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Fascism, All About It

September 10, 2025
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At 7PM on September 16, I will get to open an on-line discussion about fascism. Even though these aren’t the times to sit around and study scholarly stuff, I couldn’t pass this one up. Fascism is upon us in America and people need to know what they are fighting. I’ve started circulating some questions and, bit by bit, some of the information I’ve gathered. Hopefully, people will get in touch about the link for the class.

Some questions to think about

When one considers the history of fascism in various nations, trying to define fascism is like nailing jelly to a wall. True? False?

Fascism is best described as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” True? False?

“Fascism is capitalism in its death throes.” True? False?

A ruling class can opt for fascism at one time, then later opt for some other form of administering their state. True? False?

The United States is already fascist and has been for some time. True? False?

The Trump Administration has revealed itself to aspire to fascism. True? False?

The threat of fascism will be erased if Democrats win the 2026 mid term elections.  True? False?

Fascism comes when the capitalist class is at its strongest.  True? False?

Fascism comes when the capitalist class is at its weakest.  True? False?

When the capitalists’ economic situation is desperate, and when the progressive movement is threatening them, capitalists are likely to opt for autocracy and fascism.  True? False?

When the capitalists’ economic situation is desperate, and when the progressive movement is threatening them, socialists have a great opportunity.  True? False?

When confronted with the possibility of fascism, the united front is the way forward. True? False?

In America, the purpose of the united front is to elect anybody who opposes the Trump program.  True? False?

The united front is a broad coalition of all anti-fascist organizations and individuals. True? False?

In the broadest sense, the workers’ interest is always primarily in the form of government. Dictatorship versus democracy. True? False?

“Mango Mussolini”

I’m creating a Power Point presentation to deal with the questions. But first, here’s what I have learned:

Why Study Up?

We study fascism today because we must stop it. Let us dispense with the academic side in as few words as possible, so that we can move on to the all-important prescriptions for how to overcome the fascist threat in America today.

WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW

The previous class on “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State gave us a clear idea on what constitutes a class and a state. That clarity is essential for understanding anything else.

In the present study of fascism, bear in mind that it is a form of government chosen deliberately by a capitalist class as a way of administering their state. Historically, capitalists chose limited democracy because it works best with their economy; but sometimes they choose fascism. This is one of those times.

ACADEMIC AND HISTORICAL DEFINITIONS

Fascism is best described as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” According to Georgi Dmitrov, in a collection of his reports in 1935 and 1936, “Against Fascism and War,” fascism is “the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.”

Mussolini called it “corporatism.”

Google definition:

Fascism is a far-right, ultranationalist, and authoritarian political ideology that prioritizes the nation and its leader above all else, emphasizing national unity, military strength, and the elimination of perceived threats through violence and propaganda. It is characterized by a cult of personality, a rejection of individual rights and democratic processes, and a focus on national decline and rebirth. Fascism advocates for a totalitarian state with centralized economic control, often resulting in the suppression of dissent and the persecution of minority groups.”

IS FASCISM FATAL? IS IT PERMANENT?

We nearly always study fascism by looking at Italy and Germany in the 1930s and World War II, when fascism rose, was defined, and was crushed by the capitalist countries still operating under limited democracy.

But fascism has occurred at other times in other countries. These countries used limited democracy before they became fascist and were using limited democracy afterward as well. As these countries and situations are more recent, they may be more relevant for our present study. Why did their capitalist class choose fascism and why, later, did they let it go?

“WHAT” IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN “WHY”

As you learned in “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” historical developments have an economic basis. A nation’s capitalist class chooses fascism as their way to deal with their economic problems. Authoritarian fascism is less efficient than partial democracy; consequently, fascists intervene in their capitalist economy. Hitler directed the corporations involved in war production and Donald Trump is today using state power to force business decisions and buy shares in key corporations. The need for higher profit rates call for another extreme government tool, and that tool is war.

