The following article is the third installment of Fascism and Revolution, excerpted from a PLP magazine article titled Rise of Fascism 1919–1934, available on our website under the “New Magazines” tab. In Part I, we examined the roots of fascism beginning in 1919, when the betrayal of social democrats and the vacillations of communist leaders led to a crushing defeat by Hungarian right-wing nationalist forces allied with the national army—setting the stage for fascism’s rise. Part I concluded with the Soviet leadership’s response to the growth of fascism and Hitler’s ascent in Nazi Germany.

By 1935, Soviet leaders were deeply alarmed by the spread of fascism in Italy and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. That year, the 7th Congress of the Comintern convened to determine a response to the fascist threat. In his main report, Georgi Dimitrov largely ignored the analysis of fascism’s roots in liberal democracy offered by R. Palme Dutt, instead charting a course for communist parties worldwide to collaborate in united fronts with liberal democrats to prevent further fascist expansion.

Part II traced the effects of the Dimitrov line of collaboration on the ensuing anti-fascist struggle. 

Part III traces the progression of fascism within capitalism to the present day, drawing on the important lessons of past anti-fascist struggles that we can glean in this period in order to defeat fascism once and for all!

Liberal democracies now dominated by fascism

Beyond China, Russia, and Iran, fascism is growing in countries that have until recently been liberal democracies—in Europe, in particular, but also in Asia and Latin America. Poland, Hungary, and Italy  all now have governments led by openly fascist parties, with the fascist Sweden Democrats party, founded by pro-Nazis, using racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric to drive Swedish politics to the right. In France and Germany, openly fascist parties are the main opposition to governments led by frail liberal parties. India is ruled by a government that is openly racist and conducts violent attacks against Muslim workers.

Poland, now hailed as a staunch U.S. ally, has disbanded its supreme court, shut down opposition parties, and consolidated control under the leadership of the openly racist ruling party. Hungary, a staunch ally of Russia, has done the same.  In Italy, an anti-immigrant ruling party, a direct descendant of the fascist movements of the early 20th century, is being welcomed into the pro-U.S. fold.

In Asia, Israel has long been a liberal democracy for Jewish workers and an apartheid state for Arab workers. The latest Netanyahu regime is moving to undermine the supreme court and consolidate power under a party leadership backed by an openly racist movement. Over the last fifteen years, Turkey has become more openly fascist, with the Erdogan government’s consolidation of power violently shutting down any opposition. What’s left of Turkey’s liberal democracy is essentially run by its military.

In Mexico, with the backing of a mass workers’ movement, the Morena Party of Lopez Obrador tightened its ruling party control by hobbling the country’s electoral commission, enabling his successor as president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to win in a landslide. In South America, Brazil and Peru are now feeble democracies with large fascist movements.

In Africa, where imperialism has historically built severely oppressive governments as a means of control, the weak democracies the U.S. once sought to promote are being replaced. Today, the number of Africans living under authoritarian states is higher than it’s been for most of the last twenty years. Before Covid-19, a growing number of African heads of state were hard at work to undermine elections. The pandemic accelerated this shift away from liberal democracy. It created an excuse to shut down elections in Somalia and Ethiopia, muzzle opposition figures in Uganda and Tanzania, and restrict media across the continent.

In fact, fascism is growing so rapidly around the world that Joe Biden’s speechwriters had to take notice. In his futile appeals for building a coalition to take on China and Russia, Biden stopped using the term “democracy” to describe the U.S. side and replaced it with the more ambiguous “freedom.”

Fascism is the future of U.S. capitalism

The U.S. ruling class is being strained to the breaking point by the economic and political crisis of capitalism. The war in Ukraine has already cost them over $100 billion. Their infrastructure is in tatters; inflation is wreaking havoc. The U.S. banking system is verging on a meltdown. The once high-flying tech industry has laid off more than 100,000 workers, with more to come. As workers’ real income continues to shrink, retail looks to be the next industry to drastically downsize.

As main rival China moves to a war footing, the infighting between dueling capitalist factions is paralyzing the U.S. ruling class and dividing the workers the bosses need for its short-staffed military. Despite barely reaching its recruitment goal in 2024, shortfalls of 20 percent in 2023 and 27 percent in 2022 have left the U.S. Army understrength. With all signs pointing to wider war, the U.S. bosses are not ready politically, militarily, or industrially.

