Fascism: Five books about what it is and how to fight it

Chris Nineham recommends some essential reading on how fascism arises, what makes it so dangerous and how it can be defeated

The word “fascist” has lost its value due to excessive use. Today it is often just a swear word and means “right-wing”, “authoritarian” or “racist”.

Fascism is all of these things, but the term describes a particular kind of capitalist class rule. The economic system of capitalism takes various political forms. Many countries have some degree of democracy, which, while always very limited, makes it easier for opponents of the system to organize. Other countries have no democracy and are run as dictatorships, military, civil, sometimes religious. Still others are unstable combinations of both.

Fascism itself is something different from all of that. To call all dictatorships fascist is to overlook how common authoritarian regimes are in capitalism. It is also to underestimate the particular horrors that a fascist reorganization brings.

The indiscriminate use of the term fascism inevitably leads to strategic confusion. For socialists, the importance of analyzing different forms of capitalist rule is to find out how to effectively oppose them.

Robert O. Paxton’s 2004 study The Anatomy of Fascism (Penguin) attempts to clarify what is unique about it. Paxton argues that fascism cannot be defined by the ideas associated with it, because fascist ideology is based on appeals to anger and alienation rather than coherent arguments. The myths and goals of fascism vary by time and place. What matters is what fascists do.

Fascism differs fundamentally from other forms of dictatorship or political reaction because it is a form of capitalist rule that emerges from a mass movement.

Fascist movements are a reaction to a society in crisis, where the political system cannot or will not allow for the resolution of important issues. More and more people are looking for solutions, and fascist agitators can act as enablers of anti-systemic anger by attacking groups and institutions that appear to be part of the problem.

What is crucial is that part of the population develops the contradictory belief that their community is superior to other groups, but at the same time is oppressed by them, and that “justice” must be restored by enhancing the status of their group over the others.

Paxton describes different phases in the development of fascist movements, which reached their peak in the interwar period in Italy and Germany, when the ruling classes brought the movement to power to deal with the deep social crisis and mass opposition to their rule.

Leon Trotsky’s The fight against fascism in Germany (Pathfinder) is probably the greatest concrete analysis of fascism and how it should be fought.

Trotsky viewed the fascist movement in Germany as an expression of “counter-revolutionary despair,” especially among the petty bourgeoisie, at a time when working-class organizations were weakened by defeats and poor leadership.

Trotsky argued as early as 1930 that fascism in Germany posed a real danger because these conditions were accompanied by a deep crisis of the ruling class itself. Fascism was:

“An acute expression of the helpless situation of the bourgeois regime, the conservative role of social democracy within this regime and the accumulated powerlessness of the Communist Party to abolish it”

Trotsky’s central strategic conclusion was that revolutionaries needed to organize as broad a united front as possible, including with the Social Democrats, to isolate the fascists and, if necessary, confront them. His argument was directed against both the complacent Social Democrats and the Stalinized Communist Party, which refused to cooperate with them on the grounds that they were “social fascists.”

In his hostility to this stupidity, Trotsky repeatedly stresses that fascism will destroy every form of opposition and that joint action with the Social Democrats is in the interest of all workers, regardless of their political views:

“It is necessary to finally work out a practical system of measures without delay – not with the aim of merely ‘exposing’ social democracy, but with the aim of a real fight against fascism.”

Tragically, despite all the brilliance and urgency of his polemics, Trotsky lacked the political power to impose his arguments within the movement.

Tom Behan The unstoppable rise of Benito Mussolini (Bookmarks) is a short but very insightful account of the fascist rise to power in Italy in the 1920s. It places the rise of the fascist movement in the context of the failure of the left to make the most of the revolutionary upsurge in Italy in the “two red years” of 1919 and 1920.

Behan argues convincingly that fascism could have been stopped even after this defeat. To prove this, he traces the sudden rise of People’s Arms (ADP), “the first anti-fascist movement in the world”.

The movement united people from all parts of the left and inflicted heavy defeats on the fascist factions. It caused widespread unrest in the fascist ranks, nearly leading to a split, and forced the fascist leader Benito Mussolini to turn to more respectable, parliamentary politics.

The problem was that the Socialist Party and the trade unions responded by declaring a truce with the fascists and condemning the ADP. The newly formed Communists adopted a frighteningly sectarian attitude towards the ADP, insisting that its members not participate in its activities. The result was the sabotage of a promising mass movement.

As Behan explains, Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian Bolsheviks insisted on the need for a united front tactic to defeat fascism. Lenin convinced the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci of the need for this approach in 1922. Unfortunately for the Italian movement of those years, this proved too late.

Our flag remains red (Lawrence and Wishart) is a first-hand account of Communist Party activities in London’s East End in the 1930s and 1940s. The author, Phil Piratin, was a Communist activist at the time, who was elected as a Communist MP in 1945. This is a fascinating piece of working-class history with much valuable information for activists today, including a very useful account of how the Communists marginalised the fascists and built a base for themselves in working-class communities.

One of the book’s highlights is the brilliant account of the crushing defeat of Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts in Cable Street in 1936, when a planned march was thwarted by the mass mobilisation of over 100,000 workers. Mosley’s British Union of Fascists never fully recovered from this defeat. Piratin makes it clear that both the pre-existing organisation of the Communist Party and a broad, open approach to organising were crucial.

The book also reveals some of the political complexities of the situation, including the fact that the Communist Party leadership was initially hostile to the protests because it was then pursuing a popular front policy that downplayed class struggle and instead sought close relations with “progressive elements of the bourgeoisie.”

Caroline Moorhead A house in the mountains (Penguin) is the extraordinary story of the courageous women who led the Italian resistance against fascism during World War II.

It begins in the late summer of 1943, when Italy changed sides in the war and the Germans – now their enemies – occupied the north of the country. This gave rise to the Italian resistance movement.

Women played a key role in this underground movement, as they were less likely than men to be suspected of partisanship. The book is an astonishing account of the commitment of hundreds of women over two or three years, hiding in the mountains and regularly risking their lives as messengers, arms smugglers and organizers.

It shows that the workers’ movement was central to the defeat of fascism in Italy. When the Allied commanders finally reached Turin in 1945, they entered a city that the people had already liberated.

Caroline Moorhead’s compelling book also shows that the top priority of the Allied forces was to disarm the partisans and try to restore “normality” as quickly as possible, fearing that the anti-fascist struggle could degenerate into a social revolution.