The other, perhaps more pertinent, way to explain why capitalists choose fascism is that they need it to overcome their own domestic opposition. The German capitalists allied with the Social Democrats in order to stop the growing Communist opposition. After World War II, the Indonesian capitalists murdered a million Communist voters. The Vietnamese, Chileans, Brazilians, Argentinians and others, allied with U.S. imperialism, used “the Jakarta method” to violently overcome opposition in their countries. In later periods, when socialist opposition was less of a threat, they allowed partial democracy to return as their form of government. It’s more efficient.

WHAT MARX DIDN’T TELL US

Marx correctly predicted that capitalism will fall of its own weight. For example, the worldwide depression of the 1930s convinced many progressives that capitalism was finished. What Marx didn’t predict and what he never saw, was that capitalists can conduct world wars that destroy commodities, people, and factories. Then, afterward, the survivors effectively get to leave all our dead behind and start anew!

A SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICAN FASCISM

Early American fascism evaporated almost immediately after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. In the 1960s, as a response to a growing civil rights and anti-war movement internally and the beginnings of a slip in American economic domination of the planet, the John Birch Society began to take the main role in promoting American fascism. When the Republican Party under Reagan embraced white nationalism, fascism bloomed. Careful and deliberate legal, electoral, and cultural schemes, underwritten deliberately by some of the richest Americans, paid off for them in 2024 when they consolidated their hold over one of the two major capitalist political parties. They are, at present, using every apparatus, including state power, to dismantle the former method of class rule and implement autocracy and fascism.

IS THIS CRISIS A DISASTER OR AN OPPORTUNITY?

American capitalists are losing their economic hegemony over the world and their political hold on the people. Opting for fascism is a sign of their weakness and desperation. Would any set of rational and strong people choose an unstable spokesperson like Donald Trump if they were comfortable with their choices?

Fascism is not an inevitable extension of capitalism. It can be stopped and, in fact, the weakness of the capitalist class gives progressive forces their best possible opportunity.

THE UNTED FRONT IS OUR STRATEGY

A united front is a broad coalition of working class and allied forces who agree to stop fascism. It is built by a serious of concerted working class activities that draw our class forces together. Concerted activities include strikes, boycotts, organizing drives, contract fights, and more general activities for progress such as civil rights and civil liberties fights. Unions, as the strongest, most democratic, and most popular institutions in America are of special importance. Activists deliberately initiate and/or support activities in order to build the necessary national coalition. Our goal is a socialist system where everyone’s human needs come before the desires of the tiny capitalist class.

From Dmitrov: “CONTENT AND FORMS OF THE UNITED FRONT”

“We must tirelessly prepare the working class for a rapid change in forms and methods of struggle when there is a change in the situation. As the movement grows and the unity of the working class strengthens, we must go further, and prepare the transition from the defensive to the offensive against capital, steering towards the organization of a mass political strike. It must be an absolute condition of such a strike to draw into it the main trade unions of the countries concerned.”

SUMMARY

American capitalists are opting for fascism because 1) they are losing their economic hegemony over the world and 2) they are losing political control over the people. Left unchecked, they will commit greater and greater atrocities, up to and including world war. The working class and its allies, working in a united front, can stop them. Further, we can break their rule and allow the people to move up to a better system.

FURTHER STUDY FOR SCHOLARS

Recent article from Sept 9, 2025: https://peoplesworld.org/article/defining-fascism-think-unpaid-labor-slavery/

CPUSA Video: https://cpusa.org/party_voices/good-morning-revolution-fascism-what-it-is-and-how-to-fight-it/

Book Review: “The Jakarta Method” https://genelantz.org/2020/08/17/american-mass-murders/

Podcast: “Where’s our Offensive Team?” https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/XHtTZgkAlWb

Podcast: Building successful coalitions https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/z01GBekAlWb

Georgi Dimitrov: Against War & Fascism [1935]

The Billionaires Must Be Removed from Power

April 23, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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The for-profit economic system must be ended. Today’s unprecedented political activity must be turned toward ending this system and birthing a new system of cooperation and democracy. The opportunity is now and may soon pass by, just as two great opportunities were missed in 20th century history.

Great hordes of protesters are springing up like grass on the Earth. They are fearless and strong, but not united in purpose. In America, many of them believe that they need only to replace Musk and Trump with Democrats. They are mistaken, and, if they don’t achieve a better understanding, will probably fail even in their modest hopes. Even if they succeed, they will have solved nothing except, perhaps, a delay in fascism.

