place alongside Horthy and Tsankov and Dyer and
Chiang Kai-shek.

But the older attempts were against a still early and newly
rising movement. To-day the attempt is against a powerful and
develofed movement on the eve of power. That it will fail

308 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

like every previous attempt and end in ignominious collapse
requires no demonstration.

Wherever, in whatever shape, and under whatever conditions the
class struggle obtains any consistency, it is but natural that members
of our Association should stand in the foreground. The soil out of
which it grows is modern society itself. It cannot be stamped out
by any amount of carnage. To stamp it out, the Government would
have to stamp out the despotism of capital over labour—the con-
dition of their own parasitica] existence.

(Marx, Civil War in France.)

What is in question now is not the inevitable future collapse
of Fascism. What matters now is the speed with which the
international working class can gather its forces and drive back
this offensive, before it has developed further, before it has
developed to the point of world war and the direct attack on the
Soviet Union, can prevent the enormous losses and sacrifices
which a prolongation of this struggle will mean, and can rapidly
transform the present situation into the revolutionary offensive.

The issues which are confronting the world at the present
moment are heavy issues. Fascism in Germany lays bare to
all where capitalist civilisation is inevitably developing, if the
workers’ revolution is delayed. Germany is not a backward
country. Germany is the most advanced, highly organised
capitalist country in the world, the last word, which shows
to other countries the picture of their future development.

What is that picture of the future of capitalism thus revealed?
Barbarism and the return of the Dark Ages; the systematic
destruction of all science and culture; the enthronement of
Catholic Christian, and even pre-Christian, obscurantism,
racial persecution and torture systems; the tendency to a sys-
tem of isolated, self-sufficient warring communities. This is
the typical line of direction today of the most advanced capi-
talism, with the Pope conferring his blessing upon it and dec-
orating the murderer Goering with his Medal of the Holy Year.

Marx and Engels long ago pointed out the inevitable working
out of capitalism in barbarism and decay, if the working-class
revolution should fail to conquer in time. Stage by stage,
through imperialism and its world orgies of brutality and
destruction, through the slaughter of the world war, and to-day
through Fascism, we are tasting the first beginnings of this
alternative.

a —_———_———

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 309

It is time to end this chapter of human history, before we
have to tread this path still further, and to open the new one
throughout the world which has already begun over one-sixth
of the world. Only the working-class revolution can save
humanity, can carry humanity forward, can organise the
enormous powers of production that lie ready to hand.

The working-class movement in the first period after the
war was not yet ready outside Russia for its world historic task.
The organised working-class movement was still soaked with
reformist and pacifist illusions, with opportunism and corrup-
tion in its upper strata. Fascism is not only the punishment of
history for this weakness; Fascism is the weapon of history for
purging and burning out this weakness. In the fires of Fascist
terror and of the fight against Fascism the revolutionary work-
ing class is drawing close its ranks, steeled and hardened and
clear-seeing, for the final struggle; and the revolutionary work-
ing class, thus steeled and strengthened, will rise to the height
of its task, and win and save the world.

Whatever the black hells of suffering and destruction that
have still to be passed through, we face the future with the
certainty and confidence of approaching power, with contempt
for the barbarous antics of the doomed and decaying parasite-
class enemy and its final misshapen progeny of Fascism, with
singing hearts and glowing confidence in the future. “The last
fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race.”

==APPENDIX: FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM, JUNE 1934—MARCH 1935==

A short note may be added on the development of Fascism and Anti-
Fascism in the second half of 1934 and the beginning of 1935.

The outstanding development in the world of Fascism during this period
has been the signs of the first stages of a gathering crisis of Fascism, and as
the necessary accompaniment of this, the rapid intensification of the drive
to war. The outstanding development in the camp of the opposition to Fascism
has been the advance of the united working class front.

The beginnings of a crisis of Fascism found their first sharp expression in
the coup of June 30, 1934, in Germany, with the shooting of the principal
militant Fascist leaders and the liquidation of the majority of the Storm
Troops. The open concentration of power in the hands of the General Staff
and direct leaders of finance-capital with Hitler as the figurehead, has become
increasingly visible to all. This has not meant, however, the stabilisation of
Fascism. On the contrary, it has gone hand in hand with a steady worsening
of the economic situation, and an increasing drive to war-preparation and an
aggressive foreign policy. This process found further expression in the desperate
murder-coup fiasco against Dollfuss on July 25, in the extreme German-Italian
war-tension with mobilisation of troops, in the murder-coup against Barthou
and King Alexander at Marseilles in October, in the Italian Fascist offensive
against Ethiopia, and in the German Fascist proclamation of conscription in
March 1935.

The war-significance of Fascism, as its inner situation worsens, more and
more openly dominates the European situation. The armaments race of all
the imperialist Powers develops at an accelerating pace. Diplomatic negotia-
tions and preparations of alliances for future war are in full swing. All this
reflects the increasingly menacing situation of capitalism moving to war as the
only path forward from its present dilemmas. Fascism is more and more re-
vealed as an integral part of the preparations for war.

The rising mass opposition to Fascism and to the advance to war, develop-
ing below the surface in the Fascist countries, has been shown most powerfully
in the recent period in the countries not yet conquered by Fascism. It has
shown itself in the setback to the Fascist offensive in France after the February
assault, through the strength of the united front, and in the fall of the Dou-
mergue Government in November, and also in the setback to Mosley in Britain,
as shown by Olympia in June and Hyde Park on September 9, 1934, as well
as by the nominal dissociation of Rothermere from Mosley.

Above all, this period has seen the signal strength of the revolutionary
armed struggle of the Spanish workers against the Fascist offensive.

From all this development it is clear that, while it would be a mistake to
exaggerate the significance of particular events and fluctuations in a long-
drawn and profound world-conflict, there has undoubtedly been during this
period an increase in the inner contradictions and difficulties of Fascism and an
awakening and gathering of the mass forces of resistance to Fascism. At the
same time the forms of direct Fascism have gone forward in a number of

310

APPENDIX 31r

smaller states, and the process of fascisation has advanced in varying degree
in all the major imperialist states. With the development of the war situation
the battle is moving to a new intensity.

The decisive turning-point which heralded the opening of this new phase of
gathering inner contradictions of Fascism was constituted by the events of
June 30 in Germany, which marked a transformation of international signifi-
cance. The leaders of the fighting forces of German Fascism, the principal
leaders of the Storm Troops, within fifteen months of the accession of Fascism
to power had to be shot down by the leader of German Fascism, Hitler, as
the representative and agent of the demands of German Finance-Capital and
of its direct instrument, the Reichswehr. The majority of the Storm Troops
had to be liquidated. We see here the classic demonstration of the process
of Fascism after power, the alienation and disillusionment of the petit-bourgeois
and semi-proletarian elements which were made the tools and dupes of Finance-
Capital and now find all their aspirations thwarted with the denial of “the
second revolution,” the consequent narrowing of the social basis of the Fascist
regime, and the ever more open demonstration of its real character as the
terrorist dictatorship of Finance-Capital. While a warning must again be
uttered against exaggerating the tempo of development and rate of growth
of mass opposition, it is evident that a single chain unites the phases of the
factory elections in the spring of 1934, with their unfavourable results for
the Nazis, the intensive campaign against the “critics and carpers,” the alleged
“revolt” and its bloody suppression on June 30, and the results of the plebiscite
in August, when (after the declaration of Goebbels on the eve of the poll
that the loss of a single vote in comparison with the previous November would
be a disaster) the direct No vote rose from 2.1 millions in November, 1933, to
43 millions in August, 1934, and reached an average of 20 per cent. in the
main industrial towns. Parallel with this process has gone forward the steadily
worsening economic situation, the mounting adverse trade balance in place of
the previous exports surplus, the sharp cutting down of imports of essential
raw materials, and tightening organisation on a war basis of rationing and
hardship (reflected in the tone of Hitler’s Biickerberg speech of September 30,
1934: “Never will they bring us to our knees,” “if the worst comes to the
worst,” etc.) The whole concentration of Nazi policy becomes more and more
openly directed to the most intensive preparation of war as the sole path
forward.

On the other side, the examples of Germany and Austria have led to a
widespread awakening of working class and general popular opposition to
Fascism in all countries; and this has led to a rapid advance of the snited
working class front, and, in particular, the united front of the Socialist and
Communist Parties, against the fascist and war menace in a number of leading
countries. This extending development of the united working class front is
the most important and the most hopeful development of 1934. In this
advance the French working class has led the way. The united front pact
of the French Socialist Party and of the French Communist Party was finally
signed on July 27, 1934; and the powerful influence of this common front is
stimulating and mobilising the entire working class, and spreading confidence
and fighting spirit, has been the decisive factor in delaying the planned rapid
offensive of Fascism in France during 1934. With the fall of the Doumergue-
Tardieu Cabinet of National Concentration in November, with the combined
demand of all the bourgeois forces for anti-democratic constitutional changes,
and with the Fascist groupings preparing renewed offensives, heavy tests are
now in front for the fighting strength of the united working class in France.

At the same time in Austria the lessons of the February battles have produced
a far-reaching transformation in the working class. The illegal Communist
Party has advanced to the position of a mass party with the absorption of the

312 APPENDIX

left Social Democratic and Schutzbund elements, many organisations in leading
working-class districts coming over en bloc.

The Revolutionary Socialist Committees, composed of former Social Demo-
cratic elements and later setting up the United Socialist Party, have maintained
the old forms and contact with the emigrant leadership and with the Second
International but have proclaimed the aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat
and denounced the old “democratic and reformist illusions” (“The Fascist
dictatorship in Austria has dispelled all democratic and reformist illusions
among the workers’—letter of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary
Socialists of Vienna to Bauer and to the Second International on May 20,
1934). In July a united front was established by the Communist Party, the
Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, and the Com-
mittee of Action of the Schutzbund, with a joint manifesto for “the revolu-
tionary dictatorship of the working class” and for “a united revolutionary class
party of the Austrian proletariat.”

The united front of the Socialist and Communist Parties was also established
in Italy, in the Saar and (in September) in Spain. Among the working class
youth organisations in all countries the advance of the united front was even
more marked.

On the other hand, the British Labour Party and a number of other Social
Democratic Parties, notably the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Belgian, the
Swiss and the Czecho-Slovak, actively opposed the united front and even devel-
oped extended disciplinary measures to prevent its realisation. In October,
1934, the Communist International approached the Second International for
common action in support of the Spanish workers. A meeting took place
between the representatives of the two Internationals in October. In Novem-
ber, however, the Executive of the Second International at Paris, after a
four-days’ debate, by a narrow majority rejected the proposal of the united
front and broke off negotiations. Nevertheless, the strength of the united
front movement in a number of leading countries was such that the ban of
the Second International on the united front for its separate sections had to
be lifted; and a minority declaration of seven parties was issued in support
of the united front.

Thus alongside the gathering crisis of Fascism and of capitalist politics has
developed a gathering crisis of Social Democracy and of the Second Interna-
tional. While the British Labour Party, the strongest section of the Second
International, had at its Southport Conference in October 1934 passed draco-
nian decisions against any form of united front or even “loose association”
with Communism, and expressed strong disapproval of the international united
front negotiations, the French Socialist Party was already a partner in a
united front with the Communist Party, and the Spanish Socialist Party,
equally a section of the Second International, had not only reached a united
front with the Communist Party, but was taking direct part in armed civil
war under the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This extreme and extending division and disparateness of policies among the
parties of the Second International is a symptom of the profound process of
transformation going forward among the Social Democratic workers under
the influence of the object-lesson of Fascism. The further development of this
situation in the international working-class movement is of critical importance.

The Spanish revolutionary mass struggle, reaching in October 1934, to the
stage of open armed struggle against the advancing Fascist offensive of the
combined reactionary clerical-militarist-landlord-bourgeois forces, and in the
province of Asturias reaching to the formation of Soviets, has immeasurably
raised the whole international working-class movement, even more than the
battles of Vienna in February. It has revealed a far higher degree of mass-
participation and unity, and of consciousness of revolutionary aim, even though

APPENDIX 313

not yet reaching the conditions of organisation and leadership for final victory.
The formation of the Soviet regime in Asturias at the outset of the struggle,
and the prolonged and tenacious resistance against all the forces of the Spanish
Government, reaches a point of revolutionary struggle unequalled in Western
Europe since the days of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet Republics in 1919.
The lesson endeavoured to be drawn by the reformists, of the inevitable failure
of armed struggle against the military resources of modern governments, is the
exact opposite of the reality; for the prolonged resistance of the workers of
Asturias, facing alone the entire forces of the Spanish Government and its
African levies, has abundantly shown that, if the workers of the other principal
regions, and especially Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, had been fighting
at the same time, with equal tenacity and leadership, the forces of the Govern-
ment would have been powerless to cope with the situation, and a Soviet
Spain would have been already won. The Spanish revolutionary struggle at
the end of 1934, following on Vienna at the beginning, is the signal of the
future in Europe.

But the heaviest struggles are still in front. In the face of the present
international situation of the increasing difficulties, desperation and discrediting
of Fascism, the weakening of its mass basis in the countries where it has won
power, and the gathering of mass forces of resistance in the countries where
it has not yet won power, a new illusion has begun to be widely spread in
Liberal and Social Democratic circles—the illusion of the retreat of Fascism.
It is said that Fascism has passed its zenith, is on the downgrade, that the
heaviest danger of Fascism is passing. The extreme pessimistic defeatism of
a year and a half ago is giving place to a no less baseless and illusory optimistic
complacency. A year ago the prophecies were all of an “epoch of Fascism”
lasting for decades. To-day a Citrine can declare that “dictatorship in every
land has passed its peak; there was an appearance of stability about the
regime in Germany, but he was satisfied that even there a change would
gradually but surely come, and that ultimately the democratic rights of the
people would assert themselves” (speech to the International Clothing Workers’
Conference, August, 1934).

Underlying this outlook of a section of the Social Democratic leadership is
undoubtedly the belief that Fascism, faced with increasing internal difficulties
and mass discontent, may yet be compelled to turn to Social Democracy for
assistance, and that a renewed sphere of permitted activity may open out for
the Social Democratic and trade union leadership within Fascism (as was
already hoped for and sought by German Social Democracy in the initial
period of the Hitler regime by the May 17 vote for Hitler and the trade
union bureaucracy’s courting of the Nazis). Nor are signs of this possibility
lacking. The well-informed Manchester Guardian special correspondent (al-
ways in close touch with Social Democratic circles) reported in August that
Hitler, in view of the failure of the Labour Front and the Nazi factory
cells to win the support of the workers, had approached former Social Demo-
cratic leaders with a view to the formation of “non-political trade unions”;
the proposal had been referred to the Executive at Prague, and “Wels was in
favour of further negotiations” (the subsequent formal denial issued by Wels,
to the effect that he had not met any representative of Hitler—the intermediary
was in fact a Social Democrat—left the essence of the Manchester Guardian
report unrefuted). Similarly may be noted Bauer’s suggestion in the August
Kampf that the Schuschnigg Clerico-Fascist Government might extend its basis
to the left by “an understanding with the working class.” In Italy during
the same period Mussolini made his approach to the former Socialist leaders,
Caldara and Schiavi, for their collaboration and even for the issue of a per-
mitted “Socialist” journal in Milan. These are only signs so far; but the
possibility is not excluded that Fascism in difficulties may turn to the collabora-

314 APPENDIX

tion of a section of the Social Democratic and old trade union leadership (as
was done by De Rivera in Spain, by Pilsudski in Poland, by Bulgarian Fas-
cism, etc.).

These hopes of a section of the old Social Democratic leadership, however,
bear no relation to the real process of transformation taking place in the main
body of the Social] Democratic workers and rapid advance to militant struggle
and working class unity.

No illusion could be more dangerous than the illusion that Fascism can
be in retreat without a decisive struggle, or that the menace of Fascism can
ever be finally overcome save by the working-class revolution and the establish-
ment of the working-class dictatorship. It is equally necessary to fight the
illusion of the inevitability of Fascism, or of the inevitable long-term power
of Fascism in the countries where it has won power, as it is necessary to fight
the illusion that a temporary fluctuation can mean the retreat and ultimate
disappearance of Fascism, or disappearance of the menace of Fascism in the
countries where it has not yet conquered, without a decisive revolutionary
struggle. On the contrary, the greater the difficulties of Fascism, the more
desperate and ruthless will be its fight for existence. The massing of the
working-class united front does not yet mean the defeat of Fascism; it means
only the massing of the forces for the struggle against Fascism and for the
final revoutionary struggle.

In particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist
forms of organisation and preparation of war within each country, becomes
the more and more dominant character of the present stage.

The supreme task now is to build up the widest United Front against
Fascism and War. Widespread anti-Fascist and anti-war feeling exists on all
sides. But the essential need is organisation. The resistance to the united front
must be overcome. No separate and sectional interests can be allowed to stand

in the way of this. The all-inclusive united working-class front, drawing in
its wake the mass of the petit-bourgeois and unorganised elements, and on
this basis establishing a broad anti-fascist popular front, requires to be built
up in every country. Only the widest common front can defeat Fascism. And
for the victory of the struggle it is essential to understand the true character
of the issues, the final necessity of the revolutionary alternative, which can
alone defeat Fascism and war by the victory of the socialist revolution.

[[Category:Library works about fascism]]

Library:Fascism and Social Revolution

2025-11-04T18:01:11Z

PuzzledFox99: /* CHAPTER I: TECHNIQUE AND REVOLUTION */

{{Library work|title=Fascism and Social Revolution|author=Rajani Palme Dutt|publisher=International Publishers|published_date=1935|published_location=New York|type=Book|source=https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocial0000rpal (2nd ed.) https://archive.org/details/fascismandsocialrevolution (3rd ed.)|pdf=https://www.marxists.org/archive/dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-2.pdf (2nd ed.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-3.pdf (3rd ed.)}}

==PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION==
The issue of a second edition of this book provides the opportunity for a short note on the
development of Fascism and Anti- Fascism in the six months since May 1934.
The outstanding development in the world of Fascism during this period has been the signs
of the first stages of a gathering crisis of Fascism-most sharply expressed in the events of June
30 in Germany, but also reflected in the desperate murder-coup fiasco against Dollfuss on July
25, in the extreme German-Italian war-tension, and in the Arpinati episode in Italy, and still
further reflected (in the countries not yet conquered by Fascism) in the setback to the Fascist
advance in France during the months immediately succeeding the February offensive, in the
setback to Mosley in Britain as shown by Olympia and Hyde Park and by the formal
disassociation of Rothermere from Mosley, and in the strength of the Spanish workers’ resistance
to Fascism. While it would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of particular events and
fluctuations in a long-drawn and profound world-conflict, it is evident that there has been during
this period an increase in the inner contradictions and difficulties of Fascism and an awakening
and gathering of the mass forces of resistance to Fascism.
The central point of this process for Fascism has been the events of June 30 in Germany,
which marked a turning point of international significance. The leaders of the fighting forces of
German Fascism, the principal leaders of the Storm Troops, within fifteen months of the
accession of Fascism to power had to be shot down by the leader of German Fascism, Hitler, as
the representative and agent of the demands of German Finance-Capital and of its direct
instrument, the Reichswehr. The majority of the Storm Troops had to be liquidated. We see here
the classic demonstration of the process of Fascism after power, the alienation and
disillusionment of the petit-bourgeois and semi-proletarian elements which were made the tools
and dupes of Finance-Capital and now find all their aspirations thwarted with the denial of “the
second revolution,” the consequent narrowing of the social basis of the Fascist regime, and the
ever more open demonstration of its real character as the terrorist dictatorship of FinanceCapital. While a warning must again be uttered against exaggerating the tempo of development
and rate of growth of mass opposition, it is evident that a single chain unites the phases of the
factory elections in the spring of 1934, with their unfavourable results for the Nazis, the intensive
campaign against the “critics and carpers,” the alleged “revolt” and its bloody suppression on
June 3o, and the results of the plebiscite in August, when (after the declaration of Goebbels on
the eve of the poll that the loss of a single vote in comparison with the previous November would
be a disaster) the direct No vote rose from 2.1 millions in November, 1933, to 4.3 millions in
August, 1934, and reached an average of 20 per cent. in the main industrial towns. Parallel with
this process has gone forward the steadily worsening economic situation, the mounting adverse
trade balance in place of the previous exports surplus, the sharp cutting down of imports of
essential raw materials, and tightening Organisation on a war basis of rationing and hardship
(reflected in the tone of Hitler’s Buckerberg speech of September 30, 1934: “Never will they
bring us to our knees,” “if the worst comes to the worst” etc.. The whole concentration of Nazi
policy becomes more and more openly directed to the most intensive preparation of war as the
sole path forward.
On the other side, the examples of Germany and Austria have led to a widespread awakening
of working class and general popular opposition to Fascism in all countries; and this has led to a
rapid advance of the united working class front, and, in particular, the united front of the
Socialist and Communist Parties, against the fascist and war menace in a number of leading

countries. This extending development of the united working class front is the most important
and the most hopeful development of 1934. In this advance the French working class has led the
way. The united front pact of the French Socialist Party and of the French Communist Party was
finally signed on July 27, 1934; and the powerful influence of this common front is stimulating
and mobilising the entire working class, and spreading confidence and fighting spirit, has been
the decisive factor in delaying the planned rapid offensive of Fascism in France during 1934.
With the fall of the Doumergue-Tardieu Cabinet of National Concentration in November, with
the combined demand of all the bourgeois forces for anti-democratic constitutional changes, and
with the Fascist groupings preparing renewed offensives, heavy tests are now in front for the
fighting strength of the united working class in France.
At the same time in Austria the lessons of the February battles have produced a far-reaching
transformation in the working class. The illegal Communist Party has advanced to the position of
a mass party with the absorption of the left Social Democratic and Schutzbund elements, many
organisations in leading working-class districts coming over en bloc.
The Revolutionary Socialist Committees, composed of former Social Democratic elements
and later setting up the United Socialist Party, have maintained the old forms and contact with
the emigrant leadership and with the Second International but have proclaimed the aim of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and denounced the old “democratic and reformist illusions” (“The
Fascist dictatorship in Austria has dispelled all democratic and reformist illusions among the
workers” – letter of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Vienna to Bauer
and to the Second International on May 20, 1934). In July a united front was established by the
Communist Party, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, and the
Committee of Action of the Schutzbund, with a joint manifesto for “the revolutionary
dictatorship of the working class” and for “a united revolutionary class party of the Austrian
proletariat.”
The united front of the Socialist and Communist Parties was also established in Italy, in the
Saar and (in September) in Spain. Among the working class youth organisations in all countries
the advance of the united front was even more marked.
On the other hand, the British Labour Party and a number of other Social Democratic Parties,
notably the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Belgian, the Swiss and the Czecho-Slovak, actively
opposed the united front and even developed extended disciplinary measures to prevent its
realisation. In October, 1934, the Communist International approached the Second International
for common action in support of the Spanish workers. A meeting took place, at which the
representatives of the Second International, Vandervelde and Adler, while declaring themselves
unable to agree to any immediate common action or to commit their constituent parties, agreed to
continue the negotiations with a view to reaching a basis of common action analogous to that in
France. The British Labour Party, on the other hand, which is the largest section of the Second
International, and which had just at its Southport Conference passed draconian decisions against
any form of united front or even “loose association” with Communism, expressed strong
disapproval of any negotiations taking place. At the same time the Spanish Socialist Party,
equally a section of the Second International, had not only reached a united front with the
Communist Party, but was taking direct part in armed civil war under the slogan of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
This extreme and extending division and disparateness of policies among the parties of the
Second International is a symptom of the profound process of transformation going forward
among the Social Democratic workers under the influence of the object-lesson of Fascism. The

further development of this situation in the international working-class movement is of critical
importance.
The Spanish revolutionary mass struggle, reaching in October 1934, to the stage of open civil
war against the advancing Fascist offensive of the combined reactionary clerical-militaristlandlord-bourgeois forces, and in the province of Asturias reaching to the formation of Soviets,
has immeasurably raised the whole international working-class movement, even more than the
battles of Vienna in February. It has revealed a far higher degree of mass-participation and unity,
and of consciousness of revolutionary aim, even though not yet reaching the conditions of
Organisation and leadership for final victory. The formation of the Soviet regime in Asturias at
the outset of the struggle, and the prolonged and tenacious resistance against all the forces of the
Spanish Government, reaches a point of revolutionary struggle unequalled in Western Europe
since the days of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet Republics in 1919. The lesson endeavoured
to be drawn by the reformists, of the inevitable failure of armed struggle against the military
resources of modern governments, is the exact opposite of the reality; for the prolonged
resistance of the workers of Asturias, facing alone the entire forces of the Spanish Government
and its African levies, has abundantly shown that, if the workers of the other principal regions,
and especially Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, had been fighting at the same time, with equal
tenacity and leadership, the forces of the Government would have been powerless to cope with
the situation, and a Soviet Spain would have been already won. The Spanish revolutionary
struggle at the end of 1934, following on Vienna at the beginning, is the signal of the future in
Europe.
But the heaviest struggles are still in front. In the face of the present international situation of
the increasing difficulties, desperation and discrediting of Fascism, the weakening of its mass
basis in the countries where it has won power, and the gathering of mass forces of resistance in
the countries where it has not yet won power, a new illusion has begun to be widely spread in
Liberal and Social Democratic circles-the illusion of the retreat of Fascism. It is said that
Fascism has passed its zenith, is on the downgrade, that the heaviest danger of Fascism is
passing. The extreme pessimistic defeatism of a year and a half ago is giving place to a no less
baseless and illusory optimistic complacency. A year ago the prophecies were all of an “epoch of
Fascism” lasting for decades. To-day a Citrine can declare that “dictatorship in every land has
passed its peak; there was an appearance of stability about the regime in Germany, but he was
satisfied that even there a change would gradually but surely come, and that ultimately the
democratic rights of the people would assert themselves” (speech to the International Clothing
Workers’ Conference, August, 1934).
Underlying this outlook of a section of the Social Democratic leadership is undoubtedly the
belief that Fascism, faced with increasing internal difficulties and mass discontent, may yet be
compelled to turn to Social Democracy for assistance, and that a renewed sphere of permitted
activity may open out for the Social Democratic and trade union leadership within Fascism (as
was already hoped for and sought by German Social Democracy in the initial period of the Hitler
regime by the May 17 vote for Hitler and the trade union bureaucracy’s courting of the Nazis).
Nor are signs of this possibility lacking. The well-informed Manchester Guardian special
correspondent (always in close touch with Social Democratic circles) reported in August that
Hitler, in view of the failure of the Labour Front and the Nazi factory cells to win the support of
the workers, had approached former Social Democratic leaders with a view to the formation of
“non-political trade unions”; the proposal had been referred to the Executive at Prague, and
“Wels was in favour of further negotiations” (the subsequent formal denial issued by Wels, to the

effect that he had not met any representative of Hitler-the intermediary was in fact a Social
Democrat- left the essence of the Manchester Guardian report unrefuted). Similarly may be noted
Bauer’s suggestion in the August Kampf that the Schuschnigg Clerico-Fascist Government
might extend its basis to the left by “an understanding with the working class.” In Italy during
the same period Mussolini made his approach to the former Socialist leaders, Caldara and
Schiavi, for their collaboration and even for the issue of a permitted “Socialist” journal in Milan.
These are only signs so far; but the possibility is not excluded that Fascism in difficulties may
turn to the collaboration of a section of the Social Democratic and old trade union leadership (as
was done by De Rivera in Spain, by Pilsudski in Poland, by Bulgarian Fascism, etc.)*
These hopes of a section of the old Social Democratic leadership, however, bear no relation
to the real process of transformation taking place in the main body of the Social Democratic
workers and rapid advance to militant struggle and working class unity.
No illusion could be more dangerous than the illusion that Fascism can be in retreat without a
decisive struggle, that Fascism can ever be finally overcome save by the working-class
revolution and the establishment of the working-class dictatorship. It is equally necessary to fight
the illusion of the inevitability of Fascism, or of the inevitable long-term power of Fascism in the
countries where it has won power, as it is necessary to fight the illusion that a temporary
fluctuation can mean the retreat and ultimate disappearance of Fascism, or disappearance of the
menace of Fascism in the countries where it has not yet conquered, without a decisive
revolutionary struggle. On the contrary, the greater the difficulties of Fascism, the more
desperate and ruthless will be its fight for existence. The massing of the working-class united
front does not yet mean the defeat of Fascism; it means only the massing of the forces for the
struggle against Fascism and for the final revolutionary struggle.
It has been the essential purpose of the present book to establish that Fascism is not merely
the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is
the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final
attempt to defeat the working- class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay. This
tendency runs through all modern capitalist countries without exception, and the advent of open

Fascism to power is only its final and completed expression. The drive against the workingclass, the strengthening of executive and police powers (Sedition Bill in England, constitutional
reforms in France, new emergency dictatorship forms in the United States), the attempt to
paralyse the working-class organisations from within upon a basis of enforced class-co-operation
and war against all revolutionary elements (social fascism), the drive to war and increasing
Organisation of the entire economic social and political structure for war, go rapidly forward in
all countries, including the formally “democratic” countries, Britain, France and the United
States. The fight against Fascism is the fight against this entire process of modern capitalism. In
particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist forms of organisation and
preparation of war within each country, becomes the more and more dominant character of the
present stage.
The supreme task now is to build up the widest United Front against Fascism and War.
Widespread anti-Fascist and anti-war feeling exists on all sides. But the essential need is
organisation. The resistance to the united front must be overcome. No separate and sectional
interests can be allowed to stand in the way of this. The all- inclusive united working-class front,
drawing in its wake the mass of the petit-bourgeois and unorganised elements, requires to be
built up in every country. Only the widest common front can defeat Fascism. And for the victory
of the struggle it is essential to understand the true character of the issues, the final necessity of
the revolutionary alternative, which can alone defeat Fascism and war by the victory of the
socialist revolution.
In the six months since this book was published, the urgency of these issues has become still
greater.
November, 1934. R. P. D.

==PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION==
The Seventh Congress of the Communist International has
brought in a new stage of the struggle of Fascism and Anti-
Fascism. The period of the division of the working class
forces, of the holding back of the majority of the workers
from a common class front by the policies of reformism, which
alone has made possible the temporary victories of fascism in
a number of countries, is drawing to its close. The period of
the united working class front, and of the drawing together of
all the working masses in a wide anti-fascist people’s front, is
now opening. The directives of the Seventh Congress of the
Communist International, on the basis of the historic report of
Georgi Dimitrov on Fascism and the United Front, will have
played a decisive role in developing this new stage, which opens
the way to the defeat of Fascism.

The present study of Fascism was originally written in the
latter part of 1933 and the early months of 1934 and was pub-
lished in England and America in the summer of 1934. It thus
represents a study of Fascism at the height of the wave of the
second Fascist offensive, based on the whole development and
history of Fascism in Italy, in Germany and in Austria, on the
beginnings of the Fascist offensive in France, in England and
the United States, and on the beginnings of the united front
of resistance to Fascism in France in 1934. An appendix brings
the record up to date to the beginning of 1935.

A general theoretical study of Fascism on an international
scale as a phenomenon of post-war capitalism is still lacking.
In the meantime this book represents a first attempt in this
direction. The main aims of the book are fourfold:

First, to analyse the essence and role of Fascism in the his-
tory of capitalism as a phenomenon of extreme capitalist decay
and of the intensified general crisis of capitalism, and in par-
ticular to relate it to the general economic and political tenden-
cies of post-war capitalism in the most recent period.

9

10 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Second, to show the causes of the victory of Fascism in a
number of countries, on the basis of a historical examination
of the transition to Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria,
with special reference to the decisive role of Social Democracy
in facilitating the victory of Fascism.

Third, to expose the actual character, ideology, programme
and practice of Fascism as the open, terrorist dictatorship of
the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist
elements of finance capital, endeavouring to mask its real aims
by the most extreme and shameless social and national dema-
gogy, and in this way seeking to build up a basis of support in
the population, especially among the petty-bourgeoisie and
backward workers, but in reality exercising the heaviest op-
pression and intensified exploitation against all the working
masses and lower and middle strata in the interests of monopoly
capital, and driving forward to war as its necessary outcome.

Fourth, to show the conditions of the fight against Fascism,
and in particular the decisive importance of the united working
class front and of the broad anti-Fascist front of the working
masses for the successful fight against Fascism; and in this
connection to deal with the relations of bourgeois democracy
and Fascism, the question of the defence of bourgeois demo-
cratic rights and liberties against the Fascist offensive, and at
the same time to show the necessity of the dictatorship of the
proletariat and of the Socialist revolution as the only final
alternative to Fascism and the only guarantee of final victory
over Fascism.

Since the book originally appeared, many new developments
have taken place, among the most important of which are the
new processes taking place in the Social Democratic Parties,
offering hopes of a healing of the split in the working class
and of the passing over of the majority of the workers to the
revolutionary camp. The sections on Social Democracy,
analysing its role in the period 1918 to 1933, must therefore
be read historically.

The decisive battles against Fascism, the most malignant
and barbarous expression of modern capitalism in decay, are
still before us. The two camps are forming with ever clearer
alignment on a world scale. The menace of Fascism and the
menace of war, both the expression of the present stage of

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION It

the intensification of all antagonisms, overhang the existing

world situation. The decisive battles between the forces of
the old decaying society and the rising new social forces will

be fought in the coming period.

capitalism in the period of the intensified general crisis and of |

R. P. D.
August, 1935. |
|

INTRODUCTION

A vErY sharp issue confronts present society.
Events move with great speed. The traditional forms of
thought still cling to the remnants of past periods.

The victory and advance of Fascism over an extending area
has come as a brutal shock to millions. Yet Fascism is no sud-
den growth. For a decade and a half the whole post-war social
development has been incubating Fascism.

To all those who have hitherto accepted as unquestioned the
existing social forms and their continuity, and above all to
those who have looked to the possibility of peaceful progressive
advance within those existing social forms, and who have dis-
missed the revolutionary outlook as the fantasy of a minority,
Fascism, and more especially the victory of Fascism in an
advanced industrial country such as Germany, has come as a
brutal shock. It may yet prove a salutary shock, if it can open
their eyes to the real issues of our period.

With every year, and with every month, that the long over-
due social revolution in Western Europe and America, for
which the world war of 1914 already gave the signal—that is,
the ending of the private ownership of the means of production
which inevitably produces the increasing contradictions,
anarchy, destruction and barbarism of the present day—is
delayed, denied and postponed, the world situation grows more
desperate, and the whole future of society is brought into
question.

The world war of 1914, the opening of the world socialist
revolution in 1917, the partial revolutions and civil struggles
succeeding the war, the post-war chaos, the world economic
crisis since 1929, the victory and ever growing strength of
Socialist construction in the Soviet Union along side the decline
of the capitalist world, and now the advance of Fascism in the
capitalist world and approach to a second world war—these are
the successive warnings of the real issues of the present stage.

Fascism has already been the subject of an enormous dis-
cussion and literature over twelve years, and above all over the
13

14 INTRODUCTION

past two years. Yet the treatment of Fascism has hardly yet
brought out its full significance.

On the one side, Fascism has been widely treated as simply
the expression of brutality and violence, of militarism and sup-
pression, of national and racial egoism, of the revolt against
culture, against the old slogans of liberty, equality and brother-
hood.

On the other side, Fascism has been treated as the expression
of national rebirth, of the emergence of youth, of the end of
decadent liberalism and intellectualism, of the advance to a
balanced and organised social order.

In order to get closer to the true character of Fascism, it is
necessary to go deeper, to see Fascism in relation to the whole
character of modern social development, of which Fascism is
an expression and reflection, and above all to get down to the
basic movement and driving forces of economy and technique,
of which the social and political forms, including Fascism, are
only the reflection.

Such an examination will reveal beyond dispute that the
modern development of technique and productive powers has
reached a point at which the existing capitalist forms are more
and more incompatible with the further development of pro-
duction and utilisation of technique. There is war between
them, increasingly violent and open since 1914, and entering
into a new and extreme stage in the world economic crisis and
its outcome. This basic conflict underlies all the social and
political problems of the present period, and in particular the
advance of capitalism to Fascist forms.

Only two paths are in fact open before present society at
the existing stage.

One is to endeavour to maintain at all costs the existing
class domination at the expense of the requirements of pro-
ductive development as well as at the expense of all human
cultural values. This means in practice to strangle the powers
of production, to retard technical development, to destroy
material and human forces, to crush the development of ideas
and thought, and to concentrate the entire society on organisa-
tion for war, leading in turn to still greater destruction and
decay. This is the path of Fascism, the path to which the
bourgeoisie in all modern countries where it rules is increas-
ingly turning, the path of human decay.

INTRODUCTION I5

The other alternative is to organise the new productive
forces as social forces, as the common wealth of the entire
existing society for the rapid and enormous raising of the
material basis of society, the destruction of poverty, ignorance
and disease and of class and national separations, the unlimited
carrying forward of science and culture, and the organisation
of the world communist society in which all human beings will
for the first time be able to reach full stature and play their
part in the collective development of the future humanity.
This is the path of Communism, the path to which the working
masses who are the living representatives of the productive
forces and whose victory over capitalist class domination can
alone achieve the realisation of this path, are increasingly turn-
ing; the path which modern science and productive develop-
ment makes both possible and necessary, and which opens up
undreamt-of possibilities for the future development of the
human race. The concrete realisation of this path has already
begun to be demonstrated with daily more gigantic victories
of new construction and new culture in the Soviet Union, in
one-sixth of the world, showing the way forward for the rest
of the world.
Which of these alternatives will conquer? This is the sharp
question confronting human society to-day.
Revolutionary Marxism is confident that, because the pro-
ductive forces are on the side of Communism, Communism will
conquer; that the victory of Communism, which is expressed in
the victory of the proletariat, is ultimately inevitable as the
sole possible final outcome of the existing contradictions; that
the nightmare of the other alternative, of the “Dark Ages”
whose creeping shadow begins already to haunt the imagination
of current thinkers, will yet be defeated, will be defeated by the
' Organised forces of international Communism.
But this inevitably is not independent of the human factor.
On the contrary, it can only be realised through the human
factor. Hence the urgency of the fight against Fascism, and
for the victory of the proletariat, on which the whole future of
uman society depends. The time grows shorter; the sands
are running through the glass.

To many, the alternative of Fascism or Communism is no
Welcome alternative, and they would prefer to deny it and to
Tegard both as rival, and in their view even parallel, forms of

INTRODUCTION

extremism. They dream of a third alternative which shall be
neither, and shall realise a peaceful harmonious progress with-
out class struggle, through the forms of capitalist “democ-
racy,” “planned capitalism,” etc.

This dream of a third alternative is in fact illusory. On the
one side, it is the echo of the conceptions of a past period, of
the period of liberal capitalism, which was already perishing
with the advent of imperialism, and which cannot be revived
when the conditions that gave rise to it have passed away, in
the stage of the extreme decay of capitalism and of the extreme
intensification of the class struggle. Even the caricature of
democratic forms which is still precariously maintained in the
imperialist states of Western Europe and America is increas-
ingly supplemented and displaced by more and more open
dictatorial and repressive methods (increase of executive pow-
ers, diminution of the role of Parliament, growth of emergency
powers, extension of police action and violence, restriction of
the rights of speech and meeting, restriction of the right to
strike, violent suppression of demonstrations and strikes, com-
bined with the typical methods of social demagogy of the
millionaire Press, stampede elections, etc.). The trend of
capitalism in all countries towards fascist forms is unmistak-
able, and is wider than the question of a Mussolini or a Hitler.

On the other side, the dream of a “planned capitalism” is
already an unconscious groping after Fascism without facing
its logical implications. For in practice the endeavour to
realise the self-contradictory aim of a “planned capitalism”
can only be pursued along the path of Fascism, of repression of
the productive forces and of the working class.

Thus the myth of a third alternative is in fact no alternative,
but in reality a part of the advance towards Fascism.

Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary stage
of capitalist development through which all countries must
pass. The social revolution can forestall Fascism, as it has
done in Russia. But if the social revolution is delayed, then
the menace of Fascism becomes urgent.

Fascism can be fought. Fascism can be fought and defeated.
But Fascism can only be fought and defeated if it is fought
without illusions and with clear understanding of the issues.
The causes of Fascism lie deep-rooted in existing society.
Capitalism in its decay breeds Fascism. Capitalist democracy

INTRODUCTION 17

in decay breeds Fascism. The only final guarantee against
Fascism, the only final wiping out of the causes of Fascism, is
the victory of the proletarian dictatorship.

Fascism offers no solution of a possible stable social organisa-
tion to replace the existing society in dissolution. On the con-
trary, Fascism carries forward all the contradictions of existing
class society, because Fascism is only a form, a means of
capitalist class rule in conditions of extreme decay. Not only
that, but Fascism carries forward the contradictions of existing
class society to their most extreme point, when the contradic-
tions are laid bare in open civil war and the organisation of the
entire capitalist state upon the basis of permanent civil war.
Fascism is thus society at war within itself. On this basis,
Fascism, so far from being a solution of existing social prob-
lems, represents their extreme intensification to the point of
final disruption. The only final outcome can be the victory of
Communism, because Communism alone contains within itself
the solution of the contradictions.

But in the interim period of struggle and transition, if it is
prolonged, if Fascism succeeds for a period in organising its
basis of civil war and violent reactionary dictatorship, an
enormous consequent destruction of material wealth, of human
lives and of culture, can take place, and increasingly threatens.
Therein is the desperate urgency of the fight, not only for the
ultimately inevitable victory of Communism, but for the rapid
victory of Communism.

The urgency of the present issues needs no emphasis. All
sense the gathering storms. A host of issues, of war, of arma-
ments, of Fascism, of the economic chaos, are taken up. But
none of these issues can be taken in abstraction. It is neces-
Sary to see them in relation to the whole social development, to
the basic issue underlying all these forms, the issue of the rule
of the bourgoisie or of the proletariat, of capitalism or social-
ism, on which the future of the human race depends.

Present society is ripe, is rotten-ripe for the social revolution.
Delay does not mean pacific waiting on the issue. The dialectic
of reality knowns no standing still. Delay means ever-extending
destruction, decay, barbarism. The words of Lenin on the eve
of October apply with gathering force to the present world
Situation: “Delay means death.”

May, 1934. R. P. D.

FASCISM
AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

==CHAPTER I: TECHNIQUE AND REVOLUTION==

In the issue of the Automobile Engineer for March 1931, ap-
peared an article on “The Machine Tool: An Analysis of the
Factors Determining Obsolescence.”

This article was not written as a criticism of existing society.
It was written, with considerable detail statistical calculations,
to assist employers or their technical managers to determine
under what conditions the installation of new high-production
machinery can be profitable. Nevertheless the conclusions
reached were in the highest degree revolutionary.

The first conclusion was to the effect that, quoting the words
of a paper of Mr. H. C. Armitage to the Institute of Auto-
mobile Engineers: “high-production machines that are being
developed in America cannot be economically used in this
country.” The reason given was “because existing British
plants can already produce more rapidly than the products can
be disposed of. . . . The statement has been made many
times that American factories in the main industries could more
than supply the world’s needs, even if all other supply sources
Closed down.” On this ground, objection was taken to
the common complaint of “uninformed critics of British
industry” that British employers had fallen behind in the race

use of maintaining “hopelessly out-of-date factory equip-
ment.”

On the contrary, in fact, the British capitalists knew very
Well what they were doing when they left their German and

imerican rivals during the decade after the war to install
Bigantic modern equipment of large-scale production at heavy
€xpense, requiring heavy maintenance costs and an enormous
Market, while they themselves preferred mainly to concentrate
©n speeding up and driving harder their labour on relatively
Older machinery, requiring less maintenance costs and a smaller
Market; on this basis they have been better able to meet the

frisis than their German and American rivals.
21

22 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The second conclusion went even further and declared that
this principle now applied also to American industry:

The time has now arrived when Mr. Armitage’s remarks may be
widened to a statement that the latest machine tools now being
developed in America cannot even be economically used in the United
States.

That is to say, the most modern developments of technique
can no longer be utilised in even the most advanced countries
of capitalism.

The third conclusion provides the complement to the first
two. One market, it is pointed out, still remains for the most
advanced machine tools. That market is the Soviet Union.

American machine-tool makers, having a range of equipment
sufficient to meet the needs of the American production plants, have
supplied to Russia machine tools outside this range, specially de-
signed to obtain still faster production. An excessive price has
been demanded for these special machines on the ground that, while
the tools show an improvement in output speed on their standard
lines, they have no immediate prospects of finding other customers
for them, there being no demand outside Russia for faster production
than can be obtained with existing models.

Thus, according to the testimony of this technical engineering
journal, the most modern developments of technique, making
possible the most extensive and rapid production with the
minimum of labour, can no longer be utilised in the countries of
capitalism, where they have originated, but can only be utilised
to-day in the country of socialist construction, in the Soviet
Union.

The significance of this present stage of technique and society
here revealed—and this example is only one of ten thousand
constantly arising in every direction in the present period—
requires no emphasis. Here, as in a single crystal, is expressed
the whole present stage of the general crisis of capitalism, of the
exhaustion of the possibilities of productive advance within the
fetters of the old private property ownership, and the necessity
of the socialisation of production as the sole condition for
further development.

In the situation that this picture reveals lies the real root of
the issue of Fascism or Communism. In this situation lies the
basic cause why precisely at the present stage of social develop-

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE. FORCES 23

ment the issue of Fascism or Communism inescapably confronts
existing society.

1. The Growth of the Productive Forces.

A century ago, Robert Owen, on the basis of his experience
as a successful manufacturer, noted the contradiction between
the new social productive labour and the private appropriation
of the fruits:

The working part of this population of 2,500 persons (in New
Lanark) was daily producing as much real wealth for society as, less
than half a century before, it would have required the working part
of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself, what became of
the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and
that which would have been consumed by 600,000?
(Robert Owen, The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the
Human Race, 1849.)

The contradiction of capitalism was thus already clearly seen
by Owen on the basis of his conduct of the model factory of
New Lanark from 1800 to 1829. But the criticism remained
an idealist criticism. For capitalism in this period, despite all
the cruelty and poverty involved in its process, was still ascend-
ing; it was still able to organise and develop the productive
forces; it was still a progressive factor, carrying through the
transformation from wasteful and uneconomic small-scale pro-
duction to modern large-scale production, and thus preparing
the material basis for the future society. The critique of capi-
talism in this period by Owen and others remained utopian.
The answer to this type of critique of capitalism was pro-
vided by Marx in his discussion of a similar line of argument of
Proudhon:

In 1770 the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
Was fifteen millions and the productive population three millions.
The scientific power of production would about equal a population
of twelve more millions; thus making a total of fifteen millions of
Productive forces. Thus the productive power was to the population
as I is to 1, and the scientific power was to manual power as 4 is to 1.

In 1840 the population did not exceed thirty millions; the pro-
ductive population was six millions, while the scientific power
amounted to 650 millions, that is to say, it was to the whole popula-
tion as 21 to 1, and to manual power as 108 to I.

24 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In English society the day of labour had thus acquired in seventy
years a surplus of 2,700 per cent. of productivity, that is to say that
in 1840 it produced twenty-seven times as much as in 1770. Accord-
ing to M. Proudhon -it is necessary to put the following question:
Why is the English workman of 1840 not twenty-seven times richer
than the workman of 1770?

In putting such a question one would naturally suppose that the
English had been able to produce these riches without the historical
conditions in which they were produced—such as: the private
accumulation of capital; the modern division of labour; the auto-
matic workshop; anarchic competition; the wage system, and, in
fine, all that which is based upon the antagonism of classes—having
to exist. But these were precisely the necessary conditions for the
development of the productive forces and of the surplus of labour.
Thus it was necessary, in order to obtain this development of the
productive forces, and this surplus of labour, that there should be
some classes which thrive and others which perish.

(Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, I, 3.)

This basic conception of the capacity of development of the
productive forces as the measure of a progressive or reactionary
social order is no less strongly expressed in Marx’s praise of
Ricardo:

The reproach moved against him, that he has an eye only to the
development of the productive forces regardless of “human beings,”
regardless of the sacrifice in human beings and capital values in-
curred, strikes precisely his strong point. The development of the
productive forces of social labour is the historical task and privilege
of capital. It is precisely in this way that it unconsciously creates
the material requirements of a higher mode of production.

(Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Kerr edition, p. 304.)

The Marxist critique of capitalism thus basically differs from
the utopian school still surviving in the so-called “English
Socialism.” The Marxist critique recognises the historical role
of capitalism in the development of the productive forces. But
the Marxist critique laid bare, already nearly a century ago
when no other economists or thinkers had the slightest glim-
mering of the future line of development, that the inner laws of
capitalist development would inevitably lead to a stage at which
capitalism could no longer organise the productive forces, but
could only result in successively more violent crises, stagnation
and decay, and at which only the new social class, the pro-
letariat, freed from the limitations of private property, could

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 25

alone organise the social productive forces to a higher level.
This is the heart of Marxism, whose political expression is the
dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary condition of the
solution of the problems of the present epoch.

It is this culminating stage of capitalism that we are at pres-
ent living througk—the stage of imperialism or capitalism in
decay, and, more particularly now since 1914, the stage of the
general crisis of capitalism, or final phase within imperialism,
when the forces of production are in ever more violent conflict
with the cramping fetters of the existing property relations of
production, when capitalism in more and more obvious decay
is faced with the advance of victory of the proletarian social
revolution, and when capitalism in decay is resorting to every
device and expedient to maintain its power.

Let us note first the gigantic growth of the productive forces
since the early criticisms of a century ago.

The following table gives the growth of industrial machine-
power, omitting motor-transport power, in the past century,
in millions of horse power (one horse power is commonly
calculated as equivalent to the muscular power of six men).

GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL MACHINE POWER.
(in million horse power)

Extra-
European
United countries (other

Kingdom France Germany U.S.A. than U.S.) World
1835 0.3 0.02 0.01 0.3 0.01 0.65
1875 6 3 4 7.8 1.9 26.5
1913 28.5 12.5 21 86 31 211
1928 37 18.5 32 162 93 390

(Hausleiter, Revolution in der Weltwirtschaft, 1932, published
in English under the title The Machine Unchained, 1933.)

A century ago, we have seen, it was already complained that
Productive power had increased twenty-seven times over in
England in the previous seventy years without any correspond-
ing improvement in the standards of the workers.

But in the century since 1835 industrial machine power
Multiplied a further hundred times over in England, and six
hundred times over in the whole world—and has ended in mass
Starvation and unemployment without equal.

In the decade and a half alone between 1913 and 1928
industrial machine power in Europe has increased 50 per cent.,

26 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

in the United States roo per cent., and in the extra-European
countries other than the United States 200 per cent.

The inclusion of all forms of power would bring the world
total to something like 1,500 million horse power.

On this basis Stuart Chase in his Machines and Men (1929)
has estimated the machine power of the world as representing
the muscular power of 9,000 million additional men, or equiva-
lent to five slaves for every man, woman and child of the
human race.

Between 1913 and 1927 electrical power production, accord-
ing to the report on “Power Resources of the World,” pre-
sented to the World Power Conference in 1930, increased from
47,000 million units to 200,000 million units. Between the first
and second World Power Conferences in 1924 and 1930, elec-
trical output doubled from 150,000 million units to 300,000
million units (Economist, 21 June, 1930).

This expansion of productive power has most strongly affected
manufacturing industry, but has also affected agriculture and
the output of raw materials, not in equal degree, but far out-
stripping the growth of human population.

Already by 1890, according to Hausleiter (op. cit.) the costs
of agricultural production in the great Grain Circle (United
States, Canada, Argentine, Australia) had been reduced by
mechanisation to one quarter of the costs of the old production
by hand-labour in 1830.

Between 1890 and 1921, according to the report of the Senior
Trade Commissioner in Canada for May 1930, further
mechanisation of agriculture and extension of the area of cul-
tivation had multiplied the yield of wheat per agricultural
worker fivefold:

Mr. Field lays great stress on the rapidity with which power-driven
machinery is displacing labour in Canadian agriculture. Whereas in
1890 1314 bushels of wheat were grown for each rural dweller, there
were seventy in 1921; and as the most revolutionary machine, the
combined reaper and thresher was only introduced in 1924, the out-
put per worker must now be a great deal higher. Moreover, the
scope for the mechanisation of agriculture has by no means yet been
fully exploited.— (Economist, September 8, 1930).

Between 1920 and 1929 the number of tractors in the United
States increased from 246,000 to 843,000 (U. S. Yearbook of
Agriculture, 1930).

THE GROWTH OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 27

Between 1900 and 1924-8 the harvests of all cereals in-
creased in Australia 104 per cent., in the Argentine 172 per
cent., and in Canada 330 percent. Between 1913 and 1928 the
volume of world grain exports increased 147 per cent. In the
same period world population increased 11.6 per cent.

The old ignorant Malthusian notions of absolute “over-
population,” or the modern lugubrious chants of birth-control
as the necessary solution of poverty, are thus abundantly
exploded by facts. It is worth noting that this reactionary
propaganda is still maintained, not only in clerical and con-
servative quarters, but also by the would-be “progressive”
(actually, as we shall have occasion to see, one of the real
bulwarks of conservatism in England) Labour Party. The
Labour official organ writes:

The figures published by the League of Nations show that the
world population, already 2,012,000,000, is increasing by 20,000,000
a year.

That means that unless the rate of increase is checked, it will have
doubled in far less than a century; for the increase is, as it were, at
compound interest.

There is not the least reason for assuming that the “march of
progress” will automatically provide ways and means of feeding and
supporting that doubled population.

There is only too much evidence—in India and China for example
—that the overcrowding of a too big population brings with it
appalling conditions of misery.

Either an unendurable suffering, or the ‘natural checks” of
famine and pestilence and a high death rate. Or, on the other hand,
a deliberate and conscious lowering and controlling of the birth rate.

Those are the alternatives that face humanity.

(Daily Herald editorial, August 8, 1932.)

Fortunately, these are not the alternatives that confront
humanity to-day. The alternatives that confront humanity
to-day are serious enough; but they are alternatives of the
destruction and anarchy of capitalism, involving still greater
Poverty and misery in the midst of abundance and rising pro-
ductive power, or the social organisation of production, bringing
abundance for all. The “overpopulation” (like the simul-
taneous “overproduction”) is only relative to the capitalist
Conditions of production. Against this reactionary and vicious
Propaganda, concealing under cover of obsolete clerical super-
Stitions the true social causes of poverty and misery (concealing

28 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

also, characteristically enough, the role of imperialism in India
in creating poverty) may be quoted the opinion of the leading
international statistician, Sir George Knibbs, who estimated
that even with present resources and technique the earth could
easily maintain four times the present population at a good
standard.

The late Sir George Knibbs . . . estimated after a careful survey
that the earth could well support a population four times as great as
at present, or about eight thousand million.

(Dr. R. A. Fisher, of the Statistical Department of the
Rothamstead Experimental Station, Spectator, March 7, 1931.)

The facts of the crisis show a very different picture to the
cant of “overpopulation” outstripping natural resources.
Already by 1925, according to the reports presented to the 1927
International Economic Conference at Geneva, despite the
destruction of the world war, world production of foodstuffs
and raw materials had risen over pre-war by 16 to 18 per cent.,
against an estimated increase of population by 5 per cent.
Between 1913 and 1928, according to the League of Nations
Economic Section, world production of foodstuffs and raw
materials had increased by 25 per cent., of foodstuffs by 16
per cent., of raw materials by 40 per cent. (of industrial prod-
ucts enormously more), against an estimated increase of world
population by ro per cent.

World stocks of primary products, on the basis of 1923-5 as
100, increased by the end of 1926 to 134, by 1928 to 161, by
1929 to 192, by 1930 to 235, by 1931 to 264, and by the end of
1932, despite all the destruction of stocks, still stood at 263, or
more than two and a half times the volume of eight years before
(Economist, May 6, 1933). World stocks of manufactures
showed a less overwhelming accumulation only because “the ex-
istence of a large volume of unemployed but immediately avail-
able factors of production” has the same effect in the sphere of
manufactures “corresponding to that exercised by enormous
stocks of primary products” (ibid., May 13, 1933).

The growth of production in every direction, whether of
foodstuffs, raw materials or manufactures, has thus greatly
exceeded the growth of world population. And the increase of
productive power, which has only been partially and incom-
pletely used under capitalist conditions, with many artificial

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 29

limitations and restrictions, has been in reality enormously
greater than the actual growth of production.

But this gigantic increase of productive power has outstripped
the capacity of capitalism to organise it.

The outcome of this gigantic increase of productive power has
been world crisis, stagnation and closing down of production,
mass unemployment, mass impoverishment and the lowering of
standards, on a scale without parallel since the beginning of
capitalism, accompanied by growing social and political dis-
turbance and recurrent war.

This problem is the basic problem confronting present-day
society.

2. The Conflict of the Productive Forces Against Existing
Soctety.

This is the world situation which reveals that the system of
capitalist relations, the capitalist class ownership of the means of
production, has outlived its progressive role, and has become a
fetter on the organisation of production.

The world war was the beginning of the violent explosion of
this conflict, of the conflict between the ever-growing productive
forces and the limits of existing property-society. Since 1914
we have entered into a new era, the era of the general crisis of
capitalism and of the advance of the world socialist revolution.

The world economic crisis which opened in 1929 has brought
these issues of the present stage of society, and of the basic
economic contradictions underlying them, more sharply to the
general consciousness than ever before. But the significance of
this world economic crisis is commonly seen through too narrow
spectacles. It is seen as a special temporary disorganisation
breaking in on an otherwise harmonious and smoothly working
economic mechanism. Alike in the pessimistic and the optimis-
tic readings of its significance the proportions have tended to be
lost. Just as the extreme low depths of depression produced
almost universal utterances of pessimism and apocalyptic
gloom from the leaders and professors of capitalism, so the first
Signs of an upward movement produced a universal sigh of relief
and reprieve, as if the worst were over and all might yet be well
again. In fact, “the devil was sick.”

But the real significance of the world economic crisis, which
has so greatly exceeded in its scope all previous economic crises,

30 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

can only be correctly understood in relation to the whole
development of capitalism, and in particular the development of
capitalism during the last two decades—that is, in relation to
the general crisis of capitalism which opened in 1914.

The general crisis of capitalism should not be confused with
the old cyclical crises of capitalism which, although demon-
strating the inherent contradictions of capitalist relations, never-
theless constituted an integral part and direct factor in the
ascent of capitalism. The cyclical crises, as illustrated in
1920-1 and 1929, continue, but take on a new and intensified
character in the period of the general crisis.

The old cyclical crises were, according to Marx, “always but
momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions,
violent eruptions, which restore the disturbed equilibrium for a
while” (Capital II],p.292). Their characteristic feature was to
solve the contradictions, albeit by anarchically violent and
destructive means, to restore the equilibrium, and permit of the
resumption of production on a higher plane. They weeded out
the smaller and less efficient concerns; they wiped out a portion
of capital values in order to save the remainder; they effected a
concentration of capital; they compelled a drive to open up new
markets. On this basis they permitted, after a relatively short
period, the resumption of capitalist production at a higher level.

Elements of this character can also be traced in the post-war
world economic crisis; but these “progressive” elements are
overshadowed by the major, negative effects of the whole pro-
cess of the development of the cyclical crisis on the basis of the
general crisis of capitalism, in the consequent destruction of
stabilisation and hastening of revolutionising processes.

For the general crisis of capitalism admits of no such solution.
The domination of the imperialist Powers has already been ex-
panded to its maximum extent throughout the world; monopoly
capitalism, which had already divided up the greater part of
the world by the beginning of the twentieth century, and by
1914 was at war over its re-division, is now faced with a still
sharper situation of contradictions, not only between the
imperialist Powers, but also between imperialism and socialism.
So far from there being available new regions to open up, one
sixth of the world has passed out of the sphere of capitalism into
that of the social revolution; the colonial peoples are rising in
revolt; the world available for capitalist exploitation has begun

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 31

to contract. At the same time the growth of productive power
is greater than ever, the extreme crisis, competition and war
forcing forward technical development and the process of
capitalist rationalisation. Under these conditions there is no
room for a harmonious solution, but only for ever more violent
conflict. The upward movements within the general crisis be-
come ever shorter; depression becomes the normal, broken by
short upward movements and violent social and political ex-
plosions; the recurrence of the old cyclical crisis within the
general crisis takes on a new intensity.

The general crisis of capitalism has now continued for twenty
years without a break, only changing one form for another.
The violent explosion of the world war only gave place to the
still more profound struggle of revolution and counter-
revolution throughout the world. The defeat of the revolution
in the countries outside the Soviet Union brought no solution
and peaceful development, but only laid bare the post-war
chaos of capitalism. The temporary stabilisation and upward
movement of the middle ’twenties proved only a false and
illusory stabilisation; “the prosperity of the period 1923-29
was to a large extent illusory; andthe seeds of future trouble
had already been sown” (British Government Note to the
United States, December 1, 1932). Its only outcome was the
new form of the basic contradiction expressed in the extreme
world economic crisis which began in 1929 and continues now
in its fifth year. This in its turn breaks out into new and violent
explosions in the spread of Fascism and the visibly approaching
second world-war.

Already in the closing years of his life Engels noted the
approach of a new era: “there is now no doubt that the position
has changed fundamentally by comparison with formerly”;
“we have entered upon a period much more dangerous for the
old society than that of the ten-year cycles”; “the crises
become chronic” (Engels, letter to Bebel, January 20, 1886).
In 1909 Kautsky, writing then as a Marxist theorist, in his
Path to Power, exposed the revisionist illusions of gradual and
Peaceful progress, and demonstrated the now close entry of
Capitalism into a period of violent explosions. In 1916 Lenin
In his Imperialism laid bare the foundations of the new period as
the period of monopoly capitalism, in which all the contradic-
tions come to a head, of decaying capitalism, of the eve of the

32 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

socialist revolution, the period which broke into violent
explosion in 1914.

Up to 1913 capitalist production, despite the increasing
tendencies of decay already visible in imperialism, was still
able to maintain an almost continuous ascending line.

For many decades before the war, world production, according to
the best estimates available, increased with remarkable regularity of
trend, broken only in minor degree by successive crises. This trend
of increase ran through both the period of declining prices from 1873
to 1895, and the period of rising prices from 1895 onwards.

(League of Nations World Economic Survey 1932-3, p. 68.)

Between 1860 and 1913, according to the tables presented in
this publication, world production of basic commodities
ascended in an almost continuous line and multiplied from four
to five times. World industrial production ascended in an
almost continuous line and multiplied over six times.

But the twenty years since 1914 reveal a different picture.

If the line of trend from 1860 to 1913 is extended to 1932, the
rather startling conclusion is reached that the index of world pro-
duction, on the hypothesis that nothing had occurred to alter its
regular upward trend for the fifty preceding years, would to-day be
rather more than twice as great as it actually is. (#bid., p. 82.)

The present world economic crisis is without precedent:

There is no precedent for such a marked decline. Statistical series
ranging back to 1860 fail to reveal any previous period in which the
decline in either raw material production or manufactures has been
sO precipitate or so severe. Independent estimates agree that in
1932 the level of industrial production in the world as a whole fell
below that of 1913. (ibid., p. 82.)

Thus the war and post-war period, taken as a whole, reveals
the first large-scale absolute setback of capitalist production.

The attempt is often made, on the basis of the above facts
and figures, to argue that, since 1914 appears as the great
dividing point, therefore the war is the cause of all the present
maladies. Comparisons are sometimes made to the post-
Napoleonic period of unsettlement, revolutionary unrest and the
industrial revolution; and the inference is drawn that the
troubles of the present period are also troubles of post-war
unsettlement and of the “second industrial revolution,”

PRODUCTIVE FORCES AGAINST EXISTING SOCIETY 33

heralding a no less great expansion within the forms of
capitalism.
This very superficial approach to the real historical move-
ment of two entirely different periods, and to the crux of modern
world problems, is demonstrably incorrect both in fact and in
reasoning.

In the first place, no comparison is possible between the
post-Napoleonic period of young and ascending capitalism and
the twentieth century period of old and declining capitalism.
Fifteen years after the Napoleonic wars, production, trade and
employment were gigantically above the pre-war level;
capitalist society was bounding forward. Fifteen years after
the war of 1914-18 production, trade and employment are
actually below the pre-war level; capitalist society is in a greater
dilemma than ever, greater than even in the period succeeding
the war. The dislocation, instead of diminishing as the war
recedes, actually increases; it is greater fifteen years after the
war than it was ten years after the war. It is obvious that some
deeper factor is at work than the disturbances consequent on the
war. At the same time, the social and political issues of the two
periods are basically different. The issue of the first half of the
nineteenth century was still the issue of the bourgeois revolu-
tion, which swept forward through the processes of the
Napoleonic wars and after, despite the seeming victories of
reaction. The issue of the first half of the twentieth century is
the issue of the proletarian social revolution, which began its
advance in the conditions of the war of 1914-18, and which
Maintains its growing strength in the midst of the capitalist
reaction.

In the second place, it is not correct that the division between
before 1914 and after 1914 is a simple and absolute division
between the ascent and the descent of the level of production.
On the contrary, the actual level of production in 1927-9 was
for the short period of the boom higher than the pre-war level;
the real growth of the contradictions, which was to find expres-
Sion in the subsequent slump falling below the pre-war level,
lay elsewhere. The true measure of the decline and bankruptcy
of the existing capitalist order lies, not in any simple arith-
Metical figures of the level of production, but in the growth of
the contradictions of the existing society to bursting point, in
the growth of the contradiction between the potential pro-

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ductive power and the actual production, between the con
ditions of existence of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat,
between the rival imperialist Powers, and the consequent
expression of these in social and political explosions. It is in
this sense that the general crisis of capitalism dates from 1914,
but its causes lie in the whole conditions of the imperialist epoch.
Finally, and in consequence of the above, the world war of
1914-18, so far from being the cause of the crisis of capitalism,
was on the contrary itself only an expression and breaking out of
the crisis—a link in the chain of imperialist development. The
war was no arbitrary, accidental, unforeseeable first cause, sud-
denly breaking in from nowhere to change the whole course o
development. It was the direct consequence of the condition
of imperialism, which was itself the direct outcome of th
previous nineteenth-century capitalist epoch. It was full
foreseen, and even predicted in detail for years beforehand, a:
the outcome of the growing tensions of imperialism. Its out
break coincided with the gathering industrial crisis which w
already beginning in America in 1913, and spreading therefro
to hover menacingly over Europe. As the war-leader, Lloy:
George, confessed nearly twenty years after, the war appear
as the way out from the gathering crisis, which he is now con
vinced would have in any case developed, even had the war no
broken out at that point:
If we had not had a great war, if we had gone on as we were goin
I am sure that sooner or later we would have been confronted wi
something approximately like the present chaos. There must
something fundamentally wrong with our economic system, beca
abundance produces scarcity.
(Lloyd George, speech at Cambridge, Manchester Guards
Weekly, April 7, 1933

The fact that the dynamic of capitalist development, even aft
the direct destruction caused by the first world-war has b
repaired, only reverts to the recurrence of still more gigant
economic crisis and the visible approach to a second world-wa'
shows how little of “accident” there was in the basic develo
ment of capitalism through imperialism to world war, howev
large the role of “accident” may appear to be in the particul
historical manifestations of the process.

In order to understand the problems of the present epoch
the general crisis of capitalism, it is essential to be able to

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 35

deeper than the immediate surface manifestations and episodes,
whether of the world war of 1914 or the world economic crisis
of 1929, and to understand these in relation to the general line
of development, of which they are expressions. The general
crisis of capitalism, the conflict of the productive forces against
the existing relations of production, expresses itself in a whole
series of successively growing conflicts and explosions, up to the
final victory of the proletarian social revolution. It is in relation
to this development of the general crisis of capitalism that
Fascism is a further stage and episode.

3. Productivity and Unemployment.

The development of the productive forces has rendered the
old class-society obsolete.

Already before the end of the war the leading trust magnate,
Lord Leverhulme, estimated that, if the then existing produc-
tivity were organised, one hour’s work per week of all citizens
would provide the necessaries of life for all:

With the means that science has already placed at our disposal, we
might provide for all the wants of each of us in food, shelter and

clothing by one hour’s work per week for each of us from school age
to dotage.

(Lord Leverhulme: Preface to Professor Spencer’s
Wealth from Waste, Routledge, 1918.)

That was fifteen years ago. In the intervening decade and a
half, according to the engineer, J. L. Hodgson, in his paper on
“Industrial and Communal Waste” before the Royal Society
of Arts on June 20, 1932, in the course of which he quoted and
accepted Lord Leverhulme’s statement, “since that date our
average potential productivity has nearly doubled.” One half-
hour’s work per week should thus provide a minimum standard
a all, and one hour’s work per week an overwhelming abun-

ance,

Why should this almost immeasurable increase in productive
Power and the possibility of universal abundance result in
Universal impoverishment and lowering of standards?

This is the question that confronts the whole human race,
that is becoming a life and death question for the nineteen
hundred million human beings of the capitalist world outside
_ the Soviet Union, to which these hundreds of millions must find
the answer or go down in catastrophe.

36 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

It is evident that what is here in question is no natural or
technical causes, but only social causes—that there is no social
organisation of production.

This question is sharpened by the contrast of the productive
increase in the Soviet Union alongside the actual decline of
capitalist production. Between 1925 and 1932 industrial pro-
duction in the Soviet Union (on the base of 1925-9 as 100)
increased from 59 to 240; the corresponding figure for the
United States decreased from 95 to 58, for Britain from 99 to
86, and for Germany from 89 to 66 (League of Nations World
Production and Prices 1925-1932, p. 49). Between 1929 and
1932 industrial production in the Soviet Union increased by
65 per cent. and in the capitalist world as a whole decreased by ©
37 percent. (League of Nations World Economic Survey, 1932-
1933, pp. 85 and 71).

The most glaring and direct living expression of this present
stage of the contradiction between the growth of the productive
forces and existing society is the spread of mass unemployment
throughout the capitalist world, already before the onset of the
world economic crisis, and reaching a total at the height of the
world economic crisis, in 1932, according to official figures, of
thirty millions, and according to unofficial figures of fifty
millions.

Britain, the oldest capitalist country, and the most advanced
in decay, first reached this basis of permanent mass unemploy-
ment. This situation revealed itself in the winter of 1920-21,
and has continued up to the present without a break; in the
beginning of 1933 the Chancellor of the Exchequer staggered
the House of Commons by announcing that he calculated on
the continuance of such mass unemployment for the next ten
years. The other countries in the succeeding years reached a
similar and even more extreme basis (running at the highest
point to eight millions in Germany and fourteen millions in the
United States).

Unemployment at a certain level has always been present in
capitalism. The development of production in capitalist con
ditions has always displaced workers and independent pro
ducers, and thus created the industrial reserve army which was
indispensable to meet the fluctuations of capitalist production
and to maintain the proletariat in subjection. But this indus
trial reserve army was a part of the machinery of expanding

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 37

capitalist production; the absolute number of productive
workers employed successively grew. It is only since the war
that the new phenomenon appeared of a permanent unem-
ployed army, grudgingly kept just alive at the lowest level of
subsistence by the bourgeoisie, while the absolute number of
productive workers employed has directly decreased.

Of the possibility of such a stage of chronic unemployment
and absolute decline of the productive workers, Marx wrote:

A development of the productive forces which would diminish
the absolute number of labourers, that is, which would enable the
entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time,
| would cause a revolution, because it would render the majority of
I

a <a

the population superfluous.
(Marx, Capital, HI, p. 309.)
Engels wrote in 1886:

America will smash up England’s industrial monopoly—whatever
there is left of it—but America cannot herself succeed to that monop-
oly. And unless ome country has the monopoly of the markets of the
world at least in the decisive branches of trade, the conditions—
relatively favourable—which existed here in England from 1848 to
1870, cannot anywhere be reproduced, and even in America the
condition of the working class must gradually sink lower and lower.
For if there are three countries (say, England, America and Ger-
many) competing on comparatively equal terms for the possession of
the world market, there is no chance but chronic overproduction,
one of the three being capable of supplying the whole quantity
required.

(Engels, letter to Mrs. Wischnewetzky, February 3, 1886,
reprinted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Cor-
respondence, London and New York, 1935, p. 443.)

_ To-day we are face to face with this situation. The position
m America is reported as follows:

The United States Commissioner for Labour Statistics recently
Stated that if 200 out of the 1,357 boot and shoe factories in the
country worked full time, they could satisfy the whole existing
mand, and the remaining 1,157 establishments could be closed

Own. Similarly, 1,487 out of the 6,057 bituminous coal mines
Could produce all the coal that was needed.

(H. B. Butler in the International Labour Review, March 1931.)

Between 1919 and 1927 factory output in the United States
/T0se from 147 to 170, on the basis of 1914 as 100, while the

38 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

employment index fell from 129 to 115 (Times, March 8, 1930).
Between 1919 and 1929 the Federal Reserve Board index of
industrial production (1923-5 as 100) rose from 84 to 119;
while the number of industrial wage workers fell from 9,039,000
to 8,742,000 (United States Statistical Abstract, 1932). This
absolute decline in employment was before the collapse, during
the great upward boom.

Britain reveals a similar picture. Between 1913 and 1928
the increase in output per head of workers employed in thirty
principal industries in Great Britain was 33 per cent., but the
increase in employment was 2.2 per cent., or less than the
increase in population (Times Trade Supplement, July 23, 1932).
Still more marked is the process if the post-war period is taken
alone. Between 1923 and 1928 the number of insured workers
in employment fell from 8,368,000 to 7,898,000; the index of
production (London and Cambridge Economic Service, based
on 1913 as 100) rose from 88.7 to 96.3. Production rose 7.6 per
cent.; employment fell 5.6 per cent. And all this before the
world economic crisis began to make the heaviest effects of the
process felt.

What is to happen to the “superfluous” workers? For long,
the old theory of “alternative employment” was. still
endeavoured to be put forward as applicable to this situation.
The decline in the industrial productive workers was to be
“compensated” by the increase of auxiliary “services” and
luxury occupations (clerical, distributive, advertising, com-
mercial, and luxury services). Certainly, a very considerable
increase in these auxiliary and in the main non-productive
occupations is to be traced in the United States, Britain and
other countries during the post-war period, thus providing the
basis of the rapid expansion of the so-called ‘new middle class,”
which became one of the breeding-grounds of Fascism; just as
the growth of the permanent unemployed army provided a
further breeding-ground. The expansion of the rentier class
on the one side, and of luxury services and endlessly multiplied
“salesmanship” services on the other, is a measure of the
degeneration of capitalism.

The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand en-
forcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand
begets by its anarchical system of competition the most outrageou
squandering of labour power and of the social means of production

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 39

not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments at
present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
(Marx, Capital, I, p. 540.)

Nevertheless, this supposed “compensation” was soon
revealed as a doubtful solution. In the first place, it was
manifestly no solution for the millions of miners and heavy
industry workers thrown out of work. In the second place, the
extent of “compensation” had obvious limits which were soon
reached. For in these occupations, too, rationalisation begins
to get to work and to repeat the process of throwing off the
superfluous workers. Mechanisation transforms clerical work,
and begins increasingly to replace clerks by more and more
elaborate calculating and book-keeping machines; centralisa-
tion cuts down the number of competing businesses; staffs are
reduced. The “white-collar workers” also find themselves
increasingly thrown on the market alongside their industrial
brothers.

