FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XI Page 252
TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA
UNTIL the last few years Liberalism and Social
Democracy denied the possibility of Fascism in the
"civilised" countries of Western Europe and America. As
early as 1922, immediately after the victory of Fascism
in Italy, while current discussion still treated this as
an "Italian" phenomenon, the Communist International at
its Fourth Congress gave the warning for every country:
The menace of Fascism lurks to-day in many countries-in
Czecho-Slovakia, in Hungary, in nearly all the Balkan
countries, in Poland, in Germany (Bavaria), in Austria
and America, and even in countries like Norway. Fascism
in one form or another is not altogether impossible even
in countries like France and England. But even as late
as 1928 the Second International still clung to its
theory of "the two Europes" and of "dictatorship" as
only possible in "backward" countries. Vandervelde,
Chairman of the Second International, declared at its
Brussels Congress in 1928: A great captain of industry
recently said to us: "If without taking into account
political frontiers you trace an imaginary line from
Kovno to Bilbao, passing through Cracow and Florence,
you will find before you two Europes-the one in which
horse-power dominates, the other where it is the living
horse, the one where there are parliaments, the other
where there are dictators." It is in reality exclusively
in the latter economically and politically backward
Europe that dictatorships more or less brutal, more or
less hypocritical, abound, whether veiled or no by a
sham national representation. Three years later, in
1931, the Second International had to admit the
incorrectness of this theory. In its report to the
Vienna Congress in 1931 the Executive declared: Fascism
has overstepped the limits which but a few years
previously appeared to be drawn for it by the
development of modern technique. Whereas it was believed
at that time that Fascism was confined to those
countries in which "instead of horse-power the
TENDENCIES TO FASCISM IN WESTERN EUROPE AND AMERICA
253
living horse dominates," the Fascist danger has now
also penetrated to countries in which industry is highly
developed, The three further years since 1931 have seen
the establishment of complete Fascist dictatorships in
Germany and Austria, the growth of influentially
supported Fascist movements in France and England, the
development of the Spanish Revolution to the point of
extreme menace of Fascism,* and the establishment of the
semi-Fascist Roosevelt emergency regime. It is now clear
to all that the theory of Fascism as a phenomenon only
of "backward" "agrarian" countries is false, and that
the Communist analysis of Fascism as the characteristic
instrument of finance-capital which can be brought into
play in the most highly developed industrial countries
when the stage of the crisis and of the class struggle
requires it, has been proved correct by facts. Events
daily and hourly reinforce the truth that the
international working class throughout the world, in
every capitalist country, has to fight the menace of
Fascism. * The question of Spain, which is basically
different in type from the leading Western Imperialist
countries, is not further dealt with in this chapter;
any treatment would require a detailed separate analysis
of the whole development of the Spanish Revolution since
193 1, its strangling by the lef t-democratic
Liberal-Socialist bloc at the time of the height of the
mass revolutionary wave, and the consequent passing of
power to the Right and rapid growth of Fascism,
approaching the prospect of an intense struggle of
Fascism and the mass movement in the coming period.
(Since the publication of the first edition of this
book, these issues have come to a head in the civil war
which broke out in Spain in October, 1934.) The
corresponding revision of Fascist expression, from the
time when Mussolini declared that "Fascism is not an
article for export" to the time when Mussolini declared
(1930) that Fascism is "universal" and looks forward to
"a Fascist Europe," has accompanied, but has not caused,
this development. Apart from the interchanges between
Fascist movements, the attempts of Fascism at
rudimentary forms of international propaganda are
still-inevitably from the very nature of Fascism-feeble
so far. A journal Antieuropa is issued from Rome with
the subtitle "Rassegna del l'espansione fascista nel
mondo" ("Review of fascist expansion throughout the
world"), and, while mainly Italian, has printed
contributions from Hitler, Mosley and others; there is
also the similar journal Ottobre. The wording of the
official announcement of Antieuropa (issue of September
30, T9331 containing article of Mosley on "Modern
Dictatorship and British History") is worth reproducing
as a curiosity: "Our organ is really the Worldcentrum of
fascist intelligence, furthers extension, illustrates
relationship and controls the fascist-intelligence
development in the world. Means of
propaganda-Antieuropa, monthly review. Ottobre-paper of
the Universal Fascism. Documentate yourselves by means
of Nuova Europa." The striking English of this effusion
is sufficiently revealing of the very weak
"international" basis of this attempt of Italian Fascism
to figure as a "Worldcentrum."
254 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
1. The Basis for Fascism in Britain, the United
States and France. In 18go William Morris, in his
penetrating imaginative anticipation of the process of
the social revolution in Britain, given in his "News
from Nowhere" (Ch. XVII, How the Change Came) wrote:
Whatever the Government might do, a great part of the
upper and middle classes were determined to set on foot
a counter-revolution: for the Communism which now loomed
ahead seemed quite unendurable to them. Bands of young
men, like the marauders in the Great Strike of whom I
told you just now, armed themselves and drilled, and
began on any opportunity or pretence to skirmish with
the people in the streets. The Government neither helped
them, nor put them down, but stood by, hoping that
something might come of it. These "Friends of Order," as
they were called, had some successes at first, and grew
bolder; they got many officers of the regular army to
help them, and by that means laid hold of munitions of
war of all kinds. . . . A sort of irregular war was
carried on with varied success all over the country; and
at last the Government, which at first pretended to
ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting,
definitely declared for "the Friends of Order." The poet
of late nineteenth century Britain-whose insight was
strengthened above his contemporaries of literature by
his acceptance of the standpoint of revolutionary
Marxism and direct participation in the mass
struggle-here comes remarkably close to a forecast of
Fascism. This passage is of interest, not only as one of
the earliest direct anticipations of the specific
character of Fascism (not merely of counter-revolution
in general) in revolutionary socialist literature, but
also precisely because it sprang from observation of
British conditions and experience of the struggle in
Britain. While the blind liberals and reformists three
decades later, with facts staring them in the face, were
still to be proclaiming Fascism "alien" and
"unthinkable" in Britain, it was precisely the
observation of British conditions that first awoke in a
keen mind, which had drawn nourishment from Marxism, one
of the earliest direct anticipations of Fascism. The
illusion of the "alien" character of Fascism in the
"democratic" countries of Western Europe and America is
commonly presented as based on the supposed
peculiarities and uniqueness of the "national character"
and "institutions" in these countries. "Britain" (or
alternatively, according to
BASIS FOR FASCISM 255
the speaker, "the United States," or "France") "will
never tolerate Fascism; it is foreign to our whole
traditions and outlook." The same myth was also current
in Germany, where up to the last the formula that
"Germany is not Italy" was unweariedly repeated. What
underlies the conception of the "different" character of
Western Europe and America and the undoubted fact of the
deeper rooting of parliamentary-democratic institutions
in these countries? In reality this situation, and the
ideology accompanying it, is only the reflection of the
wealthier, more powerful, privileged situation of
Western imperialism with its vast colonial possessions
and world domination. The earlier accession to power of
the bourgeoisie in these countries brought parliamentary
institutions, the instrument of their fight against
feudalism, earlier to the front; and these parliamentary
institutions continued to be maintained, after the fight
against feudalism was fully completed and the serious
meaning had fully gone out of them, for the deception of
the working class and the camouflage of the real rule of
the narrowing plutocracy. The strength and resources of
capitalism in these metropolitan countries made it
possible to pursue a liberal policy of concessions to
the workers, and thus to draw the working class in the
wake of capitalism and hinder the growth of independent
class consciousness. Hence the long domination of
liberal and social reformist politics in the working
class in Britain, France and the United States right
into the twentieth century, and the slow growth of
class-conscious Socialism, in contrast to Central and
Eastern Europe. And hence the solid basis for the longer
successful maintenance of parliamentary institutions of
deception in these countries, when these same
institutions, transferred to other countries, could find
little root. The "democratic freedoms" of Western
imperialism have been built on the foundation of
colonial slavery; as was strikingly demonstrated when
the Labour Government, the champion of "democracy,"
brought in a reign of terror to maintain despotism in
India and jailed sixty thousand for the crime of asking
for democratic rights. But just this basis of
parliamentary-democratic institutions in the Western
imperialist countries is increasingly undermined by the
crisis of capitalism. The monopoly of the world market
breaks down; the colonies revolt; the world tribute
diminishes;
256 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the bourgeoisie in the metropolitan countries is
compelled, in place of concessions and reforms, to
withdraw those already granted and launch
ever-increasing attacks on the workers. But this
inevitably brings a new intensity of the class struggle
in these countries and a widening revolutionary
awakening of the working class. For a period the
apparatus of Labourism still serves to canalise the
discontent of the workers and keep them attached to
capitalism; but Labourism is compelled by the crisis
increasingly to expose itself and assist the capitalist
offensive against the workers; and disillusionment
grows. As this situation develops, the bourgeoisie is
compelled to look to new forms to maintain its rule. The
movement of bourgeois policy begins to turn away from
the exhausted and discredited parliamentarism towards
open dictatorship, towards Fascism. This movement, after
developing first in the more povertystricken and
backward countries, reaches its first major imperialist
state in Germany, the Power which has been stripped of
its colonies and weakened in its world imperialist
position , and only finally begins to develop in the
dominant imperialist Powers, Britain, France and the
United States, and their satellites (Scandinavia,
Belgium, Holland, Switzerland). But so soon as this
situation develops, it becomes clear that Fascism, so
far from being alien to the Western imperialist states,
has an extremely strong potential basis in their whole
social, economic and political structure. What are the
general conditions favouring the growth of Fascism? They
maybe briefly enumerated: (I ) intensification of the
economic crisis and of the class struggle; (2)
widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism; (3) the
existence of a wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate
strata, slum proletariat, and sections of the workers