Look behind the Musk/Trump fascist spokespersons at the underlying economic situation and our place in material history.

Musk and Trump are powerful figureheads, but figureheads still. The other politicians, newspersons, judges, and law firms kneeling before Musk/Trump give a clue to the breadth of the fascist trend. The power behind it all is the billionaire class.

The billionaire class would not have chosen comic madmen and unpopular ideology if they weren’t desperate. In fact, the capitalists are aware that they are drowning in a thrashing sea. Musk/Trump and fascism, they hope, will at least keep them afloat until they can find a way to restore the profit streams that keep them alive as a class. In their desperation, and because they have no conscience, they are willing to bring about a third world war – this time against China.

Armchair socialists who believe that world war is impossible and that capitalism will die of self-inflicted wounds, aren’t helping.

 Capitalism will not die of its own internal contradictions, as some bookish “Marxists” choose to believe. Like flatworms cut in half, capitalism can regenerate its missing parts.

This was demonstrated after World War I and again after World War II. In those wars, hundreds of millions died, many more suffered lifelong debilitations, and the wealth of ages was destroyed or converted into military equipment that was either blown to smithereens or discarded as useless later on. Afterward, the capitalists who had won picked up and went on to create a new phase of prosperity for themselves.

In 1914 and again in 1939, capitalism’s internal contradictions brought the system to the precipice of extinction just as Marx and Engels had predicted. But nineteenth century Marx and Engels had no experience with mechanized world war. The twentieth century bosses didn’t step aside in acknowledgement of the fact that history had already outlived them and they had nothing progressive to offer the human race. Instead, they set themselves at each other like cannibals and came close to destroying everything.

After the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evaporated, it was commonly thought that a third world war was impossible, since the existence of the planet was at stake. Bookish “Marxists” took comfort in believing that world war had become simply impossible and that the internal contradictions explained by Marx, usually described as the tendency of the profit rate to decline, was still operating to bring the bosses to their eventual knees.

Past bosses had no qualms about ordering millions of automated deaths nor of destroying civilization’s wealth. In fact, a lot of them did quite well in the wartime economy. The bosses on the winning side also reaped a bonanza in post-war prosperity.

Even though the corporate-owned newspersons describe the Musk/Trump regime as chaotic and senseless shenanigans, they have a clear purpose that is completely in line with the wishes of the billionaire class that sponsors them. They intend to bring everyone possible under their control and to direct them, like a collective battering ram of nations, corporations and individuals, against their economic adversary — China. A trade war is hardly the beginning, because only the mighty U.S. military might be able to overcome China’s commercial advantages.

If the billionaires are not stopped and removed from power, they will sooner or later carry out a third world war at immeasurable cost to the people and the planet. That’s how they handled their inevitable internal crises before; that’s how they will handle them again, unless they are stopped.

‘Tis the Final Conflict

March 3, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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“Tis the final conflict / Let each stand in their place…”

“Agrupemos todos, en la lucha final…”

The words to “l’Internacional” are ringing in my ears. The first 100 days of the Musk/Trump administration are only chaos to most people, but I think I have figured out a correct analysis, characterization, and prescription. I’ve been asking people individually if they agreed or disagreed over the past week or so. Nobody has outright agreed with me, but nobody has contradicted me, either. More importantly, nobody else has any kind of description other than “chaos.”

Here’s what I think: capitalism is in its death throes.

The ruling class, the owning class, the billionaire class, or the boss class as I like to call them, is thrashing about. Although the fascists achieved a majority in the Republican Party, they haven’t completely taken over all the bosses in both boss parties. And they are a long way from having convinced the majority of the American people. The bosses are clutching at fascism the way a drowning man clings to anything that he thinks will float.

Fascism, by the way, doesn’t float. It isn’t a viable way to run an economy. Slaves don’t make good employees. They tend to let the machines break and spit in the bosses’ food. If they try to run the American economy under fascism, they won’t last long. The only reason Hitler was able to hang on for 12 years was his early success in war.