Increasing doubts of the whole process and its outcome, as
well as of the stock explanations and solutions, found expression
in an editorial of the London Times in 1930 on “American
Unemployment” (characteristically endeavouring to treat the
problem as an “American” problem, but in fact describing
equally unemployment in Britain) :

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that unemployment must
henceforth be counted as a permanent American (!) problem. To
ascribe its occasional recurrence in an acute form to some special
event is no less delusive than to explain it as a merely “seasonal”
manifestation. . . . The experience of recent years has gone to
prove that recovery is less and less complete after each crisis, and to
show that forces other than the seasonal and the accidental are at
work. There is little reason to doubt that permanent unemploy-
ment is to-day the lot of an always growing number of American (!)
Men and women.

On this basis doubt is expressed of the whole system of “mass
Production,” i.e., of capitalis: large-scale production:
The advantages residing in a system which relies on the mass

Production of standardised articles deserve more critical examination
than they have yet been given.

The current answers of “the apologists of the system,” that the
reduced costs of production and therefore reduced price means

40 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

increased demand and consequent re-absorption of the unem-
ployed, are “no longer altogether convincing”’:

It is still doubtful whether the increased production can always
be absorbed; it is a very large question whether new industries are
created quickly enough to employ the displaced workers. In other
words, it remains to be seen how perilously the machine has run
ahead of man, and whether some re-adjustment of social condition
may not ultimately be imperative. The question drives like rain to
the roots of American (!) life. (Times editorial, March 8, 1930.)

Under the thin disguise of “America” it is obvious that “the
question drives like rain to the roots” of capitalism in all
countries, and not least in Britain, with its longest record of
permanent mass unemployment.

What prevents capitalism from carrying out the alternative
solution universally proposed by all the myriad schools of
reformers of capitalism (reformist socialists, social credit
theorists, currency reformers, etc.)—i.e., the general raising of |
the standards of the workers to a point compatible with the
consumption of the increased production alongside higher
profits for the capitalists? The answer why capitalism is unable
to carry out this apparently simple solution, but is in fact
actively engaged in carrying out the opposite, lies in the whole
character of capitalism. The reformist dream of grafting on
to the capitalist mode of production an entirely different and
incompatible system of distribution (whether by legislative
means, raising wages, social services, a “national dividend,”
or the like) only reveals its advocates’ failure to understand the
elementary workings of capitalism and the necessary conditions
of the capitalist mode of production. The reformists apply in
their fantasy the conceptions of an organised society directly
to the jungle of capitalism, which, by the very conditions of
private property and production for profit, cannot follow the
principles of an organised economy, but can only follow entirely
different laws. In fact, even the very limited measure of social
reform which could be achieved, under the pressure of the
working class, in the conditions of ascending capitalism become
increasingly circumscribed and even in part diminished and
withdrawn in the conditions of declining capitalism and of the
capitalist crisis.

The realities of capitalism are both in fact and in iron neces-
sity entirely different. The greater the crisis, the greater

i

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 41

becomes the need of the rival capitalist concerns to lower the
costs of production, to increase the rate of exploitation, to drive
the dwindling number of employed workers harder, to attack
the workers’ standards and the social services, in order to com-
pete more successfully for the dwindling market. At the same
time the growth of unemployment facilitates these attacks. The
development of the crisis has been accompanied in every
country by successively renewed and intensified attacks on
the workers’ standards. The authentic voice of capitalism is the
voice of the American capitalist magnate, Owen D. Young, the
sponsor of the Young Plan, when he declared: ‘‘Let no man
think that the living standards of America can be permanently
maintained at a measurably higher level than those of the other
civilised countries” (Economist, April 12, 1930.)

The Roosevelt “experiment,” which has skilfully utilised
the reformist propaganda of higher standards as the solution
of the capitalist crisis, but utilised it in fact for the exactly
opposite purpose to carry through intensified exploitation
and lowered standards (just as President Wilson of old utilised
pacifist propaganda for the purposes of war), is proving in
practice, as we shall later have occasion to see, only a more
complete demonstration of this reality.

The growth of productivity has been accompanied, not by
an increase of the workers’ share, but by a decrease of the
workers’ share. Between 1913 and 1928 the percentages of the
national income going to wages fell in the United States from
36.4 to 36, and in the United Kingdom from 42.7 to 40.9
(World Economic Survey, 1932-3, p. 101). Inthe United States,
between 1921 and 1927, the value of the product of industry
rose from 18.3 thousand million dollars to 27.5 thousand
million dollars (U.S. Department of Commerce, Census of
Manufactures); but in the same period the percentages 6f the
value of the product of industry going to wages and salaries fell
from 58.7 per cent. in 1921 (54.2 per cent. in 1914) to 51 per
cent. in 1927 (P. H. Douglas, Real Wages in the United States).
In Great Britain, between 1924 and 1930, according to Colin
Clark’s The National Income 1924-31, the output per person
employed rose from 100 to 113, while the proportion of wages
to home-produced income fell from 41.5 per cent. (42.5 per
cent. in rg11) to 38 per cent.

The effect of the world economic crisis has been, not to

42 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reverse this process, but to carry it enormously further forward.
The drive to rationalisation, to speeding up, to extracting a
still higher output per worker for less return, has been inten-
sified under the conditions of the crisis. Between 1929 and
1932 the output per man-hour has actually been forced up by
12 per cent. in the United States, alongside twelve million
unemployed!

Labour costs per unit of output have been substantially reduced
by an improvement in productive efficiency. The output per man-
hour in the United States increased by about 12 per cent. between
1929 and 1932.—( Economist, May 5, 1933.)

It is obvious that the effect of this is still further to intensify
the contradiction which already led to the economic crisis.

In the face of these facts increasing doubts begin to assail the
capitalists whether there can ever be full-scale employment
again, even if the extreme intensity of the crisis of 1929-33
should give place to a considerable upward movement. ‘Thus
it is reported from America:

American employment reached its highest point in 1918, American
production in 1929, and it is carefully and accurately computable
to-day that if by some magic a return could be made to the pro-
ductive maximum of three years ago, there would still be no work
for 45 per cent. of the present twelve million unemployed.

(Washington Correspondent of the London Times,
November 2, 1932.)

From Britain comes the same tale:

Tf the 24 millions of unemployed were absorbed in factory occupa-
tions, the national output of manufactured articles would be on such
a scale that the available buying markets . . . would be inadequate
to absorb it. Hence, if such a method of labour absorption could
and did take place, it would only precipitate a new crisis.

(Times Trade Supplement, July 23, 1932.)

Such are the alternatives which begin to be seen by the
capitalists, even if the present crisis should give place to the
most extensive upward movement.

Either continued mass unemployment of millions, even if
“by some magic” the record level of the previous production
boom could be attained.

Or, if all the unemployed are absorbed into productive
labour, then inevitably the immediate precipitation of a new
crisis.

—

PRODUCTIVITY AND UNEMPLOYMENT 43

As this new situation begins to be realised, the beckoning
phantom of a new world war as the only “solution” to utilise
the productive forces and wipe off the “superfluous” popula-
tion begins to exercise a visibly increasing attraction on
capitalist thought and policy as the final gamble.

Nearly a century ago Engels wrote of the necessary con-
sequences of the inevitable future breakdown of the British
capitalist monopoly: “Should English manufactures be thus
vanquished . . . the majority of the proletariat must become
forever superfluous and has no other choice than to starve or to
rebel.” (Engels: Condition of the Working Class in England in
1844, Ch. xi.)

In 1932, eighty-seven years later, the British Prime Minister
spoke in the House of Commons of the prospect, even if trade
should recover and prosperity return, of having to find “great
| bodies of men and women, perhaps even amounting to a couple
of millions, to be, to all intents and purposes, in our society,
superfluous scrap.”’ (J. R. MacDonald in the House of Com-
mons, November 22, 1932.)

' In 1933 the leader of British Conservatism had to make the
same melancholy admission:

There is the great core of unemployment. We do not know what
the numbers may be. There may be a million, a million and a half,
or less than a million; but there will be a vast number for whom there
is but little hope of employment being found in this country. The
gates of migration are closed against us. What can we do? That
is a problem that has baffled the country completely up to now.

(Stanley Baldwin in the House of Commons, November 27, 1933.)

“What can we do?” This is the final answer of what was
once the most powerful capitalism in the world, when faced to-
day with the problem of millions who seek only to work and live.

There could be no sharper expression of the bankruptcy of
Capitalism than when, in the midst of wealth and unexampled
Productive power, it can no longer even find the means to
exploit a growing proportion of its slaves, and is compelled to
proclaim millions of human beings, living, strong, and able and
willing to labour, as “superfluous scrap.” The time draws
close for the second half of the alternative—‘“to rebel”—as the
Only solution for the extending millions of producers cut off
from production, no less than for the millions whose growing
output is accompanied by growing poverty.

44 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The Alternative—Social Revolution or Destruction.

The alternatives which confront society at the present stage
are thus clear.

Capital can no longer utilise the productive forces. Capital
can no longer utilise the full labour-power of the productive
population. Monopoly capitalism is more and more visibly
choking the whole organisation of production and exchange.

The working masses can no longer find even the former
limited conditions of existence within the conditions of capital-
ism. Increasing millions are thrown aside as “superfluous.”
The standards of all are successively attacked. Intensification
of labour of the dwindling numbers employed is accompanied by
worsening of standards.

The class struggle grows more intense. New forms of
widening mass struggle develop. New and intenser methods of
repression and coercion are brought into play by the ruling class.

Against this situation the knowledge and understanding,
which begins to grow more and more widely spread, of the
scientific and technical possibilities of unlimited production
and abundance for all, confronts existing society like a mockery
and a torment: creating on the one side, among a growing
section of the dispossessed, revolutionary anger and determina-
tion; creating on the other side, among the doomed possessing
classes, growing desperation and recklessness, the revolt against
science, the revolt against mechanical technique, and readiness
to embark on ever more frenzied courses of destruction.

Two alternatives, and only two, confront existing society at
the present stage of development of the productive forces and
of social organisation.

One is to throttle the development of the productive forces in
order to save class-society, to destroy material wealth, to destroy
millions of “superfluous” human beings in the slow rot of
starvation and the quick furnace of war, to crush down the
working-class movement with limitless violence, to arrest the
development of science and culture and education, and to turn
to ever more destructive war as the supreme aim of each im-
perialist bloc striving to find a way out for itself at the expense
of its rivals, and thus to seek to save for a while the rule of
the possessing classes at the expense of a return to barbarism
and spreading decay. This is the path which finds its most
complete and organised expression in Fascism.

THE ALTERNATIVE—REVOLUTION OR DESTRUCTION 45

The other is to organise the productive forces for the whole
society by abolishing the class ownership of the means of pro-
duction, and building up the classless communist society
which can alone utilise and organise the modern productive
forces. This is the path of Communism, of the revolutionary
working class.

The issue of these two paths is the issue of the present epoch.

It is to the former of these two alternatives that the existing
capitalist world is to-day moving at an increasing pace, and to
which it will more and more visibly develop in the period ahead,
if the revolutionary working class does not succeed in time in
saving the whole future of civilisation and of human culture.

ad a

==CHAPTER II: THE END OF STABILISATION==

THE technical and economic situation described in the previous
chapter finds its social and political expression in the storms of
the present epoch, in the world war, in the revolutionary
struggles, in the world economic crisis, in the advance to
renewed world war and in Fascism.

The objective conditions for the social revolution were ripe
already from the beginning of the period of imperialism, and
more particularly since the opening of the general crisis of
capitalism in 1914.

But the living human factor was not yet ready. The minds of
men were still dominated by the conceptions of the past epoch.
The bursting of the contradictions in the world war and after
broke on the majority of men like a natural catastrophe. The
first aim was widely proclaimed on all sides to resume the
broken thread of pre-war continuity.

The proletariat in the leading capitalist countries, although
advancing to social revolution, was not yet strong enough, not
conscious enough, not organized enough, to overthrow the rule
of the capitalist class. The revolts of the proletariat after the
war, although drawing close to success and profoundly trans-
forming the political situation, were finally defeated in all
countries outside Russia.

The capitalist class, having overcome the immediate menace
to its rule, set itself the aim to restore the shaken mechanism of
capitalist production and exchange, to return to “pre-war” or
“normalcy.”

The proletariat, following the leadership of Social Democracy,
after the defeat of the revolution, sought to win improved con-
ditions within the capitalist restoration.

On this basis was built up the capitalist restoration or tem-
porary “stabilisation” of 1923-9. The illusory character of
this basis, which sought to resurrect the vanished conditions of
the old pre-war capitalism, was not at first realised by any
save the Marxists.

46

ee lee a
eu ¥

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 47

Only when a new cycle of capitalism on this basis had resulted
with extreme speed in a more intense crisis than ever before,
shattering one by one al! the pillars of “stabilisation,” did the
recognition begin to become universal on all sides that the old
conditions were passed beyond resurrection, and that funda-
mental issues of social, economic and political organisation
would have to be faced.

From this point stabilisation ends, and a transformation
begins to develop in the whole of capitalist policy and in the
consciousness of the proletariat. Social Democracy, which
had shared in the boom of capitalist restoration, goes through a
series of inner crises, and weakens before Communism. Fascism
which had previously developed only in an experimental stage
in a secondary capitalist country, now comes to the front as a
world factor, dominating directly a major capitalist country,
as well as in greater or less degree a whole series of other
countries, and revealing itself as the most typical expression of
modern capitalist policy.

1. The Last Attempt to Restore Pre-war Capitalism.

The basis of the attempted capitalist restoration after the
war was the defeat of the proletarian revolution outside Russia.

To this objective the principal concentration of world
capitalist policy was directed in the period immediately after
the war. This primary preoccupation was true, not only of the
governments of Central Europe, where the revolution came
closest to victory, but above all of the governments which held
the world leadership of capitalism, of Britain, France and the
United States. Thus Hoover declared in 1921—

The whole of American policies during the liquidation of the
Armistice was to contribute everything it could to prevent Europe
from going Bolshevik or being overrun by their armies.

(Hoover, letter to O. Garrison Villard, 1921, reprinted in
the New York Nation, December 28, 1932.)

In the same way, for Britain, Sir William Goode, British
Director of Relief in Central Europe, wrote on ‘European
Reconstruction” in 1925, quoting from his official report in
1920:

Food was practically the only basis on which the Governments of
the hastily created States could be maintained in power. . . . Half

48 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of Europe had hovered on the brink of Bolshevism. If it had not
been for the £137 million in relief credits granted to Central and
Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1921, it would have been imposi-
sible to provide food and coal and the sea and land transport for
them. Without food and coal and transport, Austria and probably
several other countries would have gone the way of Russia... .
Two and a half years after the Armistice the back of Bolshevism in
Central Europe had been broken, largely by relief credits... .
The expenditure of £137 million was probably one of the best
international investments from a financial and political point of view
ever recorded in history.

(Sir William Goode, Times, October 14, 1925.)

Subsequently, the Dawes Plan, Locarno and the flow of
American credits and loans to Europe carried forward the same
process of capitalist restoration at a higher stage.

What was the basis of the defeat of the proletarian revolution
and the rebuilding of capitalism in the years immediately fol-
lowing the war? Fascism at this time did not exist as a factor
save in Italy. The main weapons of capitalism were threefold.

The first was direct civil war and counter-revolution—the
wars of intervention against Russia, the White Terror in Fin-
land, Hungary, Poland, etc., the military aid to Poland in 1920,
the permission of the counter-revolutionary military organisa-
tions, officers’ corps, Orgesch, etc., in Germany (which helped
to build up the basis of the subsequent Fascism in Germany),
and the like. This was of decisive importance at the immediate
critical points of struggle, but it could not provide the main
basis, as it had no mass support and could only build on the
narrow ranks of the ex-officers and direct reactionary classes;
the failure of the Kapp Putsch demonstrated this weakness. It
was only later that Fascism was to find the way towards a
temporary solution of the problem of the combination of
counter-revolution with winning a wide measure of mass sup-
port.

The second weapon was Social Democracy and the granting
of temporary concessions to the workers. Social Democracy
because of its mass basis, was the main weapon of capitalism in
the years immediately after the war for the rebuilding of
capitalism. The advance of the workers to the struggle for
power, the immediate onrush of which after the war was too
powerful to be successfully defeated in direct battle, was
circumvented by a strategical ruse—the placing of Social

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 49

Democratic governments, presidents and ministers in office,
thus appearing to surrender to the workers the seats of power,
while the realities of power remained with capitalism. Only
in this way, by the alliance with Social Democracy, by hiding
capitalism under a Social Democratic front, was the capitalist
state saved after the war. Social Democracy united with
capitalism to defeat the workers’ revolution. A great show of
concessions to the workers was made; promises were lavishly
broadcast; Socialisation Commissions, Nationalisation Com-
missions, Sankey Commissions were set up; wages were
increased and hours shortened.*

Subsequently, as soon as the power of capitalism was thus
successfully re-established, a reverse action took place. The
concessions were withdrawn; inflation wiped them out in the
European countries; the capitalist offensive drove back the
workers even below pre-war levels; the Social Democrats, while
still occasionally used as governments, were increasingly
relegated to the role of “opposition.” At the same time, the
consequent growth of disillusionment of the workers with the
whole process and with Social Democracy led to the necessity
of capitalism discovering a further basis of power, and the
development of Fascism as the parallel instrument of capitalism
alongside Social Democracy. But this development only took
place on a wider scale as the stabilisation began to break down
in the world economic crisis.

The third weapon of capitalism in the re-establishment of its
power and of its economic system was the drawing on the
colgssal reserves of the still unshaken centre of world capitalism
—American capitalism. American loans and credits poured
into Europe to bolster up and rebuild the shaken fabric of
European capitalism. On this basis the restoration of the gold

* The character of this period was revealingly described, with reference to the
Sankey Coal Commission, by Evan Williams, President of the Mining Association,
in his evidence before the Mining Court of Inquiry in 1924:

“Tt was an atmosphere charged with the emotions of the time in which the
Commission sat. There were fears throughout the whole country as to what
might happen, and it was felt that the miners’ position ought to be met in order
to maintain peace. That was the atmosphere of the Commission. The atmos-
Phere was an unreal one altogether, and conclusions were arrived at without any
real foundation. Two of my colleagues, mineowners and myself,” went on Mr.
Williams with a smile, “actually signed a report which recommended a reduc-

tion in the hours of work in mines.” (Daily Herald report, April 26, 1924.)

e “smile” is the comment of capitalism on its own ruse, after the ruse has
Succeeded.

5° FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

standard took place. The triumph of stabilisation was cele-
brated by the bankers of the world. It was obvious that this basis
was a false one, and would involve a boomerang outcome, as
was predicted at the time by Marxists.*

On this basis was built the restoration of capitalism after the
war, and subsequent upward movement and boom of 1927-9.

It is evident to all to-day that this basis of stabilisation was
a hollow and rotten one.

In the first place, the direct counter-revolutionary fighting
organisation was still built on the narrow circle of privileged
strata and their immediate range of influence, and had no wider
mass basis. The masses were still only reached by Social
Democracy or Communism.

Second, the weapon of Social Democracy was more and more
blunted by each successive use. Widespread disillusionment
grew with the failure of Social Democracy, not only to lead any
fight for socialism, but even to fight to maintain existing con-
ditions or defend the daily interests of the workers. The more
and more desperate use of ever extending disciplinary and
coercive measures by the Social Democratic leadership to main-
tain their power could not check this growing discontent. In
the European countries as a whole during this period the vote
of Social Democracy declined, and that of Communism
increased.

Third, the American Colossus, whose support and subsidies
facilitated the restoration of capitalism, was a colossus with
feet of clay. As rapid as was its expansion and apparent
prosperity and power in the war and post-war period, no less —
rapid was the bursting of the contradictions of its capitalist
structure into a more gigantic economic crisis than any pre-
viously experienced in any country of capitalism. But just:
as American capitalism had facilitated the rebuilding of

* See, for example, the Labour Monthly for February 1925, on “The Restoration
of Europe,” and for March 1925, on “The Gold Standard,” where it was pre-
dicted that, as soon as the flow of new loans and credits should begin to dry up,
and be exceeded by the necessary return movement of interest and amortisation,
requiring an enormous expansion of European exports in the overcrowded world
market, this would necessarily precipitate a new crisis, leading to the shattering
of the gold standard. To-day this analysis, made in 1925, and fully realised
years later, provides an instructive comparison of the effectiveness of the Marxi
line in contrast to the complacent contemporary statements during that period 0}
all the leaders and professorial experts of capitalism on the success of stabilisa
tion and of the return to the gold standard.

THE LAST ATTEMPT TO RESTORE PRE-WAR CAPITALISM 51

capitalism throughout the world, so the American crash brought
with it the crash of the whole structure of stabilisation through-
out the world.

Fourth, the very success for the moment of stabilisation, of
rationalisation, of the enormous expansion of the productive
structure, brought with it the intensification of all the problems
and conflicts of capitalism, and only resulted in the more rapid
and complete shipwreck. The gigantic productive mechanism
required a no less gigantic expansion of the market; unless it
could maintain its mass output at full working, its very much
heavier maintenance costs made it actually less economical than
more primitive technical forms.

The presuppositions of the attempted restoration and stabili-
sation of capitalism after the war had been the return to the
conditions of pre-war capitalism (which had in reality already
been undergoing far-reaching modifications and transforma-
tions already before the war), to the free market regulation of
supply and demand, to the automatic gold standard, etc. But
in fact monopoly capitalism had already before the war trans-
formed these conditions of classic capitalism beyond recognition,
and led to the growing disequilibrium which found expression
in the war. After the war, monopoly capitalism was enor-
tmously further developed, not only in the scale of the trusts
and in the concentration of the financial oligarchies, but in
the ever closer unification of the financial oligarchies and the
State machine, in the growing State economic intervention and
control, in the utilisation of direct political means for economic
“ ends (reparations, debts, loan policies, colonial policies), and the
rising network of tariffs, subsidies, quotas, licenses, and all forms
of restrictions to maintain the closed monopolist areas. The
whole resulting structure was top-heavy. The crash was
inevitable. Capitalism under these conditions was more and
more revealing itself, no longer as a “working system,” but as a
clogging fetter on production and exchange, with vast con-
centrations of conflicting and irresponsible power at strategic
Points, which could rock the whole system.

When the crash came with the world economic crisis, the
Conditions of monopoly capitalism still further prevented the

“normal” working out of the crisis, and intensified and pro-
longed the crisis. The great capitalist monopolies were able to
maintain relatively high profits in the midst of the depression,

52 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

by artificial measures of restriction, by maintaining monopoly
prices above the general price-level, and by passing on the
burden of the depression to the working masses, to the petit-
bourgeoisie and to the colonial peoples. The prices of cartel-
lised goods in Germany in the beginning of 1933 had only fallen
20 per cent. below the level of the first half of 1929, whereas the
price of non-cartellised goods had fallen 55 per cent. (League
of Nations World Production and Prices,p.109). The prices of
manufactured goods in the imperialist countries were main-
tained above the pre-war level, at the same time as the prices
of the raw-material products of the colonial peoples were
depressed to an average of half the pre-war level. But this
meant to intensify the contradictions at the root of the crisis.
In this way the workings of monopoly capitalism hindered the
“normal” solution of the crisis after the methods of “healthy”
capitalism.

Thus it became more and more evident, both from the
circumstances leading to the crisis, and from the further
development of the crisis, that the “restoration of capitalism”
of the pre-war type was no longer possible; that its breakdown
was not due to any particular, isolated, accidental causes
(reparations, debts, gold supply and distribution, etc., as was
at first suggested), but was inherent in the whole nature of the
attempt in relation to modern conditions of production and
economic organisation; and that in fact, as began to become
increasingly recognised in informed capitalist quarters, the
whole attempt at “restoration” during the nineteen-twenties
had been in reality a chase after an illusion.

As the recognition of this begins to spread within the capitalist
world, the conscious direction of capitalist policy begins to
change more and more openly—the decisive point of change
from the old to the new may be marked in 1933 with the advent
of Roosevelt in the United States, with the advent of Hitler in
Germany, and with the breakdown of the World Economic
Conference—and moves to new types of policy in accordance
with the changed conditions, and to corresponding new types
of economic and political organisation.

2. The Collapse of the Illusions of the Stabilisation Period.

The short-lived “stabilisation” and upward movement of |
capitalism in the nineteen-twenties gave rise to a host of myths |

COLLAPSE OF THE ILLUSIONS 53

and illusions as to the possibilities of permanent capitalist
prosperity, of a new era of harmonious capitalist advance, of
“organised capitalism,” of “super-capitalism,” of improving
standards for all without the need of class struggle or revolution.

These illusions were important at the time as the means by
which capitalism sought to maintain its hold on the masses
and to counter the issue of the social revolution, which con-
cretely confronted the world since 1917.

The collapse of these illusions with the world economic crisis
was of decisive importance in the development of capitalist
ideology to Fascism.

The main forms taken by these illusions were twofold, both
closely connected.

The first was the myth of American Capitalism as a new type
of capitalism, which had overcome the contradictions and crises
of the old capitalism, which had “ironed out the trade cycle,”
and found the key to permanent prosperity and the abolition
of poverty through continuously rising standards of the workers
alongside continuously rising profits. American Capitalism was
held out as the triumphant refutation of Communism. “Ford
versus Marx” was the common popularisation of this theme.

The second, closely connected with the first, was the con-
ception of “Organised Capitalism” as the new type of capital-
ism developing throughout the world, and building up under
capitalist leadership a rational productive world order, which
would eliminate the evils, poverty and discords of the old
nineteenth-century capitalism and replace them by unparal-
lelled universal prosperity. This conception found its final
expression in “Ultra-Imperialism,” or the conception that
Capitalist development was working towards a unified world
capitalist order, eliminating war and the divisions of imperialism
under the beneficent and pacific control of international
finance.

There is no doubt that these illusions were to some extent
shared by a portion of the leaders of capitalism during this
Period, who were dazzled by the apparent rapid recovery from
the war and the unparallelled advance in production, trade
and profits, and looked forward to a period of ever-growing
prosperity. Thus President Hoover declared on July 27, 1928:
“The outlook of the world to-day is for the greatest era of
commercial expansion in history.” And again, on August 11,

— ———-~

54 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

1928, in a speech accepting the Republican re-nomination for
President:

Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing.
We in America to-day are nearer to the final triumph over poverty
than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is
vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but
given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years,
and we shall soon with the help of God be within sight of the day
when poverty will be banished from this nation.

(New York Nation, June 15, 1932.)

Similarly Keynes in 1925, addressing the Liberal Summer
School under the title, “Am I a Liberal?” distinguished three
periods of economic development: the first, of scarcity, up to
the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; the second of abundance,
represented by the nineteenth century; and the third, of
“stabilisation,” now opening:

But we are now entering on a third era, which Professor Commons
calls the period of stabilisation, and truly characterises as “the actual
alternative to Marx’s Communism.”

(Keynes Am I a Liberal? 1925, reprinted in Essays in
Persuasion, 1931.)

The principal channel of these illusions throughout Western
Europe and America was Social Democracy. Through Social
Democracy these illusions were transmitted to the masses. The
“American Model” and “Ford versus Marx” became the
battle-cry of Social Democracy and the Second International in
the fight against Communism. Government-paid missions of
labour leaders were sent from Britain, Germany and other
countries to the United States to bring back the new gospel
from the Holy Land of Capitalism. It is unnecessary now to
repeat (although it would be profitable for those who come
newly to these questions to study this record of capitalist and
social democratic illusion and ignorance on the basic questions ,
of our epoch) the more fantastic utterances of all the principal
Labour Party, trade union and social democratic leaders and
theorists on the American Miracle and the triumph of capitalism
over Marxism.*

* Reference may be made to the present writer’s Socialism and the Living Wage,
published in 1927, for a collection of some of the typical British Labour expressions
—Labour Party, trade union and Independent Labour Party—in adoration of the
American Mammon, Fordism, the New Capitalist Era, Rationalisation, etc. It

COLLAPSE OF THE ILLUSIONS 55

What is important is that capitalism in this period, through
Social Democracy, was able to build up a powerful propaganda
in the working class of expectation of a new capitalist era, of
rising prosperity, of the unshakable strength of capitalism,
and of the refutation of revolutionary Marxism. The entire
machine of reformist socialism, in control of the working class
organisations, spread this propaganda.

Thus Snowden on behalf of the Labour Party declared:

He did not agree with the statement of some of their socialist
friends that the capitalist system was obviously breaking down.
He believed that we were to-day in a position very much like the
industrial revolution that took place about 120 years ago. Then the
steam age was ushered in.

Now we are entering in, I believe, the new age of electricity and
an age of chemistry. Wide-awake capitalists are seeing this, and they
are taking steps to appropriate for private profit and private owner-
ship the exploitation of these great forces. If they succeed in doing
that, then the capitalist system will be given a new and long and
more powerful lease of life.

(Snowden, Daily Herald report, April 17, 1926.)

Citrine, on behalf of the Trades Union Congress, defending
the policy of “Mondism” or alliance with capitalism, explained
that the policy of co-operation with the employers
aims at using the organised powers of the workers to promote effec-
tive co-operation in developing more effective less wasteful methods
of production, eliminating unnecessary friction and unavoidable
conflict in order to increase the wealth produced and provide a
steady rising standard of social life and continuously improving
conditions of employment for the workers.

(Citrine, in the Labour Magazine, October 1927.)

In this way the expectation of “‘a new and long and more
powerful lease of life” of capitalism, and of “a steady rising
Standard of social life and continuously improving conditions
of employment for the workers” within capitalism was
‘reached by Social Democracy.

Similarly the theorist of German trade unionism, Tarnov,

~ Wrote that Marxism was now refuted by modern capitalism:

We must distinguish two epochs in the development of capitalism;

may be noted that Labour Press reviews of this book, which in 1927 exposed the
clay feet and impending crash of the American Colossus, rejected its reasoning on
the grounds that it was based on the “obsolete” theories of Marxism, which only

ad reference to nineteenth-century capitalism and were refuted by modern
Capitalism, as demonstrated in America.

56 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the epoch of British capitalism, which was limited in its possibilities
of expansion, and the epoch of American capitalism, which on the
basis of the latest technical advances can unendingly expand and
develop.

For the first epoch, Marx and Lassalle were typical. They main-
tained that wages are determined by certain economic laws, that
they depend on the cost of labour-power, etc. For the second epoch,
Ford is typical. He proved that capitalism can prosper, while the
worker need not at the same time remain poor.

Along the same lines another leading theorist of German trade
unionism, Naphthali, wrote:

Cyclical development, under which there was a regular succession
of prosperity and crisis, of which Marx and Engels wrote, applies
to the period of early capitalism.

A younger theorist of the Labour Party wrote in a book
appearing as late as 1931:

There are grounds for thinking that the situation is changing for
the good. The wave of world revolution, on which the advance of
Communism is depending, has subsided. Capitalism has been suc-
cessful up to a point in stabilising itseli—though at the price of
admitting into its structure socialist elements which will ultimately
supersede it. . . . There is a good deal in the classic Communist pic-
ture of a world in the grip of ineluctable conflict that is out of date.

(A. L. Rowse, Politics and the Younger Generation, 1931,

Pp. 294.)

This writer argued further that the most modern capitalist

monopolies were showing an enlightened and _ benevolent

tendency of scientific world organisation which held out the

prospect of an ultimate “synthesis of common aims” with

socialism. Unfortunately for the writer, he chose as his example

of this progressive tendency of modern monopolist capitalism
and potential ally with socialism—Kreuger.

It is noteworthy that one of the greatest and most progressive of
modern finance corporations, the Swedish Kreuger and Toll Co.,
in a brilliant review of world conditions comes to conclusions not
dissimilar. (A quotation from their report follows):

When a great capitalist concern speaks in these terms, one seems
to see a glimpse of the future in which the existing conflict between
socialism and it is resolved in a synthesis of common aims. :

(Ibid., pp. 46-7.)

The Preface of this book was dated 29 July, 1931. The collapse -

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 57

and exposure of Kreuger and his swindles took place within
eight months. This writer for the “younger generation” was
belated in his repetition of social democratic propaganda of a
preceding period, which had already reached its climax and
completed its main currency in 1927-9.

What was the effect of this dominant line of propaganda and
policy of Social Democracy during the short-lived boom period
of post-war capitalism?

First, it completely concealed the real character of post-war
capitalism, the real issues of the period, and the real struggle
confronting them, for the working class. Thus the workers were
left confused and unprepared for the gigantic issues which faced
them, and which the crisis laid bare.

Second, the subsequent collapse of all these theories and of
the entire line of leadership with the advent of the world
economic crisis produced a tremendous disillusionment through-
out the petit-bourgeoisie and the section of the working class
who had followed the promises of Social Democracy. All the
hopes which had been built up collapsed.

Thus the path was laid open for the advance of Fascism in
the petit-bourgeoisie and in certain strata of the working class.

3. After the Collapse.

At first the full extent of the collapse involved in the world
economic crisis was not understood by the leaders of capitalism.
It was attempted at first to regard the crash of the autumn of
1929 asa crisis of speculation on the American Stock Exchange,
unrelated to the general economic situation.

On 29 October, 1929, President Hoover affirmed that “the
fundamental business of the country is on a sound and pros-
perous basis.” The Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Dr.
Klein, explained that “a decline in security prices does not
greatly affect the buying power of the community ... the
industrial and commercial structure of the nation is sound.”
On November 24 Dr. Klein stated that American business was
“healthy and vigorous and promises to be more so.” On
December 3 Hoover announced: ‘We have re-established con-
fidence. .. . A very large degree of unemployment which
would otherwise have occurred has been prevented.” On
January 1, 1930, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon, pro-
phesied: “I have every confidence that there will be a revival

58 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of activity in the spring.” On January ro Dr. Klein pro-
phesied: “I believe that the turn will come about March or
April.” On March 8 Hoover prophesied that the crisis would
be over in sixty days. On May 10, the Secretary of State,
Lamont, prophesied that “normal conditions should be
restored in two or three months.” On May 1, 1930, Hoover
announced: ‘‘We have now passed the worst.”

And so on, continuously, right into 1932. A similar list
could be compiled for the Labour Government and National
Government in Britain.

As late as 1930 appeared the well-known report of the Hoover
Committee on “Recent Economic Changes,” still celebrating
the American Miracle and the “economic balance” achieved
and concluding: “Our situation is fortunate, our momentum
is remarkable.” And indeed had not all the professors proved
that the “prosperity” must be permanent? Thus Professor
Carver, of Harvard, answering the question “How long will this
diffusion of prosperity last?” replied:

There is absolutely no reason why the widely diffused prosperity
which we are now witnessing should not permanently increase.

(Professor N. Carver, This Economic World, 1928, p. 396.)

Similarly another of the professors of economics had declared:

There is no fundamental defect in the organisation of the indus-
trial system which would prevent business enterprises being operated
constantly at a profit. Under the present industrial system, it is not
only desirable to have, and to maintain constantly, profits, industrial
progress and prosperity, but it is possible to attain this goal.

(Professor A. B. Adams, Progress, Profits and Prosperity, 1927.)

Very different was the tone of President Hoover’s next
Research Committee into Modern Trends, which reported in
the end of 1932, and found that:

In the best years millions of families are limited to meagre living.
Unless there is a speeding up of social inventions or a slowing down
of mechanical invention, grave mal-adjustments are certain.

The American standard of living for the near future must decline
because of lower wages caused by unemployment.

As the deeper and more lasting character of the crisis began
to be recognised, the attempt began to be made to seek for
some specific major cause, such as reparations and debts, the
gold supply, tariffs, etc. These questions came to the front, as

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 59

the intensity of the crisis began to centre in Europe in 1931, with
the Austrian bank crash and the inability of German debts pay-
ments. In the summer of 1931 the Hoover Moratorium post-
poned all reparations and debt payments for one year. This
did not prevent the collapse of the pound sterling in the autumn.
In the summer of the following year the Lausanne settlement
ended reparations.

With the collapse of the Dawes and Young Plans, and with
the collapse of the gold standard in Britain and other countries,
the two main pillars of the stabilisation period had fallen.

But the ending of reparations and debts payments did not
mitigate the crisis. On the contrary, it grew more intense in
1932, thus demonstrating that there were deeper factors at
work. A panic tone now began to pervade capitalist expression
in 1932. Already by the end of 1931 the economist, Sir George
Paish, had prophesied that “nothing can prevent a complete
breakdown within the next two months” (Manchester Guardian,
December 10, 1931).

In May 1932, the Conservative politician, L. S. Amery,
prophesied: ‘We are likely to have a complete collapse in
Europe within the next few months” (Times, May 28, 1932).
In the same month Lloyd George declared at Llandudno:
“Without some action international trade would collapse, and
there would be famine in the midst of plenty” (Manchester
Guardian Weekly, May 27, 1932).

In October 1932, the Governor of the Bank of England,
Montagu Norman, made his famous declaration that “the dif-
ficulties are so vast, the forces are so unlimited, precedents are
so lacking, that I approach the whole subject in ignorance and
in humility. It is too great for me. . . . I will admit that for
the moment the way, to me, is not clear” (Times, October 21,
1932). And his possibly apocryphal alleged declaration to the
Governor of the Bank of France was widely reported in the
Press to have prophesied collapse of the capitalist system
within twelve months.

The expectations of the bourgeoisie, in their moment of
panic, of a sudden automatic collapse of capitalism were no
more correctly founded than their previous expectations of a
rapid automatic recovery. However unlimited the destruction
that capitalism in decay and in crisis can cause, its final collapse
can only take place through the action of the proletariat in

60 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

overthrowing it. But in these expressions of the bourgeoisie
we can see the ideological reflection of the end of stabilisation,
and the preparation of the ground for the transition to the
desperate measures of Fascism.

The subsequent upward movement of 1933 and 1934,
although limited, revived new hopes of “recovery.” But in
fact the deeper changes and problems only became more
sharply laid bare by the peculiar character of this limited
upward movement. The crisis had passed from the lowest
point of 1932 to the phase of depression which should normally
mark the transition to a new cycle and advance to a new boom.
In fact, however, the development of this upward movement
on the basis of the general crisis of capitalism enormously
complicated the process and produced a situation without
parallel in the old “normal” capitalism. The limited upward
movement of production, and more rapid upward movement
of profits, still left a heavy proportion of the means of produc-
tion unused, still left mass unemployment in all the leading
countries, and was not accompanied by any corresponding
upward movement of world trade; the dislocation of inter-
national trade, currency and credit relations continued in even
intensified forms, with increasing State regulatory measures,
discriminations and trade war; the economy of each imperialist
Power was transformed more and more towards a type of war
basis. In this situation the “limits of recovery” became
widely recognised also by the leaders and spokesmen of the
bourgeoisie; all the contradictions of capitalism, both within
each country and internationally, were laid bare as sharpened
and not diminished in the new stage, which began to reveal
itself more and more, not as the herald of the transition to
economic recovery, but as the herald of the transition to new
tension and war.

Already in the third and fourth years of the crisis, that is, as
it had approached its lowest point, and as all the attempted
remedies and hopes of recovery had proved deceptive, attention
had begun to be increasingly concerned on the deeper issues
of the whole advance of technique and its obvious outstripping
of the existing forms of social organisation. The expression
“technological unemployment” had found increasing currency
during this period as a seemingly scientific explanation which
could be used to account for everything without raising the

AFTER THE COLLAPSE 61

sharp problem of property relations. Typical of this period was
the short-lived episode of ‘“technocracy,” which was boomed
throughout the world capitalist Press during the last quarter of
1932 and the beginning of 1933. The advocates of ‘“techno-
cracy” (whose leaders were in reality former camp-followers of
the labour movement and had drawn such inspiration as they
had from incompletely digested crumbs from the table of
Marxism) brought a wealth of evidence to show the advance of
productive power and its conflict with existing social forms. But
they drew therefrom the incorrect conclusion that the problem
is consequently a technical problem, to be solved under the expert
guidance of technicians through new utopian forms of com-
modity valuation (@ Ja Proudhon) within existing property
society. Thus, while their evidence of the conflict of the ad-
vance of technique with existing society was based on familiar
and in the main indisputable facts, they remained economically
and politically at sea. They failed to understand that the
social organisation of technique is incompatible with the capi-
talist class monopoly in the means of production, and that
consequently the basic problem of the present period is not a
technical problem, but a political problem—the breaking of the
capitalist class monopoly by the power of the working class.

The minds and thoughts of the leaders of capitalism, as the
development of the crisis was making increasingly clear the
basic contradictions confronting them and the basic conflict
between the advance of technique and the maintenance of class-
society, were moving in a different direction. They were
drawing with increasing clearness and consciousness the neces-
sary conclusions for the maintenance of class-society and the
restriction of the advance of technique. The old conceptions
of the “restoration” of capitalism of the pre-war pattern, of
“international capitalism,” of all the traditional theories of
the older schools of capitalist economists, who wrung their hands
at the new developments, were becoming more and more
clearly and consciously abandoned. In their place came to the
front the conceptions of so-called “national planning,” of the
closed monopolist area, of state economic control, of regulated
and in many cases restricted production, the whole society
becoming more and more organised for war as the necessary
path forward.

==CHAPTER III: THE NEW ECONOMICS AND POLITICS==

A WELL-KNOWN statement of Lenin in 1920 with reference to
the post-war crisis gave warning against the illusion that there
is “absolutely no way out” for capitalism; on the contrary,
“there are no absolutely hopeless situations.”

The meaning of this statement is often misunderstood,
because it is commonly quoted out of its context. Lenin was in
fact giving warning against “two widespread errors’: first,
the error of the “bourgeois economists,” who fail to see the
basic character of the crisis and regard it as a temporary
“unsettlement”; and second, the error of the passive revolu-
tionists, who expect an automatic collapse of capitalism.
Against the latter he pointed out that the “proof” of the col-
lapse of capitalism can only be, not any abstract logical
demonstration, but the successful action of the proletariat in
overthrowing it. Until then, capitalism remains in power,
drags on somehow, finds its own “way out” each time, no
matter what disturbances it passes through. In other words,
capitalism does not escape from the general crisis into which it
has fallen since 1914, and which is inevitable in the present stage
of conflict between the forces of production and the existing
relations of capitalist property ownership; it only passes from
one stage of crisis to another; there is no question of a temporary
“unsettlement.” But capitalism does not finally fall until the
proletariat overthrows it. This is the dialectic of the general
crisis of capitalism which Lenin was concerned to demonstrate.

The subsequent fourteen years have abundantly confirmed
the truth of this analysis. On the one hand, so long as the pro-
letariat is not ready and strong enough, capitalism remains in
power; on the other hand, capitalism does not recover from its
mortal sickness. It passes from one stage of crisis only to fall
into a new stage. At each stage, if the proletariat is not yet
ready to deal the death-blow, there remains a capitalist “way

out” which prevails. But the capitalist “way out” is no
62

a

2 ees

ces

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 63

harmonious solution, no simple restoration of order to a tem-
porary “ unsettlement.” The capitalist “way out” is at each
stage a way of increasing destruction, of mass-starvation, of
violence, of war, of decay. This is the lesson of the two decades
since the outbreak of the war. And this is the character of the
present stage of the economics and politics of capitalism result-
ing from the world economic crisis, and carrying to an extreme
point the whole development of imperialist decay.

Destruction in place of construction; restricted production in
place of increased production; closed “national” (i.e.,
imperialist) economic blocs in place of the formal objective of
international interdependence; social and political repression
in place of liberalism—these are the characteristic watchwords
of capitalism in the present period.

1. The Destruction of the Productive Forces.

The most direct, elementary and typical expression of the
present stage of capitalist policy is the organised collective
destruction of wealth and of the productive forces.

The purposeful destruction of commodities for economic
reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism, but an integral
part of its daily working from the beginning. It was in 1799
that Fourier first became convinced of the necessity of a new
form of social organisation when he found himself entrusted
with the task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a
quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food
till it had become unfit for use. Nevertheless, this rice had at
any rate been held back in the hope of sale, and was only
destroyed because it had become unfit for use. This was not
yet the modern principle of the wholesale destruction of good
rice, good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.

In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit
stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise prices is
inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in commodity economy
from the beginning. As Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of
Nations:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment
and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
public or in some contrivance to raise prices.

(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 10, Part ii.)

64 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the original voice
of classic capitalism, as an offence against the principles of
capitalist production, as “a conspiracy against the public.”
It has remained for our day that all the capitalist governments of
the world should meet together in the World Economic Con-
ference to proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most
enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the economists, the
supreme aim to restrict production and to raise prices. Thisisa
measure of the extreme stage of decay of capitalism.

The distinctive modern stage of capitalist policy for the
destruction of wealth and of the productive forces is marked by
three outstanding characteristics.

The first is the gigantic scale of destruction, conducted over
entire principal world areas of production, and calculated in
relation to world stocks.

The second is the direct government organisation and sub-
siding of such destruction and restriction of production by all
the leading imperialist governments.

The third is the extension of destruction, not only to the
destruction of existing stocks of commodities, but to the destruc-
tion of the productive forces, the ploughing up of crops and sown
areas, the artificial limitation of production, the dismantling of
machinery, as well as holding unused the labour power of
millions of workers.

The examples of this process throughout the capitalist world
are too familiar to require repetition. The burning of millions
of bags of coffee or tons of grain, in the midst of mass starvation
and poverty, have horrified the world. But all this has been
no accidental or exceptional happening through the action of
individuals, but on the contrary directly organised by all the
capitalist governments of the world, and in the forefront by the
most “progressive” governments, by the Roosevelt Government
in the United States, by Social Democratic governments, etc.

It is a tragic irony that men and women in New York should be
suffering the tortures of hunger while tens of thousands of pigs in
farrow are being slaughtered in Iowa by the command of the Gov-
ernment, and farmers in Kansas or Nebraska are burning their
grain. (News-Chronicle, October 17, 1933.)

The expenditures account recently published of the Agricul-
tural Adjustment Administration under the Roosevelt regime

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 65

affords a pretty picture of modern capitalism (Economist,
December 30, 1933):

EXPENDITURES UNDER THE A.A.A.

Allocation Approximate Sum
Cotton Acreage ploughed up 110 million dollars
1934 Cotton Acreage Reduction 150 |” y
Emergency Pig-Sow Slaughter 33 de
Corn-Hog Production Control 350) 2 2
Wheat Acreage Reduction 102 ” i
Tobacco Acreage Reduction ate oo? ee

This inspiring combination of Mammon and Juggernaut, let it
be remembered, is the worshipped idol of the Labour Party and
of the Trades Union Congress, as proclaimed at their meetings
at Hastings and Brighton in 1933.

From Denmark it was reported in November 1933 that cattle
were being slaughtered in the Government abattoirs at the rate
of 5,000 a week, for the carcasses to be burnt in the incinerators.
The Government established a special destruction fund; but
so great was the cost of destruction that Parliament had to be
approached for further credits for the construction of new
slaughter houses. This was under a Social Democratic Govern-
ment.

In the same way the British Labour Government had already
carried the Coal Mines Act for the limitation of the output of
coal——with such success that in the beginning of 1934 a London
firm actually ordered a consignment of coal from abroad, on
the grounds, as they stated, that owing to the limitation schemes
it was impossible to secure a delivery from British sources with
sufficient speed.

In Britain in 1930 the company “National Shipbuilders
Security, Limited” was formed, with power to borrow up to
three million pounds, for the purpose (according to the
Memorandum of Association) “to assist the shipbuilding
industry by the purchase of redundant and/or obsolete ship-
yards, the dismantling and disposal of their contents, and the
re-sale of their sites under restrictions against further use for
shipbuilding.” Within a few months its successful activities
were reported in the Press:

National Shipbuilders Security, Limited, has purchased Dalmuir
Shipbuilding Yard, owned by William Beardmore and Co., and in

66 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

consequence it is to be closed down by the end of the year. This
shipyard was one of the largest on the Clyde, employing six thousand
men during the war. Negotiations for the purchase and closing
down of other shipyards are in progress.

Up to the end of 1933 this new type of capitalist company had
bought up and closed down one hundred shipbuilding berths.
In the twelve months to June 1933, the world tonnage of
merchant shipping showed a net decrease of 1,814,000 tons,
more than half this decrease being in tonnage owned by
Britain.

Similarly, in the woollen textile industry the Woolcombers
Mutual Association, Limited, was formed early in 1933 “to
assist the woolcombing industry by the purchase and dis-
mantling of redundant and obsolete mills, plant and machinery
for re-sale under restrictive covenants against their further use
for woolcombing.”

The principal copper producers of the world entered into an
agreement at Brussels in December 1931, to limit production
during 1932 to 26 per cent. of the capacity of their mines.

The National Coffee Council of Brazil, from which country
comes two-thirds of the world’s coffee, decided in December
1931 to destroy twelve million bags of coffee. During 1932-3
9,600,000 quintals (equivalent to 1,248 million pounds weight)
were destroyed, an emergency tax being imposed on coffee
exports to finance the purchase and destruction of surplus
coffee (League of Nations World Production and Prices 1925-32,
p. 28). Up to the end of 1933 no less than 22,000,000 bags of
coffee had been disposed of by burning or dumping in
the sea.

The Governors of Texas and Oklahoma called out the
National Guard to take possession of the oil-wells and prevent
production.

The United States Department of Agriculture in the summer
of 1933 announced bounties of seven to twenty dollars per acre
to farmers for the destruction of the cotton crop. This was
successful in securing the ploughing in or mowing down of
11 million acres out of a total of 40 millions:

The Government hoped to take ten million acres out of production
by paying growers $7 to $20 per acre (according to the yield of their
land) for ploughing under or mowing down cotton already growing.
. . . The scheme was immediately successful in restricting acreage,

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES 67

over 11 million acres being ploughed in or mown down, reducing
the estimated acreage from 40.8 to 29.7 million acres.
(World Economic Survey 1932-3, pp. 313-4.)*

To the modern bourgeois mind and outlook this process of
wholesale destruction and restricting of production, in the midst
of poverty, appears as a natural and self-evident necessity.
Without sense of contradiction they proclaim it in the same
breath that they proclaim the necessity of “economy” and
“cuts” to the masses; and correctly they feel no contradiction,
since both are indispensable to the maintenance of capitalism
at the present stage. They preach to-day the policy of restric-
tion of production with the same sense of obvious correctness
and common sense with which they preached after the war the
policy of “increased production” as the path to prosperity.
Thus in the summer of 1933 we find the British Chancellor of
the Exchequer answering the “theorists” who imagine restric-
tion of production to be “a bad thing”:

To allow production to go on unchecked and unregulated in these
modern conditions when it could almost at a moment’s notice be
increased to an almost indefinite extent was absolute folly.

(Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, June 2,

1933: Times, June 3, 1933.)
In the same way the Economist was able to report with satis-
faction:

While there was an enormous over-expansion of productive
capacity before 1929, investment in capital equipment has been
severely curtailed since then, and a substantial proportion of existing
plant and machinery has become obsolete or has been scrapped.
There can be little doubt that substantial progress has already been
made in the re-adjustment of productive capacity to the lower level
of demand for consumers’ goods.—( Economist, May 13, 1933.)

“Productive capacity” must be “re-adjusted” to the “lower
level” of consumption of the impoverished masses. Such is the

* The practical execution of the scheme, however, was not without difficulties,
as witness the following item from the American Press on August 9, 1933:
SOUTHERN Motes Batx at PLowinc up Cotton.

Paul A. Porter of the Administration, just back from the South, reported to-
day that many farmers had complained they found difficulty in getting their
mules to “act right” while plowing up the cotton. It is not the mule’s fault at
that, Mr. Porter explained. All these years he has been lambasted if he walked
atop the cotton row. Now it is the reverse, and he is being asked to trample
down stalks he was carefully trained to protect.

The honours go to the mules rather than to President Roosevelt.

68 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

bed of Procrustes (who was also a bandit, but a less skilled and
large-scale bandit) to which modern capitalism in its extreme
stage of decay seeks to fit the tortured body of humanity.
The more obvious and glaring expressions of this process, the
burning of foodstuffs, the dismantling of machinery that is still
in good condition, strike the imagination of all. But all do not
yet see the full significance of these symptoms: first, the expres-
sion through these symptoms of the extreme stage of decay of
the whole capitalist order; second, the inseparable connection
of this process of decay with the social and political pheno-
mena of decay which find their complete expression in Fascism;
and third, the necessary completion and final working out of
this process in war. For war is only the complete and most
systematic working out of the process of destruction. To-day
they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life.
To-morrow they will be burning living human bodies.

2. The Revolt against the Machine.

But this revolt of modern capitalism against the productive
forces, against the development of technique, and for the arti-
ficial restriction of production, goes further. It begins to turn,
ideologically, and even in certain concrete propositions and
experimental attempts, into a direct revolt against the machine.

A century ago, in 1831, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge published a brochure, The Results of Machinery,
addressed to the working men of the United Kingdom. ‘The
little book gives a glowing picture of the glories of invention, of
the permanent blessings of machinery, of the triumphant step
that man takes in comfort and civilisation every time that he
transfers one of the meaner drudgeries of the world’s work from
human backs to wheels and pistons. The argument is developed
with great animation and vigour, and the writer, as he
skirmishes with the workman’s prejudices, travels over one
industry and one country after another” (J. L. and B. Ham-
mond, The Town Labourer, p. 17).

To-day the tables are turned. It is no longer the bourgeoisie
who are teaching the ignorant workers, displaced and starving
in millions through the advance of machinery under capitalist
conditions, the blessings and advantages of machinery in the
abstract. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie, now that they no
longer see rising profits through the advance of machinery, but

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 69

instead see their whole position and rule more and more visibly
menaced by its development, change their tune; they deplore
the evils of the too rapid advance of machinery; their tone
becomes increasingly one of hostility, fear and hatred to the
machine. It is the working class who, despite their still heavy
sufferings through the advance of the machine under capitalism,
now become the conscious champions of the machine, recognis-
ing in it the powerful ally of their fight for a new order, and
seeing with clear understanding its gigantic future beneficent
role once it becomes liberated for social use under the leader-
ship of the working class and in communist society.

Even the scientists and technicians, the inventors of new
machinery and technical processes in the service of capitalism,
begin increasingly, with the exception of a small and courageous
minority, to turn against their own children, and to discuss, in
technical and scientific conferences and journals, the necessity
of arresting the advance of invention, of artificially restricting
the output of new inventions.

Thus the working class is revealed as the sole consistent pro-
gressive force of present society. The capitalists are the modern
Luddites.

This tendency of the capitalist reaction against the machine
is not confined to the social philosophers and speculators; to a
Bertrand Russell, with his idealisation of the decaying Chinese
pre-capitalist civilisation in the moment of its dissolution before
the advancing mass revolution; to a Spengler, the favourite
and most-quoted philosopher of Fascism, with his unconcealed
hatred of machine-civilisation and worship of his mythical
“primitive man roosting solitary as a vulture... without
any communal feeling, in complete freedom, with no ‘we’ like
a herd of mere generic specimens . . . strong, solitary men”
(see his revealing book Der Mensch und die Technik—Man and
Technique); or, for the matter of that, to a Gandhi and his
spinning-wheel, the adored of the Western European intel-
ligentsia, and true prototype, not of a young bourgeoisie, but of
a bourgeoisie born old without ever having known youth, the
consistent expression of one aspect of capitalism in decay (the
Passive reactionary), just as Spengler is the expression of the
other aspect (the sophisticatedly bloody, combatant reaction-
ary).

But this same tendency reveals itself increasingly in the states-

7° FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

men and politicians, in the journalists and publicists, in the
scientists and technicians. We have already seen how a Times
editorial in 1930 could discuss “how perilously the machine
has run ahead of man” and query “the advantages residing
in a system which relies on the mass production of standardised
articles” (March 8, 1930); or how the Hoover Research Com-
mittee in 1932 could speak of the possible necessity of a “slow-
ing down of mechanical invention.”*

In the same way Sir Alfred Ewing, delivering the Presidential
address in 1932 to the British Association, the annual gathering
of recognised, conventional bourgeois science, could declare:

In the present-day thinkers’ attitude towards what is called
mechanical progress we are conscious of a critical spirit. Admiration
is tempered by criticism; complacency has given way to doubts
doubt is passing into alarm.

An old exponent of applied mechanics may be forgiven if he
expresses something of the disillusion with which, now standing out-
side, he watches the sweeping pageant of discovery and invention
in which he used to take unbounded delight. It is impossible not
to ask, Whither does this tremendous procession tend? What after
all is its goal? What its probable influence upon the future of the
human race?

Man was ethically unprepared for so great a bounty. . . . More
and more does mechanical production take the place of human
effort. So man finds that, while he is enriched with a multitude of
possessions and possibilities beyond his dreams, he is in great measure
deprived of one inestimable blessing, the necessity of toil. . ..

He has lost the joy of craftsmanship. . . . In many cases un-
employment is thrust upon him, an unemployment that is more
saddening than any drudgery.

* As an example of the popularisation by finance-capital of this reactionary
propaganda in its most fantastic form may be noted an article prominently pub-
lished in the millionaire-owned Sunday Express under the title, “Make Way for the
Small Man,” denouncing the illusion of “Progress” and the failure of “mass
production,” and calling for the return to “the small owner” as the ideal:

“The unit of the State is the self-supporting farm with first thoughts for sub-
sistence and only second thoughts for the market—which might be mainly next
door and consist of craftsmen supplying the needs of neighboring farms.

“This simple farm-and-craft relationship is essential to the health and wealth
of any civilisation. . . . We should try to recover it.” (Sunday Express, Janu-
ary 15, 1933.)

Naturally the finance-capitalists would be highly indignant if this infantile
propaganda, which they broadcast by the most highly developed ‘“mass-
production” machinery, for the befogging of their readers, were suggested to be
seriously applied to their mammoth undertakings, including their mammoth Press.
The preaching of monopoly-capital against monopoly is an old story.

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 71

And the world finds itself glutted with competitive commodities,
produced in a quantity too great to be absorbed. . . .

Where shall we look for a remedy? I cannot tell.

(Sir Alfred Ewing, Presidential Address to the British

Association, 1932: Daily Telegraph report, Sept. 1, 1932.)
This is the confession of bankruptcy of official bourgeois science
before the modern world situation. Not the social conditions
which lead to the abuse of the results of science and invention
are seen as the problem, but instead the gifts of science and
invention appear to this modern monk as gifts of the devil, for
which man was “ethically” unprepared—as if “ethics” were
independent of the social conditions from which in fact they
take their character. For solution, this leader of modern bour-
geois science confesses his impotence and ends characteristically
with a prayer to “God.”

Not only the leaders of bourgeois science, but the financial
and political leaders of capitalism move in the same direction.
An outstanding demonstration of this was the speech of the
most “progressive” and “advanced” financier-politician of
French capitalism, Joseph Caillaux, on the World Crisis in the
spring of 1932 before the Press Association in Paris, and given
also in less complete form before the Cobden Club in London
(the following citations are from the report of his Paris speech
in the Déepéche Economique et Financiere). His theme was that
“the machine is devouring humanity” (“la machine dévore
l’homme): “It is necessary to take control of technique. It is
necessary to prevent inventions suddenly upsetting production.”
How? He makes two concrete propositions. First, to set up “in
every State, Departments of Technique, to discipline inventions,
paying compensation for them, and not allowing them to come
into use save in proportion as existing plant is amortised.”

The second alternative is “taxation”: “to impose heavy
taxes on all inventions of machinery.” “Science must be ham-
strung (“il faut que la science soit jogulée”). This is not the
language of an escaped lunatic, but of a cool, far-seeing
politician and skilled financier of capitalism.*

* Another example of the current tendency is afforded by the recent book of the
leader of the “Young Conservative” politicians, Lord Eustace Percy, under the
title, Government in Transition. In this book, whose programme shows strong
Fascist influence, “Lord Eustace ends his inquiry in a purely utopian vein: he pre-
sents us to a society which has emerged out of the vices of the machine age and is
Prepared to resort to the simple crafts of the pre-machine age.” (Times, January
19, 1934.) Here Conservatism in decadence looks longingly backward to the tra-
ditions of the pre-capitalist feudal reaction.

72 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Nor is this tendency confined to theoretical expression; there
are not wanting the first signs of experiments in practice. At
Philadelphia, for example, the attempt was made to meet
unemployment by substituting manual labour for machines in
some departments of municipal work:

At Philadelphia the city has decided to abandon the use of a
large number of machines in some departments of municipal work
and use manual labour instead.

(New York Correspondent of the London Times,
December 12, 1930.)

Thus the final outcome of the most advanced centre of capitalist
machine-development is to return to manual labour. The
lesson of Philadelphia, the third greatest manufacturing city of
the greatest manufacturing country of the capitalist world, is a
sign and portent of where decaying capitalism would ultimately
reach, if only it had the power to arrest development and
stabilise.

In German Fascism this tendency is strongly to the front, and
receives official encouragement by the Government. Thus the
Thuringian Government in July 1933, prohibited the use of
machinery for glass-blowing. The Acht Uhr Abendblatt, com-
menting on this decision with approval, declared:

This is the first example in modern times of the State stopping the
metallic arms of the machine. Its steel limbs, by accomplishing the
work which formerly gave nourishment to hundreds of human
hands, have made the machine the mother of working-class
misery.

On July 15, 1933, the Reich Government issued an Act pro-
hibiting the installation of any further machines for rolling
tobacco leaves and the re-starting of any established machinery
which had ceased working.

The preamble to the Act states that the progressive mechanisation
of the cigar industry was in process of destroying the livelihood of
the population of certain districts. . .. Machinery has rendered
superfluous about 80,000 workers, or five-sixths of the present labour
force. . . . It is stated that the output of rolling machines is about
1,000 to 1,200 cigars an hour, while that of a handworker is only
70. . . . The power given by the Act to the Ministers concerned

THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MACHINE 73

to limit production in mechanised undertakings is expected to ensure
a gradual return to handwork. (Manchester Guardian, Sept. 15, 1933.)
In the beginning of 1934 it was reported from Germany:

The official policy towards the use of machinery is confused;
special tax exemption was last year granted on installation of indus-
trial machinery; but the party ideology rejects machinery; and
Government prohibitions against its use increase. This week the
instalment of automatic machines in the hollow-glass industry was
forbidden; and production was limited. In the cement branch...
the opening of new or expansion of old works has been forbidden.
. . . Forbidding the use of machinery, the express aim of which is
to keep production costs high in the interest of craftsmen producers,
hampers export. The restriction policy is disliked by the more
enterprising manufacturer.—(Economist, February 24, 1934.)

Return to handwork! Return to the Stone Age! Such be-
gins today to appear as the highest teaching, and even in
isolated instances the practical working out, of the most ad-
vanced capitalism and fascism.

In fact, the drive of capitalist competition prevents its reaiisa-
tion. Thus even in the German Government law for the pro-
hibition of new machinery in the cigar-making industry, an
exception was explicitly made in respect of production for
export; and the contradiction underlying the whole policy is
still more sharply brought out in the last extract cited above.

But wherever capitalism is able to reach towards fully secured
close monopoly, which is the whole tendency and aim of modern
capitalism (though never fully realised), and the whole essence
of the economics of Fascism, the inevitably inseparable tendency
to retrogression of technique and decay is at once visible
(compare the frequent examples of buying up and suppression
of new inventions by strongly established trusts). In the
abstract theoretical hypothesis of capitalism being able to con-
solidate into a single world monopoly, such general decay would
inevitably follow and indeed be the condition of its existence
(virtual prohibition of extended reproduction of capital). Only
in socialist monopoly does the incentive to improvement of
technique remain, since every improvement of technique means
an increase in general standards and diminution of labour.

The revolt of modern capitalist ideology against the machine
can never be realised in practice; on the contrary, the capitalists
are compelled to fight each other with ever sharper weapons,

74 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But this ever-growing, though unrealisable, aspiration of
modern monopoly capitalism towards the retardation of
development of technique, is a symptom of an economic order
in decay. Fascism, with its propaganda of the return to the
primitive and the small-scale, alongside actual service in
practice to all the requirements of the most highly concentrated
finance-capital, is the complete and faithful expression of this
profoundly reactionary character of modern monopoly capital-
ism, and of the deep contradiction at its root.

3. The Revolt against Science.

The more and more conscious reactionary role of modern
capitalism, and the growing ideological revolt against the
machine and sense of antagonism to the development of tech-
nique, necessarily expresses itself on a wide front in the entire
ideological field. A transformation in the dominant trends of
capitalist ideology becomes more and more conspicuous. This
transformation expresses itself in the growing revolt against
science, against reason, against cultural development, against all
the traditional philosophical liberal conceptious which were
characteristic of ascendant capitalism; in favour of religion,
idealistic illusions, denial of the validity of science, mysticism,
spiritualism, multiplying forms of superstition, cults of the
primitive, cults of violence, racial charlatanry (“‘blood” and
“Aryan” nonsense) and all forms of obscurantism.

This tendency was already visible from the outset of the
imperialist epoch, and especially before the war. It has enor-
mously increased in the post-war period.

The relationship between science and the bourgeoisie has
never in fact been an easy one. Only in the first revolutionary
period of the bourgeoisie (in seventeenth-century England or in
later eighteenth-century France) has there been real enthusiasm.
In the nineteenth century, with the bourgeoisie in power,
although the enormous profits to be won from the results of
science led to universal official recognition, laudations and a
somewhat stingy financial support, the suspicion was always
present that the development of the scientific outlook might
undermine the social foundations. Hence the gigantic battles
of the nineteenth century over each advance of science. The
leaders of nineteenth-century bourgeois science were still
warriors in the midst of a widely hostile social camp. Educa-

THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE 75

tion was still in general jealously guarded on pre-scientific lines
and under clerical control.

But what is conspicuous about the present period is that the
offensive against science is to-day led, no longer merely by the
professional reactionaries and clericalists, but above all by the
majority of the more prominent, officially recognised and highly
placed leaders of bourgeois science. The main bulk of the
officially distinguished, be-knighted and decorated scientists of
the bourgeoisie have openly joined the clerical camp. They
proclaim with wearisome iteration the reconciliation of science
and religion, the overthrow for the thousandth time of the errors
of materialism, the limitations of scientific knowledge, and the
supremacy of the “higher” aspects of life which cannot be
approached along scientific lines. In a spate of lectures, essays,
treatises and books, whose popular, vulgarising and often
grossly unscientific character betrays their propagandist aim,
they endeavour to utilise each new advance of research and dis-
covery, not in order therefrom to reach a more scientific under-
standing of reality, but in order to throw doubt on the whole
basis of science, and on this ground to proclaim the vindication
of the particular tribal gods of their locality.

“ These utterances, still further vulgarised, are broadcast a
millionfold by all the machinery of capitalist publicity as the
“last word of science.” In this way, at the same time as for
technical and for strategical purposes science has to be more and
more widely employed in practice, a basically reactionary and
even anti-scientific outlook is endeavoured to be pumped into
all the capitalist-controlled forms of “popular culture.”

This transformation in outlook on the part of the responsible
leaders of bourgeois science (with the honourable exceptions of a
small and courageous minority) was recently illustrated in the
treatment of the fiftieth anniversary of Darwin’s death in 1932.
This anniversary provided the opportunity for the entire forces
of capitalist culture to proclaim, either the complete obso-
lescence of the theories of the hated Darwin, or alternatively,
the complete reconciliation of Darwinism with the religious
conceptions which he fought, and the final refutation of the
atheism to which he secretly (Darwin’s letter to Marx) ad-
hered. The distinguished scientist and leading authority on
Darwinism in England, Sir J. A. Thomson, wrote for general pub-

L lic consumption in the Daily Telegraph (April 19, 1932) under

76 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the singular title: “Darwin Fifty Years After: We Now Accept
Evolution, Yet Believe in a Creator”:

There are some changes in our ideas since the hot-headed days
that followed the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.

Thus many of us are clear that there is no inconsistency in
accepting the evolution idea and yet believing in a Creator who
ordained the original Order of Nature in some very simple form.

The evolution theory does not try to “explain” things in the
deeper sense. Evolutionists . . . leave to philosophy and religion
all questions of purpose and meaning. This is a change for the
better.

The shamefaced “agnosticism” of the nineteenth-century sci-
entists has given place in the twentieth century to proclamation
of “a Creator.” This is an excellent example of the “progress
backwards” of capitalism in decay.

A further example of the transformation was afforded by an
inquiry into “The Religion of Scientists” conducted by the
Christian Evidence Society and published under this title in
1932. A questionnaire was sent to all Fellows of the Royal
Society; replies were received from 200. The results on some of
the principal questions showed the following proportions:

. Do you credit the existence of a Spiritual Domain?
Favourable, 121; Intermediate, 66; Unfavourable, 13.

. Is belief in evolution compatible with belief in a Creator?
Favourable, 142; Intermediate, 52; Unfavourable, 6.

. Does Science negative the idea of a personal God as taught by

Jesus Christ?
Favourable (to Christianity), 103; Intermediate, 71; Un-
favourable, 26.

Thus, omitting the intermediates, a “Spiritual Domain” (the
expression is explained in the book as having been intended to
mean the denial of materialism) wins by 9 to 1. “God” (“a
Creator”) wins by 23 to1. Christianity wins by 4to1. These
are the answers of a representative group of distinguished
bourgeois scientists in 1932.

We are not here concerned with the philosophical or theo-
retical significance of this transformation. What is important
for present purposes is the social significance and role of this
development.

The general fact of this avowed transformation of outlook of
the majority of outstanding official representatives of bourgeois

== —* ee Se

THE REVOLT AGAINST SCIENCE Tad

science, the loudly heralded movement against “materialism”
and “the limitations of science,’’ towards ‘‘idealism’’ and
religion, is familiar ground. How far this alleged movement of
opinion is really true of the best bourgeois scientists, or of the
mass of younger working rank-and-file scientists, is less impor-
tant than the fact that the dominant official influences both in
the bourgeois scientific world, and in general bourgeois discus-
, sion, actively support, foster, patronise, encourage and in every
possible way advertise and press forward this trend.

What is not equally clear to all is the direct connection of this
ideological trend with the whole process of capitalism in decay.
It is at once its reflection, and helps to carry it forward. The
revolt against science, which bourgeois society to-day en-
courages in the ideological sphere, at the same time as it
utilises science in practice, is not only the expression of a dying
and doomed social class; it is an essential part of the campaign
of reaction. This is the basis which helps to prepare the ground
for all the quackeries and charlatanries of chauvinism, racial
theories, anti-semitism, Aryan grandmothers, mystic swastikas,
divine missions, strong-man saviours, and all the rest of the
nonsense through which alone capitalism to-day can try to

~ maintain its hold a little longer.

All this nonsense may appear on a cool view, when some par-
ticularly wild ebullition of a Hitler or a Goebbels about blood
and the joy of the dagger and the Germanic man and the
primeval forest, is produced, as highly irrational and even
insane. But in fact it is as completely rational and calculated,
for the present purposes of capitalism, as a machine-gun or a
Zinoviev Letter election. There is method in the madness. For
capitalism can no longer present any rational defence, any pro-
gressive role, any ideal whatever to reach the masses of the
population. Therefore it can only endeavour to save itself on
a wave of obscurantism, holding out fantastic symbols and
painted substitutes for ideals in order to cover the reality of the
universally hated moneybags. Fascism is the final reduction

of this process to a completely worked out technique.

In unity with this revolt against science goes the general
cultural reaction, the revolt against culture, the revolt against
education, the cutting down of education in all capitalist
countries, the increasing reactionary discipline and militarisa-
tion in the universities and schools, and—the final and complete

78 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

symbol of the culminating stage revealed by Fascism—the
burning of the books.*

4. The Revolt against “Democracy” and Parliament.

This economic, social and ideological process finds also its
political reflection.

From the outset of the imperialist era liberalism and parlia-
mentarism has in fact been on the wane.

Parliamentary democracy was essentially the form through
which the rising bourgeoisie carried through its struggle against
feudalism and against old privileged forms, carrying the working
class in their wake in this struggle. On this basis was built
up liberalism in its heyday in the nineteenth century. The
workers were drawn in the tow of bourgeois liberal politics.
It was the achievement of Marxism to cut through this bond-
age. In Britain, where the capitalist world monopoly gave the
bourgeoisie superior resources and the possibility to create a
privileged section of a minority of the workers, Marxism made
the slowest progress, and liberal-labour politics survived longest.

As the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
began to replace the old struggle against the pre-bourgeois
forms, a political shifting followed. The old Liberal Parties
began to wane before Social Democracy; the bourgeoisie
increasingly coalesced with the remnants of the older (monarch-
ist, militarist, landowning) forces. Nevertheless, parliamentary
democracy remained as the most useful basis of the bourgeoisie
for the deception of the masses and holding in of the class
struggle, so long as this means of restraining the workers was
adequate.

To-day, when the intensification of the class struggle can no
longer be held in by these forms, the bourgeoisie increasingly

* A sidelight from another angle of the anti-intellectual movement of capitalism
in decline is afforded by the following extract from the technical journal, The
IRustrated Carpenter and Builder:

“Nowadays admission to many factories depends on passing ‘intelligence
tests.’ . . . These tests are not always designed to select the most intelligent of
applicants; for in a certain Continental factory the management admit that they
use intelligence tests to eliminate the alert and intelligent among the applicants,
because the work is so sub-divided and mechanised that its monotony has the
effect of turning intelligent workers into Communists.”

It is a striking indication of the social and cultural decay inherent in the final
stages of capitalism, when elaborate scientific methods begin to be used, no longer
to promote, but to eliminate intelligence from among the workers, because intel-
ligent workers become Communists.

THE REVOLT AGAINST “DEMOCRACY” AND PARLIAMENT 79

turns its back on parliamentary democracy in favour of more
direct and open forms of coercion and the authoritarian state.
This is a measure of the weakening of the bourgeoisie.

The era of imperialism, of centralised monopoly capitalism,
already increasingly made the parliamentary democratic
forms a caricature. While in appearance the extension of the
suffrage was increasing “democracy,” in reality the governing
role was being directly removed from parliament and concen-
trated in the executive, into the Cabinet, and from the Cabinet
into the Inner Cabinet, and even into extra-parliamentary
forms (Committee of Imperial Defence, etc.) wholly removed
from “democracy,” (so the preparation of the war of 1914:
compare the statement of the Conservative, Lord Hugh Cecil,
that the war was decided “not by the House of Commons or by
the electorate, but by the concurrence of Ministers and Ex-
Ministers,” letter to the Times, April 29,1916.) Corresponding
to the realities of monopoly capitalism, the routine of govern-
ment was in fact in the hands of an increasingly strengthened
and centralised bureaucracy; effective power and the decision
of policy lay with the handful of leaders of finance-capital;

.while the puppet-show of parliament, responsible Ministers,
elections and nominally opposing parties, became increasingly
recognised as a decorative appendage of the Constitution for
purposes of window-dressing. This was equally conspicuous
in the ‘‘democracies” of the United States, France and Britain.

Nevertheless, Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in the
earlier or pre-war period of imperialism—but in the new form
of Liberal imperialism with its deceptive programme of
“social reform.” The super-profits of imperialism provided
the means in the imperialist countries to endeavour to buy off
the revolt of the advancing workers with a show of meagre con-
cessions to a minority. Bismarck had already shown the way
to utilise “social reform” legislation, alongside coercion, in order
to endeavour to stem the advance of Socialism. On the basis of
imperialist exploitation was built up the short-lived twentieth-
century renaissance of Social Reform Liberalism of the Lloyd
George era, which tried to stem the rising tide of working-class
revolt with a loudly advertised show of concessions and con-
cern for the “condition of the people,” and with noisy cam-
Paigns of denunciation of the landlords and the aristocracy,
while the real aims of imperialism and war-preparation were

80 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

pressed forward, and all the forces of the State were employed
against the militant working-class struggle.