under capitalist influence; (4) the absence of an
independent class- conscious leadership of the main body
of the working class. Are these conditions present in
Britain, France and the United States? The answer must
be given that they are all strongly present. If we take
Britain first, and ask the question whether there is a
basis for Fascism in Britain, a consideration of the
social forces and structure in the country will show
that there is every basis. In the first place, there is
a very large proportion of intermediate
BASIS FOR FASCISM 257
strata of the population, of petit-bourgeois elements
with very narrow and easily controlled political
interests, and of a parasitic proletariat closely allied
to their masters and virtually unorganisable to the
working-class movement. This proportion is larger in
Britain than in other countries. The 1921 census showed
ten millions of the population engaged in direct
productive industries and transport, and seven millions
in "services" of very varying degrees of productive
value, often of no productive value, but parasitic in
character and tied up with the processes of
exploitation. Of these seven millions over four millions
are classified under Commerce, Finance and Personal
Service. This classification, however, is to some extent
misleading without further analysis. More important is
the proportion of salaried workers to wage workers. In
1924, according to Bowley and Stamp (The National Income
.1924, published in 192 7), the number of salaried
workers was 2.8 millions against 15.4 million wage
earners, or 15 per cent. of the employed population.*
Further, of the wage-workers, some two-thirds are
unorganised; and these two-thirds are not an outside
margin in all industries, but mainly represent the
workers outside the big productive industries. At the
same time the Labour Party and trade union leadership,
by their denial of the class struggle and preaching of
the "community above classes," by their alliance with
the employers (Mondism) and capitalism, and by their ban
on the united front, disorganize the independent class
action of the workers and pave the way for Fascism. An
indication of the potential Fascist forces is provided
by the monster circulations, approaching two millions,
of journals of the type of the Daily Mail, circulating
mainly among petitbourgeois elements, and in its whole
character since its inception a real forerunner of
Fascism more than twenty years before the name existed
(since 1934 openly Fascist). If we turn to the policy
and tactics of the bourgeoisie in * It is noticeable
that the proportions of the salariat have considerably
increased in the period of the imperialist decline. The
1907 Census of production estimated the salaried at 7
per cent. and the wage-earners at 93 per cent. For 1911
Bowley and Stamp (op. cit.) estimate the numbers at 1.6
millions and 15.6 millions respectively, or over 9 per
cent for the salariat. The 1924 figure gives over is per
cent. The increase between 1911 and 1024 is by more than
1.1 million or 68 per cent. In the same period,
according to this estimate, the number of wage-earners
decreased by 250,000.
258 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Britain, it is obvious that these not only do not
exclude Fascism, but are on the contrary most closely
prepared and adapted for Fascism by all the developments
of the imperialist period. On the one hand the State
machine-with the famous "unwritten Constitution" which
can be turned in any direction desired at a moment's
notice to suit the emergency needs of the bourgeois
dictatorship-is far more exactly fitted than in any
democratic republic for all the purposes of intensified
dictatorship and Fascism. On the other hand, the British
bourgeoisie is trained for generations on the basis of
its rule of India, Ireland and the colonial empire to
methods of violence and despotic domination, at the same
time as on the basis of parliamentary and electioneering
humbug in Britain to the technique of mass-deception-
the two together constituting the perfect combination
for Fascism. The words of the American Ambassador in
London during the war years, W. Page, a shrewd and
admiring observer, on the technique of the Diehards may
be recalled: They call these old Tories "Diehards." It's
a good name. They use military power, social power,
financial power, eloquence, learning, boundless
impudence, blackguardism--everything-to hold what they
have; and they fight-fight like tigers, and tire not. Or
as Lloyd George (the "Liberal" founder of the "Black and
Tans") declared in a speech in 19 2 5: "Scratch a
Conservative, and you will find a Fascist." For those
who are still chloroformed by the sedulously instilled
myths of law and order, it would be well to study a
little the history of the British bourgeoisie for the
past three centuries, which in bloody violence could
hardly be equalled by any ruling class since the Roman
Empire, as well as the action of this same bourgeoisie
as a ruling class in the Empire outside Britain to-day.
They would speedily learn the mailed fist basis which
lies behind the velvet speeches of a Baldwin or a
MacDonald. It is sufficient to recall the technique of
the Boer War jingo agitation, the Ulster rebellion, the
Amritsar massacre, the "Black and Tans" in Ireland, or
the Organisation for countering the General Strike, to
see the full basis for Fascism. The Ulster movement,
with its open defiance of Parliament, Organisation of
private armies, and direct support by the Army chiefs,
the Court and high society, and ignominious capitulation
BASIS FOR FASCISM 259
of the Liberal Government, is of especial interest as
an embryonic precursor of Fascism. Lenin wrote of it at
the time: The significance of this revolt of the
landlords against the "allpowerful" (as the Liberal
blockheads, especially the Liberal scholars, think and
have said a million times) English Parliament is
extraordinarily great. March2l, 1914, will mark a
world-historical turningpoint, when the noble landlords
of England, smashing the English Constitution and
English law to atoms, gave an excellent lesson in class
struggle. . . . These aristocrats behaved like
revolutionaries from the Right, and by that tore up all
conventions, tore down all the veils that prevented the
people from seeing the unpleasant, but undoubtedly real,
class struggle. That was revealed to all which was
formerly concealed by the bourgeoisie and the Liberals
(the Liberals are hypocritical everywhere, but it is
doubtful whether their hypocrisy goes to such lengths
and to such refinement as in England). Everybody
realised that the conspiracy to break the will of
Parliament had been long prepared. Real class-rule has
always been and still lies outside of Parliament. . . .
And the petit-bourgeois Liberals of England, and their
speeches about reforms and about the power of
Parliament, with which they lull the workers, proved to
be in fact frauds, straw men put up in order to fool the
people, who were quickly torn down by the aristocracy
with power in their hands, (Lenin, The Constitutional
Crisis in England, 1914.) Indeed the Fascists in Britain
to-day directly look to the Ulster movement as their
predecessor: Just before the war the widespread movement
directed against Parliament, in sympathy with the Ulster
loyalists, assumed formidable proportions within two
years of its initiation. That movement, psychologically
limited as it was, and directed only to the safeguarding
of certain limited objectives, would-had not the war
intervened-have developed into a formidable revolt
against the whole theory and system of Democracy in
Britain. The Ulster movement was in fact the first
Fascist movemen(W. E. D. Allen, Fascism in Relation to
British History and Character, B.U.F., 1933.) If we turn
to the United States, an examination of the social
composition of the population would also show the basis
for Fascism. Of the 49 million occupied persons returned
in the census of 1930, 19 millions were classified under
manufacturing industry, mining and transport, 10
millions under agriculture,
260 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
6 millions under trade, 3 millions under the
professions, 4 millions under clerical occupations, and
5 millions under domestic and personal service. In
addition to the urban petit-bourgeoisie and very wide
expansion of the salariat, salesmen , etc., the farming
population, with some six million separate farms,
constitutes roughly one quarter of the total population.
Extreme economic pressure has powerfully radicalised all
the poorer farmers; but until a strong proletarian
leadership succeeds to establish the
alliance-all-powerful, once it is achieved-of the
industrial workers and small farmers, there is every
danger of demagogic Fascist movements winning their hold
here. At the same time, the Organisation of the
industrial workers is weak. Trade union organisation,
even after the increases accompanying the present crisis
and the Roosevelt Codes (which have mainly in fact
encouraged company unions the initial basis for Fascist
Organisation in industry), only reaches about one-fifth
of the workers; it is mainly confined to the privileged,
skilled workers on a craft basis, leaving out the
unskilled workers; and, apart from railroads and to some
extent mining, has won little hold yet in the basic
productive industries. The class-collaboration policy of
the American Federation of Labour leadership is more
open and extreme than in Europe, and still so far
opposes any form of political party of the workers,
although the development of the crisis may compel a
change in this respect. The reformist labour leaders
have taken the role of direct allies and lieutenants of
the Roosevelt emergency regime. Here again, therefore, a
strong social basis exists for the development of full
Fascism, if this should become necessary to the
bourgeoisie. The traditional tactics and methods of
domination of the American bourgeoisie are equally
adapted to Fascism, in proportion as occasion arises. If
they have not had the same experience as the British
bourgeoisie in the domination of colonial peoples, save
more recently and on a smaller scale, they have had
plenty of experience in their own domain in the
suppression of the twelve million Negroes within the
United States and of the heavily exploited immigrant
populations. The combination of violence, lawlessness
and corruption for the maintenance of capitalist
domination has reached classic heights in the United
States. It is only necessary to recall the Chicago
hangings, Homestead or Dearborn, Sacco-Vanzetti
BASIS FOR FASCISM 261
or Scottsboro, the exploits of the Pinkerton gangs,
the methods in the coalmining and steel areas, the
private armies of the employers, the judicial murders,
the lynchings and gangsters, the Anti-Red drive of the
Department of justice after the war, or the waves of
sudden expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and similar
organisations, to see the plentiful basis for Fascism in
American bourgeois traditions. If Britain and the United
States are both classic lands of semi- Fascist methods
of bourgeois domination long before Fascism, France has
long been considered the classic land of "pure
democracy." Yet in fact just the overwhelming
petitbourgeois social basis (preponderant small industry
and peasantry, with a layer of finance-capital at the
top, but relatively less developed large industry or
foreign trade) which underlay the "pure democracy" of
formal social-radical republicanism and actual unlimited
corruption and rule of the financial cliques, to-day,
when the new stage develops, becomes equally the basis
for Fascism. Not only is the majority of the population
in France still rural (the proportion of the population
in towns of over 5,000 inhabitants was 44 per cent. in
1928, as against 54 Per cent. in Germany, 58 per cent.
in the United States and 79 per cent. in Britain), but
the preponderance of petty industry in the industrial
field is still extreme. According to an investigation of
de Ville-Chabrolle on the basis of official statistics
(see Economist, September 30, 1933), out of a total of
6,167,647 establishments in 1926, 5,983,075 consisted of
five persons or less (2,981,521 single-handed concerns).
