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Date Posted: 16:52:38 06/24/99 Thu
Author: Per Rasmussen
Subject: The Marxist-Leninist Theory of Fascism

The Marxist-Leninist Theory of Fascism
David Lethbridge

Marxist-Leninists, and the world communist movement as a whole, pay particular attention to fascism because fascism's greatest danger is to the working class, their organizations, and their political parties. Any successful resistance to fascism, in all its forms, requires a theory based firmly in the experience of the working class struggle.

The classic definition of fascism in power was presented by Georgi Dimitrov at the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935: "Fascism is the open dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and imperialist elements of the financial oligarchy." It should be noted, right from the outset, that Dimitrov speaks of "reactionary elements," and the correct implication is that there must be - and are - elements of the state which are not so reactionary, which we can term "relatively progressive elements."

If we look for the class base of fascism, we find a complex diversity. Essentially, fascist and quasi-fascist groups spring up within the economic contradictions that flow from the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. The petit-bourgeoisie, the middle class and all intermediate strata, find themselves increasingly ground between the two major contending classes. Many members of the middle class fall into the working class, or find themselves impoverished, but continue to retain the ideology of their class, which is almost identical to that of the most reactionary circles within the ruling class.

It is primarily the urban middle class, the rural petit-bourgeoisie, and alienated members of the urban and rural working class that provides the mass base for fascism. It is these elements that provide the soil of fascism, and should a single fascist leader emerge from the many fascist groups that come into existence, this leader, and the organization that supports him, will be invited into power. But this invitation occurs only under conditions of severe economic stress within capitalism. Once in power, fascism supports big business and acts as its agent to crush the working class and all its independent organizations.

It is important to recognize that fascist groups have their origin outside the State. They are not created by the State, and can arise outside the immediate needs of the capitalist class. Certainly fascist groups share the ideology of the most reactionary circles of the ruling class, and therefore some members of the wealthy ruling class may be early members or financial supporters. It is out of this confluence of ideological similarity that fascism necessarily grows from inside capitalist imperialism and brings forward in more extreme and violent form the anti-working class, anti-communist, anti-union, anti-semitic, racist, homophobic, and sexist ideology which is the common currency of the most reactionary circles of capitalism itself. Because of its class basis within the middle strata, fascism's demagogy is aimed not only at denouncing communism - the most progressive force within the working class - but also initially at big business; a position which is given up as soon as it becomes financed by substantial circles within the ruling class.

Fascism, then, does not come into power by any simple decision of the financial oligarchy, but through a dual struggle. On the one hand, fascism wages an open attack against the working class and its political parties, and at the same time against the bourgeois political parties. On the other hand, the reactionary state elements engage in struggle with the relatively progressive state elements over the open support of fascism. With the success of the struggle by the reactionary state elements within the ruling class, fascism is brought into power.

The role of the social-democratic political parties is crucial in this process. Monopoly capitalism would prefer to rule through bourgeois democracy. Bourgeois democracy stabilizes its rule, and appeals during periods of relative economic stability, to both reactionary and relatively progressive elements in the ruling class and in the state apparatus. The function of social-democracy under such conditions, is to anchor bourgeois rule and bourgeois ideology firmly within the working class and the trade union movement. As such, it is indispensable to capitalism. Through its class-collaboration and reformism, and by dispensing lies about the nature of capitalist democracy, it not only keeps capitalism in power, but is even able to wring some concessions from the ruling class. In order to carry out its functions, social-democracy uses every opportunity to betray and destroy the working class revolution.

The example of Denmark from 1945 to 1972 provides a concrete illustration. In that country, the Social-Democratic Party, and the labor union apparatus affiliated with it, developed an intelligence network, spied on communist union members, electronically bugged them, and passed the information on to both the official Danish intelligence service, and American CIA operatives. As a reward, many of these Social-Democratic spies were offered high-ranking jobs within the civil service.

Even so, when social-democracy can no longer provide its services to capitalism, that is to say when economic conditions become so critical that capitalism takes back its concessions and exploitation increases, the people lose faith in social democracy. Social democracy can no longer operate as capitalism's agent within the working class. Under these new conditions, the ruling class will shift its support increasingly towards fascism, as happened historically, for example, in Italy, Austria, and Germany.

Much of the preceding analysis is true of fascism in general but, as Dimitrov points out, fascism will differ from country to country based on historical, national, social, and economic specifics, as well as on the international situation and balance of forces existing at the time.

There is an obvious necessity then, flowing from Dimitrov's analysis, of an independent study of neo-fascism and neo-fascist ideology in its concrete forms.

