Neither fascism, nor populism, nor democracy

Below we publish correspondence between the ICC and a comrade who has written to us from the Netherlands. We welcome his letter and especially the initiative to share his disagreements on an essential political question: the relationship between fascism, populism and democracy. The importance of this question today lies in the fact that the international situation is marked by the rise of populism, by a widespread tendency to equate it with the fascism of the 1930s, and by the calls to defend democracy that this provokes. This is a vital issue for the proletariat because the bourgeoisie is fully exploiting and ideologically instrumentalising this situation to mystify the working class and lead it onto a false terrain, allowing it to exonerate and protect its system: capitalism. This is particularly the case in the United States, where Trump's policies are presented as a ‘threat to democracy’, or in Germany, where the inexorable rise of the AfD is presented as a new ‘fascist threat’. Faced with these dangers, the “liberal” factions of the bourgeoisie and, above all, the left wing of capital are calling for significant mobilisations to ‘defend democratic institutions’. The enemy is no longer capitalism but populism or ‘new fascism’.

In our response, we want to highlight not only how different the context is today from the 1930s and the era of fascism, but also how the mystification of the ‘defence of democracy’ has always been a formidable weapon of the bourgeoisie to lead the working class to defeat. Our response aims above all to provide some initial answers, to encourage debate and reflection on this subject in order to broaden and deepen the discussion. However, it needs to be extended and enriched by further debate and reading. We encourage all comrades who wish to do so to write to us and raise any questions that arise within the proletariat, as this comrade from the Netherlands has done.

Our reader’s letter

Dear comrades,

This is a response to the article The bourgeoisie is trying to lure the working class into the trap of anti-fascism.

In general, I read your paper with great approval. I am particularly impressed by your internationalism. International solidarity should be very important to the left, rather than nationalism. The above-mentioned article appealed to me less.

Here is my response to your article

It is very important to note that modern fascism is not fundamentally different from old fascism. Fascism differs fundamentally from pre-9/11 liberalism. Fascism once again fanatically supports capitalism and, moreover, longs for a return to the pre-Enlightenment era. The repression of protest is increasing sharply. Rights that have been acquired are being abolished at a rapid pace. This applies to the rights of workers. It also applies to the rights of a large number of social groups, from refugees to women. This is partly intended to sow division among workers. We should therefore fight to preserve and, preferably, expand all acquired rights. In doing so, countering division among workers is an important point.

Now, a few comments on parts of the article.

You claim that what I call the ‘parliamentary left’ is firmly opposed to fascism. The opposite is true. Fascism is seen as harmless and is usually not mentioned, but referred to as ‘populism,’ as if it were something belonging to the common people. Unfortunately, this is also done in your article.

You rightly argue that fascism was a very effective means of crushing the proletariat. Isn't that still the case today? The fact that there is less protest from the proletariat now than 100 years ago is not a significant difference.

The ‘parliamentary left’ does indeed argue that the choice is between fascism and the parliamentary system. Fighting against fascism certainly does not mean agreeing with the parliamentary system. You cannot stop fascism by voting once every four years. Moreover, in the (recent) past, the parliamentary left has repeatedly agreed to severe cuts and/or opposed protests against them. Extra-parliamentary actions are essential to combat fascism and achieve social change.

You consider ‘all kinds of fragmented demands’ from ‘the LGBTQ movement to charities’ to be ‘all of a bourgeois ideological nature’. It seems to me that you are overlooking the diversity of these movements. Some activists are significantly more radical than others. It is important to support these groups' struggle against the restriction of their rights. How this should be done is, of course, a matter of discussion.

Hopefully, you will consider this a contribution to the much-needed discussion.

With fraternal greetings,

R. V., Amsterdam

 

Our response

Dear comrade R.

Thank you for your enthusiastic assessment of the ICC press. In your letter, you raise several important points, but, in this response, we would like to focus on the political question of fascism, populism and democracy. You write: "It is very important to note that modern fascism is not fundamentally different from old fascism. Fascism is not generally referred to as such, but under the name of “populism”, as it were something belonging to the common people "

This is an important position to discuss because it is often expressed in debates and texts about the populist tidal wave. The ICC does not share this view, for two reasons:

- the current social context, and more specifically the situation of the working class, is in no way comparable to that of the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy in the 1930s;

- the current phenomenon of populism is not comparable to fascism, but rather expresses the political and ideological putrefaction of a bourgeoisie that no longer has any perspective to guide society.

