First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 19, May 16, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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“The danger of fascism is inherent in the imperialist system.“ So reads the Draft Program of the Communist Party (M-L), reflecting the Party’s line that resisting the fascist menace is a component part of the struggle against capitalism and for socialist revolution in the U.S. The Program states: “Fascism in power is the open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital.“
The danger of fascism is historically connected with the tendency towards decay in modern capitalist society as the capitalist ruling class launches its final attempt to defeat the working-class revolution and hold back the wheels of history. The growing fascist threat reflects the overall weakness of the ruling class.
The U.S. today is locked in the deepest crisis in its history and is preparing for the inevitable showdown with its main rival Imperialist, the Soviet Union. As Mao Tsetung said in his talk with Anna Louise Strong more than 30 years ago:
“To start a war, the U.S. reactionaries must first attack the American people. They are already attacking the American people – oppressing the workers and democratic circles in the United States politically and economically and preparing to impose fascism there. The people of the United States should stand up and resist the attacks of the U.S. reactionaries. I believe they will.”
Since that time the world crisis of imperialism has grown deeper than ever before. The forces of fascism, which were dealt a mortal blow in World War II, are rearing their ugly head once again throughout the capitalist world. Furthermore, the struggle has grown more complex because the Soviet Union, which under socialism and the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, was the strong-hold of anti-fascism, today is the strong-hold of fascism.
In the U.S., along with massive war preparations, there has come a new wave of anti-worker measures. These include the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus and the fostering of extra-legal fascist terror groups.
Recently the Criminal Reform Code Act of 1977 was introduced in Congress. This code would further centralize the police organizations and erode the democratic and political rights of the people. Evidence of the growing tendency toward fascism can also be seen in the restoration of the death penalty, in the massive funding of the Law Enforcement Assistance Agency (LEAA), and the reports of government groups like the Commission on Civil Disorders, which call for even further restrictions of democratic rights on the pretext of “potential future urban riots.”
The elements of fascism can also be seen in the sharpening attacks on the Afro-American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native American and other national minorities. These attacks, which have always been an integral part of capitalist society, have been on the rise as the crisis has deepened.
Massive jailings of minorities, widespread deportations of foreign-born workers, assassinations of popular mass leaders and the stepped-up activities of the racist anti-busing movement and the Ku Klux Klan, all represent growing danger signs of fascism. All of these fascist groups are operating with direct or covert backing from the government.
With the collusion of the reactionary trade union leaders, all the basic rights of workers are being attacked, including the most basic right to strike. This right has already been fully surrendered by the top bureaucrats of the USWA union and others.
Along with the bourgeoisie’s war against the working class comes its attack on the workers’ leadership, the communist vanguard. What the ruling class fears most is the conscious revolutionary leadership of a genuine communist party. The Smith Act, the McCarren Act and other anti-communist laws – all of which denoted the growing danger of fascism – are part of the long and bloody anti-communist history of the U.S.
As the Draft Program points out: “The danger of fascist victory is greatest when the working-class’ ranks are divided and weakened. The bourgeoisie is using the revisionists and reformist bureaucrats, who now dominate the trade unions and other working-class organizations, to divide and disarm the working class and to set it up for slaughter by preaching class collaboration, white chauvinism and anti-communism.”
This section of the Program points the way forward for the working class in waging a relentless struggle to isolate the influence of these opportunist leaders and drive them out of the workers’ movement. At the same time, the Program shows that the most powerful weapon against fascism and all other ruling class attacks is a Marxist-Leninist party. The fight against opportunism and the building of a party are necessary preconditions for the smashing of the fascist threat.
The ruling class, of course, doesn’t rely simply on fascist attacks to maintain its precarious rule. Especially in the U.S., the bourgeoisie is long skilled in the use of the “carrot” as well as the “stick.”
While the bourgeoisie uses its “democratic” facade to mask its exploitation and oppression of the masses, even bourgeois democracy as a form of rule has meant vicious, brutal attacks on the people. The history of the U.S. as the “most democratic” of capitalist countries is a history of lynchings, murders, assassinations and violent terror against the working people.
The growing danger of fascism in the U.S. shows the weakening hold of the ruling class over the people. Their propagandists are turning out new films, books and other cultural weapons designed to perpetuate old liberal myths which reaffirm it belief in capitalism. They are trying to get the workers, under their reformist leadership, to lie down quietly and peacefully accept the burden of the crisis and of another world war.
But as these illusions are shattered through revolutionary struggle and especially through the revolutionary education of the Party, the capitalists are inevitably driven towards fascism. In the recent period, the cultural assault on the masses has included a wave of fascist propaganda, glorifying the Nazis of old and the “law-and-order” forces of today, from “SWAT” to “Dirty Harry.”
Do all these factors mean that fascism is “inevitable,” as some revisionists claim? Certainly not. The opportunists would argue that if the people struggle against oppression, then “they will bring down fascism upon themselves.”
In fact the opposite is true. The only way the victory of fascism can be prevented is through the heightened revolutionary struggle for socialism. In previous deep economic crises, such as the one during the ’30s, elements of the ruling class pushed for the worldwide conquest of fascism over “Bolshevism” and over the working class. But their plans were defeated by the struggles of the workers and the oppressed nations, with the communists pointing the way.
Finally, in order to defeat the fascist threat, it is vital to grasp where fascism comes from. The revisionists and opportunists of all stripes try to cover up the fact that the source of fascism is to be found among the big finance capitalists. Instead they claim that the fascist threat comes from the “middle class,” or from the reactionary fringe groups like the KKK or Nazi parties.
The revisionist Communist Party goes so far as to claim that fascism comes only from the “Pentagon” or the “Republican Party.” They paint the liberals as “anti-fascists” in order to fabricate their anti-monopoly election coalition. In this way, they preach reliance on one section of finance capital against the other, and on “peaceful” and “constitutional” forms of struggle.
It is precisely this reliance on the bourgeoisie and electoralism that the revisionists used to set up the workers for fascism in Chile. It is for these reasons, as well as many others, .that we can truly call the revisionists “social-fascists”: socialist in word but fascist and imperialist in deed.
Now our new Communist Party (M-L) is being formed with a Program for destroying the system of capitalism in which fascism is spawned. Our Party shows that the danger of fascism in the U.S. doesn’t come from some right-wing fringe elements outside the government, but from the same reactionary, chauvinist and imperialist elements of finance capital who rule the country today. While the Rockefellers, Fords and Mellons would rather rule through “democratic” means, as their dictatorship over the working class is weakened, they won’t hesitate to bring down open terrorist rule.
The Program of our Party points the way forward to the struggle against the capitalist system itself as the road to fighting fascism. In the course of that struggle we must rally the broad masses against every sign of the fascist danger, defend the democratic rights of workers and minorities and stop fascism while it is still in its preparatory stage.
We carry out this struggle, not for the purpose of “saving democracy” under capitalism, for this is a fool’s dream. Rather, we fight for the complete end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism and the dictatorship of the working class, which will ultimately destroy the fascist threat forever.