So even if they manage to impose fascism, as they are clearly trying to do, they won’t have solved their problem. Their problem is world competition. Musk and Trump are offering to solve the problem by bringing all their so-called allies to heel (thus the crazy tariffs) and getting everybody to focus on defeating China (thus the effort to change Russia into an ally). Defeating China will require a nuclear war, and they know that. At the same time and for the same reason, they are offering to continue destroying the planet ecologically. To carry all this out, they need the absolute cooperation of all the boss class (thus the tax giveaway) and the total subservience of the working class (thus the moves to starve us into giving up). The result, if it worked, would be a temporary period of unstable fascism.

Long term, there are two possible outcomes: 1) America’s working class unites and puts an end to boss rule, which would effectively end capitalism worldwide 2) Not an alternative.

Either way, the system just doesn’t work any more. It is up to us to work for understanding, for unity, and for action to bring a bright new dawn for humanity. We need to hurry!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9. My personal web site has been bothered by adware but seems to be working OK at last: https://lilleskole.us.

It’s not Biden, it’s the System!

December 17, 2023
democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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Last week’s Pew Poll revealed that President Biden’s approval rating has continued to fall and has reached a dismal 33%! If we put some perspective around that figure, we can discover something really worth knowing. Think about it, how could Biden’s approval ratings keep falling while the economy keeps improving?

Compare Biden to Other World Leaders

The Los Angeles Times checked approval ratings of other world leaders of industrialized nations.

Canada’s Justin Trudeau 31%

Britain’s Rishi Sunak 21%

Germany’s Olaf Sholz 17%

Japan’s Fumio Kishida 17%

They added in several more observations. Donald Trump’s approval is harder to measure but they give him a measly 42%. While President Biden started his term with well over 50%, Trump never had over 49%.

Compare Approval Ratings over Time

The Los Angeles newspaper also checked back a few decades and concluded that President Eisenhower (1952-1960) was the last one to keep decent approval ratings all the way. That was in the days of the “American Century” when unions demanded and received 3% raises every year, plus cost-of-living raises, plus pensions, plus free health care. After Eisenhower, every American president started out with over 50% and then fell steadily to the end of their term.

The evidence shows clearly that declining approval ratings can’t be blamed on any of the simple things. It’s not the person’s age, not the state of the economy, not war, not peace, not scandal, not any of the issues of any particular period. It has to be something big, something powerful, and something consistent.

Once You See It, Things Make Sense

People in America and other industrialized countries do not like the system they live under. It’s that simple.

Want to know why Trump won in 2016 in spite of every possible prediction? Voters thought he represented some kind of new system. What they got was tax cuts for the rich and an intensification of everything that was wrong with the old system, but many of them are still desperate for some kind of positive change, and many of them, incredible as it may seem, will continue to hang those hopes on Donald Trump.

The system we live under produces the worst kind of inequality. We could call it the “rich get richer and poor get poorer” system. Just last week, in the same newspapers, we read that the stock market had peaked and, that same week, homelessness in American also reached an all-time historical high! If you read carefully, you would also have seen that the number of young Americans who expect to vote in the 2024 Presidential race is tanking!

It isn’t just Biden, Trump, Trudeau and the rest of them that can’t get high approval ratings. It wouldn’t help much to substitute other Democrats for Biden or other Republicans for Trump. We would still have the same system and approval ratings would continue falling!

Change Will Come, Because It Must

My recent blogs and podcasts have been about the outlook for fascism, for a general strike, and a viable workers’ party. Those are the trends underway, and we’d better be working hard for one of the last two.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. On Wednesdays, they post my “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, try my personal web site at http://lilleskole.us.