The Social Democratic and Labour Parties after the war
tried to carry forward the role of Social Reform Liberal
Imperialism, but under basically changed conditions—in a far
more advanced stage of the class struggle, and in the midst of
the crisis and decline of capitalism. Therefore they could not
attain any corresponding measure of success; the appeal they
could make to the masses on behalf of parliamentary reformism
no longer evoked enthusiasm; the reforms they could achieve
were limited by the economic crisis, the weakening national
finances, and the weight of the war-debts they had to carry;
the repressive and coercive measures they had to exercise
against the class struggle were far heavier.

But even the limited measure of social reform concessions
began to break down and dwindle under the pressure of the
economic crisis. With the rising colonial revolts, the basis of
imperialism began to weaken. The stream of super-profits
diminished; the conflict of the rival monopolist capitalisms
became more intense. Thus a reverse movement set in, no
longer to the extension of social concessions, but on the con-
trary to the cutting down and withdrawal of concessions already
granted. This process received its powerful demonstration in
the history and fall of the Second Labour Government and the
crisis of 1931.

From this point the class struggle is forced increasingly into
the open, bursting through the thin cover of liberal and parlia-
mentary democratic illusions. Even Social Democracy is forced
to speak of the “collapse of reformism” and the “end of social
reform,” and the consequent inevitability of a “frontal”
attack on capital (so the general propaganda line of the
Leicester Labour Party Conference in 1932), at the same time
as it merges in practice still more completely into alliance with
monopoly capitalism and repression of the workers (the “Public
Corporations” line, etc.). The confrontation of the working
class and capitalism can no longer be covered by liberal and
reformist pretences of improving conditions under capitalism.

From this point the demand becomes increasingly strong
from the representatives of capitalism for the throwing aside or
modification of the old parliamentary democratic forms, which
no longer serve their purpose, and the establishment of open

THE REVOLT AGAINST “DEMOCRACY” AND PARLIAMENT 81

and strengthened forms of repression and dictatorship. The
revolt against “democracy” and “parliament,” which was
already marked in bourgeois circles before the war, but was
still confined in direct expression to the narrower reactionary
circles, now become general in all current expression. The
demand of an Owen Young for a “holiday of parliaments”
(“If a holiday of armaments is good, a holiday of parliaments
would be better,” speech at the Lotus Club, New York, on
December 6, 1930); or of a Sir William Beveridge for “a world
dictator” (Halley Stewart lecture in February 1932); or the
announcement of a Gordon Selfridge to the American Chamber
of Commerce in London on his return from the United States
that ‘as an American he spoke to fifty representative men in
America, and did not find one who disagreed with his view that
democracy in that great country could not possibly succeed as a
system of government . . . a country should be managed as
a great business was managed” (Times, June 22, 1932): these
and a thousand similar expressions are typical of the present
outlook of the representatives of finance-capital, and are paral-
leled by the sceptical tone of the parliamentarians themselves,
the openly anti-parliamentary tone of the Press, or of the once
“progressive” literary intelligentsia (Shaw, Wells), no less than
the direct attack of a Churchill, Lloyd or Tardieu.

The Social Democratic and Labour Parties, moving parallel
with capitalism, undergo a similar transformation of outlook,
and begin to speak increasingly of the “limitations of parlia-
ment” and the necessity of strengthening “discipline” and
“authority” in the State (‘“‘Neo-Socialism” in France, the
Socialist League propaganda in England; see also Laski’s De-
mocracy in Crisis, 1933, and Vandervelde’s L’ Alternative, 1933,
for the weakening of the old abstract-democratic assumptions ).

The practice of modern capitalism moves increasingly away
from parliamentary-democratic forms to strengthened and more
open coercion and class-dictatorship. This applies not only to
the directly Fascist states, but also to the diminishing number
of imperialist states which still remain nominally “democratic.”
The Roosevelt emergency powers, and the National Govern-
ment in Britain, represent stages and phases of a process of
transformation, corresponding in some respects to the Briining
stage in Germany. Modern legislation increases the powers of
the executive, of the bureaucracy and of the police, and more

82 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and more restricts the limits of the legal working-class move-
ment, of the right of meeting and association, and of the right
to strike. This process of the “transformation of democracy”
in the Western imperialist countries, and preparation of the
ground for Fascism, is further examined in a later chapter.

The stream against parliamentary democracy is rising on all
sides, although this does not mean that capitalism has yet
exhausted its uses. But the real issue is commonly confused by
the vulgar propagandist treatment that the attack on ‘‘democ-
racy” is a parallel attack of Communism and Fascism. On the
contrary. The critique of Communism or Marxism against
capitalist democracy is not that it is “too democratic,” but
that it is “not democratic enough,” that it is in reality only a
deceitful cover for capitalist dictatorship, and that real democ-
racy for the workers can only be achieved when the proletarian
dictatorship breaks the power of the capitalist class. The move-
ment of modern capitalism, on the other hand, against parlia-
mentary democracy is a movement to strengthen repression of
the working class and establish the open and violent dictator-
ship of monopoly capital. The reality of this issue between
oligarchic dictatorship and working-class freedom breaks
through the old illusory trappings of parliamentary democracy.

5. “National Self-Suficiency.”

A no less strongly marked expression of the modern ten-
dencies of capitalism is the movement towards so-called
“national self-sufficiency,” ‘“autarchy,” “national planning,”
“fsolationism,” etc. This tendency has come most strongly to
the front since the world economic crisis, and the breakdown
of the World Economic Conference revealed its strength.
This development is the logical working out of imperialist
decay.

Of this tendency as the dominant tendency in the latest phase
of world politics the League of Nations economic expert, Sir
Arthur Salter, wrote in his standard work Recovery in 1931:

World trade may be restricted to small dimensions, through every
country excluding imports of everything which (at whatever
expense) it can make or produce at home. Along this line of
development, America might withdraw within herself, arresting
and almost abandoning her foreign investments, sacrificing her
export trade, and cultivating an isolated self-sufficiency on the

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 83

lower level of prosperity which this would necessitate. As the
world closed against her, Great Britain might be forced to sup-
plement such preferential trade with the Dominions and India
as may be practicable, with a policy of exploiting and closing in
her non-self-governing Empire from the rest of the world, against
all the traditions and principles of her history. This line of
development would mean loss to every country, impoverishment
to countries like Switzerland which have no similar resources, and
an organisation of the world into separate units and groups which
would soon be dangerous and ultimately fatal to world peace. It is
along this path that the world is now proceeding.

(Sir Arthur Salter, Recovery, pp. 192-3.)

This description, although faithfully reflecting one side of
the tendency, and to some extent indicating the possible out-
come, is not a fully correct description of the actual process.
For, while the propaganda speaks in terms of internal self-
sufficiency, the reality of the policy remains the fight of the
imperialist powers, on the basis of this strengthened internal
organisation, for the world market.

In fact, the movement towards the closed monopolist area is
not in itself new, but is inherent in the whole development of
imperialism, whose essential character is the denial and ending
of free trade. What is new is only the extreme intensity with
which this monopolist policy is now pursued, and the com-
plexity of the weapons which are now brought into play for its
realisation.

Not only the old tariff weapons, which are now brought to
unheard of heights, but a host of new weapons—surtaxes
variable at a moment’s notice, quotas, embargoes, exchange
restrictions, currency control, complex trade alliances, State
subsidies, and direct State economic control—are now brought
into play by the imperialist giants in their ever more desperate
conflict for closed markets, for privileged areas of exploitation,
and for control of the sources of raw materials.

The intensified conflict of the imperialist Powers for the
shrinking world market makes this development to new and ever
flercer weapons of economic warfare, and essentially reactionary
choking of the channels of free world trade, not merely some
foolish and mistaken policy of particular statesmen, but the
inevitable development and working out of the inner laws of
imperialism. In vain the theoretical economic experts of the
League of Nations throw up their hands in distress and deplore

84 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the universal “loss” and “impoverishment” caused by such
politics; in vain the international conferences of economic
experts, as at Geneva in 1927, pass unanimous resolutions con-
demning the destructive barbarism of such intensified economic
warfare and calling for its reversal. The reality moves in the
opposite direction to the resolutions. For there is no world
capitalism as a whole to adopt the “enlightened” policies so
patiently and incessantly held out by the economic theorists
and would-be reformers of capitalism; just here is the cardinal
error of the Salters and all their company.* There is only the
conflict of the rival imperialist powers; and in the conditions
of this conflict the statesmen and leaders of finance-capital,
however much they may regret the cost and the losses involved,
see no alternative to the policies they find themselves com-
pelled to pursue if they are not to go under. In the words of
the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the eve of the World
Economic Conference, explaining the necessity of maintaining
economic warfare:

Much as all of us regretted the economic warfare which had arisen
between us and other countries, we must maintain that warfare as
long as it was the other countries which had taken the aggressive.

(Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, June 2,

1933.)

“We must maintain that warfare;” the fault lies with “the
other countries.” This is the keynote of all the imperialist
powers.

The most important expression of this transformation of

* It is characteristic of this whole school that, after recording a hundred previous
disappointments, Sir Arthur Salter concludes his Preface to the Seventh Edition of
Recovery on January 1, 1933, with the hopeful statement:

“The World Economic Conference affords the next occasion for a great con-
structive effort.”
The history of 1933 provided the comment. Indeed, even the professional opti-
mists of capitalism begin to lose heart. Salter writes further in the same Preface:
“The whole system under which our rich heritage of Western civilisation has
grown up is at stake. Its fate depends, not only upon deliberate and concerted
governmental action, but also upon constructive reform by those who organise
and direct policy through every main sphere of economic activity. The sands
are running out; but it is still not—quite—too late.”
This was at the beginning of 1933 before the further aggravation of the issues
during 1933. In fact, it was always “‘too late” from the outset for the imagined
“constructive reform by those who organise and direct policy through every main
sphere of economic activity,” because in the conditions of post-war imperialism
such “constructive reform” never was, and never could be, other than a Liberal
civil servant’s myth.

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 85

policy in the present period was the passing of British Imperial-
ism in 1932 from the old free-trade basis to a general tariff and
the policy of the closed Empire. The long survival of free trade
in Britain reflected the remnants of the old commercial and
financial world domination. The Chamberlain propaganda in
the beginning of the imperialist era, and the strongly reinforced
Empire Economic Unity propaganda after the war showed the
pressing forward of the new forces. As late as 1926 the Bankers’
Manifesto issued in that year still called for a general move-
ment towards lower tariffs and free trade. The Bankers’ Mani-
festo of 1930, signed by all the most important financial leaders,
marked the decisive turn, and the end of the last remains of the
old era, with its declaration:

The immediate step for securing and extending the market for
British goods lies in reciprocal trade agreements between the nations
constituting the British Empire.

As a condition of securing these agreements, Great Britain must
retain her open market for all Empire products, while being pre-
pared to impose duties on all imports from all other countries.

The Ottawa Conference of 1932 showed the attempt to carry
out this policy. Although in relation to the Dominions heavy
concessions from Britain have only won small and doubtful
gains, in relation to India and the Crown Colonies the policy
is being pressed forward at full strength. The subsequent
elaborate trading negotiations for exclusive agreements, the
agricultural quota arrangements, and the use of the currency
weapon to endeavour to organise a “sterling bloc,” all mark
the development of the new system.

Attempts are frequently made to present the new phase of
intensified monopolist conflict in idealist form under cover of
the slogans of “national planning,” “national self-sufficiency,”
etc., or to compare it with the entirely opposite process of
socialist construction of the Soviet Five-Year Plan. The mani-
fest economic breakdown of the capitalist anarchy, contrasted
with the simultaneous gigantic advance of the Soviet Five-Year
Plan, led to an outburst of talk of “planning” in the capitalist
world. A World Planning Congress was held at Amsterdam in
1931. A myriad abortive schemes for Five-Year Plans, Ten-
Year Plans and Twenty-Year Plans were put forward in all the
Capitalist countries. The Trades Union Congress in 1931, true

86 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

to its line of alliance with capitalism and worship of “organised
capitalism,” adopted a resolution which declared:

This Congress welcomes the present tendency towards a planned
and regulated economy in our national life.
(Belfast Trades Union Congress resolution, 1931.)

Needless to say, this description of the real process which is
taking place is a complete deception. The conditions of private
ownership of the means of production, and of production for
profit, negate the elementary conditions for any real scientific
economic planning, which requires a single ownership of the
means of production and the organisation of production for
use. The reality which is described under the euphemism of
“a planned and regulated economy in our national life’ is
intensified monopolist organisation in a given imperialist area
(not national area) for the purposes of sharpened world
imperialist conflict and increased exploitation of the workers.

The complete passing over of the previous progressive
elements in capitalism to the new reactionary policies is illus-
trated by the conversion of the former leading Liberal economic
theorist, Keynes, in his articles on ‘‘National Self-Sufficiency”
(New Statesman and Nation, July 8 and 15, 1933). Keynes
writes:

I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect Free Trade not
only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person
could not doubt but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded
departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an
outrage. I thought England’s unshakable Free Trade convictions,
maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation
before man and the justification before heaven of her economic
supremacy. As lately as 1923 I was writing that Free Trade was
based on fundamental truths “which, stated with their due qualifi-
cations, no one can dispute who is capable of understanding the
meaning of words.”

Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundamental
truths which I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet
the orientation of my mind is changed; and I share this change of
mind with many others.

He then sets out the drawbacks of which he has become aware
in the working out of the system of international capitalism,
and reaches the conclusion:

I sympathise therefore with those who would mimimise, rather

“NATIONAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY” 87

than those who would maximise economic entanglements between
nations. . . . I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition
is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and
economic isolation between countries than existed in 1914 may tend
to serve the cause of peace rather than otherwise.

More fully, he declares:

We wish to be as free as we can make ourselves from the inter-
ferences from the outside world. . . . Ideas, knowledge, art, hos-
pitality, travel—these are the things which should of their nature be
international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably
and conveniently possible, and above all let finance be primarily
national.

It will be seen that the outlook of Keynes has begun to
approximate to that of Hitler. This is a valuable measure of
capitalism in decay.

The reality behind the phraseology of a Keynes or other
capitalist “national planners” must not be misunderstood. The
belated discovery by Keynes of the naive, subjective and un-
critical assumptions on which the old traditional “economic
science” of the bourgeoisie, especially in its centre in England,
was always based, does not here concern us. Marx long ago—
in the middle nineteenth century—before, not after the event—
laid bare the local, temporary and insular character of the
free trade economic theory as only the reflection of the his-
torically caused British capitalist supremacy; and showed also
how this phase would necessarily pass, how British capitalist
supremacy would disappear, and with it the accompanying free
trade theory, and liberal free trade capitalism would pass into
monopolist capitalism and the period of decay. However, the
empiricist can only learn from the behind-side of history; only
the impact of the event compels the bourgeois professors of
economics to begin to grope for the source of their errors.
Keynes, the faithful believer in the divine ordainment of free
trade and British economic supremacy until 1923, in 1933 an-
nounces his disillusionment with the pride of a pioneer.

What is important, however, is that this disillusionment or
“change of mind” which he “shares with many others” is
only the reflection of the change of capitalism, which he trans-
lates into universal conclusions in exactly the same subjective
and uncritical way as the old free trade theory which he now
condemns. For in fact, the issue is no longer between inter-

88 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

national free trade capitalism and monopolist capitalism in its
modern forms. That issue has long been settled in practice.
At the present time history has placed on the order of the day a
different issue, of which he is unaware. The daring “advance”
which he believes himself to have made in his thought, with
his conversion from old liberal fetishes to “national self-
sufficiency,” leaves him in reality still well in the rear of events
as the faithful servitor of the ruling class; he has simply passed
from being the servitor of one phase of capitalism to becoming
the servitor of the next.

In reality, “national self-sufficiency” is only the ideal cover
for the modern forms of monopolist capitalism, extreme inten-
sification of antagonisms, and advance to Fascism and war.

Just as the imperialist blocs cover their predatory wars for
the spoils of the world under cover of the slogan of “national
defence,” so they seek increasingly to-day to cover their
monopolist economic organisation and warfare under cover of
the slogan of “national self-sufficiency.”

It is this advance to war which is the essential significance .
concealed behind the slogan of “national self-sufficiency.”

6. War as the Final “Solution.”

The culmination and final working out of all the new
policies of capitalism under the stress of the world crisis is the
advance to the second world war.

The effects of the world economic crisis enormously intensi-
fied all existing international antagonisms. The “pacific”
“internationalist” language of the stabilisation period (Locar-
no, Briand-Stresemann, Kellogg Pact) gives place to in-
creasingly open national-chauvinist language and _ policies.
International conference after international conference breaks
down. Even such limited success as attends the measures of
internal reorganisation, of strengthening and tightening up
of monopolist economy and aggressive power, within each
imperialism, only leads to the intensification of world
antagonisms. There is a renewed and ever more feverish
pressing forward of armaments on all sides, and of industries
connected with armaments. The World Disarmament Con-
ference breaks down. Japan and Germany withdraw from
the League of Nations. The issue of “disarmament” passes
into the issue of “re-armament.” Alliances and counter-

WAR AS THE FINAL “SOLUTION” 89

alliances are actively built up on every side. The Naval
Limitation Treaty passes into the melting-pot.

Alongside the limited “revival” of world production in 1933
and 1934—and, indeed, as an important element in this “re-
vival”—the armaments industries leapt forward; their shares
and profits rapidly rose. According to the calculations of the
German Institute of Economic Research (Institut fir Kon-
junkturforschung), the proportions of world armaments ex-
penditure and of world production, on the basis of 1928 as 100,
showed the following significant picture:

Armaments expenditure World production
1913 64 54
1929 104 104
1930 106 87
1932 107 56

The total world armaments expenditure in 1934, according
to the same authority, amounted to £2,500 millions, or three
times the level of 1913. 1935 showed a still steeper rise.

The expression now begins to become open in capitalist
circles that the only final “‘solution” of the crisis is war. In
The Means to Prosperity, issued in 1933 Keynes noted the
trend:

Cynics . . . conclude that nothing except a war can bring a major
slump to its conclusion.

The New York financial journal, the Annalist, wrote in the
spring of 1933:

That there is a large possibility of a European war in the very
near future can hardly be denied recognition. . . . We were lifted
from a business depression in 1914 by the outbreak of a great war.
It would be a curious repetition of function if another war should
again come to our industrial rescue. (Annalist, March 17, 1933.)

For the wolves and jackals of finance-capital, war represents
“our industrial rescue.”

The gathering expectation of the close approach of war finds
increasingly frequent expression in the speeches of the states-
men of all countries. Typical was Mussolini’s “War To-
Day” declaration in his speech to the officers at the Italian
army manceuvres in August, 1934:

War is in the air and might break out at any moment. We must
prepare, not for a war for to-morrow, but for a war of to-day.

go FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In July, 1934, Marshal Pétain declared in his speech to the
Reserve Officers’ Conference at St. Malo that the next war
would break out like a “lightning flash.” Baldwin, in advo-
cating the new British air programme in the House of Com-
mons in July, 1934, reported

a greater sense of uneasiness, of malaise, in Europe than we have
hitherto experienced.

The propaganda of war spreads. War begins to be presented
as the heroic alternative, the last hope, the “way out” from
the unending nightmare of economic crisis, misery and unem-
ployment. Fascism, the most complete expression of modern
capitalism, glorifies war. The filthy sophism “War means
Work” begins to be circulated by the poison agencies of im-
perialism, and filters down to the masses. It is a measure of
the stage reached by capitalist civilisation that to-day, before
the leading capitalist countries—other than Japan—are yet
directly involved in war, while there are still nominally condi-
tions of peace, it is possible for such an argument to be seri-
ously presented and widely repeated and actually discussed,
that murder is the only way to provide men and women with
work and livelihood.

All to-day see the ever more visible approach of war. Rising
alarm is expressed in many quarters of bourgeois opinion who
see the ruin and destruction of the entire existing society in-
volved in the menace of renewed world war. But these sections
of anti-war opinion see only the question of war in isolation,
and concentrate their efforts on capitalist “machinery” to avoid
war, without realising that such machinery of imperialism can
only function as machinery to organise the future war in the
name of “ideal” symbols. Bourgeois pacifism, which, in the
name of these symbols, preaches support of the various im-
perialist states, becomes an indispensable part of the war-
preparations of imperialism. The success of the fight against
war depends on the strength of the mass struggle, and cannot
be separated from the fight against imperialism.

War is only the continuation and working out of the crisis of
capitalism and of the present policies of capitalism. It is
inseparable from these, and cannot be treated in isolation.
All the policies of capitalist reorganisation, all the policies of
Fascism, can only hasten the advance to war. This is equally

WAR AS THE FINAL “SOLUTION” gI

true of the line of a Roosevelt, a MacDonald or a Hitler. War
is no sudden eruption of a new factor from outside, a vaguely
future menace to be exorcised by special machinery, but is
already in essence implicit in the existing factors, in the existing
driving forces and policies of capitalism.

All the existing policies of capitalism are policies of ever-
sharpening war: of ever more formidably organised imperialist
blocs; of tariff-war, of gold-war, of currency-war; of war with
every possible economic, diplomatic and political weapon. It
is no far step from these to the final stage of armed war.

All the existing policies of capitalism are more and more
dominantly policies of destruction. The capitalists are to-day
the destructive force in human society. All their most typical
modern policy, from super-tariffs and debt-enslavement of
whole states to burning foodstuffs and devastating cotton
plantations, from dismantling plant and machinery to throwing
millions of skilled and able workers on the scrap-heap of
starvation, is a policy of destruction of human effort and labour,
strangling of production, destruction of life. War is only a
continuation of this policy. It is no far step from spending
millions of pounds to buy up machinery in order to destroy it,
to spending millions to produce guns and warships and muni-
tions to be blown up into the air. It is no far step from con-
demning millions of human beings to the death-in-life of
unemployment as “superfluous,” to the final solution of dis-
posing of their lives and bodies by bomb and gas and chemical,
for the greater profit of whatever group of capitalists can gain
most in the redivision of the world by the holocaust.

But this does not mean that war, any more than Fascism,
presents the final “solution” of the crisis of capitalism. On
the contrary. War, like Fascism, is to-day the outcome of the
intensified contradictions of capitalist society in decay; but
neither solve those contradictions. On the contrary, both bring
out those contradictions to the most extreme point, organise
upon their basis, and lay bare the deep disintegration of existing
society, both internally and internationally, to the point of
destruction. The crisis extends and develops through these
forms to yet greater intensity, and thereby only reveals the more
sharply that the sole final solution lies in the social revolution.

==CHAPTER IV: WHAT IS FASCISM?==

Wuat is Fascism?

In the first three chapters of this book attention has been
deliberately concentrated on the developing tendencies of
modern capitalist society as a whole since the war, in place of
limiting attention to the distinctively “Fascist” countries—
Italy, Germany, etc.

Such a survey has revealed how close is the parallel which
can be traced in every field, economic, political and ideological,
between the increasingly dominant tendencies of theory and
practice of all modern capitalism since the war and the pro-
fessedly peculiar theory and practice of Fascism.

Fascism, in fact, is no peculiar, independent doctrine and
system arising in opposition to existing capitalist society.
Fascism, on the contrary, is the most complete and consistent
working out, in certain conditions of extreme decay, of the most
typical tendencies and policies of modern capitalism.

What are these characteristics which are common, subject to
a difference in degree, to all modern capitalism and to Fascism?
The most outstanding of these characteristics may be sum-
marised as follows:

1. The basic aim of the maintenance of capitalism in the
face of the revolution which the advance of productive tech-
nique and of class antagonisms threatens.

2. The consequent intensification of the capitalist dictator-
ship.

3. The limitation and repression of the independent working-
class movement, and building up of a system of organised class-
co-operation.

4. The revolt against, and increasing supersession of,
parliamentary democracy.

5. The extending State monopolist organisation of industry
and finance.

6. The closer concentration of each imperialist bloc into a
single economic-political unit.

92

THE CLASS-CONTENT OF FASCISM 93

7. The advance to war as the necessary accompaniment of
the increasing imperialist antagonisms.

All these characteristics are typical, in greater or lesser degree,
of all modern capitalist states, no less than of the specifically
Fascist states.

In this wider sense it is possible to speak of the development
towards Fascism of all modern capitalist states. The examples
of the Roosevelt and Briining regimes offer particular illus-
trations of near-Fascist or pre-Fascist stages of development
towards complete Fascism within the shell of the old forms.
Nor is it necessarily the case that the development to Fascism
takes the same form in detail in each country.

The sum-total of the policies of modern capitalism provide
already in essence and in germ the sum-total of the policies of
Fascism. But they are not yet complete Fascism. The com-
pleted Fascist dictatorship is still only so far realised over a
limited area. What is the specific character of complete Fas-
cism? The specific character of complete Fascism lies in the
means adopted towards the realisation of these policies, in the
new social.and political mechanism built up for their realisation.

This is the specific or narrower significance of Fascism in the
sense of the Fascist movements or the completed Fascist dicta-
torships as realised in Italy, Germany and other countries.
Fascism in this specific or narrower sense is marked by definite
familiar characteristics: in the case of the Fascist movements,
by the characteristics of terrorism, extra-legal fighting forma-
tions, anti-parliamentarism, national and social demagogy,
etc.; in the case of the completed Fascist dictatorships, by the
suppression of all other parties and organisations, and in
particular the violent suppression of all independent working-
class organisation, the reign of terror, the “totalitarian” state,
etc.

It is to this specific sense of Fascism, that is to say, to fully
complete Fascism, that we now need to come.

1. The Class-Content of Fascism.

What, then, is Fascism in this specific or narrower sense?

The definitions of Fascism abound, and are marked by the
greatest diversity and even contradictory character, despite the
identity of the concrete reality which it is attempted to describe.

Fascism, in the view of the Fascists themselves, is a spiritual

94 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reality. It is described by them in terms of ideology. It repre-
sents the principle of “duty,” of “order,” of “authority,” of
“the State,” of “the nation,” of “history,” etc.

Mussolini finds the essence of Fascism in the conception of
the “State”:

‘
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its

character, its duty and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as

an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are
relative. . . . Whoever says Fascism implies the State.

(Mussolini’s article on “Fascism” in the Enciclopedia

Italiana, 1932, published in English under the title “The

Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” 1933.)

We further learn that ‘Fascism believes in holiness and in
heroism”; “the Fascist conceives of life as duty and struggle
and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for one-
self, but above all for others”; “Fascism combats the whole
complex system of democratic ideology”; “Fascism believes
neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace’;
“the Fascist State is an embodied will to power”; ‘“‘the Fascist
State is not indifferent to the fact of religion”; “for Fascism
the growth of Empire is an essential manifestation of virility”;
“Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a
possibility”’—and similar profound, and hardly very original
philosophisings in an endless string, the ordinary stock-in-trade
of all Conservatism.

Luigi Villari, the semi-official exponent of Fascism in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, writes:

The programme of the Fascists differs from that of other parties,
as it represents for its members not only a rule of political conduct,
but also a moral code.

Mosley in his Greater Britain, the official handbook of British
Fascism, explains:

The movement is Fascist (1) because it is based on a high con-
ception of citizenship—ideals as lofty as those which inspired the
reformers of a hundred years ago; (2) because it recognises the
necessity for an authoritative State, above party and sectional
interests.

The Fascist, the organ of the Imperial Fascist League, defines
Fascism (in its issue of August 1933):

Fascism is defined as a patriotic revolt against democracy, and

=

a ——

ee ee

THE CLASS-CONTENT OF FASCISM 95

a return to statesmanship. Fascist rule insists upon the duty of
co-operation.

Fascism itself is less a policy than a state of mind. It is the
national observance of duty towards others.

It is manifest that all this verbiage is very little use to bring
out the real essential character of Fascism.

In the first place, all these abstract general conceptions which
are paraded as the peculiar outlook of Fascism have no dis-
tinctive character whatever, but are common to a thousand
schools of bourgeois political philosophy, which are not yet
Fascist, and in particular to all national-conservative schools.
The generalisations of “duty of co-operation,” “duty towards
others,” “life as duty and struggle,” “a high conception of
citizenship,” “the State above classes,” “the common interest
before self” (motto of the German National Socialist Pro-
gramme), are the dreary commonplaces of all bourgeois
politicians and petty moralisers to cover the realities of class
domination and class-exploitation. The professedly distinctive

philosophy of the idealisation of the State as an ‘“‘absolute end”
transcending all individuals and sections is only the vulgar-
isation of the whole school of Hegel and his successors, con-
stituting the foundation of the dominant school of bourgeois
political philosophy. In all these conceptions there is not a
trace of original or distinctive thought.

In the second place, it is in fact incorrect to look for an
explanation of Fascism in terms of a particular theory, in
ideological terms. Fascism, as its leaders are frequently fond of
insisting, developed as a movement in practice without a
theory (“In the now distant March of 1919,” says Mussolini in
his encyclopedia article, “since the creation of the Fascist
Revolutionary Party, which took place in the January of 1915,
I had no specific doctrinal attitude in my mind”), and only
later endeayoured to invent a theory in order to justify its
existence. {Fascism, in fact, developed as a movement in
practice, in the conditions of threatening proletarian revolution,
as a counter-revolutionary mass movement supported by the
bourgeoisie, employing weapons of mixed social demagogy and
terrorism to defeat the revolution and build up a strengthened
Capitalist state dictatorship; and only later. endeavoured to
adorn and rationalise this process with a “theory.” It is in
this actual historical process that the reality of Fascism must be

96 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

found, and not in the secondary derivative attempts post festum
at adornment with a theory.

No less unsatisfactory are the attempted anti-Fascist inter-
pretations of Fascism in terms of ideology or abstract political
conceptions. The conventional anti-Fascist ideological intér-
pretations of Fascism see in Fascism only the principle of
“dictatorship” or “violence.” This approach, which is the
hallmark of the liberal and social democratic schools of thought
in relation to Fascism, sees Fascism as the parallel extreme to
Communism, both being counterposed to bourgeois ‘“demo-
cracy.”’ Fascism is defined as “Dictatorship from the Right”
in contrast to Communism as “Dictatorship from the Left”
(this line is characteristically expressed in the Labour Party
Manifesto of March 1933, on “Democracy versus Dictator-
ship” in explanation of the Labour refusal of the united working-
class front against Fascism).

It is evident that this definition of Fascism is equally
useless as an explanation of the real essential character of
Fascism.

“Dictatorships from the Right” have existed and can exist
in hundreds of forms without in any sense constituting Fascism.
Tsarism was a “Dictatorship from the Right.” But Tsarism
was not Fascism. The White Guard dictatorships immediately
after the war for crushing the revolution were ‘“Dictatorships
from the Right.” But these White Guard dictatorships were
not yet Fascism, and only subsequently began to develop Fascist
characteristics as they began to try to organise a more per-
manent basis (subsequent evolution in Hungary and Finland).
Fascism may be in fact a reactionary dictatorship. But not
every reactionary dictatorship is Fascism. The specific charac-
ter of Fascism has still to be defined.

Wherein, then, lies the specific character of Fascism?

The specific character of Fascism cannot be defined in terms
of abstract ideology or political first principles.

The specific character of Fascism can only be defined by
laying bare its class-basis, the system of class-relations within
which it develops and functions, and the class-role which it
performs. Only so can Fascism be seen in its concrete reality,
corresponding to a given historical stage of capitalist develop-
ment and decay.

As soon, however, as we endeavour to come to the class-

a“

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? 97

analysis of Fascism we find ourselves confronted with a
diametrical opposition of two viewpoints.

In the one viewpoint Fascism is presented as an independent
movement of the middle class or petit-bourgeoisie in opposition
to both the proletariat and to large-scale capital.

In the other viewpoint Fascism is presented as a weapon of
finance-capital, utilising the support of the middle class, of the
slum proletariat and of demoralised working-class elements
against the organised working class, but throughout acting as
the instrument and effective representative of the interests of
finance-capital.

Only when we have cleared this opposition, and what lies
behind it, can we finally come to the real definition of Fascism.

. Middle-Class Revolution or Dictatorship of Finance-Ca pital?
/ Fascism is commonly presented as a “middle-class” (i.e.,

‘ petit-bourgeois) movement.

There is an obvious measure of truth in this in the sense that
Fascism in its inception commonly originates from middle-class
(petit-bourgeois) elements, directs a great deal of its appeal to
the middle class, to small business and the professional classes
against the organised working class and the trusts and big
finance, draws a great part of its composition, and especially
its leadership, from the middle class, and is soaked through with
the ideology of the middle class, of the petit-bourgeoisie under
conditions of crisis. So far, there is common agreement as to
the obvious facts.

But Fascism is also often presented as a middle-class move-
ment in the sense of an independent movement of the middle
class, as a “third party” independent of capital or labour, in
opposition to both the organised working class and large-scale
capital. The Fascist dictatorship is accordingly presented as a
“conquest of power” by the middle class in opposition to both
the organised working class and to the previous domination of
finance-capital.

This conception is common in liberal and social democratic
treatment of Fascism.

Thus the liberal-labour New Statesman and Nation writes
(October 28, 1933):

The collapse of capitalism does not at all necessarily lead to the
seizure of power by the proletarians, but more probably to the

98 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

dictatorship of the middle class. This is surely the Achilles heel of
Communist theory.

Brailsford, the leading theorist of English Social Democracy,
writes: us

If the Marxist conception of history be sound, somewhere surely
on the surface of this stricken planet the increasing misery of the
workers should have produced some aggressive stirring. That is
nowhere the case.

There is, however, an aggressive class which has made in one great
industrial country its revolutionary stroke. The German Nazis are
emphatically the party of the small middle class... .

This class rose and captured the machinery of the State, because
it was “miserable” and desperate. It shrank in terror from the
menace of large-scale commerce.

(H. N. Brailsford, “No Hands Wanted,” New Clarion,
July 8, 1933.)
And again:

A militant middle class, with its dare-devil younger generation to
lead it, faces the organised workers. If on both sides there has
developed a distrust in parliamentary procedure, and a contempt for
its dilatory and irresolute ways, the issue between them can be
decided only by force.

The class which first decides to organise itself for this new phase
will enter the contest with an overwhelming advantage.

(H. N. Brailsford, “Will England Go Fascist?” News-
Chronicle, November 28, 1933.)

The Socialist Review in January 1929 published an article
entitled “The Third Nation,” arguing that “the assumption
at the root of all Communist theory” of a basic division between
the capitalists and the proletariat as the decisive issue of modern
society was false:

Apart from the capitalists and the proletariat—and between them
—there is a third class. Here, then, is the fundamental question for
Marxists: Does this class exhibit the characteristics of a subject
class, about to make a bid for supremacy?

A possible answer is that, in one country—Italy—they have
already emerged as a revolutionary class. The Fascist revolution
was essentially a revolution of the third class.

The American would-be “Marxist” journal, the Modern
Monthly, says in an editorial on “What is Fascism?”’:

The first task of the Fascist dictatorship was to wrest state power

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? 99

from the hands of the private bankers, industrialists and landlords
who possessed it... .

The Fascist dictatorship, it is clear, then, became possible only
because of the two factors above noted: first, the crisis in imperialism
and the consequent collapse of ruling-class power and policy, and,
secondly the rise of a belligerent lower middle-class which provided
a mass basis for its assumption of power.

(V. F. Calverton in the Modern Monthly, July, 1933.)

Even Scott Nearing’s otherwise fruitful and valuable study
of “Fascism” is marred by this same basic theory of Fascism
as a petit-bourgeois revolution:

At the centre of the Fascist movement is the middle class, seeking
to save itself from decimation or annihilation by seizing power and
establishing its own political and social institutions. It therefore
has the essential characteristics of a social revolutionary movement,
since its success means the shift of the centre of power from one class
to another... .

Fascism arises out of the revolt of the middle class against the
intolerable burdens of capitalist imperialism.

(Scott Nearing, “Fascism,” Vanguard Press, New Bat
Pp. 42.

This separation of Fascism from the bourgeois dictatorship
reaches its extreme point in the official Labour Party and
Trades Union Congress organ, the Daily Herald, which, on
May 2, 1933, after the full demonstration of the real character
of Hitlerism in practice, still looked hopefully towards it to
carry out some form of “socialist” programme against big
capital:

The “National-Socialists,” it is essential to remember, call them-
selves “Socialist” as well as “National.” Their “Socialism” is
not the Socialism of the Labour Party, or that of any recognised
Socialist Party in other countries.

But in many ways it is a creed that is anathema to the big land-
lords, the big industrialists and the big financiers.

And the Nazi leaders are bound to go forward with the “Socialist”
side of their programme.

(Daily Herald editorial on ‘“Hitler’s May Day,” May :

1933-
Thus Fascism in the view of the Labour Party is almost a wing
of Socialism, a rather unorthodox variety of Socialism, but
“anathema to the big landlords, the big industrialists and the
big financiers” (who, curiously enough, maintained it in funds

roo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and finally placed it in power). The same day that this article
appeared in the British Labour and trade union organ, this party
whose creed was “anathema to the big landlords, the big
industrialists and the big financiers” seized and closed down the
workers’ trade unions in Germany.

It is evident that this view of Fascism as a petit-bourgeois
revolution against the big bourgeoisie is incorrect in fact, and
dangerous in the extreme to any serious understanding of the
real character of Fascism and of the fight against it.

That it is incorrect in fact is manifest from the most elemen-
tary survey of the actual history, development, basis and prac-
tice of Fascism. The open and avowed supporters of Fascism
in every country are the representatives of big capital, the
Thyssens, Krupps, Monds, Deterdings and Owen Youngs.

Fascism, although in the early stages making a show of
vague and patently disingenuous anti-capitalist propaganda to
attract mass-support, is from the outset fostered, nourished,
maintained and subsidised by the big bourgeoisie, by the big
landlords, financiers and industrialists.*

Further, Fascism is only enabled to grow, and is saved from
being wiped out in the early stages by the working-class move-

* See Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, 1933, p. 117, for a characteristic
report of a private conversation of a leading Jewish banker in Berlin who “to a
somewhat bewildered gathering in a drawing-room in plutocratic Berlin unctuously
explained how for years he had been a heavy subsidiser of the National Socialists.”
The financial backing of Hitler by big industry was already laid bare in the Hitler-
Ludendorff trial of 1924 and in the Bavarian Diet Investigation Committee. ‘In
later years the list of the alleged financial patrons of the National Socialist Move-
ment became extremely long. Factory owners, managers, general counsel
(syndici) were as thick as they might be on the subscription list of the Republican
National Committee in the United States” (Mowrer, p. 144). Foreign supporters
were stated to include Deterding, Kreuger and Ford. Paul Faure stated in the
French Chamber of Deputies on February 11, 1932, that the foreign financial
backers of the Nazis included the directors of the Skoda armaments firm, controlled
by Schneider-Creusot. The reader should consult Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over
Europe (1934) for the most detailed examination of the financial backing and
control of National Socialism since 1927 by the Ruhr Steel Trust elements domi-
nated by Thyssen: “Thyssen persuaded the two political centres of German Ruhr
capital, the ‘Bergbauverein Essen’ and the ‘Nordwestgruppe der Eisen-und
Stahlindustrie’ to agree that every coal and steel concern had, by way of a par-
ticular obligatory tax, to deliver a certain sum into the election funds of the
National Socialists. In order to raise this money, the price of coal was raised in
Germany. For the Presidential elections of 1932 alone Thyssen provided the
Nazis with more than 3 million marks within a few days. Without this help the
fantastic measures resorted to by the Hitler agitation in the years 1930-1933 would
never have been possible” (pp. 11-12). For the general policy, see the statement
of the Deutsche Fiihrerbriefe, or confidential bulletin of the Federation of German
Industries, quoted in the next chapter.

/

MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION OR DICTATORSHIP? Ior

ment, solely through the direct protection of the bourgeois
dictatorship. Fascism is able to count on the assistance of the
greater part of the State forces, of the higher army staffs, of
the police authorities, and of the lawcourts and magistracy,
who exert all their force to crush working-class opposition,
while treating Fascist illegality with open connivance (banning
of the Red Front alongside permission of the Storm Troops).*
/ Finally, has Fascism “conquered power” from the bourgeois
tate dictatorship? Fascism has never “conquered power” in
any country. In every case Fascism has been placed in power
from above by the bourgeois dictatorship. In Italy Fascism
was placed in power by the King, who refused to sign the
decree of martial law against it, and invited Mussolini to power;
Mussolini’s legendary “March on Rome” took place in a
Wagon-Lit sleeping-car. In Germany Fascism was placed in
power by the President, at a time when it was heavily sinking
in support in the country, as shown by the elections.

The bourgeoisie, in fact, has in practice passed power from
one hand to the other, and called it a “revolution,” while the
only reality has been the intensified oppression of the working
class.

After the establishment of the full Fascist dictatorship, the
policy has been still more openly and completely, despite a

* For the protection of Fascism by the lawcourts and police, and savage vin-
dictiveness against all working-class defence, see Mowrer, of. cit., Ch. xviii. For
the same process in Italy, see Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, Vol. I. Salve-
mini relates (p. 71) how in 1920 the Liberal Giolitti Cabinet, with Bonomi, the Re-
formist Socialist, as Minister for War, “thought that the Fascist offensive might be
utilised to break the strength of the Socialists and Communists” and “therefore
allowed the chiefs of the Army to equip the Fascists with rifles and lorries and
authorised retired officers and officers-on-leave to command them.” The “March
on Rome” was led by six Army Generals (p. 153). The pro-Fascist Survey of
Fascism, 1928, admits that Fascism in Italy grew up “not without a certain tolera-
tion and even some assistance from high quarters” (p. 38). Mowrer confesses him-
self unable to understand why the pre-Fascist governments in Germany tolerated
the growth of Fascism. “It is inconceivable that any German Chancellor, even a
clerical militarist like Heinrich Briining, should have allowed the constitution and
training of such a force, armed or unarmed. Why he did so has never been satis-
factorily settled—perhaps never will be” (p. 277). There is no mystery, no more
with Briining than with Giolitti, once the class realities of bourgeois policy and
Fascism are clearly understood. In Germany, the officers who led the Kapp Putsch
were never sentenced; a worker who shot a Kapp rebel was sentenced to fifteen
years hard labour. Hitler, for his armed revolt against the State in 1923, was
given a light sentence of detention, and released in a few months. The beginnings
of the same process of discrimination by the lawcourts, with leniency to the early

hooliganism of the nascent Fascist movements and savage sentencing of workers’
attempts at self-defence, are already visible in Britain.

102 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

show of a few gestures of assistance to small capital, the most
unlimited and ruthless policy of monopolist capital, with the
whole machinery of Fascism mercilessly turned against those of
its former supporters who have been innocent enough to expect
some anti-capitalist action and called for a “‘second revolution.” *

Fascism, in short, is a movement of mixed elements,
dominantly petit-bourgeois, but also slum-proletarian and
demoralised working class, financed and directed by finance-
capital, by the big industrialists, landlords and financiers, to
defeat the working-class revolution and smash the working-
class organisations.

* The argument sometimes put forward that the elimination of Hugenberg from
the Nazi-National Government represented a breach between the Nazis and Big
Capital, and the defeat of the latter, is a childishly superficia] attempt to substitute
the fate of an individual for the really decisive social forces. Hugenberg was
removed from the Nazi-National Government, not because he was a big capitalist,
but because he was the leader of the National Party, and the completed Fascist
system cannot tolerate the existence of two parties. Certainly, this reflects an
undoubted and sharp division within the bourgeoisie, between the alternative
methods of maintaining bourgeois rule, between the old traditional National
Party mechanism and the new Nazi Party mechanism, to the necessity of which a
great part of the bourgeoisie have only reconciled themselves with many mis-
givings and much anxiety for the future. But the Nazi method remains a method,
although a hazardous one, of maintaining the rule of finance-capital. Finance-
capital remains supreme, as was abundantly shown by the composition of the
Provisional Supreme Economic Council appointed under the aegis of the Nazi
Government. Its leading members included;

Herr Krupp von Bohlen, armaments king; private fortune, £6,000,000;
capital represented, £15,000,000.

Herr Fritz Thyssen, steel king; private fortune £6,000,000; capital
interests German Steel Trust, £140,000,000.

Herr F. C. Von Siemens, electrical king; private fortune, £6,500,000;
capital represented, £12,500,000.

Prof. Karl Bosch, Dye Trust millionaire; private fortune, £2,000,000;
capital represented, £55,000,000.

Dr. A. Vogler, German Steel Trust; private fortune, £6,000,000;
capital represented, £40,000,000.

Herr A. Diehn, director Potash Syndicate; capital represented,
£10,000,000,

Herr Bochinger, director Maximilian Steel Works; capital, £1,500,000.

Herr F. von Schroeder, banker.

Herr A. von Finck, banker.

Herr F. Reinhart, banker.

This glittering galaxy of the leaders of German finance-capital is sufficient proof
of the relations of the Nazis and finance-capital. The subsequent further
reorganisation of German industry, announced in March 1934, in twelve industrial
groups, under the control of the principal large capitalists in each group, and under
the genera! leadership, for heavy industry and also for industry as a whole, of Herr
Krupp von Bohlen, has still more conspicuously illustrated this process of system-
atisation of Nazi rule as the most complete and even statutory domination of
Monopoly Capital.

THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PROLETARIAT 103

3. The Middle Class and the Proletariat.

This question of the role of the middle class or petit-
bourgeoisie, in relation to the working class and to the big
bourgeoisie, is so important for the whole dynamic of present
capitalist society and the social revolution, that it deserves fuller
clearing.

The controversy over the role of the middle class, or many
and varied intermediate strata between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat (small business men, small and middle peasantry,
handicraftsmen, independent workers, small rentiers, liberal
professions, technical, managerial and commercial employees)
is no new one. In the nineteenth century Marx had dealt very
fully with the economic and political situation and tendencies
of these elements. He had shown how these middle elements
were increasingly ground between the advance of large capital
and of the proletariat, with growing numbers from their ranks
falling into proletarian or semi-proletarian conditions; he had
shown their vacillating and unstable political role, now siding
with the bourgeoisie and now with the proletariat, torn between
their bourgeois prejudices, traditions and aspirations, and the
actual process of ruination and proletarisation at work among
them; and he had shown how the proletariat should win the
alliance of the lower strata of the peasantry and urban
petit-bourgeoisie under its leadership in order to conquer
power.

In the beginning of the imperialist era the question of the
middle class was anew raised sharply to the forefront by Bern-
stein and the Revisionists in the last years of the nineteenth
century and the first years of the twentieth. The Revisionists
challenged Marx’s teaching of the increasing proletarisation of
the middle strata and consequent increasing sharpness of the
issue between capitalism and the proletariat. On the contrary,
they argued that the middle class was growing, and pointed to
the figures of income returns, property returns and shareholding,
to prove the growth of the middle class. On this basis they
denied Marx’s revolutionary teaching, saw instead the increas-
ing harmony of classes and democratisation of capital, and looked
to the gradual peaceful advance towards socialism through
capitalist reorganisation, social reform and State intervention.

What the Revisionists really represented, as is now abun-
dantly clear, was the growth of the “new middle class” of

104 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

salaried employees of capitalism. In fact the process predicted
by Marx was abundantly realised through the course of the
nineteenth century. The concentration of capital went forward
at an increasing pace. Large-scale capital pressed small-scale
capital to the wall. The former small owners and independent
workers became, as Marx said, “overseers and underlings.”
In this way a “new middle class” came more and more to the
front, based on the increasing disappearance of the old indepen-
dent small owners. This new middle class resembled the old in
its two-faced position and outlook, between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, and its dreams of occupying an “indepen-
dent” position above the class struggle; but it was already
dependent for its livelihood on employment under large capital,
and no longer primarily on its own property. Thus the
development of this new middle class was in fact a stage in the
process of proletarisation, in the increasing divorce of the ever-
widening mass of the population from an independent property
basis; and its lower strata began to draw closer to the proletariat
and to the proletarian movement (beginnings of “middle-
class” trade unionism, recruiting to social democracy). The
distinctive outlook of this new middle class was typically
expressed in England by Fabianism and the leadership of the
Independent Labour Party.

Against the Revisionists, the Marxists were easily able to
show, not only that the development of this new middle class
increasingly replacing the old was in reality a phase of the pro-
cess of proletarisation, but that further economic development
was in turn affecting the position of this new middle class, and
creating a crisis in its ranks and a new stage of proletarisation.
The overstocking of the professional market, the turning out
from the universities and technical schools of increasing num-
bers beyond the possibilities of employment, and the cutting
down of personnel through the further concentration of
businesses, was already before the war creating a more and more
sharp crisis of the new middle class.

This crisis of the middle class (both old and new) has been
carried enormously forward in the post-war period. The
operations of finance-capital—inflation, currency and exchange
manipulations, share-juggling, monopoly prices and heavy
taxation—have played havoc with small savings and invest-
ments, and with the old stability of middle-class incomes. At

THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PROLETARIAT I0§

the same time unemployment and redundancy in all the pro-
fessions has reached desperate heights.

“Throughout the Continent,” wrote Keynes in his Treatise on
Monetary Reform (p. 16), “pre-war savings of the middle class,
so far as they were invested in bonds, mortgages or bank
deposits, have been largely or entirely wiped out.” The
German property valuation returns showed that the number of
those owning from thirty to fifty thousand marks worth of
property (£1,500 to £2,500) fell from over 500,000 in 1913 to
216,000 in 1925; owners of from fifty to a hundred thousand
marks (£2,500 to £5,000) fell from nearly 400,000 in 1913 to
136,000 in 1925. Although, despite the disillusionment of the
wiping out of their savings by inflation, the middle class began
hopefully to save anew after stabilisation, the total of savings
rapidly began to fall after the economic crisis, and is now
threatened anew by the new wave of world inflation. In
Britain, a marked decline in small savings is noticeable in the
post-war period even before the world economic crisis. Thus
while in 1909-13 the Post Office Savings Bank accounts regis-
tered a net increase of £12 million, in 1923-7 they registered a
net decrease of £17 million, as well as a net decrease of
government securities standing to their holders’ credit by
£18 million, or a total decline of £35 million; Trustee Savings’
Banks showed a net decline of £12 million; after allowing
against this, the net increase in National Savings Certificates in
the same period by £14 million, there is still left a total loss
in these main forms of small savings between 1923-7 of £33
million (Economist, February 23, 1929).

If the impoverishment of the small middle class alongside the
enrichment of monopoly capital is thus a characteristic feature
of the post-war period, even more so is the increasingly des-
perate situation of overcrowding in the professions. The world
economic crisis brought this situation to an extreme point.

In Germany, it was reported that of 8,000 graduates from
the technical colleges and universities in 1931-2, only 1,000
found employment in their professions. According to a state-
ment issued by the Prussian Minister of Education, of 22,000
teachers who completed their training in 1931-2, only 990 found
posts. “Engineers have become mere wage-earners; while of
the technical school engineering graduates only one in five
found any job at all” (H. H. Tiltman, Slump, 1932, p. 75).

106 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

R. Schairer in Die Akademische Berufsnot, 1932, reported that
45,000 graduated students were unemployed, and that this
figure, it was estimated, would, in the absence of remedial
measures, reach 105,000 by 1935. Here we can see a large part
of the social basis for the desperate armies of Fascism.

The impoverished and desperate middle class is driven from
its former philistine slumbers into political activity. But this
political activity takes on a new character. Whereas the
Bernsteinian dreams had seen in the middle class a stabilising
and harmonising factor in the social structure, wedded to
liberalism and social reform, and smoothing over the antagon-
ism of classes, the new dispossessed and ruined middle-class
elements break out as an extremely unstable, violent force
potentially revolutionary or, alternately, ultra-reactionary,
without clear social basis or consciousness, but recklessly seeking
any line of immediate action, which may offer a hope of
immediate relief (relief from debts, State aid to small businesses,
smashing the large stores, etc.) or the prospect of jobs (the new
bureaucracy, mercenary fighting forces, displacement of Jews,
war).

In what direction, however, can these middle-class elements
turn their political activity? They can in practice only line up
in the service of either finance-capital or of the proletariat.
The myth of their “independent” role, of the “third party,”
is still endeavoured to be hung before them. The Liberal
Yellow Book, characteristically enough, endeavoured to make
much of “the third party in industry” as the force of the future.
But these dreams are soon shattered by reality. For the owner-
ship of the means of production is decisive, and to this the
middle class can never aspire. Either finance-capital, owning
the means of production, can seek to make the middle class its
auxiliary, giving a measure of employment, if diminishingly in
production, then at any rate increasingly in the tasks of violent
coercion of the working class (fascist militia, police-officer class,
fascist bureaucracy). Or the proletariat, socialising the means
of production, can at last give full scope to all the useful trained
and technical abilities within the middle class in the gigantic
tasks of social reconstruction. These are the only two alterna-
tives before the middle class. The first is the line of Fascism.
The second is the line of Communism.

The true interests of the majority of the middle class, of all the

THE DEFINITION OF FASCISM 107

lower strata of the middle class, lie with the proletariat, with
the line of Communism. Finance-capital is the enemy and
exploiter of both sections. The line of Fascism of service with
finance-capital against the working class, means in fact no
solution for the economic crisis of the middle class; alongside
privileges and rewards for a handful, it means intensified
servitude, oppression and spoliation of the majority of the
middle class at the hands of the great trusts and banks.

Where the working-class movement is strong, follows a
revolutionary line, and is able to stand out as the political
leader of the fight of all oppressed sections against large capital,
there the mass of the petit-bourgeoisie is swept in the wake of
the working class. This was the general situation in the post-
war revolutionary wave of 1919-20. During this time Fascism
could win no hold.

But where the working-class movement fails to realise its
revolutionary role, follows the leadership of Reformism and
thus surrenders to large capital, and even appears to enter into
collaboration with it, there the discontented petit-bourgeois
elements and declassed proletarian elements begin to look else-
where for their leadership. On this basis Fascism is able to win
its hold. In the name of demagogic slogans against large capital
and exploiting their grievances, these elements are drawn in
practice into the service of large capital.

4. The Definition of Fascism.

Fascism is often spoken of as a consequence of Communism.
“Reaction of the ‘Left,’ declared the Labour Manifesto on
“Democracy and Dictatorship” in 1933, “is displaced by
triumphant reaction of the ‘Right.’” With strikingly similar
identity of outlook to the Labour Party, the Conservative
leader, Baldwin, also declared: ‘Fascism is begotten of Com-
munism out of civil discord. Whenever you get Communism _
and civil discord, you get Fascism” (House of Commons,
November 23, 1933).

This picture is a fully misleading picture. Undoubtedly, the
parallel advance of the forces of revolution and counter-
revolution represents in fact the two sides of the single process
of the break-up of capitalism; the continuous interaction of the
opposing forces of revolution and counter-revolution was long
ago described by Marx. But the inference attempted to be

108 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

drawn from this that, if the working class follows the line of
Communism, then Fascism will triumph, is the direct opposite
of historical experience. The reality shows the exact contrary.

The examples are now sufficient to make certain a generalisa-
tion beyond possibility of dispute.

Where the majority of the working class has followed the
line of Communism (the Soviet Union), Fascism has not been
able to appear.

Where the majority of the working class has followed the line
of Reformism (Germany, Italy, etc.), there at a certain stage
Fascism has grown and conquers.

What is the character of that stage? That stage arises when
the breakdown of the old capitalist institutions and the advance
of working-class movement has reached a point at which the
working class should advance to the seizure of power, but when
the working class is held in by reformist leadership.

In that case, owing to the failure of decisive working-class
leadership to rally all discontented strata, the discredited old
regime is able to draw to its support under specious quasi-
revolutionary slogans all the wavering elements, petit-bour-
geoisie, backward workers, etc., and on the very basis of the
crisis and discontent which should have given allies to the
revolution, build up the forces of reaction in the form of
Fascism. The continued hesitation and retreat of the reformist
working-class leadership at each point (policy of the “lesser
evil’’) encourages the growth of Fascism. On this basis Fas-
cism is able finally to step in and seize the reins, not through
its own strength, but through the failure of working-class
leadership. The collapse of bourgeois democracy is succeeded,
not by the advance to proletarian democracy, but by the regres-
sion to fascist dictatorship.*

We are now in a position to reach our general definition of
the character of Fascism, the conditions of its development and
its class-rule. This definition has received its most complete

* Reference may be made to the present writer’s suggested definition of the
conditions of the advance to Fascism, written in 1925:

“Fascism arises where a powerful working-class movement reaches a stage
of growth which inevitably raises revolutionary issues, but is held in from
decisive action by reformist leadership. . . . Fascism is the child of Reform-
ism” (Labour Monthly, July 1925).

The subsequent events in Germany have abundantly illustrated the truth of
this.

THE DEFINITION OF FASCISM 109

scientific expression in the Programme of the Communist Inter-
national in 1928:

Under certain special historical conditions the progress of the
bourgeois, imperialist, reactionary offensive assumes the form of
Fascism.

These conditions are: instability of capitalist relationships; the
existence of considerable declassed social elements, the pauperisation
of broad strata of the urban petit-bourgeoisie and of the intelligent-
sia; discontent among the rural petit-bourgeoisie, and, finally, the
constant menace of mass proletarian action. In order to stabilise
and perpetuate its rule the bourgeoisie is compelled to an increasing
degree to abandon the parliamentary system in favour of the fascist
system, which is independent of inter-party arrangements and com-
binations.

The Fascist system is a system of direct dictatorship, ideologically
masked by the “national idea” and representation of the “‘pro-
fessions” (in reality, representation of the various groups of the
ruling class). It is a system that resorts to a peculiar form of social
demagogy (anti-Semitism, occasional sorties against usurer’s capital
and gestures of impatience with the parliamentary “talking shop”)
in order to utilise the discontent of the petit-bourgeois, the intel-
lectual and other strata of society; and to corruption through the
building up of a compact and well-paid hierachy of Fascist units,
a party apparatus and a bureaucracy. At the same time, Fascism
strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most back-
ward strata of the workers to its ranks, by playing upon their dis-
content, by taking advantage of the inaction of Social Democracy,
etc.

The principal aim of Fascism is to destroy the revolutionary labour
vanguard, i.e., the Communist sections and leading units of the
proletariat. The combination of social demagogy, corruption and
active White terror, in conjunction with extreme imperialist aggres-
sion in the sphere of foreign politics, are the characteristic features
of Fascism. In periods of acute crisis for the bourgeoisie, Fascism
resorts to anti-capitalist phraseology, but, after it has established
itself at the helm of State, it casts aside its anti-capitalist rattle, and
discloses itself as a terrorist dictatorship of big capital.

Alongside of this may be placed the parallel analysis of Fascism
in the Resolution on the International Situation of the same
Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928:

The characteristic feature of Fascism is that, as a consequence of
the shock suffered by the capitalist economic system and of special

IIo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

objective and subjective circumstances, the bourgeoisie—in order
to hinder the development of the revolution—utilises the discontent
of the petty and middle, urban and rural bourgeoisie and even of
certain strata of the declassed proletariat, for the purpose of creating
a reactionary mass movement.

Fascism resorts to methods of open violence in order to break the
power of the labour organisations and those of the peasant poor,
and to proceed to capture power.

After capturing power, Fascism strives to establish political and
organisational unity among all the governing classes of capitalist
society (the bankers, the big industrialists and the agrarians), and
to establish their undivided, open and consistent dictatorship. It
places at the disposal of the governing classes armed forces specially
trained for civil war, and establishes a new type of State, openly
based on violence, coercion and corruption, not only of the petit-
bourgeois strata, but even of certain elements of the working class
(office employees, ex-reformist leaders who have become govern-
ment officials, trade union officials and officials of the Fascist Party,
and also poor peasants and declassed proletarians recruited into the
Fascist militia).

Finally, the short definition given by the Thirteenth Plenum
of the Executive of the Communist International in 1933, and
repeated in the Resolution of the Seventh Congress in 1935,
may be given:

Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary,
most chauvinist and most imperalist elements of finance capital.

The further characteristics of Fascism indicated in the above
analysis, both in respect of its advance to power, and of its
programme and practice after power, it will now be necessary
to examine.

==CHAPTER V: HOW FASCISM CAME IN ITALY==

In the light of this general understanding of the character
and role of Fascism, and of the conditions of its development, it
is now possible to examine more closely the concrete historical
manifestations of Fascism, and, in particular, its development in
Italy and Germany.

For this purpose it is necessary first to review the conditions
of the transition to Fascism in these countries. It is then neces-
sary to examine more closely the programme and practice of
Fascism, especially as demonstrated in these two leading
countries.

1. The Priority of Italian Fascism.

Why did Fascism, the outstanding development of modern
capitalist policy, develop its first distinctive and complete form
in Italy, a secondary capitalist country?

The question bears a certain analogy to the question often
asked why the world proletarian revolution should have con-
quered first, not in the most advanced capitalist country, but
in the relatively less-developed Russia.

In both cases a general world development of the imperialist
epoch first reached its specific form, not at the main centres of
world imperialism, but at that point where the complex of con-
ditions, of extreme contradictions, made its appearance first
possible, and only more slowly spread beyond the original
country.

The reasons for the opening of the world socialist revolution
in Russia have long been cleared. Russia was the weakest link
of world imperialism: it represented the combination, on the
one side, of the weakest bourgeoisie and of the greatest corrup-
tion and collapse of the old regime; and on the other side, of the
most politically developed proletariat, of the highest proportion
of the proletariat in large-scale industry and of the most con-
scious and highly trained revolutionary party of the proletariat

in established leadership of the majority of the workers.
Iir

II2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The case of Italy and Fascism is more complex. In fact,
embryonic forms of Fascism already developed in other
countries before Italy, notably in Finland, Hungary, Poland
and Germany. But it was in Italy that Fascism was first
elaborated into a complete system and became during the suc-
ceeding decade the recognised principal model. Why was this?
We have seen that Fascism develops where the proletarian
revolution draws visibly close, but is held in by reformist leader-
ship. This was certainly the case in Italy after the war. But
in the immediate post-war period did not the proletarian revolu-
tion far more closely threaten in Germany than in Italy? Why
then the difference, and the very much later development of
Fascism in Germany?

The answer lies, not only in the very much greater strength
and long-drawn resistance of the German proletariat, but in
the basic difference of conditions of the revolutionary movement
in the two countries. In Germany a mass-revolution took
place; but the Social Democracy was able to retain control of the
main body of the working-class movement, and to rob the
revolution of its fruits. In Italy, on the other hand, there was
only the menace of a revolution; but the old Social Democratic
leadership lost effective control of the mass movement. In
consequence, the methods of the bourgeoisie in the two coun- |
tries necessarily differed.

In Germany the proletarian revolution actually overthrew
the old regime in 1918; but the workers were robbed of the
fruits of their victory by the Social Democratic leadership.
The task of the bourgeoisie in the first stage became to limit
the successful revolution, whose victory could not for the mo-
ment be questioned. For this purpose the direct governmental
leadership of Social Democracy was essential to the bourgeoisie
as the sole salvation. Only later, as the influence of Social
Democracy weakened, and the menace of the proletarian
revolution grew, in spite of and against Social Democracy,
did the German bourgeoisie require to bring into play the
additional weapon of Fascism against the working class.

In Italy, on the other hand, no revolution took place after
the war, but only a mass revolutionary wave of great power—
the highest mass revolutionary wave of those countries (the
victor countries) where the war was not followed by revolution. |
There was no question of strangling an already victorious

SOCIALISM IN ITALY II3

mass revolution by setting Social Democracy in power as tne
supposed leadership and voice of the triumphant revolution.
The government remained throughout directly in the hands
of the bourgeoisie. But the old Social Democratic leadership
lost control of the mass movement, which was rapidly advanc-
ing to revolution. The task for the bourgeoisie became to
prevent the menacing proletarian revolution. For this purpose
Social Democracy could serve as the brake to disorganise the
workers’ forces. But to smash the workers’ forces Fascism was
necessary. In contrast to Britain and France, the mass revo-
lutionary wave after the war in Italy was so high as to make
the bourgeois democratic forms inadequate; extraordinary
forms had to be brought into play. But it was not so high
as to reach to open insurrection and overthrow of the govern-
ment, and to the necessity of the bourgeoisie making a show
of surrendering power. The bourgeoisie only required to
change the forms and methods of its power. For this reason
Italy, despite the lower level of revolutionary development
than Germany, gave the first example of the new Fascist
dictatorship, to which Germany only reached later. Italian
Fascism revealed Fascism as a species of preventive counter-
revolution.

2. Socialism in Italy.

The relatively backward economic development of Italy
meant that the industrial proletariat, especially in large
industry, was proportionately much weaker than in the leading
industrial countries, such as Germany, Britain and the United
States. Of the 16.8 million occupied persons recorded in the
1911 census, 9 millions, or 54 per cent., were recorded as
engaged in agriculture and fisheries; 243,000 industrial estab-
lishments were recorded as employing 2.3 million workers.
The 1927 Census of Industries reported 2.9 million industrial
workers in manufacturing production; but 1.5 millions of these
were employed in establishments of less than 10 workers; only
695 factories had over 500 workers, with a total of 692,000
workers,

Nevertheless, the dominant numerical strength of the indus-
trial and agricultural proletariat combined, especially together
with the poor peasantry, should not be under-estimated. On
the basis of the 1911 census statistics it was calculated that of

114 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the 16.8 million occupied persons the agricultural proletariat
numbered 6.2 millions, and the proletariat in industry and trans-
port 4 millions, or a total of over 10 millions or over 60 per cent.

Further, Socialism, on the basis of a revolutionary pro-
gramme, reached an overwhelming mass support after the war.
The Italian Socialist Party, previously weak and dominated by
reformism and collaborationist policies until 1910, began to
move to the left in the fight against the Tripoli war in 1911; in
1912 it strengthened itself by expelling the chauvinist reformists,
under Bonomi and Bissolati, at the Reggio Emilia Congress;
thereafter the membership, previously dwindling from 36,000
in 1906 to 24,000 in 1910, shot up from 27,000 in 1912 to
48,000 in 1914. Thus strengthened, and with the added
advantage of a delayed entry of Italy into the war only after a
protracted dispute which divided also the bourgeoisie, the
Italian Socialist Party was not swept in the wake of the war,
but took the Zimmerwald line; it emerged from the war with
an increased membership of 70,000 and high popularity and
prestige.

The revolutionary wave after the war reached very great
heights in Italy, affecting all strata, the industrial workers, the
demobilised soldiers, the agricultural proletariat and the poor
peasantry. A widespread strike movement developed, both
economic and political, land seizures by the peasantry, etc.
The Socialist Party affiliated to the Communist International
in March 1919, by executive decision, which was confirmed by
an overwhelming majority at the Bologna Congress in October.
On this basis the Party went to the elections in November 19109,
on a Communist programme of dictatorship of the proletariat
and soviets, and for this programme won over one-third of the
total vote of the whole population, emerging as the strongest
party with 156 seats out of 508—at the same time as Mussolini
and his Fascists were unable to win a single seat. The member-
ship of the Party rose to 200,000, and of the Confederation of
Labour, which was allied to the Party, to two millions. At the
municipal elections in 1920 the Party won control of over 2,000
Communes, or one-third of the total. At the height of the
revolutionary wave the Government was powerless to act, as
shown in its passivity during the occupation of the factories in
1920, since it could not count on the support of the military
forces. The expectation of the social revolution was general.

SOCIALISM IN ITALY 11s

Nevertheless, no revolution took place, because there was no
decisive revolutionary leadership. As the Executive Committee
of the Communist International wrote in October 1920:

The P.S.I. (Italian Socialist Party) acts with too much hesitation.
It is not the Party which leads the masses, but the masses which push
the Party. . . . In Italy there exist all the necessary conditions for
a victorious revolution except one—a good working-class organisa-
tion.

The truth of this was abundantly shown in 1919-20. No Com-
munist Party existed until 1921, when the main revolutionary
wave had passed. Anarchist and syndicalist tendencies and
confusions on the one side, reformism in control of the principal
mass organisations on the other, and a passive, hesitating centrist
leadership between—this constituted the main picture of the
leadership of the Italian working class during the revolutionary
wave. Although the Italian Socialist Party had affiliated to
the Communist International in 1919, it retained at the very
heart of the leadership, in control of the most strategic points,
convinced enemies of Communism, the old reformist leadership
under Turati and D’Aragona, who had dominated the party
until 1910. These had no longer more than a small following
among the workers, as Congress votes showed; but they were
strong at the centre, dominating the parliamentary group and
controlling the official machinery of the Confederation of
Labour. They remained in the party, despite the adoption of
the Communist programme, openly in order to defeat the
revolutionary line. As one of their leaders, Prampolini,
explained at the Conference of the reformist wing in September
1922:

By remaining in the Party we were able to fulfil our duty
as Socialists. It would have been quite impossible for us to
ea accomplished outside the Party the task we accomplished
inside.

It was manifest that if the party were to achieve its task of
revolutionary leadership, the first necessity was to remove the
enemies of the revolution from the strategic leading positions and
replace them by revolutionaries. On this demand the Executive
Committee of the Communist International, under the leader-
ship of Lenin, conscious of the impending danger in Italy if this
were not carried out, exerted the whole of its pressure and

.

116 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

authority. The Executive long urged, and finally by the sum-
mer of 1920, when the matter was too serious for further parley-
ing, demanded in the name of the whole international move-
ment, the expulsion of Turati and the reformist leadership.
But the centrist leadership under Serrati refused, and the fate
of the Italian revolution was sealed for many years to come.
The issue came to a head at the Second Congress of the Com-
munist International in August 1920; Serrati set himself in
opposition to Lenin and to the whole international leadership,
preferring unity with Turati and the reformists to unity with
International Communism; and the bulk of the party under his
leadership passed out of the International. The break followed
at the Livorno Congress in January 1921; Serrati and the
centrists had a following of 98,o00, Turati and the reformists
14,000, and the Communists 58,000, who thereon formed the
Italian Communist Party. Serrati and his wing, who styled
themselves “unity Communists,” were appealed to by the
Communists to unite with them in a single Communist Party,
which would have thus constituted go per cent. of the old
party, freed from reformism; but they preferred unity with the
14,000 reformists to unity with 58,000 Communists. Thus the
workers’ ranks were broken.

Two years later, on the very eve of Mussolini’s coming to
power, Serrati was compelled to recognise his fatal error; at the
Rome Congress of the now weakened and dwindled Socialist
Party in the beginning of October 1922, the Serrati leadership
finally carried through the expulsion of Turati and the
reformists, now grown to nearly half the membership, and
applied for re-admission to the Communist International.
“Our fault,” declared Serrati at this Congress, “is that we
never sufficiently prepared ourselves for the events that have
overtaken us. . . . To-day we believe it essential to abandon
the democratic illusion, and to create a combative, active and
audacious Party.” But it was then too late; the irreparable
harm had been done; within four weeks Mussolini was in power.
As the message of the Communist International to the Rome
Congress declared:

He cannot be called a leader of the proletarian masses who with
great effort and after the lapse of several years comes to a correct
conclusion, but rather he who can detect a tendency at its birth and
can warn the workers in time of the peril that menaces them.

WAS REVOLUTION POSSIBLE IN ITALY? 137

3. Was Revolution Possible in Italy?

This understanding of the inner situation of Italian Socialism
during the critical years 1919-1922 is essential for the under-
standing of the failure of the Italian revolution during those
years, despite the favourable conditions and the readiness and
self-sacrifice of the masses, and the resulting advance and victory
of Fascism.

The revolutionary wave of 1919-20 spent itself in a confusion
of unorganised partial struggles and demonstrations without
decisive leadership or concentrated aim. The Socialist Party
leadership gave out the watchword: “The Revolution is not
made. The Revolution comes.” Under cover of this fatal non-
Marxist conception the responsibility of leadership was in fact
abandoned. The energy and self-sacrifice of the masses went
to waste in fruitless unco-ordinated actions.

The final climax of the revolutionary wave was reached with
the occupation of the factories in Northern Italy in September
1920. This action of the workers was undertaken in response
to a lock-out begun by the employers and threatening to be
made general. Beginning from the metallurgical industry in
Milan at the end of August, it spread to all industries until by
September 3 half a million workers were in unchallenged
occupation of the factories, establishing their own workers’ com-
mittees and armed guards. The government and employers
were powerless. The troops could not be counted on to act
against the workers. The classic conditions of revolution were
present. The Prime Minister, Giolitti, temporised. The
extra-legal Fascist formations were then only an impotent hand-
ful, and found it more prudent to applaud the workers’ move-
ment from a distance, proclaiming noisily their “sympathy”
for the occupation in which they had no part, and which
Mussolini declared in his journal to be “a great revolution”
(Popolo d’ Italia, September 28, 1920).

The bourgeoisie in this situation could only count on the
reformist leadership to save them. But the reformist leadership
did not fail them. It was obvious that the occupation of the
factories, if it remained a passive economic movement, with
political power remaining in the hands of the bourgeoisie, could
only end in stultification and failure. The condition of victory
was that the movement begun by the occupation of the factories
should be extended to the conquest of political power by the

118 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

workers, which the bourgeoisie was then powerless to resist.
Just this the reformists resisted, insisting on confining the move-
ment as “purely an economic movement” (the same tactics
as in the British General Strike in 1926), and negotiating with
the Government for a settlement. The critical decision was
taken on September 11 at a combined conference of the
Socialist Party and the Confederation of Labour; by a vote of
591,245 to 409,569 control was placed in the hands of the Con-
federation of Labour, that is, of the reformist leadership. The
reformist leadership entered into immediate negotiations with
Giolitti; and on September 19 a settlement was reached, by
which evacuation of the factories was conceded in return for a
20 per cent. wage increase and a promise of a share of ‘workers’
control” in industry (the promise went the way of all such
promises; the subsequent joint commission established to work
out the details of the scheme broke down; finally, the Govern-
ment in 1921 introduced an emasculated Bill of Labour Control,
similar to the German Works Councils Act). The essence of the
settlement was the evacuation of the factories. The reformist
leaders ordered the workers to leave the factories. What
neither the employers, nor the Government, nor the police,
nor the armed forces could effect, this was effected by the
reformist leadership—to get the workers out of the factories
and hand them back to capitalism.

Was the victory of the working-class revolution in Italy
possible in the situation of September 1920? Of this there can
be no doubt in the united evidence of all parties. The liberal
anti-fascist historian, Salvemini, who is mainly concerned for
the purposes of his argument to minimise the revolutionary
issues of the situation in Italy before Fascism in order to deny
this bourgeois “justification” of Fascism, nevertheless writes
of this period:

Had the leaders of the General Confederation of Labour and of
the Socialist Party wished to strike a decisive blow, here was the
opportunity. . . . The bankers, the big industrialists and big land-
lords waited for the social revolution as sheep wait to be led to the
slaughter. If a Communist revolution could be brought about by
bewilderment and cowardice on the part of the ruling classes, the
Italian people in September, 1920, could have made as many Com-
munist revolutions as they wished.

(G. Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, 1928, Vol. 1, p. 41.)

WAS REVOLUTION POSSIBLE IN ITALY? 11g

The leading Italian journal, the Corriere della Sera, wrote at the
time in its issue of September 29, 1920:

Italy has been in peril of collapse. There has been no revolution,

not because there was anyone to bar its way, but because the
General Confederation of Labour has not wished it.
The reformist leadership themselves boasted of having averted
revolution by their action, and thereafter, in exactly the same
way as the German reformists later, complained bitterly of the
ingratitude of the bourgeoisie in repaying their services by the
blows of Fascism:

“But after we had the honour,” stated the Secretary of the
General Confederation of Labour in a speech delivered two years
after the occupation of the factories, “of preventing a revolutionary
catastrophe—Fascism arrived.” (Daily Herald, April 12, 1928.)

