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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 35, 15 July 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Fascism makes its appearance as the second representative agent of the bourgeoisie. Like the social democracy, but to a greater degree. Fascism possesses its special army, its particular interests and its own logic as a movement. We know that in order to save and stabilize bourgeois society in Italy, Fascism not only had to oppose sharply the social democracy but the traditional bourgeois parties as well. We must not imagine that all the political organs of the bourgeoisie worked in perfect concord. Fortunately things do not work out that way. Economic anarchy is supplemented by political anarchy. Now, too, Fascism, which has been nourished by the social democracy, will have to smash the latter in order to reach power.
(Trotzky, The Austrian Crisis, November 1929)
No matter how true it is that the social democracy, by its whole policy, prepared the blossoming of Fascism, it is no less true that Fascism comes forward as a deadly threat primarily to that same social democracy, all of whose magnificence is inextricably bound up with parliamentary-democratic-pacifist forms and methods of government.
(Trotzky, The Turn in the Communist International and the German Situation, September 1930, page 13)
The XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I. came to the decision that it was imperative to put an end to those erroneous views which originate in “the liberal interpretation of the contradictions between Fascism and bourgeois democracy, as well as between the parliamentary forms of bourgeois dictatorship and the outright forms ...” The gist of this Stalinist philosophy is quite plain: From the Marxist denial of the absolute contradiction, it deduces the total negation of any contradiction at all, even of a relative contradiction. This error is typical of vulgar radicalism.
(What Next, page 28)
A contradiction does exist between democracy and Fascism. It is not at all “absolute” or, putting it in the language of Marxism, it does not at all denote the rule of two irreconcilable classes. But it does denote different systems of the domination of one and the same class.
(Page 29)
The statement that the transition from democracy to Fascism may take on an “organic” and a “gradual” character can mean one thing and one thing only and that is: without any fuss without a fight, the proletariat may be deprived not only of its material conquests – not only of its given standard of living, of its social legislation, of its civil and political rights – but also of the basic weapon whereby these were achieved, that is, its organizations. The “bloodless” transition to Fascism implies under this terminology, the most frightful capitulation of the proletariat that can be conceived.
(Page 36)
In a Fascist regime, at least during its first phase, capital leans on the petty bourgeoisie which destroys the organizations of the proletariat. Italy, for instance! Is there a difference in the “class content” of these two regimes? If the question is posed only regards the ruling class, then there is no difference, if one takes into account the position and inter-relation of all classes, from the angle of the proletariat, then the difference appears to be quite enormous.
(Page 34)
In order to try to find a way out, the bourgeoisie must absolutely rid Itself of the pressure exerted by the workers’ organizations, these must needs be eliminated, destroyed, utterly crushed.
At this juncture the historic role of Fascism begins. It sets on its feet those classes that are immediately above the proletariat and who are ever in dread of being forced down into ranks; it organizes and militarizes them at the expense of finance capital, under the cover of the official government, and it directs them to the extirpation of proletarian organizations, from the most revolutionary to the most conservative.
Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of Fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist advance guard but in holding the entire class in a state of enforced disunity. To this end, the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three quarters of a century by the social democracy and the trade unions. For, in the last analysis, the Communist party also bases itself on these achievements.
(What Next?, Page 12)
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