Out Of 17.8 million occupied persons, 11.8 millions were
occupied in concerns of five persons or less, and only
1.5 million workers were employed in concerns of over
Soo workers, that is, in large-scale industry. Trade
union organisation, reaching to a few hundred thousands
in each of the two rival Confederations, is extremely
weak, although militant traditions and
class-consciousness are strongly developed in the big
industrial centres. The parliamentary republic has
maintained a sometimes precarious hold for two
generations; but the open reactionary forces which seek
to change the regime increase in strength. The
experiences of Boulangism, of the anti-Dreyfus
agitation, or of the Action Francaise movement have
shown the ground that there is for Fascist agitation;
and the offensive of the recent
262 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Fascist demonstrations of the beginning of 1934,
leading to the hasty withdrawal of the "Left" Government
and instalment of a Government of National
Concentration, have shown how rapidly the advance to
Fascism may develop in France. All this is not to argue
that Fascism must necessarily develop and conquer in
these Western countries. Its success or failure, as in
every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and
militant resistance of the proletariat. But it is folly
to be blind to the reality of the danger, or to the many
favouring factors that Fascism can marshal to its side
in precisely these countries. Above all, it is worse
than folly to place a blind confidence, as the liberal
and reformist leaders preach, in the "democratic
institutions" of these countries. The bourgeoisie will
use any and every instrument of struggle as occasion
arises. It is for the working class and its allies to be
prepared for the fight in front. 2. The Significance of
the National Government in Britain. The development of
the world economic crisis has brought a sharp break in
the political development in the countries of Western
Imperialism, and in so doing has brought the question of
Fascism increasingly to the front also in these
countries. In England the break took place in the autumn
of 1931 with the financial crisis and the establishment
of the National Government. In the United States the
break took place in the spring of 1933 with the
inauguration of the Roosevelt regime amid extreme
financial crisis and the establishment of emergency
powers. In France, where the effects of the economic
crisis have operated more slowly, the break came with
the Paris revolutionary and counter-revolutionary
demonstrations of February 1934, and the formation of
the Government of National Concentration under
Doumergue. All these reveal a common process of
concentration of the bourgeois forces in the crisis,
establishment of intensified forms of dictatorship and
emergency powers, diminution of the role of
parliamentarism, and, in general, advance to types of
the pre- Fascist stage which characterised the Bruning
regime in Germany. What was the significance of the
formation of the National
SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 263
Government in Britain, and of the stage of the crisis
which gave rise to it? In the first place, it marked the
heavy discrediting of the Labour Party. The Labour
Government, which bad been placed in office by eight
million votes on a programme of promises of socialism
and of the solution of unemployment, had looked on
impotently while unemployment rose under its rule from
1.1 millions to 2.7 millions, and bad proved itself only
the ally of capitalist rationalisation against the
workers. The hopes which had been preached throughout
the post-war period of the peaceful democratic Labour
path to socialism as the alternative to revolution, and
which had won a steadily rising Labour vote from 2
millions in 1918 to 8 millions in 1929, received a heavy
blow. Disillusionment in the masses was rising. But the
Labour Party had in reality represented the
safety-mechanism of bourgeois rule in the post-war
period, like Social Democracy in Germany, the
social-conservative force which, while seeming to voice
the socialist aspirations of the masses, had served to
attach them through parliamentarism. to the bourgeois
regime. This was now in danger of collapsing and giving
place to the rising process of revolutionisation. The
bourgeoisie was quick to sense the danger. Already in
the spring of 1930 Lloyd George voiced the menace to the
traditional bourgeois institutions through the
discrediting of the Labour Party. Describing how the
workers had originally put their hopes in the Liberal
Party and lost faith in it, he continued: Millions
consequently threw in their lot with a new party. To
them this party was the party of the last hope. It is
now rapidly becoming the party of lost hope. Speakers
and agents of all parties returning from the last
by-election in a great industrial constituency had the
same tale to tell. It was one of the gloom and despair
which had fallen on this working class district owing to
the failure of the Government they had helped at the
last General Election to put into power to bring any
amelioration into their conditions and prospects. If
Labour fails this time, confidence in parliamentary
institutions will for a period disappear in myriads of
loyal British homes and hearts. (Lloyd George, article
in the Daily Express, March 18, Y93o.) The bourgeoisie
manoeuvred to meet this critical situation. The step,
previously only attempted in wartime, was taken of
264 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
creating a Coalition Government from all the parties,
the National Government, under the nominal leadership of
MacDonald and Snowden, and under the actual control of
Conservatism, to win anew the confidence of the masses
under this new cover. The manoeuvre succeeded for the
moment, by playing on the very intensity of the disgust
of the masses with the Labour Government. The Labour
vote fell for the first time since the war, by the heavy
fall of two millions. But this disillusionment did not
go to the benefit of the small revolutionary vote, which
only slightly increased. Many former Labour voters
abstained. The benefit of the process of disillusionment
went to the "National" vote, which swept the country
with 141/2 millions. It is clear that we have here a
special form of the same process which was demonstrated
in Germany. The betrayal by Social Democracy thrusts
millions of workers and former petitbourgeois supporters
into the reactionary camp, which is skilful to put
forward a new flag in order to win them. This is the
heart of the process of Fascism. It is revealed in its
first rudimentary form in the "National" manoeuvre in
Britain. The "National" vote of 1.931 was the
warning-signal of the danger of Fascism. Second, the
National Government marks the process of bourgeois
concentration and intensified dictatorship for the
carrying through of measures of an increasingly Fascist
character. The consciousness of this role of the
National Government, as directly analogous to that of
Nazism or Fascism, was openly expressed by the Prime
Minister, MacDonald, in his speech to the National
Labour Committee on November 6, 1933: The secret of the
success of dictatorships is that they have managed
somehow or other to make the soul of a nation alive. We
may be shocked at what they are doing, but they have
certainly awakened something in the hearts of their
people which has given them a new vision and a new
energy to pursue national affairs. In this country the
three parties in co-operation are doing that, and our
task must be to get the young men with imagination, hope
and vision behind us. The National Government thus
avowedly sets itself the task to achieve the same
objects as those of Hitlerism. in Germany, whose
"dictatorship" it publicly praises as representing a
"new vision" and a "new energy" to "make the soul of a
SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN 265
nation alive." This direct praise of Fascism comes
from the man who was till 1931 the accepted Leader of
the Labour Party, and who indeed gave similar praise to
Italian Fascism, while still Leader of the Labour Party.