Thus in the agreed testimony of the bourgeoisie and of the
reformists alike, the Communist revolution was fully possible
in Italy in September 1920, and was only prevented by the
reformist leadership. Fascism played no part in this.

It was only after the revolution was already defeated, after
the working-class ranks were disorganised and disillusioned by
the reformist betrayal, after this had begun to show itself in a
rapid collapse of membership and organisation, that then
Fascism stepped forward to show its prowess in beating the
already defeated workers.

The surrender of the factories took place in September 1920.
From that point the Italian working-class movement went
downwards. “After the occupation of the factories in Sep-
tember 1920, the idea spread among the people that the revolu-
tion had failed, and they grew discouraged” (Salvemini, op.
cit., p. 43). The membership of the party and of the trade
unions began rapidly to fall (the party membership fell from
216,000 in 1920 to 170,000 in January 1921).

In November 1920, the first Fascist terrorist action of blood
and fire against the workers was launched at Bologna.

The sequence of dates is obvious. The Fascist jackal strikes
only the already wounded proletarian lion. Fascism was not
the weapon of defence of the bourgeoisie against the advancing
proletarian offensive, but the vengeance of the bourgeoisie
against the retreating proletariat, after reformism had broken
the workers’ ranks, to follow up the victory by smashing the
working-class organisations.

120 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The Growth and Victory of Fascism.

Fascism had existed in germ in Italy since the beginning of
1919—in fact since the hired interventionist campaign of 1915.
The former Socialist Party agitator, Mussolini, who had
throughout his career performed a doubtful role of advocacy of
bomb attentats, Hervéist extravagance, etc., changed his coat
with the usual celerity of social chauvinists, and passed within
a few weeks from editing the Socialist anti-war Avanti, wherein
he had denounced the “bourgeois war” during August and
September, to founding, with French Government funds, the
interventionist Popolo d’Italia in November. The Fasct di
Azione Interventista, which he founded at Milan in 1915, were
the nucleus of future Fascism. After the war Mussolini and his
followers, their previous campaigning basis gone with the end of
the war, sought for a new one, and founded the first Fascio di
Combattimento at Milan in March 1919, on a confused chauvin-
ist, republican and revolutionary-sounding programme. This
was the official starting-point of Fascism. The Fasci were con-
stituted a political party in December 1920.

During 1919 and up to the autumn of 1920, that is, during
the revolutionary wave, Fascism had no strength or popular
support. The official authorities encouraged it; the Popolo
d’Italia was distributed by the Army authorities free among the
troops in 1919 and 1920. But Fascism could win no support.
At the elections in November 1919, Fascism could not win a
seat; Mussolini received 4,795 votes in Milan against the
Socialist 180,000. The total membership throughout the
country was small. Fascism had to swim with the revolu-
tionary stream. Its programme called for the abolition of the
monarchy and nobility, confiscation of war profits, inter-
national disarmament, abolition of the stock exchanges, the
land for the peasants, workers’ control of industry, etc. Its
propaganda glorified strikes, food riots, calling for the hanging
of speculators, the seizure of land by the peasantry, occupations
of factories by the workers (Dalmine), and denounced the State
as the enemy—“Down with the State in all its forms!”
(Popolo a’Italia, April 6, 1920).

During this period Fascism was still in preparation and had
no important place among the weapons of the bourgeoisie to
meet the proletarian offensive. In the face of the strength of
the revolutionary wave the bourgeoisie had to use other

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM I2I

methods. So far as an attempt was made to build up an alterna-
tive new party to counter and outbid the Socialist Party, this
attempt was concentrated on the Catholic “Popular Party,”
which was constituted in 1919 with a demagogic programme,
and was utilised to split the rural proletariat and peasantry,
winning 100 seats in 1919 against the Socialist 156. But the
main method of the bourgeoisie was the method of liberalism
and concessions, so long as their forces were unprepared, the
granting of shorter hours, wage increases, the Labour Control
Bill and similar legislation. This was the line of the successive
governments of Nitti, Giolitti, Bonomi and Facta. They cal-
culated on the reformist socialist leadership to break the
revolutionary offensive. Meanwhile, under cover of this policy
of seeming “weakness” and retreat, they were preparing the
armed counter-revolution. The gendarmerie, or Carabinieri,
were increased from 28,000 at the end of the war to 60,000 by
the summer of 1920. A new special force, the Royal Guard,
was created, 25,000 strong. At the same time the Fascist hooli-
. gan bands were being equipped and armed by the authorities.

Thus the transfer from the policy of a Giolitti to the policy of
a Mussolini was no sudden volte-face of the Italian bour-
geoisie. They were the two halves of a single policy; Mussolini
was the foster-child and creation of Giolitti, just as Hitler was
the foster-child of Briining. The task of Giolitti and the
“liberal” “democratic” governments was to fool the pro-
letariat with sham concessions, so long as the proletarian
forces were too strong to be defeated, and assist the reformist
leadership to break them up from within. Meanwhile these
“liberal” “democratic” governments were secretly equipping
and arming Fascism. When this first stage was completed, and
the proletarian forces had been disorganised by reformism, the
violent counter-revolution was let loose. The violent offensive
of Fascism was carried forward under the benevolent protection
of Giolitti and his successors. This second stage continued from
the autumn of 1920 to the autumn of 1922. Reformism con-
tinued to retreat and trust in parliamentarism for defence.
When the second stage had done its work, and the proletarian
forces had been smashed and beaten up, the final transference
to open Fascism was accomplished. Giolitti and his successors
peaceably made way for Mussolini. The cycle was complete.
The continuity of policy runs in practice right through.

ee ee

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122 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

This mechanism of the transition to Fascism, exactly repeated
in Germany, is the essential key to the correct understanding
of the real relationship of bourgeois democracy and Fascism.

Fascism grew up and grew strong after the autumn of 1920,
and was able to exercise its wholesale violence, only under the
direct protection and assistance of the bourgeois democratic
governments, of the military authorities, of the police, of the
magistracy and of the big bourgeoisie. From the autumn of
1920 the big landlords and the big industrialists poured support
to the Fascist bands to exercise terrorism against the peasantry
and the proletariat. The membership shot up, according to
Mussolini, from 20,000 in 1920 to 248,000 in 1921. The army
authorities supplied arms. Professional officers trained the
bands and directed operations. The General Staff issued a cir-
cular (October 20, 1920) instructing Divisional Commanders to
support the Fascist organisations. The workers and peasants
were rigorously disarmed; the Fascists carried arms with
impunity. The police and gendarmerie either directly assisted
the Fascists or remained passive. The magistracy habitually
subjected to savage sentences workers who attempted to defend
themselves, while releasing Fascists.

The conscious policy of Giolitti and Bonomi in permitting
and supporting Fascist violence has been already noted (p. ror).
The semi-official spokesman of Fascism, Luigi Villari, in his
Awakening of Italy (p. 123) notes that Giolitti “refused to inter-
fere with the repressive actions of the Fascists, illegal though
they were.” The pro-Fascist A. Zerboglio, in his standard
Il Fascismo, 1922, wrote:

The Government more or less openly made use of Fascism.

The Socialist Press are piling up proofs of Government tolerance
towards the Fascists, and it cannot honestly be disputed that some
of this evidence appears convincing.

The leading American journalist, Mowrer, recorded:

In the presence of murder, violence and arson, the police remained
“neutral.” ... When armed bands compelled the Socialists to
resign from office under pain of death, or regularly tried, and con-
demned their enemies to blows, banishment or execution, the
functionaries merely shrugged their shoulders. . . . Sometimes
Carabineers and Royal Guards openly made common cause with
the Fascists, and paralysed the resistance of the peasants. Against
the Fascists alone the latter might have held their own. Against

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM 123

the Fascists and the police together they were helpless, and their
complaints merely caused the authorities to arrest them as guilty of
attempting to defend themselves. Socialists were condemned for
alleged crimes committed months, years before. Fascists taken red-
handed were released for want of evidence.”

(E. A. Mowrer, Immortal Italy, p. 361.)

And again:
From the army the Fascists received sympathy, assistance and
war material. Officers in uniform took part in the punitive expedi-

tions. The Fascists were allowed to turn national barracks into their
private arsenals.—(Jbid., p. 144.)

Similarly the notorious advocate of Fascism, Odon Por, notes in
his Fascism (p. 111) that “the Fascists had been equipped
largely on the quiet, from the regular army.” Another
American journalist who was in Italy in 1921, J. Carter, reports:

The Fascisti had carte blanche to beat up their opponents through-
out Italy, while the Government pretended to be neutral.
(J. Carter, New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1927.)

One of the standard writers on Fascism, generally sympathetic,
G. Prezzolini, in his Le Fascisme, 1925, writes (p. 97):

They could organise themselves in armed corps and kill right and
left, with the certainty of impunity and with the complicity of the
police. It is thus no overstatement to recognise that the Fascists
fought with 99 chances out of 100 of gaining the victory.

The Fascist offensive of terrorism, destruction and murder,
which was launched at Bologna in November 1920, with the
overthrow of the newly elected Socialist Town Council and
sacking of the Chamber of Labour, was thereafter systemati-
cally developed and extended, with the manifest planning of a
military campaign, through the industrial region, and with
wholesale sporadic violence in the agricultural areas. Socialist,
trade union and co-operative buildings, painfully erected by
millions of sacrifices of a generation of workers, were burned and
sacked; workers’ newspapers and printing presses were des-
troyed; socialist municipal councils were expelled from office;
militant workers and peasants were beaten up or murdered.
All this went forward with the connivance of the civil authori-
ties, who normally followed up each Fascist coup expelling a
duly elected socialist municipal council by appointing a Special
Commissioner in its place. The normal procedure when a

124 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

workers’ building was threatened by the Fascists would be for
a special force of armed police or Royal Guards to appear
first to “protect” it; these would search for and remove any
arms, disarm the workers in it, and prevent any workers’
demonstration approaching it; the Fascists would then arrive
with full arms, and machine-guns; the police forces would then
declare resistance impossible and retire; and the Fascists would
be left free to work their will on the defenceless building and
disarmed workers.

Between January and May 1921, according to figures pub-
lished by the Italian Socialist Party at the time, the Fascists
destroyed 120 labour headquarters, attacked 243 socialist
centres and other buildings, killed 202 workers (in addition to
44 killed by the police and gendarmerie), and wounded 1,144.
During this period 2,240 workers were arrested by the police;
162 Fascists were arrested. During 1921-2, up to the Fascist
dictatorship, 500 labour halls and co-operative stores were
burned, and goo socialist municipalities were dissolved.

How did Reformism and Centrism, in control of the majority
of the working class, meet this offensive of the bourgeoisie?
They preached to the workers to put their trust in legal and
pacific methods and the use of the ballot. In May 1921,
Giolitti held a general election, hoping that the reign of
violence would have already broken the workers’ forces. The
total Socialist and Communist vote, nevertheless, actually
exceeded the 1919 total, reaching 1,861,000, against 1,840,000
in 1919; 122 Socialists and 16 Communists were returned,
totalling 138, as against only 35 Fascists. The workers were
endeavouring to use the ballot in their defence. The Socialist
organ, Avanti, in illusory triumph, proclaimed: “The Italian
proletariat has submerged the Fascist reaction under an
avalanche of red votes.” The reality was otherwise. The
“avalanche of red votes” made no difference to a situation of
civil war. The violence, in place of being diminished, was
increased. ‘

The next step of the reformist leadership was to spread even
more disastrous illusions as to the real character of the struggle.
They endeavoured to enter into a formal treaty of peace with
Fascism. On August 3, 1921, the Fascist-Socialist Treaty was
signed, proclaiming an end to all acts of violence. This was
signed by Mussolini and his colleagues on the one side; on the

THE GROWTH AND VICTORY OF FASCISM 125

other by the Executive of the Socialist Party, of the Socialist
Parliamentary Group and of the General Confederation of
Labour. The Communist Party refused to take part in this
criminal comedy. The agreement was not worth the paper it
was written on. The Fascist violence went forward; and
Mussolini explained the violation of his pledge by declaring
that he had been “overridden” by his supporters.

The final step of the reformist leadership was to endeavour
to enter into a parliamentary ministerial combination. After
the resignation of Facta in July 1922, Turati as the Socialist
parliamentary leader saw the King. When the attempt to
secure agreed terms for a ministerial coalition was unsuccessful,
the Reformist leadership conceived the idea of calling a general
strike at this late stage as a weapon of extra-parliamentary
pressure to bring about the formation of a coalition government.
The general strike was called on August 1, wholly without
preparation, and was explained by Turati to be a strike ‘in
defence of the State.” Under these conditions the general
strike was inevitably a failure, reaching only a section of the
membership of the Confederation of Labour, and winning no
general response, because of the utter lack of serious preparation
or fighting lead. The effect was only to play into the hands of
the Fascists, who intensified their attack.

The conditions were now complete for the final step of the
open transmission of power by the bourgeoisie into the hands of
the Fascists. This took place in October. The transmission
was carried through by the combined action of the King, the
army chiefs and the Facta Cabinet. A theatrical “March on
Rome” of Fascists was organised for October 28. This march
was in fact organised under six army generals; and the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army addressed an enthusiastic Fascist
gathering on the evening of October 27. The Facta Cabinet
went through the form of proclaiming martial law; this only
had the effect that the civil authorities handed over their
powers to the military throughout the country, who promptly
allowed the Fascists to occupy the public offices, railways, postal
and telegraphic offices, etc. After this had been successfully
achieved, the King announced on the morning of October 28
that he retused to sign the decree of martial law; martial law
was accordingly withdrawn; it was in consequence declared
impossible to “defend” Rome against the Fascists. The Facta

126 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Cabinet, which had already been in negotiation with the Fas-
cists, resigned. Mussolini was invited to form a Ministry, and
arrived at Rome on October 30 in a sleeping-car. Such was the
so-called Fascist “revolution,” which was in fact carried through
from start to finish by the bourgeois dictatorship from above.

‘The full forms of the Fascist dictatorship were not im-
mediately decided and carried through, as in Germany eleven
years later, because the methods were still being experimentally
discovered. At first, a show of parliamentary forms and per-
mission of opposition parties and Press was maintained, along-
side wholesale governmentally maintained violence and terror-
ism in practice. It was not until 1926 that the completed
Fascist dictatorship was finally established, with complete
suppression of all other parties, organisations and Press, the
workers’ trade unions being officially incorporated in the Fascist
syndicates, and the principal Reformist trade union leaders,
including D’Aragona, passing over to Fascism.

The Italian example provides the classic demonstration of
the transition to Fascism. The lines of development, the réles
of the different elements, the successive stages of this tragedy of
the working class stand out clear and sharp for all to learn.
What are the principal conclusions that stand out?

First, the revolutionary wave in Italy was broken, not by the
bourgeoisie, not by Fascism, but by its own inner weakness and
lack of revolutionary leadership, by Reformism.

Second, Fascism only came to the front after the proletarian
advance was already broken from within and disillusionment
had been spread. Fascism appeared on the scene after the
battle in order to play the hero (under police and military pro-
tection ) in harassing and slaughtering an army already in retreat.

Third, the transition to open Fascist dictatorship was no sud-
den abrupt break and reversal of bourgeois policy, but a con-
tinuation of bourgeois policy into new forms. Fascism was
prepared and fostered within the conditions of bourgeois democ-
racy (alongside a show of “liberalism” and concessions, so
long as the bourgeois forces were unprepared), to be placed in
power when the conditions were ripe.

All these lessons were demonstrated in the classic example of
Italian Fascism. Nevertheless, they were not yet learnt by the
international working class. They were to be demonstrated
anew on a yet wider scale in the next decade in Germany.

==CHAPTER VI: HOW FASCISM CAME IN GERMANY==

THE victory of Fascism in Germany opened a new page in the
whole development of Fascism.

Up to that time the view had still been generally expressed,
in liberal democratic and social democratic circles, that Fas-
cism and “dictatorship” in general was a phenomenon of
backward countries, of industrially less developed countries
without a strong industrial proletariat, of Southern and Eastern
Europe.

But Germany was the country with the most highly-advanced
and concentrated industrial development in Europe, and with
the most highly-organised and politically conscious industrial
proletariat in the whole capitalist world. Yet the most brutal
and barbarous Fascist dictatorship yet known, leaving the
Italian in the shade, triumphed in Germany in 1933.

How was this possible? How did it arise? This question is
of vital concern to the countries of Western Europe and
America, with their closely parallel conditions.

The answer is to be found, not simply in the events of 1933,
but in the whole fifteen years’ development of the German
Revolution. The establishment of the Fascist dictatorship was
only the culminating step of a long process, which began already
in 1918 when Ebert and Hindenburg drew up the terms of their
treaty of alliance against the proletarian revolution.

Superficial critics, with their eyes only on the events of 1933,
speak often of the “sudden collapse,” of the inglorious “defeat
without a battle” of the powerful and highly-organised German
working class. They speak of the “ease” with which Fascism
won its victory, and of the “incapacity” of the German
working class to fight.

This picture is a false one, as the whole past history of the
German Revolution has already proved, and as its future will
still more abundantly prove. The battle of the German working

class against the advancing counter-revolution lasted for fifteen
127

128 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

years before the Fascist dictatorship could be established; in
that battle tens of thousands of German workers gave their lives
under the bullets of the enemy; and if in the end the working-
class forces had to retreat and could not prevent the establish-
ment of the Fascist dictatorship, this was not due to any superior
fighting strength of Fascism, but was solely because the action
of the workers was paralysed and prevented by their own
majority leadership, and by their own mistaken discipline and
loyalty under that leadership. But the speed with which the
vanguard of the working class has adapted itself to the new
conditions, and taken up the struggle with renewed force under
the leadership of the Communist Party in the face of all the
terrorism and suppression, is the surest guarantee that the Hitler
dictatorship will be only an episode in the long-drawn battle of
the German working class and in its advance to the final victory
of the proletarian revolution.

1. The Strangling of the 1918 Revolution.

The seeds of Hitler’s victory were sown in 1918. The Ger-
man workers had overthrown the old State, and power was in

their grasp. The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils were for a
short period the strongest power throughout the country. The
bourgeoisie and the old militarist class were unable to offer any
resistance. All the conditions were present for building an
impregnable Soviet Republic—save that no revolutionary
party existed to lead the workers (the Communist Party of
Germany was only formed in December 1918). ‘The strength
of the proletariat at the beginning of the revolution, before
Social Democracy had squandered and destroyed that strength,
is attested by the principal social democratic witnesses:
The military collapse brought the whole power of the State into
the hands of the proletariat at one stroke.
(H. Strobel, The German Revolution, p. 1.)
In November, 1918, the Revolution was the work of the proletariat
alone. The proletariat won so all-powerful a position that the
bourgeois elements at first did not dare to attempt any resistance.
(Kautsky, Introduction to the Third Edition of
The Proletarian Revolution, 1931.)
How was this absolute power of the proletariat turned in
fifteen years into its exact opposite—into the absolute power of
the bourgeoisie and militarist class, and the absolute subjection

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION I29

of the working class? The answer to this question, in which is
contained the tragedy of the German Revolution of 1918, is
comprised in two words—Social Democracy.

The German Social Democratic Party was built upon a long
and glorious revolutionary past. Its early years had been
watched over by Marx and Engels, and led by Bebel and the
elder Liebknecht. It had refused to vote the war credits in
the war of 1870, and had fought and defeated during the
eighties Bismarck’s twelve-year attempt at its suppression. It
had stood for the programme of revolutionary Marxism, and
on this programme had built up the mass organisations of the
working class. But in the imperialist era, opportunism and

/corruption had made increasing inroads in the leadership
especially in the reformist trade-union leadership. In their
closing years Marx and Engels had already given warning of
the danger and called for asplit. Their warnings were ignored;
and their messages and programme-criticisms were held back
from the membership. The party and trade union apparatus
grew in practice more and more closely bound up with the
capitalist State. 1914 completed the process; the Social
Democratic Party leadership openly united with the Kaiser,
the militarists and the bourgeoisie in support of the imperialist
war, against the working class. The scattered opposition
elements, under heavily difficult conditions of combined war-
censorship and party-censorship, gathered their ranks for the
fight, in the revolutionary illegal Spartacus League, founded in
1916, and in the Independent Socialist Party, founded in 1917.
Through these forces the 1918 revolution was organised.

The Social Democratic Party had no part in the victory of
the 1918 revolution, but was on the contrary opposed to it
from the first. As Scheidemann declared in his libel lawsuit
in Berlin in 1922: “The imputation that Social Democracy
wanted or prepared the November revolution is a ridiculous,

stupid lie of our opponents.”” When the revolution broke out,

the Social Democratic leaders were Ministers in the Coalition

Government of Prince Max; in the critical days their Executive

issued call after call to the population against revolution; when
they found themselves compelled to press for the abdication of
the Kaiser, they did so, according to Scheidemann (Vorwarts,

December 6, 1922), in the hope to save the monarchy; the

trade union leaders were negotiating a Treaty of Alliance with

130 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the employers, which was actually signed on November 15,
1918.

Nevertheless, the main body of the workers, soldiers and
sailors, who were in fact carrying through the revolution against
the Social Democratic leadership, were at the same time
organised in the Social Democratic Party and under its leader-
ship. This was the fatal contradiction of the November
revolution, which led to its downfall.

As soon as the revolution had triumphed on November 9,
the Social Democratic leaders hastened to the revolutionary
leaders, to Liebknecht and the Independents, to beg to take
part in the leadership of the victorious revolution and form a
joint government. It was at this point, already on the morning |
of November 9, that Centrism, in the shape of the Independent |
or Left Social Democratic leaders, took the disastrous step
which sealed the fate of the revolution. Liebknecht correctly |
rejected such a coalition with the open agents of the bourgeoisie,
which could only serve to restore their prestige and enable them |
to strangle the revolution. Had the Independents followed the
lead of Liebknecht, and stood firm in a revolutionary bloc,
excluding the social imperialists, at the head of the triumphant
revolution (the Spartacists and Independents controlled the
majority of the Berlin Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council), it is
doubtful whether the discredited Social Democratic leadership,
hopelessly identified with the overthrown old regime, could have
prevented the victory of the revolution.

But the Independents in the name of “unity” chose the
alternative course. They allied themselves with the Social
Democratic enemies of the revolution in an equal coalition
government. In this way, where all other channels had failed,
bourgeois influence was re-established at the heart of the new
order. (Within less than two months the Independents found
themselves compelled to withdraw from the coalition govern-
ment; but the work had been done; the bourgeois-militarist
regime had been re-established under the protecting shell of
Social Democracy.)

A Council of People’s Commissars, responsible to the |
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, was appointed, consisting of
three majority Social Democrats, and three Independents. |
The forms which had thus to be adopted revealed how com-
pletely the pressure and demand of the masses in the moment |

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION 131

of revolution was towards the Soviet Republic. But the leaders
of the new formally soviet order were its sworn enemies whose
only thought was to overthrow it.

If the November revolution were to maintain itself, it is
obvious that its first task was to destroy the bases of power of the
old regime, which was momentarily defeated, but still fully in
being: to replace at all strategic points the old reactionary
bureaucracy, military caste and magistracy; to break up the
landed estates; to take over the banks and large enterprises; to
build up the workers’ armed guards for the defence of the
revolution. Had this been done, when there was full power to
do it, Fascism could never have raised its head in Germany.

But the Social Democratic Government did the opposite.
At every point it confirmed and protected the old regime; main-
tained the bureaucracy and all reactionary institutions;
appointed bourgeois Ministers for War, the Navy, Foreign
Affairs, Finance and the Interior; ordered the disarming of
the workers; and armed and equipped special counter-revolu-
tionary corps under the most reactionary monarchist officers.
Through these White Guard corps, authorised, financed and
equipped by the Social Democratic Government, the workers’
revolution was drowned in blood; Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg were murdered, the officers who murdered them
going scot free and openly glorying in their crime under the
Social Democratic Government; the resistance of the workers
was steadily suppressed with systematic terror through the end
of 1918 and through 1919.

Thus the 1918 revolution was defeated by Social Democracy.
Only so was the basis for subsequent Fascism laid.

What led the Social Democratic leadership to act in this
fashion, which could in the end only mean the destruction also
of their own positions? By 1920 the Social Democratic
Ministers were already fleeing from Berlin in the night before
the same officers they had themselves armed and equipped, and
only the action of the workers saved them; by 1933, when the
resistance of the workers had been still further broken and
the power of the counter-revolution built up, their organisation
was formally dissolved, and they passed into exile.

Blindness, folly, stupidity is the common answer of those who
still seek to apologise for them, in the face of the terrible sequel
of their acts.

132 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

But in fact the Social Democratic leaders acted with full
consciousness of what they were doing, and could not act other-
wise on the basis of their whole line. For their one thought in
1918-19, as their subsequent memoirs have abundantly shown,
was to “save Germany from Bolshevism,” that is, in fact, to
save the capitalist regime—always in the name of “democracy.”
But they could only accomplish this in alliance with the most
reactionary and militarist classes as the sole force to crush the
working class. Therefore they entered into alliance with the
bourgeoisie, with the militarists, with the old General Staff,
with the White Guards—always in the name of “democracy.”
In a revolutionary period the class struggle knows no half-
measures: either the victory of the working class revolution, or
the victory of complete reaction; either Kornilov or Bolshevism;
either Hindenburg or Communism. The class-realities tore
through the “democratic” pretences. Only two courses were
open in post-war Germany: either the victory of the working-
class revolution or the complete victory of reaction. In their
hostility to the former the Social Democratic leadership chose
the latter. They entered into formal alliance with the repre-
sentatives of the old regime.

The direct alliance of Hindenburg and President Ebert, the
leader of Social Democracy, was formally sealed in an exchange
of letters. Hindenburg wrote to President Ebert in December
1918 (the letter was quoted by the son of Ebert in February
1933, in a published appeal to Hindenburg, begging for the
toleration of Social Democracy under Fascism in view of its
past services):

I address you because I have been told that you, too, as a true
German, love the Fatherland above everything, suppressing personal
opinions and desires just as I had to do because of the plight of the
Fatherland. In this spirit I have concluded an alliance with you to
save our people from a threatening collapse.

General Groener, Chief of the German General Staff at the
time of the November Revolution, gave the same evidence in
the course of a libel case at Munich in November 1925, that an
“alliance” was concluded between the old monarchist General
Staff and Social Democracy to defeat Bolshevism. He stated:

On November 10, 1918, I had a telephone conversation with
Ebert, and we concluded an alliance to fight Bolshevism and
Sovietism and restore law and order. -. . .

THE STRANGLING OF THE 1918 REVOLUTION 133

Every day between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. the staff of the High Com-
mand talked to Ebert on a special secret telephone. From Novem-
ber ro our immediate object was to wrest power in Berlin out of the
hands of the Councils of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

Thus the seeds of Fascism and of the victory of the counter-
revolution were planted by Social Democracy. From the
beginning of the revolution continuously, while the workers
were most stringently disarmed and subjected to heavy penalties
if any were found in possession of arms, the illegal, armed
counter-revolutionary corps and formations, which were the
first forms of Fascism, were protected and tolerated by Social
Democracy and by the Entente. “Disarmament” was never
applied to these; the Fascist murder-gangs worked their will
with impunity throughout the so-called “democratic republic,”
as shown conspicuously in their murders of Erzberger and
Rathenau. The tolerance of the Entente for these formations,
in deference to the insistence of German statesmen that they
were essential for the defeat of the revolution, is illustrated in
the diary of the British Ambassador in Berlin, Lord D’Abernon,
who as late as the autumn of 1920, two years after the armistice,
is still recording “long conversations” without result on the
issue.

Berlin, October 22, 1920. A long conversation with Dr. Simons
at the Foreign Office. Regarding Disarmament, Dr. Simons said
that the demands of the Entente for the dismemberment of various
Einwohnerwehr and Orgesch (Fascist) organisations was equivalent
to delivering up the orderly section of the population to their greatest
foes. Without organisation the bourgeois element cannot resist the
Reds, who are a real danger.

In fact, effective disarmament was never carried out. Through
all the varying forms and phases of the Einwohnerwehr, the
Orgesch, the Ehrhardt Brigade and its successors, the Organisa-
tion Consul, the Black Reichswehr, the so-called Labour Corps,
and finally the Stahlhelm and Storm Troops, the counter-
revolutionary formations were maintained under the egis of
Social Democracy and the “democratic republic” right up to
the final triumph of Fascism. But the workers’ attempt at
self-defence, the Red Front, was ruthlessly suppressed by
Social Democracy (by Severing as Minister of the Interior in
1929).

On this basis was built up the Weimar Republic, which lasted

134 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

from 1918 to 1932 on the basis of the coalition of the bourgeoisie
and Social Democracy. Throughout these years Social Democ-
racy was in governmental office: during the greater number of
them in the Federal Government (from 1918 to 1925 under the
presidency of Ebert, and from 1928 to 1930 in the Miller
Cabinet); during all of them in Prussia, through the Braun-
Severing Cabinets, governing the majority of the German popu-
lation; and the principal Police President posts were held by
Social Democrats. Thus Fascism grew to power under the
protection of Social Democracy.

The Weimar Republic was on paper “the freest democracy
in the world.” In reality, it covered the maintenance and
protection of the reactionary institutions of the old regime,
combined with the violent suppression of the workers and con-
stant recourse to martial law and emergency dictatorship
against the workers (the bloody suppressions of 1918-19; the
terror in the Ruhr after the Kapp Putsch in 1920, when the
workers who had defended the republic were sentenced by
military tribunals composed of officers who had taken part in
the revolt; the Horsing terror in Saxony in 1921; the military
overthrow by the Reich of the elected Zeigner Government in
Saxony in 1923; the von Seeckt dictatorship and martial
law throughout Germany; the shooting down of the workers’
May Day demonstrations under Severing in 1929; the emer-
gency dictatorship from 1930 to 1933).

Of this “democratic republic” the leading American bour-
geois journalist, Mowrer, with no revolutionary sympathies,
could only write:

A virgin Republic that appeals to old-time monarchists and gen-
erals to defend it against Communists! Inevitably it falls into the
enemy’s hands. .. .

What can be said for a republic that allows its laws to be inter-
preted by monarchist judges, its government to be administered by
old-time functionaries brought up in fidelity to the old regime; that
watches passively while reactionary school teachers and profes-
sors teach its children to despise the present freedom in favour of a
glorified feudal past, that permits and encourages the revival of the
militarism which was chiefly responsible for the country’s previous
humiliation?

What can be said for democrats who subsidise ex-princes who
attack the regime; who make the exiled ex-Emperor the richest man
in deference to supposed property rights. ... This remarkable

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 135

Republic paid generous pensions to thousands of ex-officers and
civil servants who made no bones of their desire to overthrow it.”
(E. A. Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, pp. 17-19.)

He further notes that in 1914 30 per cent. of the officers’ corps
were of aristocratic lineage; in 1932 21 per cent. were of aris-
tocratic lineage—an indication how little the real regime was
changed under the so-called “democratic republic.”

These were the conditions within which Fascism grew to
power in Germany in the midst of bourgeois democracy.
Fascism was able to utilise the growing discontent, the economic
distress and the widespread anger against the slave treaty of
Versailles and its tribute. But it was only able to utilise these,
and to build a mass following on this basis, because Social
Democracy, the majority leadership of the working class, had
surrendered any leadership on these issues, and had on the
contrary identified itself with capitalism, with Versailles and
the tribute, and with the whole regime of oppression of the
masses. And Fascism was only able to build up its strength on
these issues, and to build up its armed formations, because it
was protected and assisted at every point from above, by the
State machine, by the police and military, by the judicature
and by the big capitalists, right up to its final placing in power.

2. The Growth of National Socialism.

Fascism grew up in Germany, even more than in Italy, under
the guidance and fostering care of the old regime, and, in par-
ticular, of the military authorities. The old General Staff
remained the real centre of the State behind the outer demo-
cratic forms. The early counter-revolutionary formations,
which were the precursors of Fascism, were mainly composed of
officers and ex-officers. Feder, the theoretical founder of
National Socialism, was a Reichswehr instructor. Hitler was
put through an intensive political course by the Army authorities
before being launched as a mass agitator. As he has since
recounted in his autobiography, he first came in contact with
the National Socialist Party (then in its first form as the
“German Labour Party” in 1919) under orders from Army
headquarters. The semi-professional military organisation of
the Storm Troops was organised on lines closely parallel to the
Reichswehr.

But Fascism, to conquer, requires to develop a mass move-

|
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136 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ment. The early attempts of the counter-revolution, signalised
in the Kapp putsch, based solely on the officers, junkers and
bureaucracy, could only end in failure. The Ludendorff-
Hitler putsch of 1923, although preceded by longer agitation,
also ended in immediate ignominious collapse. The leniency
with which these armed revolts against the State were treated
shows the semi-official protection under which the counter-
revolution was being built up. The Kapp rebels went un-
punished, while workers who had resisted them were subjected
to heavy sentences. Ludendorff went unpunished; Hitler, an
alien who had taken up arms against the State, was given a few
months’ detention and then allowed to continue his agitation.
But the failure of these putsches showed that it was necessary to
build deeper roots of a mass party, alongside military terrorist
organisation. On this task Fascism concentrated its attention
in the succeeding years.

The mass agitation of German National Socialism was built
up on the basis of the Twenty-Five Points Programme originally
adopted in 1920 (see Chapter IX), and was especially developed
under Hitler, and later under Goebbels and Gregor Strasser,
to direct its appeal, not only to the peasantry and urban petit-
bourgeoisie, but to the working masses in the industrial dis-
tricts. Whereas Italian Fascism early dropped any pretence of
connection with “socialism,” German Fascism could only
reach a mass basis by professing to stand for “socialism.”
National Socialist propaganda distinguished itself by its wild
and frenzied character of combined anti-Semitism, anti-
capitalism, and chauvinist denunciation of Versailles and of the
subjection of Germany. Its contradictions, unscrupulousness
and demagogy were far more blatant than in the Italian
example. As Hitler declared in Mein Kampf (in a sentence
subsequently deleted since the twelfth edition in 1932): “The
German has not the slightest notion how a people must be
misled, if the adherence of the masses is to be sought.” Hitler
took as his model the British war-time propaganda, which he
admired as the finest example of the art of demagogic lying.

Fascism can, however, as the Italian example had already
shown, only reach a mass basis after Social Democracy has fully
exposed itself and created widespread mass disillusionment in
the midst of growing economic crisis and gathering revolu-
tionary issues. This is the general background for the growth

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 137

of Fascism. A first wave of advance to such a basis was reached
in the end of 1923 and the beginning of 1924, after the inflation-
ruin of the petit-bourgeoisie and the failure of the proletariat in
the revolutionary situation of 1923; in the elections of May 1924
National Socialism reached a vote of 1.9 millions (against 6
millions for Social Democracy and 3.6 millions for Com-
munism). But the subsequent stabilisation period, and the
widespread promises of Social Democracy of a new era of
“organised capitalism” and “economic democracy,” led to
new hopes in Social Democracy and the dream of the peaceful,
reformist “democratic” path to Socialism. By December
1924, the Nazi vote fell to goo,ooo. Four years later, in the
1928 elections, it had fallen to 800,000 (against 9.1 millions for
Social Democracy and 3.2 millions for Communism). Only
when the world economic crisis and the Briining hunger-regime
had exposed the final bankruptcy of all the promises of Social
Democracy, only then Fascism leapt forward in the headlong
advance which was revealed at the elections of September 1930,
in a vote of 6.4 millions (against 8:5 millions for Social Democ-
racy and 4.5 millions for Communism). This was carried for-
ward in the Presidential elections of April 1932, to 13.4 millions,
and in the elections of July 1932 (the highest point), to 13.7
millions.

What led to this sudden expansion of Fascism in Germany in
1930 to 1932? The world economic crisis, which undermined
the basis of stabilisation and of the Weimar Republic, under-
mined equally the position of Social Democracy which was
closely linked up with these. Capitalism in Germany required
to advance te new methods in face of the crisis. It required to
wipe out the remainder of the social gains of the revolution, in
respect of social legislation, hours and wages, which had con-
stituted the main basis of influence of Social Democracy in the
working class and its stock-in-trade to point to as the fruits of
its policy. In place of the concessions of the early years of the
revolution, capitalism required now to advance to draconian
economic measures against the workers. For this purpose new
forms of intensified dictatorship were necessary. Social Democ-
Tacy was thrust aside from the Federal Government, and the
Briining dictatorship was established in the summer of 1930,
ruling without parliament by emergency decree—but with the
Support of Social Democracy. On this basis the famous Hunger

I 38 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Decrees were carried through. Between 1929 and 1932,
according to official figures, the total wages and salaries paid
by the employers fell from 44.5 billion marks to 25.7 billion
marks; unemployment rose to eight millions; unemployment
benefit was cut to an average of slightly over 9 marks. All this
dictatorship and offensive was carried through with the
support of Social Democracy. These were the conditions that
made possible the rapid growth of Fascism.

Had Social Democracy been prepared to join forces with
Communism in resisting the Briining dictatorship and the
hunger offensive, there is no question that the heavy capitalist
attack need not have weakened the working-class front and
played into the hands of Fascism, but would have on the con-
trary intensified the class struggle and strengthened the working
class front and the widest mass mobilisation on this basis,
leaving no room for Fascism to win a hold. But Social Democ-
racy, rather than join forces with Communism, preferred to
support the Briining dictatorship, to support the Hunger
Decrees, and to help to carry through the attack on the workers,
in the name of the policy of the “lesser evil.” This was the
crucial weakness in the proletarian camp in the decisive years of
the preparation of Fascism. This support of the Briining dicta-
torship by the majority working-class organisation, controlling
the trade unions, disorganised and shattered the proletarian
ranks. It was only through this disorganisation of the proletarian
ranks that the initiative in the critical years 1930-32, and
the main gains from the universal distress, which should
have strengthened the working-class front, passed instead to
Fascism.

The leaders of German capitalism were well aware (as the
revealing ‘Fihrerbriefe”’ or confidential bulletins of the
Federation of German Industry during the period, quoted in
the next chapter, make abundantly clear) that the policy they
were compelled to pursue in the economic crisis, with the attacks
on all sections of the workers, including those who had gained
by the previous social legislation, inevitably meant the weaken-
ing of the basis of Social Democracy, their main support in the
working class, and the strengthening of Communism. The
weakened and discredited Social Democracy could no longer
hold back the growing Communist advance. The Weimar

THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM 139

Coalition basis was bankrupt. The German capitalists clearly
recognised that it was necessary to advance to a new political
system, and to build up, alongside Social Democracy, a parallel
new system of mass organisation, to defeat the Communist
advance, against which Social Democracy was no longer
adequate, and to disrupt and smash the working class.

In consequence, it was from this period, from the time of
the Briining dictatorship, that the overwhelming support of the
main body of German capitalism and landlordism began to be
placed at the disposal of the hitherto only partially supported
National Socialism, the instrument found ready to their hand.
Unlimited funds, not only from German bourgeois, but also
from foreign bourgeois sources, were poured into the National
Socialist coffers. An overwhelming, all-sided, lavish agitation
without parallel in political history was conducted during these
years; while the terrorist bands received abundant police and
judicial protection to break up working-class agitation, the
hand of the government dictatorship was heavy on all militant
working-class organisation and agitation. The gigantic, artifi-
cial expansion of National Socialism during this period (it had
begun to sink again as rapidly already by the autumn of 1932
was a highly organised product of the entire mechanism of the
capitalist dictatorship. All the politically backward dis-
contented elements of the population, petit-bourgeois, declassed
elements and backward workers, were swept into the National
Socialist net.

The class-conscious workers who became disillusioned with
Social Democracy passed to Communism. The politically
backward elements passed to Fascism. This process is shown
by the successive voting figures. Between 1930 and 1932 Social
Democracy lost 1,338,000 votes, while Communism gained
1,384,000 votes. Thus the Communist gains almost exactly
approximated to, slightly exceeding, the Social Democratic
losses. Thanks to the existence of a strong Communist Party,
the losses from Social Democracy did not pass—as in England,
in the National Government elections of 1931—to abstention
or the class enemy, but to the militant working-class front. The
gigantic Nazi gains were essentially derived from the previous
voters for the old bourgeois parties, who lost many millions of
votes, and from those who had not previously voted at all.

I40 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. The Crucial Question of the United Front.

In spite of all the highly subsidised, and violently supported,
Nazi agitation, the combined working-class forces, if they had
been united, were immeasurably superior to the Fascist forces.
Even in the merely numerical test of the electoral votes, they
were throughout superior, with one exception. If we add
together the Social Democratic and Communist votes as an
indication of the potential combined working-class vote (which
would have at once become immensely higher if there had been
the enormous stimulus of a united fight against the capitalist
dictatorship), this total exceeded the Nazi total on every
occasion, save July 1932. On that occasion it totalled
13,229,000 against 13,732,000 for the Nazis. But already
within four months, by November 1932, it totalled 13,241,000
against 11,729,000 for the Nazis. This, however, is merely in
respect of the electoral counting of heads. In every real social
and political test, in organisation, in homogeneity, in their
social role, in political consciousness and in fighting power, the
working-class forces, if they had been united, were im-
measurably superior to the Nazi electoral miscellany.

The decisive question was thus the question of the united
working-class fight. To this the Communist Party devoted all
its efforts. As the issue grew more and more urgent, the Com-
munist Party issued appeal after appeal for the united working-
class front against Fascism and the capitalist attack, both to
the mass of the workers and specifically to the Social Demo-
cratic Party and to the General Trade Union Federation.

The first nation-wide appeal for the united front was
launched in April 1932, by the Communist Party and the Red
Trade Union Opposition, who called for a combined action of
ali labour organisations against the then impending general
wage offensive. This appeal won a measure of response among
the lower trade union organs and social democratic member-
ship, but was rejected by the Social Democratic and trade
union leadership, who maintained a ban on the united front.

The second appeal for the united front was made on July 20,
1932, after the von Papen dictatorship had expelled the Social
Democratic Government of Prussia. The Communist Party
directly addressed itself to the Executives of the Social Demo-
cratic Party and of the General Trade Union Federation, pro-
posing the joint organisation of a general strike for the repeal of

THE CRUCIAL QUESTION OF THE UNITED FRONT I4I

the emergency decrees and the disbanding of the Storm Troops.
The Social Democratic leadership rejected this appeal for a
united front, branding any call for a general strike as a provoca-
tion, and declaring that the only method to oppose Fascism was
the ballot.

The third appeal for a united front was made on January 30,
1933, after Hitler had been installed as Chancellor. This
appeal won such wide response that, though the Social Demo-
cratic leadership made no official answer, it was compelled to
explain its refusal in its Press and put forward tentatively
alternative suggestions of a “non-aggression pact” (i.e., ab-
stention from verbal criticism), but specifically excluding any
action against Hitler on the grounds that he was legally in
power and should not be opposed.

The fourth appeal for a united front was made on March 1,
1933, after the burning of the Reichstag and the unloosing of
the full Nazi terror. This appea! was left unanswered by the
Social Democratic and trade union leadership, who were
endeavouring to come to an understanding for the toleration of
Social Democracy under Fascism.

Alongside these direct appeals for the united front, the Com-
munist Party endeavoured to the utmost of its power to build
the united front from below with the Social Democratic, trade
union and unorganised workers throughout Germany. This
won a wide measure of response, as shown in increasing mass
demonstrations and partial strikes and actions; but it was
heavily handicapped from reaching effective strength by the
official ban of the Social Democratic and trade union leader-
ship, who excluded all active members and organisations that
took part in the united front.

In the face of this record, it is impossible for any impartial
judge to reach any other verdict than that the united working-
class front, which could alone have defeated Hitler, was ren-
dered impossible solely by the official ban of the Social Demo-
cratic and trade union leadership. This was the decisive con-
dition which made possible the victory of Fascism in Germany.

Social Democracy rejected the united working-class front
because it was pursuing an alternative line, which it declared to
be the correct line for defeating Fascism—the line of unity with
the bourgeoisie and support of the bourgeois State, even under
conditions of dictatorship. This was the so-called line of the

142 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“lesser evil.” What was this conception of the “lesser evil”?
The existing bourgeois dictatorship, even after democratic
forms had been flung aside, even under Hindenburg, Briining,
von Papen or von Schleicher, was declared to be a “lesser
evil” than the victory of Fascism. Therefore it should be sup-
ported, and every blow against the workers accepted passively
without struggle (the same line was subsequently pursued by
Austrian Social Democracy in the support of Dollfuss). But
these forms of dictatorship were only preparing the ground for
complete Fascism, destroying the resistance of the workers step
by step, and, as soon as their work was complete, handing over
the State to Hitler. Thus the line of the “lesser evil” meant
the passive acceptance of every stage of development to com-
plete Fascism. And even when Hitler came to power, his rule,
on the grounds that he was “legally” in power, was proclaimed
a “lesser veil” to an “illegal” Nazi terror, and therefore not to
be opposed. Thus the line ran continuously without a break
to the complete Nazi terror and suppression of all working-class
organisations. In this way the line of Social Democracy ensured
the victory of Fascism in Germany without a struggle.

The first step in this policy was the “toleration” of the
Briining dictatorship since 1930.

The second decisive step was the support of Hindenburg as
President in 1932. Social Democracy urged that the victory
of the reactionary Hindenburg was necessary to defeat Hitler
(as against the Communist warning to the workers that “a
vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler”). As soon as Hin-
denburg was installed as President by the support of Social
Democracy, before a year was out, he placed Hitler in power.

The third decisive step was the passive acceptance in July
1932, of the forcible ejection of the constitutional Social Demo-
cratic Government of Prussia by von Papen.

All over Germany Socialists who read the news of the ignominious
dismissal of Braun and Severing waited for the inevitable answer—
the general strike—and waited in vain.

(Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back, p. 7.)

The Social Democratic Ministers, instead, appealed to the
Supreme Court at Leipzig, which indulged in some very delicate
legal discussions as to the legal status of the dismissed Ministers
in relation to the Commissar imposed in their place—until the

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 143

completion of the Fascist dictatorship rendered further discus-
sion unnecessary.

This was in fact the culminating point already in July 1932.
From this point it was clear to the bourgeoisie that the complete
Fascist dictatorship could be put through without resistance
from Social Democracy, which would only exert its powers to
hold in the workers.

4. The Causes of the Victory of Fascism.

Although the effective building of the united working-class
front was thus prevented by the official ban and active opposi-
tion of Social Democracy, there was a growing measure of
partial united front development from below through the
initiative and leadership of Communism. During 1932 a rising
wave of resistance developed among the workers. This showed
itself in the rising strike movement in 1932, led by the Com-
munists, and the overwhelming mass demonstrations against
von Papen, culminating in the Berlin transport strike of
November 1932. The Berlin transport strike was led by the
Red Trade Union Opposition, after an overwhelming majority
vote of the men for a strike (14,000 out of 18,000 voting and
21,000 eligible to vote) had been turned down by the trade
union officials; it was completely effective in stopping all
traffic, and was only broken by wholesale Government violence,
arrests and shootings. At the same time the November elections
reflected the rising wave: the Nazi vote fell by over two mil-
lions, the Social Democratic vote fell by 700,000, while the
Communist vote rose by 700,000 to nearly six millions.

This situation, as revealed both in the Berlin transport strike
and in the elections, opened up the prospect of the effective
leadership of the working class passing rapidly in the near future
to Communism, while the Fascist tide was visibly ebbing.
Urgent measures had to be taken by the bourgeoisie. Von
Papen had to resign on November 17. Long negotiations
followed between Hindenburg and Hitler. It was clear, how-
ever, that, in view of the rising working-class resistance, it
was necessary first to temporise and manceuvre for a short
space. The “social General” von Schleicher was accordingly
installed as Chancellor for a couple of months, during which he
relaxed some of the emergency decrees, especially with regard
to the freedom of the Press and assembly, proclaimed his main

144 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

concern with the “social question,” negotiated for an alliance
with Leipart and the trade union chiefs, who accordingly praised
him highly in their Press, and in general sought to lull the
workers’ resistance. (At the same time, strong police protection
was given to the Nazis, as in their provocative demonstration in
the Biilow Square on January 25, 1933.) Then, when the
ground seemed adequately prepared, Hitler was installed as
Chancellor on January 30.

The ebbing of the Fascist tide in the elections of November
1932, had been universally hailed by Social Democracy as the
end of the Fascist danger. The Social Democratic Press spoke
of “the final annihilation of Hitler.” The leading Second
International organ, the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung wrote: “One
thing is now clear: Germany will not be Fascist.” The British
Labour publicist, Laski, wrote in the Daily Herald:

I think it is a safe prophecy that the Hitlerite movement has passed
its apogee, and that it is unlikely to retain much longer the appear-
ance of solidity it had a few months ago. Hitler or some of his
partisans may enter the von Papen Cabinet; but in that case they
will be rapidly submerged by the forces of the Right... . The day
when they were a vital threat is gone. . . . All that remains of his
movement is a threat he dare not fulfil. . . . He reveals himself as a
myth without permanent foundation.

(H. J. Laski, Hitler: Just a Figurehead, in the Daily Herald,
November 19, 1932.)

Such was the wisdom of Social Democracy on the very eve of
Hitler’s dictatorship. At the same time the Communists were
giving the warning with regard to the election defeats of the
Nazis: “However great the defeat of National Socialism may
have been, it would be criminally foolish to talk of the smashing
up of the mass-movement of Fascism” (Communist International
December 1, 1932).

Once again the Communist diagnosis proved correct, as in
the case of the election of Hindenburg, and on issue after issue
in the whole development to Fascism, and the Social Demo-
cratic diagnosis proved hopelessly incorrect. The electoral
retreat of the Nazis in November, so far from meaning the
annihilation of Fascism, meant the opposite. Just the evidence
of waning mass support hastened the decision of the bour-
geoisie to place Fascism in power, before its stock should have
hopelessly sunk and Communism grown to full strength in the

ee ————

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 145

working class, in order that on the basis of State power Fascism
should be able to rebuild its strength and smash all opposition.*

If the coming to power of Fascism in Italy was already the
opposite of a “revolution,” being entirely carried out under the
guidance and protection of the higher authorities, this was still
more ignominiously the case with the coming to power of
Fascism in Germany. There was no pretence of a “march on
Rome.” There was no question of a parliamentary majority
or combination. There was no question of a conflict with
the existing ruling authorities. So far from Fascism com-
ing to power on the crest of a popular wave, as the myth is
attempted to be created after the event, Fascism was heavily
ebbing in mass support, and its leaders were actually discussing
(according to the expelled Otto Strasser in his Black Front) the
danger of the rapid disintegration of their movement. It was
just because of this menace of decomposition of the last reserves
of defence for bourgeois rule that the bourgeois dictatorship
decided to take the plunge and place Fascism in power as the
final measure. Fascism was placed in power by the grace of a
social-democratically-elected President.

The significance of placing Hitler in power was above all the
amalgamation of the already existing dictatorial State machine,
prepared by Briining and von Papen, and the extra-legal Fascist
fighting forces to create a single unparalleled instrument of

* Interesting confirmation of this analysis of the situation preceding the advent
of Hitler to power is afforded by the American observer, C. B. Hoover, in his
book Germany Enters the Third Reich (1933). Arriving in Germany in the latter
part of 1932, he found the situation following the November elections as follows:

“During this period the writer discussed the political situation with indus-
trialists, editors, bankers, political leaders, university professors, labour leaders,
economists, and others. Almost without exception they insisted that Hitler had
missed his hour. . . . In spite of the fact that the writer had come to Germany

in September 1932, with the fixed belief that Hitler’s coming to power was a

virtual certainty, the fact that nowhere could there be found anyone outside the

National Socialist movement who would even entertain the possibility finally

shook this conviction” (p. 64).

He admits that alone the Communists judged the situation more accurately:

“With the possible exception of the Communists, the opposition parties and
classes had been living in a fool’s paradise. . . . ‘Responsible opinion’ was
unanimous that the process of disintegration in the National Socialist Party was

Progressing at an accelerated pace” (p. 88).

He notes further that just this disintegration of the Nazi movement convinced the
big bourgeoisie of the necessity to take immediate steps to counteract this:

“After the losses of the National Socialists in the Reichstag elections of

November, German ‘Big Business’ decided that the immediate danger was that

the National Socialist Party might disintegrate too rapidly” (p. 83).

146 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

terror for war on the working class. Whereas in Italy the great
part of the work of terror and material destruction was carried
out already before the conquest of power, in Germany this was
not possible to anything approaching a similar degree, owing
to the superior strength of the working class; and the over-
whelming terror and destruction, the unleashing of all the furies
of lawlessness, only took place after the Nazis were safely
ensconced in State power. As the American bourgeois observer,
Calvin Hoover, writes:

It must be emphasised that there was no revolution at all in the
sense of seizure of the State power against resistance from the armed
forces of the State or from any other force. Von Papen had com-
pleted taking over the State without resistance in July 1932, and had
passed the State power on to von Schleicher, who in turn had
handed it over to Hitler. Consequently, the assaults which took
place were against unarmed and unresisting individuals. . . . The
extraordinary skill of Hitler in paralysing the will to resist of his
opponents had, strictly speaking, made all these acts of violence
unnecessary except as a means of satisfying the blood-lust of the
S.S. and S.A. detachments.

(Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, 1933,

pp. 111-2.)

The “extraordinary skill” was not necessary; the “paralysing
the will to resist” was accomplished, not by Fascism, but by
Social Democracy.

The question is often asked why the advent to power of Hitler
and the unleashing of the Nazi terror did not immediately
release a universal movement of resistance of the powerful
German working class. The question reveals a failure to under-
stand the conditions. The control of the majority of the
working class, and in particular of the overwhelming majority
(nearly nine-tenths, according to the factory councils elections)
of the employed industrial workers, and of the entire trade
union machine, lay with Social Democracy. The traditions of
the German working-class movement are, more than in any
country, the traditions of a disciplined movement. The decision
as to the action or otherwise of the German working class in
the face of Hitler lay primarily in the hands of the Social
Democratic and trade union leadership.

But the policy of Social Democracy was to “tolerate” Hitler,
and even (especially in the case of the trade union leadership)

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 147

to seek to reach an accommodation with him. Already in 1932
the Social Democratic leadership were speaking favourably of
the prospect of a Hitler Government. Thus Severing declared
in April 1932: “The Social Democratic Party, no less than the
Catholic Party, is strongly inclined to see Herr Hitler’s Nazis
share the Governmental responsibility.” And the party organ
Vorwaris wrote in the same period: “Apart from constitutional
considerations it is a precept of political sagacity to allow the
Nazis to come to power before they have become a majority.”
Let Hitler come to power; Hitler’s coming to power is inevit-
able; Hitler’s coming to power will be the quickest way to
expose him: this was the fatal line of thought of Social Democ-
racy. Only the Communists were opposing this line and pro-
claiming in the same period (Rote Fahne, April 26, 1932): “We
shall do everything to bar Hitler’s way to Governmental
power.” But the Communists were in the minority.

When Hitler came to power on January 30, the Social
Democratic leadership rejected the Communist appeal for a
united struggle. They declared that Hitler had come to power
“constitutionally” and “legally” (i.e., by the appointment of
Hindenburg from above), and therefore should not be opposed.
The only course was to await the elections on March 5. Mean-
while Hitler armed the Storm Troops and incorporated them
in the State as “auxiliary Police” with special control of the
“policing” of the elections, suppressed the entire Social Demo-
cratic and Communist Press, forbade all working-class meetings
and propaganda, arrested all leading militants, and let loose the
terror, and under these conditions held his “elections.”

Even the conservative Times was compelled to declare that
such conditions, already a fortnight before the burning of the
Reichstag and before the full terror and suppression, “render
the holding of normal elections impossible” (London Times,
February 15, 1933). On the eve of the poll the Daily Herald
wrote (March 4, 1933): “The people of Germany go to the
polls under the shackles of a vile terrorism. . . . The result of
the poll will be no index of the thought of the nation.” The
figures of the polling, which in some districts exceeded the
number of electors, revealed also the falsification of the poll, in
addition to the terror.

Yet after the terror elections the entire Social Democracy
seized eagerly on the plea that Hitler had now a “democratic

148 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

mandate,” and that it would be indefensible to oppose him save
as a “loyal parliamentary opposition.” Stampfer, the former
editor of Vorwarts, wrote in the party bulletin after the elections:

The victory of the Government parties makes it possible to govern
strictly in accordance with the Constitution. .. .

They have only to act as a legal Government, and it will follow
naturally that we shall be a legal opposition; if they choose to use
their majority for measures that remain within the framework of the
Constitution, we shall confine ourselves to the role of fair critics.

Kautsky wrote:

The Dictatorship has the mass of the population behind it.
(Kautsky, What Now? Reflections upon March sth.)
The Diplomatic Correspondent of the Daily Herald, W.N. Ewer,
wrote:

The triumph of Hitler, everyone is saying, is a heavy defeat for
democracy. Yet it is really nothing of the kind. It is a victory of
democracy, or at any rate of demagogy. He (Hitler) has come to
power by the most strictly constitutional means. He is Chancellor
of Germany under the Weimar Constitution, and by virtue of the
Weimar Constitution.

Of course there was a certain amount of intimidation at the
elections. There always is. But it was under the circumstances

curiously small. . . . The figures indeed are proof that the election
was practically free.

(W. N. Ewer, “Why Hitler Triumphed,” Plebs, April 1933.)
The Chairman of the Independent Labour Party, Maxton,
wrote:
The brutalities do not make my statement false that Hitler first
contrived to get a popular mandate for setting up his regime.
(J. Maxton, New Leader, December 29, 1933.)
Thus Social Democracy endeavoured to cover its subser-
viency and bootlicking to Fascism by the transparent devise of
ignoring the terror preceding the election, and thereafter arguing
that the mock “election” conducted under the terror con- |
stituted a “democratic mandate.” The victory of Fascism was,
in the Labour and Social Democratic view, a “victory of
democracy.” There was a “certain amount of intimidation at
the elections,” but “curiously small.” The complete sup-
pression of the Communist and Social Democratic Press; the
arrest of the Communist deputies; the raids on Communist and
Social Democratic buildings; the armed occupation of the Com-

a ee

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 149

munist headquarters; the suppression of all freedom of speech
and meeting; the beating up and imprisonment of thousands of
the most active Communist and Social Democratic workers:
all this is a “curiously small” amount of “intimidation at the
elections.” ‘The election was practically free.” Such is the
Labour Party conception of “democracy,” which throws a
revealing light on their pose as champions of “democracy” or
their claim through it to bar the way to Fascism.

The line of Social Democracy after the elections, in the face
of the full operations of the Fascist dictatorship and terror,
continued this degradation and subserviency to the extreme
point, in the endeavour to win favour with Fascism. The
speech of the leader, Wels, at the opening of the Reichstag on
March 23, was the signal expression of this line of endeavour-
ing to win the favour of Fascism. Wels, as leader of the party,
publicly resigned from the Executive of the Second Inter-
national, in protest at the spreading of “atrocity stories” by
the latter against the Nazis. The trade union leadership pro-
claimed their readiness to co-operate with Fascism, acclaiming
in their Press the Fascist “revolution” as a triumphant “con-
tinuation” of the 1918 revolution, urging that the common
enemy was Communism, and that their “socialism” also was “a
German affair” (Sozial Demokratischer Pressedienst, March 9,
1933). On this basis the trade union central executive officially
called on the workers to participate in Hitler’s May Day.
“The union leaders,” declared the Labour Daily Herald
(April 24, 1933), “have sealed their reconciliation with the new
rulers of Germany.”

Nevertheless this subserviency did not win for the reformist
leadership the hoped for position of a recognised and tolerated
adjunct to Fascism. A large proportion of the workers in the
big enterprises refused to obey their leaders’ instructions and
held off the Nazi May Day demonstration. As soon as it was
thus clear that the hold of the reformist leadership on the
workers was insufficient to serve the purposes of Fascism,
immediately on the next day, on May 2, the Nazis took over
the trade unions, incorporating them into their Labour front,
and threw the leaders into prison, replacing them by Nazi
Officials. ‘The Leiparts and the Grassmanns,” declared Dr.
Ley, the leader of the Nazi Labour front, “may profess their
devotion to Hitler; but they are better in prison.”

:

Igo FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The Social Democratic Party trod the same path of
ignominious capitulation, followed by dissolution. On May 17
the entire Social Democratic Party in the Reichstag voted for
the Fascist Government’s resolution, and joined in the unani-
mous acclamation of Hitler. This also did not avail them. The
entire property of the Social Democratic Party was con-
fiscated, and on June 22 the organisation was formally declared
dissolved.

If the attempt of Social Democracy to become an officially
recognised and tolerated adjunct of Fascism thus failed (in
fact, a considerable number of the functionaries, state and
municipal officials, police presidents, trade union organisers,
etc., directly joined the Nazis and continued in their posts, as
also the Reichstag leader, Loebe, and the former Minister
of the Interior, Severing, later declared their support of the
Nazis), this was manifestly not for any lack of trying on the
part of the leadership, but only because Fascism had no con-
fidence in their power to control the workers and no use for any
form of independent working-class organisation, however sub-
servient the leadership. Social Democracy was thus forced by
the bourgeoisie, in spite of all its pleadings, to perform its task
of disruption under the conditions of illegality, under which
conditions it could be of more use to the bourgeoisie in the event
of a rising revolutionary wave in the working class than if it
were openly identified with Fascism.

The opposition to Fascism thus rested throughout with the
Communist Party alone, which was the sole political force in
Germany to maintain the fight against Fascism unbroken
through all the terror. But the Communist Party was not yet
at the moment of the Fascist coup in a strong enough position
to lead the working class in the face of the opposition of the
Social Democratic and trade union machine. The figure of six
million Communist electors is a deceptive measure of the real
fighting strength, because the fighting strength of the working
class depends on the employed industrial workers in large-scale
industry, and just there Communism was weak. In 1930 at
enterprises employing 5,900,000 workers, the reformist trade
unions had 135,689 factory committee members, or 89.9 per
cent. of all factory committee members. The proportion of
Communist influence was thus inadequate to draw the working
class into the struggle. The Communist call for the general

THE CAUSES OF THE VICTORY OF FASCISM 151

strike against Hitler remained without effective response; the
majority of the workers remained faithful, to their own heavy
cost and subsequent disillusionment, to Social Democratic
discipline. In this situation for the Communist Party to have
attempted an insurrection as a minority, in isolation from the
majority of the working class, would have been an indefensible
putsch, resulting only in the destruction of the vanguard of the
working class and ensuring Hitler’s power for a generation.
The Communist Party was compelled in consequence to pursue
the difficult course of postponing the decisive struggle, to main-
tain its organisation, to spead an ever-widening network of
agitation and organisation in the midst of conditions of unparal-
leled terror, and in this way to build up the illegal revolu-
tionary movement and the leadership of the working class and
to prepare the final decisive struggle for the overthrow of
Hitler and the victory of the working-class revolution. The
speed, tenacity, heroism and self-sacrifice with which this task
is being accomplished—on a scale unparalleled in working-
class history under conditions of illegality and terror, as testified
even by all bourgeois observers—is the guarantee of future
victory.

The decisive causes of the temporary victory of Fascism in
Germany thus stand out sharply and clearly:

First, the strangling of the 1918 revolution, the destruction of
the power of the working class in the name of “democracy”
and the restoration of the capitalist dictatorship and the pro-
tection of the reactionary institutions of the old regime under
the cover of Weimar “democracy.”

Second, the support of the Briining dictatorship, and of the
successive stages of emergency dictatorship in preparation of
Fascism, by Social Democracy and the trade unions.

Third, the rejection of the united working-class front, and
active ban on the united working-class front, by Social Democ-
racy and the trade unions.

Fourth, the refusal of Social Democracy and the trade union
leadership to resist Hitler on his accession to power or on the
opening of the Nazi terror.

The experience of Germany from 1918 to 1933 is the classic
demonstration before the international working class of how a
working-class revolution can be destroyed and squandered and
brought to the deepest abyss of working-class subjection. It is

1§2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the classic demonstration before the international working class
of where the path of bourgeois “democracy” leads, step by
step to its inexorable conclusion.

History has produced in the two great post-war revolutions,
the Russian Revolution and the German Revolution, the
gigantic demonstration of the two main paths in our epoch and
where they lead. The Russian October Revolution and the
German November Revolution occurred within twelve months
of each other; but they followed divergent paths. The one
followed the path of the proletarian dictatorship, of the Com-
munist International. The other followed the path of bour-
geois “democracy,” of the Second International. The theo-
retical expression of that divergence was contained in the
controversy at the time of Kautsky and Lenin. To-day, a
decade and a half later, we can see where those two paths have
led.

The path of the proletarian dictatorship, of Lenin, of
the Communist International, has led to the ever-greater
strengthening of the workers and the triumphant building of
Socialism.

The path of bourgeois “democracy,” of Kautsky, of the

Second International, has led to the victory of Fascism.

==CHAPTER VII: HOW FASCISM CAME IN AUSTRIA==

Harp on the heels of the victory of Fascism in Germany came
the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship of Dollfuss in
Austria during 1933-4.

The rising of the Austrian workers in February 1934, against
this Fascist dictatorship, opened a new stage in the struggle of
the international working class against Fascism, at the same
time as it finally completed the German experience in exposing
the illusions of “‘democratic socialism.”

The lesson of Austria is even clearer and sharper in many
respects than that of Germany.

1. The Significance of the Austrian Experience.

In the first place, Austria revealed a conflict between two
rival forces of Fascism, the Heimwehr and the Nazis, openly
reflecting the battle for domination of rival imperialist and
Fascist Powers over the living body of the Austrian people.
There could be no more striking demonstration of the real role
of Fascism as the chauvinist predatory policy of particular
groupings of finance-capital, belying all the “national,”
“popular” and “pacific” pretences. The battle of Fascist
Germany and Fascist Italy over the body of Fascist Austria
provides a foretaste of the “majestic peace of World
Fascism.” Both these forces were in fact equally united against
the working class, but sharply in conflict between themselves
for the dominant position. In the initial stage the Clerical-
Fascism of Dollfuss, subordinate to Italian Fascism, has con-
quered; but the further development of events may still bring
a change of combinations and the possible ultimate dominance
of the Nazis and Pan-German Fascism. In this situation the
fatal policy of the working-class organisations under Social
Democratic leadership was to endeavour to support one Fascist
group against the other, Dollfuss against the Nazis, as the
“lesser evil,’? and thus to smooth the way at every stage for
the advance and victory of Fascism.

153

tae tn |

154 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Second, the Fascist dictatorship of Dollfuss grew directly out
of bourgeois democracy under Dollfuss, even more clearly
than the parallel Hindenburg-Hitler process in Germany.
Dollfuss was acclaimed throughout Western Europe as the
“champion of democracy against Fascism” (i.e., against the
German Nazi menace), and on this basis was supported and
tolerated by Social Democracy, at the same time as in fact he
was carrying through the transition to Fascism. Up to the
last, on the very eve of the workers’ rising, Social Democracy
was offering to accept and support an emergency dictatorship
of Dollfuss, the suspension of the parliamentary regime, and
institution of a form of Corporate State, on condition of being
permitted to exist under these conditions—the clearest, most
conscious expression of the line of Social Fascism. The policy
of Social Democracy, of the “lesser evil,”’ here receives its crush-
ing exposure no less heavily than in Germany.

Third, the Austrian working class was the most highly
organised in the capitalist world. In a population of six
millions the paying membership of the Social Democratic
Party numbered six hundred thousand, and the voting strength
one and a half millions, or 70 per cent. of the electorate in
Vienna and 40 per cent. of the electorate in the whole country.
There was no question of a “split” in organisation. The Com-
munist Party, although playing a role of great significance in
the fight (it alone gave the call for the general strike on Feb-
ruary 10, which was forced by the workers on the reformist
leadership on the 11th), and in the actual launching of the fight
(Linz, where the united front of the Communist and Social
Democratic workers had been established in defiance of the
reformist leadership, and the fight was opened against the
express orders of the reformist leadership), was nevertheless
extremely weak in numbers. The attempt to explain the
advance and victory of Fascism by the “split” in the working
class through the existence of Communism is thus exploded once
and for all by the example of Austria. Social Democracy
boasted of its sole complete control of the working class, and
thereby admits its sole responsibility for the outcome. ‘There
was no split in the Austrian Labour Movement; the Com-
munists were merely an insignificant minority. The fact that
so powerful a party should have been completely smashed is
now naturally engaging the attention of Socialists in all

————E——————— —

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AUSTRIAN EXPERIENCE I55

countries” (Otto Bauer on “Tactical Lessons of the Austrian
Catastrophe”). In reality, the Austrian workers were split,
and therefore defeated; but the split was within Social Democ-
racy, between the workers and the leadership, and through the
action of the leadership. The real question of the split in the
working class through the existence of a Social Fascist leader-
ship is thus laid bare beyond the possibility of concealment.
Fourth, Austrian Social Democracy was, despite the small-
ness of the country, in its theoretical role and in the high degree
of organisation and supposed “practical results,” the leading
party and the “model party” of international Social Democ-
racy, and in particular of Left Social Democracy. Where
German Social Democracy or British Labourism was far more
glaring and shameless in its virtual or specific repudiation
of Marxism and acceptance of capitalism, the corruption of the
Austrian Social Democratic leadership was covered under the
subtle sophistries of ‘“Austro-Marxism.” Further, many of the
leaders were obviously “sincere” in their democratic-pacifist
betrayal of the struggle; even though by their policy they did
everything to assist the strengthening of capitalism and the
advance of Fascism, even though by their policy they made the
defeat of the struggle certain, though they failed to prepare it,
to organise it or to lead it, and did everything to prevent it,
nevertheless, when the workers launched it in spite of them,
some of them took part and suffered. This is commonly ac-
counted to the Austrian Social Democratic leadership for virtue
and for rebuttal of the charge of “Social Fascism.” On the con-
trary, just this makes the real role of political treachery of the
whole line of Social Democracy far more clear and unmistakable.
The question of politics is not a simple question of subjective
“sincerity.” Long ago, at the Second Congress of the Com-
munist International, when Serrati endeavoured to defend the
reformist Turati as “sincere,” and argued against the Twenty-
one Conditions on the grounds that it was impossible to produce
a “sincerometer” or test of sincerity, Lenin replied: “We have
no need of such an instrument as a ‘sincerometer’; what we
have is an instrument to test political directions.” And it is
in this sense that the role of Austrian Social Democracy is
revealed with unexampled clearness, with a completeness and
relative absence of complicating factors unequalled elsewhere,
as a role of direct service and assistance to the victory of Fascism.

156 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Fifth, the armed rising of the Austrian workers, both in its
strength and in its weaknesses, has marked out and lit up the
future line of the fight of the international working class against
Fascism. To the experiences and lessons of this struggle, alike
political, strategic and tactical, it will be constantly necessary to
recur in every country in the further development of the struggle
against Fascism.

The Second International endeavours to draw two lessons
from the Austrian events. On the one hand, they endeavour to
exploit the fight of the Austrian workers, launched in the face of
the express warnings and prohibitions of the Social Democratic
leadership, as a vindication of the “honour” of Social Democ-
racy after the German exposure, and a proof that Social Democ-
racy can and does fight. On the other hand, they endeavour
simultaneously to prove that the Austrian outcome has shown
the policy of armed struggle to be impossible and foredoomed to
failure; that against modern artillery nothing can avail, and
that the Austrian rising was only a “heroic gesture,” nothing
more (“No one doubted that the military forces of the Govern-
ment were much stronger than the power of the workers, and
that the workers could not succeed in struggle against the
Government.”’—Bauer).

Thus Social Democracy seeks to prove two opposite con-
clusions. They wish simultaneously to cover their real policy of
surrender with the stolen glory of the rising which they pro-
hibited, and in the next breath to prove the correctness of their
policy of surrender, that struggle is impossible, and that the
victory of Fascism is consequently inevitable.

Both conclusions are false. The Austrian workers fought, not
through the initiative and leadership of Social Democracy, but
against the express instructions of Social Democracy.

The victory of the workers is not impossible. The lesson of
Austria shows the exact opposite, how closely victory was
within reach of the workers, had there been leadership and
organisation, had the full forces of the working class been
brought into play, had there not been division and chaos at
every strategic point of the leadership, and had the struggle
been entered on at the right time, with clear political aims and
with the tactics of the offensive. Victory was only made impos-
sible by the policy of Social Democracy. It can be, and will be,
achieved under revolutionary leadership.

———— =e _~

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION 157

2. The Betrayal of the Central-European Revolution.

As in Germany, so in Austria the issue of the workers’ struggle
cannot be judged solely on the basis of the final stage of the
Fascist coup, of the days of February 1934, but must be seen in
relation to the whole line of development of 1918-1934. Just as
the strangling of the 1918 revolution in Germany by Social
Democracy laid the basis for the ultimate victory of Fascism, so
also in Austria.

The victory of the proletarian revolution in Austria was fully
in the grasp of the workers in 1918-19, and was only prevented
by Social Democracy. This is common ground, and is admitted
by the Social Democratic leaders themselves. Otto Bauer
describes the situation at the end of the war in his book The }
Austrian Revolution of 1918:

There was deep ferment in the barracks of the people’s army. }
The people’s army felt that it was the bearer of the revolution, the
vanguard of the proletariat. .. . The soldiers with arms in hand
hoped for a victory of the proletariat. . . . “Dictatorship of the
proletariat!” “All Power to the Soviets!” was all that could be
heard in the streets.

He continues:

No bourgeois government could have coped with such a task. It if
would have been disarmed by the distrust and contempt of the ‘
masses. It would have been overthrown in a week by a street f
uprising and disarmed by its own soldiers. f
Only the Social Democrats could have safely handled such an \
unprecedentedly difficult situation, because they enjoyed the con-
fidence of the working masses. ... Only the Social Democrats
could have stopped peacefully the stormy demonstrations by negotia- |
tion and persuasion. Only the Social Democrats could have guided
the people’s army and curbed the revolutionary adventures of the
working masses. . . . The profound shake-up of the bourgeois social tH
order was expressed in that a bourgeois government, a government 1
without the participation in it of the Social Democrats, had simply |
become unthinkable.

The role of Austrian Social Democracy was thus in fact exactly
parallel to that of the German. The power of the workers’ |
revolution was deliberately destroyed by Social Democracy in
the name of bourgeois “democracy.” The bourgeois order y
was only saved by the Coalition Government from 1918 to 1920
of Austrian Social Democracy and the bourgeois parties, with lt

158 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Bauer as Foreign Minister and Deutsch as Minister for War.
This is the background which lies behind the victory of Fas-
cism.*

Austrian Social Democracy argued at the time in defence of
its policy that, although the proletarian revolution was cer-
tainly and easily possible in Austria in 1918-19, it could not
hope to maintain itself in so small, dependent and isolated a
state, in the face of the forces of imperialism. Yet in fact the
Soviet Republic was achieved in Hungary and Bavaria; the
drive was strong throughout Germany and Italy. Had Soviet
Austria stood in with Soviet Hungary and Bavaria, an un-
shakable power could have been built up in Central Europe;
the whole history of post-war Europe would have been different.
Instead, Austrian Social Democracy abandoned Soviet Hun-
gary to its fate, and then, when the White Terror raged in Hun-
gary, pointed to it to prove the fate from which it claimed to
have saved the Austrian workers. To-day the event has proved
that the Austrian workers were not saved from White Terror;
they were only robbed of the possibility of victory when it was
in their grasp.