3 More Ways the UAW Could Win

September 11, 2023
civil rights, democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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There are at least three ways that the UAW could win against their 3 large corporate opponents without a massive strike:

  1. A rolling strike: The UAW could strike only in the plants where they are strongest, and the strikes could be limited to relatively short periods. The auto industry is interconnected and uses just-in-time inventory; consequently, one facility might shut down several others for lack of components.
  2. A slowdown: My own local, 848 in Grand Prairie, Texas, ran a successful campaign in 1984-5 and defeated a rich and powerful corporation by “running the plant backwards” for 15 months. During that time, only 65 of us were fired and required strike pay. The first 10 months or so were very difficult and not successful, but we learned how to carry out the fight and, eventually, went on strike for only 11 hours before we reached victory. All 65 of us marched back in the plant with back pay in our pockets! I wrote an account that is available on-line.
  3. A Hit-And-Run: Around 1960, my union local invented an entirely novel tactic. Instead of going on strike, they looked through the membership to see which departments were strongest for the union. Those departments alternated one day work stoppages. A lot of the members were entirely unaffected. Some of them did not even know that a battle was going on, but the stronger units were slowing down production.

Because of just-in-time inventory and assembly-line production, the UAW does not need an expensive full-fledged strike to win. Just a few workers can shut down an assembly line; just a small component shortage can shut down a factory.

I’m not a labor lawyer, so I do not know what tactics might run closer or further from the law. Also, I do not know if any of these suggested tactics might result in as much public support as a full fledged strike against all 3 big auto corporations would surely engender. I don’t know which tactics might result in more political support as the 2024 elections loom large. Ultimately, I believe that the key to victory is the support of the American people, and I believe that working families have that support, and will win more of it as time goes by.

I’m just pointing out that there’s more than one way to defeat a greedy corporation.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on knon.org’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. My “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts are on knon.org and Soundcloud. Lately, my personal web site, http;//lilleskole.us, has picked up some malware, so be careful.

Secret Police Hate Folk Singers!

June 10, 2023
art, civil rights, democracy, history
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Book Review:

Leonard, Aaron, “The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956.” Repeater, 2020

Some of the first songs I ever learned were “Good Night, Irene” and “On Top of Old Smokey.” I still sing them. They were top-of-the-chart popular songs by The Weavers in the late 1940s. Then the Weavers disappeared and I didn’t hear anything about any of them until the late 1960s, when everybody knew and loved Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes, and Ronnie Gilbert. I didn’t know much about how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI secret police hounded and threatened them and everybody who listened to them until I ran across this book.

Thanks to the young man who joined our “flying pickets” action for telling me about it. I think his name was Gregory something or something Gregory. He said I could get it through the public library, but I failed at that and bought it for Kindle from Amazon for $8.95. Good investment.

Attacking artists like the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Sisco Houston, Hudie Ledbetter and others was supposedly justified by Hoover as part of his lifelong campaign against communists. The funny thing is, it’s kind of hard to call these artists reds. Sure, they were in and out of the CPUSA, but so were thousands of progressive and liberal-minded people in those days. I think what really pulled Hoover’s chain was the plain fact that they sang the truth, and fascists hate truth passionately.

I appreciate the author’s speculations, near the end of the book, as to just how much the world might have benefitted if these artists had been allowed access to audiences, recording studios, TV, and movies during those dreadful anti-communist witch hunt years.

Also, I appreciated the way the author gave the background of America’s witch hunt. Like most historians, he makes sure that the readers know that he doesn’t agree with nor approve of communists. People are still too afraid to say anything positive in print, but he does tell the truth about why CPUSA fell from a very large political force down to a miniscule one: government persecution. Not that they didn’t make some mistakes.

Leonard’s criticisms of CPUSA errors during the period ring true to me, because I have talked to old reds who lived through it. Their errors in dealing with the witch hunt came directly from misunderstanding the economic and political situation at the end of World War II. I can see why they would think that American fascism was imminent, but they were wrong and it led them to make unnecessary mistakes.

The folk singers didn’t make any of the decisions nor any of the mistakes. They just sang the truth and sang it well. That was plenty of reason for J.Edgar Hoover!

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show every Saturday at 9AM. They usually post my weekly podcast on KNON and on Soundcloud during Wednesdays. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my old personal web site.

One Crisis Away from Radical Change

April 10, 2023
democracy, history, politics, strategy
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Limited democracy, which characterizes our American political system, cannot endure another of its inherent crises. Change is coming. It will bring either furtherance of democracy or radical curtailment.