In the present period, particularly in North America, there are both similarities and differences from the fascism of the classic period. As Marxists as diverse as Dimitrov, Palme Dutt, and Trotsky pointed out, fascism grows and builds when a wave of revolutionary struggle has peaked without succeeding in gaining power, and then begins to collapse. The examples of Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Spain, in the 1920s and 1930s bear out such an analysis.

In the present period, the civil rights struggle, the struggle against the US incursion into Vietnam, and the wave of revolutionary uprisings between the early 1960s and 1975, collapsed before state power could be seized. Immediately, these events were followed by a massive increase in both the number and the membership of fascist groups. And again in 1990, with the general collapse of the Left, fascist groups generated massive new growth.

The ideology of the neo-fascist groups that arose in the mid-1970s and 1990s differs little from its earlier classic form. It emanates from the same class basis and continues to reflect the ideology of the most reactionary ruling elements. At the core of fascism today, as in the past, is anti-communism, although this factor is consistently ignored by conservative anti-racist groups. Anti-communism is the ideological glue that unites the ruling class, the middle class, fascist organizations, and all reactionary movements and elements.

Moreover, in the present period, due to intense state ideological pressure and nakedly repressive measures, anti-communism is unfortunately common throughout much of the working class itself, especially in North America. The presence of anti-communist ideology within the working class has the effect of making the working class more vulnerable to fascism, and provides a basis through which members of the working class - especially its most alienated sectors - can be more easily recruited to fascism.

This anti-communism is no pervasive that among the most extreme fascist circles, even conservatives and ultra-conservatives are referred to as communists. For example, Eustace Mullins, a rabidly pro-fascist author, claims that the US Democratic Party is controlled by Stalinists, while the Republicans are controlled by the Trotskyists! It is common to see claims that the international banking system is promoting communism, or that the imperialist governments of the US and Canada are under the control of a world-wide communist conspiracy. The John Birch Society was claiming in the late 1960s that Canada was already a communist country.

So, while anti-communism is the ideological thread that unites the capitalist ruling class with fascists, reactionaries, and conservatives, as well as liberals and social-democrats, there is nevertheless also an ideology that is more specific to fascism, and this we can perhaps call "biological-nationalism."

In this fascist ideology, the nation is viewed as essentially a racial entity. Biologically, individuals are seen as responding to instinctive forces organically linking them to the racial group. This in turn joins itself to mystical notions of God-created racial nations possessing both spiritual and biological-racial imperatives. Within this ideology, the so-called "White Race" is proclaimed as both biologically and spiritually superior. Fascism as geopolitics expresses itself in the demand for a racially-pure living space, for a biological-spiritual nation.

This core ideology expresses itself at one and the same time as racist, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, reactionary, traditionalist, ultra-patriotic, anti-internationalist, opposed to inter-racial marriage and the so-called "mingling of the races," and as both homophobic and against women's abortion rights, on grounds that the latter are in opposition to the biological-racial-spiritual imperative.

We can see the direct or indirect reflection of this ideology in every neo-fascist or ultra-reactionary organization, from Ron Gostick's Canadian League of Rights, to Doug Christie's Western Canada Concept, to Paul Fromm's anti-immigrant organizations, to the Heritage Front, to Aryan Nations attempt to build a white's only Nazi homeland.

Another, and significant, aspect of contemporary neo-fascism, as opposed to its classic period, is that neo-fascism tends to express the most extreme forms of fascism itself: it bases itself much more on Nazi fascism than, say, Italian fascism, in terms of its symbols, its regalia, its history, and its ideology. Partly because of this, neo-fascism is at pains to deny the reality of the Nazi Holocaust, and attempts to relativize the all-too-obvious crimes of fascism as nothing more than the usual practice of government or of war. Furthermore, neo-fascism benefits from the underground networks of support and finance set up by post-war Nazis and fascists, and which remain in operation.

As Marxist-Leninists, we recognize that the problem of neo-fascism is not limited to fascist organizations, but includes fascist tendencies within the capitalist state itself. Since fascism is a direct product of capitalism in crisis, fascist tendencies will always exist within the capitalist state. Their precise expression, however, and the degree of fascism exercised by the State itself requires constant monitoring and analysis, and must inform our own strategy and political practice.

For reasons of its own, the capitalist state today prefers the illusion of bourgeois liberal democracy. Since the on-going economic crisis of capitalism is not severe enough to warrant inviting fascism into power, the ruling circles are unlikely to make such a move in the near future.