A still more complete and conscious expression of the
new policy has been provided in the more recent
declarations of the Cabinet Minister, Elliot, Secretary
for Agriculture, a former Fabian. Elliot, who came to
the front as the most active exponent of the new
economic policy in respect of the whole system of
quotas, licences, subsidies, controlled and restricted
production, etc., has increasingly underlined the
political significance of the process. In his broadcast
speech under the title "Whither Britain?" on March 27th,
1934, he spoke of the transition to the "New State," of
the necessity to "give up a certain amount of liberty,"
of the need of "economic self-discipline,"
"psychological self- discipline," etc., and directly
compared the role of the National Government to that of
the Hitler Government in Germany. To- day Elliot stands
out as the principal governmental representative of the
new Fascist tendency. The development to Fascism does
not necessarily take the same form in every country. The
general tendencies of the new economic and political
policies which receive their most complete expression in
Fascism are common in greater or less degree, as has
been already pointed out, to all modern capitalism. But
the first steps towards Fascism commonly develop in and
through the decaying forms of the old bourgeois
democracy. This is above all the significance of the
National Government, which itself carries forward
tendencies already visible in the whole post-war
capitalist development. On the one hand, the National
Government carries forward the new lines of economic
policy (increasing State regulation of production,
tariffs, quotas, import boards, the striving towards
empire economic unity) and the active increase of war
preparations. On the other hand, the National Government
carries forward the process of the transformation of
bourgeois democracy from within-the development of new
forms of intensified capitalist dictatorship and
increasing restriction of democratic rights. This
process is already visible in the whole post-war period,
notably in such measures as the Emergency Powers Act and
in
266 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the Trade Union Act of 192 7. It is carried very
markedly forward under the National Government. This is
shown in such measures as: 1.The increasing separation
of governmental action from parliamentary forms, and
extension of government by administrative order or by
Orders in Council (the Economy cuts and Means Test were
put through by Orders in Council, and only referred to
Parliament after they were already in operation); 2.The
reorganisation of the police under increasingly
centralised and military forms, and rapid increase of
police expenditure; 3.Increasing restriction of the
rights of free speech and assembly, prohibitions of
meetings (e.g., bannings of meetings of unemployed at
labour exchanges), imprisonment without charge of any
offence committed (Tom Mann case), etc.; 4.Active
political repression against the workers (in the two and
a half years of the National Government up to the spring
of 1934 over 1900 arrests for political offences have
taken place, over 600 sentences for a total of 1,613
months imprisonment, and some 850 fines for a total Of
L2,540, police interference with strikes, etc.;
5.Increasing police violence against the workers, baton
charges, etc. 6.The Unemployment Bill, bringing the
unemployed, who have outrun the short period of regular
benefit, under the control of a centralised autocratic
Board, not responsible to Parliament, with power to
establish camps and "training centres" ("concentration
camps" in the Home Secretary's phrase), subjecting them
to a semi-military regime and forced labour without pay
or for purely nominal rates of pay-any worker who
resists this slavery and smashing of trade union rates
and conditions being liable to be sent to prison; 7.The
Incitement to Disaffection Bill, nominally directed
against anti-militarist propaganda, but in fact very
much wider and so worded, in its original form as
presented, as to make the mere possession of any
revolutionary socialist or anti-war literature an
offence
THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 267
punishable with two years imprisonment, and giving to
the police unlimited powers of search and confiscation.
All this may be described as the process of "encroaching
Fascism" within the old forms, which precedes and
prepares the full Fascist attack. An examination of the
experience of the Mining regime in Germany, or of the
successive earlier stages of Dollfuss in Austria (when
he was still loudly hailed as the "champion of
democracy" by all the liberal and social democratic
forces of the West), will abundantly show the
significance of this process, which has definitely begun
its first stages in Britain. 3. The Roosevelt Emergency
Regime. The Roosevelt emergency regime in the United
States offers a still clearer demonstration of the whole
process. Here the move to a form of dictatorship of a
war-type is open. From the moment of his inauguration
the new President demands and is granted emergency
powers "as in wartime." I shall ask the Congress for the
one remaining instrument to meet the crisis-broad
executive power to wage war on the emergency as great as
the power that would be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe. (President Roosevelt's
Inaugural, March, 1932.)
We do not expect to have to resort to the drastic
steps taken during the war. But we have the same kind of
a situation. (General H. S. Johnson, speech at Chicago.)
What is the essence of the "New Deal," if we strip
from it the sentimental philanthropic ballyhoo? The "New
Deal," the policy of the Roosevelt regime expressed in
the National Industrial Recovery Act and associated
measures, represents the most comprehensive and ruthless
attempt of finance- capital to consolidate its power
with the entire strength of the State machine over the
whole field of industry, to hold the workers in
subjection under extreme and intensified exploitation
with a universal lowering of standards, to conduct on
this basis and on the basis of the depreciated dollar a
world campaign for markets, and to prepare directly the
consequent inevitable war. The signal marks of the
Roosevelt policy are: I. State-Controlled
Capitalism.-The process of trustification in the United
States was previously still hampered by
268 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the remains of the old anti-trust legislation
surviving from the pre-war epoch. The New York
correspondent of the London Times (June 6, 1933) stated
the first and principal reason for big business support
of the Industrial Recovery Act: "What big business
desires above all things is relief from the antiquated
Anti-Trust Laws." By one stroke all anti-trust
legislation is swept away. The Preamble of the
Industrial Recovery Act openly proclaims the aim "to
remove obstructions to the free flow of inter-State
commerce which tend to diminish the amount thereof, and
to promote the Organisation of industry for the purpose
of co-operative action among trade groups." A gigantic
process of consolidation of the big monopolies, and
extermination of the small producers and independent
firms in the leading industries ("Ten million retailers
protest against the Blue Eagle: they maintain they
cannot do business on a basis of shorter hours, more
wages and practically the same prices"-Daily Telegraph ,
August 25, 1933), already begun by the effects of the
crisis, the credit-smash and the operations of the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation, is now carried to
its logical conclusion. Every leading industry is
established under direct State Organisation, with
regulation of labour conditions, price- fixing,
restriction of production and guaranteed profits. This
is the ideal of capitalist society in decay, seeking to
chain the productive forces which have outgrown
capitalism. 2. Inflation.-The ostensible purpose of
inflation is proclaimed as to give a stimulus to
recovery (a stimulus whose artificial character is
rapidly revealed, as in the heavy decline in the autumn
of 1933 following the short-lived summer boom), and to
relieve and reduce the load of debts of agriculture and
industry, which were threatening to bring the whole
structure crashing. Its actual operation reveals it as
one of the familiar weapons of finance-capitalist
brigandage in periods of crisis. It means in the first
place a direct robbery of all small owners and of all
small savings, the partial expropriation of the
petitbourgeoisie. Second, it serves as the basis for
colossal sharespeculations and manipulations, as well as
processes of priceraising, for the profit of
finance-capital. Third, it effects a universal reduction
of the real wages of all workers, such as to make the
guaranteed wage standards, already fixed at very low
levels, in practice the cover for a general lowering of
wagestandards, as even the American Federation of Labor
has now
THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 269
begun to complain. Fourth, it opens the way in the
international sphere to a price-cutting campaign on the
basis of the depreciated dollar, to wipe out competitors
and swamp the already depressed world markets. 3.
Servitude and Intensified Exploitation of Labour.-The
new Industrial Codes establish an authoritative regime
of the subjection of the worker under the direct union
of the employers and the State, with Government-fixed
wages, hours and conditions of labour, virtually
compulsory arbitration by the Government, and
increasingly open offensive on the right to strike and
on independent workers' organisation. While the social
fascist organs are drawn directly into the governmental
apparatus, a full offensive is let loose on all
independent militant unions. The inauguration of the new
industrial regime is accompanied by the shooting of
miners on strike in Western Pennsylvania and the
proclamation of martial law against strikers in Utah and
New Mexico. "The A. F. of L. has voluminous evidence,"
declared its president, William Green, on January 15,
11934, at a hearing on the lumber code, "that drastic
reduction has taken place in the wages of skilled
workers since the adoption of the code, and that the
minimum wages tended to become the maximum wages paid."
In the name of the N.R.A. the employers endeavour to
proclaim all strikes and picketing illegal. At the same
time in the Labour Camps some 350,000 young workers are
placed under semi-military conditions. 4.
War-Preparations.-The Industrial Recovery Act
specifically provides for the building of "naval
vessels, airplanes and mechanisation or motorisation of
the army tactical units." 235 million dollars of the
special appropriations for Public Works are devoted to
the Navy. The Secretary for the Navy, Swanson, states: I
know of no more effective and praiseworthy way of giving
our industrial life that country-wide stimulus which it
so sorely needs than by devoting a portion of the money
and energy which is to be used for public construction
to this vital arm of our national defence. (New York
Times, June 16, 1933.) The war character of the whole
system of State Organisation, mobilisation of industry
and semi-conscription of labour, is obvious. To what
outcome does the new American system lead? Its economic
outcome can be no more successful in solving the
270 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
crisis than the similar methods of Fascism elsewhere.
The emptiness of all the promises of renewed prosperity,
of the solution of unemployment and of the achievement
of higher standards all round, has been already
demonstrated. The speculative production boom of the
summer of 1933 only led to a small increase in
employment, and yet was followed by a rapid collapse,
showing the impossibility of absorbing the present
increased productive power under existing conditions,
save through the final "solution" of war. The Federal
Reserve Board index of industrial production (reduced to
the base of 1928 as 100) which rose from 54-1 in March
1933, to (0-1 in July, fell to 65.8 in November, and had
only risen to 68.5 by January 1934. The "stagger" system
of reducing the nominal figure of unemployment, as in
Germany, by spreading the existing employment means no
real increase in the volume of employment. The Civil
Works schemes, while pouring out colossal sums of money
to give temporary employment and thus assisting the
process of inflation, only intensify the problem when,
owing to the enormous rising volume of debt, they have
to be diminished and come to an end, throwing millions
again into the unemployed, while no permanent channels
of employment have been found. The level of real wages
has been lowered owing to the rapid rise in prices. The
American Federation of Labor is compelled to report in
its official organ in January 1934: Since the bank
crisis, the average worker's weekly income has risen 7.4
per cent. (to October), but prices the worker has to pay
for his living expenses have risen much more than this.
Food prices are up 118 per cent. (to November 21),
prices of clothing and furnishings are Up 26.3 per cent.
(to November). Thus the worker who had a job right along
is worse off than he was when the year began. His pay
envelope may be larger, but it buys less. His real wage
is smaller. (The American Federationist, January, 1934.)