But at the time Austrian Social Democracy held out before
the workers, not the real alternative which events were to
demonstrate, but an imaginary golden alternative of peaceful

* The British Labour spokesman, Laski, writes of the role of Otto Bauer in his
“Salute to Vienna’s Martyrs” (Daily Herald, February 17, 1934):

“Austrians themselves acknowledge that without his influence there would
have been civil war in Vienna when the peace of 1919 came. That there was
half a generation of peace in this troubled country Austria owes to him more
than to any man.

“The privileged class has rewarded him not only by bombarding his accom-
plishment to pieces, but by making certain in the years that lie ahead the bloody
revolution he strove with all his great powers to avert.”

The “ingratitude” of the bourgeoisie to Social Democracy for having saved it is
the only lesson that the Labour publicist is able to draw even after this demon-
stration of the iron logic of the class struggle. That the first events, the refusal and
active preventing of the path of the proletarian revolution and of civil war, when
it could have been achieved with the greatest success and the minimum of
suffering, is the cause of the second, the subsequent crushing, after capitalism has
recovered its strength and prepared its armed forces, of the workers in blood, he
is unable to see. He admits that the path of “bloody revolution” now becomes
inevitable—after fifteen years of suffering, after the maximum strengthening of the
class enemy, and therefore now involving far heavier sacrifice and bloodshed, that
the so-called ‘‘peaceful” path is thus proved to involve in the end, not the avoid-
ance of bloodshed, but the maximum of bloodshed. But he refuses to recognise the
plain conclusion that the whole Labour and Social Democratic theory is thereby
exploded.

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION 159

advance to socialism through “democracy.” Bauer wrote in
his Bolshevism or Social Democracy? (1921):

In a modern highly-civilised society, where all classes take part
in public life, no other form of class-rule is any longer durably pos-
sible save one which permits the subject classes freedom to influence
“public opinion,” participation in the formation of the collective
will of the State, and control over its working: a class-rule, therefore,
whose basis rests on the social factors of influence of the ruling class,
and not on the use of mechanical instruments of force” (p. 116).
Such was the bourgeois-liberal wisdom of “Austro-Marxism,”
now mercilessly exposed by the event, when Bauer and Deutsch
have themselves had the opportunity to make the acquaintance
at first hand of the “mechanical instruments of force” of the
ruling class.

In this way, while the Austrian workers suffered and went
short under the “democratic republic,” the magnificent apart-
ment buildings erected in Vienna for a portion of their numbers
became the “symbol” of reformist “achievement,” of the sup-
posed “alternative” to Bolshevism—in reality, of the tem-
porary buying off of the workers’ revolt, while the bourgeoisie
was not yet strong enough to defeat them, preliminary to
smashing them. The Second International Manifesto on the
Austrian events declares:

The fate of the wonderful municipal houses of Vienna is a symbol.

The constructive work of the Socialists created them; the guns of
Fascism have reduced them to smoking ruins.
The “symbol” goes very much further than the Second Inter-
national appears to realise. It was not only the apartment
buildings that were struck by the guns; it was the illusions of
reformism, of the “alternative” path to Bolshevism.

The Russian journalist, Ilya Ehrenburg,* has related how in
1928 he visited these municipal buildings in all their glory, con-
ducted by a proud representative of Social Democracy. He
admired these buildings, their planning, their construction,
their beauty, their organisation, even though he could not fail to
see alongside the playing fountain in the beautiful garden an
unemployed worker, weak with hunger. But he asked his
guide: “You have indeed constructed wonderful houses. .. .
But have you not the feeling that these houses are built on the
land of another? Has not the example of our country taught
that the worker must pay with his blood for every foot of ground

* A Soviet Writer Looks at Vienna, London, 1934-

160 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

that he conquers? We had to destroy much—to destroy in
order after victory to construct. You have begun, not with the
machine-gun, but with the compass and the rule. With what
will you end?” His companion smiled and replied: ‘We shall
end with the pacific victory of socialism. Do not forget that
at the last elections seventy per cent. of the population of Vienna
voted for us. That was in 1928. In February 1934, Ilya
Ehrenburg revisited these buildings. He saw the battered walls,
the gaping holes, the débris under which people said corpses
still lay, the trembling, cowering women and children, hunger
and misery, and the flags of the Heimwehr fiying from the
towers. He had witnessed the “pacific victory” of socialism.

Out of the conditions of bourgeois democracy, in Austria as
everywhere, Fascism was bred. The bourgeoisie, under the
protecting egis of Social Democracy, under cover of the mag-
nificent apartment buildings, built up its strength anew and
prepared its armed forces for the struggle.

But Fascism was not bornina night. It took fifteen years for
it to grow to full strength. The workers, seeing what was afoot,
insisted on the organisation of their Defence Corps. The leaders
promised that if democracy should once be threatened, they
would act; they developed their famous “defensive theory of
violence,” that violence should only be used by the workers
in defence of democracy. Meanwhile they took no action.
Fascism grew unchallenged.

In 1927 the anger of the workers at the growth of Fascism and
open connivance of the State authorities broke all bounds.
Following the acquittal of a Fascist who had murdered a worker,
they rose and stormed the lawcourts of Vienna; Vienna was in
their hands, if their leaders had been ready to lead. But their
leadership, in control of the municipal administration of
Vienna, sided with the bourgeoisie, with the police, with the
State authorities, and thus in fact with Fascism, against the
workers. The workers’ rising was crushed in blood, with the
connivance of Social Democracy.

Dr. Deutsch, the commander of the Republican Defence Corps,
has reminded the world that at the time of the Vienna disorders of
1927, when an excited mob burned down the Palace of Justice, not
one military weapon of the many thousands at their command was
issued to the Republican Defence Corps. There are photographs on
record showing that Burgermeister Seitz and other Socialist leaders

ee ———k———— ee

THE BETRAYAL OF THE CENTRAL-EUROPEAN REVOLUTION I61

at the risk of their own lives went out into the midst of the angry
mob to calm them. Ninety-five men and women were killed by
police bullets on that occasion, and only five police—figures which
speak for themselves. Why did not these bloodthirsty revolutionaries
seize their opportunity, when the Heimwehr were in their infancy,
the army largely socialist, democracy unchallenged in Europe, and
the Clerical Party comparatively weak? . . . It is that the Austrian 4
Social Democratic Party has established by its whole history the
right to the description of democratic and pacific” ( New Statesman
and Nation, February 24, 1934). "i
Thus the approval of the bourgeois-liberal journal. The
working class will take a different view of 1927, when Austrian
Fascism could have been wiped out in its infancy. The cost of
this bourgeois-liberal approval for the “democratic” “pacific” }
Social Democratic leadership has been the sacrifice of the lives
of the best of the Austrian workers, the suppression of the
organised working-class movement and the victory of Fascism.

Meanwhile Austrian Social Democracy held out to the
workers the illusory prospect of the defeat of Fascism by
“democracy.” After the 1930 elections had returned the Social
Democratic Party as the largest party, with 72 representatives,
against only 8 representatives for the Heimwehr, the party
leadership triumphantly reported:

Democracy has inflicted a crushing defeat on the Heimwehr and
its promoters. . . . The Heimwehr movement, which until recently
believed itself to be on the eve of the final victory, is in a state of
rapid decline. . . . The purely political problems have ended with
the complete victory of the working class.

(Report of the Austrian Social Democratic Party to the

Vienna Congress of the Second International, July 1931.)
Such was the degree of prevision of the Social Democratic
leadership, reposing peacefully in the supposed security of
paper ballots, while paralysing the real struggle of the workers.
The illusions of the Italian reformist leadership, after the success
of the elections of May 1921, as having “submerged the ; |
Fascist reaction under an avalanche of Red votes,” or of the
German reformist leadership after the elections of November
1932, as marking the “final annihilation of Hitler,” were thus it
exactly paralleled in Austria. In reality Fascism was pre-
paring its final coup, when the issue would depend, not on
paper ballots, but solely on the mass struggle and the organisa-
tion of class force.

162 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. The Fascist Dictatorship and the February Rising.

It was only as the sequel of the whole above chain of develop-
ment that came the culminating stage since March 7, 1933,
when Dollfuss finally threw aside the mask and proclaimed
open dictatorship and the suspension of parliament.

Now, if ever, was the time to act even for the “democrats.”
Now was the time for the famous “defensive theory of violence”
to demonstrate its meaning in practice. But the Social Demo-
cratic leadership still found reasons to put off action. Social
Democracy was engaged in the policy of the “toleration” of
Dollfuss as the “lesser evil” against German Nazism, and was
seeking to negotiate an agreement with Dollfuss.

The Social Democratic Party did not reply with forcible resistance.
On the contrary, right down to the last it made every effort to enter
into negotiations with the Dollfuss Government. . . . This peace-
ful and waiting attitude of the Social Democratic Party only
encouraged the Dollfuss-Fey Government to adopt more and more
antagonistic measures against the working class and against the
Social Democratic Party.

(“International Information,” bulletin of the Second
International, February 18, 1934.)

Why, after all the loudly repeated declarations over many
years concerning the action that would be taken “if”? democ-
racy were once attacked, was no action taken when on March 7,
1933, Dollfuss carried through his coup d’etat and suspended
democratic institutions?

Basically, because all these typical Social Democratic
asseverations of future action “if” democracy is attacked, “if”
the bourgeoisie attempt, etc., are inherently and inevitably
valueless, and worse than valueless, when the present policy is
the policy of class-co-operation. The present policy determines
the future action. It is not possible, even if there were the will
(and in fact there was not the will) at a moment’s notice to trans-
form a deeply enroutined machine and large-scale organisation
of class-co-operation, pacifism and legalism within twenty-four
hours into an organ of class struggle and revolution. Only
when the united front of struggle has been effectively estab-
lished in the preceding period, when the leadership and training
and practice and organisation of struggle and militancy on all
issues has been already established, only then can there be
readiness when the Fascist coup strikes. Otherwise inevitably,

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 163

whatever the previous promises and threats and boasts, when
the time comes, there will be enormous hesitation, sense of over-
whelming “difficulties,” yearnings for a “peaceful” settle-
ment, prudent counsels to postpone the struggle, to save what
can be saved of the organisation and not hazard all upon a
single battle, desperate efforts for some “way out” without a
struggle, hopes against hopes that it is not yet the final issue.

This is what happened to Austrian Social Democracy.
Bauer writes of March 7, 1933, and the following eleven
months:

What was to be done now? The Social Democrats knew very well
that it would be very difficult for a general strike to succeed in a
period of unprecedentedly severe and prolonged unemployment.
The Social Democrats made every imaginable effort to avert a
violent issue. Over a period of eleven months we tried again and
again to establish negotiations with Dollfuss. . . . Again and again
we offered to agree to extensive constitutional reforms and to the
granting of extraordinary powers to the Government for a period of
two years, all that we asked in return being the most elementary
legal freedom of action for the Party and the trade unions. . .

We over-estimated the possibility of reaching a peaceful settle-
ment.

(Bauer, “Tactical Lessons of the Austrian Catastrophe,”
International Information, March 8, 1934.)

Thus “democracy” went by the board. Just as German
Social Democracy supported the Briining emergency dictator-
ship, and sought to come to terms with the Hitler dictatorship,
so Austrian Social Democracy was fully prepared to support
a Dollfuss emergency dictatorship, in return for a permitted
existence of its organisation under the dictatorship (while the
Communist Party was suppressed). Such was the humiliation
of ‘“Austro-Marxism’—a humiliation which did not even
attain its object.

The Social Democratic leadership at the party conference in
October 1933, had laid down four conditions in the event of
any one of which to launch the struggle against the Fascist
dictatorship: (x) if a Fascist constitution were proclaimed
without consulting parliament; (2) if the Vienna municipal
administration were superseded; (3) if the Party were sup-
pressed; (4) if the trade unions were suppressed. In fact this
widely advertised strategy of the four conditions never came

164 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

into operation in practice to launch the struggle. The
Fascist dictatorship was steadily engaged in consolidating its
position, in disarming the workers, in arresting the local
leaders, in arming its forces, and in sapping the workers’
positions in detail, until at last the workers found themselves
compelled to resist if they were not to be already completely
wiped out before the four conditions came into operation.
Thus the four conditions were not a method to prepare the
struggle, but in reality a mechanism to paralyse the struggle.

What was the consequence of this whole line of successive
surrender and protracted attempts at negotiation? Did it
succeed even in “averting a violent issue’? On the contrary.
It only ensured that that violent issue should develop under the
conditions most favourable to Fascism and most unfavourable
to the proletariat. Fascism was able to strengthen and prepare
its forces, while the workers were weakened. Bauer continues,
in the statement already quoted:

But during the eleven months that we were trying to secure a
peaceful dénouement, the military strength of the Government
considerably increased, the Heimwehr was supplied with arms, and
on the other hand, large sections of the working class—especially the
railwaymen—were discouraged, crushed and robbed of their fighting
spirit by the oppressive tactics of the Government.

He is accordingly compelled to make the significant admission
(italics added) :

If we had launched our attack at an earlier stage, our action would
have been on a greater and more universal scale, and the prospects of
victory would have been brighter.

Consequently, if we did make a mistake, our mistake consisted in
unduly prolonging our efforts for a peaceful settlement and in unduly
postponing the decisive struggle. There is no need for us to feel
ashamed of this mistake! We made it because we wanted to spare
the country and the working class the disaster of a bloody civil war.”

Similarly in his pamphlet “Der Aufstand der Oesterreichis-
chen Arbeiter,” published in English under the title “Austrian
Democracy Under Fire,’ Bauer writes of the critical days of
March, 1933:

The masses of the workers were awaiting the signal for battle.
The railwaymen were not yet so crushed as they were eleven months
later. The Government’s military organisation was far weaker than
in February 1934. At that time we might have won. But we shrank

———— -——™

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 165

dismayed from the battle. We still believed that we should be able to
teach a peaceful settlement by negotiation. Dollfuss had promised
to negotiate with us at an early date—by the end of March or the
beginning of April—concerning a reform of the Constitution and of
the Parliamentary agenda, and we were still fools enough to trust a
promise of Dollfuss. We postponed the fight, because we wanted to
spare the country the disaster of a bloody civil war. The civil war,
nevertheless, broke out eleven months later, but under conditions that
were considerably less favourable to ourselves. It was a mistake—
the most fatal of all our mistakes.

Did they “spare the working class a bloody civil war”?
No; they only ensured its defeat. He admits that “the pros-
pects of victory would have been brighter,” “we might have
won,” if they had only acted in March 1933, just as 1927
would have been more favourable than 1933, and 1918-19
than 1927. The “pacific” policy did not avert civil war in
the end: it only made the conditions the most unfavourable
for the working class and ensured the heaviest defeat in place
of victory. “Austro-Marxism” stands condemned out of its
own mouth.

The waiting policy meant that Fascism was step by step able
to prepare its positions. The Defence Corps was declared
illegal. The Communist Party was declared illegal. The
Heimwehr was strengthened and fully equipped with arms.
Arms of the workers were searched for and seized wherever they
could be found. Local leaders were arrested. At strategic
points, particularly among the railwaymen, militants were
removed and “patriotic” agents installed. All this, of decisive
importance for the future struggle, went forward without
resistance. The workers pressed more and more for resistance,
but the Social Democratic leadership held them back, thus
performing its indispensable service to Fascism. The “First
Report” of “a Leader of the Austrian Social Democratic
Party,” published in the Second International bulletin on Feb-
ruary 18, 1934, declares:

The embitterment of the working class regarding the Govern-
ment’s policy continually increased. .. . The embitterment of the
workers was directed more and more against the policy of the Party
Executive, which was to wait and be prepared for agreement.
Growing numbers of members of the Party demanded with increas-
ing force that the offensive should be taken. . . . For months past
it has been increasingly difficult for the Party Executive to make the

166 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

embittered workers understand the necessity for this waiting
policy.

Here is seen the real split in the Austrian working class—
between the workers (the united front between the Social
Democratic and Communist workers was growing in the
localities ) and the Social Fascist leadership.

When the final struggle at last broke out on February 11,
1934, it broke out én spite of and against the orders of the Social
Democratic leadership. The official “Report” already quoted
makes this clear:

During the last week there were growing signs that the Govern-
ment was preparing for the decisive blow. . . . These events caused
the workers to take the following view: ‘“. . . In this situation we
can no longer allow ourselves to be disorganised by the arrests of
Schutzbund leaders and by the confiscation of stores of arms, unless
we are to confront a Fascist coup d’etat defenceless and unable to
fight within a very few days.”

In spite of this the Party Executive still adhered to its line. It
considered it to be necessary for the workers to wait for the results of
the negotiations between the Federal Chancellor and the Provincial
Governments with regard to the demands of the Heimwehr, and that
they should not take the offensive until one of the four cases should
arise in which a defensive struggle for the defence of the Con-
stitutional order would according to the decision of the Party be
unavoidable. On Sunday (February 10) officers of the Party Execu-
tive gave instructions on these lines to comrades who reported on the
agitation among the workers, and urgently warned them against
taking the initiative on their own account.

But the agitation among the masses had reachéd such a pitch that
these warnings from the Party Executive were not heeded.

Thus the honour of the Austrian rising rests wholly with the
workers, and not with the Social Democratic leadership. The
role of the leadership was only to disorganise the struggle at
every stage.

The struggle of the Austrian workers was not defeated by the
superior forces of the enemy. It was defeated by the dis-
organising role of the Social Democratic leadership. This was
clear in all the events leading up to the struggle. It was no less
clear in the actual struggle.

Instead of being able to enter the struggle with the full
strength of their organised force on a strategic plan, with the
maximum mobilisation of the masses, and with a clear political

Dee

THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP AND THE FEBRUARY RISING 167

lead the workers had to enter the struggle by local initiative
from below, sporadically, partially, against hampering opposi-
tion from above, losing the possibility of the initiative, losing
the possibility of the offensive, and thus yielding all the strategic
advantage to the enemy.

Many people believe that the Socialists would have won control
in Austria if all sections of the working class had supported them.

In many places the workers were split among themselves and
reached decisions too late.

Several leading trade unions refused to give instructions to strike
to the factories they controlled. (Daily Herald, February 16, 1934.)

The general strike was first vetoed, and, even when the
workers compelled the call to be given, after the struggle had
already begun, the call never reached the majority of the
workers, and a great part of the trade union machine made no
attempt to make it effective. The railwaymen continued to
carry the Government troops, thus giving to them full liberty
of movement and concentration. The struggle of the Defence
Corps was fatally cut off from the masses, instead of being
developed as a mass struggle, and even the majority of the
Defence Corps were never mobilised or brought into the
struggle. There was no political mass lead to positive aims
of the struggle, but only halting apologetic explanations of
“defence of the Constitution.” Because the initiative was lost
through disorganisation, through the absence of any central
leadership beginning and organising the struggle, the possibility
of the offensive and of seizing the main public buildings of the
centre at the outset was lost; the Government was able to com-
plete its cordon of the inner city and artillery preparations
before the struggle began; the fight was turned from the first
into a defensive fight.

Yet even under all these heaviest disadvantages a position
was achieved by the second day in which the Government
forces weakened and the issue was in doubt:

On the Government side the troops are reported to be exhausted
and disheartened. According to the Vienna correspondent of the
Berliner Tageblatt, sections of the Fifth Infantry Regiment have
deserted to the Socialists. Deprived of a bully’s “walkover,” the
Fascist Heimwehr showed they had little stomach for a real fight.
Many have flung down their arms, and the rest may be withdrawn
to barracks (Daily Herald, February 14, 1934).

168 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Bauer himself is compelled to admit that, despite all the
Government’s artillery, the victory could have been won by
the working class, had the struggle been developed as a mass
struggle:

After four days’ fighting the workers of Vienna were defeated.
Was this result inevitable? Could they conceivably have won?
After the experience of those four days we can say, that if the rail-
ways had stopped running, if the general strike had spread through-
out the country, if the Schutzbund had carried with it the great
mass of the workers throughout the country, the Government could
hardly have succeeded in suppressing the rising.

(Otto Bauer: Austrian Democracy Under Fire, p. 34.)

The closer the analysis of the tactical conditions and organisa-
tion of the struggle, no less than of the conditions leading up to
the struggle, the clearer stands out the conclusion that the
Austrian rising, the first great battle of the workers against
Fascism, has not shown the impossibility of the victory of the
workers in armed struggle under modern conditions, as the
Social Democratic leaders in all countries now endeavour to
argue. On the contrary, it has shown the certainty of future
victory, once the united front is built up, once revolutionary
leadership has replaced Social Democratic treachery, once the
poison of pacifist-democratic reformism has been replaced by
the revolutionary aims, tactics and organisation of the working-
class fight.

==CHAPTER VIII: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM==

Tr is evident from the previous survey of the historical develop-
ment of Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria that the role of
Social Democracy is of decisive importance in the development
to Fascism. The understanding of these two closely-related
phenomena of the post-war period, of modern Social Democracy
and of Fascism, is of key importance for the whole under-
standing of post-war capitalist politics. The whole question,
however, is ringed round with controversy, and requires very
careful further analysis, if the real issues of Fascism, and the
conditions of the growth of Fascism are to be understood.

It should be explained that the term “Social Democracy”
is here used only to cover the post-war phenomenon, the post-
1914 Social Democratic Parties which subsequently united to
form the post-war Second International or “Labour and
Socialist International.”” It should further be noticed that
the policy of Social Democracy is here used only to
denote the policy of collaboration with capitalism as preached
and practised by the post-war Second International. Al-
though the tendencies of opportunist parliamentary corrup-
tion and absorption into the capitalist State was already strong
and growing before the war throughout the imperialist epoch,
even while the nominal programme of international revolution-
ary Marxism remained, and were increasingly fought by the
revolutionary wing within these parties since the beginning of
the twentieth century, it was only the decisive test of the im-
perialist war in 1914 that brought these tendencies to their full
working out and openly revealed these parties as having passed
over to capitalism. The direct passing over in this way since
1914 of large organisations of the working-class movement in
all the imperialist countries, and especially of the parliamentary
and trade union leadership, to open unity with capitalism and
with the capitalist State, is a big historical fact; and the subse-
quent evolution of these parties since the war has played a
large role, in the early years in the defeating of the working-
class revolution, and in the subsequent years in the growth of

Fascism.
169

r70 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

This latter role was already showing itself in very marked
preliminary forms in those secondary states where White
dictatorships were established, in Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria
etc. In the period of the reconstruction and partial stabilisation
of capitalism with the aid of Social Democracy, and still more
since the development of the world economic crisis and the
shattering of the basis of capitalist reconstruction, this character
has become increasingly marked throughout Social Democracy.
A process of “fascisation” in a whole variety of forms and
stages, as well as of playing directly into the hands of Fascism,
can be traced.

Nevertheless, although many disillusioned Social Democrats,
especially after the glaring example of Germany and the con-
sequent crisis throughout the Second International, are in-
creasingly coming to recognise the role Social Democracy has
in practice played in the development of Fascism, yet the
Communist analysis of “Social Fascism” as the more and more
dominant character of Social Democracy in the process of lead-
ing up to the victory of Fascism in Germany, has often aroused

indignant resentment and much misunderstanding.
It is therefore necessary to examine more fully the relation-
ship of Social Democracy and Fascism.

1. The Capitalist View of Social Democracy and Fascism,

It will be most useful to begin the examination of this question
with a consideration of the view of modern finance-capital on
the roles of Social Democracy and Fascism.

The view of finance-capital is to be found expressed with
exemplary clearness in the Deutsche Fiuhrerbriefe already re-
ferred to, or confidential bulletin of the Federation of German
Industry during the critical year 1932. These “Fuhrerbriefe”
or “Letters to Leaders” ccnstitute a “political-economic pri-
vate correspondence,” originally issued for confidential circu-
lation to the heads of finance-capital, organised in the Federation
of German Industry. Nos. 72 and 75 of September 16 and 20,
1932, contained a study of “The Social Reconsolidation of
Capitalism,” which is a revealing expression of the outlook
of the dominant financial groups.

The writer sets out from the basic viewpoint that the main-

J Le

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM I7I

tenance of capitalist rule depends on the splitting of the working
class:

The necessary condition for any social reconsolidation of bour-
geois rule possible in Germany after the war is the splitting of the
workers’ movement. Any united workers’ movement springing up
from below must be revolutionary, and this rule would not be able
to hold out against it for long, not even with the means of military
power.

The main danger is thus the united working-class front: against
this even military force could not long prevail. Capitalism
accordingly requires a social basis outside its own ranks and
splitting the working class. This has been provided in the post-
war period by Social Democracy.

The problem of consolidating the bourgeois regime in post-war
Germany is generally determined by the fact that the leading bour-
geoisie, who have control of the national economy, have become too
small in order to uphold their rule alone. They require for this rule,
if they do not wish to rely on the extremely dangerous weapon of
purely military force, an alliance with strata which do not belong
to them socially, but which render them the indispensable service of
anchoring their rule in the people, and thereby being the actual and
final bearers of this rule. This last or “outermost bearer” of bour-
geois rule was, in the first period of post-war consolidation, Social
Democracy.

So far the analysis is simple. Social Democracy had pro-
vided the basis for the maintenance of capitalist rule and split-
ting the working class. But what has made it possible for Social
Democracy to split the working class? What is the social basis
of Social Democracy? Here the analysis of the spokesman of
finance-capital comes very close to Lenin’s analysis of the causes
of the split in the working class in imperialist countries. The
writer finds the basis of Social Democracy, and of its splitting
of the working class, in the privileged conditions, based on social
legislation and concessions, of a favoured, organised section of i
the working class:
In the first reconstruction era of the bourgeois post-war regime,
in the era from 1923-4 to 1929-30, the split in the working class was
founded on the achievements in regard to wages and social policy {
into which Social Democracy capitalised the revolutionary upsurge. ,
Thanks to its social character as being originally a workers’ party, |
Social Democracy brought into the system of reconstruction at that |
|

172 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

time, in addition to its purely political force, something more
valuable and enduring, namely the organised working class, and
while paralysing their revolutionary energy chained them fast to the
bourgeois State.

It is true that November socialism was also an ideological mass
flood and movement, but it was not only that, for behind it there
stood the power of the organised working class, the social power of
the trade unions. This flood could ebb, but the trade unions
remained, and with them, or more correctly stated, thanks to them,
the Social Democratic Party remained.

On this basis the main body of the organised working class
was “chained fast to the bourgeois State” through Social
Democracy and the trade unions, while Communism was kept
outside as by a “sluice mechanism”’:

These (the achievements in regard to wages and social policy)
functioned as a sort of sluice mechanism through which, in a falling
labour market, the employed and firmly organised part of the
working class enjoyed a graduated, but nevertheless considerable
advantage compared with the unemployed and fluctuating mass of
the lower categories, and were relatively protected against the full
effects of unemployment and the general critical situation on their
standard of living.

The political frontier between Social Democracy and Communism
runs almost exactly along the social and economic line of this sluice-
dam; and all the efforts of Communism, which, however, have so far
been in vain, are directed towards forcing a breach into this pro-
tected sphere of the trade unions.

This system worked well enough until the world economic
crisis began to destroy the basis of stabilisation. The economic
crisis compelled capitalism to wipe out the “achievements” of
wages and social policy, and thereby to undermine the basis of
Social Democracy. But this raised the danger of the working-
class forces passing to Communism. Therefore it was necessary
to find a new instrument for splitting the workers—National
Socialism:

The process of the transition which we are undergoing at present,
because the economic crisis necessarily destroys these achievements,
passes through the stage of acute danger that, with the disappearance
of these achievements, the mechanism of disrupting the working
class which is based upon these achievements will cease to operate,
with the result that the working class will begin to turn in the direc-
tion of Communism and the bourgeois rule will be faced with the

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM 173

necessity of setting up a military dictatorship. This stage would
mark the beginning of the phase of the incurable sickness of bour-
geois rule. As the old sluice mechanism can no longer be suffi-
ciently restored, the only possible means of saving bourgeois rule
from this abyss is to effect the splitting of the working class and its
tying to the State apparatus by other and more direct means.
Herein lie the positive possibilities and the tasks of National
Socialism.

The new conditions mean, however, a change of the form of
state. The tying of the organised working class to the State
through Social Democracy requires the parliamentary mechan-
ism; conversely, the liberal parliamentary constitution can
only be acceptable for monopoly capitalism provided Social
Democracy successfully controls and splits the working class.
If capitalism is compelled to destroy the basis of Social Democ-
racy, then it is equally compelled to transform the parlia-
mentary constitution into a non-parliamentary “restricted”
(i.e., Fascist) constitution.

The tying of the trade union bureaucracy to Social Democracy
stands and falls with parliamentarism. The possibility of a liberal
social constitution of monopoly capitalism is determined by the
existence of an automatic mechanism which disrupts the working
class. A bourgeois regime based on a liberal bourgeois constitution
must not only be parliamentary; it must rely for support on Social
Democracy and allow Social Democracy adequate achievements.
A bourgeois regime which destroys these achievements must sacri-
fice Social Democracy and parliamentarism, must create a sub-
stitute for Social Democracy, and must go over to a restricted social
constitution.

The solution of the problem of the maintenance of capitalism
in crisis the writer accordingly finds in National Socialism and
the establishment of a “restricted” or Fascist regime. The
writer finds in the role of National Socialism in the present period
a remarkable parallel, in his view, to the role of Social Democ-
racy in the preceding period.

The parallelism is indeed really striking. The then Social
Democracy (from 1918 to 1930) and present-day National Socialism
both perform similar functions in that they both were the grave-
diggers of the preceding system, and then, instead of leading the
masses to the revolution proclaimed by them, led them to the new
formation of bourgeois rule. The comparison which has often been
drawn between Ebert and Hitler is also valid in this respect.

174 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Both appeal to the anti-capitalist yearning for emancipation;
both promise a new “social” or “national” commonwealth.

From this the final conclusion is drawn:

The parallelism itself shows that National Socialism has taken over
from Social Democracy the task of providing the mass support for
the rule of the bourgeoisie in Germany.

Such is the exposition of the private thought of the finance-
capitalist oligarchy on the role of its two instruments, Social
Democracy and Fascism. We have so far reproduced this
exposition without criticism, because it has independent value
as an authoritative statement, all the clearer through not having
been written for public consumption, of the real viewpoint of
finance-capital. It is a valuable political document which may
be recommended for the study of disciples both of Social
Democracy and of Fascism. It will be noted that this remark-
ably candid and clear-headed statement of the real case for
Fascism, as seen by its actual paymasters and controllers, shares
none of the mystical, national, racial, “corporative,” chauvinist
nonsense with which Fascism is presented for public consump-
tion, but is thoroughly rational and hard-headed. To this it
will be important to return in considering the so-called “theory”
of Fascism.

The actual analysis, however, although a useful starting-
point of discussion on the question of Social Democracy and of
Fascism, requires in certain respects criticism. The writer sees
correctly the mechanics of capitalist post-war rule on the basis
of Social Democracy. But he writes as if Fascism ‘has taken
over from Social Democracy the task of providing the mass sup-
port for the rule of the bourgeoisie.”” Yesterday Social Democ-
racy performed this role; to-day it is Fascism; each has its
period. Social Democracy and Fascism are thus seen as per-
forming an essentially identical role, only in differing periods,
and under different conditions, and therefore with differing
methods and forms of state constitution. This is, however, too
simple, and is not correct. Both exist together; and each per-
forms a distinctive role, supplementing one another. Fascism
bases itself primarily, for its social basis, on the miscellaneous
petit-bourgeois strata, the peasantry, the declassed elements and
backward workers. Social Democracy bases itself on the upper
strata of the industrial workers. The bourgeoisie builds its rule

THE CAPITALIST VIEW OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND FASCISM 175

on the support of both, bringing now one, now the other, to the
forefront, and utilising both for its support. Fascism can never
become the main basis of the bourgeoisie in the same sense as
Social Democracy (although it may become its main and sole
governmental instrument when the crisis requires the coercion
of all the workers, and the hold of Social Democracy is in
danger of weakening), because Fascism never wins the main
body of the industrial workers with traditions of organisation—
the sole power that can overthrow capitalism. Here the role
of Social Democracy remains of decisive importance, even
after the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship. This is
seen with obvious clearness in those countries, e.g., Poland,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain under De Rivera, etc., where Social
Democracy is tolerated under a Fascist dictatorship. But it
is also in a different sense true in those countries of fully com-
pleted fascist dictatorship—Germany, Italy—where Social De-
mocracy as an organisation is formally suppressed and the trade
unions absorbed into the Fascist front. In these countries also
the reactionary wing of Social Democracy or the old reaction-
ary Social Democratic leadership stands ready, if the Fascist
dictatorship weakens, to come to the rescue of capitalism, and
strives in every possible way, through the readjustment of
forces in the bourgeois camp, to reestablish its position as the
main social basis and direct instrument of the capitalist dic-
tatorship.

The distinction of Social Democracy and Fascism is no less
important to understand than the parallelism.

Both are instruments of the rule of monopoly capital. Both
fight the working-class revolution. Both weaken and disrupt
the class organisations of the workers. But their methods differ.

Fascism shatters the class organisations of the workers from
without, opposing their whole basis, and putting forward an
alternative “national” ideology.

Social Democracy undermines the class organisations of the
workers from within, building on the basis of the previous
independent movement and “Marxist” ideology, which still
holds the workers’ traditions and discipline, in order more
effectively to carry through the policy of capital and smash all
militant struggle.

Fascism accordingly requires for its full realisation the
“totalitarian” terroristic class-State.

176 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Social Democracy controls the workers most favourably and
successfully in the liberal-parliamentary class-State, utilising
its own “internal” methods of discipline, and occasional State-
coercion, for the suppression of all militant struggle.

Fascism operates primarily by coercion alongside of decep-
tion.

Social Democracy operates primarily by deception, alongside
of coercion.

It is this combined relationship of difference in method and
parallelism in basic aim and role that underlies Stalin’s
definition, given already in 1924 (“‘Main Factors of the Present
International Situation,” Communist International, English edi-
tion 1924, No. 6), that “Social Democracy objectively repre-
sents the moderate wing of Fascism.” It should be borne in
mind that this definition was directed to a specific phase in the
history of Social Democracy, most sharply shown in a specific
period of post-war capitalism.

2. The Germs of Fascism in Social Democracy.

Fascism not only historically draws its origin in large part
from Social Democracy in the sense that many of its principal
leaders spring from Social Democracy: Mussolini, former edi-
tor of the Italian Socialist central organ Avanti; Pilsudski,
former leader of the Polish Socialist Party; Mosley, former
Minister of the second MacDonald Labour Government.

Fascism also draws its ideology mainly from the lines already
worked out by Social Democracy.

The attempt can be made to trace earlier strands and ten-
dencies in pre-war non-Marxist forms of Socialism already giv-
ing hints of aspects later developed in Fascism: e.g., Lassalle’s
“national” type of socialism (the Lassallean party’s deputies,
it may be noted, voted the war credits of 1870, while the
Marxists abstained), Prussian tendencies and coquetting with
Bismarck; Proudhon’s credit-fallacies and opposition to the
class struggle; Sorel’s cult of violence, “social myths” for mass-
deception, and denunciation of democracy in the abstract; the
Syndicalist cult of “occupational” lines of division; Fabian
super-class State glorification; Hyndman’s already pre-war
social chauvinism and big navy agitation. The Fascist writers
seek to trace their spiritual ancestry from three main sources:
Mazzini (the old liberal democrat would turn in his grave),
Proudhon and Sorel. But this is mere myth-making. Fascism

rs cer

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 177

is essentially a product of the post-war general crisis of
capitalism, and has no spiritual ancestry. Fascism is in practice
an abortion consequent on the miscarriage of the proletarian
social revolution.

It is from 1914, when Social Democracy directly abandoned
Marxism and internationalism, that the characteristic trends of
ideology akin to Fascism begin. A study of the principal
extreme expressions of the war-socialists, especially of Lensch,
Parvus and Cunow in Germany, Hervé in France, or Blatch-
ford in England, would reveal many striking resemblances with
subsequent Fascism. “In this world war,” wrote Lensch in
1916, “Germany completes its revolution” (the typical use of
“Tevolution” to cover the most extreme monopolist dictator-
ship and chauvinism); ‘at the head of the German Revolution
stands Bethman-Hollweg.” Cunow declared that Social
Democracy must adapt itself to imperialism and throw over-
board the remains of liberal-democratic ideology about “the
right of nations to political independence.” “England in the
war” wrote the war-socialist Hanisch “represents the reaction-
ary, and Germany the revolutionary principle.” All these
illustrate the use of “revolutionary” phrases and denunciation
of obsolete “liberal-democratic” superstitions to cover in
practice complete subservience to monopolist capitalism and
chauvinism. Denial of internationalism, advocacy of class-
unity or the “sacred truce,” and service of the capitalist State
in the name of “socialist” or “revolutionary” phrases—
these are the common starting-point of modern Social Democ-
racy since 1914, and, in a more developed form, of Fascism.

’ But it is in the post-war period that the ideology of Social
Democracy becomes the real breeding-ground for Fascism.
Social Democracy emerged from the war with two clearly

‘ marked characteristics: first, close unification of each party
with its own “national,” i.e., imperialist State, and denial of

| any save the most formal “letter-box” internationalism;
second, class-co-operation, in the forms of coalition minis-
terialism and trade union collaboration, to help to build up
capitalist prosperity as the necessary condition of working-class
prosperity. It will be seen that these basic principles are
already close to the basic principles of “National Socialism.”

Social Democracy after the war was faced with two tasks: \
first to defeat the working-class revolution; second, to help to

178 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

reconstruct the shattered structure of capitalism. The first
brought the Social Democratic leadership into close alliance
with the reactionary, militarist and White Guard circles, and
trained it in undertaking governmental responsibility in shoot-
ing down the militant workers. The second task of capitalist
reconstruction, after the period of direct civil war was closed,
required ever closer collaboration of Social Democracy and the
trade unions with monopoly capitalism.

This collaboration of Social Democracy with capitalism in
the period of reconstruction and stabilisation required the
development of a corresponding new ideology. The war-time
ideology of the “national danger” and the necessity of unity
against “the common enemy” could no longer serve in peace
time. In the period of reconstruction and stabilisation a new
theoretical basis had to be developed. The collapse of capital-
ism, it was argued, was not in the interest of the working
class; the working class required a prospering capitalism as the
basis of the advance to socialism; “it is useless to socialise
misery,” as Kautsky declared, pointing to the “economic ruin”
of Russia as the warning of the consequence of the alternative
path. Capitalism had not yet exhausted its development; it
had still before it the advance to a new flourishing era of
“organised capitalism”; this was the path to socialism. The
task of the workers was to help to rebuild capitalism, increase
production, and help to develop the new rationalised “organ-
ised capitalism,” with increasing participation economically
through the trade unions (“economic democracy,” Mondism)
and politically through Social Democracy in the Government;
this was the true path of advance as against the “catastrophic”
policies of Communism. In the period of stabilisation, rational-
isation and the short-lived boom of 1927-9 this new ideology
of Social Democracy reached its highest development.

Marxism began to be more or less openly thrown overboard,
especially by the trade union leadership, even though it re-
mained formally on the programme. The leading German trade
union theorist, Tarnov, came out openly at the Breslau Congress
of the German Trade Union Federation:

Marxism as a leading ideology of the working-class movement has
outlived itself. But as a real great mass movement cannot exist
without a corresponding ideology, therefore we, the leaders of the
trade unions, must create a new ideology.

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY I79

The essence of the “new ideology” was in fact the very old
pre-Marxist (originally Liberal, later Fabian and finally Fascist)
theory of the identity of interests of the working class and
capitalism. As another leading theorist of the German trade
unions declared:

One must not lose sight of the fact that the working class is a part
of the capitalist system, the downfall of which system is its own down-
fall; and therefore the great historical duty of the working class is
to obtain by means of the regulation of its place in that system the
improvement of the whole social structure, which is again equivalent
to the betterment of its own social situation.

The same line of thought was expressed by the General Council
of the British Trades Union Congress in its Report to the
Swansea Congress in 1928, when it analysed three possible
courses before the trade unions, and advocated the third (the
Mondist line of collaboration with capitalism) as the best:

The third course is for the trade union movement to say boldly
that not only is it concerned with the prosperity of industry, but that
it is going to have a voice as to the way industry is carried on, so
that it can influence the new developments that are taking place.
The ultimate policy of the movement can find more use for an
efficient industry than for a derelict one, and the unions can use their
power to promote and guide the scientific reorganisation of industry
as well as to obtain material advantages from the reorganization.

Social Democracy and the trade unions under its leadership
thus become, in the Social Democratic theory, constituent parts
of modern capitalist organisation and of the capitalist State
(the Webbs had in fact fully worked out this theory long before
the war; and this theory is the underlying thread of their
History of Trade Unionism, as indeed of all their work). “Social
Democracy to-day,” affirmed Hilferding at the Kiel Congress of
the German Social Democratic Party in 1927, “is an indispen-
sable element of the State.” ‘Without the trade unions,” wrote
Citrine, “industry under modern conditions could not function
effectively”? (W. M. Citrine, “Trade Unionism—the Bulwark
against Chaos,” Reynolds’ News, September 4, 1932).

Every development of organisation and strengthening of
monopoly capitalism and its dictatorship is thus hailed as the
advance of “Socialism.” Characteristic of this is the Labour
Party’s advocacy of the “public corporation” (i.e., State-
protected capitalist trust, with guaranteed dividends for the

180 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

shareholders) as the form of modern socialism—exemplified by
the London Passenger Transport Act, which was introduced by
a Labour Government and carried through by a Conservative
Government, and hailed by the Labour Party as a triumph
of “Socialism.” On this the conservative Times declared:

The principal objections which have been raised may be grouped
under three main heads—namely that the Bill is a “Socialist”
measure; that it creates a dangerous monopoly; and that it will
raise the cost of transport. None of these criticisms will really bear
very prolonged examination. It is true that the Bill in its original
form was produced by a Socialist Government, and that the then
Minister of Transport, Mr. Morrison, nearly succeeded in damning it
for ever by claiming it as a triumph of Socialism. But where in fact
does the Socialism come in? On what point of principle will the
new transport undertaking differ from the Central Electricity Board
or from Imperial Communications Company, both of which were
created by a Conservative Government? Like them indeed it is a
statutory monopoly, and therefore subject to a certain degree of
public control; but it is privately, not publicly owned.

(Times editorial, “The London Traffic Bill,” December 1,
1932.)

It is obvious that the “public corporation” of the Labour
Party and Social Democracy bears certain analogies in prin-
ciple to the Fascist “corporation” as the system of organisation
for industry.

On this basis Social Democracy upholds the modern develop-
ments of monopolist capitalism as already the advent of
“Socialism.” As the German Social Democratic leader, Ditt-
mann, declared at the Magdeburg Congress of the Social
Democratic Party:

We are no longer living under capitalism; we are living in
the transition period to socialism, economically, politically,
socially. . . .

In Germany we have ten times as many socialist achievements
to defend as they have in Russia.

The world economic crisis dealt a heavy blow to this ideology.
But Social Democracy adapted itself to the crisis by an exten-
sion of its theories. It was now necessary, it declared, to
“save” capitalism from the menace of chaos and proletarian
revolution. The Leipzig Congress of the German Social Demo-
cratic Party in 1931 gave out the watchword: ‘We must be the

ail

THE GERMS OF FASCISM IN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 181

physicians of ailing capitalism.” Vandervelde, the Chairman
of the Second International, proclaimed in the Belgian Cham-
ber of Deputies in 1932:

The capitalist system is cracking in all its parts. It can only
be saved by serious and urgent measures. We are at the eleventh
hour. Take care that the proletariat, like Samson, does not bring
crashing down the columns of the temple.

(E. Vandervelde, Le Peuple, May 7, 1932.)
And the French Socialist, Montel, had indeed already pro-
claimed before the crisis (République Sociale, November 15,
1928): “The Socialist Party will present itself as the only party
capable of saving bourgeois society.”

Through the whole of this line and propaganda it is evident
that Social Democracy was in practice preparing and smoothing
the way for Fascism and for the conceptions of Fascism. And
indeed even after the victory of Fascism Leipart, the leader of
German trade unionism, directly used the same line of argu-
ment to prove that the trade unions could be accepted by
Fascism as subservient instruments of the Fascist dictatorship:

The trade unions have come into being as the organised self-help
of the working class; and in the course of their history through
natural causes have become more and more fused with the State
itself,

The social tasks of the trade unions have to be fulfilled no matter
what the form of the State regime is. . . .

The trade unions are fully prepared, even beyond the field of
wages and working conditions, to enter into permanent co-operation
with the employers’ organisations.

A State supervision over such collaboration could in certain
circumstances be conducive towards raising its value and rendering
its execution more easy.

The trade unions do not claim to influence directly the policy
of the State. Their task in this respect can only be to direct the just
claims of the workers to the attention of the Government with
reference to its measures of social and economic policy and legis-
lation, and also to be of service to the Government and Parliament
through its knowledge and experience in this field.

This was the official declaration of German trade unionism in
March 1933, offering its alliance to the Fascist dictatorship.
It was received with expressions of pain and indignation in the
non-German Social Democratic Press as a “shameful capitula-
tion.” Yet the line expressed is exactly identical with the line

'
}
4
|
}

182 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of argument, on the question of trade unionism and the State,
employed by a Citrine in Britain, a Green in the United States,
or a Jouhaux in France.

With this may be compared Mussolini’s suggestion in 1921
of a possible alliance of reformist Social Democracy and Fas-
cism:

In the field of social legislation and of improvement in the standard
of life of the working classes, the Socialists may find unexpected allies
within Fascism. The salvation of the country may be assured, not
by the suppression of the antithesis between Fascism and Socialism,
but by their reconciliation within Parliament. A collaboration with
the Socialists is quite possible, especially at a later stage, after the
clarification of ideas and tendencies, under which the Socialist
Party at this moment labours, is ended. It is evident that the
co-existence of Intransigent and Reformist Socialists in the same
party will in the course of time become impossible. Either revolution
or reform resulting from participation in the responsibilities of

PORER. (Mussolini, Popolo d’Italia, May 22, 1921.)

The course of events rendered this direct alliance unnecessary;
but Mussolini subsequently took the reformist trade union
leaders, D’Aragona and his colleagues, into his service.

Social Democracy thus prepared the way ideologically for
Fascism: first, by the abandonment or corruption of Marxism;
second, by the denial of internationalism and attaching of the
workers to the service of “their own” imperialist State; third
by the war on Communism and the proletarian revolution;
fourth, by the distortion of ‘Socialism” or the use of vaguely
“socialist” phrases (“the new social order,” the “common-
wealth,” “industry as a public service,” etc.) to cover monop-
olist capitalism; fifth, by the advocacy of class-collaboration
and the unification of the working-class organisations with the
capitalist State. All this provides the ideological basis and
groundwork of Fascism, which represents the final stage of the
policy of the complete absorption of the working class, bound
hand and foot, into capitalism and the capitalist State. This
whole propaganda and line of Social Democracy confused,
weakened and battered down the class-conscious socialist out-
look of those workers who were under its influence, prevented
the spread of revolutionary Marxist understanding, fostered
semi-Fascist conceptions of nationalism, imperialism and class-
collaboration, and thus left the masses an easy prey to Fascism.

HOW SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ASSISTS FASCISM TO POWER 183

3. How Social Democracy Assists Fascism to Power.

In the historical examination of the Italian, German and
Austrian examples in the previous two chapters we have seen in
practice how Social Democracy assists Fascism to power. It is
therefore only necessary now to summarise these results of
what historical experience has demonstrated.

First, Social Democracy disorganises the proletariat and the
proletarian struggle. The Social Democratic and trade union
leadership act as an agency of the employers and of the ruling
class within the working-class ranks, preaching defeatism and
opposition to struggle, and, where the outbreak of working-class
struggle becomes inevitable, directly disrupting the struggle
from within.

This is most clearly seen in the role of Social Democracy in
strikes. A conspicuous example of this process, in view of the
subsequent revelations, was afforded by the great munitions
strike in Germany in January 1918, which nearly brought
Germany out of the war. The Social Democratic leaders,
Ebert, Braun and Scheidemann, by decision of their Execu-
tive, took over direction of the strike, even calling on the
workers to disobey mobilisation orders. Yet their object in
coming on the strike committee, as declared by them many
years later, was to strangle the strike. In 1924 Ebert
brought a libel suit against the charge of treason for having
led the strike of January 1918. In this trial he made known
that the Executive had passed a secret resolution instructing
them to take over the leadership of the strike in order to
bring it to an end. Ebert stated in court (Times, December
II, 1924):

The Socialists had been requested to take control of the strike in
order to avoid the worst. Herr Ledebour had told the strikers that
the strike would be lost if the Majority Socialists came on to the
Strike Committee, and at this point he (Herr Ebert) had joined it
in order to restore the balance. ... He declared that he had
entered the Strike Committee to bring the strike to an end as soon
as possible.

Scheidemann stated in the same trial (Times, December 13,
1924):

The strike broke out without our knowledge. We joined the
Strike Committee with the firm intention of putting a speedy end
to the strike by negotiating with the Government. There was a

184 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

great deal of opposition to us in the Strike Committee: we were
known as “the strike stranglers.”

Exactly the same process was conducted by the Labour
Party and Trades Union Congress General Council leadership
in the British General Strike of 1926, which was only called,
according to MacDonald (Socialist Review, June 1926), because
“Gf no general strike had been declared industry would have
been almost as much paralysed by unauthorised strikes.”
J. H. Thomas explained subsequently in the capitalist journal
Answers, that, although opposed to the strike, he “did not
resign because I felt certain that I could do far more good by
staying in than by going out.” The object of the leadership, he
explained to the House of Commons on May 13, 1926, was to
prevent the struggle “getting out of the hands of those who
would be able to exercise some control.” The Conservative
Home Secretary, Joynson-Hicks, analysing the causes of the
defeat of the General Strike, put forward as the main cause that
“the responsible trade-union leaders retained their hold upon
the trade unions, and took the constitutional course of admit-
ting the general strike was illegal and called it off” (Joynson-
Hicks, letter to the Twickenham Conservative Association,
August 14, 1926).

The same process was demonstrated in Italy over the occupa-
tion of the factories, where the reformist leadership achieved
what all the Government forces had to confess themselves unable
to achieve—the restoration of the factories to capitalism.

But this direct strike-breaking (examples of which on a
greater or lesser scale are familiar every year and almost every
month to the workers in every country) is only the plainest and
simplest expression of a universal process of disorganisation and
disruption of the working-class front, preaching of confidence
in capitalism, close alliances with the class enemy, and war on
the militant workers.

It is only after conspicuous and repeated disruption of the
working-class front after this fashion by Social Democracy from
within, and consequent weakening and discouragement of the
workers, that the way is opened for Fascism to advance.

The betrayal of the General Strike was followed by Mond-
ism—a first step towards Fascism, and welcomed as such by
the Italian Fascist Press (it may be noted that Mond openly
declared his sympathy for Fascism).

HOW SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ASSISTS FASCISM TO POWER 185

The surrender of the factories in Italy was followed im-
mediately by the Fascist offensive, opening at Bologna and
going continuously forward to the establishment of the Fascist
State in 1922.

The second Labour Government’s assistance to the offensive
against the workers was followed by the landslide of the
National Government vote of 1931 and the first beginnings of a
serious Fascist movement in Britain.

The Social Democratic support of the Brining dictatorship
and hunger-offensive was immediately followed by the sweep-
ing advance of Fascism in Germany.

This is the principal way in which Social Democracy assists
the advance of Fascism to power—by disorganising the working-
class front, by breaking strikes, by denunciation of the class
struggle, by preaching legalism and trust in capitalism, by
expulsion of all militant elements and splitting of the trade
unions and working-class organisations.

The war on Communism is placed in the forefront by Social
Democracy. The German example has shown to what lengths
of direct alliance with the militarist and White Guards Social
Democracy will go in order to crush the revolutionary workers.*
But the slogan of the war on Communism is the slogan of Fas-
cism. Social Democracy and Fascism offer, in effect, rival
services to the bourgeoisie for the slaying of Communism.

With the further development of the post-war period Social
Democracy heips forward the advance towards Fascism more
and more positively by assisting the strengthening of the capital-
ast mechanism and of the capitalist dictatorship. Social Democ-
racy assists to carry through the economic measures for the
strengthening of capitalist monopoly (rationalisation, etc.); it
supports all the Briining and Roosevelt types of intensified capi-
talist dictatorship, and itself helps to introduce and operate
measures of intensified dictatorship. This was signally shown
by the second Labour Government of 1929-31, with its Coal
Mines Act and London Traffic Bill, its imposition of textile wage
cuts by arbitration awards, its arrest and sentencing of hundreds
of workers under the Trade Union Act, and its lathi-rule and

* Compare the statement of the first British Labour Prime Minister, Mao-
Donald, over the forged Zinoviev letter in 1924:
“Who is it that has stood against Bolshevism? Liberals have contributed
nothing, Tories nothing. . . . All the work has been done by Labour Leaders
and Labour Party leaders.”

186 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

imprisonment of sixty thousand in India. In the same way
Severing as Minister of the Interior shot down the workers’
May Day demonstrations in Berlin in 1929. Similarly, the
Prussian Social Democratic Government actually boasted in
its own defence, when removed by von Papen, that it “had
caused more deaths on the Left than on the Right”:

The Prussian Government is in a position with police-statistics
to prove that police interference has caused more deaths on the
Left than on the Right, and that police measures have caused more
wounds on the Left than on the right.

(Braun-Severing Memorandum to Hindenburg, protesting
against deposition: B. Z. am Mittag, July 19, 1932.)

In the final stage, as the Fascist movement advances closer
to direct power, Social Democracy gives its final and decisive
assistance by opposing and banning the united working-class
front against Fascism—the sole means to prevent Fascism
coming to power—and concentrating hopes in illusory legal
defences, the ballot, “democracy,” moderate bourgeois govern-
ments and finally even the support of pre-Fascist and near-
Fascist dictatorships (Briining, Dollfuss) as the “lesser evil.”

It is the Social Democratic Minister Severing that bans and
dissolves the Red Front, while permitting the Storm Troops.

It is Social Democracy that refuses the repeated urgent
appeals of Communism for the united front during the critical
year of 1932 and the first quarter of 1933.

This policy brought the temporary victory of Fascism.

4. The Question of the Split in the Working Class.

The crucial importance of the united working-class fight
against Fascism is seen by all to-day, especially after the
German example of the disastrous consequences of disruption.

Nevertheless, in spite of the German example, the reaction-
ary wing of Social Democracy continues to refuse and op-
pose the united front and holds back its realisation in a
number of leading countries. At the same time, alongside this
direct refusal of the united front, the cause of the split in the
working class is often attempted to be misrepresented by many
Social Democratic leaders as due to Communism and the Com-
munist International, which are accused of dividing the work-
ing-class forces.

It is therefore necessary to give further consideration to this

EEE ——

THE QUESTION OF THE SPLIT IN THE WORKING CLASS 187

all-important question of the split in the working class and its
causes.

The analysis of the split in the working class as due to Com-
munism and the Communist International is both historically
and in current practice incorrect.

The causes of the split in the working class developed long
before the Communist International existed. These causes lay
in the growth of opportunism in the leadership of the Social
Democratic Parties, which was itself a reflection of the process
of imperialist corruption of the upper stratum of the working
class and consequent division of the workers in the imperialist
countries. This made necessary the sharpened fight of the
revolutionary wing against the policies of opportunism or
union with capitalism. Marx and Engels in their closing years
had already indicated the necessity of this sharpened fight and
of an eventual split. The line of Marx and Engels was carried
forward by Lenin. The first clear and consistent organisa-
tional expression of the split with opportunism was given by
the separation of Bolshevism from Menshevism in the early
years of the twentieth century. Only this clear demarcation
and independent organisation of Bolshevism made possible the
victory of the Socialist revolution in Russia and the final com-
plete unification of the Russian working class, in contrast to
the still continuing divisions in all other countries. In the
other leading countries the fight of the revolutionary wing
against opportunist corruption did not take definite organised
form until the war of 1914-18. But 1914 brought the issue to
a head. The dominant official leadership of the Social Demo-
cratic Parties abandoned their pledges and obligations before
the International, directly contravened the principles on which
their Parties were built, and passed to open unity with capi-
talism. The split took formal shape when this leadership ex-
pelled those deputies who voted against the war credits, in
accordance with their international obligations, and the sec-
tions who supported them. All this took place already during
the war, before the Communist International existed.

The split deepened as the issue of the imperialist war de-
veloped into the issue of the working-class revolution or the
support of the White Guards in shooting down the workers’
revolution. The Mensheviks united with the Tsarists and
foreign imperialism to take up arms against the workers’ rule;

188 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the German Social Democratic leaders armed the counter-
revolutionary officers’ corps to shoot down the revolutionary
workers. The breach of 1914 had widened to civil war, with
Social Democracy on the capitalist side of the barricades. A
deep barrier was thus created—as unbridgeable as the division
of the classes. All this process of 1914-19 had already de-
veloped, revealing to the full the fact of the division of the
working-class owing to the existence of an imperalist wing in
the working-class camp, before the revolutionary sections finally
organised the Communist International in 1919. To regard
the Communist International as the cause of the split is to
mistake the effect for the cause. j

Lenin gave the call for the formation of the Communist
International already in the autumn of 1914, only after the ik
majority Social Democratic leadership had destroyed the old
Second International, trampled international socialism under
foot, and openly united with capitalism. There was no other
way to continue the struggle for international socialism.

It is obvious that the responsibility of the split lies wholly
with those sections that abandoned the party programme and
united with capitalism, and not with those sections that stood
by the party programme and continued to fight capitalism.
It is the unity of the Social Democratic leadership with capital-
tsm that inevitably splits the working class and is the cause of
the split. This is the root of the question of the split.

But given this split of the working-class organisations, which
can only be finally overcome by the re-union of the mass of
the workers (through the experience of the struggle, through
ideological controversy, through conviction by their own ex-
perience) on the basis of the class struggle against capitalism,
that is, finally on the basis of Communism, the immediate
urgent question becomes that of the present common fight
against the capitalist and Fascist offensive. It is evident that
in this situation the need is for all workers and working-class
organisations, whatever their political outlook, to combine in a
common front for the immediate fight on the maximum possible
agreed basis of fight. This is the meaning of the united front,
for which the Communist international has consistently striven
since 1921.

But it is here that Social Democracy, after causing the
original split, perpetuates and deepens the split of the working

THE QUESTION OF THE SPLIT IN THE WORKING CLASS 189

class by opposing the united front, expelling all sections that
support it, and even wrecking the working-class organisations
to maintain its domination.

This is shown with conspicuous clearness in the decisively
important question of the trade unions. The Communist line
is for a single united trade union organisation, embracing all
workers, independent of their political views, within which the
revolutionary workers conduct propaganda for their view-
point or proposals, according to the. principles of trade union
democracy. Social Democracy rejects this viewpoint, and seeks
to make membership of a trade union, or active membership
(delegate positions, official positions) dependent on holding
reformist views, on subscribing to the Labour Party programme,
etc. To achieve this purpose the Social Democratic trade union
leadership habitually expels, not only individual trade unionists
(often outstanding militants with long records in the struggle
and elected at the top of the polls by their fellow members)
but whole sections and organisations and even majorities, if
these express a revolutionary viewpoint, in order to maintain
the domination of Social Democracy.

It is evident that this system of Social Democracy in the
unions means the smashing of the unions as the united organisa-
tions of the workers. Reference is often made by Social Demo-
crats to the existence of “Red Unions” as evidence of the role
of Communism in splitting the trade union movement. But it is
not realised by many who hear these charges in good faith that
the Red Unions, in the countries with a divided trade union
movement, have developed historically as the consequence of
the Social Democratic policy of expulsions and denial of trade
union democracy. The case of the Scottish Mineworkers is the
classic example of this process in Britain, where the majority
of the members of the union constitutionally elected a new
executive and officials with an overwhelming revolutionary
majority, but the old reformist executive and officials refused
to vacate office, and proceeded to expel one of the two largest
districts, the Fife district; after exhausting every constitutional
effort for unity, the revolutionary majority were thus com-
pelled to form the United Mineworkers of Scotland. Similarly
in France the C.G.T.U. or Unitary Confederation of Labour
(revolutionary) only came into existence at the end of 1921
after the revolutionary trade unionists had won a constitutional

190 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

majority in the old Confederation of Labour, and the old
reformist leadership had met this majority by a series of
expulsions to convert it into a minority; the Congress con-
stituting the C.G.T.U. was actually attended by a majority
(1,564) of the unions belonging to the old C.G.T. The respon-
sibility for the split rests with the reformists. In Germany, in
particular, where the revolutionary movement was strongest,
the Social Democratic policy of wrecking the unions by whole-
sale expulsions to maintain control was carried to extreme
lengths, and played a large part in the disruption of the work-
ing class and opening the way to the victory of Fascism. This
is the parallel to the general policy of the refusal of the united
front.

There remains the question whether Communism in Ger-
many, as is sometimes urged by critics, over-emphasised the
policy of the “united front from below,” that is, the appeal to
the lower organisations of Social Democracy and the trade
unions and to the organised and unorganised workers generally
to combine in the single front against Fascism, and only in the
last two years, since April 1932, and more especially since
the expulsion of the Braun-Severing Government in July 1932,
developed alongside of this the policy of “the united front from
above,” that is, the direct party-to-party appeal. The criticism
of this line is based on a lack of understanding of the condi-
tions. The policy of the united front from above, alongside the
united front from below, has never been ruled out in principle
by the Communist International, and has been repeatedly ap-
plied, when suitable occasion offered; but regard has had to be
taken to the conditions in differing periods and situations.
When Severing as Social Democratic Minister of the Interior
was shooting down the workers’ May Day demonstrations in
1929, to have appealed to the Social Democratic Party leader-
ship for a united front against the attack on the workers would
have been worse than meaningless. So soon as the expulsion of
the Braun-Severing Government by von Papen offered an oc-
casion, the Communist Party immediately made its proposal
for a united front directly to the Executives of the Social Demo-
cratic Party and of the General Trade Union Federation. The
refusal of the united front by these bodies sealed the victory of
Fascism.

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM I9QI

5. The Adaptation of Social Democracy to Fascism.

As capitalism developed the forms of its state power towards
Fascism, Social Democracy (in the sense of the theory and
practice of collaboration with capitalism) went through a cor-
responding process of adaptation. This process of “facisation”
of Social Democracy showed itself in the increasing support of
open forms of dictatorship (Briining, Emergency Powers, Ordi-
nance rule in India), the use of armed violence against the
workers, not only in civil war as in the early post-war years,
but against unarmed workers in conditions of peace (Berlin
in 1929, India under the Second Labour Government), and
the increasing suppression of democracy within the working-
class organisations.

Already since the war a whole series of examples of direct
alliance of Social Democracy with White Governments of
counter-revolutionary terror against the working class have
shown themselves in country after country, and have continued
to-day into Fascist forms.

In Hungary under the White Terror Social Democracy
entered into a written Treaty of Alliance with the White Gov-
ernment. This Treaty was signed on December 22, 1921, be-
tween the Prime Minister, Bethlen, and the Social Democratic
Party, affiliated section of the Second International. By the
terms of this Treaty it was laid down that

The Social Democratic Party will consider the general interests of
the nation as of equal importance to the interests of the working class.

In respect of foreign policy the Hungarian Social Democratic
Party

will carry on an active propaganda on behalf of Hungary, among the
leaders of the foreign Social Democratic Parties, with the foreign
governments, etc., and for this purpose will co-operate with the
Hungarian Foreign Ministry ... will adopt the Magyar stand-
point . . . before all, in its organ Nepszava adopt an impartial
attitude and loyally express in this paper the collaboration with
bourgeois society.

In respect of home policy the Social Democratic Party will
“co-operate with the bourgeois classes in the economic sphere,”
prevent strikes, conduct “no republican propaganda” and “shall
not extend its agitation among the agricultural workers.” The
Treaty concluded with the pledge:

1g2 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The delegates of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party declare
that they agree to the wishes expressed by the Prime Minister both
with regard to foreign and home policy, and give assurance of
fulfilment on their part. They nominate on their part a delegate
who maintains contact with the Foreign Ministry.

In return for this Treaty, Social Democracy was to be officially
protected by the White Government, while Communism was
ruthlessly suppressed. When the terms of this Treaty became
known three years later, and a scandal was raised, com-
pelling even a Commission of Enquiry in the Second Inter-
national (the Commission of Enquiry, under Kautsky in 1925,
ended in a complete whitewashing verdict, recognising the
“good faith” of the Hungarian Social Democrats, and accepting
their assurance that the Treaty would not be continued fur-
ther), the Hungarian semi-governmental organ, the Neues
Pester Journal commented in its issue of January 1, 1925:

The Treaty does not contain anything which every Socialist
Party of the world—if we disregard the Third International—would
not have recognised, or at least realised by its practical attitude. ...
The Treaty has been fully observed, and both parties have honestly
fulfilled its provisions.

The bourgeois organ is correct. The Bethlen-Social Democratic
Treaty is only peculiar in that it sets down in writing the
practice of all Labour and Social Democratic Parties, what-
ever their formal programme. The underlying principles of
Fascism and its “Labour Front” are thus in many respects
anticipated by Social Democracy.

Bulgaria afforded a further example of the same process.
The elections of 1923 had resulted in a vote of 437,000 for the
Peasants’ Party under Stambulisky, 252,000 for the Commu-
nist Party, 219,000 for the Bourgeois Bloc, and 40,000 for the
Social Democrats. The Stambulisky Government was carrying
through a programme of agrarian reforms, the impeachment
and trial of the former war-ministers, and other measures un-
popular with the reaction. The reactionary parties in June,
1923, carried through a military coup d’état, engineered by
army officers, overthrew the Peasant Party’s Government by
force and murdered the Prime Minister, Stambulisky. On
this basis was set up the White Terror regime of the butcher,
Tsankov, under whom, according to the statement of Vander-

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM 193

velde, Chairman of the Second International, 16,000 Bulgarian
workers and peasants were murdered in eighteen months
(Humanité, May 18, 1925). In this Tsankov Government of
White Terror the Social Democratic Party, affiliated section of
the Second International, was officially represented; its Min-
ister, Kasassov, sat alongside the representatives of the Fas-
cist “Officers’ League” and of the bourgeois parties.

In Poland in 1926 the Pilsudski coup d’état, overthrowing
parliamentary democracy, and establishing a type of Fascist
dictatorship, was carried out with the support of the Polish
Socialist Party, section of the Second International; its repre-
sentative, Moraszevski, sat in Pilsudski’s Government.

In Spain the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship gave its pro-
tection to the Spanish Socialist Party and the reformist General
Union of Labour, while suppressing the revolutionary workers’
movement.

In Italy D’Aragona and the reformist leaders of the General
Confederation of Labour entered into the service of Mussolini
and declared the Confederation dissolved in 1926.

™ In Austria the Dollfuss dictatorship was built up step by step
with the passive support of Social Democracy as the “lesser
evil” in relation to the Nazis; in the beginning of 1934 the
Social Democratic Party was making a direct offer of alliance
to Dollfuss at the same time as the Government offensive was
turning on its organisations and Press; and even when the
workers finally rose in their heroic struggle, it was against
express orders of the Party, which on the very eve of the strug-
gle was sending urgent messages for submission and expressing
readiness to Dollfuss to accept an emergency dictatorship and
a form of Corporate State.

In Czecho-Slovakia the Social Democratic Party participated
in the Coalition Government of all the bourgeois parties, which
in 1933 was suppressing the Communist Press and preparing
the conditions of intensified dictatorship.

In Japan the following situation was complacently reported
in the British Labour organ Forward on March 20, 1930, under
the title “Labour in Japan,” with reference to the elections:

One’s impression is that the proletarian parties have been given
a much fairer field than before. It is true that since the last election
there have been two great police round-ups of the so-called dan-
gerous thinkers. This might be urged to have had a weakening

I94 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

effect, but the opposite is more probably the case. Those that
remain have been given as it were an official cachet. By inference
they are certified free from Communism. There is no longer that
bogy to frighten away possible supporters.

The “official cachet” to Social Democracy from an extreme
reactionary militarist Government, which is savagely suppres-
sing Communism with tens of thousands of arrests, is regarded
with high favour by the British Labour organ as a most for-
tunate advantage. A short time after, in the spring of 1932, the
leadership of this Japanese Social Democratic Party, headed
by the Secretary, Akamatsu, and half the Executive Committee
openly moved over and transformed themselves into an
avowedly Fascist “‘National Socialist Party.”

Social Democracy has thus throughout the world shown itself
ready to adapt itself and enter into alliance with every counter-
revolutionary, White Terrorist and Fascist Government, even
entering directly into such Governments. Where Social
Democracy has not been accepted into such open alliance, but
has been forced under, carrying out its role of disruption of
the working class under the form of opposition, this has not
been for lack of trying on the part of the Social Democratic
leadership, who have invariably exhausted every manceuvre to
endeavour to be admitted to the favoured circle under the pro-
tection of Fascism.

The signal example of the latter process has been Germany.
The significance of the German experience has been dealt with
in the previous chapter.

If German Fascism rejected the offers and pleadings of Social
Democracy for an open alliance, it was because German
Fascism had no confidence in the existence of any form of
workers’ organisation, however servile the leadership, save
under its direct control, because it had no confidence in the
power of a permitted Social Democracy to maintain control of
the workers, because it was determined to hold all apparatus
positions for itself and permit no other forms of organization.
The role of the remaining representatives of the traditional
official line of Social Democracy (as represented by the Prague
Executive of the German Social Democratic Party, with their
refusal of the Communist offers of the united front continuing
even into 1935) thus becomes in practice, under the completed
Fascist dictatorship, to continue its disruption of the working-

THE ADAPTATION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO FASCISM 195

class front in new forms, to carry forward its fight against the
united front and against Communism, to confuse the revolu-
tionary struggle with the deceitful aim of Weimar democracy
which made possible the victory of Fascism, and to stand ready,
in the event of the weakening of the Fascist dictatorship and
the advance of the working-class offensive, to come to the
rescue of capitalism and save the capitalist State, as in 1918,
against the working-class revolution. But this policy meets
with rising resistance within the ranks of Social Democracy;
among the illegal Social Democratic groups which have main-
tained existence or come together to carry on the struggle under
Fascism, an increasing proportion moves towards the united
front with Communism.

The collapse of German Social Democracy created a crisis
in the Second International. Numbers of workers who had
followed its leadership began to have their eyes opened to the
realities of the struggle, and to move towards increasing sym-
pathy with Communism and towards the line of the united
front. But the effect of the crisis on the leading strata was to
hasten the process of “‘fascisation.” The slogan was given
out to rally on the basis of “democracy,” that is, on the basis of
the existing capitalist state. Therefore the line was proclaimed
to combat still more fiercely the united working-class front, to
strengthen the authority of the State, if necessary, in “emer-
gency” forms, to unite with the “moderate” elements of the
bourgeoisie, forming left blocks and coalition governments
to save the State, and even to support the war-propaganda of
the bourgeoisie in the name of “democracy.” The Left Cartel
policy in France, the toleration of Dollfuss in Austria, the
coalition policy in Czecho-Slovakia, the support of Roosevelt
by the reformist leadership in Britain and America, illustrated
this line. An increasingly influential school developed which
openly drew the “lessons” of Fascism as the need to concen-
trate more on a “national,” as opposed to an international,
basis, to abandon the conception of the working-class conquest
of power and direct the appeal increasingly to the petit-bour-
geoisie, and to seek to build a “strong, authoritarian State” in
the conditions of crisis. These conceptions were openly ex-
pressed by ‘“Neo-Socialism” in France. A variant of a similar
tendency was revealed by the Socialist League wing of the
Labour Party leadership, which also came forward with pro-

196 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

posals for an intensified dictatorship within the capitalist State.
It is evident that this whole line of propaganda in practice
chimes in with and assists the increasing development of capi-
talism in all modern states towards fascist forms.

On the other hand, a strong current developed within the
Social Democratic ranks towards the united front with Com-
munism. In some countries, as in France and Spain, where
the Fascist menace was intense, the mass-pressure was suffi-
ciently powerful to overcome the resistance of the Socialist
Party leadership and to compel a united front of the Socialist
and Communist Parties. Through all the Social Democratic
Parties a left section, striving towards the united front and the
path of active struggle against Fascism, developed a growing
role. Thus a process of extreme differentiation advanced in
Social Democracy as a consequence of the Fascist offensive;
and this process is of critical importance for the whole future
of the international working class movement.*

Social Democracy—modern post-1914 Social Democracy—
takes its starting-point and origin in the conception of co-opera-
tion with capitalism and with the capitalist State. This line is
presented as the line of safe and peaceful, harmonious, “demo-
cratic’ advance towards Socialism, as opposed to the dangers
and destruction of the path of violent revolution. The whole
experience of 1914-1933 has demonstrated with inescapable
clearness that this line leads, not to Socialism, nor to peaceful
progress, nor even to the maintenance of democratic forms in
the most limited sense, but to unexampled violence against the
working class and strengthening of the capitalist dictatorship
and, in the final culmination, to the victory of Fascism, of
imperialist war and of all the forces of destruction, against
which only the proletarian revolution can avail to save the
world. This is the lesson of the episode of post-war Social
Democracy in working-class history, an episode which is be-
ginning to draw to its close, as the workers increasingly awaken
from reformist illusions, through the experience of Fascism, to
the revolutionary struggle.

*For the further development of the crisis in Social Democracy and the
advance of the united front, see Appendix.

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==CHAPTER IX: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FASCISM==

ON a superficial view the theory and practice of Fascism might
appear to resemble closely Gibbon’s famous definition of the
theory and practice of the medieval Catholic Church—
“defending nonsense by violence.” But in fact, as there has
already been occasion to emphasise, there is a highly rational
method in the nonsense, no less than in the violence. Behind
the ranting megalomaniacs, bullies, drug-fiends and broken-
down bohemians who constitute the outer facade of Fascism,
the business heads of finance-capital who pay the costs and pull
the strings are perfectly cool, clear and intelligent. And it is
with the real system of Fascism in this sense, rather than with
the imaginary ideology created to gull the innocent, that we are
here concerned. The second, the professed fantastic ideology,
is only of importance in relation to the first, the real working
system for the maintenance of capitalism in conditions of
extreme crisis and weakening.

1. Is There a “Theory” of Fascism?

The first illusion that requires to be cleared out of the way is
the illusion that there is a “theory” of Fascism, in the same
sense that there is a theory of Liberalism, Conservatism, Com-
munism, etc.

Many intellectuals, while “deploring” the “excesses” of
Fascism, allow themselves to be fascinated and drawn into
elaborate speculative discussion of the “philosophy” of
Fascism—and are soon lost in the Serbonian bog of alternating
“socialism,” capitalism, corporatism, strong-man worship,
high moral adjurations, and platitudes, anti-alien agitation,
appeals to “unity,” glorifications of war, torture-gloating,
deification of primitive man, denunciations of big business,
idolisation of captains of industry, kicking of the dead corpse of
the nineteenth century and “liberal-democratic humanitarian
superstitions,” exhumation of the considerably more putres-

197

198 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

cent corpses of mercantilism, absolutism, inquisitorial methods
and caste-conceptions, racial theories of the inferiority of all
other human beings save the speaker’s own tribe, anti-semitism,
Nordicism and all the rest of it.

The innocent may solemnly and painstakingly discuss at face
value these miscellaneous “theories” provided to suit all tastes.
But in fact their importance is rather as symptoms and by-
products of the real system and basis of Fascism than as its
origin and raison d’étre. The reality of Fascism is the violent
attempt of decaying capitalism to defeat the proletarian revolu-
tion and forcibly arrest the growing contradictions of its whole
development. All the rest is decoration and stage-play, whether
conscious or unconscious, to cover and make presentable or
attractive this basic reactionary aim, which cannot be openly
stated without defeating its purpose.

