A VERY sharp issue confronts present society. Events
move with great speed. The traditional forms of thought
still cling to the remnants of past periods. The victory
and advance of Fascism over an extending area has come
as a brutal shock to millions. Yet Fascism is no sudden
growth. For a decade and a half the whole post-war
social development has been incubating Fascism. To all
those who have hitherto accepted as unquestioned the
existing social forms and their continuity, and above
all to those who have looked to the possibility of
peaceful progressive advance within those existing
social forms, and who have dismissed the revolutionary
outlook as the fantasy of a minority, Fascism, and more
especially the victory of Fascism in an advanced
industrial country such as Germany, has come as a brutal
shock. It may yet prove a salutary shock, if it can open
their eyes to the real issues of our period. With every
year, and with every month, that the long overdue social
revolution in Western Europe and America, for which the
world war of 1914 already gave the signal-that is, the
ending of the private ownership of the means of
production which inevitably produces the increasing
contradictions, anarchy, destruction and barbarism of
the present day-is delayed, denied and postponed, the
world situation grows more desperate, and the whole
future of society is brought into question. The world
war of 1914, the opening of the world socialist
revolution in 1917, the partial revolutions and civil
struggles succeeding the war, the post-war chaos, the
world economic crisis since 1929, and now the victory
and advance of Fascism and approach to a second world
war-these are the successive warnings of the real issues
of the present stage. Fascism has already been the
subject of an enormous discussion and literature over
twelve years, and above all over the past two years. Yet
the treatment of Fascism has hardly yet brought out its
full significance.
On the one side, Fascism has been widely treated as
simply the expression of brutality and violence, of
militarism and suppression, of national and racial
egoism, of the revolt against culture, against the old
slogans of liberty, equality and brotherhood.
On the other side, Fascism has been treated as the
expression of Πnational rebirth, of the emergence of
youth, of the end of decadent liberalism and
intellectualism, of the advance to a balanced and
organised social order.
In order to get closer to the true character of
Fascism, it is necessary to go deeper, to see Fascism in
relation to the whole character of modern social
development, of which Fascism is an expression and
reflection, and above all to get down to the basic
movement and driving forces of economy and technique' of
which the social and political forms, including Fascism,
are only the reflection.
Such an examination will reveal beyond dispute that
the modern development of technique and productive
powers has reached a point at which the existing
capitalist forms are more and more incompatible with the
further development of production and utilisation of
technique. There is war between them, increasingly
violent and open since 1914, and entering into a new and
extreme stage in the world economic crisis and its
outcome. One must end the other. Either the advance of
the productive forces must end capitalism. Or the
maintenance of capitalism must end the advance of
production and technique and begin a reverse movement.
In fact the delay of the revolution has meant that the
reverse movement has already begun throughout the world
outside the Soviet Union.
Only two paths are therefore open before present
society.
One is to endeavour to strangle the powers of
production, to arrest development, to destroy material
and human forces, to fetter international exchange, to
check science and invention, to crush the development of
ideas and thought, and to concentrate on the
Organisation of limited, self-sufficient, nonprogressive
hierarchic societies in a state of mutual war-in short,
to force back society to a more primitive stage in order
to maintain the existing class domination. This is the
path of Fascism, the path to which the bourgeoisie in
all modern countries where it rules is increasingly
turning, the path of human decay.
The other alternative is to organise the new
productive forces as social forces, as the common wealth
of the entire existing society for the rapid and
enormous raising of the material basis of society, the
destruction of poverty, ignorance and disease and of
class and national separations, the unlimited carrying
forward of science and culture, and the Organisation of
the world communist society in which all human beings
will for the first time be able to reach full Πstature
and play their part in the collective development of the
future humanity. This is the path of Communism, the path
to which the working masses who are the living
representatives of the productive forces and whose
victory over capitalist class domination can alone
achieve the realisation of this path, are increasingly
turning; the path which modern science and productive
development makes both possible and necessary, and which
opens up undreamt-of possibilities for the future
development of the human race.
Which of these alternatives will conquer? This is the
sharp question confronting human society to-day.
Revolutionary Marxism is confident that, because the
productive forces are on the side of Communism,
Communism will conquer; that the victory of Communism,
which is expressed in the victory of the proletariat, is
ultimately inevitable as the sole possible final outcome
of the existing contradictions; that the nightmare of
the other alternative, of the "Dark Ages" whose creeping
shadow begins already to haunt the imagination of
current thinkers, will yet be defeated, will be defeated
by the organised forces of international Communism.
