[Jane Kelly's introduction Trotsky on fascism first appeared in Socialist Outlook's book on the far right, Ending the Nightmare. Is is suggested reading for participants at the Socialist Resistance dayschool on fascism being held in central London on July 10. For an invitation, please contact your local Socialist Resistance branch.]
Trotsky’s writings on fascism start with the events in Italy. The workers’ uprising in Italy in 1920, triggered partly as a result of a financial collapse, because Italy was not given financial assistance promised after the end of the First World War, meant that the working class seized the factories and the industries.
Trotsky not only analyses the objective situation, but also the political role of social democracy, of reformism, and the sorry role of the newly-formed Italian Communist Party (PCI). Trotsky points out that it was a tragedy that the PCI acted the way it did, but explains on the other hand that it was a very young, inexperienced party facing a new phenomenon. In some ways it was to be excused in its inability to deal with the rise of fascism.
He didn’t make such allowances for the later errors of the German (Communists, the KPD, because they and the Communist International should have learnt from what the Italians did wrong.
He goes on to analyse the seizure of power by Mussolini in 1922.
Trotsky’s analysis, developed as things happened and not with the benefit of hindsight, shows how the fascist victory in Italy resulted from a counter-offensive of the capitalists following the betrayal of the Italian proletariat by the reformist social democrats of the Socialist Party (PSI) who refused to give the working class a lead. This betrayal came after the revolutionary workers had seized the factories.
The workers didn’t know what to do next: they were left, as Trotsky says, “facing a void”. As a result the class retreated. Without a leadership to take them forward, this was inevitable.
The Italian social democrats, perhaps recognising they were facing a disaster, then called a general strike. But it was too late because the retreat had already taken place. When they were unsuccessful in the general strike, they started calling on the King to help them. But the King backed Mussolini. Still the social democrats retreated.
One right wing social democratic leader, Turati, actually said “One must have the manhood to be a coward!”.
Almost as bad were the actions of the newly formed Communist Party, the PCI. They completely underestimated the potential danger of fascism. They saw as it not as anything new or different, but simply as ‘the right wing of capitalism’. And despite the instructions of the Communist International, they refused to fight for a united front with social democracy.
This combination of reformist betrayal and Communist Party sectarianism was repeated in Germany. Though the histories of Italy, Germany, Spain and France in this period each have their specific features, Trotsky’s analysis teases out common elements, common processes and common lessons. As Trotsky argues, it is necessary to generalise from specific events in order to learn from experience, and particularly to learn from mistakes, in order not to repeat them.
There are four main points which pull together Trotsky’s thinking. The first is that fascism is a form of government and state which is adopted by the bourgeoisie only in the last resort, when there is no other way to maintain capitalist rule.
Second, that the victory of fascism results from the defeat of the working class, often betrayed – as in Italy – by reformism.
Third, that fascism bases itself on the petty bourgeoisie, which had become disillusioned with the vacillations of the workers’ organisations and their failure to solve the crisis. And fourth, in order to defeat fascism a united front of all workers and all workers’ organisations is necessary.
Trotsky argued that by uniting the reformists in the working class with the revolutionaries around clear demands, and by developing bold tactics in this crisis situation, the working class could take the lead, and win to that alliance the petty bourgeoisie.
In the process of developing these ideas around the united front he uses the mistakes of the Italian Communists as a warning to the revolutionaries in Germany.
By the end of the 1920s, Trotsky was systematically lambasting the suicidal ultra-left sectarianism of the KPD, who despite increasingly violent fascist attacks on working class meetings and in the streets stubbornly refused to unite with social democratic workers either in demonstrations or in workers’ self-defence organisations.
At some points the KPD joined with the fascists against social democracy.
How on earth could they have done such a thing? The reason of course is that after 1927 and particularly after 1929, Stalin, under pressure of the sharpening crisis in the USSR, developed his theory of the so called ‘Third Period’, which was slavishly adopted as the line of the Communist International, and followed by its parties, including the KPD.
Stalin, in the process of a vicious repression of the ‘kulaks’ (rich peasantry) in the rural areas, predicted a new global revolutionary upsurge, a period of ‘class against class’, in which social democracy -as a barrier to workers joining the KPD – was as great an enemy as fascism. According to this sectarian analysis there was an equals sign between social democracy and fascism. Stalin went so far as to dismiss social democracy as “social fascism”.
Trotsky, especially in his writings on Germany, develops a whole series of brilliant analogies and fables by which he shows how disastrous was Stalin’s analysis. In fact even in the late 1920s and early 30s the German working class, although clearly defeated by the earlier failed revolutions, was still very strong. In 1928 there were still five million workers in trades unions affiliated to the major federation.
The social democratic party, the SPD, had a million members and the KPD 130,000.
Even in 1933, the year Hitler took power, working class parties between them polled thirteen million votes, while the Nazi Party polled nearly fourteen million. There was a very close balance between the two groups. It is clear, as Trotsky argues, that united action could have defeated fascism at that point. Not only because it would have united the working class, but because it would have given a lead to the petty bourgeoisie as well.
The response of the Stalinist KPD was nothing short of appalling. Having completely misestimated and miseducated its cadres on the dangers of fascism, its leaders developed fantastic and bizarre scenarios, according to which the whole process was a step towards a working class victory.
A KPD deputy in the Reichstag said in 1931:
“Once they [the Nazis] are in power, the united front of the proletariat will rise and make a clean sweep of everything. We are not afraid of the fascist gentlemen, they will shoot their bolts quicker than any other government”.
Two years later Hitler had stormed to power, unleashing civil war against the workers’ organisations – and the KPD leadership was in concentration camps. As far as Trotsky was concerned, and we would agree with him, the united front, given decisive leadership, could have won the petty bourgeoisie to the side of the working class, and defeated fascism.
Today, of course the situation is different in many ways. But it is still important that we analyse the specifics of the right wing threat, the development of far-right and fascist groupings and movements which are again raising their ugly heads in various parts of Europe. And it is vital that socialists learn the value of the united front tactic and the tragic consequences of failing to apply it.
So it is useful to use Trotsky’s ideas in order to look at the situation we find ourselves in.
All the better to fight it.
1 comment
Patrick Black · 16 July 2010
And then there was Spain !