For this reason the real scientific theory underlying Fascism
can better be studied in such a document as the Deutsche
Fihrerbriefe or confidential bulletins of the Federation of Ger-
man Industries, already quoted in the previous chapter (pp. 170-
174), rather than in the propaganda statements for public
consumption concerning its professed “theories” by the Fascist
leaders themselves. The confidential statement of the heads of
finance-capital defines plainly and without disguise the objective
essence and purpose of Fascism as seen by its actual paymasters
and controllers, and is therefore of primary scientific and theo-
retical importance for the real understanding of Fascism. Sucha
statement makes plain that Fascism is solely a tactical method of
finance-capital—in exactly the same way as the support of
democratic forms and of Social Democratic Governments was
also a tactical method, either being supported with equal
readiness according to circumstances—to defeat the proletarian
revolution, to divide the exploited population, and so to main-
tain capitalist rule. All the propaganda “theories,” mytho-
logical trimmings, supposed “‘new school of political thought,”
etc., only constitute a smokescreen to cover this aim.

We have already seen, in the course of the enquiry “what
is Fascism?” in the fourth chapter, how empty and meaning-
less are all the infinite attempted definitions of Fascism by its
leading exponents. The more these definitions are examined
and analysed, the more they resolve themselves into a string
of commonplaces and platitudes by no means peculiar to

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 199

Fascism: “the common interest before self” (basis of the
German National Socialist Programme); “duty,” “heroism,”
“the conception of the State as an absolute” (Mussolini); “an
organic and historical conception of society’ (Rocco); “a
conception which leans neither to the Right nor to the Left,”
“the co-operation of all classes,” “the co-ordinated develop-
ment of all national resources for the common good” (Villari) ;
“a high conception of citizenship,” “the Modern Movement,”
“the faith of those who ever since the war have realised that
the old system was dead and that a new system must be
created,” “the system of the next stage of civilisation,” “the
creed and morality of British manhood” (Mosley); “orderly
government, national discipline,” ‘‘co-ordinated progress,”
“a creed of Justice and Solidarity,” “Social Christianity”
(The Blackshirt); “a return to statesmanship,” “the national
observance of duty towards others,” “less a policy than a state
of mind” (The Fascist), etc., etc. These and the like wind-
filled phrases revolve without end through all the propagandist
explanations of Fascism. There is, it is true, one professedly
definite and specific content put forward, namely, the much
advertised “Corporate State”; but further analysis in a sub-
sequent section will show that this conception is actually as
empty and hollow as the rest.

This vagueness and ambiguity of conventional common-
places to describe its basic aims is not accidental in Fascism,
but inherent and inevitable. This terminology is the standard
vague and deceitful terminology of all capitalist parties to
cover the realities of class-rule and class-exploitation under
empty phrases of “the community,” “the national welfare,”
“the State above classes,” etc. It is the familiar terminology
of a MacDonald, a Henderson or of Fabianism in the Labour
movement to defeat the aims of Socialism and cover servitude
to capitalism. It is the familiar terminology of a Baldwin or a
Lloyd George, of a Tardieu or a Laval, of a Hindenburg or a
Wels. In the use of these threadbare clichés of capitalist politics
to describe its aims Fascism differs not a whit from the other
capitalist parties, from Conservatism, Liberalism or Labourism,
all of which would readily accept all the formulas quoted above.
By this identity Fascism not only reveals its theoretical poverty
and emptiness, but also reveals its basic identity of aims with
the other capitalist parties. Fascism differs from the other

200 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

capitalist parties only in its particular methods, in its practice, to
realise the same basic aims.

There is, in short, despite all the inflated claims and attempts
to the contrary, no distinctive “theory” of Fascism in the
sense of a distinctive, scientific system of doctrines and world-
outlook. There is only a practice: and, to cover this practice, a
medley of borrowed plumes of any and every theory, principle
or institution which may serve the purpose of the moment,
often with the utmost consequent theoretical contradiction
(e.g., in racial theories) between one Fascism and another. To
mistake the borrowed plumage for the bird means to fail to
understand the essence of Fascism. Or, to vary the metaphor,
the warning may be addressed to those who seek in all innocence
to study the highly “ideal” and “spiritual” explanations of
the “theoretical basis” of Fascism, that to mistake the sheep’s
hide for the wolf means to reveal oneself in truth a sheep and
fit prey for the wolf.

Fascism grew up in historical fact as a movement without a
theory—that is to say, it grew up in reality as a negative move-
ment (employing mixed national-chauvinist and pseudo-
revolutionary slogans) in opposition to the proletarian revolu-
tion, and mainly distinguished by the use of violent and extra-
legal methods against the proletarian movement. Only later,
after over two years of existence, when it became clear that in
order to appear fully dressed and equipped as a party and move-
ment, it required to have a “philosophy,” in 1921 the Fascist
leadership gave orders for a suitable “philosophy” to be
created. In August 1921, in preparation for the 1921 Congress,
Mussolini wrote:

Italian Fascism now requires, under pain of death, or worse, of
suicide, to provide itself with a “body of doctrines.”. . .

The expression is a rather strong one, but I would desire that
within the two months between now and the National Congress the
philosophy of Fascism must be created.

(Mussolini, letter to Bianchi, August 27, 1921, reprinted in
Message et Proclami, Milan, 1929, p. 39.)

“Within two months the philosophy of Fascism must be
created.” The new “philosophy” is ordered as simply as a
waggon-load of blacksticks. The spirit of this is no doubt
magnificent in the style of a Selfridge’s or Whiteley’s emporium,
ready to provide anything at a moment’s notice, including even

aera

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 201

a brand-new “philosophy” is desired. But it is not the spirit
of a genuine or serious movement with roots.

In the same way we may note Hitler’s explanation that a new
““world-theory” was necessary as the sole means to combat the
world-theory of Marxism.

Every attempt to combat a world-theory by means of force comes
to grief in the end, so long as the struggle fails to take the form of
aggression in favour of a new intellectual conception. It is only
when two world-theories are wrestling on equal terms that brute
force, persistent and ruthless, can bring about a decision by arms in
favour of the side which it supports.

It was on this side that the fight against Marxism had failed up to
that time. It was the reason why Bismarck’s legislation regarding
Socialism failed in the end in spite of everything, and was bound to
fail. It lacked the platform of a new world-theory to establish which
the fight might have been fought; for only the proverbial wisdom of
high State officials could find it possible to imagine that the twaddle
about so-called “State authority” or “order and tranquillity” are
a sufficient inducement to fight to the death.

In 1914 a contest against Social Democracy was in fact con-
ceivable, but the lack of any practical substitute made it doubtful
how long such a contest could have been maintained successfully.
In that respect there was a serious blank.

(Hitler, Mein Kampf, English translation, pp. 78-9.)

Hitler, or the writer of this passage, is here perfectly correct in
placing his finger on the weakness of the fight against Marxism.
But his correctness is the correctness of a cunning tactician, not
of a world thinker or historical leader. Marxism is strong and
invincible because of its world-theory; therefore we must also
create a world-theory in order to defeat it: such is the reasoning.
Once again only the negative approach to Marxism dictates the
ideology and the demand for it; Marxism remains the sole posi-
tive, dominating force. It is obvious that no world-theory comes
into existence in this fashion, but only a substitute for one.
The sensation of a “new ideology” which intoxicates the
more fanatical and emotional adherents of Fascism, giving
them the illusion of a liberation from old superstitions and a new
dynamic power, represents in reality no new ideology distinct
from the general ideology of capitalism, but only the typical
ideology of the most modern phase of capitalism, that is to say,
the sharpened expression of all the tendencies of imperialism or
capitalism in decay, in the period of the general crisis. The

202 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

contempt for constitutional and legalist forms, the glorification
of violence, the denial of all liberal, egalitarian and humani-
tarian ideas, the demand for the strong and powerful
State, the enthronement of war as the highest form of human
activity—all these are the typical expressions of modern mono-
polist capitalism. They are not peculiar to Fascism; they are
only expressed with greater brutality by Fascism. In the poems
of a Kipling, in the Boer War agitation of a Daily Mail, in the
war dictatorship of a Lloyd George riding roughshod over con-
stitutional forms and driving to the aim of a “Knock-out Blow,”
the spirit of Fascism is already present inembryonic forms. And
indeed Fascism grew historically out of war agitation, and under
the guiding inspiration of the Army authorities, in both Italy
and Germany.

There is nothing original or creative in Fascism. Not
one single creative idea or achievement can be traced to
Fascism. The critique of liberalism and of liberal capitalist
democracy, with its hollow contradiction between the formal
sovereign “citizenship” and the reality of wage-slavery is
borrowed from Marx. But Marx’s conclusion, which alone
justifies the criticism by pointing the path forward to the stage
when the abolition of classes will make the formal citizenship
real, is omitted; for in Fascism the hollow contradiction be-
tween the formal “citizenship” and the reality of wage-
slavery remains, just as in Liberalism, save with heavier
coercion and subjection to maintain it.

The pseudo-revolutionary trappings, the sham staged ‘“‘con-
quest of power,” the new form of government based on a single
party running throughout the entire population, is twisted,
with servile imitation, from a caricature of the Russian Revolu-
tion, turned upside down. But even the caricature cannot be
reproduced in the end; for, while the idea of a single party
leadership is borrowed (but of an autocratic, not a democratic
party), the key of the system, the Soviets or drawing of the
masses directly into the work of government through their own
elected organs from below, cannot be copied even in caricature;
on the contrary, even the previously elected municipal councils
have to be abolished and replaced by the arbitrary rule of the
nominated Podesta or Prefect, or in Germany by the nominated
State Commissary imposed from above and overruling even
nominal elected forms.

IS THERE A “THEORY” OF FASCISM? 203

The theory of economic state regulation of privately owned
industry and of class-collaboration in the “Corporate State,”
that is, of syndicated state-controlled capitalism with a dash of
sham “labour representation,” is borrowed from the entire
modern development of monopolist capitalism in all countries.
In particular, these are the typical theories of modern Liberal-
ism and Social Democracy, with their “Organised Capitalism,”
“National Planning Boards,” “National Economic Councils,”
“Joint Industrial Councils,” and all the rest of the apparatus of
theories and institutions which have developed continuously
and increasingly in the imperialist era, and more especially
since the war, before Fascism ever existed.

Finally, the national-chauvinist ideology, the anti-semitism
and the racial theories are all borrowed, without a single new
feature, from the stock in trade of the old Conservative and
reactionary parties, as utilised by a Bismarck or Tsar Nicholas,
and made familiar in the propaganda of the Pan-Germans or
Pan-Slavists.*

* Modern Anti-Semitism developed from Germany and Austria in the eighteen-
seventies, that is, as capitalism was beginning to pass from the liberal epoch to-
wards the imperialist epoch. In 1873 appeared Marr’s Der Sieg des Judentums uber
das Germantum, or, The Victory of Jewry over Germanism, “It is impossible to
doubt,” writes Lucien Wolf, former President of the Jewish Historical Society in
England, “that the secret springs of the new agitation were more or less directly
supplied by Prince Bismarck himself.” It is worth noting that a “Christian Social
Working Men’s Union” (worthy forerunner of the National Socialist Workers’
Party) was founded in this period by Stécker, a Court Chaplain, which preached a
programme of so-called “Christian Socialism,” in practice Anti-Semitism, dished
up with denunciations of financial corruption, and organised street riots and blood-
shed. It was with reference to this movement that the elder Liebknecht spoke of
Anti-Semitism as the “Socialism of Fools.” The Anti-Semite agitation spread
from Germany to Russia in the beginning of the ’eighties, again directly inspired
and stimulated from above. “The modern Anti-Semitic element,” writes Lucien
Wolf, “came from above. It has been freely charged against the Russian Govern-
ment that it promoted the riots in 1881 in order to distract attention from the
Nihilist propaganda. This seems to be true of General Ignatiev, then Minister
of the Interior, and of the secret police.” The conscious anti-revolutionary, anti-
socialist and officially inspired character of the movement thus stands out in every
case. In France, Drumont’s La France Juive appeared in 1886, and the anti-
Dreyfus scandal, promoted by all the high military and bureaucratic authorities
with wholesale forgeries, dragged from 1894 to 1906. Only British Capitalism,
which in its period of stability could make a Conservative Jew Prime Minister and
ennoble Jewish millionaires in abundance, had for long no use for the primitive
devices of Anti-Semite demagogy; but to-day the signs begin to spread in Britain
in close association with the spread of Fascism. Thus The Blackshirt (1933, No.

204 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The whole outlook and ideology of Fascism is in short nothing
but a ragbag of borrowings from every source to cover the
realities and practice of modern monopolist capitalism in the
period of crisis and of extreme class-war. There is not a single
creative idea. Capitalism in its time, in its early progressive
days achieved a great constructive work, and carried enor-
mously forward the whole of human culture in every field.
The French Revolution spread a new life and a new under-
standing throughout the world, the outcome of which we can
to-day be proud to inherit, even though we are to-day able to
understand that its bourgeois basis inevitably set a limit to
what it could achieve. The Russian Revolution opened a new
era on a scale exceeding every previous change in human his-
tory, the full extent of which is still only beginning to be realised.
But Fascism has produced nothing, and can produce nothing.
For Fascism is the expression only of disease and death.

2. Demagogy as a Science.

Bolshevism is knocking at our gates. We can’t afford to let it in.
We have got to organize ourselves against it, and put our shoulders
together and hold fast. We must keep America whole and safe
and unspoiled. We must keep the worker away from red literature
and red ruses; we must see that his mind remains healthy.

(Al Capone.)

The above quotation from Al Capone is a suitable intro-
duction to the anti-Communist ideology of Fascism. The
earnestness of this appeal of a thief and gangster to maintain
existing society “unspoiled” in face of the Communist menace
might appear at first blush comic; but in fact it is purely
reasonable. None have more sincere concern and zeal than
thieves to maintain the institution of private property, without
which their profession would come to an end, and they would
find themselves faced with the unpleasant alternative of having
to work for their living. On the other hand, they cannot
publicly proclaim the principles of thievery and gangsterism as
the basis of their stand; for public purposes, they have to pro-

23) prints on its front page under the heading “Britain for the British: The Alien
Menace”:

“The low type of foreign Jew, together with other aliens who are debasing the
life of this nation, will be run out of the country in double-quick time under
Fascism.”

Anti-Semitism, the typical degrading expression of a tottering system, is developed
by Capitalism in its decaying stage in proportion as the class struggle grows acute.

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 205

claim the most high moral principles, to maintain existing society
“unspoiled” and to keep “the mind” of the worker “healthy.”
This high moral tone runs through all Fascist propaganda
and accompanies their gangster exploits. Nor should this be
thought a contradiction; the two characteristics invariably run
together in periods of decay. As Plechanov has remarked:

Marx said very truly that the greater the development of antagon-
ism between the growing forces of production and the extant social
order, the more does the ideology of the ruling class become
permeated with hypocrisy. In addition, the more effectively life
unveils the mendacious character of this ideology, the more does the
language used by the dominant class become sublime and virtuous
(see Saint Max). This shrewd remark is confirmed by what is going
on to-day in Germany. The spread of debauchery disclosed by the
Harden-Moltke trial proceeds hand in hand with the “revival of
idealism” in sociology.

(Plechanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism, English
edition, 1929, p. 82.)

The process noted by Plechanov has gone considerably further
in Germany and in all capitalist Society to-day. The fact that
many of the principal leaders of German Fascism are not only
notorious drug-fiends and perverts, but express themselves in
their writings with highly jocular gusto over their exploits of
tortures of women and particularly revolting murders (see for
example the Ernstes und Heiteres aus dem Putschleben of von
Killinger, who was appointed by Hitler Commissar for Saxony
and Minister-President), while in their programme they
demand the protection of “the morals and sense of decency of
the German race,” is no contradiction, but only a further
exemplification of the general rule.*

*“Von Killinger was made Commissar for Saxony and later Minister-
President, and he consequently was in charge of ‘Gleichschaltung’ in this State.
He had previously written a little book, Ernstes und Heiteres aus dem Putsch-
leben, in which he recounts, among other incidents, how in the campaign against
the Soviet Government in Munich he had a soldier whip a young ‘wench’ with
a horsewhip ‘until there was not a white spot left on her backside.’ He also
recounts how, after a Communist street agitator had made an impudent reply
to a threat, he had a soldier toss a hand grenade at the man. He recounts with
gusto the gory details of the man’s death” (Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters
the Third Reich, 1933, Pp. 113). : ; Hts
Leaders of this type have invariably been given especially high position in German
Fascism. Many similar exploits could be recounted of the notorious “Rasses”
of Mussolini in Italy, of Finnish Fascism, of Hungarian Fascism, etc. This
characteristic is a general characteristic of Fascism, and follows inevitably from
the type of work it has to do.

206 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The mystical and openly non-rational character of Fascist
ideology and propaganda is only the inevitable expression of
its class-role to maintain the domination of a doomed and
decaying class. The present situation of world capitalism is
in the highest degree irrational. It is not rational that food-
stuffs should be destroyed, while millions are undernourished,
that building workers should be unemployed, while housing
becomes more and more overcrowded and inadequate; that
the masses should have to economise and go short, because
there is too much plenty; or that learned economists should
discuss anxiously the “menace” of a good harvest or the
“hopes” of a bad harvest. But all this is inherent in the present
stage of capitalism. Therefore capitalism can no longer defend
itself on rational grounds, as it used to do in its early days, when
it argued that its system, though cruel, meant the maximum
development of natural resources and the maximum material
well-being. To-day such arguments are dimissed as low,
materialistic, utilitarian, merely rational arguments unworthy
of higher human nature, characteristic of the exploded nine-
teenth-century outlook and long replaced by twentieth-century
“spirituality” and the “revival of idealism.” To-day
capitalism defends itself on mystical grounds. “Race,” “the
nation,” “Christianity,” “spirituality,’ “the mystery of
patriotism,” “faith’—this is the language of the modern
defenders of capitalism, and, in particular, of Fascism.

Thus Mussolini, in defining Fascism, speaks with contempt of
“doctrine” and exalts “faith”:

Doctrine, beautifully defined and carefully elucidated, with
headlines and paragraphs, might be lacking; but there was to take
its place something more decisive—faith.

(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, p. 10.)
Gentile, the philosopher of Fascism, defines the Fascist State
as “a wholly spiritual creation.” Hitler defines the State as
“nothing to do with any definite economic conception or
economic development,” but
the organisation of a community homogeneous in nature and feeling,
for the better furtherance and maintenance of their type and the
fulfilment of the destiny marked out for them by Providence.

(Hitler, Mein Kampf, English edition, p. 69.)
The British Union of Fascists, in its short definition of Fascism,
declares:

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE

We believe in the co-operation of all classes, in the solidarity
of all units of a nation, and in justice. And in the mystery of
patriotism. (The Blackshirt, No. 34, 1933-)

Bottomley in his wartime speeches and articles had many
similar exalted passages.

This type of “ideal” “spiritual” language is the familiar
language of all scoundrels, rogues, war-profiteers, gangsters,
Kreugers, Al Capones, Morgans, MacDonalds, Mussolinis,
Hitlers, Romanoffs and all who live by preying on their fellow
human beings and cannot face a plain, rational, materialist
examination of their role and of the organisation of society.

On this exaltation of mystical “feeling” above reason—
whether national “feeling,” religious “feeling,” racial “feel-
ing,” etc.—as the ultimate basis, Hegel (himself philosophically
an idealist, but of a more solid type, and therefore by his system
laying the groundwork for the subsequent dialectical material-
ism), wrote with incisive contempt in Phenomenology of Mind:

By referring to his feelings, his inward oracle, he thinks he has a
sufficient answer to those who do not agree with him; he must
declare that he has nothing more to say to those who do not share the
same feelings—in other words, he tramples under foot the roots of
humanity. For the nature of this is to seek agreement with others,
and it exists only in the community of consciousness that has been
brought about. The inhuman, the brute consists in being guided
only by feeling and being able to communicate only through feelings.

“He tramples under foot the roots of humanity”—this preg-
nant saying applies to all the racial, mystical, non-rational,
anti-humanitarian, anti-international ideologies of Fascism.
And the result in every case is the same—to lead only to “the
inhuman, the brute.”

The truth is, the propaganda of Fascism is essentially dema-
gogy carried to its most extreme point of development. It
might indeed be said that, if Marxism represented the develop-
ment of Socialism from Utopia to science, Fascism represents
the development of capitalist demagogy from amateurdom to
science. Already before Fascism the precursors of the modern
age, Northcliffe, Lloyd George, Bottomley, Hearst and others
had done much to point the way and lay down the general
lines and methods; but these were still erratic and individualist
in character, and never solved completely the complicated and
contradictory problem of building up a reactionary mass move-

208 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ment, at once “popular” in form and anti-popular in content.
Hitler expresses generously his gratitude to his predecessors,
especially Northcliffe, Lloyd George and British wartime pro-
paganda, which he acknowledges as his model that he learnt
from, admiring its “psychological superiority”; he admires
particularly the idea of pretending to fight for “the freedom of
little nations” as a far superior motive to “lead men to their
death” rather than telling them the real aims of the war; he
praises Lloyd George highly as a “great demagogue,’”’ whose
“primitiveness” is “proof of towering political capacity.”
But in fact Fascism was to leave these models far behind in its
systematisation of playing on every backward feeling, instinct
and ignorance in the population, in the unscrupulousness of
its programmes thrown out to appeal to any and every section
without pretense of regard for consistency, and in the brazen-
ness of its sudden changes of front and repudiation of its own
programmes.

What is demagogy? The ruling classes will apply the epithet
“demagogue” to every revolutionary leader of the masses who
awakens them to the struggle to overthrow their oppressors, as
realised at its highest in a Lenin or a Liebknecht. Such appel-
lation is a glaring misuse of language; for the relation of the
revolutionary leader to the masses is based on the strictest
regard for objective truth, whether popular or unpopular, and
the most consistent and unwavering prosecution of the interests
of the mass struggle for liberation against all opposition, how-
ever powerful. Demagogy, on the other hand, is the art of
playing on the hopes and the fears, the emotions and the
ignorance of the poor and the suffering for the benefit of the rich
and the powerful. It is the meanest of the arts. This is the art
of Fascism.

An examination of the programmes of Italian and of German
Fascism will show the systematisation of this method, which
is being painstakingly copied to-day by British Fascism.

It is unnecessary to go into the earlier record of Mussolini
himself, as when in 1910 he declared that “the proletariat has
no fatherland, nor in truth has the bourgeoisie; in case of war
we Socialists will not go to the front—we will raise insurrection
within our own borders,” or when in 1912 he denounced
Bissolati for treason in having acclaimed the King whose
servitor he was himself to become. This is only the common

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 209

record of all the corrupt Western European Social Democratic
politicians, of the Millerands and Briands, of the MacDonalds
and Snowdens. It is more important to begin with the early
programme of Italian Fascism in 1919-22 before power.

The early programme of Italian Fascism was, in the words of
an official spokesman of Fascism, Professor G. Volpe (Professor
of Modern History in the University of Milan), in the Yearbook
of the International Centre of Fascist Studies for 1928, “a nebu-
lous programme at first . . . somewhat demagogic and revolu-
tionary.” It contained items of the following type:

Abolition of the Monarchy, Senate and Nobility.

Republic, and Universal Suffrage to elect a Constituent Assembly
as Italian Section of the International Constituent Assembly of the
Peoples.

International Disarmament and Abolition of Compulsory Military
Service.

Confiscation of Church property.

Confiscation of war super-profits, and capital levy; abolition of
the Stock Exchange and dissolution of limited liability Companies
and banks;

Land for the peasants.

Transference of control of industry to syndicates of technicians

and workers.
Italian Fascism systematically applauded the occupation of
factories by workers, food-riots, strikes, peasant land-seizures,
etc. and called for the hanging of speculators from lamp-posts
and similar measures.

It is only necessary to examine this programme of Fascism in
comparison with its record in power to understand the meaning
of demagogy. In comparison with Fascism, the average “old
gang politician’s” record of election promises and subsequent
violation is innocent child’s play and almost honest by contrast.
Political history in all its range from a Machiavelli to a Tam-
many Hall knows no parallel of brazen dishonesty to equal
Fascism.*

* The examples of this record in every field are too abundant and commonplace
to be worth detailed review. Thus on the question of Republicanism Mussolini
wrote in the Popolo d’Italia on May 24, 1921:

“J shall not allow Fascism to be altered and made unrecognizable by changing
from republican in tendency, as I founded it, and as it ought to remain, to a
monarchical, nay more, a dynastic movement. Our symbol is not the scutcheon
of the House of Savoy. ... It is not permissible to preach one thing and
practise another.”

On the very next day, when the controlling capitalist and landed elements in

210 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The programme of German National Socialism surpassed
that of Italian Fascism in unblushing demagogy. Here, in the
more advanced stage of development of Germany, it was neces-
sary for Fascism to proclaim the aim of “Socialism.” The
Krupps and the Thyssens, the Deterdings and the Hohenzol-
lerns paid out their money to spread the propaganda of
“Socialism.” The Twenty-Five Points Programme, adopted
in 1920, and proclaimed by the 1926 Congress to be “‘unalter-
able,” set out the following aims among its miscellaneous
medley of items:

Abolition of Unearned Income (11).

Breaking of Interest-Slavery (11).

Confiscation of all war profits (12).

Nationalisation of all trusts (13).

Profit-sharing in large concerns (14).

Confiscation without compensation of land for communal pur-
poses (17).

Death penalty for usurers and profiteers (17).

The meaning of these high-sounding “revolutionary” and
“socialistic” aims was left deliberately obscure. It is reported
that two earnest students and devotees of National Socialism
having approached Goebbels for an explanation how the
famous Eleventh Point on the “Breaking of Interest-Slavery”
would be accomplished received the reply that the only “break-
ing” likely to take place would be of the heads of those who
tried to understand it.

“Interpretation” was, however, at a later stage brought
into play in reference to one point, the Seventeenth Point on the
confiscation of land without compensation. This demand had

Fascism insisted on the withdrawal of this republican declaration, Mussolini at
once obediently wrote (Popolo d’Italia, May 21, 1921):

“Fascism is superior to monarchy and republic. . . . The future is uncertain,
and the absolute does not exist. .. . Those who would draw the conclusion
that Fascism espouses the republican cause, and regards the setting up of the
republic as a prime necessity, reveal a lamentable want of understanding.”

On the question of religion Mussolini wrote on April 3, 1921:
“Fascism is the strongest of all heresies that strikes at the doors of the churches.
. .. Away with these temples that are doomed to destruction; for our tri-
umphant heresy is destined to illumine all hearts and brains.”

In his Encyclopedia article on Fascism in 1932 he wrote:

“In the Fascist State religion is considered as one of the deepest manifestations

of the spirit of man, thus it is not only respected, but defended and protected.”
These examples could be continued indefinitely, and are only of importance as the
demonstration that Fascism cannot be interpreted in terms of its own alleged
political “theories,” but only in terms of its service to finance-capital.

DEMAGOGY AS A SCIENCE 2Ir

evidently caused alarm to the more stupid large landlords, who
required an assurance in writing, while the more wily heads of
big business and finance remained wholly unperturbed at the
terrible Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads in the
shape of the “Nationalisation of All Trusts,” “Abolition of
Unearned Income” and the “Death Penalty for Profiteers.”
Accordingly, the following explanatory addition was officially
inserted in the “unalterable” programme in 1928:

It is necessary to reply to the false interpretation on the part of
our opponents on Point 17 of the programme.

Since the National Socialist German Workers’ Party admits the
principle of private property, it is obvious that the expression ‘“con-
fiscation without compensation” merely refers to possible legal
powers to confiscate, if necessary, land illegally acquired or not
administered in accordance with national welfare. It is directed in
the first instance at the Jewish companies which speculate in land.

This specimen exercise in official “interpretation” speaks
volumes for the real character of the whole programme.

At the same time, occasional assurances had in fact also to
be given to some of the more hesitating capitalists. An official
letter of this type from the district party leadership in Dresden
to a Weimar capitaiist, who had hesitated to give financial
support owing to the “anti-capitalist” propaganda conducted,
and to whom it was officially explained that he should not be
alarmed at the anti-capitalist ‘“catchwords,” since these were
only adopted “for reasons of diplomacy,” fell into the hands
of the opponents of the Nazis in 1930 and was published. The
text of this indiscreet letter ran:

Do not let yourself be continually confused by the text of our
posters... . Of course there are catchwords like “Down with
Capitalism!” etc.; but these are unquestionably necessary, for
under the flag of “German national,” or “national” alone, you
must know, we should never reach our goal, we should have no
future. We must talk the language of the embittered socialist work-
men ... or else they wouldn’t feel at home with us. We don’t
come out with a direct programme for reasons of diplomacy.

(Letter of Dresden party leader to the industrialist, Fritsche,
in Weimar: reprinted in Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock
Back, p. 150.)

This illuminating letter makes further comment on the real
meaning of Fascist “demagogy” and its purpose superfluous.

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

3. Capitalism, Socialism and the Corporate State.

Fascism differs from Socialism chiefly in this—that in the Cor-
porate State you will be left in possession of your business.

(“Fascism Calling . . . to the Industrialists and Business
Men,” The Fascist Week, January 19-25, 1934.)

Fascism endeavours to present itself as a third alternative
distinct from either Capitalism or Socialism. To the workers
Fascism insists that it does not stand for Capitalism. To the
employers Fascism insists that it does not stand for Socialism.
For its supposed distinct positive conception it remains
extremely vague. Only after several years of existence Italian
Fascism worked out the formula of the “Corporate State” to
cover its aim. German Fascism worked out the formula of
“National Socialism.” Both these formulas are intended to
represent the supposed “third alternative” to Capitalism or
Socialism.

This supposed “third alternative’—the will o’ the wisp
dream of petit-bourgeois ideology ever since the development of
Capitalism and the class struggle—remains a myth and can
never be other than a myth. It is in fact nothing but a repeti-
tion of the old petit-bourgeois dream of a class-society without
class-contradictions or class-struggle, but this time used to
cover in reality the most violently coercive class-state and class-
suppression. The “Corporate State” is in fact the transparent
masquerade-dress of modern Capitalism, with developed state
organisation of industry, and complete suppression of all
independent workers’ organisation and rights.

Economically, there can only be Capitalism or Socialism in
the conditions of modern society based on large-scale industry.
What is Capitalism? Capitalism is marked by (1) production
for profit, (2) class ownership of the means of production, (3)
employment of the dispossessed workers or proletariat for wages.
What is Socialism? Socialism is marked by (1) common
ownership of the means of production by the workers, con-
stituting the entire society, (2) production for use. The current
fashionable vulgar talk of all bourgeois journalists and politi-
cians about “the disappearance nowadays of the line of dis-
tinction between Capitalism and Socialism” is only based on
the confusion that Capitalism is identified with the old liberal
laisser-faire relatively small-scale Capitalism or individualism
of the nineteenth century, while Socialism is identified with

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 213

State intervention. Hence the most typical characteristics of
modern Capitalism or Imperialism, with the increasing role of
the State in its organisation, are described as “Socialism,”
while the realities of wage-labour, profits and class-division are
unchanged and even intensified. This muddle-headed con-
fusion, which is common to all capitalist, Labourist and Fascist
ideology, and is the breeding-ground for all the demagogic
attempts of Fascism to conceal its capitalist character, becomes
impossible as soon as the class-analysis of Capitalism is under-
stood.

Fascism by all the above tests is economically identical with
Capitalism, representing only a special method to maintain its
power and hold down the workers. Fascism is profit-making
society, is class-society, is society based on exploitation. Alike
in Italy and in Germany, production is carried on for profit;
the means of production are the property of a small
minority, the upper strata of whom draw large incomes
through their ownership; the mass of the workers are
cut off from ownership, and work for a wage, producing
surplus-value for the owners, or are left unemployed, if it is
not profitable to employ them. All these are the familiar
characteristics of capitalism in all countries, as are equally the
crisis, depression, decline of production and mass unemploy-
ment. The Fascist countries show no difference from the other
capitalist countries in any of these respects. Fascist Italy and
Fascist Germany are no better off than non-Fascist France and
non-Fascist Britain (in fact worse off, but for reasons not neces-
sarily connected with Fascism); they are all economically in
the same boat, in the capitalist boat. The only contrast is
provided by the land of socialist construction, the Soviet Union,
with its ending of unemployment and gigantic rise of production
alongside the decline in all Fascist or other capitalist countries.

It is necessary at the outset to insist on these very elementary
facts, before examining more closely the specific economic _
institutions of Fascism, because Fascist propaganda, which is
characterised by brazenness of assertion rather than any attempt
at objective or scientific character, is so insistent on denying
the capitalist basis of Fascism that it may easily confuse those
who mistake words for facts. As this plea is at the heart of
the economic apologies for Fascism, it will be necessary to
examine more closely, first, the Fascist line of expression on

214 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Capitalism; second, the Fascist line of expression on “Socialism,”
as exemplified in “National Socialism’; and finally, the
positive economic principles and practice of Fascism, as
exemplified in the Corporate State or in the German Labour
Code.

The Fascist line of expression on Capitalism is marked by
extreme self-contradiction. According to Hitler, there is no such
thing as the “capitalist system.” He writes:

There does not exist a capitalist system. The employers have
worked their way up to the top by their industry and efficiency.
And by virtue of this selection, which shows that they belong to a
higher type, they have the right to lead. Every leader of industry
will forbid any interference by a factory council.

According to Mussolini, however, in his speech to the Council
of Corporations on November 14, 1933, the present crisis is
“a general crisis of capitalism.” He defines Capitalism as
follows:

Capitalism in its most highly developed form is a mass production
for mass consumption, financed nationally and internationally by
anonymous capital.

Having thus brilliantly “defined” Capitalism in terms of
“capital” (he is compelled to tie himself up in this way, for if
he were to attempt to analyse capital, he would be compelled
to lay bare the capitalist basis of Fascism), he proceeds to dis-
tinguish three periods of capitalism, the period of free com-
petition from 1830 to 1870, the “static” or “stagnating”
period of the great trusts from 1870 to 1913, and the period of
“decadence” since the war (here we have only a very confused
and mangled borrowing from Lenin’s /mperialism). He then
poses the question:

The crisis which has held us in its clutches for four years—is it a
crisis in the capitalist system or of the capitalist system?

And he reaches the answer that the crisis which has held “us”
(Fascist Italy) in its clutches for four years is “‘a crisis of the
capitalist system” (which Hitler says does not exist). But having
reached this important admission, he then endeavours to argue
that Italy is “not a capitalist country.” Upon what does he
base this argument? On the plea that in Italy there is a
majority proportion of agriculture and small industry (as if
this made any difference to the dominance of the capitalist class

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 215

and of capitalist exploitation, which knows very well how to
suck the labours, not only of the industrial workers, but also of
the peasants and small producers). But if this structure makes
Italy “not capitalist,” this structure applied equally to Italy
before Fascism, and Italy was accordingly “not capitalist” also
before Fascism. But if Italy was “not capitalist” before
Fascism, what was it? Again he can give no answer which
would not undermine his whole attempt to present Fascist Italy
as any different in its essential capitalist basis from pre-Fascist
Italy. Finally he argues that, since the corporate system has
admittedly failed to save Italy from the crisis of capitalism
“which has held us in its clutches for four years,” therefore the
corporate system may be recommended to other capitalist
countries to save them equally:

We come to the last question: Can the corporative principle be
applied in other countries? There is no doubt about it. As there is
a general crisis of capitalism, solution by the Corporate State seems
to be necessary in other countries.

However, in that case he would need to show that “solution by
the Corporate State” has applied to Italy, which has suffered

as heavily from the capitalist crisis as any other capitalist
country. But when the crisis broke on Italy in 1929-30, what
was his line? Did he argue that “solution by the Corporate
State” would save Italy? On the contrary, he argued that
Fascist Italy was helpless to do any more about the crisis than
any other capitalist country. In his speech of October 1, 1930,
he declared:

The situation has grown considerably worse throughout the
world, including Italy. ... The State cannot perform miracles.
Not even Mr. Hoover, the most powerful man in the world in the
richest country in the world, has succeeded in putting his house in
order.

“The State” (i.e., the Fascist State) “cannot perform
miracles.” It cannot hope to do more than other capitalist
countries. Quite right, and very honestly said for once. But
in that case what happens to the boasted superiority of Fascism
and the supposed emancipation of Fascism from capitalism and
its contradictions?

It is evident that we have here a mere tangle of confusions
and self-contradictions (which could be endlessly further

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216 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

exemplified from the statements of all the principal Fascist
leaders in all countries), without attempt at serious thinking.
Let us now turn to the Fascist line on “Socialism.” According
to Mussolini, in his speech on January 13, 1934, “Socialism”
is condemned outright as “the bureaucratisation of economy.”
According to German Fascism, “Socialism” is the ideal,
provided it is “National Socialism.” But what do they mean
by “Socialism”? The definitions given by the leaders of
German Fascism afford an instructive variety of choice.

The thirteenth point of the official party programme calls
for “the nationalisation of all trusts.”’ However, the official
economic theorist of the party, Feder, explains in his Manifesto
on the suppression of interest-slavery:

Every honest politician knows that general socialisation means
economic collapse and the absolute bankruptcy of the State. Our
watchword must be, not “socialisation,” but ‘“desocialisation.”

Goebbels in his Little A.B.C. of the National Socialists, states:

The Socialisation of all the means of production is absolutely
unachievable.

Addressing a group of business men at Hamburg on December
15, 1933, Feder won their applause by declaring that “the
State must not engage in business itself as a competitor,” and
adding, ‘Don’t be afraid your enterprises will be nationalised.”

Where then is the “Socialism”? Explanations are forth-
coming in abundance. Gregor Strasser, speaking on the radio
on behalf of the party on June 14, 1932, gave the following com-
prehensive definition:

By socialism we understand governmental measures for the pro-
tection of the individual or the group against any sort of exploitation.
The taking over of the railways by the State, of the street-cars,
power plants and gas works by the municipalities; the emancipation
of the peasants by Baron von Stein, and the incorporation of the
guild system into the State; the Prussian officers’ system of selection
by achievement; the incorruptibility of the German official; the
old walls, the town hall, the cathedral of the free Imperial city—
these are all expressions of German Socialism as we conceive and
demand it.

“Socialism,” after passing gently through the stages of gas-and-
water Fabianism and an admixture of “guilds,” thus comes to

NN ee

a —

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 217

rest at last in the solid ground of “the old walls,” “the
cathedral” and “the Prussian officers’ system.”

Goebbels is still more explicit in his brochure Prussia Must
Become Prussian Again:

Socialism is Prussianism (Preussentum). The conception “Prus-
sianism” is identical with what we mean by Socialism.

And again in a speech in East Prussia:

Our Socialism is that which animated the kings of Prussia, and
which reflected itself in the march-step of the Prussian Grenadier
regiments: a Socialism of duty.

It is impossible not to recall Marx’s comments on “German
Socialism” (despite all the differences) nearly a century ago:

German Socialism recognised its own calling as the bombastic
representative of the petit-bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the
German petit-bourgeois Philistine to be the typical man. To every
typical meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher,
“socialist” interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character.
It went to the length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive”
tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and im-
partial contempt of all class struggles.

But this old “German Socialism,” which Marx thus castigated,
was by comparison the noblest-hearted idealism if set against
the conscious and open filth of their “German Socialist”
descendants of the twentieth century, the bootlickers of reaction
and murderers of the workers, dressing up the hated Prussian,
militarist, absolutist corpse as “Socialism.”

It is obvious that the Fascist conceptions on “Socialism”
are even less worthy of serious discussion than their conceptions
on “Capitalism.” It remains to consider their supposed
“new” and “distinctive” programme: the Corporate State
“the greatest constructive conception yet devised by the mind
of man” (Mosley).

What is the Corporate State?

The basic official document of principles, the Italian Labour
Charter, published in 1927, lays down the following (§7):

The Corporate State considers that in the sphere of production
private initiative is the most effective and valuable instrument in
the interests of the nation.

Since private enterprise is a function of national concern, the

218 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the manage-
ment of its production. From the fact that the elements of pro-
duction (labour and capital) are co-operators in a common enter-
prise, reciprocal rights and duties devolve upon them. The
employee, whether labourer, clerk or skilled workman, is an active
collaborator in the economic enterprise, responsibility for the
’ direction of which rests with the employer.

These principles are tolerably familiar in all capitalist countries.

The standard semi-official work on the question, Fausto
Pitigliani’s ‘The Italian Corporative State” (P. S. King,
1933, written “in close contact with the Ministry of Corpora-
! tions’’) declares:

=

—

The idea of the sovereignty of the State and of national unity is
; the primary motive underlying the Fascist theory of govern-
ment... .

Parallel to this unifying principle . . . there is to be noted another
concept implicit in the State system which Fascism desires to build
up, namely, the economic collaboration of the various categories
engaged in production.

This new economic departure may be said to lie somewhere
between Liberalism . . . and Communism. .. .

The different categories of producers are represented officially
by various Occupational Associations. ... These Occupational
Associations, consisting solely of employers or of workers or of
persons belonging to one or other of the liberal professions, are
grouped in Corporations for purposes of protection and development
of some specific branch of production. These advisory bodies are
organs of State, and they embody all the elements involved in a
given branch of production, namely, capital, labour and technical
direction. It is precisely from the character of these institutions—
so distinctive a feature of the new political and economic order in
Italy—that the epithet of “corporative” is derived, which serves to
differentiate the Fascist State in its particular characteristics from
other State types.

Paul Einzig in his pro-Fascist “Economic Foundations of
Fascism” (1933) describes the Corporate State as “a new
economic system that differs fundamentally from Liberal
Capitalism and Communism”’:

In the Corporate State private property is respected just as in any
capitalist country. There is no expropriation without compensation.
The State reserves the right, however, to limit and guide the employ-
ment of the means of production, and to intervene in the process of

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 219

distribution in accordance with public interest. It does not aim at
owning the means of production any more than in a capitalist
country. Private ownership is the rule, and State ownership the
exception. Individual initiative is not superseded by State inter-
vention. But the Government reserves the right to supplement
individual initiative whenever this is considered necessary; to pre-
vent it from developing in directions detrimental to public interest,
and to guide it so as to obtain the maximum benefit for the com-
munity as a whole.

Mosley in his Fascism in Britain describes the Corporate State
as follows:

Our policy is the establishment of the Corporate State. As the
name implies, this means a State organised like the human body.
Every member of that body acts in harmony with the purpose of
the whole under the guidance and driving brain of the Fascist
Government. This does not mean that industry will be conducted
or interfered with from Whitehall, as in Socialist organisation. But
it does mean that the limits within which interests may operate will
be laid down by Government, and that those limits will be the welfare
of the nation as a whole. To that interest of the nation as a whole,
all lesser interests are subordinate, whether of Right or of Left,
whether they be employers’ federation, trade union, banking or
professional interests. All such interests are woven into the
permanently functioning machinery of Corporate Government.
Within the Corporate structure interests such as trade unions and
employers’ federations will no longer be the general staffs of
opposing armies, but the joint directors of national enterprise. Class-
war will give place to national co-operation, All who pursue a
sectional and anti-national policy will be opposed by the might
of the organized State. Profit can be made provided that the
activity enriches the nation as well as the individual. Profit may
not be made at the expense of the nation and of the working class.
The Corporate State will secure that the nation, and the workers
who are part of the nation will share fully in the benefits and rewards
of industry.

The Corporations, it should be noted, are “advisory” bodies
(Pitigliani). Control rests with the private employer in his
enterprise, and with the State above him, as in all capitalist
countries. The Corporations are joint-committees of employers’
representatives and so-called “workers’ representatives” (after
the destruction of all independent workers’ organisation).
Only the “workers’ organisations” recognised by the Fascist
State, not those chosen by the workers, are admitted, the only

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220 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

legal requirement being that they should represent one-tenth
of the workers in an industry to secure sole recognition as
representing all the workers in the industry. The functions of
the Corporations (Article 44 of the Decree of July 1, 1926) are:
(i) conciliation; (ii) encouragement of measures “to co-
ordinate production and improve its organisation”; (iii) estab-
lishment of labour exchanges; (iv) regulation of training and
apprenticeship.

The purely nominal stage-dressing character of the Corpora-
tions is shown by the fact that up to 1933, eleven years after the
establishment of the Fascist regime, not a single Corporation
had yet been established, except for the amusement “industry”
(in 1930).

The work will be done directly by the Minister of Corporations,
and hence these largely nominal bodies will be not merely “organs
of the State,” as the theory demands, but really mere additional
powers for present politicians. As a result, not a single corporation
has been formally created.

(H. W. Schneider, Making the Fascist State, 1928.)

In 1933 Pitigliani, in his semi-official work already quoted, in
the fourth chapter on “Corporative Organisation,” coming to
his third section under the grandiose title “The Corporations in
their Actual Working,” is compelled to write under that title
(like the famous chapter on Snakes in Iceland):

It is impossible to judge in the light of any practical results how
the system is actually working in the corporative field properly
so-called. Reference has already been made to the fact that only a
single corporation, viz., that of the stage, has so far been established
in Italy.

Not until February 1934 was the law on the Constitution and
Functions of the Corporations passed. On November 10,
1934, the twenty-two Corporations were inaugurated. On this
occasion Mussolini declared:

It is as yet premature to say what developments the Corporative
system may have in Italy and elsewhere from the point of view of
the production and distribution of goods. Ours is a point of de-
parture and not of arrival. Yet since Fascist corporativism repre-
sents the social content of the Revolution, it categorically obliges all
men of the regime—wherever and however they are organised—to
guarantee its development and fruitful continuance.

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 221

The vagueness of this language is worthy of a Mac-
Donald.

What, then, does the Corporate State, as so far described in
the terms of its own advocates, actually represent? Its prin-
ciples, according to these descriptions, amount in fact to the
following:

1. Maintenance of the class-structure of society, and of
class-exploitation, under cover of phrases about
“organic unity,” etc.;*

Maintenance of capitalist ownership, “private enter-
prise,” “profits,” etc.;

Moderate State intervention or regulatory role, where
necessary ;
Compulsory conciliation committees or joint industrial
councils of capital and labour.
But so far this is identical with the principles of all modern
capitalist states. The cool effrontery of attempting to present
this as something “new” is only based on the naive trick of

* The transparent deception, which is at the root of the “(Corporate State,” of
maintaining class-division in fact and denying it in words, is strikingly expressed
by Rossoni, writing as President of the National Confederation of Fascist Syndi-
cates on “The Significance of Fascist Syndicalism” in the Yearbook of Fascist
Studies, 1928:

“The conception of Fascist Syndicalism changes the outlook of all those
engaged in industry, and takes from Socialism all that it has of value. Even the
old terminology of ‘masters’ and ‘men’ is changing. The word ‘master’ has
an offensive meaning and implies the servitude of labour, a servitude which is in
direct contradiction to modern progress. The Italian scheme of Corporations
brings about a much-needed co-operation between the directors and the
executors of an undertaking, and is the only present-day conception which
entails equilibrium and economic justice.

“Tt should be emphasised that it was these very Fascist organisers who were
the first to insist that the old expressions ‘masters’ and ‘men’ should be
abolished, and this because master supposes servant. Nowadays we are no
longer able to concur with the old absurd idea of class-distinctions, nor do we
hold that there is by nature any moral inferiority between men. On the con-
trary, it is fully recognised that all men have the same right to citizenship in the
national life.”

It will be seen that the “absurd idea of class-distinctions” is regarded as solely a
question of “terminology.” Hence, while Socialism aims at overcoming the class-
division of society by the abolition of classes and thus achieving for the first time
real social unity, Fascism proposes a verbal liquidation of classes, while the reality
remains. Employers and wage-earners remain; the whole system of profits and
exploitation remains; but these are to be covered by the new terms “directors”
and “executors” of an undertaking (or in the German Labour Code, “leaders”
and “followers’”), and thereafter it is assumed that the class struggle should end.
This is typical of the “idealist” outlook of Fascism—or, to speak more frankly, of
its humbug.

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

making the comparison with the long-ago defunct, pre-
imperialist, “laisser-faire,” capitalist epoch. Ever since the
imperialist epoch all modern capitalism has developed increas-
ing state regulation and control, co-ordination and cartellisation
under state guidance, and a hundred thousand experiments
and devices in joint industrial councils and every other possible
mechanism for the collaboration of capital and labour. As for
the conception of industry as a “public service,’ and the
approval of profit-making only in so far as it is consistent with
“national welfare,” it really does not need a Fascist “revolu-
tion” in order to be able to repeat the wisdom of a Callisthenes.
The practical meaning of the Fascist “revolution” and its
“Corporate State” lies elsewhere, as we shall shortly see.

Take, for example, pre-Fascist Germany, where the State
already held in its hands one-tenth of industrial production,
held the dominating shares in the big banks, in shipping and in
the Steel Trust, and where industry and capital-labour relations
were covered by a network of regulating councils. C. B. Hoover
writes in his book already quoted:

Cartellisation had been carried to further limits than in any other
country. In 1932 there were some 3,000 of these cartels. In the coal
and potassium mining industry syndication was compulsory, and
complicated regulating councils known as the Federal Coal Council
and the Federal Potassium Council had been set up. Upon these
Councils the operators, labourers, consumers and coal merchants
were represented. There was a Federal Economic Council, but its
regulatory functions had failed to develop.

This Federal Coal Council, based on compulsory syndication,
representing employers, workers, consumers and coal mer-
chants, with wide regulatory powers, was already a very much
more developed “Corporation” than anything produced by
Fascism. But this was only an advanced example of the ten-
dency of modern capitalist development throughout the world.
Here Fascism brings nothing new.

“The idea of a National Council,” writes Mosley in his
Greater Britain, with the complacency of an infant peacock,
“was, I believe, first advanced in my speech on resignation
from the Labour Government in May 1930. The idea has
since been developed by Sir Arthur Salter and other writers.”
The history of Capitalism since the war is littered with “the
idea of a National Council” (i.e., National Economic Council

a

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 223

or National Council of Industry) in every country. Clemenceau
in 1918 proposed the formation of a National Economic Coun-
cil, and the proposal only broke down on the opposition of the
Confederation of Labour. Rathenau in his new proposals for
state organisation put in the centre the formation of a repre-
sentative State Economic Council. Millerand in 1920 proposed
the incorporation of a National Economic Council, including
representatives of the trade unions, in the state. Caillaux
made the same proposal in his Oz va la France, ou va l’Europe?
The National Industrial Conference in Britain in 1919 put
forward similar proposals for the establishment of a permanent
representative National Industrial Council.

The whole trend of post-war Liberalism, Labourism and
Social Democracy, in particular, is closely parallel to the Fascist
line and propaganda of the Corporate State—i.e., the general
line of combination of state control and private enterprise,
co-ordination through a network of regulating councils, class-
collaboration and so-called workers’ representation, in short,
the whole myth of “Organised Capitalism.”” The great part
of the Liberal Yellow Book, of Labour and the Nation and of the
Fascist Labour Charter could be interchanged without notice-
able difference.

Nevertheless, there is a “new” and distinct feature in the
Fascist Corporate State. All the Liberal-Labour proposals are
based on the incorporation of the existing workers’ organisations
into the capitalist state, with the maintenance of the formal
independent rights of organisation and the right to strike.
The Fascist policy of the Corporate State is based on the violent
destruction of the workers’ independent organisations and the
complete abolition of the right to strike. This is the sole new
feature of the Fascist Corporate State, to which modern Capital-
ism elsewhere has not yet dared to advance, although develop-
ing in this direction as rapidly as it is able.

The Italian Law of Syndicates of April 3, 1926, the basis of
the Corporate State, lays down in Article 18:

Employees and labourers who in groups of three or more cease
work by agreement, or who work in such a manner as to disturb its
continuity or regularity, in order to compel the employers to change
the existing contracts, are punishable by a fine of from 100 to 1,000
lire.

The chiefs, promoters and organisers of the crimes mentioned

224 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

above are punishable by imprisonment for not less than one year,
nor more than two years, in addition to the fines prescribed above.

Here is the real heart of the Fascist Corporate State; all the
rest is window-dressing. The meaning of this is expressed with
simple delight by the financial publicist, Einzig, in his Economic
Foundations of Fascism (a book written for the business
public):

Strikes and lock-outs were outlawed from the very outset of the
Fascist regime (p. 11).

In no country was it so easy as in Italy to obtain the consent of
employees to a reduction in wages (p. 31).

Thanks to the establishment of industrial peace, wages in Italy
are more elastic than in any other country (p. 73).

“In no country was it so easy to obtain a reduction in wages.”
Here is the essence of the Corporate State. Similarly Augusto
Turati, Secretary-General of the Fascist Party, wrote in 1928:

The year 1927 was one of widespread economic depression... .
It was necessary for the Government of the Fascist Party to take
steps with the object of bringing about a general reduction of wages
from ro to 20 per cent. . . . It was then that the Labour Charter
showed itself to be the one secure point of reference in the negotia-
tions which followed.

In the ungrateful task of reducing wages, not one of the principles,
solemnly enunciated in the Labour Charter, was violated.

(A. Turati, Secretary-General of the Fascist Party, on “The

Labour Charter,” in the International Yearbook of Fascist

Studies, 1928.)

And the prominent Fascist trade union official, Olivetti,
declared at the Fascist Trades Union Congress in 1928:

It was an illusion to presume that the existence of class-war had
been finally abolished. It has been abolished . . . for the workers.
On the other side, class-war is being continued.

The German Labour Code, brought into force on May 1,
1934, reveals the same picture. Its essence is the wiping out of
all the collective contracts which have hitherto regulated
German industry, and the establishment of the absolute power
of the employer, called “the leader of the factory,” over his
workers, called “followers.”

In the factory the employer, as the leader of the factory, and the

workers and clerical employees as his followers, work jointly to
further the aims of the factory in the joint interests of the people

————

>

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 225

and of the State. The decision of the leader of the factory is binding
on his followers in all factory matters.

In place of the previous elected works councils, the new factory
councils are to be appointed by the employer in agreement with
the Nazi leader in the factory, and to meet only when called
by the employer. All collective agreements for industries or
trades as a whole, or even for districts, are annulled; wages are
to be fixed separately by each firm according to the conditions
of “profitableness.’””’ The last word rests with the “Labour
Trustees” or district dictators on all questions of wages and
labour conditions, appointed by the Nazi Government. The
character of these “Labour Trustees” can be judged from the
fact that the big industrialist, Krupp, has been appointed
“Labour Trustee” for the Ruhr area.

The destruction of all independent workers’ organisation, the
complete slave-subjection of the workers to the employers, the
abolition of the right to strike, and intensified exploitation—this
is the sole and entire reality of the Corporate State for the work-
ing class.

4. The Outcome of Fascism in the Economic Sphere.

Fortunately the Italian people is not yet accustomed to eat several
times a day. Its standard of living is so low that it feels scarcity and
suffering less.

(Mussolini, speech to the Italian Senate on December 18,
1930, Corriera della Sera, December 19, 1930.)

The principal reasoned claim put forward by Fascism on its
own behalf, on the rare occasions when it descends from
emotional chauvinist and spiritual verbiage to endeavour to
make a reasoned claim, is that Fascism provides a solution of
the economic crisis of modern capitalist society and ensures
economic harmony, prosperity and progress. Fascism in its
propaganda promises the solution of unemployment, rising
production and consumption, higher wages, higher profits,
and in general the end of all the contradictions of capitalism
without ending capitalism.

The decisive test of this claim is the test of facts—the facts of
the economic situation in every country where Fascism rules,
and above all in Italy, the land of the “Corporate State,”
where the Fascist regime has had twelve years to show its
results.

That the world crisis of capitalism has hit Italy as hard as any

226 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

other capitalist country, with colossal unemployment, falling
production and trade, and lowered wages, so that Fascism has
brought no immunity whatever from the common ills of capital-
ism, even the official apologists of Fascism are compelled to
admit. But in fact the economic crisis hit Italy before the world
crisis, while the rest of the capitalist world was enjoying a boom,
and then became further intensified by the world crisis.
The pro-Fascist Einzig writes in his Economic Foundations of
Fascism:

Between 1926 and 1930 the depression prevailing in Italy pre-
sented a discouraging contrast with the prosperity of most other
countries. But that prosperity has since been proved to be fictitious,
so that we are now in a position to say that Italy has missed little
by failing to share it. Moreover, during her period of depression
Italy became hardened to face the subsequent crisis.

If this is the best that a supporter of Fascism on economic
grounds can claim, it is scarcely an advertisement. The only
“consolation” for the failure of Italy under Fascism to share
in even the limited upward movement of other capitalist
countries between 1926 and 1930 is found in the fact that in
consequence even the world crisis could hardly make things
much worse than they were already in Italy.

According to the League of Nations World Economic Survey
1932-3, the national income in Italy fell from 94 billion lire in
1928 to 60-70 billion lire in 1931, or a drop of one-third. In
the same period in the Soviet Union, according to the same
authority, the total income rose from 18.6 billion gold roubles
to 31.2 billions, or an increase by two-thirds. Foreign trade in
1932 was less than half the volume of 1930; and the tonnage of
goods cleared at the ports in 1932 was actually less than in
1913, when the population was six millions fewer. Italy keeps
no general index of production; but the production of pig iron
which was 603,000 tons in 1913, was 461,000 tons in 1932.
The production of steel was raised to 2.1 million tons in 1929,
but fell to 1.4 millions in 1932. 1933 saw a slight upward
movement as in other countries, but foreign trade continued to
fall from 15.1 million lire in 1932 to 13.3 million in 1933.
The Budget deficit rose from 504 million lire in 1930-31 to
3,687 millions in 1932-3. The floating debt rose from 1,618
million lire in June 1928, to 8,912 millions in June 1933.

5

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 227

Bankruptcies in 1931 reached the record in Europe, exceeding
21,000, or five times the British total.

The unemployment record is still more revealing. The total
of industrial and commercial wage-earners was returned in
1933 at 4,283,000, or about one-quarter of the British total.
Yet the official return of wholly unemployed for 1933, monthly
average, stood at 1,018,000, and in January 1934, the latest re-
turn available at the time of writing, stood at 1,158,000 in
addition to about a quarter of a million returned as partially or
seasonally unemployed. As for unemployment insurance, “the
amount of unemployment insurance is moderate, even for the
low standard of living prevailing, and it is paid only for a short
period” (Einzig, Economic Foundations of Fascism). For forty
weeks’ contributions only three months’ benefit is paid, at a
maximum of 3.75 lire or 11d. a day; there is no transitional
benefit. In December 1931, of 982,321 registered unemployed,
only 195,454 were receiving benefit. Between 1919 and 1929
the Unemployment Fund received 1,275 million lire in con-
tributions from the employers and workers, the State con-
tributing nothing, and paid out only 413 millions in benefits
the State constantly raiding the Fund for its own purposes.
Truly a halcyon state of affairs from the capitalist point of
view, at which even the skinflints of the National Government
might look with despairing envy. It may be noted that the
social services expenditure in Italy is among the lowest of any
leading country in Europe, amounting to 3 per cent. of the
total national budget, as against 7 per cent. in Belgium or
9 per cent. in Britain.

The wage-cutting record gives the final stamp on the
realities of Fascist economics. Between 1929 and 1932 the
total pay-roll of wages and salaries fell from 6,040 million lire
to 4,100 millions (World Economic Survey 1932-3). In the same
period, according to a Report of the Director of the Inter-
national Labour Office in June 1933, “the purchasing-power
of the wage-earners fell by 19 per cent.”’ Cuts had been heavy
already before the world crisis:

Between June 1927 and December 1928, wages fell by about
20 per cent. as a result of agreements between masters and men in
connection with the stabilisation of the lira. A further drop of
approximately ro per cent. took place in 1929, and in November
1930 there was a general downward movement, in some cases not

228 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

exceeding 18 per cent., but in particular instances involving as much
as 25 per cent. Moreover we must not overlook the fact that many

other adjustments were made in 1931.
(Biagi, Secretary of the National Confederation of Fascist
Syndicates, Corriera della Sera, March 26, 1932.)

This makes successive cuts, first of 20 per cent., then of 10 per
cent., then of 18-25 per cent., in addition to “many other
adjustments.”” The Department of Overseas Trade Report on
Economic Conditions in Italy 1933, states:

While the cost of living with an index figure of 93.78 in 1927 has
fallen in 1932 to 78.05, a difference of 15.73 per cent., industrial
wages have been reduced by much larger proportions. . . .

Cuts have been made ranging from 16 to 18 per cent. in the
sheltered printing and woodworking trades, 25 per cent. in the metal
and chemical industries, to 40 per cent. in the cotton industry. ...

To the above must be added arbitrary reductions affected by
various means without negotiation, such as the re-grading of work-
staff and the systematic reduction of piece-work rates.

Examples are given of the percentage cuts in the various
industries:

Chemicals ..... 20-25% Silk Weaving ..... 38%
Rayon ........ 20% Jute: esheets 30%
Rayon (Turin). 38% Metal trades...... 23%
Glass ......... 30-40% Building ......... 30%
Cotton ........ 40% Mining .......... 30%
Wool ......... 27%

This process has been carried still further with the extensive
all-round wages and salaries cuts proclaimed by Government
Order in April, 1934. The importance of the Fascist
“Corporate” system, making strikes a penal offence, is
obvious.

If we turn to Germany, it is clear that one year’s experience
is not yet sufficient to achieve the imposing completeness of the
Italian results in depressing the conditions of the workers and
spreading poverty; but the signs of the direction are already
abundant.

Foreign trade in 1933 fell by 13 per cent. in comparison with
1932, exports by 16 per cent. and the export surplus by 40 per
cent. The volume of production rose by 12 per cent.; but this
rise was mainly in industries (iron and steel, dyes and chemicals,
artificial silk, electro-technical, motors) connected with war

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 229

needs, and was actually accompanied, as will be seen, by a fall
in the general standard of living. The rise in output was not
accompanied by any rise in the total pay-roll until the third
quarter. “This means that fresh employment was only found
at the expense of those already occupied, by cutting down their
hours of work and reducing their wages accordingly” (Econ-
omist, December 30, 1933).

Retail sales, the measure of internal trade and of the standard
of living, fell heavily, even compared with the low level of
1932:

Retail sales of the first ten months of 1933 were 8 per cent. below
those of the very depressed corresponding period of 1932, depart-
ment store sales declining 20 per cent. on a like comparison, and
later reports indicate substantial further decline.

(New York Annalist, January 19, 1934.)
This reflects a lowered standard of life. The German Institute
for Economic Research reported a decline of 10 per cent. in
the consumption of the principal foodstuffs during the first
and second quarters of 1933, in some articles of even 30 per
cent., and “stabilisation” at this lower level in the third
quarter. For the whole of 1933 it reported a decline of 7 per
cent. in the turnover of retail commodities, compared with
1932. Prices rose steadily, especially of foodstuffs, through
special legislation, e.g., the Fat Monopoly and raising of the
price of margarine by 175 per cent., the raising of the price of
wheat to 182 marks per ton or four times the world price, etc.

Nazi propaganda tries to make much of the rise in the volume
of production by 12 per cent. during 1933, and of the decline
in the official figure of registered unemployed by 2 millions on
the previous 6 millions (actually by 1.7 millions from 5,773,000
in December 1932, to 4,058,000 in December 1933). Both
claims are misleading. The rise in production was, as explained
in great part connected with the war industries. It was not a
rise peculiar to Germany, but was part of a world movement
during the same period. Between January and December, 1933,
the German index of industrial production (on the basis of 1928
as 100) rose from 62.9 to 72.8, the United States index from 58.6
to 67.6, the French from 78.7 to 83.5, the Japanese from
117.2 to 139.4 (November), the Canadian from 52.8 to 72.2, the
Swedish from 83.7 to 97.1 (League of Nations Monthly Bulletin
of Statistics, March 1934).

230 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The figures of the alleged decline in unemployment are still
more misleading. The official figure is given of a decline in the
registered unemployed from 6,014,000 in January 1933, to
3,715,000 in November 1933, and to 2,798,000 in March,
1934. But the total of employed workers in Novem-
ber 1933, according to the health insurance statistics,
Was 14,020,000, making with the 3,715,000 registered unem-
ployed a combined total of 17,735,000 workers. In August
1929, that is, before the crisis, the same combined total of
employed and unemployed workers numbered 20,400,000.
Thus, since 1929, 2.3 million workers have dropped clean out of
the German official statistics, being neither entered as employed,
nor as unemployed—alongside an increase in population! “The
actual number of unemployed is admitted to be considerably
larger than the number registered. The ‘invisible unem-
ployed’ are now reckoned at about 1,500,000” (Manchester
Guardian Weekly, January 12,1934). “Most signs tend to show
that the volume of unrecorded unemployment has increased”
(Economist, March 3, 1934).

This contradiction was strikingly brought out when in
March, 1934, the official figure for unemployment was returned
at 2,798,000, and in the very same month Hitler, momentarily
forgetful of the official figure, in his speech at Munich on
March 21, spoke of the necessity during the coming year to
endeavour to bring into employment 5,000,c00 of those at
present unemployed.

The official decline in registered unemployed in fact
reflects a series of factors. Married women have been
driven out of industry without being registered as
unemployed, consequent on the Nazi law forbidding the
employment of married women where their husbands are
employed, and thus disappear from the official records. The
same applies to the prisoners in concentration camps, and to
the Jewish and political refugees. Several hundreds of
thousands of workers (estimated at 680,0o00o—Basel Rundschau,
November 18, 1933), have been drafted into the militarised
labour camps, agricultural service and other works schemes,
and are thus counted as “employed,” but in fact receive no
normal wage, but either only food and a few marks a week or
a very low subsistence allowance equivalent to unemployment
relief. Finally throughout industry, by a series of devices

THE OUTCOME OF FASCISM IN THE ECONOMIC SPHERE 231

offering inducements for this process to employers, workers have
been given part-time work by spreading existing work, with re-
duced hours and weekly wages, that is, at the expense of other
workers, and of a general lowering of standards. On the whole
process the British financial journal, The Statist, comments,
with reference to Hitler’s anniversary speech to the Reichstag:

As regard economic affairs he had not very much to say, perhaps
because there is not much to report. He claimed, as the figures
show, a reduction in unemployment of 21% millions to about 3.7
millions. But this is obviously not a reliable guide to the trend of
industrial conditions, since, apart from labour immobilisation in
labour camps and concentration camps, the effect of the tax certi-
ficate system has been to spread employment out over the work
available rather than to succeed in creating new work. There has,
however, been some improvement in production, particularly in
iron and steel, in 1933 as compared with 1932, and doubtless this
has meant some real decrease in unemployment. The improvement
in employment is therefore only partly due to a net increase in the
demand for labour, and it arises mainly from spreading out employ-
ment. This may be a good thing psychologically, but economically
it results in lower wages and even in lower real wages. In addition
to this lowering of the standard of living, there must be counted the
numerous “voluntary” contributions which have to be deducted
from the weekly wages. It is possible as a result that the beneficial
political effect of spreading employment may be lost in the lowering
of the standard of living, and probably for this reason Herr Hitler
did not devote much of his speech to economic affairs.

(Statist, February 3, 1934.)

This process of effective wage-reduction and lowering of the
standard of living, already revealed in the statistics of falling
consumption during 1933, is further borne out by the available
information on the movement of wages. The official statistics
claim that the total of wages plus salaries for the third quarter
of 1933 exceeded the corresponding total for 1932 by 4 per
cent., alongside an increase in the number employed by 7 per ,
cent.; it is obvious that even these figures, which do not take
into account the heavily increased deductions from wages,
nevertheless betray a net reduction in the wage per worker. It
may be noted that the total return from the tax on wages,
which reached 65 million marks for the monthly average in
1932, fell to 61.3 millions in July 1933, and 59.6 millions in
August 1933—the very.period of the supposed “increase”

232 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION ]

(Jahrbicher fiir Nationalokonomie und Statistik, December
1933). A correspondent in the Manchester Guardian reports:

Wages fell considerably in Germany in 1932, and there was a
further fall last year. At present the average hourly wage is about
20 per cent. lower than in 1931.
The fall in wages has been accompanied by a great increase in
the deductions for income tax, unemployment insurance, sickness
insurance, etc., which have more than doubled. In 1932 these
deductions amounted to between 12 and 13 per cent. of the wages.
They now amount to nearly 27 per cent., including “voluntary”
contributions . . . which are voluntary only in name. q
According to calculations made by a very competent statistician,
the net average wage of workmen employed in German industry
last September was 21.65 marks a week. . . . If agricultural workers
were included, the average net wage would be much lower.
The “real wages” (purchasing power) of the German industrial
workers have fallen since April rather more than the money wages,
as general prices, which in the first four months of last year were lower
than the average of 1932, have risen about 3 per cent. since April,
and prices of primary necessities have risen about ro per cent. The
average real wage in September 1933, was about 31 per cent. lower
than in 1900.—(Manchester Guardian Weekly, January 12, 1934.)
On April 9 Dr. Ley, head of the “Labour Front,” declared in
a speech at Cologne that the German worker “‘to some extent was
being paid starvation wages in the interest of the reconstruction of
the nation,” but that he must, while the State “was finding bread i
and work for 7,000,000 unemployed, renounce wage increases and 4
such like things.”—(Times, April 10, 1934.)

This is already before the Labour Code, with its abrogation :
of all existing collective contracts, came into force on May 1, ;
1934.

It is sufficiently clear that the economic process of Fascism
in Germany goes the same path as in Italy, the path of the
extreme depression of the standards of the workers and inten-
sification of exploitation. The lesson of facts in Italy and
Germany should put all on their guard against the empty
economic promises and programmes of Fascism before power in
Britain and other countries.

5. Fascism and War.

Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of per- q
petual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all i

FASCISM AND WAR 233

human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who
have the courage to meet it.
(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.)

In eternal warfare mankind has become great—in eternal peace
mankind would be ruined.—(Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 149.)

The chauvinistic warlike character of Fascism is its most
obvious external characteristic. The war-role of Fascism can,
however, only be correctly understood in relation to its general
social role as the expression of the extreme stage of imperialism
in break-up.

On the question of Fascism and war very much nonsense has
been written.

On the one hand, bourgeois critics of Fascism in Western
Europe and America express their shocked indignation as if
Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy were the first and only
countries to go in for jingoism, wholesale war-incitement and
war-preparation, and as if England, France and the United
States were innocent angels of peace.

On the other hand, supporters of Fascism in these countries
endeavour to accept at face-value the transparently hypo-
critical “peace speeches” occasionally turned out by the Fascist
leaders for foreign consumption, in open and glaring contradic-
tion to their main utterances, and seek to soothe an alarmed
public with fanciful reassurances, as if Fascism were really a
doctrine of world peace.

Both these lines of treatment are an absurd flying in the face
of facts.

Because Fascism is the leading expression of modern imperial-
ism, of capitalism in decay, of the most violent policies of
capitalism in crisis, therefore necessarily Fascism means
war. Fascism, with its violent suppression of all socialist,
pacifist and internationalist agitation, with its militarisation of
labour and centralised dictatorship, as well as with its ceaseless
sabre-rattling agitation, is a direct part of capitalist war pre-
paration. Its methods and policies reproduce the conditions
of a country at war, as seen in all the belligerent countries in
the last war, but already in the pre-war period. In the same
way the final outcome of all the policies of Fascism, of all its
chauvinist, nationally exclusive, aggressive and domination-
seeking policies, can only be war, as indeed its leaders in all

234 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

their principal and most authoritative utterances to their own
followers openly declare.

But these tendencies are not peculiar to Fascism. They are
common, in greater or less degree, to all imperialist states.
They only receive their most extreme expression in Fascism.

Fascism in Britain, where there is no such immediate easy
basis for war agitation as Versailles provided in Germany and
also in Italy, and where mass anti-war feeling is strong,
endeavours to hide for the moment the war-role of Fascism and
even to put on a pacifist dress and present Fascism as a doctrine
of world peace. Thus Mosley writes:

Fascist organisation is the method of world peace among nations
bound together by the universal Fascism of the twentieth century.
(Mosley, Fascism in Britain, p. 7.)

This blatant attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the credulous is
exposed by the entire propaganda of Fascism. Mosley, who
professes to proclaim the aim of “world peace” through Fas-
cism, will need to fight it out with his masters, Mussolini and
Hitler, who denounce in round terms the whole conception of
world peace as incompatible with Fascism. “Fascism,” pro-
claims Mussolini, “believes neither in the possibility nor the
utility of perpetual peace.” “In eternal peace,” proclaims
Hitler, “mankind would be ruined.” ‘Fascism issued from
war,” writes the Fascist, Carli, ‘and in war it must find its
outlet.” This is the dominant voice of Fascism. The tem-
porary pretence of British Fascism to put on a peace advocate’s
dress is only a typical example of Fascist demagogy.
International Fascism is a contradiction in terms. The
foreign policies of Fascist states can only be the foreign policies
of extreme aggressive imperialist states, with all the consequent
antagonisms heightened to the most extreme point. The
identity of counter-revolutionary policy produces no identity
of foreign policy. This is strikingly illustrated, as soon as the
first three fully completed Fascist states, Germany, Italy and
Austria have come into existence, by the extreme tension
immediately following, even to the point of veiled war-threats,
between Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy over the body of
Fascist Austria. The conception of a Bloc of Fascist States on
the basis of a common policy of Fascism is a myth; an alliance
between such States can only be formed where an identity of

FASCISM AND WAR 235

immediate aims of the foreign policy of the imperialist group-
ings concerned would have in any case made an alliance
possible, whatever the political form. But if the Fascist type
became generalised for all the leading imperialist Powers, this
would only mean an immediate accentuation of the
antagonisms and hastening of the advance to war.

The extreme tensity of war-preparations and inculcation of
the war spirit in Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy has been
equally noted by observers of all political colours. For the
evidence of the developments in Germany, especially, reference
may be made to Wickham Steed’s Hitler: Whence and Whither?,
to the American journalist Leland Stowe’s Nazi Germany
Means War, and to Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over Europe.

This does not mean that Fascist Germany, any more than
Fascist Italy, aims at immediate war. To this extent, and no
further, the peace speeches are sincere, in so far as they are
calculated to gain time and cover the necessary process of
re-armament. Unless the situation is precipitated by un-
expected events, a preliminary period is sought for the necessary
heavy war-preparations, as well as for the diplomatic pre-
paration of a favourable situation. The present balance of
power is unfavourable to Germany, and the position of Italy
is also weak. But there is no question of the goal to which policy
is being directed. As Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mussolini’s
speeches make abundantly clear, the full aims of the Fascist
programme of territorial and colonial expansion can only be
finally achieved by war.

England, France and the United States, whose statesmen and
publicists indulge in expressions of shocked surprise at the
militarism of Fascist Germany or of Japan, are in fact far more
heavily armed than Germany, Italy or Japan, spend more on
armaments, and have bigger records of plunder and armed
violence all over the world. But the difference in the present
situation of these two sets of Powers (which partly accounts
also for the more rapid development of Fascist forms in the
latter group) lies in the fact that England and France (the
position of the United States, owing to its special continental
situation, is in a category by itself and shares characteristics
with both groups) are relatively “sated” imperialist groups,
gorged with world-plunder and seeking above all to hold what
they have, therefore strongly interested in questions of

236 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“security,” while Germany, Italy and Japan are “hungry”
imperialist Powers, without an equivalent share in the partition
of the world proportionate to their strength or potential
strength, and therefore intent on an aggressive policy of expan-
sion. This is the working of the law of unequal capitalist
development which underlay the last war and drives to the next.