In January 1934, the President of the American
Federation of Labor, William Green, complained that
there were still nearly twelve million workers not
absorbed into normal employment, and that "workers are
steadily losing by price increases": Our estimate shows
that there are 11,690,000 persons wanting work, but
unable to find employment in our normal industrial
production services. . . . Unemployment is still above
the 1932
THE ROOSEVELT EMERGENCY REGIME 271
level by 1,500,000. . . . Workers are steadily losing
by price increases, and we must expect their living
standards to be further reduced as prices go on upward.
But while all the social -reformist "progressive"
camouflage of the Roosevelt "New Deal" thus rapidly
fades away, the reality of the new Fascist type of
system of concentrated state capitalism and industrial
servitude remains. As Roosevelt declared in his Message
to Congress in January 1934: We have created a permanent
feature of our modernised industrial structure, and it
will continue under the supervision, but not the
arbitrary dictation, of the Government itself.
Roosevelt's Secretary for Agriculture, Wallace, still
further brought out the implications of this process in
his pamphlet entitled "America Must Choose", issued in
the spring of 1934. in this pamphlet, in the course of
which he advocates that America must "annually and
permanently retract of our good agricultural land some
25,000,000 acres", he states: The new types of social
control that we have now in operation are here to stay,
and to grow on a world or national scale. . . . As yet,
we have applied in this country only the barest
beginnings of the sort of social discipline which a
completely determined nationalism requires. . . . We
must be ready to make sacrifices to a known end. The
significance of the Roosevelt regime is above all the
significance of the transition to Fascist forms,
especially in the economic and industrial field. As the
Associate Editor of the Current History Magazine of the
New York Times, E. F. Brown, writes: The new America
will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor will it be
Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards
Fascism, it will be an American Fascism, embodying the
experience, the traditions and the hopes of a great
middle-class nation. (Current History Magazine, July,
1933.)
But in fact this stage is still a transition. As the
failure of the plans of economic recovery becomes
manifest and gives place to new forms of crisis and
widespread mass discontent, and above all as the advance
to war implicit in the whole Roosevelt policy develops,
the demand for corresponding political forms of Fascism
will inevitably come to the front in the United States.
272 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
4. The February Days and the National Concentration
Government in France. In France the development of the
effects of the economic crisis appeared at first more
slowly. But in the latest period the situation has gone
forward with extreme rapidity, and the question of
Fascism has become a burning issue. The events of
February 6-12, 1934, and the fall of the Daladier
Government, leading to the formation of the transitional
Doumergue Government of National Concentration, have
brought to the front the whole question of Fascism and
the increasing signs of advance to a direct armed
struggle. These events are of vital importance for the
Western "democratic" countries, because in these events
are set out with crystal clearness the two alternative
paths, the path of the "left bloc" or bourgeois- liberal
democracy, leading in fact to Fascism, or the path of
the united working-class front of struggle, which can
alone defeat Fascism. What was the situation on the eve
of the events of February 6-12? The national-chauvinist,
Fascist and Royalist forces in France-at all times
active beneath the democratic-republican
exterior--developed extreme activity in the gathering
crisis, and especially since the advent of Hitlerism,
with the open alliance and assistance of the police
authorities in Paris and of the big press, that is, of
the State and finance-capital. At the same time the
governmental forms were showing the same increase of
executive powers and repression of the workers common to
all capitalist governments in the present period. Even
The Times on February 5, that is, before the decisive
events, was compelled to note: A contrast has been drawn
between the severe repression of Communist
manifestations and the comparative immunity from
punishment of Royalist demonstrators and the Royalist
newspaper which directly incites its readers to riot in
the streets. This was under a "Left" bourgeois
Government, maintained in office in practice by the
support of the Socialist Party. The majority in
Parliament was a "Left Cartel" majority, consisting of
the Socialist Party and of the "Left" bourgeois
groupings. This "Left" bourgeois Government (previously
under Chautemps, then under Daladier) was heavily
discredited by
THE FEBRUARY DAYS 273
one of the typical recurrent financial and police
scandals, the Stavisky scandal, which was being utilised
by the reactionary forces to raise agitation against the
parliamentary regime and to prepare a Government of
National Concentration, just as the crisis of the franc
was similarly used in 1926. After the dismissal of the
police chief, Chiappe, who was notoriously hand-in-glove
with the Royalist and Fascist elements, preparations
were openly made- without interference-and proclaimed in
the big press for a jingo riot on February 6, which was
to serve as a preliminary trial of strength and
spear-head for the Fascist advance. What was the line of
the Daladier Government and of "left democracy" in the
face of this challenge? The Socialist Party voted its
confidence in the Daladier Government, in the "Left"
bourgeois Government, as the defender of "democracy"
against Fascism. On the basis of their support the
Daladier Government received a substantial parliamentary
majority of 360 to 220 on the critical evening of
February 6. As against this line the Communist Party,
which had approached the Socialist Party for the united
front against Fascism in March 1933, and been refused,
called for the united front from below, called the
workers to the streets against the Fascist attack, and
through the unions began to make agitation for a general
strike against the Fascist menace. The two lines were
now to receive their practical demonstration in the
events that followed. The Daladier Government massed
heavy military forces in Paris in the days preceding
February 6. But did it act against Fascism? The leaders
of the Fascists and Royalists were allowed to carry on
their preparations in complete freedom. Previously, on
the eve of a Communist May Day demonstration, three
thousand Communist leaders had been arrested in Paris in
order to cripple the organisation of the demonstration.
On the eve of this reactionary demonstration not a
single Fascist or Royalist leader was touched. The
organisers of the reaction were given freedom of the
streets to burn, destroy, set fire to Government
buildings, and advance on the Chamber of Deputies; no
adequate forces were placed against them; the police
were inactive; the "Gardes Republicaines" and "Gardes
Mobiles" were steadily commanded to retreat and give way
before the bourgeois mob; only at the last
274 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
moment, when the Chamber was nearly reached and the
bourgeoise demonstrators began to fire with their
revolvers, the "Gardes Mobiles," not on the order of
their officers, but in instinctive self-defence, fired
back, and about a dozen of the dupes of the reaction and
onlookers were killed. The subsequent Commission of
Enquiry established that the shooting was begun by the
Fascist demonstrators and maintained for half an hour
before any answering fire took place on the side of the
Government forces; and that even so no order to fire was
given by any officer, but that the rank and file of the
"Gardes, Mobiles" began spontaneously to fire in
self-defence and were immediately ordered to stop by
their officers. The sequel to this incident is
instructive for the whole future of parliamentary
democracy. Immediately following this incident, on the
very next day, on February 7, the Daladier Government,
which bad just received an overwhelming parliamentary
majority, resigned; and there was installed, amid the
plaudits of the millionaire press, the Doumergue
Government of National Concentration, with the semi-
fascist-Tardieu in a strategic position in its midst.
How did this happen? Why this sudden surrender of the
legal Government with a parliamentary majority before
the first Fascist street-offensive? This question is of
crucial importance for all the Western "democratic"
countries, where confidence in "democratic institutions"
as the defence against Fascism is still preached. Why
did Daladier, "champion of democracy" and chosen
representative of French Socialism, immediately resign
before the Fascist extra-parliamentary offensive? Where,
then, was the "sovereignty of Parliament," "law and
order," the "will of the electors," and all the paper
paraphernalia of bourgeois democracy? Flown to the
winds, as soon as financecapital gave the order in the
opposite direction. The parliamentary majority might
vote one thing; but finance- capital ordered another,
and finance-capital was obeyed, including by the
representatives of that parliamentary majority. The
Daladier Government issued an explanation that it
resigned "to avoid further bloodshed": The Government,
while responsible for the maintenance of order, declined
to ensure it by the employment of exceptional means,
which might result in severer repressive action and
further blood
THE FEBRUARY DAYS 275
shed. The Government bad no wish to use soldiers
against the demonstrators, and for that reason bad laid
down office. The transparent hypocrisy of this
"explanation" is manifest. As if any French bourgeois
Government bad ever hesitated to use the utmost violence
against working-class demonstrators, not merely using
soldiers against them, but organising complete military
operations against them, as was done on the night of the
far more serious fighting of February 9, amid the
applause of the entire bourgeois press. Daladier
resigned, not because be was a pacifist, but because he
was a puppet of finance-capital and could do no other.
Daladier resigned because he was compelled by the real
ruling forces of the State, in relation to which a
parliamentary majority was mere stage-play. What else
could he do? Even had he had the will to fight, be bad
no forces. The police belonged to the reaction; the
General Staff belonged to the reaction; it was reported
that the old Marshal Lyautey threatened to lead the army
on Paris if there should be any attempt at resistance by
the parliamentary majority. He was as contemptible a
helpless puppet as Asquith over Ulster. Had be wished to
fight, he could only have done one thing, to have
publicly exposed the whole plot, and to have called on
the proletarian masses, on the rank and file of the
soldiers, to resist. But this would have meant to
unloose the proletarian revolution, which he feared as
much as any of the Bloc National or the Fascists. At
bottom he was one with these; all the liberal-democratic
pretence was no more than electoral humbug. He knew his
duty. He went quietly. Therewith the whole card-castle
of bourgeois democracy, of the "democratic" defence
against Fascism, of "democracy versus dictatorship," of
the whole Social Democratic line, came tumbling down.