Let us explain[1]:

Fascism is a historical product, a political current that emerged during the counter-revolutionary period (the 1920s and 1930s), after the working class in Europe had been defeated ideologically and physically. First there was the bloody failure of the revolution in Germany (1919-1923), notably with the crushing of the proletarian uprising in Berlin, massacred by the Freikorps under the impetus and orders of the treacherous Social Democratic Party (SPD), a party which, by voting for war credits and supporting the Sacred Union for the slaughter of the First World War, had gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie. Then came the failure of the Russian Revolution, isolated by the failure of the world revolution to spread, weakened by a terrible civil war and where the counter-revolution was embodied by the Bolshevik Party itself under the leadership of Stalin (1917-1927). It was this physical and ideological crushing of the battalions at the forefront of the global revolutionary movement and the assassination of the vanguard of the communist movement in these countries (1919-1923) that paved the way for the advent of fascism. In other words, fascism (like Stalinism, for that matter) merely confirmed the heavy defeat of the proletariat, which once again paved the way for war between imperialist powers. From this point of view, the advent of fascist regimes met the needs of national capital: it was necessary to concentrate all power within the state, accelerate the war economy, and militarise labour. In Western European countries where the working class had not been defeated, it was in the name of ‘anti-fascism’ that the proletariat was mobilised by the left wing of capital to defend democracy and enlisted for war.

In short, fascism is not the cause but the product of the crushing physical and ideological defeat of the working class orchestrated by social democracy, Stalinism and other ‘democratic forces’, fraternally united within the ‘popular fronts’. Furthermore, the context of class struggle today is fundamentally different from that of the 1930s. At present, the working class in the world's major countries has not been defeated either physically or ideologically. On the contrary, since 2022, various important struggles indicate that it is striving to recover its class identity, and attempts to mobilise and divide workers behind populist campaigns or, conversely, behind campaigns to defend democratic institutions, are aimed precisely at breaking this proletarian dynamic.

The use of the word ‘populism’ is debatable, but whatever name we give to this phenomenon, it differs fundamentally from fascism. Unlike fascism, it is not the product of a defeated working class, but of the growing contradictions within capitalist society, which make rivalry within the bourgeoisie increasingly uncontrollable and consequently lead to a growing loss of control over the political apparatus. Populism is therefore a pure product of the profound disintegration and decay of capitalist society. Due to the absence of any meaningful perspective for society, “creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of ‘every man for himself’”. (Theses on decomposition)

As a result, in many cases, current elections do not lead to the appointment of a bourgeois faction capable of representing the general interests of national capital in the best possible way, but to the appointment of factions that defend their own interests, often in contradiction to overall national interests.

Thus, populist movements find support among the ‘people,’ victims of the economic and financial crisis, who feel abandoned by the political establishment, betrayed by the left-wing media, and threatened by the influx of immigrants. These are often people from the lower petty bourgeoisie, but also from more marginalised working-class backgrounds in areas that were once heavily industrialised. In 2016, Trump's campaign "won the support it won from non-college educated whites, and especially from workers in the ‘Rust Belt’, the new industrial deserts who voted for Trump as a protest against the established political order, personified in the so-called ‘metropolitan liberal elite’. (…) Their vote was above all a vote against – against the growing inequality of wealth, against a system which they felt has deprived them and their children of any future." (President Trump: symbol of a dying social system).

However, the bourgeoisie is using and exploiting this situation ideologically by attempting to draw the working class into a battle between populist vandals and defenders of democratic principles, thereby preserving its capitalist system from any challenge. The left in particular reacts to populism by readily brandishing the spectre of fascism and the banner of ‘defending democracy’ in order to rally as many workers as possible. However, this left-wing opposition to populism is just as much a part of the bourgeoisie and attacks workers' working and living conditions just as much as all the other parties and, as you yourself write, ‘has repeatedly approved drastic austerity measures in the (recent) past’. Workers must therefore refuse to follow this path and under no circumstances allow themselves to be divided into ‘populist’ and ‘democratic’ workers.

While you seem to reject parliamentary activity in your letter (“Fighting against fascism certainly does not mean agreeing with the parliamentary system”), at the same time, nothing in your letter indicates that you reject democracy, which, like dictatorship, despotism and autocracy, is also a political expression of the dictatorship of capital. This is, in fact, the central theme of the article you criticise. Let us be clear, this question is vital and central to the proletariat. It is indeed the campaigns for the defence of democracy that will disarm the working class and lead to defeat by preparing the mobilisation for a stronger regime in preparation for war if we are not careful and do not fight against being misled by the democratic myth. Workers must not allow themselves to be drawn into ‘campaigns to defend the democratic state.’ They must wage the struggle on their own class terrain, independently of the bourgeois parties.

Finally, in your letter, you also point to a phenomenon that suggests a similarity with the emergence of fascism in the 1930s: “The repression of protest is increasing sharply”. Admittedly, this is also the case with other phenomena such as the hunt for migrants and their confinement in camps, the exclusion of certain sectors of the population, the search for scapegoats, the use of blackmail, threats, and reprisals, etc. But all these phenomena are far from being specific to fascism: they were already present in Stalinist countries such as China, in ‘strong democratic’ regimes (sic) such as Russia, Turkey and Pakistan, for example, and they are becoming increasingly widespread in countries that are ‘champions of democracy’. Above all, the explosion of these phenomena is a characteristic manifestation of the generalisation of barbarism that characterises society's current plunge into the period of decomposition of decadent capitalism.

ICC

 

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[1] For a more complete argument see our text online Is there a danger of fascism today? , and, in French, our pamphlet Fascisme & démocratie deux expressions de la dictature du capital.