While we cannot be certain which capitalist faction will come out on top, or whether the two sides will cut a deal, all signs point to drastic political changes to meet the needs of the U.S. ruling class. Although the bosses are still ruling under the guise of liberal democracy, and neither side is yet ready to jettison elections, they are laying the political basis to move closer toward full-blown fascism. Main wing media, including the New York Times, have decided that even a façade of impartiality poses too big a risk to the system. Judges are openly declaring that the law is not blind, and that they too must take sides in the battle. Liberal democracy in the U.S. continues to run on fumes only because neither faction is yet ready for civil war. 

The U.S. ruling class will keep moving toward fascism because it has no choice

Under Biden, most U.S workers and students suffered under the business-as-usual racist oppression of the ruling class. For immigrants, it was fascism, as Biden deported them in record numbers. There were protests, some of them quite large, based mostly in humanitarianism. Then came the 10/07/23 Hamas attack. Pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist protests grew, especially on college campuses. Claiming the protestors were anti-Semitic, the universities, pressured by the U.S. government, cracked down. Under the liberal Democrat administration, freedom of expression was muzzled.

Then Trump, running on a racist, anti-immigrant platform, was elected President. He doubled down on the crackdown. ICE became a full-fledged gestapo. Universities which did not toe the line on supporting Israel and punishing pro-Palestinian professors and students had their funding cut. Trump is ignoring the rule of law, exercising Executive Action to further his agenda.

Trump’s  high handed and often illegal acts intensified the opposition of workers and students to his policies. Pro-immigrant and pro-Palestine demonstrations grew. Many people felt Trump was a fascist, but they did not see that his actions, extreme though they were, actually were an extension of previous administration policies. Biden and his predecessors supported Israel, the U.S. policeman in the Middle East, to the hilt. Regarding immigrants, Obama was the deporter-in-chief.

The Democrats, seeing an opportunity, have taken the leadership of supposedly grassroots organizations opposing Trump to lead their members to the ballot box. They urge people to vote for Democratic candidates to turn Republicans out of office and restore “real democracy”. Many people, seeing no other way, will follow this course. 

However, as stated in the paragraphs above, whichever bosses’ faction wins the electoral struggle, workers will lose. The winners will need to discipline the losers to be able to organize the ruling class to further prepare for war with their imperialist rivals. As they do this, the working class will then feel the full brunt of a fascist heel on their necks, be it Democrat or Republican.

Three Lessons

This article has reviewed three lessons from the struggle to defeat fascism between 1934 and 1945. They remain important today.

FIRST LESSON: Fascism is the natural tendency of the decadent monopoly capitalist class. Even the few capitalist nations that avoided full-blown fascism, such as the U.S., Britain, and Canada, saw the rise of mass fascist movements financed by big business. No less important, they dramatically strengthened their central state apparatus. The tendency of modern capitalism to move toward fascism is an inexorable law of modern development.

SECOND LESSON: Liberal democracy leads to fascism as surely as any other process of social development. Dimitrov’s defense of liberal democracy was essentially a defense of the roots of fascism. In every case, it led to disastrous results. In France and Spain, popular front governments severely handicapped the workers’ struggle against fascism.

THIRD LESSON: The only alternative to fascism is communism. It follows that only communists can lead the struggle to defeat fascism. We have seen how both liberals and conservatives paved the way for fascism and joined the fascist governments. We have seen how revisionist social democrats caved in to fascism at every turn, apologized for it, and even preferred it to the “Bolshevik menace.”

Even after fascism was defeated in World War II, the problem was that capitalism remained—decadent monopoly capitalism. The fascist weed was cut down, but its roots remained to sprout new varieties in the postwar world. As long as capitalism exists, fascism will inevitably spring up out of liberal democracy in crisis.

In this critical period, the working class is faced with a stark choice between two paths. One follows the bosses into the hell of war and fascism. The other is the path of communist revolution. It’s the road to smashing capitalism and building an egalitarian society led by and for the working class.