For explanatory purposes, examine the western world just prior to the great crisis of October, 1929. The people running things chose their way out of the great depression, some by radically increasing their democracy under Franklin Delano Roosevelt as chief executive; others chose to curtail democracy under Adolph Hitler.

It’s Present, not Future

The polarity between more democracy and less is underway. In Washington State, everybody can vote by mail. In Texas, the right to vote is being whittled away. In some places, abortion rights are enshrined in constitutions. In others, women have no rights at all. In some of the world’s places, gay marriage is common. In others, homosexuality carries the death penalty.

Political parties in the United States each take almost 50% of the vote. Neither more democracy nor less has triumphed, but small, quantitative changes add up historically to big, qualitative change. One more crisis will push us one way or the other.

Choose Your Crisis

As Finland and Sweden join NATO and the war in Ukraine continues, the siege of Russia is set. American oil companies, already taking over Russia’s European markets, will not be restrained from bringing nuclear war closer and closer.

In the East, America is re-establishing bases in the Philippines, training South Koreans, and strengthening ties with Taiwan. As America’s proxy war grew strength in Europe, President Biden tried to turn it toward China. Mighty navies and air forces crisscross the South China Sea. An American general predicts war with the world’s second largest economy within two years.

Sea levels and carbon in the atmosphere continue to rise. Thousands of tons of ice have already melted. Giant ice shelves hang precariously over the ocean. Storms, floods and droughts are already taking lives and threatening food production.

Bank failures within the United States terrify economists. Untamed inflation forces governments to choose between potentially disastrous monetary policies and, for them, unthinkable fiscal policies against the ruling rich. Smaller nations are joining the interlocking BRIC economies that challenge the “American Century” of domination. Reactionaries in the U.S. Congress announce their intention to bring about a worldwide financial meltdown.

The leadership that is offered has hardly any credibility. The most popular politicians capture less than 50% approval ratings. Institutions, such as the U.S. Congress, can’t get above 30%. In “democratic” America, fewer than 50% of the voting age population turns out even in the most highly publicized elections. 30% do not even register.

Choose your crisis, all of them are at hand.

A Program for More Democracy

Our choice has to be more democracy, not less. Our choice is peace; clean air and water; pro-worker economic policies; and leadership we can believe. To take the limits off our American democracy and give people say-so in international and economic affairs, which we do not have and have never had, we must organize.

Organizing is an incremental process. If we take the side of working families on every issue, if we build the organizations that win for working families on every issue, we will be ready to demand and win more democracy during the next crisis. The alternatives are unthinkable.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.ORG “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. My weekly podcasts are on their web site and “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my old personal web site

Robeson Was Right

March 15, 2023
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy
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Book Review:

Robeson, Paul, “Here I Stand.” Beacon Press, Boston, 1958

I got my copy from the Dallas Library B, R653R. You may have to reserve it and then wait, as I did. I was pleased to put aside the absolutely terrible political book I was trying to read and enjoy some time with one of the greatest men ever produced by our country

It’s not a biography. It’s a statement of beliefs and a strong prescription for action on civil rights. I believe it’s a good book to read for 3 reasons:

  1. It’s very direct and clear about history in Robeson’s lifetime
  2. His prescription for the civil rights movement is valid
  3. It’s a short easy read of only 111 pages

Paul Robeson went to Spain to help the republican nationalists who were fighting fascism. It was a prelude to World War II. Robeson explains, in just a page or two, that the western powers allowed German and Italian fascists to become great military powers because they believed that Hitler and Mussolini would kill all the socialists in Europe and then in the Soviet Union. They were to be nothing more than an exterminator squad for capitalism.

Robeson recommended a great, unified civil rights movement involving all good people but led by African Americans. He had a lot of first hand experience in civil rights and knew what he was talking about. He is very convincing and his recommendations should be taken seriously today.