Instead, the capitalist state, and especially the US state, prefers to export fascism to other countries, to finance, prop up and maintain fascism outside its own borders. The examples range from Franco's Spain, to Greece during the time of the Colonels, to Stroessner's Paraguay, to Pinochet's Chile, to Fujimori's Peru, and to any number of other cases. Indeed, one year after annihilating Allende's left-democratic government, and putting Pinochet into power, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was meeting with the leadership of Italy's neo-fascist party, the MSI, to discuss mutual strategy should the Communists come to power in the Italian elections. It has been perfectly clear since fascism emerged in the 1920s, and right up to the present, that capitalism is entirely comfortable with - its most favored child.

Domestically, fascist tendencies within the capitalist state range from the active repression and outright murder of progressive leaders, to political frame-ups, to the jailing of progressive leaders, to the privatization of the prison system, to the repression of active dissent, to the criminalization or decertification of the Communist Party, to an endless stream of acts of police brutality.

Within this context, it is also important to speak of trends within the capitalist state that may well bring ultra-reactionary forces into government that begin to approach the ideology and policy of fascism. In the United States, the fact that Republican Trent Lott, the Senate Majority leader, as well as a number of state governors and elected representatives, are members of white supremacist and neo-Confederate organizations, having themselves ties to international fascism, is a matter of the gravest concern.

In Canada, the reactionary Reform Party continues to grow and might conceivably form the next government. Even though they must necessarily downplay the overt racism that characterized its early phase in order to gain power, their demagogic positions on First Nations, homosexuality, abortion, immigration, and secular education, as well as their anti-intellectualism, their law-and-order policies, and their attempts to whip up support for the death penalty, require an all-out effort on the part of progressives to defeat them.

The fact that Reform's core support lies within Christian fundamentalism, is not only an indication of the specific nature of the danger that they pose, but ought to guide any strategy we might seek to employ in order to neutralize and destroy the Reform Party as a political force.

Under these conditions of exported fascism and tendencies towards fascism within the capitalist state, it is necessary to address what appears to be a paradox. Why does the capitalist state, albeit infrequently, arrest white supremacists and fascists? Why do they put laws on the books criminalizing hate propaganda, even if they one rarely press charges?

The issue is really quite simple. For the capitalist ruling circles there is only one question. Does an organization threaten or not threaten state power and stability? Only on that basis is an organization suppressed, or ignored, or encouraged. The far right is a useful tool for capitalism, particularly for its most reactionary circles. But, in the present conjuncture, when fascism is not yet required in the capitalist heartland, fascist excesses cause disruption within the well-oiled machinery of class exploitation, and so there must be at least the appearance of discipline and punishment, no matter how mild or occasional.

What is the Marxist-Leninist strategy of resistance?

At the level of theory, we require an on-going tactical analysis of the changes and shifts in the relations of strength of all the various forces involved. These forces include:

1 - Fascist organizations
2 - Quasi-fascist and reactionary organizations
3 - Reactionary political parties
4 - Social-Democratic political parties
5 - Trade Unions
6 - The Communist Party
7 - Other progressive forces and movements
8 - Reactionary elements of the State apparatus
9 - Relatively progressive elements of the State apparatus
10 - Shifts of ideology, sentiment, and activity within the various social classes

The complexity of such a multi-faceted analysis - no matter how difficult - is an inescapable task if we are to defeat both the proliferating fascist organizations, and fascist tendencies within the bourgeois-capitalist state itself.

In terms of strategy and practice, the relatively progressive elements within the state are useless after fascism has been invited into power. But it is the existence of these "relatively progressive elements" within the state that permits a form of leverage for the anti-fascist struggle before fascism succeeds. These progressive elements can be lobbied. Pressure can be applied on them to fulfill and enforce legislation protecting labor, political, and basic human rights. Certainly, such pressure cannot be applied naively or blindly, or with any actual faith in bourgeois democracy as such. But such pressure can indeed provide one tactic among many in a broad anti-fascist strategy.

The fundamental task, however, for Marxist-Leninists is to organize a mass movement from below. This must involve the organization of a mass communist movement, and the building of a united front with all other working class organizations, political parties, and movements. But a united front by itself is insufficient under the present conjuncture of forces. The Left is weaker than it has been since the turn of the century. Given that reality, a popular front with democratic forces within the petit bourgeoisie and other middle strata becomes a necessity.

Even this is not enough. In order to defeat fascism, we must focus not only on the fascist organizations and their many crimes, but on fascist tendencies within the state. We must consistently build international left unity to prevent and actively reverse the export of fascism from the centers of capitalism to other nations around the world, on the grounds that to defeat fascism anywhere is to defeat it everywhere.

And finally, and most obviously, we must work on all fronts to hasten the collapse of capitalism and usher in a new world where fascism is no longer possible.

February 1999

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