The line of the "Left Cartel," of the French Socialist
Party, of the parliamentary-democratic "defense" against
Fascism, was proved once again only to have smoothed the
way for the advance of Fascism, for a Government of the
Right, for intensified dictatorship against the
workers-so much so that the Socialist Party, after the
damning exposure of February 6, was compelled to make a
show in words of calling for the united front and
supporting the general strike against Fascism, when it
was no longer possible to hold back the workers with the
"democratic" deception.
276 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
In his speech of apologia to his constituents on
April 8 Daladier admitted that he was aware that a full
counterrevolutionary coup was being prepared for
February 6: The Fascist organisations were mobilised to
force an entry into the Chamber, to proclaim the fall of
parliament and to impose a dictatorship. Authentic
documents proving this, direct appeals to insurrection,
have been placed in the hands of the Commission of
Enquiry. Why, then, did the Left-Democratic Government,
with this information in its hands, take no action? Why
did these "democrats," so merciless and rigorous against
the slightest sign of Communist activity, making arrests
and suppression right and left, not lay a finger on the
Fascist press which was openly calling to insurrection?
He has no answer. On the contrary, he is anxious to show
that no serious measure of defence was taken: It has
been established that at no point was any order to fire
given by the Government. Not a single machine-gun, not a
single repeating- rifle was in the hands of the "Gardes
Mobiles" or of the police. Why did the Government,
chosen by the parliamentary majority, take no steps to
maintain itself against Fascism, but instead resign at
once, despite its parliamentary majority? He admits that
this question is perplexing "republican opinion":
Republican opinion is amazed that the Government should
have resigned on February 7 instead of maintaining
itself in power, since it had the majority in
parliament. He has no answer. He fumbles and stumbles
over the question. He accuses fellow-ministers of having
wanted to give way. He accuses the President of having
insisted on his resignation. He hints at legal
difficulties in the way of taking any effective
measures, of making arrests, of proclaiming martial law:
would the President have signed the decrees, or would
parliament have supported him? As if there should have
been a moment's difficulty or hesitation to carry
through any steps whatever, if it had been workers, and
not Fascists, who had advanced in armed formation to
burn down Government buildings, invade the Chamber and
proclaim a dictatorship. Finally he ends with the old
lame excuse: It seemed better to resign than to risk any
further spilling of blood.
THE FEBRUARY DAYS 277
Thus the swan song of parliamentary democracy, the
regime of blood against the workers, of bloodshed
unlimited in imperialist war, but toothless and helpless
against Fascism and reaction. On February 6-7, 1934,
parliamentary democracy in France signed its
death-warrant. The Fascist-Royalist demonstrations of
February 6 were in reality only the preliminary
offensive of the reaction to conceal and defeat the real
rising movement of mass-discontent, the rising movement
of the working class, against which a Government of
intensified dictatorship was required. Hence the
peculiar character of the manoeuvre which installed the
Government of National Concentration, The full
significance of this process-first, the preliminary
preparations under cover of the "Left" Daladier
Government, and the military massing of artillery and
troops by this Government with the support of the
Socialists, and then, at the critical moment, the
replacement of this Government by a Right Government of
National Concentration-was laid bare in the days
following February 6, as the working class came
increasingly into action. The battles of Friday,
February 9, when the Communist demonstration had been
banned by the Government, and the workers fought for
possession of the streets, enormously exceeded in their
range February 6, and were turned into a full military
operation by the Government, 23,000 troops and 14,000
Police were called into action against the workers. In
contrast to Tuesday night (February 6), when the
policeoffered only half-hearted resistance to the
Fascist and Royalist rioters till it was too late, the
city was turned into an armed camp. (Daily Herald,
February 10, 1934.) The capitalist dictatorship had no
scruples now to "employ exceptional means" or "use
soldiers against the demonstrators." But the strength of
the working-class resistance was such that it was
successful to give pause to the first wave of the
Fascist attack. This was still further shown in the
country-wide General Strike of February 12. The
Communist slogan for the 24 hours general strike
received such wide mass support that the reformist
unions were compelled formally to take it up, even
though they tried to sabotage its execution, going so
far as to turn it in their actual instructions (the
railwaymen) into a
278 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"fifteen minutes" or even "one minute" strike. But
the strike and the accompanying united front
demonstrations won overwhelming support throughout the
country. The true path of the struggle against Fascism
was thus shown. The rising strength of the united
working-class front of struggle in France was laid bare
as the sole power of the fight against the rising
Fascist offensive of French finance-capital. The
Government of National Concentration in France is thus
revealed as a typical transition Government of the
advance to Fascism. Its functions may be summed up:
first, by the concentration of all forces to counter and
defeat the rising wave of working-class discontent;
second, in view of the strength of the working-class
resistance, to cover the too open Fascist designs with a
show of "appeasement" and "safeguarding" of
parliamentary democratic institutions; third, to carry
through the heavy offensive against the working class
required by finance-capital, as shown in the cuts
campaign; and fourth, to provide the cover under which
the Fascist forces can carry forward their preparations
for a further assault. To-day the Fascist and Royalist
forces are actively carrying forward their armed
preparations, and speak openly of a future coup. The
signs point to critical conflicts in the near future in
France. 5. The Beginnings of Fascist Movements. In 1905
Milner, one of the more far-seeing leaders of the older
British imperialism, described in a private letter the
only hope that he could see for the salvation of
bourgeois rule: Perhaps a great Charlatan-political
scallywag, buffoon, liar, stump orator, and in other
respects popular favourite-may some day arise who is
nevertheless a statesman-the combination is not
impossible- and who, having attained power by popular
acts may use it for national ends. It is an off-chance,
but I do not see any other. (Milner, letter to Lady
Edward Cecil, The Milner Papers, Vol. II, 1899-1905.)
Here we see the bourgeoisie consciously groping for the
forms of Fascism long before Fascism existed. The fact
that so lifelike a description of Hitler or Mussolini
could have been penned a decade before these began to
play their role is a striking confirmation of how little
it is personality that creates
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 279
history, and bow much rather history calls forth the
personality that it requires at a given stage. Fascism
does not come into existence because a "leader" arises.
On the contrary, because the bourgeoisie requires
Fascism, a "leader" is created from such materials as
can be found. This is particularly important with regard
to the development of Fascist movements in Britain,
France and the United States, where there is still some
difficulty in finding a suitable "leader" with
sufficient popular qualifications (in Britain, a
definite candidate exists, but drawn from the
plutocracy). The development of a specific Fascist
movement is a complicated process, involving a
considerable "trial and error" of rival movements,
before the successful technique is found. Only fools
will laugh at the awkwardnesses of these embryonic
stages, and not realise the character of the serpent
that is being incubated. The crystallisation of Fascism
into a single main movement has taken over ten years in
Britain, and may not have yet reached its final form;
the process is still uncertain in France, owing to the
special complication of the existence of the older
Royalist "Action Francaise," which is stronger so far
than the nascent pure Fascist movements and may still
dominate them; in the United States the situation is
still that of the early stages of confusion. More
important in this initial stage than the specific
Fascist movements are the direct tendencies within
leading circles of the bourgeoisie towards open Fascism,
and therefore towards the creation of a Fascist movement
or towards the support of the most effective Fascist
movement already existing. These direct expressions of
support for Fascism are to be found in abundance among
the leaders of the bourgeoisie in Britain, France and
the United States. The close connections of leading
British bourgeois circles with Italian Fascism and with
Hitlerism are notorious. Mussolini had scarcely
completed his coup d'etat before he was ostentatiously
honoured by the British King in 1923 with the Order of
the Grand Commander of the Bath as a reward for his
services to the counter- revolution (corresponding to
the similar title of a lower grade conferred on the
unsuccessful Denikin). The intimate relations of
Chamberlain and Mussolini were repeatedly expressed with
a fervour which was not solely dictated by the
requirements of foreign policy. The connections
280 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
of envoys of Hitlerism with British Conservative
headquarters were reported already before its advent to
power. Churchill openly declared, speaking in the Mecca
of Rome in 1927, his support for Fascism: If I had been
an Italian, I am sure I should have been entirely with
you from the beginning to the end of your victorious
struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of
Leninism. (Churchill, Address to the Roman Fascists,
January 1927, quoted in Salvemini, The Fascist
Dictatorship, P. 20.)
Mond, the patron saint of the Trades Union Congress
and joint author of the Mond-Turner Reports for
class-co-operation, was no less open in his recognition
of Fascism and explicit avowal that his purpose in the
industrial peace negotiations with the Trades Union
Congress was directed towards the same aim as Fascism.
His avowal, made also in Rome (the shrine where the
hearts of British Conservative statesmen are to-day
opened) in 1928, was indeed so explicit, as reported in
the British Press, that he subsequently endeavoured to
disavow it and allege an "abridged" and "incorrect
version" of his remarks; "my references to Fascism," he
wrote, "were entirely restricted to its application to
Italy." The report, as printed in the Daily Herald, ran:
"I admire Fascism because it is successful in bringing
about social peace," said Sir Alfred Mond in an
interview in Rome yesterday, reported by the Exchange.