But this inevitability is not independent of the
human factor. On the contrary, it can only be realised
through the human factor. Hence the urgency of the fight
against Fascism, and for the victory of the proletariat,
on which the whole future of human society depends. The
time grows shorter; the sands are running through the
glass.
To many, the alternative of Fascism or Communism is
no welcome alternative, and they would prefer to deny it
and to regard both as rival, and in their view even
parallel, forms of extremism. They dream of a third
alternative which shall be neither, and shall realise a
peaceful harmonious progress without class struggle,
through the forms of capitalist "democracy," "planned
capitalism," etc.
This dream of a third alternative is in fact
illusory. On the one side, it is the echo of the
conceptions of a past period, of the period of liberal
capitalism, which was already perishing with the advent
of imperialism, and which cannot be revived when the
conditions that gave rise to it have passed away, in the
stage of the extreme decay of capitalism and of the
extreme intensification of the class struggle. Even the
caricature of democratic forms which is still
precariously maintained in the imperialist states of
Western Europe and America is increasingly supplemented
and displaced by more and more open dictatorial and
repressive methods (increase of executive powers,
diminution of the role of Parliament, growth of
emergency powers, extension of police action and
violence, restriction of the rights of speech and
meeting, restriction of the right to strike, violent
suppression of demonstrations and strikes, combined with
the typical methods of social demagogy of the
millionaire Press, stampede Πelections, etc.). The
trend of capitalism in all countries towards fascist
forms is unmistakable, and is wider than the question of
a Mussolini or a Hitler.
On the other side, the dream of a "planned
capitalism" is already an unconscious groping after
Fascism without facing its logical implications. For in
practice the endeavour to realise the self-
contradictory aim of a "planned capitalism" can only be
pursued along the path of Fascism, of repression of the
productive forces and of the working class.
Thus the myth of a third alternative is in fact no
alternative, but in reality a part of the advance
towards Fascism.
Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism is not a necessary
stage of capitalist development through which all
countries must pass. The social revolution can forestall
Fascism, as it has done in Russia. But if the social
revolution is delayed, then Fascism becomes inevitable.
Fascism can be fought. Fascism can be fought and
defeated. But Fascism can only be fought and defeated if
it is fought without illusions and with clear
understanding of the issues. The causes of Fascism lie
deep-rooted in existing society. Capitalism in its decay
breeds Fascism. Capitalist democracy in decay breeds
Fascism. The only final guarantee against Fascism, the
only final wiping out of the causes of Fascism, is the
victory of the proletarian dictatorship.
Fascism offers no solution of a possible stable
social organisation
19.
to replace the existing society in dissolution. On
the contrary, Fascism carries forward all the
contradictions of existing class society, because
Fascism is only a form, a means of capitalist class rule
in conditions of extreme decay. Not only that, but
Fascism carries forward the contradictions of existing
class society to their most extreme point, when the
contradictions are laid bare in open civil war and the
organisation of the entire capitalist state upon the
basis of permanent civil war. Fascism is thus society at
war within itself. On this basis, Fascism, so far from
being a solution of existing social problems, represents
their extreme intensification to the point of final
disruption. The only final outcome can be the victory of
Communism, because Communism alone contains within
itself the solution of the contradictions.
But in the interim period of struggle and transition,
if it is Πprolonged, if Fascism succeeds for a period
in organising its basis of civil war and violent
reactionary dictatorship, an enormous consequent
destruction of material wealth, of human lives and of
culture, can take place, and increasingly threatens.
Therein is the desperate urgency of the fight, not only
for the ultimately inevitable victory of Communism, but
for the rapid victory of Communism.
The urgency of the present issues needs no emphasis.
All sense the gathering storms. A host of issues, of
war, of armaments, of Fascism, of the economic chaos,
are taken up. But none of these issues can be taken in
abstraction. It is necessary to see them in relation to
the whole social development, to the basic issue
underlying all these forms, the issue of the rule of the
bourgoisie or of the proletariat, of capitalism or
socialism, on which the future of the human race
depends.
Present society is ripe, is rotten-ripe for the
social revolution Delay does not mean pacific waiting on
the issue. The dialectic of reality knows no standing
still. Delay means ever-extending destruction, decay,
barbarism. The words of Lenin on the eve of October
apply with gathering force to the present world
situation: "Delay means death."
May, 1934. R. P. D.