How Fascists Tims X00, Power

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erly that "History teaches ons; but it has no pupils." was looking to be proved ing. the • recent ugly rise in the rity of extreme right wing and ist organisations-from the ional Front which got nearly a ! of the vote in some GLC itituencies three weeks ago to National Association of dom and the Self Help group ch have given their support to management in the hotels pmes a pupil and learns the bry of fascism.

That is why Socialist Press is fishing a series of articles on ism in the twenty years which lup to the Second World • War. • first article on Italy will be pwed by three others-on many, on Spain and Portugal. finally on Britain.

Throughout the advanced capitI countries the economic and itical crises which followed the * World War spawned fascist rements.

The form and fate of these cements varied: in Italy and ¡many fascist parties came to ver: in other countries like itugal and Spain other extreme It wing forces seized power and med themselves with the fascists; here, in Britain and France, instance, the fascists, though rificant, never came close to her directly.

But in all cases the central itures of fascism were similar: its Is base as a mass movement was petty bourgeoisie-state bureaucrats, shopkeepers, "professionals" and some intellectuals; its tactics were violence against the workers' movement and often racialism; its words were spiced with anti-capitalism but when in power it acted ruthlessly in the interests of big business from which it received its material support; while it followed a partly parliamentary road to power, its decisive strength lay in physical control of the streets and its ability physically to destroy the organisations of the labour movement.

NEW PHENOMENON Fascism was a new phenomenon a feature of the epoch of capitalist decline, a response to increasing difficulty of exercising capitalist rule through the "democratic" parliamentary methods which capitalisin had itself created.

Fascism in power did not change the ruling class. Fascism, like parliamentary democracy, was capitalist rule. But if the ruling class remained the same, the relation of all the classes under fascism was profoundly altered.

Fascism was a new type of authoritarianism which, as Trotsky put it in What Next?, "has for its basic and only task the razing to their foundations of all institutions of proletarian democracy" , that is the trade unions, political parties, clubs and co-operatives which the workers had built up in times of bourgeois democracy. And in order to destroy all workers organisations it was necessary for fascism also to destroy all the political organisations of bourgeois society including those of the bourgeoisie itself.

The Social Democracy, Trotsky argued, though it bore the prime responsibility for the rise of fascism was nonetheless completely incompatible with fascism.

This analysis formed the foundation of the policy which Trotsky consistently urged the Communists to pursue to defeat fascism-the united front of workers' organisations.

Ultimately fascism could only be eradicated by proletarian revolution but immediately, fascism could be obstructed from coming to power by the united action of the whole working class.

Both consistency and the profundity of Trotsky's analysis of fascism stands in the sharpest possible contrast to that of the Third International after its Stalinist degeneration.

Stalin took • the connection between the rise of the proletarian revolutionary movement and the growth of fascism to mean that the second was simply a mechanical reflection of the first. Failing completely to foresee the ruthless counter-revolution which fascist power would unleash, the Third International almost welcomed fascism as a sign that the inevitable socialist revolution was round the corner.

To Stalin, the fact that the capitalist class rested in turn on the social democracy and on the fascists came to mean that the social democracy was no more than the 'moderate wing of fascism' , the "social Fascists" • The Stalinists argued that it was necessary to destroy social democracy before destroying fascism.

Through such sectarian policies the Stalinists, refusing all united fronts with other workers' organisations, helped to bring fascism to power. When the enormity oi the disaster made it impossible to maintain this catastrophic ultralett position, then Stalin shifted in 1935 to a right-wing policy of 'anti'ascist" alliances in popular tront vith the parties of the capitalist Class.

Having contributed to the annihilation of workers' democracy in Germany, the Stalinists became the defenders of bourgeois democracy in Spain. In both cases the Stalinists helped to sell the workers into the most appalling repression.

The lessons of fascism, the lessons of social democracy and the lessons of Stalinism must be learned together. Workers ocru the $.50

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rites-shows how important it is ! that the labour movement