"I have been working for years towards the same peace in
the industrial field in England. . . . Fascism is
tending towards the realisation of my political ideals,
namely, to make all classes collaborate loyally." (Daily
Herald, May 12, 1928.)* The Rothermere and Beaverbrook
press support of Hitler and Mussolini, and demands for
"a British Hitler," are notorious, culminating in the
direct support accorded by the Rothermere press to the
British Fascist movement. Of especial importance are the
recent developments of the Diehard and right-wing revolt
within the Conservative Party, represented by Churchill,
Lloyd and others, and also, in varying forms by
Rothermere and Beaverbrook. Under the form of the *See
Trades Union Congress Report, 1928, P. 215, or Mond's
partial denial, and P. 412 for Citrine's amazing defence
of Mond's right to be a Fascist and in favour of the
trade union alliance with Mond, even if Mond were a
Fascist: "Supposing that the statement had been true,
and that he had associated himself with Fascism, would
that have been a logical ground on which to break down
dis. cussion?"
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 281
battle against Baldwin, and especially over the issue
of India, is fought the battle of more and more open
opposition to parliamentary democratic institutions; and
the Conservative headquarters is hard pressed to
maintain control within the party for the present more
cautious stage of official bourgeois policy (it may be
noted that between 1933 and 1934 the Diehard or
opposition vote on the Indian issue at the Central
Council of Conservative Associations rose from below
onethird to over three-fifths). Churchill, speaking
before the Joint Select Committee on Indian
Constitutional Reform in October 1933, and opposing the
extension of even the farcical sham "democratic"
institutions proposed for India, seizes the opportunity
to refer to democratic institutions as "now falling into
general disrepute in the Western world." The Times,
writing of the revolt against Baldwin in the
Conservative Party, notes both its anti-democratic line
and the possibility of its victory: That "Baldwinism"
would be followed by some form of "Diehardism"-whether
dictatorial or bureaucratic or purely commercial -is
hardly open to question if these malcontents were to
have their way. They may have it yet. (Times, October
17, 1930.) This development is of especial importance to
note because, when the issue comes to a bead, it is far
from certain that a Churchill or a Lloyd will allow the
leadership to pass to a Mosley.* Similar tendencies and
expressions looking more or less openly towards Fascism
may be observed among the statesmen and industrialists
in the United States and France. Thus Gary, the United
States Steel King, declared at the International Chamber
of Commerce Congress in 1023 (Observer, April 1, 1923):
We should be the better for a man like Mussolini here
too. * On the other "Progressive" wing of the
bourgeoisie is worth noting the advocacy of Liberal
Fascism by H. G. Wells, and G. Bernard Shaw's active
agitation on behalf of Fascism, which has led him to be
hailed as their patron by the British Fascists (see The
Fascist Week, February 23-March 1, 1934, on "G.B.S. on
the Brink -Will He Ever Wear a Blackshirt?" and the
quotation from Shaw in praise of Mosley as the motto of
the official book B.U.F.: Oswald Mosley and British
Fascism). The older agitation of the Belloc- Chesterton
school (against parliamentarism, against financiers,
against Marxism, against pacifism, against Jews; for
nationalism, for small property, etc.) was fully Fascist
in an academic fashion - although the subsequent coming
to life of their entire programme with literal
exactitude in the Catholic Hitter has not been
appreciated by these virulent anti- Prussians.
282 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
And the former United States Ambassador to Berlin, J.
W. Gerard, declared in praise of Hitler: Hitler is doing
much for Germany; his unification of the Germans, his
destruction of Communism, his training of the young, his
creation of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his
curbing of parliamentary government, so unsuited to the
German character, his protection of the right of private
property are all good; and, after all, what the Germans
do in their own territory is their own business, except
for one thing-the persecution and practical expulsion of
the Jews. (New York Times, October 15, 1933.) Abundant
examples could also be quoted from the right wing press
in France of an envious admiration of Hitlerism. If we
turn from these gathering tendencies to the specific and
organised Fascist movements, it is to be noted that in
the recent period direct Fascist movements have rapidly
developed to prominence in Britain and France, as well
as in the smaller countries, Belgium, Holland, Sweden,
Switzerland, etc. In the United States the process of
the Roosevelt development is still preparing the ground
of Fascism; and the question of direct fascist
Organisation is still at the time of writing mainly a
question of confused tendencies and beginnings, such as
the "Silver Shirts," "Khaki Shirts," Ku Klux Klan
revival, the Fascist movement of Dennis, etc.; from
these tendencies more developed fascist Organisation may
be expected rapidly to emerge. But the situation in
Britain and France is already considerably more
advanced; and at the present stage the situation in
Britain and France is of crucial importance for the
future development of Fascism in the Western imperialist
countries. In France we have already seen how the events
of February 1934, leading to the fall of the Daladier
Government and the establishment of the Government of
National Concentration, have brought the question of
Fascism sharply to the front and led to a rapid growth
of the Fascist organisations. The situation is
complicated in France by the parallel existence of the
Royalist "Action Francaise" and of the newer directly
Fascist organisations. The older "Action Francaise,"
with its subsidiary hooligan bands, the "Camelots du
Roy," was originally founded in 1898 as a nationalist
and anti-semitic Organisation, and later became
Royalist. With its close connections with right-wing
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 283
Conservatism and semi-official protection for its
violent and unrestrained agitation, it has considerable
strength among the forces of the Right; but it is a
rigidly doctrinaire reactionary Royalist body,
explicitly separating itself from the principles of
Fascism, although closely similar in general outlook and
practice, and not accepting its typical social-demagogic
technique. The numerous directly Fascist organisations
have not yet coalesced into a single party. The previous
attempt to found such a party, the "Faisceau,"
established by Georges Valois in 1925, was not
successful. To-day the principal more or less explicitly
Fascist organisations are the "Jeunesses Patriotes,"
founded by Taittinger in 1924, and the semi- military
"Croix de Feu" (nominally an ex-servicemen's
Organisation, but in fact recruited from all sources),
under Colonel de la Roque, founded in 1927 with
subsidies from Coty, in its early years numbering only a
few thousands, but since the February days claiming
150,000 members. There are also a number of minor
organisations and groups, such as the "Mouvement
National Populaire" around the "Action Nouvelle." Of the
fighting strength of these organisations the Paris
correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports: The
Croix de Feu, the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Action
Francaise and other reactionary organisations have
probably not more than 25,000 to 30,000 "fighting
members" in Paris. Nevertheless, if this force were
armed, it would be sufficiently impressive, though even
then it could do little if it had the police and the
army against it. But there is just a danger that at the
critical moment both the police and the army might be on
their side, or at any rate neutral. (Manchester Guardian
Weekly, March 23, 1934.) At the same time from the
"Socialist" side has developed an organisation, the
"Neo-Socialists," or, as they have termed themselves,
the "Socialist Party of France," led by Marquet. This
group was until the autumn of 1933 a right wing within
the Socialist Party; under the influence of the victory
of Hitlerism it came forward with a new programme,
attacking the old conceptions of internationalism and of
the proletarian basis of socialism, insisting on the
need to build on the basis of "the nation," and to
appeal to the middle class and to "youth," and stressing
the necessity of "authority," of the "strong State," of
"order," of "discipline," of "action," etc.
284 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Its outlook was thus, although in fact only
developing and stating more explicitly the basic social
democratic outlook, marked by strong fascist influence;
and the development of this tendency was universally
recognised as a development towards Fascism. In the
autumn of 1933 this group broke away from the French
Socialist Party to found the Socialist Party of France;
its leader, Marquet, joined the Government of National
Concentration on its formation. In Britain the situation
has not yet reached the same degree of intensity as in
France; but a fully formed Fascist Party and
Organisation, even though not yet strong, has been
constituted since 1932 in the British Union of Fascists
under Mosley. The rival smaller organisations are to-day
of minor importance; note may be taken of the markedly
anti-semitic Imperial Fascist League, and of the
"Greenshirts," originally a currency movement of more or
less fascist character, though denying Fascism. The
British Union of Fascists, although not yet necessarily
the final form, has to-day established its position for
two reasons: firstly and mainly, because of its
overwhelming financial support from influential sources,
support by the million-tentacled Rothermere Press, etc.;
and secondly, because of its historical origin from the
heart of the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party,
whereas the previous attempts had remained movements
purely of retired generals and suburban reactionaries.
The earlier movement of the "British Fascisti"
originated in 1923, from the circles around the Duke of
Northumberland's journal The Patriot, and received its
legal recognition from the first Labour Government: The
legality of their organisation was officially recognised
by the late Labour Government by the granting to them of
their Articles of Association as "The British
Fascisti,(General Blakeney, President of the British
Fascisti, in The Nineteenth Century, January 1925.)
Brigadier-General R. B. D. Blakeney, its President, had
been general manager of the Egyptian State Railways. Its
Commander for the London area was B rigadier- General
Sir Ormonde Winter, K.B.E., and its Vice-President was
RearAdmiral J. C. Armstrong. (The subsequently attempted
United Empire Party, launched with the support of the
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 285
Rothermere and Beaverbrook Press in rg3o, was equally
overweighted with generals: "the Council is almost
entirely composed of military officers, and their
experience of political matters or organisation is, with
two exceptions, negligible, Morning Post, September 13,
1930). These earlier would-be fascist organisations had
no understanding of the necessary Labour connections and
social-demagogic technique of Fascism. The British
Fascisti proclaimed in all simplicity the objective "to
render practical, and, if necessary, militant defence of
His Majesty the King and the Empire." A further circular
explaining the role of its two branches, Men's Units and
Women's Units, stated: In times of.peace both branches
carry on propaganda, recruiting and
counter-revolutionary organisation. Should Revolution or
a General Strike be threatened, Men's Units would form
the Active Force, and the Women's Units the Auxiliary
Force. It is obvious that on this basis of ingenuous
"counter-revolutionary," honesty no mass Fascist
movement could be built up. The movement won a certain
degree of attention in the period preceding the General
Strike, mainly owing to its semi-official police
recognition, its members being accepted in certain areas
for recruitment into the special constabulary in a body
under their own officers. It achieved no political
influence, and after the General Strike fell into
obscurity. The first significance of the Mosley movement
was its direct origin from within the Labour Party.