What, however, is conspicuous in the present international
situation is the relative complacency and even conciliatory at-
titude with which the other imperialist powers, especially
Britain, have treated the question of the re-armament of
Germany. In particular, Britain has directly supported and
assisted the German rearmament, both materially and finan-
cially, and also diplomatically, as shown notably in its line
over the German Military Law of March 1935, and in the
Anglo-German naval agreement.

What underlies this attitude of British imperialism in rela-
tion to the open war preparations of German fascism? Apart
from the general aims of British policy to counterbalance and
weaken the previous French hegemony in Europe, two further
dominating factors may be traced.

The first is the recognition of Fascism as the bulwark against
social revolution, and the anxiety not to weaken in any way the
position of Fascism and thereby open the way to the fall of
the Hitler Government and to the proletarian revolution in
Germany. As Lloyd George frankly declared in his speech on
September 22, 1933:

If the powers succeeded in overthrowing Nazism in Germany,
what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal
regime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their
objective. A Communist Germany would be infinitely more formid-
able than a Communist Russia. The Germans would know how
to run their Communism effectively. That was why every Com-
munist in the world from Russia to America was praying that the
Western nations should bully Germany into a Communist revolution.
He would entreat the Government to proceed cautiously.

(Times, September 23, 1933.)

The National Government needed no such entreaties, but
has acted throughout as the broker for Fascist Germany.

FASCISM AND WAR 237

The second factor is the widespread hope of imperialist
circles, especially in Britain, to use a re-armed Fascist Ger-
many, in unity with Japan, for war on the Soviet Union.

The objective of an expansionist war to the East, directed
against the Soviet Union, and with the support, if possible,
of Britain, France and Poland, is continuously expressed in
all official statements of Nazi foreign policy, notably in Hit-
ler’s Mein Kampf, in the writings of Rosenberg, the official
chief of the Nazi foreign political department, whose line is
fully and openly set out in his book The Future Path of a
German Foreign Policy (Der Zukunftsweg einer Deutschen
Aussenpolitik), and also in the formerly withdrawn Hugenberg
memorandum.

Hitler writes:

For Germany the only possibility for the carrying out of a sound
territorial policy lay in the winning of new land in Europe itself.
. . . When one would have territory and land in Europe, this could
in general only happen at the cost of Russia.

(Mein Kampf, pp. 153-4.)

We stop the eternal march to the south and west of Europe and
turn our eyes towards the land in the East. . . . If we speak of land
in Europe to-day we can only think in the first instance of Russia,
and her border States—(Mein Kampf, p. 743.)

The American publicist, Calvin Hoover, reports the follow-
ing as his impression of the prevailing tendencies in the event
of a possible agreement between Western Europe and Fascist
Germany:

In such a case the Western European Powers might be glad to
allow Germany a free hand in the Slavic East and South for the
satisfaction of any further expansionist aims. .. .

There is evidence that the idea of the “reorganisation and
restoration of Russia” under German tutelage is again very much
to the fore.

(Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, pp. 226-7.)

238 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

British imperialism above all encourages up to the present
with moral and material support both Germany and Japan, and
influential circles hope for a combined attack of both Powers on
the Soviet Union. At the same time German-Japanese relations
are drawn extremely close.

It is unnecessary here to discuss the powerful resistance which
such an attempt would meet, not only from the Soviet Union,
but from the whole international working class, leading to the
unloosing of revolutionary struggle and civil war above all in
Germany itself. Just this prospect leads the imperialist and
Fascist forces still to hesitate.

The final direction of Fascist war still lies in the womb of
events. What is already manifest is that the advance of Fas-
cism has enormously accelerated the advance to war on every
side.

6. Fascism and the Women’s Question.

In no direction does the contrast of the two worlds of Fas-
cism, or Capitalism in extreme decay, and of Socialism, as
demonstrated in the Soviet Union, express itself more clearly
and sharply than in the status of women.

The position of women has often been referred to as one of
the surest measures of the level of a civilisation. By this meas-
ure the Soviet Union stands out as the first fully-developing
civilisation in history, where for the first time men and women
participate with full equality, While Fascism is revealed in its
most undisguised reactionary charactert

The subjection of women has always been inseparably bound
up with class-society, and is one of the indispensable foundations
without which private-property society could not maintain
itself. Capitalism has taken over from the preceding period
and adapted to its own purposes the social institutions built on
the subjection of women. While revolutionising and organising
production and trade on a gigantic scale throughout the world,
it maintained, preserved and even intensified in a still more
limited and narrow form the primitive and anarchic
basis of the small-scale individual household, of the family and
its ties, and sought to make of this pre-capitalist institution its
most powerful conservative pillar of support. Only on
this basis could capitalism, with its complete individualist
cash-nexus repudiation of all social obligations and ties, never-
theless successfully maintain itself, and through the institution

FASCISM AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION 239

of the family throw off its own shoulders all social responsibility
for the proper conditions of motherhood, of the bringing up of
children, of the support of the sick and the aged, as well as the
enormous volume of so-called “domestic labour”—all socially
necessary labour indispensable for the maintenance of society,
but offering no profit for capitalism to organise, and thrown off
as unpaid labour on to the shoulders of the working-class wives
and mothers to be performed in the heaviest, dirtiest, most
unproductive and wasteful pre-machine conditions alongside
highly organised large-scale machine industry in the world
outside. The consequent economic and social institutions,
involving the subjection of women and the forcible compulsion
of the majority of women to economic dependence on marriage
as their sole means of livelihood, are bound up with the existence
of private-property socicty, and can only be ended with com-
munist social organisation.

Nevertheless, capitalism in its progressive phase performed
also a progressive role in relation to the position of women by
offering for the first time the possibilities and conditions of a
new economic form of organisation. Capitalism in its search
for ever more and cheaper supplies of labour-power draws
increasingly millions of women and young persons into industry,
until to-day about one-third of the total labour force in modern
capitalist states consist of women and girls. Despite the brutal
conditions of exploitation, more heavy than for the male workers
(an inequality defended in the name of the sacred “family,”
on the basis of the illusory theory that the average woman
worker is supposed to have no “dependents’’), yet this means
that millions of women have for the first time the beginnings of
possibility of an independent economic existence and active
citizenship, in place of the compulsion of dependence on a male
earner as their sole possibility of livelihood and existence
Marx discerned at an early stage the significance of this process:

However terrible and disgusting the dissolution under the capi-
talist system of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern
industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process
of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young
persons and to children of both sexes, creates a new economical
foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relation
between the sexes. (Marx, Capital, I., Ch. 15, para. 9.)

The realisation of this possibility of emancipation, for which

240

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

capitalism has thus laid the preliminary conditions, depends on
the advance to a Communist society: since the drawing of
women into industry, so long as the old property conditions and
burden of the individual household remain unreplaced by social
organisation, only in fact adds to the burden of women instead
of liberating them. Only by the full introduction of women into
equal partnership in social production, with the consequent
necessary equal education and training, and the destruction of
the old wasteful unorganised domestic economy inseparably
connected with the private property system, can the old position
of the economic dependence of women be ended, and their
equality and freedom be realised, not only in form, but in living
reality. This standpoint was expressed by Engels in his well-
known declaration in the Origin of the Family:

The emancipation of women and their equality with men are
impossible, and remain so as long as women are excluded from
social production and restricted to domestic labour. The emancipa-
tion of women becomes feasible only then when women are enabled
to take part extensively in social production.

The dependence of the solution of the women’s question upon
the realisation of a Communist society was constantly
emphasised by Lenin:

The full liberation of woman and her real equality with man
requires a communist economy, a common social organisation of
production and consumption and the participation of woman in
general production. Only through this will woman take the same
place in society as man.

(Lenin, Speech to Moscow Conference of Working Women.)

The Soviet Union illustrates the advance towards this position,
where for the first time in the world’s history the real equality of -
women is being built up and established among all the peoples
in its territory.

But capitalism in the period of the general crisis begins to
reverse the engines and move in the opposite direction. It is
no longer hunting for new reserves of labour-power to exploit.
On the contrary, it can no longer find employment for the |
existing labour force. Hence the cry begins to be sounded
increasingly, always from the beginning voiced by the clerical-
reactionary forces, but now increasingly taken up by modern
capitalism as a whole, to drive women out of industry and thus
assist to “solve” unemployment by increasing the number of

FASCISM AND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION 241

dependents to be maintained on each wage (the process can
be observed in England in the operation of the Anomalies Act
and of the barbarous Family Means Test).

This cry is taken up in its sharpest and most undisguised form
by Fascism, here as in every sphere voicing the most reactionary
tendencies of capitalism in extreme decay. Back to the home!
Back to economic dependence on marriage as the sole career
for women! Cut down women’s education! Expel women
from employment and give the jobs to men! Back to pots and
pans! Produce more cannon-fodder for war! Back to kitchen-
slavery! This is the line of Fascism on the women’s question.

Hitler writes:

In the case of female education the main stress should be laid on
bodily training, and after that on development of character and
last of all, on intellect. But the one absolute aim of female education
must be with a view to the future mother.—(Mein Kampf, p. 163.)

It may be noted that the new German Government regulations
for cutting down university education and establishing a rigidly
limited student quota for all forms of higher education
(and that also dependent on political ‘national reliability”)
restricts women to 10 per cent. of the quota of 15,000o—i.e., only
1,500 women for the whole of Germany to be permitted in a
given year to proceed to any form of higher education, whether
universities, technical colleges or other institutions. In 1931
there were 19,700 women students in Germany: taking an
average three-year course as basis, representing an average pre-
Fascist annual entry of 6,000 to 7,000 women students, this
represents a cut by Fascism of women’s higher education by
75-80 per cent.*

* The drastic cutting down of university education, previously the pride and
greatest strength of German civilisation, is a typical expression of the general cul-
tural reaction of Fascism, equally illustrated in the burning of the books, etc. The
Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reported in the beginning of
1934:

“Of the total number of matriculated students in the whole of Germany
only 15,000 are to be allowed to enter universities, technical colleges or other
institutes of higher education in the coming year. . . . Some 23,000 matricu-
lated students will be unable to proceed to higher education in consequence of
the new regulations.”

At the same time the Soviet Union educational authorities were reporting that the

total number of university and technical college students in the Soviet Union in

1933 Was 415,000 as against 203,000 in 1926-7, and 130,000 under Tsarism. In

the face of these facts even the dullest should be able to see that Communism, with

its basis in science, is bound to conquer the world, while Fascism, with its denial
of science, is doomed to decay and death.

ee
7

242 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Spengler writes in his Years of Decision:

Let German women breed warrior men and take pleasure in
breeding them.

Woman is to be neither comrade, nor beloved, but only mother.

The American observer, Calvin B. Hoover, reports the Nazi
attitude to the women’s question:

The attitude of the National Socialists towards women is an
integral part of their belief in the desirability of a return to a system
of life and morals characteristic of an agricultural rather than an
industrial society. The Party is determined that the place of women
shall once more be in the home. ...In a word, the National
Socialist conception of women in the scheme of things is that they
should bear many strong sons to serve the State in peace and war.

(Calvin B. Hoover, Germany Enters the Third Reich, p. 165.)

It is an error to suppose that the reactionary Fascist attitude
to women is simply a reflection of a religious-reactionary out-
look and yearnings for a pre-industrial type of civilisation.
The fact that the policy of minute bonuses (not in cash, but in
orders on the large shops, and repayable) for marriage, on the
condition that the woman passes out of industry, and the violent
propaganda for more births, are accompanied at the same
time by the policy of wholesale sterilisation of the alleged unfit
or mentally weak (i.e., of those likely to produce offspring unfit
for military service or of those politically unreliable), this latter
practice being extremely offensive to traditional religious
sentiment, is sufficient evidence that the policy as a whole is not
simply the policy of religious-reactionary romanticism, but the
conscious reactionary policy of modern capitalism in its most
extreme decay. Modern capitalism, while freely exploiting
women in industry at sweated rates so far as it has use for their
labour, kicks the remainder out of industry whom it cannot
employ, bidding them become dependent on male wage-earners
and thus save its total bill for wages or unemployment relief,
and at the same time calls on them to perform their service in
producing plenty of recruits for the increasing needs of the
slaughterhouses of imperialist war. This is the viewpoint of
modern capitalism in extreme decay, or Fascism, on the role
of women. In this key question of the role of women, as in its
attitude to culture, or in its use of torture and re-introduction
of barbaric beheadings, Fascism reveals typically its degraded
social, political and cultural level.

==CHAPTER X: THE ESSENCE OF FASCISM—THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION
OF SOCIAL DECAY==

Fascism, developing since little over a decade, has no long past
behind it, and in all probability—from the very nature of its
reactionary role, from its violent inner contradictions, and from
the whole character of its desperate attempt to throw up a
dam against the advancing social revolution—is likely to have
no long future before it. Fascism is likely to be remembered
only as an episode in the long-drawn class war advancing to the
final victory of the Socialist revolution.

But zf Fascism were able to have the opportunity to continue
over a longer period, were able to maintain its power and to
dominate, as it dreams, a whole phase of social history, then
it is evident from the whole foregoing analysis what its his-
torical role would be, and what kind of society it would pro-
duce.

Fascism claims to bring “rejuvenation” to the existing de-
clining society, to represent the principle of “new birth” and
“new life” in place of the existing decay, to represent the
principle of organisation and order in place of the existing
capitalist anarchy,

The exact contrary is the case. Because the roots of the
existing decay and anarchy lie in the capitalist class ownership
of the means of production, the only new life and new birth
can come from the victory of the proletariat and the socialist
reorganisation of society. This has been demonstrated on a
world historic scale by the Soviet Union, where alone trium-
phant advance in every sphere of human activity and culture
confronts the increasing decay and barbarism of the capitalist
world, equally in the Fascist and in the non-Fascist countries.

What Fascism organises and carries forward is in reality
nothing other than the process of increasing decay and bar-
barism of the capitalist world in the culminating stage of the

243

244 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary and chau-
vinist elements of finance capital.

Fascism endeavours violently to suppress and overcome the
ever-growing contradictions of capitalist society. As Goering
stated in a speech to the Pomeranian Landbund on March 17,

1933:

The regime of national concentration will with iron fist bring the
opposing interests of the different strata of society into that harmony
which is so essential to the prosperity of the German people.

Forcible (“‘iron fist”) suppression of the “opposing interests of
the different strata of society” into “harmony,” that is to say,
in short, “iron-fist harmony’’—that is the essence of Fascism.

But what does this involve? For in fact just the contradic-
tions and consequent conflicts are the mainspring and driving
force of social development in class-society, that is to say,
until society becomes a true collective by the liquidation of
classes. Until then, the path of class conflict is the path of
social development. To attempt on the one hand to maintain
the contradictions unresolved, and on the other to suppress
forcibly their expression, would mean, even if it could be
imagined as successful, that society would cease to develop
and would pass, on the most favourable hypothesis, to a Byzan-
tine or Old-Chinese hieratic ossification. But such a society
requires in fact an entirely different economy from capitalism.
In reality, the driving force of the laws of finance capital, which
govern Fascism, leads necessarily to an entirely different out-
come, to an intensification of all contradictions, both internal
and external, to the point of explosion.

Just by its attempt to suppress forcibly, in place of resolving,
the contradictions of modern society, Fascism reveals most
profoundly its reactionary role.

First, Fascism seeks to suppress the class struggle, not by the
abolition of classes, but by the violent permanent subjection of
the exploited class to the exploiters and crushing of all resis-
tance. This means, even if it could be for a period successful,
a condition of permanent inner war within society, with
consequent extreme waste of social forces and increasing
destruction of all possibility of collective achievement. Its
stabilisation would mean the replacement of liberal capitalism
by a caste or statutory servile system. As the nineteenth

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 245

century liberal capitalist system of formal “free contract” in-
creasingly disappears under modern conditions of large scale
industry, its breakdown raises ever more sharply the two
immediate alternatives: either Socialism, that is, the common
ownership of the means of production and common obligation
of all citizens to labour and sharing of the fruits; or the Servile
State (State Capitalism), that is, the statutory compulsion
and regulation of the labour of the wage earning class for the
profit of the property owning class under a general framework
of state control, with the abolition of the right to strike. The
Fascist state represents the second alternative, that is, the
Servile State.

Second, Fascism seeks to suppress and overcome the con-
tradictions of capitalist economy brought about by the advance
of technique and the development of mass production and pro-
ductive power. As before, it seeks, not to resolve the contra-
dictions in the higher form of socialisation of the already social
forms of production, but to overcome them within the limits
of the fettering capitalist relations. This can only mean in
practice, however, either to endeavour to restrict artificially the
productive forces, throttling down production to fixed limits
suitable to monopolist capital, checking new development and
clamping on state bureaucratic control for the purposes of this
limitation; or in the final analysis, since such limitation is
finally incompatible with the requirements of the expansion of
capital, to move to the only alternative and endeavour to blast
by violence a way out from the impasse, that is, to endeavour
by war to secure a new division of the world and an enlarged
outlet for the one particular finance-capitalist bloc at the ex-
pense of its rivals.

Third, and in consequence of the above, Fascism necessarily
leads to war on an extending scale. Fascism already enor-
mously carries forward the process of shattering the basis of
international economy and of the international division of
labour built up in the previous period, and moves instead to the
line of organisation of closed-in “isolationist”? economic blocs,
the line of so-called “national self-sufficiency” or ‘“autarchy,”
which is in fact only the preparation for intensified war for
the world market. This openly retrograde line means the cut-
ting down of international trade and communications, the rais-
ing of the costs of production, the lowering of the standard of

—

246 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

living, and the increasing “Balkanisation” of the capitalist
world. In its final working out the intensified economic war
necessarily leads to open armed struggle. War becomes the
open avowed and glorified aim of every Fascist society.

Fascism reveals itself more and more in every aspect of its
policy as organisation and mobilisation of the entire economy,
political structure and population as a whole, for war. This
sharply expresses the profoundly reactionary role of Fascism,
which in this way directs its main organisation, even where it
appears to carry forward the highest organisation and technical
development, for destruction, objectively hastening forward the
decline and decay of capitalism. Just this demonstrates the
significance of the role of Fascism as the typical system of
organisation of capitalism in extreme decay, seeking to over-
come the decay and contradictions by intensified organisation
and strengthening of the capitalist dictatorship, but in fact only
able to lead by its very organisation to intensified contradic-
tions, war, and the acceleration of capitalist decay.

Thus Fascism, so far from representing a counter-force to
the process of decay of existing capitalist society, is in reality
the sharpest expression and an accelerating factor of the whole
process of capitalist decay, of increasing destruction and the
drive to barbarism. This is the reality of the “alternative”
which Fascism offers to Socialism.

The sense of the decline of civilisation, the overpowering
atmosphere of pessimism, even though accompanied by formal
expressions of hope of revival through Fascism, overwhelmingly
dominates all Fascist expression, and betrays its innermost
essence.

We have no belief in programmes or plans, in saints or apostles.
Above all, we have no belief in happiness, in salvation or in the
promised land.—(Mussolini, Popolo d'Italia, January 1, 1922.)

Fascism denies the materialist conception of happiness as a pos-
sibility —(Mussolini, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.)

In the gloom of to-day and the darkness of to-morrow the only
faith that remains to us individualists destined to die is the at present
absurd but ever-consoling religion of anarchy.

(Popolo d’Italia, April 6, 1920.)

Hopeless we may be, yet we have the hope of doomed men.
(Blackshirt, September 16-22, 1933.)

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 247

Fully aware of the decline of cultures and civilisations before us,
we still demand the right of every proud warrior—to fight for a
cause though that cause seem lost.

(Fascist Week, January 12-18, 1934.)

“But it is not a lost cause.” Such is the hasty addition ap-
pended, without attempt at grounds other than a mystic faith,
to the last quotation, to save appearances and justify the Fas-
cist fight. But the addition rather confirms than changes the
basic outlook revealed. The basic tone and outlook remains
that of a dying civilisation fighting against odds to continue
defiantly in the face of all the evidence of the doom of history
proclaimed against it.

Characteristic of this whole outlook is the dominating influ-
ence of Spengler on Fascism. The favourite, the most quoted
and the dominating philosopher and teacher of the Fascist
“theorists” remains Spengler, the shallow journalistic-smatterer
philosopher of the inevitability of decline and of the collapse
of civilisation, even though his conclusions are so downright
black and hopeless in their pessimism that they are compelled
formally to deny them, while accepting his premises. The
recent official book of British Fascism (Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir
Oswald Mosley and British Fascism) fills its pages with endless
excerpts from Spengler, declaring:

Spengler’s interpretation of world history is a colossal monument
to the European mind. . . . His interpretation of past history re-
mains valid, and constitutes a base from which modern man may
begin to interpret his own present and to modify his own future.

What is the teaching of this “colossal” prophet? He writes:

Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is
cowardice. We are born into this time and must bravely follow the
path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to
hold on the last position, without hope, without rescue. . . . The
honourable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.

What is the comment of The Fascist Week on this common-
place maudlin posturing of all dying civilisations?

His words are a magnificent example of dauntless nobility in the
face of inevitable annihilation—(Fascist Week, January 12-18,

1934.)

ae

A I i

a RF

248 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The Fascist organ thereafter endeavours to plead that perhaps
man may be “in some ways free of natural laws” and thus
escape the doom. But even the final conclusion of the Fascist
organ runs:

For those who make the choice, the very least of their destinies
will be an honourable end.

In the same way the official book on Mosley and British
Fascism, already quoted, glories in the breakdown of civilisa-
tion and the return to the primitive:

The powers of the blood, unbroken bodily forces, resume their
ancient lordship (p. 198).

Out of the night of history, old shadows are appearing which
menace their complacency. . . . Sir Herbert Samuel, a Liberal of
singular perspicacity, believes that Europe is returning to the con-
ditions of the twelfth century. Professor Laski wails against these
new men who have “no inhibitions.”

The figure of the leader . . . comes out into the stark day—
in the grim serenity of Mussolini, in the harsh force of Hitler. And
behind them stride the eternal condottieri—the gallant, vivid Balbo,
the ruthless Goering (pp. 42-3).

(Drennan, B.U.F.: Sir “Oswald Mosley and British Fascism.)

With this typical glorification of the ‘“condottieri,” of the return
of the brigand Balbo and the gorilla Goering, of the law of the
jungle, we may leave the Fascists to their Neronian pleasures,
until such time as the strong hand of the proletarian dictator-
ship shall end their blood-orgies and establish civilised order
and progress throughout the world. What speaks here through
the mouth of the Fascists is nothing but the typical decadent
parasitic glorification of blood and the cave-man (already
visible in its first signs in the invalids Nietzsche, Carlyle and
other sick types, or later represented in the Ethel M. Dells and
Hemingways of literature). Fascism in its ideology is nothing
but the continuation of fin-de-siécle decadence into its neces-
sary outcome in blood-lust and barbarism. All this is only the
death-rattle of the dying bourgeois civilisation.

Against all this pessimism, decline, decay and filth, tragic
destinies, self-heroisings, idolisation of death, returns to the
primitive, mysticism, spiritualism and corruption, the revolu-
tionary proletarian movement of Communism, of Marxism, the

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 249

heir of the future, proclaims its unshakable certainty and con-
fidence in life, in science, in the power of science, in the possi-
bility of happiness, proclaims its unconquerable optimism for
the wholefuture of humanity, and in this sign, armed with the
weapons of scientific understanding, of dialectical materialism,
of Marxism, will conquer and sweep from the earth the dregs
of disease and decay which find their expression in Fascism.

The Threat of World War

The experience of both Italian Fascism and German Fascism,
as also of the military Fascism of Japan, has overwhelmingly
demonstrated that Fascism drives towards war.

Italian Fascism, after concentrating its entire organisation
and economy on preparation for war, led the way as the first
of the European powers to open large-scale war in the new
period since the world crisis by its attack on Ethiopia in 1935.
The open and cynical character of this aggression on a people
technically backward and deprived of arms by the action of the
imperialist powers, and the no less contemptuous disregard of
all the professions of the Kellogg Pact and of the League of
Nations Covenant, aroused universal awakening to the true
character of Fascism as the instigator of war. The Ethiopian
adventure of the Italian Fascists was declared by their friend
and admirer, Churchill, to be a “deadly trap.” But in fact this
whole policy, the growing crisis of their economy, as well as the
inner weakening of the regime, could find no other outcome.
The advance of Italian Fascism to war was continuously pre-
dicted by Mussolini, and even dated by him for 1935, in his
speeches as far back as 1927. In this respect, and in this re-
spect alone, the event has fully borne out the proposals of
Fascism.

The experience of German Fascism, though shorter, is of
even more far-reaching significance. In the case of German
Fascism it is manifest to all observers, and it is unnecessary to
recapitulate the detailed evidence (given, for example, with
ample documentation in Dorothy Woodman’s Hitler Rearms),
that the entire organisation, not only of technique and econ-
omy, but of the whole life of the people, has been directed to
war on a scale that has never before been equalled. Behind
Hitler stands the General Staff. The estimate, given currency

250 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

by Churchill in 1935, that the expenditure of Germany on war-
preparation has attained the colossal figure of £800 millions
annually, a sum exceeding the total figure of the British budget,
reveals not only the extreme degree which this process has
reached, but also the extreme instability of its whole basis and
the impossibility of continuing this process for any prolonged
period without reaching the final outcome in war.

These tendencies of extreme and heavy rearmament and of
the increasing mobilisation of the whole population and econ-
omy for war, are not confined to the Fascist countries. In
greater or less degree they are common to all the imperialist
countries. But they are carried to an extreme point without
parallel elsewhere in the Fascist countries. The Fascist dicta-
torship provides the means for this enormous compulsory mo-
bilisation and regimentation in a way that arouses the envy of
the statesmen of the parliamentary democratic countries.

Where, however, does this process lead? Ji is manifest that
there can be here no question of stability. On the contrary,
the artificial stimulus to economic life through this process of
rearmament, which leads to the illusory picture of a short-term
revival through Fascism, compels a constant acceleration and a
continually greater economic instability. On the one side, the
pyramid of long-term and short-term debt for unproductive
expenditure rises steadily higher. On the other side, the sac-
rifices and privations imposed on the population, both through
the myriad forms of heavy taxation to meet the rising demands
of state expenditure, and through the restrictions and cutting
off of normal foreign sources of supply, as well as the limitation
of home sources of supply for the purpose of war needs and war
stocks, lead to a'situation in which the population is reduced to
the level of extreme wartime conditions and virtual blockade
already before the outbreak of war.

Thus a situation is reached which received its most typical
expression in respect of Japan, when the Times Tokyo corre-
spondent had occasion to declare that if the war industries were
for a moment interrupted, the whole economic structure would
collapse. Such an artificial position belongs to the conditions
of war-time but not of peace-time. It is obvious that such a
process as is going forward in Germany cannot long continue
in conditions of peace. It must inevitably in a relatively short
period of time lead to its outcome in war, as the only alterna-

THE ORGANISED EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DECAY 251

tive to its own inner collapse. This becomes more and more
evidently the whole direction of German policy, just as Italian
policy has already reached this outcome. But the gamble of
war in fact eventually sharpens all the contradictions and inner
weakness of the whole regime. The process of capitalist decay
reaches its most extreme and violent expression in Fascism.

CHAPTER XI
TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA

Untit the last few years Liberalism and Social Democracy
denied the possibility of Fascism in the “civilised” countries of
Western Europe and America.

As early as 1922, immediately after the victory of Fascism
in Italy, while current discussion still treated this as an
“Italian” phenomenon, the Communist International at its
Fourth Congress gave the warning for every country:

The menace of Fascism lurks to-day in many countries—in
Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary, in nearly all the Balkan countries, in
Poland, in Germany (Bavaria), in Austria and America, and even
in countries like Norway. Fascism in one form or another is not
altogether impossible even in countries like France and England.

But even as late as 1928 the Second International still clung
to its theory of “the two Europes” and of “dictatorship” as
only possible in “backward” countries. Vandervelde, Chair-
man of the Second International, declared at its Brussels Con-
gress in 1928:

A great captain of industry . . . recently said to us: “If without
taking into account political frontiers you trace an imaginary line
from Kovno to Bilbao, passing through Cracow and Florence, you
will find before you two Europes—the one in which horse-power
dominates, the other where it is the living horse, the one where there
are parliaments, the other where there are dictators.” It is in
reality exclaisively in the latter economically and politically back-
ward Europe that dictatorships more or less brutal, more or less
hypocritical, abound, whether veiled or no by a sham national
representation.

Three years later, in 1931, the Second International had to
admit the incorrectness of this theory. In its report to the
Vienna Congress in 1931 the Executive declared:

Fascism has overstepped the limits which but a few years pre-
viously appeared to be drawn for it by the development of modern
technique. Whereas it was believed at that time that Fascism was
confined to those countries in which “instead of horse-power the

252

TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA 253

living horse dominates,” the Fascist danger has now also penetrated
to countries in which industry is highly developed.

The three further years since 1931 have seen the establish-
ment of complete Fascist dictatorships in Germany and Austria,
the growth of influentially supported Fascist movements in
France and England, the development of the Spanish Revolu-
tion to the point of extreme menace of Fascism,* and the
first signs of semi-fascist movements and tendencies.

It is now clear to all that the theory of Fascism as a
phenomenon only of “backward” “agrarian” countries is
false, and that the Communist analysis of Fascism as the
characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be
brought into play in the most highly developed industrial
countries when the stage of the crisis and of the class struggle
requires it, has been proved correct by facts. Events daily and
hourly reinforce the truth that the international working class
throughout the world, in every capitalist country, has to fight
the menace of Fascism.+

* The question of Spain, which is basically different in type from the leading
Western Imperialist countries, is not further dealt with in this chapter; any treat-
ment would require a detailed separate analysis of the whole development of the
Spanish Revolution since 1931, its strangling by the left-democratic Liberal-Social-
ist bloc at the time of the height of the mass revolutionary wave, and the conse-
quent passing of power to the Right and rapid growth of Fascism, approaching the
prospect of an intense struggle of Fascism and the mass movement in the coming
period. (Since the publication of the first edition of this book, these issues have
come to a head in the civil war which broke out in Spain in October, 1934.)

f The corresponding revision of Fascist expression, from the time when Mussolini
declared that “Fascism is not an article for export” to the time when Mussolini
declared (1930) that Fascism is “universal” and looks forward to “a Fascist
Europe,” has accompanied, but has not caused, this development. Apart from the
interchanges between Fascist movements, the attempts of Fascism at rudimentary
forms of international propaganda are still—inevitably from the very nature of
Fascism—feeble so far. A journal Antieuropa is issued from Rome with the sub-
title “Rassegna del 1’ espansione fascista nel mondo” (‘‘Review of fascist expansion
throughout the world”), and, while mainly Italian, has printed contributions from
Hitler, Mosley and others; there is also the similar journal Ottobre. The word-
ing of the official announcement of Antieuropa (issue of September 30, 1933,
containing article of Mosley on “Modem Dictatorship and British History”) is
worth reproducing as a curiosity:

“Our organ is really the Worldcentrum of fascist intelligence, furthers exten-
sion, illustrates relationship and controls the fascist-intelligence development in
the world.

Means of propaganda—Antieuropa, monthly review.

Ottobre—paper of the Universal Fascism.

Documentate yourselves by means of Nuova Europa.”

The striking English of this effusion is sufficiently revealing of the very weak
“international” basis of this attempt of Italian Fascism to figure as a ‘“World-
centrum.”

254 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

1. The Basis for Fascism in Britain, the United States and France.

In 1890 William Morris, in his penetrating imaginative
anticipation of the process of the social revolution in Britain,
given in his “News from Nowhere” (Ch. XVII, How the Change
Came) wrote:

Whatever the Government might do, a great part of the upper and
middle classes were determined to set on foot a counter-revolution:
for the Communism which now loomed ahead seemed quite unen-
durable to them. Bands of young men, like the marauders in the
Great Strike of whom I told you just now, armed themselves and
drilled, and began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with
the people in the streets. The Government neither helped them, nor
put them down, but stood by, hoping that something might come
of it. :

These “Friends of Order,” as they were called, had some suc-
cesses at first, and grew bolder; they got many officers of the regular
army to help them, and by that means laid hold of munitions of war
of all kinds. . . . A sort of irregular war was carried on with varied
success all over the country; and at last the Government, which at
first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting,
definitely declared for “the Friends of Order.”

The poet of late nineteenth century Britain—whose insight
was strengthened above his contemporaries of literature by
his acceptance of the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism and
direct participation in the mass struggle—here comes remark-
ably close to a forecast of Fascism. This passage is of interest,
not only as one of the earliest direct anticipations of the specific
character of Fascism (not merely of counter-revolution in
general) in revolutionary socialist literature, but also precisely
because it sprang from observation of British conditions and
experience of the struggle in Britain. While the blind liberals
and reformists three decades later, with facts staring them in
the face, were still to be proclaiming Fascism “alien” and
“unthinkable” in Britain, it was precisely the observation of
British conditions that first awoke in a keen mind, which had
drawn nourishment from Marxism, one of the earliest direct
anticipations of Fascism.

The illusion of the “alien” character of Fascism in the
“democratic” countries of Western Europe and America is
commonly presented as based on the supposed peculiarities and
uniqueness of the “national character” and “institutions”
in these countries. “Britain” (or alternatively, according to

i i

BASIS FOR FASCISM 255

the speaker, “the United States,” or “France”) “will never
tolerate Fascism; it is foreign to our whole traditions and out-
look.” The same myth was also current in Germany, where
up to the last the formula that “Germany is not Italy” was
unweariedly repeated.

What underlies the conception of the “different” character
of Western Europe and America and the undoubted fact of
the deeper rooting of parliamentary-democratic institutions in
these countries? In reality this situation, and the ideology
accompanying it, is only the reflection of the wealthier, more
powerful, privileged situation of Western imperialism with its
vast colonial possessions and world domination. The earlier
accession to power of the bourgeoisie in these countries brought
parliamentary institutions, the instrument of their fight against
feudalism, earlier to the front; and these parliamentary in-
stitutions continued to be maintained, after the fight against
feudalism was fully completed and the serious meaning had fully
gone out of them, for the deception of the working class and the
camouflage of the real rule of the narrowing plutocracy. The
strength and resources of capitalism in these metropolitan

| countries made it possible to pursue a liberal policy of conces-
sions to the workers, and thus to draw the working class in the
wake of capitalism and hinder the growth of independent class
consciousness. Hence the long domination of liberal and social
reformist politics in the working class in Britain, France and
the United States right into the twentieth century, and the

. slow growth of class-conscious Socialism, in contrast to Central

. and Eastern Europe. And hence the solid basis for the longer
successful maintenance of parliamentary institutions of decep-
tion in these countries, when these same institutions, transferred
to other countries, could find little root. The “democratic
freedoms” of Western imperialism have been built on the
foundation of colonial slavery; as was strikingly demonstrated
when the Labour Government, the champion of “democracy,”
brought in a reign of terror to maintain despotism in India and
jailed sixty thousand for the crime of asking for democratic
rights.

But just this basis of parliamentary-democratic institutions
in the Western imperialist countries is increasingly undermined
by the crisis of capitalism. The monopoly of the world market
breaks down; the colonies revolt; the world tribute diminishes;

256 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the bourgeoisie in the metropolitan countries is compelled, in
place of concessions and reforms, to withdraw those already
granted and launch ever-increasing attacks on the workers.
But this inevitably brings a new intensity of the class struggle
in these countries and a widening revolutionary awakening
of the working class. For a period the apparatus of Labourism
still serves to canalise the discontent of the workers and keep
them attached to capitalism; but Labourism is compelled by
the crisis increasingly to expose itself and assist the capitalist
offensive against the workers; and disillusionment grows. As
this situation develops, the bourgeoisie is compelled to look to
new forms to maintain its rule. The movement of bourgeois
policy begins to turn away from the exhausted and discredited
parliamentarism towards open dictatorship, towards Fascism.
This movement, after developing first in the more poverty-
stricken and backward countries, reaches its first major
imperialist state in Germany, the Power which has been stripped
of its colonies and weakened in its world imperialist position,
and only finally begins to develop in the dominant imperialist
Powers, Britain, France and the United States, and their
satellites (Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland).

But so soon as this situation develops, it becomes clear that
Fascism, so far from being alien to the Western imperialist
states, has an extremely strong potential basis in their whole
social, economic and political structure.

What are the general conditions favouring the growth of
Fascism? They may be briefly enumerated: (1) intensification
of the economic crisis and of the class struggle; (2) widespread
disillusionment with parliamentarism; (3) the existence of a
wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat,
and sections of the workers under capitalist influence; (4) the
absence of an independent class-conscious leadership of the
main body of the working class.

Are these conditions present in Britain, France and the
United States? The answer must be given that they are all
strongly present.

If we take Britain first, and ask the question whether there is
a basis for Fascism in Britain, a consideration of the social
forces and structure in the country will show that there is every
basis.

In the first place, there is a very large proportion of inter-

BASIS FOR FASCISM 257

mediate strata of the population, of petit-bourgeois elements
with very narrow and easily controlled political interests, and of
a parasitic proletariat closely allied to their masters and
virtually unorganisable to the working-class movement. This
proportion is larger in Britain than in other countries. The
1921 census showed ten millions of the population engaged in
direct productive industries and transport, and seven millions
in “services” of very varying degrees of productive value,
often of no productive value, but parasitic in character and
tied up with the processes of exploitation. Of these seven
millions over four millions are classified under Commerce,
Finance and Personal Service. This classification, however, is
to some extent misleading without further analysis. More
important is the proportion of salaried workers to wage
workers. In 1924, according to Bowley and Stamp (The
National Income 1924, published in 1927), the number of sala-
ried workers was 2.8 millions against 15.4 million wage earners,
or 15 per cent. of the employed population.*

Further, of the wage-workers, some two-thirds are un-
organised; and these two-thirds are not an outside margin in all
industries, but mainly represent the workers outside the big
productive industries.

At the same time the Labour Party and trade union leader-
ship, by their denial of the class struggle and preaching of the
“community above classes,” by their alliance with the em-
ployers (Mondism) and capitalism, and by their ban on the
united front, disorganize the independent class action of the
workers and pave the way for Fascism.

An indication of the potential Fascist forces is provided by
the monster circulations, approaching two millions, of journals
of the type of the Daily Mail, circulating mainly among petit-
bourgeois elements, and in its whole character since its incep-
tion a real forerunner of Fascism more than twenty years
before the name existed (since 1934 openly Fascist).

If we turn to the policy and tactics of the bourgeoisie in

* It is noticeable that the proportions of the salariat have considerably increased
in the period of the imperialist decline. The 1907 Census of production estimated
the salaried at 7 per cent. and the wage-earners at 93 per cent. For 1911 Bowley
and Stamp (op. cit.) estimate the numbers at 1.6 millions and 15.6 millions respec-
tively, or over 9 per cent for the salariat. The 1924 figure gives over 15 per cent.
The increase between 1911 and 1924 is by more than 1.1 million or 68 per cent. In
the same period, according to this estimate, the number of wage-earners decreased
by 250,000.

258 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Britain, it is obvious that these not only do not exclude Fascism,
but are on the contrary most closely prepared and adapted for
Fascism by all the developments of the imperialist period.
On the one hand the State machine—with the famous
“unwritten Constitution” which can be turned in any direc-
tion desired at a moment’s notice to suit the emergency needs
of the bourgeois dictatorship—is far more exactly fitted than
in any democratic republic for all the purposes of intensified
dictatorship and Fascism. On the other hand, the British
bourgeoisie is trained for generations on the basis of its rule of
India, Ireland and the colonial empire to methods of violence
and despotic domination, at the same time as on the basis of
parliamentary and electioneering humbug in Britain to the
technique of mass-deception—the two together constituting the
perfect combination for Fascism. The words of the American
Ambassador in London during the war years, W. Page, a
shrewd and admiring observer, on the technique of the Die-
hards may be recalled:

They call these old Tories “Diehards.” It’s a good name.
They use military power, social power, financial power, eloquence,
learning, boundless impudence, blackguardism—everything—to hold
what they have; and they fight—fight like tigers, and tire not.

Or as Lloyd George (the “Liberal” founder of the “Black and
Tans’’) declared in a speech in 1925: ‘Scratch a Conservative,
and you will find a Fascist.” For those who are still chloro-
formed by the sedulously instilled myths of law and order, it
would be well to study a little the history of the British bour-
geoisie for the past three centuries, which in bloody violence
could hardly be equalled by any ruling class since the Roman
Empire, as well as the action of this same bourgeoisie as a
ruling class in the Empire outside Britain to-day. They would
speedily learn the mailed fist basis which lies behind the velvet
speeches of a Baldwin or a MacDonald. It is sufficient to
recall the technique of the Boer War jingo agitation, the Ulster
rebellion, the Amritsar massacre, the “Black and Tans” in
Ireland, or the organisation for countering the General Strike,
to see the full basis for Fascism.

The Ulster movement, with its open defiance of Parliament,
organisation of private armies, and direct support by the Army
chiefs, the Court and high society, and ignominious capitulation

BASIS FOR FASCISM 259

of the Liberal Government, is of especial interest as an em-
bryonic precursor of Fascism. Lenin wrote of it at the time:

The significance of this revolt of the landlords against the “all-
powerful” (as the Liberal blockheads, especially the Liberal scholars,
think and have said a million times) English Parliament is extraor-
dinarily great. March 21, 1914, will mark a world-historical turning-
point, when the noble landlords of England, smashing the English
Constitution and English law to atoms, gave an excellent lesson in
class struggle... .

These aristocrats behaved like revolutionaries from the Right, and
by that tore up all conventions, tore down all the veils that pre-
vented the people from seeing the unpleasant, but undoubtedly real,
class struggle.

That was revealed to all which was formerly concealed by the
bourgeoisie and the Liberals (the Liberals are hypocritical every-
where, but it is doubtful whether their hypocrisy goes to such lengths
and to such refinement as in England). Everybody realised that the
conspiracy to break the will of Parliament had been long prepared.
Real class-rule has always been and still lies outside of Parliament.
. . . And the petit-bourgeois Liberals of England, and their speeches
about reforms and about the power of Parliament, with which they
lull the workers, proved to be in fact frauds, straw men put up in

order to fool the people, who were quickly torn down by the aristoc-
racy with power in their hands.
(Lenin, The Constitutional Crisis in England, 1914.)

Indeed the Fascists in Britain to-day directly look to the Ulster
movement as their predecessor:

Just before the war the widespread movement directed against
Parliament, in sympathy with the Ulster loyalists, assumed formid-
able proportions within two years of its initiation. That movement,
psychologically limited as it was, and directed only to the safe-
guarding of certain limited objectives, would—had not the war in-
tervened—have developed into a formidable revolt against the whole
theory and system of Democracy in Britain. The Ulster movement
was in fact the first Fascist movement in Europe.

(W. E. D. Allen, Fascism in Relation to British History and
Character, B.U.F., 1933.)

If we turn to the United States, an examination of the social
composition of the population would also show the basis for
Fascism. Of the 49 million occupied persons returned in the
census of 1930, 19 millions were classified under manufacturing
industry, mining and transport, ro millions under agriculture,

260 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

6 millions under trade, 3 millions under the professions, 4 mil-
lions under clerical occupations, and 5 millions under domestic
and personal service. In addition to the urban petit-bourgeoisie
and very wide expansion of the salariat, salesmen, etc., the
farming population, with some six million separate farms, con-
stitutes roughly one quarter of the total population. Extreme
economic pressure has powerfully radicalised all the poorer
farmers; but until a strong proletarian leadership succeeds to
establish the alliance—all-powerful, once it is achieved—of
the industrial workers and small farmers, there is every danger
of demagogic Fascist movements winning their hold here. At
the same time, the organisation of the industrial workers is
weak. Trade union organisation, even after the increases
accompanying the present crisis and the Roosevelt Codes
(which have mainly in fact encouraged company unions—
the initial basis for Fascist organisation in industry), only
reaches about one-fifth of the workers; it is mainly confined to
the privileged, skilled workers on a craft basis, leaving out the
unskilled workers; and, apart from railroads and to some extent
mining, has won little hold yet in the basic productive industries.
The class-collaboration policy of the American Federation of
Labour leadership is more open and extreme than in Europe,
and still so far opposes any form of political party of the workers,
although the development of the crisis may compel a change in
this respect. The reformist labour leaders have taken the role
of direct allies and lieutenants of the Roosevelt emergency
regime. Here again, therefore, a strong social basis exists for
the development of full Fascism, if this should become necessary
to the bourgeoisie.

The traditional tactics and methods of domination of the
American bourgeoisie are equally adapted to Fascism, in
proportion as occasion arises. If they have not had the same
experience as the British bourgeoisie in the domination of
colonial peoples, save more recently and on a smaller scale,
they have had plenty of experience in their own domain in the
suppression of the twelve million Negroes within the United
States and of the heavily exploited immigrant populations.
The combination of violence, lawlessness and corruption for
the maintenance of capitalist domination has reached classic
heights in the United States. It is only necessary to recall the
Chicago hangings, Homestead or Dearborn, Sacco-Vanzetti

BASIS FOR FASCISM 261

or Scottsboro, the exploits of the Pinkerton gangs, the methods
in the coalmining and steel areas, the private armies of the
employers, the judicial murders, the lynchings and gangsters,
the Anti-Red drive of the Department of Justice after the war,
or the waves of sudden expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and
similar organisations, to see the plentiful basis for Fascism in
American bourgeois traditions.

If Britain and the United States are both classic lands of
semi-Fascist methods of bourgeois domination long before
Fascism, France has long been considered the classic land of
“pure democracy.” Yet in fact just the overwhelming petit-
bourgeois social basis (preponderant small industry and
peasantry, with a layer of finance-capital at the top, but
relatively less developed large industry or foreign trade) which
underlay the “pure democracy” of formal social-radical repub-
licanism and actual unlimited corruption and rule of the finan-
cial cliques, to-day, when the new stage develops, becomes
equally the basis for Fascism.

Not only is the majority of the population in France still
rural (the proportion of the population in towns of over 5,000
inhabitants was 44 per cent. in 1928, as against 54 per cent. in
Germany, 58 per cent. in the United States and 79 per cent.
in Britain), but the preponderance of petty industry in the
industrial field is still extreme. According to an investigation
of de Ville-Chabrolle on the basis of official statistics (see
Economist, September 30, 1933), out of a total of 6,167,647
establishments in 1926, 5,983,075 consisted of five persons or
less (2,981,521 single-handed concerns). Out of 17.8 million
occupied persons, 11.8 millions were occupied in concerns of
five persons or less, and only 1.5 million workers were employed
in concerns of over 500 workers, that is, in large-scale industry.
Trade union organisation, reaching to a few hundred thousands
in each of the two rival Confederations, is extremely weak,
although militant traditions and class-consciousness are strongly
developed in the big industrial centres.

The parliamentary republic has maintained a sometimes
precarious hold for two generations; but the open reactionary
forces which seek to change the regime increase in strength.
The experiences of Boulangism, of the anti-Dreyfus agitation,
or of the Action Francaise movement have shown the ground
that there is for Fascist agitation; and the offensive of the recent

262 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Fascist demonstrations of the beginning of 1934, leading to the
hasty withdrawal of the “Left” Government and instalment of
a Government of National Concentration, have shown how
rapidly the advance to Fascism may develop in France.

All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop
and conquer in these Western countries. Its success or failure,
as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and
militant resistance of the proletariat. But it is folly to be blind
to the reality of the danger, or to the many favouring factors
that Fascism can marshal to its side in precisely these countries.
Above all, it is worse than folly to place a blind confidence, as
the liberal and reformist leaders preach, in the “democratic
institutions” of these countries. The bourgeoisie will use any
and every instrument of struggle as occasion arises. It is for
the working class and its allies to be prepared for the fight in
front.

2. The Significance of the National Government in Britain.

The development of the world economic crisis has brought a
sharp break in the political development in the countries of
Western Imperialism, and in so doing has brought the question
of Fascism increasingly to the front also in these countries.

In England the break took place in the autumn of 1931 with
the financial crisis and the establishment of the National
Government.

In the United States the break took place in the spring of
1933 with the inauguration of the Roosevelt regime amid
extreme financial crisis and the establishment of emergency
powers.

In France, where the effects of the economic crisis have
operated more slowly, the break came with the Paris revolu-
tionary and counter-revolutionary demonstrations of February
1934, and the formation of the Government of National Con-
centration under Doumergue.

All these reveal a common process of concentration of the
bourgeois forces in the crisis, establishment of intensified forms
of dictatorship and emergency powers, diminution of the role
of parliamentarism, and, in general, advance to types of the
pre-Fascist stage which characterised the Briining regime in
Germany.

What was the significance of the formation of the National

SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 263

Government in Britain, and of the stage of the crisis which
gave rise to it?

In the first place, it marked the heavy discrediting of the
Labour Party. The Labour Government, which had been
placed in office by eight million votes on a programme of
promises of socialism and of the solution of unemployment,
had looked on impotently while unemployment rose under its
rule from 1.1 millions to 2.7 millions, and had proved itself
only the ally of capitalist rationalisation against the workers.
The hopes which had been preached throughout the post-war
period of the peaceful democratic Labour path to socialism
as the alternative to revolution, and which had won a steadily
rising Labour vote from 2 millions in 1918 to 8 millions in 1929,
received a heavy blow. Disillusionment in the masses was
rising. But the Labour Party had in reality represented the
safety-mechanism of bourgeois rule in the post-war period, like
Social Democracy in Germany, the social-conservative force
which, while seeming to voice the socialist aspirations of the
masses, had served to attach them through parliamentarism
to the bourgeois regime. This was now in danger of collapsing
and giving place to the rising process of revolutionisation. The
bourgeoisie was quick to sense the danger. Already in the
spring of 1930 Lloyd George voiced the menace to the tradi-
tional bourgeois institutions through the discrediting of the
Labour Party. Describing how the workers had originally put
their hopes in the Liberal Party and lost faith in it, he con-
tinued:

Millions consequently threw in their lot with a new party. To
them this party was the party of the last hope. It is now rapidly
becoming the party of lost hope. Speakers and agents of all parties
returning from the last by-election in a great industrial constituency
had the same tale to tell. It was one of the gloom and despair which
had fallen on this working class district owing to the failure of the
Government they had helped at the last General Election to put into
power to bring any amelioration into their conditions and prospects.
If Labour fails this time, confidence in parliamentary institutions
will for a period disappear in myriads of loyal British homes and
hearts.

(Lloyd George, article in the Daily Express, March 18, 1930.)

The bourgeoisie manceuvred to meet this critical situation.
The step, previously only attempted in wartime, was taken of

264 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

creating a Coalition Government from all the parties, the
National Government, under the nominal leadership of
MacDonald and Snowden, and under the actual control of
Conservatism, to win anew the confidence of the masses under
this new cover. The manceuvre succeeded for the moment, by
playing on the very intensity of the disgust of the masses with
the Labour Government. The Labour vote fell for the first
time since the war, by the heavy fall of two millions. But this
disillusionment did not go to the benefit of the small revolu-
tionary vote, which only slightly increased. Many former
Labour voters abstained. The benefit of the process of dis-
illusionment went to the “National” vote, which swept the
country with 14% millions.

It is clear that we have here a special form of the same pro-
cess which was demonstrated in Germany. The betrayal by
Social Democracy thrusts millions of workers and former petit-
bourgeois supporters into the reactionary camp, which is
skilful to put forward a new flag in order to win them. This is
the heart of the process of Fascism. It is revealed in its first
rudimentary form in the “National” manceuvre in Britain.
The “National” vote of 1931 was the warning-signal of the
danger of Fascism.

Second, the National Government marks the process of bour-
geois concentration and intensified dictatorship for the carrying
through of measures of an increasingly Fascist character. The
consciousness of this role of the National Government, as
directly analogous to that of Nazism or Fascism, was openly
expressed by the Prime Minister, MacDonald, in his speech to
the National Labour Committee on November 6, 1933:

The secret of the success of dictatorships is that they have managed
somehow or other to make the soul of a nation alive. We may be
shocked at what they are doing, but they have certainly awakened
something in the hearts of their people which has given them a new
vision and a new energy to pursue national affairs.

In this country the three parties in co-operation are doing that,
and our task must be to get the young men with imagination, hope
and vision behind us.

The National Government thus avowedly sets itself the task to
achieve the same objects as those of Hitlerism in Germany,
whose “dictatorship” it publicly praises as representing a
“new vision” and a “new energy” to “make the soul of a

SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 265

nation alive.” This direct praise of Fascism comes from the
man who was till 1931 the accepted Leader of the Labour
Party, and who indeed gave similar praise to Italian Fascism,
while still Leader of the Labour Party.

A still more complete and conscious expression of the new
policy has been provided in the more recent declarations of the
Cabinet Minister, Elliot, Secretary for Agriculture, a former
Fabian. Elliot, who came to the front as the most active
exponent of the new economic policy in respect of the whole
system of quotas, licences, subsidies, controlled and restricted
production, etc., has increasingly underlined the political
significance of the process. In his broadcast speech under the
title “Whither Britain?” on March 27th, 1934, he spoke
of the transition to the “New State,” of the necessity to “give
up a certain amount of liberty,” of the need of “economic
self-discipline,’ “psychological self-discipline,” etc., and
directly compared the role of the National Government to that
of the Hitler Government in Germany. To-day Elliot stands
out as the principal governmental representative of the new
Fascist tendency.

The development to Fascism does not necessarily take the
same form in every country. The general tendencies of the
new economic and political policies which receive their most
complete expression in Fascism are common in greater or less
degree, as has been already pointed out, to all modern capital-
ism. But the first steps towards Fascism commonly develop in
and through the decaying forms of the old bourgeois demo-
cracy. This is above all the significance of the National Govern-
ment, which itself carries forward tendencies already visible
in the whole post-war capitalist development.

On the one hand, the National Government carries forward
the new lines of economic policy (increasing State regulation
of production, tariffs, quotas, import boards, the striving
towards empire economic unity) and the active increase of war
preparations.

On the other hand, the National Government carries forward
the process of the transformation of bourgeois democracy from
within—the development of new forms of intensified capitalist
dictatorship and increasing restriction of democratic rights.

This process is already visible in the whole post-war period,
notably in such measures as the Emergency Powers Act and in

266 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the Trade Union Act of 1927. It is carried very markedly
forward under the National Government. This is shown in
such measures as:

1. The increasing separation of governmental action from
parliamentary forms, and extension of government by
administrative order or by Orders in Council (the
Economy cuts and Means Test were put through by
Orders in Council, and only referred to Parliament
after they were already in operation) ;

The reorganisation of the police under increasingly
centralised and military forms, and rapid increase of
police expenditure;

Increasing restriction of the rights of free speech and
assembly, prohibitions of meetings (e.g., bannings of
meetings of unemployed at labour exchanges), imprison-
ment without charge of any offence committed (Tom
Mann case), etc.;

Active political repression against the workers (in the two
and a half years of the National Government up to the
spring of 1934 over 1900 arrests for political offences
have taken place, over 600 sentences for a total of
1,613 months imprisonment, and some 850 fines for a
total of £2,540, police interference with strikes,
etc.;

Increasing police violence against the workers, baton
charges, etc.

The Unemployment Bill, bringing the unemployed,
who have outrun the short period of regular benefit,
under the control of a centralised autocratic Board,
not responsible to Parliament, with power to establish
camps and “training centres” (‘concentration camps”
in the Home Secretary’s phrase), subjecting them to a
semi-military regime and forced labour without pay or
for purely nominal rates of pay—any worker who
resists this slavery and smashing of trade union rates and
conditions being liable to be sent to prison;

The Incitement to Disaffection Bill, nominally directed
against anti-militarist propaganda, but in fact very
much wider and so worded, in its original form as
presented, as to make the mere possession of any
revolutionary socialist or anti-war literature an offence

THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 267

punishable with two years imprisonment, and giving to
the police unlimited powers of search and confiscation.
All this may be described as the process of “encroaching
Fascism’ within the old forms, which precedes and prepares the
full Fascist attack. An examination of the experience of the
Briining regime in Germany, or of the successive earlier stages of
Dollfuss in Austria (when he was still loudly hailed as the
“champion of democracy” by all the liberal and_ social
democratic forces of the West), will abundantly show the
significance of this process, which has definitely begun its first
stages in Britain.

3. The Roosevelt Emergency Regime.

The Roosevelt emergency regime in the United States offers
a still clearer demonstration of the whole process.

From the moment of his inauguration the new President
demands and is granted emergency powers “as in wartime.”

I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet
the crisis—broad executive power to wage war on the emergency as
great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe.

(President Roosevelt’s Inaugural, March, 1932.)

We do not expect to have to resort to the drastic steps taken during
the war. But we have the same kind of a situation.

(General H. S. Johnson, speech at Chicago.)

What is the essence of the “New Deal,” if we strip from it
the sentimental philanthropic ballyhoo?

The “New Deal,” the policy of the Roosevelt regime
expressed in the National Industrial Recovery Act and
associated measures, represents the most comprehensive and
ruthless attempt of finance-capital to consolidate its power with
the entire strength of the State machine over the whole field
of industry, to hold the workers in subjection under extreme and
intensified exploitation with a universal lowering of standards,
to conduct on this basis and on the basis of the depreciated
dollar a world campaign for markets, and to prepare directly
the consequent inevitable war.

The signal marks of the Roosevelt policy are:

1. State-Controlled Capitalism.—tThe process of trustifica-
tion in the United States was previously still hampered by

268 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

the remains of the old anti-trust legislation surviving from the
pre-war epoch. The New York correspondent of the London
Times (June 6, 1933) stated the first and principal reason for
big business support of the Industrial Recovery Act: “What
big business desires above all things is relief from the antiquated
Anti-Trust Laws.” By one stroke all anti-trust legislation is
swept away. The Preamble of the Industrial Recovery Act
openly proclaims the aim “‘to remove obstructions to the free
flow of inter-State commerce which tend to diminish the amount
thereof, and to promote the organisation of industry for the
purpose of co-operative action among trade groups.” <A
gigantic process of consolidation of the big monopolies, and
extermination of the small producers and independent firms in
the leading industries (“Ten million retailers protest against
the Blue Eagle: they maintain they cannot do business on a
basis of shorter hours, more wages and practically the same
prices” —Daily Telegraph, August 25, 1933), already begun by
the effects of the crisis, the credit-smash and the operations of
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, is now carried to its
logical conclusion. Every leading industry is established under
direct State organisation, with regulation of labour conditions,
price-fixing, restriction of production and guaranteed profits.
This is the ideal of capitalist society in decay, seeking to chain
the productive forces which have outgrown capitalism.

2. Inflation—The ostensible purpose of inflation is pro-
claimed as to give a stimulus to recovery (a stimulus whose
artificial character is rapidly revealed, as in the heavy decline
in the autumn of 1933 following the short-lived summer boom),
and to relieve and reduce the load of debts of agriculture and
industry, which were threatening to bring the whole structure
crashing. Its actual operation reveals it as one of the familiar
weapons of finance-capitalist brigandage in periods of crisis.
It means in the first place a direct robbery of all small owners
and of all small savings, the partial expropriation of the petit-
bourgeoisie. Second, it serves as the basis for colossal share-
speculations and manipulations, as well as processes of price-
raising, for the profit of finance-capital. Third, it effects a
universal reduction of the real wages of all workers, such as to
make the guaranteed wage standards, already fixed at very low
levels, in practice the cover for a general lowering of wage-
standards, as even the American Federation of Labor has now

—eeeeEEEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEE——————— =

THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 269

begun to complain. Fourth, it opens the way in the inter-
national sphere to a price-cutting campaign on the basis of the
depreciated dollar, to wipe out competitors and swamp the
already depressed world markets.

3. Servitude and Intensified Exploitation of Labour.—The
new Industrial Codes establish an authoritative regime of the
subjection of the worker under the direct union of the employers
and the State, with Government-fixed wages, hours and condi-
tions of labour, virtually compulsory arbitration by the Govern-
ment, and increasingly open offensive on the right to strike and on
independent workers’ organisation. While the social fascist
organs are drawn directly into the governmental apparatus, a
full offensive is let loose on all independent militant unions.
The inauguration of the new industrial regime is accompanied
by the shooting of miners on strike in Western Pennsylvania
and the proclamation of martial law against strikers in Utah
and New Mexico. “The A. F. of L. has voluminous evidence,”
declared its president, William Green, on January 15, 1934, ata
hearing on the lumber code, “that drastic reduction has taken
place in the wages of skilled workers since the adoption of the
code, and that the minimum wages tended to become the
maximum wages paid.” In the name of the N.R.A. the
employers endeavour to proclaim all strikes and picketing
illegal. At the same time in the Labour Camps some 350,000
young workers are placed under semi-military conditions.

| 4. War-Preparations.—The Industrial Recovery Act specifi-

cally provides for the building of “naval vessels, airplanes and
mechanisation or motorisation of the army tactical units.”
235 million dollars of the special appropriations for Public
Works are devoted to the Navy. The Secretary for the Navy,
Swanson, states:

I know of no more effective and praiseworthy way of giving our
industrial life that country-wide stimulus which it so sorely needs
than by devoting a portion of the money and energy which is to be °
used for public construction to this vital arm of our national defence.

(New York Times, June 16, 1933.)
The war character of the whole system of State organisation,
mobilisation of industry and semi-conscription of labour, is
obvious.

To what outcome does the new American system lead? Its
economic outcome can be no more successful in solving the

270 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

crisis than the similar methods of Fascism elsewhere. The
emptiness of all the promises of renewed prosperity, of the
solution of unemployment and of the achievement of higher
standards all round, has been already demonstrated. The
speculative production boom of the summer of 1933 only led to
a small increase in employment, and yet was followed by a rapid
collapse, showing the impossibility of absorbing the present
increased productive power under existing conditions, save
through the final “solution” of war. The Federal Reserve
Board index of industrial production (reduced to the base of
1928 as 100) which rose from 54.1 in March 1933, to go.1 in
July, fell to 65.8 in November, and had only risen to 68.5 by
January 1934. The “stagger” system of reducing the nominal
figure of unemployment, as in Germany, by spreading the
existing employment means no real increase in the volume of
employment.

The Civil Works schemes, while pouring out colossal sums of
money to give temporary employment and thus assisting the
process of inflation, only intensify the problem when, owing to
the enormous rising volume of debt, they have to be diminished
and come to an end, throwing millions again into the unemployed,
while no permanent channels of employment have been found.
The level of real wages has been lowered owing to the rapid rise
4 in prices. The American Federation of Labor is compelled to
report in its official organ in January 1934:

Since the bank crisis, the average worker’s weekly income has
risen 7.4 per cent. (to October), but prices the worker has to pay for
his living expenses have risen much more than this. Food prices
are up 18 per cent. (to November 21), prices of clothing and fur-
nishings are up 26.3 per cent. (to November).

Thus the worker who had a job right along is worse off than he
was when the year began. His pay envelope may be larger, but it
buys less. His real wage is smaller.

(The American Federationist, January, 1934.)

In January 1934, the President of the American Federation of
Labor, William Green, complained that there were still nearly
twelve million workers not absorbed into normal employment,
and that “workers are steadily losing by price increases”:

Our estimate shows that there are 11,690,000 persons wanting

work, but unable to find employment in our normal industrial
production services. ... Unemployment is still above the 1932

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THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 271

level by 1,500,000. . . . Workers are steadily losing by price
increases, and we must expect their living standards to be further
reduced as prices go on upward.

But while all the social-reformist “progressive” camouflage
of the Roosevelt ‘New Deal” thus rapidly fades away, the
reality of the new Fascist type of system of concentrated state
capitalism and industrial servitude remains. As Roosevelt
declared in his Message to Congress in January 1934:

We have created a permanent feature of our modernised industrial
structure, and it will continue under the supervision, but not the
arbitrary dictation, of the Government itself.

Roosevelt’s Secretary for Agriculture, Wallace, still further
brought out the implications of this process in his pamphlet
entitled ‘‘America Must Choose’, issued in the spring of 1934.
In this pamphlet, in the course of which he advocates that
America must “annually and permanently retract of our good
agricultural land some 25,000,000 acres”’, he states:

The new types of social control that we have now in operation are
here to stay, and to grow on a world or national scale... .

As yet, we have applied in this country only the barest beginnings
of the sort of social discipline which a completely determined
nationalism requires. ... We must be ready to make sacrifices
to a known end.

The significance of the Roosevelt regime is above all the
significance of the transition to Fascist forms, especially in the
economic and industrial field. As the Associate Editor of the
Current History Magazine of the New York Times, E. F. Brown, |
writes:

The new America will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor will
it be Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards Fascism, it
will be an American Fascism, embodying the experience, the tradi-
tions and the hopes of a great middle-class nation.

(Current History Magazine, July, 1933.)

But in fact this stage is still a transition. As the failure of the
plans of economic recovery becomes manifest and gives place
to new forms of crisis and widespread mass discontent, and
| above all as the advance to war implicit in the whole Roosevelt y
policy develops, the demand for corresponding political forms \
of Fascism will inevitably come to the front in the United f
States.

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272 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

4. The February Days and the National Concentration
Government in France.

In France the development of the effects of the economic
crisis appeared at first more slowly. But in the latest period
the situation has gone forward with extreme rapidity, and the
question of Fascism has become a burning issue.

The events of February 6-12, 1934, and the fall of the
Daladier Government, leading to the formation of the tran-
sitional Doumergue Government of National Concentration,
have brought to the front the whole question of Fascism and
the increasing signs of advance to a direct armed struggle.

These events are of vital importance for the Western “demo-
cratic” countries, because in these events are set out with
crystal clearness the two alternative paths, the path of the
“left bloc” or bourgeois-liberal democracy, leading in fact
to Fascism, or the path of the united working-class front of
struggle, which can alone defeat Fascism.

What was the situation on the eve of the events of February
6-12? The national-chauvinist, Fascist and Royalist forces in
France—at all times active beneath the democratic-republican
exterior—developed extreme activity in the gathering crisis,
and especially since the advent of Hitlerism, with the open
alliance and assistance of the police authorities in Paris and
of the big press, that is, of the State and finance-capital. At
the same time the governmental forms were showing the same
increase of executive powers and repression of the workers
common to all capitalist governments in the present period.
Even The Times on February 5, that is, before the decisive
events, was compelled to note:

A contrast has been drawn between the severe repression of
Communist manifestations and the comparative immunity from
punishment of Royalist demonstrators and the Royalist newspaper
which directly incites its readers to riot in the streets.

This was under a “Left” bourgeois Government, main-
tained in office in practice by the support of the Socialist
Party. The majority in Parliament was a “Left Cartel”
majority, consisting of the Socialist Party and of the “Left”
bourgeois groupings.

This “Left” bourgeois Government (previously under
Chautemps, then under Daladier) was heavily discredited by

EEE —EE————— ee

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 273

one of the typical recurrent financial and police scandals, the
Stavisky scandal, which was being utilised by the reactionary
forces to raise agitation against the parliamentary regime and
to prepare a Government of National Concentration, just as
the crisis of the franc was similarly used in 1926. After the
dismissal of the police chief, Chiappe, who was notoriously
hand-in-glove with the Royalist and Fascist elements, pre-
parations were openly made—without interference—and pro-
claimed in the big press for a jingo riot on February 6, which
was to serve as a preliminary trial of strength and spear-head
for the Fascist advance.
What was the line of the Daladier Government and of “left
democracy” in the face of this challenge? The Socialist Party
voted its confidence in the Daladier Government, in the
“Left” bourgeois Government, as the defender of “demo-
cracy” against Fascism. On the basis of their support the
Daladier Government received a substantial parliamentary
majority of 360 to 220 on the critical evening of February 6.
As against this line the Communist Party, which had approached
the Socialist Party for the united front against Fascism in
March 1933, and been refused, called for the united front
from below, called the workers to the streets against the
Fascist attack, and through the unions began to make agitation
for a general strike against the Fascist menace. The two lines
were now to receive their practical demonstration in the events
that followed. {
The Daladier Government massed heavy military forces in (
Paris in the days preceding February 6. But did it act against
Fascism? The leaders of the Fascists and Royalists were
allowed to carry on their preparations in complete freedom.
Previously, on the eve of a Communist May Day demon-
stration, three thousand Communist leaders had been arrested
in Paris in order to cripple the organisation of the demon-
stration. On the eve of this reactionary demonstration not a
single Fascist or Royalist leader was touched. The organisers
of the reaction were given freedom of the streets to burn,
destroy, set fire to Government buildings, and advance on the
Chamber of Deputies; no adequate forces were placed against (
them; the police were inactive; the “Gardes Republicaines”
| and “Gardes Mobiles” were steadily commanded to retreat
and give way before the bourgeois mob; only at the last

274 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

moment, when the Chamber was nearly reached and the
bourgeoise demonstrators began to fire with their revolvers,
the ‘“‘“Gardes Mobiles,” not on the order of their officers, but
in instinctive self-defence, fired back, and about a dozen of the
dupes of the reaction and onlookers were killed. The subse-
quent Commission of Enquiry established that the shooting |
was begun by the Fascist demonstrators and maintained for
half an hour before any answering fire took place on the side
of the Government forces; and that even so no order to fire
was given by any officer, but that the rank and file of the
“Gardes Mobiles” began spontaneously to fire in self-defence
and were immediately ordered to stop by their officers.

The sequel to this incident is instructive for the whole
future of parliamentary democracy. Immediately following
this incident, on the very next day, on February 7, the Daladier
Government, which had just received an overwhelming
parliamentary majority, resigned; and there was installed,
amid the plaudits of the millionaire press, the Doumergue
Government of National Concentration, with the semi-fascist-
Tardieu in a strategic position in its midst.

How did this happen? Why this sudden surrender of the
legal Government with a parliamentary majority before the
first Fascist street-offensiver This question is of crucial import-
ance for all the Western “democratic” countries, where
confidence in “democratic institutions” as the defence against
Fascism is still preached.

Why did Daladier, “champion of democracy” and chosen
representative of French Socialism, immediately resign before
the Fascist extra-parliamentary offensive? Where, then, was
the “sovereignty of Parliament,” “Jaw and order,” the
“will of the electors,” and all the paper paraphernalia of
bourgeois democracy? Flown to the winds, as soon as finance-
capital gave the order in the opposite direction. The parlia-
mentary majority might vote one thing; but finance-capital
ordered another, and finance-capital was obeyed, including ©
by the representatives of that parliamentary majority.

The Daladier Government issued an explanation that it
resigned “to avoid further bloodshed”’:

The Government, while responsible for the maintenance of order,
declined ta ensure it by the employment of exceptional means,
which might result in severer repressive action and further blood-

_ ee .

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 275

shed. The Government had no wish to use soldiers against the
demonstrators, and for that reason had laid down office.

The transparent hypocrisy of this “explanation” is manifest.
As if any French bourgeois Government had ever hesitated to
use the utmost violence against working-class demonstrators,
not merely using soldiers against them, but organising complete
military operations against them, as was done on the night
of the far more serious fighting of February 9, amid the applause
of the entire bourgeois press.

Daladier resigned, not because he was a pacifist, but because
he was a puppet of finance-capital and could do no other.
Daladier resigned because he was compelled by the real ruling
forces of the State, in relation to which a parliamentary major-
ity was mere stage-play. What else could he do? Even had
he had the will to fight, he had no forces. The police belonged
to the reaction; the General Staff belonged to the reaction;
it was reported that the old Marshal Lyautey threatened to
lead the army on Paris if there should be any attempt at
resistance by the parliamentary majority. He was as con-
temptible a helpless puppet as Asquith over Ulster.

Had he wished to fight, he could only have done one thing,
to have publicly exposed the whole plot, and to have called
on the proletarian masses, on the rank and file of the soldiers,
to resist. But this would have meant to unloose the proletarian
revolution, which he feared as much as any of the Bloc National
or the Fascists. At bottom he was one with these; all the
liberal-democratic pretence was no more than electoral
humbug. He knew his duty. He went quietly.

Therewith the whole card-castle of bourgeois democracy, of
| the “democratic” defence against Fascism, of “democracy versus
dictatorship,” of the whole Social Democratic line, came tum-

bling down. The line of the “Left Cartel,” of the French Socialist
Party, of the parliamentary-democratic “defense” against
Fascism, was proved once again only to have smoothed the way
for the advance of Fascism, for a Government of the Right, for
intensified dictatorship. A rapid awakening of the entire
working class to the united fight against Fascism developed.
The general strike of February 12 brought out four million
workers. A united front pact of the French Socialist Party
and the French Communist Party against Fascism was finally
signed on July 27, 1934.

276 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

In his speech of apologia to his constituents on April 8
Daladier admitted that he was aware that a full counter- —
revolutionary coup was being prepared for February 6:

The Fascist organisations were mobilised to force an entry into
the Chamber, to proclaim the fall of parliament and to impose a
dictatorship. Authentic documents proving this, direct appeals to —
insurrection, have been placed in the hands of the Commission of
Enquiry.
Why, then, did the Left-Democratic Government, with this
information in its hands, take no action? Why did these
“democrats,” so merciless and rigorous against the slightest
sign of Communist activity, making arrests and suppression
right and left, not lay a finger on the Fascist press which was
openly calling to insurrection? He has no answer. On the
contrary, he is anxious to show that no serious measure of
defence was taken:

It has been established that at no point was any order to fire
given by the Government. Not a single machine-gun, not a single
repeating-rifle was in the hands of the “Gardes Mobiles” or of the
police.
Why did the Government, chosen by the parliamentary
majority, take no steps to maintain itself against Fascism, but
instead resign at once, despite its parliamentary majority?
He admits that this question is perplexing “republican
opinion”’:

Republican opinion is amazed that the Government should have
resigned on February 7 instead of maintaining itself in power, since
it had the majority in parliament.
He has no answer. He fumbles and stumbles over the question.
He accuses fellow-ministers of having wanted to give way.
He accuses the President of having insisted on his resignation.
He hints at legal difficulties in the way of taking any effective
measures, of making arrests, of proclaiming martial law:
would the President have signed the decrees, or would parlia-
ment have supported him? As if there should have been a
moment’s difficulty or hesitation to carry through any steps
whatever, if it had been workers, and not Fascists, who had
advanced in armed formation to burn down Government
buildings, invade the Chamber and proclaim a dictatorship.
Finally he ends with the old lame excuse:

It seemed better to resign than to risk any further spilling of blood.

THE FEBRUARY DAYS 277

Thus the swan song of parliamentary democracy, the regime
of blood against the workers, of bloodshed unlimited in
imperialist war, but toothless and helpless against Fascism and
reaction.

The Fascist-Royalist demonstrations of February 6 were in
reality only the preliminary offensive of the reaction to conceal
and defeat the real rising movement of mass-discontent, the
rising movement of the working class, against which a Govern-
ment of intensified dictatorship was required. Hence the
peculiar character of the mancuvre which installed the
Government of National Concentration.

The full significance of this process—first, the preliminary
preparations under cover of the “Left”? Daladier Government,
and the military massing of artillery and troops by this Govern-
ment with the support of the Socialists, and then, at the critical
moment, the replacement of this Government by a Right
Government of National Concentration—was laid bare in the
days following February 6, as the working class came increas-
ingly into action.

The battles of Friday, February 9, when the Communist
demonstration had been banned by the Government, and the
workers fought for possession of the streets, enormously exceeded
in their range February 6, and were turned into a full military
operation by the Government. 23,000 troops and 14,000 police
were called into action against the workers.

In contrast to Tuesday night (February 6), when the police
offered only half-hearted resistance to the Fascist and Royalist
rioters till it was too late, the city was turned into an armed camp.
(Daily Herald, February 10, 1934.)