–genelantz  

Surviving Fascism

October 22, 2022
civil rights, democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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“Argentina 1985” is a good film streaming on Amazon Prime. It is about the trial of the dictators who ran Argentina’s Dirty War. If you can get over the fact that it’s dubbed (pretty well) and you like courtroom dramas, you’ll like this one. There’s a lot to be learned, but great questions still need to be answered:

  1. How does fascism come about?

2. How does fascism end, as it clearly can and does

3. Why?

Writers across the world, including me, are warning that fascism is approaching. Even the President of the United States recently joined in the same caution. Such scholarly articles as can be seen at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d9c0/3a042dd7f1bf8ffbd0096c2eed88a0403600.pdf warn us that fascism is approaching on a world-wide basis.

Scholars almost always study the fascism of Italy and Germany that ended in ruins during World War II. That is one way that fascism might end, but not the only way. I’ve seen very little reference to fascist governments since WWII. Undoubtedly, fascism in Germany and Italy owed much to the support of Western Imperialism. In that respect, they are similar to the fascist governments that arose in Spain, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and other countries. But those latter nations survived fascism and returned to limited democracy. Why don’t we study them?

I am curious about those latter countries’ experience with fascism because they apparently survived it and returned to the kind of limited capitalist democracy that they had before and, for that matter, is similar to what the United States has had since its inception: limited capitalist democracy. Working people are “free” to vote and to do a good many other things, but not to control the economy nor foreign policy.

And yet we continue to talk about fascism as a one-way street to destruction, as it was in the classic examples of Italy and Germany. Why don’t we know anything about fascism as a transitory form of government as it clearly was in, for example, Chile?

My Best Solution to the Riddle

Fascism In Germany and Italy were created and then destroyed by western imperialism. Their driving force was to overcome the progressive forces, primarily the communists who had been inspired by the Soviet revolution of 1917. Similarly, western imperialism is responsible for initiating fascism in Chile and other countries that, later on, returned to one form or another of limited capitalist democracy.

Fascist Rule is a Conscious Choice

Like almost all riddles concerning social progress, this one can only be solved with class analysis. None of the fascist governments came about by revolutions. That is, there was never a change in the class that ruled. Fascism is just one form of capitalist class rule. In fact, fascism cannot come about without the ruling capitalist class consciously choosing it. That’s the answer to the first question: a necessary requirement for fascism is that the capitalists must choose it as their form of government.

Mussolini defined fascism as “corporatism.” Hitler could never have come to power without the backing of the ruling class of capitalists.

Ending Fascist Rule is Also a Conscious Choice

If a ruling capitalist class can consciously choose to rule with fascism, they can also consciously decide to discontinue it. And that is what happened in Spain, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the other countries in this discussion. That’s the answer to the second question: fascism ended the same way it began — as a conscious decision of the capitalist class. Why, one might legitimately ask, would they opt for fascism in the first place? The answer is the same as in Germany and Italy: they chose fascism to avoid the extension of democracy under socialism. When democracy threatens to exceed its limits, the ruling class reacts.

Why, then, would they choose, once the immediate democratic threat is lessened, to discontinue fascist rule? Because authoritarian regimes make for inefficient economies. Limited democracy and capitalism worked together to build the most powerful economies that the world had ever known. That’s why they easily conquered all previous forms of government and came to rule the world. Authoritarian governments, where the population is basically forced to work for the state, may be able to build powerful war economies, but only temporarily. To the extent that workers are not enslaved, but “free labor,” or at least if workers believe themselves to be “free,” economies thrive.

Other Considerations

Here, I set out only to answer the question “Why have some nations survived fascism?” I did not set out to discuss the implosion of the Soviet Union. But one might ask if the Soviet Union might have lived up to its potential if it had not been forced by imperialist war threats to adopt an authoritarian stance over its government and, more unfortunately, its economy.

And consider China today. China seems to be balancing a market economy with a socialist government. The economic results, so far, are better than any previous socialist revolution has been able to achieve. One might even argue that the Chinese approach of socialist rule with limited economic democracy is proving itself superior to limited capitalist democracy.

Summary

But understanding the USSR and China are far beyond my ambitions. I simply want to make these two critical points: 1) Fascism is a form of rule that is sometimes chosen by capitalists and 2) Nations have survived fascism, once the threat of “excessive” democracy is past.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org “Workers Beat” radio talk show at 9AM Central Time ever Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, you might look at my personal web site.