Mosley, after having been a Conservative Member of
Parliament, entered the Labour Party in 1924. On the
basis of his great wealth and influential connections,
he advanced with an extreme rapidity unattainable to
ordinary working- class members of the Labour Party, to
a commanding position in that party, which is always
notoriously open to the power of money and of bourgeois
connections, and where seats are often offered as at an
auction to the highest bidder (no less than fifty seats
were offered to Mosley in the same year that he joined).
Within three years he was elected to the Labour Party
Executive in 192 7 with a higher vote than Herbert,
Morrison, and in 1928 was re-elected, polling 2,153,000
votes. He was appointed a Minister of the Labour
Government of 1929, and in 1930 resigned on the grounds
of inactivity to deal with unemploy
286 FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
ment. As a Minister he had produced the Mosley
Memorandum, which was the first outline towards a
Fascist policy, that is, an active, openly
non-socialist, far-reaching policy of capitalist
reconstruction. This policy, not because of its
nonsocialist character, but because of its active
character, was unwelome to the conservative do-nothing
line of the Labour Government, which accordingly sat on
it and endeavoured to bury it. Mosley appealed to the
Labour Party Conference in 193o and won 1,046,000 votes
against 1,251,000 for the Executive. He was re- elected
to the Labour Party Executive, and thus in fact passed
straight from the Labour Party Executive to the
organisation of his New Party or Fascist Party in 1931.
For the original wider political basis and influence of
Mosley (in contrast to the unsuccessful generals of the
previous Fascist attempts), and his launching into the
front ranks of politics, it is thus necessary to thank
the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, which in
this way characteristically performed the role of Social
Fascism. While the Communist Party alone from the outset
correctly gave warning of the Fascist tendencies
implicit in Mosley (which he at first endeavoured to
deny), the Left Labour politicians rallied to his
support and assisted his campaign. The New Leader, the
organ of the Independent Labour Party, wrote of the
Mosley Memorandum: In the main, as is known, his scheme
followed I.L.P. lines. (New Leader, October 10, 1930.)
Brockway wrote: In the ideas of the I.L.P. Group and
the smaller Mosley Group there is a good deal in common.
. . . Before long we may expect to see a revolt by the
younger members of all three parties against the methods
and spirit of the olde(Brockway, "The Ferment of Ideas,"
New Leader, November 7, 1930.) The Mosley Manifesto of
December 1930, which already formally disclaimed
Socialism ("the immediate question is not a question of
the ownership, but of the survival of British industry")
and demanded a Dictatorship of Five to carry out an
aggressive capitalist programme, was signed by seventeen
Labour M.P.s, including five I.L.P. M.P.'s, together
with
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 287
A. J. Cook.* When the New Party, the first definite
step towards the formation of a Fascist Party, was
formed in the spring of 193 1, it was formed of six
Labour M.P.'s and one Conservative M.P., and made its
appeal to "the mass of patriotic men and women who are
determined upon action." The final evolution from the
womb of Social Fascism to open Fascism developed in 193
1. After the unsuccessful Ashton by- election fight of
the New Party in April 1931, writes Strachey (Menace of
Fascism, p. 161), "Mosley began more and more to use the
word Fascism in private." In May 1931, according to the
Daily Express (May 18, 1931), Mosley at a meeting at the
headquarters of the New Party "spoke of the need for
discipline: it was generally agreed that there were many
lessons to be learned by the New Party from Hitlerism."
Major Baker, political secretary of Mosley, in an
interview to the same journal declared: It is true that
the young men who are gathering round us are Oxford
students and graduates. They are mostly athletes The men
around us are in many instances the owners of motorcars.
They will form themselves into flying squads to descend
suddenly on a place. According to the Daily Herald (June
6, 1931), a mission, consisting of Major Thompson,
D.S.O., and L. J. Cumming (formerly propaganda secretary
of the West London Federation of the I.L.P.) was sent to
Germany to study the methods of the Nazis. Mosley, The
Times (March 2, 193 1) reported, "has, it is understood,
collected a considerable fund-not, of course, from
Socialists." The details of this development are only
important as showing in a classically clear form the
close connection of Social Fascism and Fascism. The last
step in the process took place in 1932 when the Fascist
name was openly adopted, and the New Party (as the
Communists bad prophesied from the outset) was
transformed into the British Union of Fascists. The
statement of policy, Mosley's Greater Britain was
issued, which repeats in very summary form the familiar
features of Fascist economics * The names of the
seventeen Labour M.P.'s, signatory of the Mosley
Manifesto, which became the starting point of British
Fascism, were, in addition to Mosley and his wife:
Oliver Baldwin, Aneurin Bevan, W. J. Brown, Dr. R.
Forgan, J. F. Horrabin, M. Phillips Price, E. J.
Strachey, J. Batty, W. G. Cove, J. Lovat Fraser, S. F.
Markham, J. McGovern, 1. J. McShane, H. T. Muggeridge,
and C. J. Simmons.
288 ]FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
and politics discussed in previous chapters, with the
main stress on the economic policy ("Corporate State,"
compulsory arbitration, "scientific protection,"
regulation of production, trade, wages, prices and
investments-the old illusions of "planned capitalism"),
and with the necessarily unpopular political features of
repression smoothed over under vague phrases or even
omitted from mention.* In the autumn of 1932 the Fascist
Defence Force was established, and in 1933 Fascist
barracks-headquarters, of the type of the Brown Houses
in Germany, began to be set up. The growth of violence
in 1933 in connection with the "wearing of political
uniforms" (i.e., of the Fascists-no Workers' Defence
Force as yet exists) was reported as follows by the Home
Secretary in Parliament on February 20, 1934: The
growing danger of public disturbances which the police
attribute to the wearing of what may conveniently be
called political uniforms is shown by the fact that the
Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis reports that
for the first six months of 1933 there were in the
Metropolitan police district II disturbances of a
political character attributed to this cause, while in
the last six months of the year there have been no less
than 22 such disturbances. In the beginning of 1934
Fascism was endowed with a largescale Press organisation
by the resources of the millionaire Rothermere Press
being placed at the service of the British Union of
Fascists in order that it might represent a
well-organised party of the Right ready to take over
responsibility for national affairs with the same
directness of purpose and energy of method as Hitler and
Mussolini have displayed. (Rothermere in the Daily Mail,
January 15, 1934.)
The situation by the spring of 1934 was reported as
follows by the Government (Lord Feversham's reply on
behalf of the Government in the House of Lords on
February 28, 1934): The membership of the British Union
of Fascists was difficult to * the penal suppression of
strikes under the Corporate State is not mentioned. The
violent suppression and dissolution of any form of
socialist working-class movement is not mentioned. On
the electoral system it is blandly stated (p. 34) that
"Such electoral principles (i.e. of the Corporate State)
are designed not to limit the powers of electors, but
rather to increase their real power by enabling them to
give a well-informed vote," without stating that in fact
in Fascist Italy and Germany the electors are presented
with a single ready-made list to give their assent to,
with no permission of any alternative candidates. But
the whole book is marked by the glaring disingenuousness
customary to Fascist propaganda before power.
THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCIST MOVEMENTS 289
obtain, but the movement was gaining ground. . . . An
article which had appeared in the Daily Mail, written by
the owner, had undoubtedly given it considerable
impetus. The exact source from which income was derived
to finance these activities was unknown, but it was
obvious that substantial financial backing was
forthcoming from various sources other than that of the
private wealth of the leader and the dues or
subscriptions from members. The policy of the Government
was stated to be not to interfere to restrict the growth
of Fascism: As long as a majority were able, with the
assistance or lack of assistance of a Government, to
maintain peace and order in this country, it was
unnecessary for any great action to be taken to restrict
such parties. It is possible that in the near future, as
a result of the widespread mass opposition and
indignation over the unchecked growth of Fascism and
Fascist violence, a show of measures may be taken by the
authorities (as in other countries, as in Germany, as in
Italy) - purporting to restrict the "private armies" of
Fascism. The experience of other countries has shown
abundantly that such legal and administrative
restrictive measures are always in practice exercised
heavily against any working-class self-defence, and only
lightly, if at all, against Fascism (e.g., in Germany,
rigorous dissolution and disarming of the workers' Red
Front, alongside a short nominal ban on the Storm Troops
by Bruning, the latter ban being officially raised soon
after by von Papen on "patriotic" grounds). Fascism in
every country grows by the direct support and connivance
of the State authorities, of the higher police
authorities and of the bourgeoisie. The battle against
Fascism can only be fought, not by illusory trust in
legalism, but by the power of the working-class
movement.