The capitalist dictatorship had no scruples now to “employ
exceptional means” or “use soldiers against the demon-
strators.” But the strength of the working-class resistance
was such that it was successful to give pause to the first wave
of the Fascist attack.

This was still further shown in the country-wide General
Strike of February 12. The Communist slogan for the 24 hours
general strike received such wide mass support that the
reformist unions were compelled formally to take it up, even
though they tried to sabotage its execution, going so far as to
turn it in their actual instructions (the railwaymen) into a

278 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“fifteen minutes” or even “one minute” strike. But the
strike and the accompanying united front demonstrations won
overwhelming support throughout the country. The true
path of the struggle against Fascism was thus shown. The
rising strength of the united working-class front of struggle in
France was laid bare as the sole power of the fight against the
rising Fascist offensive of French finance-capital.

The Government of National Concentration in France is
thus revealed as a typical transition Government of the advance
to Fascism. Its functions may be summed up: first, by the
| i. concentration of all forces to counter and defeat the rising
my wave of working-class discontent; second, in view of the
Q, strength of the working-class resistance, to cover the too open
Fascist designs with a show of “appeasement” and “safe-
i) guarding” of parliamentary democratic institutions; third, to
4 carry through the heavy offensive against the working, class
required by finance-capital, as shown in the cuts campaign;
and fourth, to provide the cover under which the Fascist forces
can carry forward their preparations for a further assault.

Nevertheless, the Doumergue Government fell before the
strength of the united working class front, and had to be re-
placed by the Flandin Government in November 1934. The
French bourgeoisie had to manceuvre more cautiously. Mean-
while the Fascist and Royalist forces are actively carrying
forward their armed preparations. The signs point to critical
conflicts in the near future in France.

5. The Beginnings of Fascist Movements

In 1905 Milner, one of the more far-seeing leaders of the
older British imperialism, described in a private letter the only
hope that he could see for the salvation of bourgeois rule:

Perhaps a great Charlatan—political scallywag, buffoon, liar,
stump orator, and in other respects popular favorite—may some
day arise who is nevertheless a statesman—the combination is not
impossible—and who, having attained power by popular acts may
use it for national ends. It is an off-chance, but I do not see any
other. (Letter to Lady Edward Cecil, The Milner Papers, Vol. 11.)

Here we see the bourgeoisie consciously groping for the
forms of Fascism long before Fascism existed. The fact that so
lifelike a description of Hitler or Mussolini could have been —
penned a decade before these began to play their role is
striking confirmation of how little it is personality that creat

ne

ee ee ee ee ee = a

pape t <item

oy wae

FN eee

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 279

history, and how much rather history calls forth the personality
that it requires at a given stage. Fascism does not come into
existence because a “leader” arises. On the contrary, because
the bourgeoisie requires Fascism, a “leader” is created from
such materials as can be found.

This is particularly important with regard to the development
of Fascist movements in Britain, France and the United States,
where there is still some difficulty in finding a suitable “leader”
with sufficient popular qualifications (in Britain, a definite
candidate exists, but drawn from the plutocracy). The develop-
ment of a specific Fascist movement is a complicated process,
involving a considerable “trial and error” of rival movements,
before the successful technique is found. Only fools will laugh
at the awkwardnesses of these embryonic stages, and not realise
the character of the serpent that is being incubated. The
crystallisation of Fascism into a single main movement has
taken over ten years in Britain, and may not have yet reached its
final form; the position in France is complicated by the exist-
ence of the older Royalist “Action Francaise” alongside the
newer direct Fascist organisations, and by the multiplicity of
Fascist organisations; in the United States the situation is still
that of the early stages of confusion.

More important in this initial stage than the specific Fascist
movements are the direct tendencies within leading circles of
the bourgeoisie towards open Fascism, and therefore towards
the creation of a Fascist movement or towards the support of the
most effective Fascist movement already existing. These
direct expressions of support for Fascism are to be found in
abundance among the leaders of the bourgeoisie in Britain,
France and the United States.

The close connections of leading British bourgeois circles with
| Italian Fascism and with Hitlerism are notorious. Mussolini
| had scarcely completed his coup d’etat before he was osten-
tatiously honoured by the British King in 1923 with the Order

of the Grand Commander of the Bath as a reward for his ser-
vices to the counter-revolution (corresponding to»the similar
title of a lower grade conferred on the unsuccessful Denikin).
The intimate relations of Chamberlain and Mussolini were
repeatedly expressed. with a fervour which was not solely
dictated by the requirements of foreign policy. The connections

280 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

of envoys of Hitlerism with British Conservative headquarters —
were reported already before its advent to power. Churchill ©
openly declared, speaking in the Mecca of Rome in 1927, his
support for Fascism:

If I had been an Italian, I am sure I should have been entirely
with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle —
against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.

(Churchill, Address to the Roman Fascists, January 1927,
quoted in Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, p. 20.)

Mond, the patron saint of the Trades Union Congress and joint
author of the Mond-Turner Reports for class-co-operation, was
no less open in his recognition of Fascism and explicit avowal
that his purpose in the industrial peace negotiations with the
Trades Union Congress was directed towards the same aim as
Fascism. His avowal, made also in Rome (the shrine where the
hearts of British Conservative statesmen are to-day opened) in
1928, was indeed so explicit, as reported in the British Press,
that he subsequently endeavoured to disavow it and allege an
“abridged” and “incorrect version” of his remarks; ‘my
references to Fascism,” he wrote, “were entirely restricted to
its application to Italy.” The report, as printed in the Daily
Herald, ran:

“T admire Fascism because it is successful in bringing about social
peace,” said Sir Alfred Mond in an interview in Rome yesterday,
reported by the Exchange. “I have been working for years towards
the same peace in the industrial field in England. . . . Fascism is
tending towards the realisation of my political ideals, namely, to make
all classes collaborate loyally.” (Daily Herald, May 12, 1928.)*

The Rothermere and Beaverbrook press support of Hitler
and Mussolini, and demands for “a British Hitler,” are
notorious, culminating in the direct support accorded by the
Rothermere press to the British Fascist movement.

Of especial importance are the recent developments of the
Diehard and right-wing revolt within the Conservative Party,
represented by Churchill, Lloyd and others, and also, in varying
forms by Rothermere and Beaverbrook. Under the form of the

*See Trades Union Congress Report, 1928, p. 215, or Mond’s partial denial,
and p. 412 for Citrine’s amazing defence of Mond’s right to be a Fascist and in
favour of the trade union alliance with Mond, even if Mond were a Fascist: “Sup-
posing that the statement had been true, and that he had associated himself with

Fascism, would that have been a logical ground on which to break down dis-
cussion ?”’

rien TT

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 281

battle against Baldwin, and especially over the issue of India,
is fought the battle of more and more open opposition to
parliamentary democratic institutions; and the Conservative
headquarters is hard pressed to maintain control within the
party for the present more cautious stage of official bourgeois
policy (it may be noted that between 1933 and 1934 the
Diehard or opposition vote on the Indian issue at the Central
Council of Conservative Associations rose from below one-
third to over three-fifths). Churchill, speaking before the
Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform in
October 1933, and opposing the extension of even the farcical
sham “democratic” institutions proposed for India, seizes the
opportunity to refer to democratic institutions as “now
falling into general disrepute in the Western world.” The
Times, writing of the revolt against Baldwin in the Conservative
Party, notes both its anti-democratic line and the possibility
of its victory: :

That “Baldwinism” would be followed by some form of “Die-
hardism”—whether dictatorial or bureaucratic or purely commercial
—is hardly open to question if these malcontents were to have their
way. They may have it yet. (Times, October 17, 1930.)

This development is of especial importance to note because,
when the issue comes to a head, it is far from certain that a
Churchill or a Lloyd will allow the leadership to pass to a
Mosley.*

Similar tendencies and expressions looking more or less
openly towards Fascism may be observed among the statesmen
and industrialists in the United States and France. Thus
Gary, the United States Steel King, declared at the
International Chamber of Commerce Congress in 1923
(Observer, April 1, 1923):

We should be the better for a man like Mussolini here too.

* On the other “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie is worth noting the advo-
cacy of Liberal Fascism by H. G. Wells, and G. Bernard Shaw’s active agitation on
behalf of Fascism, which has led him to be hailed as their patron by the British Fas-
cists (see The Fascist Week, February 23-March 1, 1934, on “G.B.S. on the Brink
—Will He Ever Wear a Blackshirt ?” and the quotation from Shaw in praise of
Mosley as the motto of the official book B.U.F.: Oswald Mosley and British Fas-
cism). The older agitation of the Belloc-Chesterton school (against parliamentar-
ism, against financiers, against Marxism, against pacifism, against Jews; for nation-
alism, for small property, etc.) was fully Fascist in an academic fashion; although
the subsequent coming to life of their entire programme with literal exactitude
in the Catholic Hitler has not been appreciated by these virulent anti-Prussians.

282 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

And the former United States Ambassador to Berlin, J. W.
Gerard, declared in praise of Hitler:

Hitler is doing much for Germany; his unification of the Germans,
his destruction of Communism, his training of the young, his crea-
tion of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his curbing of
parliamentary government, so unsuited to the German character,
his protection of the right of private property are all good; and, after
all, what the Germans do in their own territory is their own business,
except for one thing—the persecution and practical expulsion of the
Jews. (New York Times, October 15, 1933.)

Abundant examples could also be quoted from the right wing
press in France of an envious admiration of Hitlerism.

If we turn from these gathering tendencies to the specific
and organised Fascist movements, it is to be noted that in the
recent period direct Fascist movements have rapidly developed
to prominence in Britain and France, as well as in the smaller
countries, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. In
the United States the process of the Roosevelt development is
still preparing the ground of Fascism; and the question of
direct fascist organisation is still at the time of writing mainly
a question of confused tendencies and beginnings, such as the
“Silver Shirts,” “Khaki Shirts,” Ku Klux Klan revival, the
Fascist movement of Dennis, etc.; from these tendencies more
developed Fascist organisation can rapidly emerge. But
the situation in Britain and France is already consider-
ably more advanced; and at the present stage the situa-
tion in Britain and France is of crucial importance for
the future development of Fascism in the Western imperialist
countries.

In France we have already seen how the events of February
1934, leading to the fall of the Daladier Government and the
establishment of the Government of National Concentration,
have brought the question of Fascism sharply to the front and
led to a rapid growth of the Fascist organisations. The situ-
ation is complicated in France by the parallel existence of the
Royalist ‘Action Francaise” and of the newer directly Fascist
organisations.

The older “Action Frangaise,” with its subsidiary hooligan
bands, the “Camelots du Roy,” was originally founded in
1898 as a nationalist and anti-semitic organisation, and later
became Royalist. With its close connections with right-wing

——————_—_—_____ or

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 283

Conservatism and semi-official protection for its violent and
unrestrained agitation, it has considerable strength among the
forces of the Right; but it is a rigidly doctrinaire reactionary
Royalist body, explicitly separating itself from the principles
of Fascism, although closely similar in general outlook and
practice, and not accepting its typical social-demagogic
technique.

The numerous directly Fascist organisations have not yet
coalesced into a single party. The previous attempt to found
such a party, the “Faisceau,” established by Georges Valois
in 1925, was not successful. To-day the principal more or less
explicitly Fascist organisations are the “Jeunesses Patriotes,”
founded by Taittinger in 1924, and the semi-military “Croix
de Feu” (nominally an ex-servicemen’s organisation, but in
fact recruited from all sources), under Colonel de la Roque,
founded in 1927 with subsidies from Coty, in its early years
numbering only a few thousands, but since the February days
claiming 150,000 members. There are also a number of minor
organisations and groups, such as the “Mouvement National
Populaire” around the “Action Nouvelle.” Of the fighting
strength of these organisations the Paris correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian reports:

The Croix de Feu, the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Action Frangaise
and other reactionary organisations have probably not more than
25,000 to 30,000 “fighting members” in Paris. Nevertheless, if this
force were armed, it would be sufficiently impressive, though even
then it could do little if it had the police and the army against it.
But there is just a danger that at the critical moment both the
police and the army might be on their side, or at any rate neutral.
(Manchester Guardian Weekly, March 23, 1934.)

At the same time from the “Socialist” side has developed an
organisation, the ‘‘Neo-Socialists,” or, as they have termed
themselves, the “Socialist Party of France,” led by Marquet.
This group was until the autumn of 1933 a right wing within
the Socialist Party; under the influence of the victory of °
Hitlerism it came forward with a new programme, attacking
the old conceptions of internationalism and of the proletarian
basis of socialism, insisting on the need to build on the basis
of “the nation,” and to appeal to the middle class and to
“youth,” and stressing the necessity of “authority,” of the
“strong State,” of “order,” of “discipline,” of “action,” etc.

284 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

. Its outlook was thus, although in fact only developing and

stating more explicitly the basic social democratic outlook, ©
marked by strong fascist influence; and the development of ©
this tendency was universally recognised as a development —
towards Fascism. In the autumn of 1933 this group broke
away from the French Socialist Party to found the Socialist
Party of France; its leader, Marquet, joined the Government —
of National Concentration on its formation.

In Britain the situation has not yet reached the same degree
of intensity as in France; but a fully formed Fascist Party and
organisation, even though not yet strong, has been constituted
since 1932 in the British Union of Fascists under Mosley. The
rival smaller organisations are to-day of minor importance;
note may be taken of the markedly anti-semitic Imperial
Fascist League, and of the “Greenshirts,” originally a currency
movement of more or less fascist character, though denying
Fascism.

The British Union of Fascists, although not yet necessarily
the final form, has to-day established its position for two
reasons: firstly and mainly, because of its overwhelming
financial support from influential sources, support by the
million-tentacled Rothermere Press, etc.; and secondly, because
of its historical origin from the heart of the Labour Party and
Independent Labour Party, whereas the previous attempts
had remained movements purely of retired generals and
suburban reactionaries.

The earlier movement of the “British Fascisti” originated
in 1923, from the circles around the Duke of Northumberland’s
journal The Patriot, and received its legal recognition from the
first Labour Government:

The legality of their organisation was officially recognised by the
late Labour Government by the granting to them of their Articles of
Association as “The British Fascisti, Ltd.”

(General Blakeney, President of the British Fascisti, in The
Nineteenth Century, January 1925.)

Brigadier-General R. B. D. Blakeney, its President, had been
general manager of the Egyptian State Railways. Its Com-
mander for the London area was Brigadier-General Sir
Ormonde Winter, K.B.E., and its Vice-President was Rear-
Admiral J. C. Armstrong. (The subsequently attempted
United Empire Party, launched with the support of the

——E————————

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 285

Rothermere and Beaverbrook Press in 1930, was equally over-
weighted with generals: “the Council is almost entirely com-
posed of military officers, and their experience of political
matters or organisation is, with two exceptions, negligible,
Morning Post, September 13, 1930). These earlier would-be
fascist organisations had no understanding of the necessary
Labour connections and social-demagogic technique of Fascism.
The British Fascisti proclaimed in all simplicity the objective
“to render practical, and, if necessary, militant defence of
His Majesty the King and the Empire.” A further circular
explaining the role of its two branches, Men’s Units and
Women’s Units, stated:

In times of peace both branches carry on propaganda, recruiting
and counter-revolutionary organisation. Should Revolution or a
General Strike be threatened, Men’s Units would form the Active
Force, and the Women’s Units the Auxiliary Force.

It is obvious that on this basis of ingenuous “counter-revolu-
tionary” honesty no mass Fascist movement could be built up.
The movement won a certain degree of attention in the period
preceding the General Strike, mainly owing to its semi-official
police recognition, its members being accepted in certain areas
for recruitment into the special constabulary in a body under
their own officers. It achieved no political influence, and after
the General Strike fell into obscurity.

The first significance of the Mosley movement was its direct
origin from within the Labour Party. Mosley, after having
been a Conservative Member of Parliament, entered the Labour
Party in 1924. On the basis of his great wealth and influential
connections, he advanced with an extreme rapidity unattain-
able to ordinary working-class members of the Labour Party,
to a commanding position in that party, which is always
notoriously open to the power of money and of bourgeois con-
nections, and where seats are often offered as at an auction to
the highest bidder (no less than fifty seats were offered to
Mosley in the same year that he joined). Within three years he
was elected to the Labour Party Executive in 1927 with a
higher vote than Herbert Morrison, and in 1928 was
re-elected, polling 2,153,000 votes. He was appointed a
Minister of the Labour Government of 1929, and in 1930
resigned on the grounds of inactivity to deal with unemploy-

286

ment. As a Minister he had produced the Mosley Memoran- —
dum, which was the first outline towards a Fascist policy, that
is, an active, openly non-socialist, far-reaching policy of
capitalist reconstruction. This policy, not because of its non- —
socialist character, but because of its active character, was
unwelome to the conservative do-nothing line of the Labour
Government, which accordingly sat on it and endeavoured to
bury it. Mosley appealed to the Labour Party Conference in
1930 and won 1,046,000 votes against 1,251,000 for the
Executive. He was re-elected to the Labour Party Executive,
and thus in fact passed straight from the Labour Party Executive
to the organisation of his New Party or Fascist Party in
1931.

For the original wider political basis and influence of Mosley
(in contrast to the unsuccessful generals of the previous Fascist
attempts), and his launching into the front ranks of politics, it
is thus necessary to thank the Labour Party and Independent
Labour Party, which in this way characteristically performed
the role of Social Fascism. While the Communist Party alone
from the outset correctly gave warning of the Fascist tendencies
implicit in Mosley (which he at first endeavoured to deny), the
Left Labour politicians rallied to his support and assisted his
campaign. The New Leader, the organ of the Independent
Labour Party, wrote of the Mosley Memorandum:

In the main, as is known, his scheme followed I.L.P. lines.
(New Leader, October 10, 1930.)

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Brockway wrote:

In the ideas of the I.L.P. Group and the smaller Mosley Group
there is a good deal in common. . .

Before long we may expect to see a revolt by the younger members
of all three parties against the methods and spirit of the older
generation.

(Brockway, “The Ferment of Ideas,” New Leader, Novem-

ber 7, 1930.)

The Mosley Manifesto of December 1930, which already
formally disclaimed Socialism (‘the immediate question is
not a question of the ownership, but of the survival of British
industry”) and demanded a Dictatorship of Five to carry out
an aggressive capitalist programme, was signed by seventeen
Labour M.P.s, including five I.L.P. M.P.’s, together with

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 287

A. J. Cook.* When the New Party, the first definite step
towards the formation of a Fascist Party, was formed in the
spring of 1931, it was formed of six Labour M.P.’s and one Con-
servative M.P., and made its appeal to “the mass of patriotic
men and women who are determined upon action.”

The final evolution from the womb of Social Fascism to
open Fascism developed in 1931. After the unsuccessful Ashton
by-election fight of the New Party in April 1931, writes
Strachey (Menace of Fascism, p. 161), “Mosley began more and
more to use the word Fascism in private.” In May 1931,
according to the Daily Express (May 18, 1931), Mosley at a
meeting at the headquarters of the New Party “spoke of the
need for discipline: it was generally agreed that there were
many lessons to be learned by the New Party from Hitlerism.”
Major Baker, political secretary of Mosley, in an interview to
the same journal declared:

It is true that the young men who are gathering round us are
Oxford students and graduates. They are mostly athletes. ...

The men around us are in many instances the owners of motor-
cars. They will form themselves into flying squads to descend sud-
denly on a place.

According to the Daily Herald (June 6, 1931), 2 mission, con-
sisting of Major Thompson, D.S.O., and L. J. Cumming
(formerly propaganda secretary of the West London Federation
of the I.L.P.) was sent to Germany to study the methods of the
Nazis. Mosley, The Times (March 2, 1931) reported, ‘“‘has, it
is understood, collected a considerable fund—not, of course,
from Socialists.”

The details of this development are only important as showing
in a classically clear form the close connection of Social Fascism
and Fascism. The last step in the process took place in 1932
when the Fascist name was openly adopted, and the New Party
(as the Communists had prophesied from the outset) was
transformed into the British Union of Fascists. The statement
of policy, Mosley’s Greater Britain was issued, which repeats in
very summary form the familiar features of Fascist economics

* The names of the seventeen Labour M.P.’s, signatory of the Mosley Manifesto,
which became the starting point of British Fascism, were, in addition to Mosley
and his wife: Oliver Baldwin, Aneurin Bevan, W. J. Brown, Dr. R. Forgan, J. F.
Horrabin, M. Phillips Price, E. J. Strachey, J. Batey, W. G. Cove, J. Lovat

Fraser, S. F. Markham, J. McGovern, J. J. McShane, H. T. Muggeridge, and
C. J. Simmons.

288 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

and politics discussed in previous chapters, with the main stress _
on the economic policy (“Corporate State,” compulsory
arbitration, “scientific protection,” regulation of production,
trade, wages, prices and investments—the old illusions of
“planned capitalism”), and with the necessarily unpopular
political features of repression smoothed over under vague
phrases or even omitted from mention.*

In the autumn of 1932 the Fascist Defence Force was estab-
lished, and in 1933 Fascist barracks-headquarters, of the type
of the Brown Houses in Germany, began to be set up. The
growth of violence in 1933 in connection with the “wearing of
political uniforms” (i.e., of the Fascists—no Workers’ Defence
Force as yet exists) was reported as follows by the Home Secre-
tary in Parliament on February 20, 1934:

The growing danger of public disturbances which the police
attribute to the wearing of what may conveniently be called political
uniforms is shown by the fact that the Commissioner of Police for
the Metropolis reports that for the first six months of 1933 there were
in the Metropolitan police district 11 disturbances of a political
character attributed to this cause, while in the last six months of the
year there have been no less than 22 such disturbances.

In the beginning of 1934 Fascism was endowed with a large-
scale Press organisation by the resources of the millionaire
Rothermere Press being placed at the service of the British
Union of Fascists in order that it might represent

a well-organised party of the Right ready to take over responsibility
for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of
method as Hitler and Mussolini have displayed.

(Rothermere in the Daily Mail, January 15, 1934.)

The policy of the Government in relation to the growth of
Fascism was stated in Lord Feversham’s reply on behalf of the
Government in the House of Lords on February 28, 1934. He
declared that the British Union of Fascists was gaining ground,

* The penal suppression of strikes under the Corporate State is not mentioned.
The violent suppression and dissolution of any form of socialist working-class
movement is not mentioned. On the electoral system it is blandly stated (p. 34) that
“Such electoral principles (i.e. of the Corporate State) are designed not to limit
the powers of electors, but rather to increase their real power by enabling them to
give a well-informed vote,” without stating that in fact in Fascist Italy and Ger-
many the electors are presented with a single ready-made list to give their assent
to, with no permission of any alternative candidates. But the whole book is marked

by the glaring disingenuousness customary to Fascist propaganda before power.

THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 289

but that the policy of the Government was not to interfere to
restrict its growth.

As long as a majority were able, with the assistance or lack
of assistance of a Government, to maintain peace and order in
this country, it was unnecessary for any great action to be
taken to restrict such parties.

In the second half of 1934 the question of Fascism came in-
creasingly to the forefront, but the anti-Fascist forces at the
same time markedly increased in strength. The Fascist demon-
stration at Olympia on June 7, 1934, with its systematically
brutal manhandling of the anti-Fascists and even of non-par-
tisan spectators who protested, and with the connivance and
assistance of the police in this brutality, produced widespread
awakening to the Fascist menace. This was further shown at
the Fascist demonstration at Hyde Park on September 9,
1934, when the Fascist demonstration, numbering 2,500, was
protected by 7,000 police, while the anti-Fascist demonstration
numbered, according to the hostile press reports, from 100,000
to 150,000. From this heavy exposure the illusion began to
develop that Fascism had already passed its climax and was
bound to decline. There could be no more dangerous illusion.
The direct support of the authorities for Fascism was imme-
diately afterwards shown in a series of significant law court
cases, in one of which the Lord Chief Justice went out of his
way to pay an official tribute to Mosley as ‘a public man of no
mean courage, no little candour and no little ability.” The
growing strength and active offensive of the Right Conserva-
tives, under Lloyd and Churchill, and their close co-operation
with the open Fascists, is also an important indication of the
developing tendencies in the British ruling class; while from
another angle the recent Lloyd George “New Deal” campaign,
with its call for “national unity for action,” a “strong line” |
and a “War Cabinet” of Five, illustrates the new tendencies
gaining ground. As the class struggle develops in Britain, and
the situation of the bourgeoisie requires stronger measures, the
question of Fascism, both through veiled forms and also
through open forms, will inevitably come increasingly to the
front; and the strength of resistance will depend on the power
of the working class movement to achieve united action.

CHAPTER XII

FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Wuat is the future of Fascism? What is the future of the fight
against Fascism?

Fascism is a historical phenomenon, arising in a con-
crete historical situation. It is useless to discuss abstractly
as in a schoolroom alternative social forms of ‘Fascism,”
“Democracy,” “Dictatorship,” etc., without regard to the
actual situation and general line of capitalism in the present
period.

Fascism is the outcome of modern capitalism in crisis, of
capitalism passing into the period of the proletarian revolution,
when it can no longer maintain its power by the old means,
but is compelled to resort to ever more violent methods for the
suppression of all working-class organisation, and also for the
attempted authoritarian economic unification and organisation
of its own anarchy, in a last desperate effort to maintain its —
existence and master the contradictions that are rending it.

More specifically, Fascism is the consequence of the delay of
the proletarian revolution in Western and Central Europe in ©
the post-war period, when the whole objective situation calls —
for the proletarian revolution as the only final solution and —
ever more visibly raises the issue of the struggle for power, but
when the working-class movement is not yet strong enough and
ready owing to being disorganised and paralysed by reformism, "
and thus lets the initiative pass to capitalism. “Fascism,” as —
Klara Zetkin declared in 1923, “ts the punishment of the pro-
letariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia.”
Fascism is the abortion consequent on a miscarriage of the
proletarian revolution. But Fascism cannot solve the contra-
dictions or prevent the collapse of capitalism. On the contrary, ©
Fascism carries the contradictions, both within the capitalist
world, and between the two worlds since 1917, the capitalist |
world and the socialist world, to the highest point; Fascism
brings an extreme intensification of the class struggle and of
the process of revolutionisation.

290

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 291

Fascist tendencies are not peculiar to the countries of com-
pleted Fascist dictatorship, to Germany, Austria and Italy, or
to Poland, Hungary, etc. Fascist tendencies are common in
greater or less degree to all modern capitalism, including West-
ern Europe and America, wherever the process of decay and the
advance of the class struggle have reached a certain point, and
advance in proportion as working-class resistance is paralysed
or weakened by reformism.

1. The Dialectics of Fascism and Revolution.

The victory of Fascism in Central Europe, and the advance of
Fascist tendencies in Western Europe and America, in 1933-4,
represents the highest point yet reached by the Counter-Revo-
lution since the war. But this victory of the Counter-Revolution
does not represent the growing strength of capitalism. On
the contrary, it is the direct result of the extreme aggravation
of the world crisis and of the instability of capitalism, of
the shattering of Versailles and all the peace settlements,
of the growth of social contradictions and mass discontent,
bursting all peaceful and legal forms: that is to say, of the
very advance of all the forces which finally make for the
victory of the proletarian revolution, since the proletarian
revolution alone can solve these contradictions, which Fascism
can only intensify.

Capitalism can no longer maintain its power by the old
means. The crisis is driving the whole political situation at an
accelerating pace. All social and international contradictions
are brought to a new and greater sharpness by the successive
developments of the crisis of capitalism. All strata of the
population are affected by the crisis. The bourgeois regime is
driven to ever more desperate expedients to prolong for a
while longer its lease of life.

For the decade and a half since the war the bourgeoisie has
maintained its power mainly on the basis of Social Democracy
as the governing instrument to hold in the workers and prevent
the working-class revolution. In return for disciplining the
workers and preaching myths about “democracy” and the
“peaceful path to Socialism,” Social Democracy has been
given ministerial posts, patronage and pickings. This process
of being drawn into the capitalist machine has been held up
to the workers as evidence of the gradual, peaceful conquest of

292 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“power” by the working class. How much this “power” was
worth, when it came to the test, or rather, where the real
power lay, has been abundantly shown by the event in Ger-
many, Austria and elsewhere.

But this system, or particular mechanism of capitalist rule in
the post-war crisis, is not eternal—as the Labour leaders, on
the flood-tide of Mondism and successive Labour Governments,
have fondly hoped. The crisis drives to sharper political issues,
to intensified class struggle, to the need of new forms of capitalist
rule, to rapid and desperate emergency measures. The basis
of widening social reforms and concessions, hastily granted in
the post-war period to stave off revolution, and constituting the
mechanism of Social Democratic influence and ascendancy in
the working class in the Western Imperialist countries, breaks
down under the strain of the economic crisis, and gives place
to the withdrawal and cutting down of social reforms and
increasing attacks upon the workers. With this process a new
alignment of political forces develops.

On the one hand, the hold of Social Democracy upon the
workers begins to weaken, as shown in its declining numbers,
its increasing use of Social Fascist disciplinary measures and
violence, and in the growth of Communist influence. In
the face of this growing revolutionisation of the workers,
the bourgeoisie hastens to act, while there is yet time,
before Communism has yet won its visibly approaching
majority position in the working class, while the dis-
organisation of the workers by Social Democracy can
still prevent successful resistance, and brings into play the
dangerous hazard of Fascism to smash the advance of the
working class.

On the other hand, the working class, tied to capitalism by
the reformist leadership inherited from the preceding period, is
paralysed from being able to play its decisive role as political
leader in the developing crisis and draw all the discontented
strata of the population under its leadership for the overthrow —
of capitalism. On the contrary, since there is no standing still,
the exact reverse process takes place in the early stages. As the
crisis develops, the working class under reformist leadership
appears to grow, not stronger, but weaker. The policy of”
coalition with capitalism has steadily demoralised and sapped
the strength of the old working-class organisations, brought

errr rrr

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 293

membership lower and lower every year to the lowest point
since the war, and destroyed the confidence of the workers in
their organisation and leadership. The class struggle goes
forward, but in disorganised forms, since the new fighting
leadership has not yet won the majority of the working class,
and has to fight simultaneously the forces of capitalism and
the throttling stranglehold of the reformist machine. In con-
sequence, the working-class forces are weakened and divided
at the very moment of the heaviest capitalist attack, not because
of the militant workers who remain true to the class struggle,
but because of the alliance of the reformist machine with
capitalism. This weakening of the workers’ forces in the face of
the Fascist attack is the price of the path of bourgeois “democ-
racy,” of Social Democracy.

At the same time as the organised working-class forces are
thus temporarily weakened, the way is opened for alternative
forces, which could otherwise play only a subordinate part, to
come to the front. The mixed intermediate strata or so-called
middle classes, who can play no independent political role, but
can only act in practice as the ally of either the working class

or capital, come to the front, in proportion as the active role
of the working class is weakened. They are sharply affected
by the crisis and by all the operations of finance-capital. Their
lower strata are the natural ally of the working class in the
war on finance-capital. But they see from their point of view
the modern parliamentary state as a coalition of Big Capital
(“international financiers”) and Labour bosses, with them-
selves left out, and feel themselves squeezed by ever-increasing
taxation for the benefit of big business and the system of social
services to the workers, that is, the system of social reformism.
Nor can the reformist Labour propaganda, which dare not
touch the roots of finance-capital, expose to them the real
reasons of their plight, or give them the revolutionary lead for
which they are groping, to mobilise them against their real
enemy. Thus they become easy prey for the demagogic
propaganda of finance-capital to give them a sham “revolu-
tionary” lead, exploiting to the full the weaknesses and corrup-
tion of Labourism or Social Democracy, and organise them as
a counter-force against the working class, in contradiction to
their own interests. Capital is able for the first time to organise,
no longer a mere mercenary army for its support, but a

«

294 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

mass movement, built on disgust with Reformism, built
out of those intermediate strata and unstable, discontented,
disillusioned, working-class elements, against the organised
working class. From the ruins and discredit of Reformism
Fascism springs.

The old liberal parliamentary-democratic method of main-
taining bourgeois rule on a basis of social reforms increasingly
breaks down before the realities of the crisis and the sharpening
of the class struggle. On all sides the bankruptcy of the old
social, economic and political system becomes recognised, and
the demand for a complete change of the social system replaces
the old cry for reforms. Capitalism has to meet this new situa-
tion in which its whole regime begins to be questioned and
denounced, no longer only by the few, but by the overwhelming
majority of the population, and the call for “socialism” and
“revolution” sounds on all sides. An extreme example of this
process is revealed in Germany on the eve of Fascism, where in
the elections of the summer of 1932 no less than 74 per cent. of
the voters gave their votes for parties proclaiming the aim of
“socialism,” and all the parties which declared their support
of capitalism could not win more than a quarter of the electors.
In this situation capitalism is only able to save its power for
one further lease by the final desperate expedient of staging
a sham “revolution” with the nominal aim of “socialism,”
but in fact designed to maintain its power—the ‘National
Socialist Revolution” or Fascism. The poison, from the point
of view of capitalism, of the “revolutionary” and “socialist”
propaganda which can to-day alone win a mass hearing, is
skilfully rendered harmless by the antidote of the “national”
idea.

Thus the final mask of this ultimate masquerade of capitalism
staging a “socialist” “revolution” to maintain its power
becomes the old “national” label. What is the significance of
this? Does it mean that the “national” appeal is in fact
stronger to the masses than the socialist? Not at all. The
Nationalist Party in Germany, on the basis of the pure
“national” appeal, could only win two million votes, where,
by the skilful addition of “socialism,” the ‘National Socialist”
Party could win thirteen millions. But the “national” label
becomes the final device for distorting and defeating the
meaning of socialism, when the defence of capitalism can no

maf ae

THE DIALECTICS OF FASCISM AND REVOLUTION 295

longer be openly proclaimed. The whole drive of the present
situation, as all are increasingly compelled to recognise, is
towards the necessity and inevitability of collective social organ-
isation, that is, towards socialism. The “national” principle,
on the other hand, represents in reality the rule of a given capi-
talist grouping, in opposition to other capitalist groupings. But
the “national” principle is falsely presented to appear as the
expression of the collective, social principle against private ego-
ism, individualism, capitalism. In this way the historical move-
ment towards collective social organisation, when it becomes
too strong to be any longer directly resisted, is attempted to
be distorted from its common, human basis into an exclusive
group-assertive basis, which becomes in fact the cover for the
maintenance of the rule of the capital class. This is the
significance of “National Socialism” or Fascism.

But what is the historical outcome of this process? The
advance to Fascism as the final defence means the destruction
of legality, not by the revolutionaries, but by the bourgeoisie,
and the laying bare to all of the class struggle as a direct con-
flict of force. In order to hold off the revolution, the bourgeoisie
is compelled to play at revolution, and to seek to “outbid the
revolution.” They are compelled to preach to the masses con-
tempt for peace and legality, which were formerly their best
protection. To prevent the working-class revolution, they are
compelled to stage their masquerade revolution, and even to
dub it a “socialist revolution.” The junkers, barons and
industrial magnates, in order to maintain their power, are
compelled to place themselves at the head of bandit hordes with
cries of “Down with Interest-Capital!” ‘Down with Un-
earned Income!” ‘“Nationalisation of the Trusts!” ‘“Nation-
alisation of the Banks!” ‘“‘Socialisation of all enterprises ripe
for socialisation!” etc. The modern Black Hundreds have to
proclaim themselves “socialists” and enemies of “capitalism”
in order to win a hearing and save capitalism. Such is the
measure of the strength of capitalism revealed in the temporary
victory of the Fascist Counter-Revolution.

It is manifest that we have here not a strengthening, but in
reality and in the final outcome, an extreme weakening of
capitalism. The further examination of the development of
the fight against Fascism will reveal the inevitable final
working out of the dialectics of this process.

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296 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

2. The Fight Against Fascism.

What, then, of the future of the fight against Fascism?

Fascism, it is evident from the above analysis, develops out of
the decay of bourgeois democracy and reformism in the con-
ditions of the capitalist crisis. Indeed, Fascism develops in the
first place in and through the forms of bourgeois democracy,
step by step strengthening the state coercive apparatus and
emergency powers and restricting the rights of the workers,
in proportion as the workers’ resistance is paralysed by
reformism and trust in constitutionalism; and only when the
ground has been thus fully prepared within the shell of ““democ-
racy,” and the workers’ forces disorganised to the maximum,
only then the final blow is struck and the complete and open
Fascist dictatorship is established. Germany and Austria are
the outstanding examples of this process, where all the pre-
liminary stages for the victory of Fascism were carried through
by a Briining or a Dollfuss in the name of the defence of
“the constitution” and with the support of the Social Demo-
cratic leadership on this basis.

In consequence, the fight against Fasctsm cannot be conducted
on the basts of trusting to bourgeois “democracy” as the defence
against Fascism. To do this means to invite and to guarantee
the victory of Fascism. The fight against Fascism can only
be conducted on the basis of the united class fight of the
workers (leading all the exploited strata) against all the
attacks of finance-capital, whether these attacks are conducted
through nominal “democratic” forms or through open Fascist
forms. The stronger the fight of the workers in the early
stages, within the still nominally maintained “democratic”
forms, the less easy becomes the advance of the bourgeoisie
to the further stages, to the open Fascist forms. Hence the
importance of the united working-class front. The strength
of the working-class fight is also decisive for winning the
wavering petit-bourgeois sections.

The bourgeois democrats and reformists argue that Fascism
is the consequence of Communism. “The fear of the dictator-
ship of the working class has evoked the iron dictatorship of
Capitalism and Nationalism. Reaction on the ‘Right’ has
bred reaction on the ‘Left.’ Reaction of the ‘Left’ is displaced
by triumphant reaction of the ‘Right’” (Labour Manifesto
on “Democracy versus Dictatorship,” March 1933). From

ree

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 297

this they draw the conclusion, expressed in many Labour
speeches: “To defeat Fascism, root out Communism.” This
line is expressed in the abstract slogan “Democracy versus
Dictatorship,” presented without reference to class-relations:
that is, in practice, defence of the existing capitalist state (with
its increasing Fascist tendencies) against the working-class
revolution, under cover of the plea of defence against the Fascist
danger.

This line of the Labour Party is also the line of the big bour-
geoisie in its present propaganda. Thus the Conservative leader,
Baldwin, declared in a speech at Glasgow on June 24, 1932.

In Europe you find these Communistic methods were tried in
Italy. What was the result? Something very near civil war, when
the Right beat the Left, and you got a dictatorship, not of the Left,
but of the Right... .

I say that a dictatorship of no kind will we have in this country,
either of the Right or of the Left, at any time.

What is important here is not the glaring travesty of the actual
facts: namely, that in Italy the Communists were in a minority,
that the Reformist Socialists in Italy were defeated, not because
they adopted Communist methods, but because they specifically
refused to adopt Communist methods, because they refused to
seize power in 1920 when by the admission of all it was theirs
for the taking, because they clung to passive parliamentary and
industrial strike tactics, and therefore Fascism conquered; and
that, finally, the only country where the working class has
adopted Communist methods, the Soviet Union, is the only
country where Fascism has not been able to show its face. All
this has been long demonstrated by history; and the Con-
servative-plus-Labour propagandists are only hoping to play on
the ignorance of their hearers when they thus endeavour to con-
ceal the real facts. But what is here important is the exact
unity, even to a literal identity of phrasing, revealed between
the line of the Labour Party and the line of the Conservative
Party, that is, of the ruling party of the bourgeoisie. This
identity should already awaken the alertness of any working-
class supporter of the Labour Party to the fact that the line here
expressed represents no defence of working-class interests or
real fight against Fascism.

The whole dialectics of revolution and counter-revolution,
of vital importance for the understanding of the present period,

tl,

.

298 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

lies concealed and distorted behind this treatment. The con- ©
ception of Communism as the cause of Fascism is as shallow in
understanding of the real working of social forces as it is
illusory in fact. The growth of the working-class revolution
(Communism), and the growth of violent capitalist repression,
are in reality both equally the consequence and outcome and
expression of the growing crisis and break-up of capitalism.
They develop as parallel parts of the single process of the
gathering revolutionary crisis. To fmd in one symptom the
cause of the other symptom is worthy of the shallowest quack.
In fact the example of Austria, where the Communist Party was
still very weak and where Social Democracy boasted of the
completeness of its control of the working class, has shown how
little the bourgeoisie has need of the pretext of Communism to
advance to the Fascist dictatorship.

“Before the war,” declared Lenin (speech to the All-Russian
Conference of the Bolshevik Party in May 1917), “England was
the freest country in the world. There was freedom in England
because there was no revolutionary movement there.” Does
this mean that the masses in pre-war England were fortunate
because they had no revolutionary movement? On the con-
trary. The formal “freedom” was only the mirror, the
counterpart, of the real subjection. The “freedom” was con-
ditional on the masses accepting passively their servitude and
looking only for the crumbs of reforms. But so soon as the
workers begin to stir against their servitude and to fight con-
sciously for their liberation, the “freedom” rapidly disappears
and gives place to the whip. And that is the meaning of Fas-
cism. Fascism marks the extreme intensification of the capital-
ist dictatorship and offensive against the working class; but it
marks thereby at the same time the growth of capitalist con-
tradictions and the growth of the revolutionary awakening of
the working class.

If to-day in England and the other Western countries the
traditional “freedoms” are being steadily eaten into and cut
down, if police expenditure is trebled since the war and the
police are being centralised and militarised, if freedom of
agitation and assembly and demonstration is being more and
more cut away, if the trade union machine on top is absorbed
into unity with capitalism and the State, and the price of
criticism of Labour leaders is assessed at seven thousand pounds

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 299

by the capitalist courts, all this is only a measure of the awaken-
ing of the working class. The awakening of the working class
pricks the myth of “freedom” and lays bare the lash of the
despot. The degree of violence, the degree of coercion and
restriction of rights, the variation of methods between open
complete Fascism and partial developing forms of Fascism
beneath a decaying “democratic” cover, corresponds to the
degree of development of the working class and of the relations
of the class struggle.

Does this mean that, so long as the forms of bourgeois democ-
racy remain, bourgeois democracy provides the best defence
of the workers against Fascism? Just here it is necessary to
see with absolute clearness the real conditions of the struggle
against Fascism. The workers fight, and need to fight, tena-
ciously for every democratic right of organisation and of agita-
tion within the existing regime. Against the attack of Fascism
on bourgeois democracy, the workers will fight to defend bour-
geois democratic liberties. But they cannot afford for one
moment to be blind to the fact that bourgeois democracy is
only a cover for the capitalist dictatorship, and that within
its forms the advance to Fascism is steadily pushed for-
ward.

Bourgeois democracy breeds Fascism. Fascism grows organi-
cally out of bourgeois democracy. At what point did Dollfuss,
“champion of democracy in Europe,” become Dollfuss,
champion of Fascism? The process developed through such a
series of stages that up to the very last Social Democracy was
offering alliance to Dollfuss to “save the constitution,” at the
same time as Dollfuss was proclaiming the complete principles
of Fascism and preparing to turn his guns upon the workers.
The more the workers place their trust in legalism, in con-
stitutionalism, in bourgeois democracy, the more they make
sacrifices to save the existing regime as the “lesser evil” against
the menace of Fascism, the heavier become the capitalist attacks
and the more rapid the advance to Fascism. To preach con-
fidence in legalism, in constitutionalism, in bourgeois democ-
racy, that is, in the capitalist state, means to invite and to
guarantee the victory of Fascism. That is the lesson of Ger-
many and of Austria. And this is the reality which blows to
smithereens the deceitful and disastrous slogan of “Democracy
versus Dictatorship.”

vo

300 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Yet in face of the deadly lessons of Germany and of Austria
the British Labour Party leadership and Social Democracy in
Western Europe are to-day repeating to the last detail the fatal
line of German Social Democracy. All that German Social
Democracy and the German trade unions preached and prac-
tised, the British Labour Party and the British trade unions are
preaching and practising to-day. How then can they expect the
same policy to lead to a different outcome? They preach up and
down the country in favour of democracy and constitutionalism
and legality. So did German Social Democracy. They de-
nounce Communism; they refuse the united front; they expel
all militant workers; they set up a network of discipline to
maintain the safety of their organisations for capitalism. So
did German Social Democracy. They are faithful pillars of
capitalism and of imperialism. So was German Social Democ-
racy. They are treading the same road. Only the action of the
workers, learning the lessons in time, refusing to follow their
teaching, breaking their bans and building up the common front
against capitalism, can change the outcome.

What have they to offer the workers if their policy leads to
the same outcome as confronted German Social Democracy?
Nothing. What is their answer? They have no answer.
Citrine, leader of British trade unionism, speaking of the Trades
Union Congress in September 1933, on the situation that con-
fronted German Social Democracy, could only say: “I hope
to God we are never put into a similar position. I hope we
never have to face that position.” And again, with regard to the
growth of mass unemployment as the visible “common factor”
both in Britain and in Germany.

If that gets worse, I cannot answer for the consequences.

“Hope to God.” “Cannot answer.” Such is the final lead of
British Labourism in the face of Fascism. Of one thing only

Citrine is sure. It is impossible to fight. If it comes to a ° |

fight, the workers will be beaten.
If we go in for the metnod of force, we shall be badly beaten.
And again:
If we try to organise by force of arms, we shall be beaten.

“We shall be beaten.” ‘We shall be badly beaten.” Such is

the litany of defeat before the battle, by which the reformist
leaders seek to drill into the workers the sense of their own

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 301

impotence. This is the open invitation to capitalism to launch
the attack on the workers’ organisations; the workers are
defenceless and cannot resist; Social Democracy, as the Chair-
man of the Trades Union Congress declared on the same
occasion, is “peaceful, law-abiding, and shrinks from fratricidal
conflict,” and therefore is inevitably, as he finds, at the mercy
of its bloodthirsty enemies:

One of the tragic lessons of events in Germany was that the
enemies of democracy were willing to shed blood to destroy liberty,
and did not shrink from murder, arson and lawless action; but Social
Democracy was peaceful, law-abiding, and shrank from fratricidal
strife.

The very heart of reformism is here laid bare. Capitalism
is all-powerful. The workers are powerless against it. The
workers must only hope to get what capitalism permits them
through the legal forms capitalism permits. Let us cling to what
capitalism may grant us through the forms of ‘‘democracy”
(which were in fact only won by violent struggle) and “hope
to God” that, if we are docile, capitalism may not strike us
further. Such is the voice of the beaten, trembling slave, which
expresses itself as the philosophy of reformism.

Does, then, the advance of Fascism mean the end of all
things, that there is no hope for the working-class movement,
that there is no hope for the victory of socialism? On the con-
trary. The poet, William Morris, in his imaginative picture
already quoted of the path of the socialist revolution in England
(in the chapter “How the Change Came,” of News from
Nowhere), describes how the Government proclaimed martial
law and appointed a well-known general who with modern
artillery carried through a terrible massacre of thousands of
unarmed workers. The following dialogue then ensues between
the narrator and his informant, old Hammond:

I wondered that he should have got so elated about a mere

massacre, and I said:
“How fearful! And-I suppose that this massacre put an end to

the whole revolution for that time?” :
“No, no,” cried old Hammond, “it began it. . . . That massacre

began the civil war.”

“It began the civil war.” It destroyed the myths and illusions
of legality and passive slavery, and laid bare the civil war which,
once begun, could only finally end with the victory of the

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302 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

masses. And that above all is the significance of Fascism. The —
old poet is’a hundred times right against the trembling modern
reformists, who solemnly declare that modern artillery and
technique have made revolution impossible. Once the myths
and illusions of legality and pacifism have fallen, once the united
mass of the workers enter into the struggle, with the scales fallen
from their eyes, there is no question of the ultimate outcome.
The exploiters know this well; hence their anxiety to build up
the final rampart of a national-fascist ideology of deception in
the masses, alongside the direct violence and coercion; and
hence also the importance, on the workers’ side, of carrying
through the ideological-political fight of exposure against Fas-
cism alongside the direct preparation of the mass struggle and
final armed struggle.

The example of Austria has shown how much even a
courageous minority of the workers, shackled and held back
at every point by their reformist leaders, when all the previ-
ous favourable opportunities had been squandered and the
enemy had been allowed to entrench himself over the whole
field before the struggle began, when the great part of the mass
organisations of the workers were directly held back from the
struggle by their chiefs, could nevertheless accomplish to shake
and bring to a critical position the whole Fascist regime and
awaken an answering spirit of struggle throughout the whole
world. The bands of hundreds of Schutzbundler who fought
their way to freedom across the frontier, are reported to have
cried out as they reached the other side: “Long live the
Soviet Union!” and some “Long live the Communist Inter-
national!”’ Their lesson was learned.

How much more will the final outcome of the struggle be cer-
tain, when the whole working class will fight as a united force
under revolutionary leadership, when Fascism will be weakened
and disorganised by its own internal contradictions and by the
fiasco of its regime and of its promises, and when disillusion-
ment and discontent and rising sympathy with their fighting
working-class brothers will spread through the lower Fascist
ranks. Tsarism also fell despite all its machinery of repression.
Far more certainly and rapidly will the card-castles of the
modern Fascist dictatorships fall, when the time comes.

The laying bare of the civil war at the root of class-society, the
explosion of all the illusions of peace and legality—that is, above

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 303

all, the historical role of Fascism. Fascism attempts to organise
society on the basis of permanent civil war, no longer merely
with the old state forces, police and military, of repression, but
with permanent special armed legions of class-war to hold down
the workers. That fact is the most complete expression of the
final bankruptcy of capitalism and of the certainty of its col-
lapse. The eyes of all are being opened to the realities of class
society and to the real character of the war confronting the
working class. The necessity of the workers’ dictatorship as
the sole means to crush the counter-revolution is becoming
understood. The crisis within the post-war Second Interna-
tional since Fascism in Germany is only the expression of this
process. As we enter more and more directly into a period of
revolutionary conditions, when the working-class movement can
only be carried forward by revolutionary methods and under
illegal conditions or go under, the will-o’-the-wisp lights of
so-called “democratic socialism,” that is, of “socialism by per-
mission of the bourgeoisie,” inevitably go into eclipse and leave
the workers in the bog; only the clear light of revolutionary
socialism burns stronger than ever and shows the path forward.
The issue becomes more and more clearly no longer even in
appearance a question of two tendencies, of two paths for the
working-class struggle; in the sight of all, the Communist
International alone leads the working-class struggle.

In this situation even the Second International was com-
pelled in form to recognise the necessity of “revolutionary”
methods and the “error” of its past policies. German Social
Democracy in its latest Executive Manifesto of January 1934,
proclaims the “error” of its path in 1918:

The political transformation of 1918 ended up in a counter-revo-
lutionary development. . . . The Social Democratic Party . . . took
over control of the State without opposition, sharing it as a matter
of course with the bourgeois parties, the old bureaucracy and even
with the reorganised military forces. That it should have taken
over the old machinery of government virtually unchanged was the
great historical error committed by a German Labour Movement
which had lost its sense of direction during the war.

(“The Battle of Revolutionary Socialism and its Objec-
tive”: Manifesto of the Executive of the German Social
Democratic Party, published in the Karlsbad Neuer

Vorwarts, January 28, 1934.)

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304 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

“The great historical error.’”’ Fifteen years ago the centre of
controversy of the Second and Third Internationals, expressed
in the controversy of Kautsky and Lenin, turned precisely on
this point, when Lenin, with Marx, declared that it was neces-
sary for the workers’ revolution, not to take over, but to smash
the existing capitalist state machine and establish its own
dictatorship instead, and the Second International denied this.
Now fifteen years too late, after the harm is done, after the
German working class is reduced to the uttermost limit of sub-
jection by their methods, the Second International blandly pro-
claims that its policy was an “error”’—and then proceeds
again in fact to recommend the path of bourgeois democracy,
“the new organisation of the State on the basis of freedom by
the convening of a National Assembly elected by universal,
equal, direct and secret suffrage.” Once again, despite all the
attempts to make a show of a great “change of heart,” this is
in reality the old Weimar path. But the German workers have
had their experience of the Weimar path and its outcome and
have no intention to repeat it.

Similarly, the Second International in its Paris Resolution of
August 1933, on “The Strategy and Tactics of the International
Labour Movement during the Period of Fascist Reaction,”
admits the necessity of “revolutionary struggle” after Fascism:

Where the bourgeoisie has renounced democracy in order to throw
itself into the arms of Fascism and has deprived the working class of
the democratic means of struggle, the only means of emancipation
left is that of the revolutionary struggle. .. .

In the countries in which Fascism has prevailed, the dictatorship
can only be overthrown by a revolution of the people. When they
have gained their victory over Fascism, the revolutionary forces will
not confine themselves to breaking its power; they will destroy the
great capitalist and landowning forces which are its economic
foundation.

By this declaration the whole line of the 1918 Revolution,
of Weimar democracy, is implicitly condemned. In the con-
troversy of those days between Kautsky and Lenin, between the
line that the revolutionary working class in the moment of
victorious overthrow of the old regime must confine itself to
setting up “pure” democracy and then await a majority in
the Constituent Assembly or Parliament before proceeding
further, and the line that the revolutionary working class in

rrr

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 305

the moment of victory must at once use its power, without
waiting for parliamentary majorities, to overthrow capitalism,
the Second International is now compelled, fifteen years late,
in a half-hidden unclear fashion, to admit that Lenin was )
right. The revolutionary working class, it is now declared,
in the moment of overthrow of the old regime must at once,
without waiting for Constituent Assemblies or parliamentary
majorities, proceed to “destroy the great capitalist and
landowning forces.” Excellent. If this were seriously
meant, it would mean the workers’ dictatorship. But in
fact this phrase—thrown in as a sop because in relation to
Germany to-day it would be impossible openly to advocate
the return to the completely exposed Weimar democracy—
is used as a fine-sounding phrase without any attempt to face
what it practically involves, and is made completely meaning-
less by the rest of the resolution. Further—notable precaution
—it is to be applied only to countries where Fascism has al-
ready conquered.
What, therefore, does this line mean in practice? First,
the working class must let itself be bull-dozed by Democracy,
paralysed and divided by reformism, smashed and butchered
by Fascism. Then, when their forces have been thus heavily
broken up and weakened, when Fascism has completely or-
ganised and established without resistance its apparatus of
armed pretorian guards over the disarmed workers, then
the workers are graciously permitted by the Second In-
ternational to carry through the socialist revolution (though
if there were the slightest signs appearing of their succeeding
in this, these gentlemen, as the Karlsbad Manifesto of j
German Social Democracy has made clear, would be the first
to hurry forward to wave again the banner of “pure democ-
racy” and thus endeavour again to save the bourgeoisie \
as in 1918). \
But where “democracy” still exists, the workers must still
tread the fatal path of “pure democracy,” abstaining from any
revolutionary initiative, until Fascism has conquered them.
Such are the final confusions and contortions of the leadership
of the Second International in the present epoch. |
|
|

Against this line the revolutionary working class line of

306 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Communism declares: The workers’ dictatorship is the only
alternative to the capitalist dictatorship, which at present is
increasingly passing from the older “democratic” to Fascist
forms. The workers’ dictatorship is the only guarantee against
the victory of Fascism, against the victory of the capitalist
counter-revolution and the unlimited subjection of the working
class. The path of bourgeois democracy ends in Fascism. The
battle for the workers’ dictatorship must be fought, not merely
after Fascism, but before Fascism, as the sole means to prevent
Fascism. Social Democracy says: First Fascism, then Revolu-
tion. But Communism says: Revolution before Fascism, and
preventing Fascism. Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism only
becomes inevitable if the working class follows the line of
reformism, of trust in the capitalist state, of refusal of the united
front, and thus lets itself be struck down by the class enemy.
But if the working class follows the line of the united front, of
the rising mass struggle, of the building of its Communist Party
and fighting mass organisation to the final victory of the revolu-
tion and establishment of the workers’ dictatorship, then the
working class can defeat and crush Fascism and pass straight
to the socialist order with no costly and shameful Fascist inter-
lude. This is the path to defeat Fascism.

Equally in those countries where the Fascist dictatorship has
won the temporary upper hand, the only path forward and
object of the workers’ struggle requires to be, no longer the
restoration of the old illusory “democracy” which only pre-
pared the way for Fascism, but the workers’ dictatorship and
the establishment of the Soviet regime. The German working-
class revolution is not defeated, despite the temporary retreat
of 1933 made inevitable by the whole role of Social Democracy.
On the contrary, Germany is nearer to the final victory of the
proletarian revolution than any country in the capitalist world.
The fact that the German workers are going through the
extremest hell of Fascism is the reflection of the fact, not that
their movement is more backward, but that it is relatively more
advanced and closer to the revolution.

The liberals and reformists see only the surface completeness
of the Fascist victory. They can never understand the dialec-
tical process. They see the immediate victory of Fascism. But
they do not see the negative side. They do not see the disin-
tegration of all capitalist stability that that represents. They do

a a ere

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 307

not see that the very ferocity of the capitalist attack is the
measure of the growing revolutionary advance. They do not
see the significance of the crushing exposure of the line of
reformism and laying bare of the real battle. They do not see
that the Communist Party of Germany—with unbroken ranks
and organisation, and over one hundred thousand members
active under the most extreme terror, a record without parallel
in working-class history—is in reality stronger than it has ever
been, closer to the winning of the unquestioned leadership of
the majority of the working class, closer to the victory of the
proletarian revolution.

The mournful pessimists and fainthearts who see a long period
of Fascist dictatorship and unshaken reaction in front do not
understand the whole character of the present period of the
destruction of capitalist stability, a period in which rapid
changes throughout the world and gigantic revolutionary
struggles are before us.

The bourgeoisie dream through Fascism to exterminate
Marxism, that is, to exterminate the independent working-
class movement and the fight for Socialism. The attempt is not
anew one. A hundred years ago “all the Powers of old Europe
have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise the spectre of
Communism: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French
Radicals and German police-spies.” The collapse of 1848 was
heralded as the collapse of Socialism. In the decade after the
Commune, on the basis of thirty thousand corpses, Thiers
boasted that “we have heard the last of Socialism.” In the
following decade Bismarck set himself to stamp out Marxism
in Germany with all the power of the most highly organised
Prussian police and bureaucratic system, and after twelve years
had to recognise that he had met his master. Down the long
gallery of the years the ghosts of the past, Cavaignac and
Gallifet, Thiers and Bismarck, Pobiedonostsev and Stolypin,
Kornilov and Kolchak, the hangmen and butchers and jailers
of bourgeois rule, may welcome with a spectral sneer the new
accessions to their ranks, Hitler and Goering and Goebbels,
taking their place alongside Horthy and Tsankov and Dyer and
Chiang Kai-shek.

But the older attempts were against a still early and newly
rising movement. To-day the attempt is against a powerful and
develofed movement on the eve of power. That it will fail

308 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

like every previous attempt and end in ignominious collapse
requires no demonstration.

Wherever, in whatever shape, and under whatever conditions the
class struggle obtains any consistency, it is but natural that members
of our Association should stand in the foreground. The soil out of
which it grows is modern society itself. It cannot be stamped out
by any amount of carnage. To stamp it out, the Government would
have to stamp out the despotism of capital over labour—the con-
dition of their own parasitica] existence.

(Marx, Civil War in France.)

What is in question now is not the inevitable future collapse
of Fascism. What matters now is the speed with which the
international working class can gather its forces and drive back
this offensive, before it has developed further, before it has
developed to the point of world war and the direct attack on the
Soviet Union, can prevent the enormous losses and sacrifices
which a prolongation of this struggle will mean, and can rapidly
transform the present situation into the revolutionary offensive.

The issues which are confronting the world at the present
moment are heavy issues. Fascism in Germany lays bare to
all where capitalist civilisation is inevitably developing, if the
workers’ revolution is delayed. Germany is not a backward
country. Germany is the most advanced, highly organised
capitalist country in the world, the last word, which shows
to other countries the picture of their future development.

What is that picture of the future of capitalism thus revealed?
Barbarism and the return of the Dark Ages; the systematic
destruction of all science and culture; the enthronement of
Catholic Christian, and even pre-Christian, obscurantism,
racial persecution and torture systems; the tendency to a sys-
tem of isolated, self-sufficient warring communities. This is
the typical line of direction today of the most advanced capi-
talism, with the Pope conferring his blessing upon it and dec-
orating the murderer Goering with his Medal of the Holy Year.

Marx and Engels long ago pointed out the inevitable working
out of capitalism in barbarism and decay, if the working-class
revolution should fail to conquer in time. Stage by stage,
through imperialism and its world orgies of brutality and
destruction, through the slaughter of the world war, and to-day
through Fascism, we are tasting the first beginnings of this
alternative.

a —_———_———

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 309

It is time to end this chapter of human history, before we
have to tread this path still further, and to open the new one
throughout the world which has already begun over one-sixth
of the world. Only the working-class revolution can save
humanity, can carry humanity forward, can organise the
enormous powers of production that lie ready to hand.

The working-class movement in the first period after the
war was not yet ready outside Russia for its world historic task.
The organised working-class movement was still soaked with
reformist and pacifist illusions, with opportunism and corrup-
tion in its upper strata. Fascism is not only the punishment of
history for this weakness; Fascism is the weapon of history for
purging and burning out this weakness. In the fires of Fascist
terror and of the fight against Fascism the revolutionary work-
ing class is drawing close its ranks, steeled and hardened and
clear-seeing, for the final struggle; and the revolutionary work-
ing class, thus steeled and strengthened, will rise to the height
of its task, and win and save the world.

Whatever the black hells of suffering and destruction that
have still to be passed through, we face the future with the
certainty and confidence of approaching power, with contempt
for the barbarous antics of the doomed and decaying parasite-
class enemy and its final misshapen progeny of Fascism, with
singing hearts and glowing confidence in the future. “The last
fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race.”

APPENDIX

FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM, JUNE 1934—MARCH 1935

A short note may be added on the development of Fascism and Anti-
Fascism in the second half of 1934 and the beginning of 1935.

The outstanding development in the world of Fascism during this period
has been the signs of the first stages of a gathering crisis of Fascism, and as
the necessary accompaniment of this, the rapid intensification of the drive
to war. The outstanding development in the camp of the opposition to Fascism
has been the advance of the united working class front.

The beginnings of a crisis of Fascism found their first sharp expression in
the coup of June 30, 1934, in Germany, with the shooting of the principal
militant Fascist leaders and the liquidation of the majority of the Storm
Troops. The open concentration of power in the hands of the General Staff
and direct leaders of finance-capital with Hitler as the figurehead, has become
increasingly visible to all. This has not meant, however, the stabilisation of
Fascism. On the contrary, it has gone hand in hand with a steady worsening
of the economic situation, and an increasing drive to war-preparation and an
aggressive foreign policy. This process found further expression in the desperate
murder-coup fiasco against Dollfuss on July 25, in the extreme German-Italian
war-tension with mobilisation of troops, in the murder-coup against Barthou
and King Alexander at Marseilles in October, in the Italian Fascist offensive
against Ethiopia, and in the German Fascist proclamation of conscription in
March 1935.

The war-significance of Fascism, as its inner situation worsens, more and
more openly dominates the European situation. The armaments race of all
the imperialist Powers develops at an accelerating pace. Diplomatic negotia-
tions and preparations of alliances for future war are in full swing. All this
reflects the increasingly menacing situation of capitalism moving to war as the
only path forward from its present dilemmas. Fascism is more and more re-
vealed as an integral part of the preparations for war.

The rising mass opposition to Fascism and to the advance to war, develop-
ing below the surface in the Fascist countries, has been shown most powerfully
in the recent period in the countries not yet conquered by Fascism. It has
shown itself in the setback to the Fascist offensive in France after the February
assault, through the strength of the united front, and in the fall of the Dou-
mergue Government in November, and also in the setback to Mosley in Britain,
as shown by Olympia in June and Hyde Park on September 9, 1934, as well
as by the nominal dissociation of Rothermere from Mosley.

Above all, this period has seen the signal strength of the revolutionary
armed struggle of the Spanish workers against the Fascist offensive.

From all this development it is clear that, while it would be a mistake to
exaggerate the significance of particular events and fluctuations in a long-
drawn and profound world-conflict, there has undoubtedly been during this
period an increase in the inner contradictions and difficulties of Fascism and an
awakening and gathering of the mass forces of resistance to Fascism. At the
same time the forms of direct Fascism have gone forward in a number of

310

APPENDIX 31r

smaller states, and the process of fascisation has advanced in varying degree
in all the major imperialist states. With the development of the war situation
the battle is moving to a new intensity.

The decisive turning-point which heralded the opening of this new phase of
gathering inner contradictions of Fascism was constituted by the events of
June 30 in Germany, which marked a transformation of international signifi-
cance. The leaders of the fighting forces of German Fascism, the principal
leaders of the Storm Troops, within fifteen months of the accession of Fascism
to power had to be shot down by the leader of German Fascism, Hitler, as
the representative and agent of the demands of German Finance-Capital and
of its direct instrument, the Reichswehr. The majority of the Storm Troops
had to be liquidated. We see here the classic demonstration of the process
of Fascism after power, the alienation and disillusionment of the petit-bourgeois
and semi-proletarian elements which were made the tools and dupes of Finance-
Capital and now find all their aspirations thwarted with the denial of “the
second revolution,” the consequent narrowing of the social basis of the Fascist
regime, and the ever more open demonstration of its real character as the
terrorist dictatorship of Finance-Capital. While a warning must again be
uttered against exaggerating the tempo of development and rate of growth
of mass opposition, it is evident that a single chain unites the phases of the
factory elections in the spring of 1934, with their unfavourable results for
the Nazis, the intensive campaign against the “critics and carpers,” the alleged
“revolt” and its bloody suppression on June 30, and the results of the plebiscite
in August, when (after the declaration of Goebbels on the eve of the poll
that the loss of a single vote in comparison with the previous November would
be a disaster) the direct No vote rose from 2.1 millions in November, 1933, to
43 millions in August, 1934, and reached an average of 20 per cent. in the
main industrial towns. Parallel with this process has gone forward the steadily
worsening economic situation, the mounting adverse trade balance in place of
the previous exports surplus, the sharp cutting down of imports of essential
raw materials, and tightening organisation on a war basis of rationing and
hardship (reflected in the tone of Hitler’s Biickerberg speech of September 30,
1934: “Never will they bring us to our knees,” “if the worst comes to the
worst,” etc.) The whole concentration of Nazi policy becomes more and more
openly directed to the most intensive preparation of war as the sole path
forward.

On the other side, the examples of Germany and Austria have led to a
widespread awakening of working class and general popular opposition to
Fascism in all countries; and this has led to a rapid advance of the snited
working class front, and, in particular, the united front of the Socialist and
Communist Parties, against the fascist and war menace in a number of leading
countries. This extending development of the united working class front is
the most important and the most hopeful development of 1934. In this
advance the French working class has led the way. The united front pact
of the French Socialist Party and of the French Communist Party was finally
signed on July 27, 1934; and the powerful influence of this common front is
stimulating and mobilising the entire working class, and spreading confidence
and fighting spirit, has been the decisive factor in delaying the planned rapid
offensive of Fascism in France during 1934. With the fall of the Doumergue-
Tardieu Cabinet of National Concentration in November, with the combined
demand of all the bourgeois forces for anti-democratic constitutional changes,
and with the Fascist groupings preparing renewed offensives, heavy tests are
now in front for the fighting strength of the united working class in France.

At the same time in Austria the lessons of the February battles have produced
a far-reaching transformation in the working class. The illegal Communist
Party has advanced to the position of a mass party with the absorption of the

312 APPENDIX

left Social Democratic and Schutzbund elements, many organisations in leading
working-class districts coming over en bloc.

The Revolutionary Socialist Committees, composed of former Social Demo-
cratic elements and later setting up the United Socialist Party, have maintained
the old forms and contact with the emigrant leadership and with the Second
International but have proclaimed the aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat
and denounced the old “democratic and reformist illusions” (“The Fascist
dictatorship in Austria has dispelled all democratic and reformist illusions
among the workers’—letter of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary
Socialists of Vienna to Bauer and to the Second International on May 20,
1934). In July a united front was established by the Communist Party, the
Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, and the Com-
mittee of Action of the Schutzbund, with a joint manifesto for “the revolu-
tionary dictatorship of the working class” and for “a united revolutionary class
party of the Austrian proletariat.”

The united front of the Socialist and Communist Parties was also established
in Italy, in the Saar and (in September) in Spain. Among the working class
youth organisations in all countries the advance of the united front was even
more marked.

On the other hand, the British Labour Party and a number of other Social
Democratic Parties, notably the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Belgian, the
Swiss and the Czecho-Slovak, actively opposed the united front and even devel-
oped extended disciplinary measures to prevent its realisation. In October,
1934, the Communist International approached the Second International for
common action in support of the Spanish workers. A meeting took place
between the representatives of the two Internationals in October. In Novem-
ber, however, the Executive of the Second International at Paris, after a
four-days’ debate, by a narrow majority rejected the proposal of the united
front and broke off negotiations. Nevertheless, the strength of the united
front movement in a number of leading countries was such that the ban of
the Second International on the united front for its separate sections had to
be lifted; and a minority declaration of seven parties was issued in support
of the united front.

Thus alongside the gathering crisis of Fascism and of capitalist politics has
developed a gathering crisis of Social Democracy and of the Second Interna-
tional. While the British Labour Party, the strongest section of the Second
International, had at its Southport Conference in October 1934 passed draco-
nian decisions against any form of united front or even “loose association”
with Communism, and expressed strong disapproval of the international united
front negotiations, the French Socialist Party was already a partner in a
united front with the Communist Party, and the Spanish Socialist Party,
equally a section of the Second International, had not only reached a united
front with the Communist Party, but was taking direct part in armed civil
war under the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This extreme and extending division and disparateness of policies among the
parties of the Second International is a symptom of the profound process of
transformation going forward among the Social Democratic workers under
the influence of the object-lesson of Fascism. The further development of this
situation in the international working-class movement is of critical importance.

The Spanish revolutionary mass struggle, reaching in October 1934, to the
stage of open armed struggle against the advancing Fascist offensive of the
combined reactionary clerical-militarist-landlord-bourgeois forces, and in the
province of Asturias reaching to the formation of Soviets, has immeasurably
raised the whole international working-class movement, even more than the
battles of Vienna in February. It has revealed a far higher degree of mass-
participation and unity, and of consciousness of revolutionary aim, even though

APPENDIX 313

not yet reaching the conditions of organisation and leadership for final victory.
The formation of the Soviet regime in Asturias at the outset of the struggle,
and the prolonged and tenacious resistance against all the forces of the Spanish
Government, reaches a point of revolutionary struggle unequalled in Western
Europe since the days of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet Republics in 1919.
The lesson endeavoured to be drawn by the reformists, of the inevitable failure
of armed struggle against the military resources of modern governments, is the
exact opposite of the reality; for the prolonged resistance of the workers of
Asturias, facing alone the entire forces of the Spanish Government and its
African levies, has abundantly shown that, if the workers of the other principal
regions, and especially Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, had been fighting
at the same time, with equal tenacity and leadership, the forces of the Govern-
ment would have been powerless to cope with the situation, and a Soviet
Spain would have been already won. The Spanish revolutionary struggle at
the end of 1934, following on Vienna at the beginning, is the signal of the
future in Europe.

But the heaviest struggles are still in front. In the face of the present
international situation of the increasing difficulties, desperation and discrediting
of Fascism, the weakening of its mass basis in the countries where it has won
power, and the gathering of mass forces of resistance in the countries where
it has not yet won power, a new illusion has begun to be widely spread in
Liberal and Social Democratic circles—the illusion of the retreat of Fascism.
It is said that Fascism has passed its zenith, is on the downgrade, that the
heaviest danger of Fascism is passing. The extreme pessimistic defeatism of
a year and a half ago is giving place to a no less baseless and illusory optimistic
complacency. A year ago the prophecies were all of an “epoch of Fascism”
lasting for decades. To-day a Citrine can declare that “dictatorship in every
land has passed its peak; there was an appearance of stability about the
regime in Germany, but he was satisfied that even there a change would
gradually but surely come, and that ultimately the democratic rights of the
people would assert themselves” (speech to the International Clothing Workers’
Conference, August, 1934).

Underlying this outlook of a section of the Social Democratic leadership is
undoubtedly the belief that Fascism, faced with increasing internal difficulties
and mass discontent, may yet be compelled to turn to Social Democracy for
assistance, and that a renewed sphere of permitted activity may open out for
the Social Democratic and trade union leadership within Fascism (as was
already hoped for and sought by German Social Democracy in the initial
period of the Hitler regime by the May 17 vote for Hitler and the trade
union bureaucracy’s courting of the Nazis). Nor are signs of this possibility
lacking. The well-informed Manchester Guardian special correspondent (al-
ways in close touch with Social Democratic circles) reported in August that
Hitler, in view of the failure of the Labour Front and the Nazi factory
cells to win the support of the workers, had approached former Social Demo-
cratic leaders with a view to the formation of “non-political trade unions”;
the proposal had been referred to the Executive at Prague, and “Wels was in
favour of further negotiations” (the subsequent formal denial issued by Wels,
to the effect that he had not met any representative of Hitler—the intermediary
was in fact a Social Democrat—left the essence of the Manchester Guardian
report unrefuted). Similarly may be noted Bauer’s suggestion in the August
Kampf that the Schuschnigg Clerico-Fascist Government might extend its basis
to the left by “an understanding with the working class.” In Italy during
the same period Mussolini made his approach to the former Socialist leaders,
Caldara and Schiavi, for their collaboration and even for the issue of a per-
mitted “Socialist” journal in Milan. These are only signs so far; but the
possibility is not excluded that Fascism in difficulties may turn to the collabora-

314 APPENDIX

tion of a section of the Social Democratic and old trade union leadership (as
was done by De Rivera in Spain, by Pilsudski in Poland, by Bulgarian Fas-
cism, etc.).

These hopes of a section of the old Social Democratic leadership, however,
bear no relation to the real process of transformation taking place in the main
body of the Social] Democratic workers and rapid advance to militant struggle
and working class unity.

No illusion could be more dangerous than the illusion that Fascism can
be in retreat without a decisive struggle, or that the menace of Fascism can
ever be finally overcome save by the working-class revolution and the establish-
ment of the working-class dictatorship. It is equally necessary to fight the
illusion of the inevitability of Fascism, or of the inevitable long-term power
of Fascism in the countries where it has won power, as it is necessary to fight
the illusion that a temporary fluctuation can mean the retreat and ultimate
disappearance of Fascism, or disappearance of the menace of Fascism in the
countries where it has not yet conquered, without a decisive revolutionary
struggle. On the contrary, the greater the difficulties of Fascism, the more
desperate and ruthless will be its fight for existence. The massing of the
working-class united front does not yet mean the defeat of Fascism; it means
only the massing of the forces for the struggle against Fascism and for the
final revoutionary struggle.

In particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist
forms of organisation and preparation of war within each country, becomes
the more and more dominant character of the present stage.

The supreme task now is to build up the widest United Front against
Fascism and War. Widespread anti-Fascist and anti-war feeling exists on all
sides. But the essential need is organisation. The resistance to the united front
must be overcome. No separate and sectional interests can be allowed to stand

in the way of this. The all-inclusive united working-class front, drawing in
its wake the mass of the petit-bourgeois and unorganised elements, and on
this basis establishing a broad anti-fascist popular front, requires to be built
up in every country. Only the widest common front can defeat Fascism. And
for the victory of the struggle it is essential to understand the true character
of the issues, the final necessity of the revolutionary alternative, which can
alone defeat Fascism and war by the victory of the socialist revolution.

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