Reading notes on Harpal Brar's "Bourgeois Democracy and Fascism"
"Such is the bed of Procrustes …to which modern capitalism in its extreme stage of decay seeks to fit the tortured body of humanity" (R Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, Martin Lawrence Ltd, London, 1934, pp. 47-48).
"Fascism, " said Clara Zetkin in 1923, "is the punishment of the proletariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia".
....third way offered by Social Democracy only leads, in the final analysis, to the cul-de-sac of fascism.
....essence of Social Democracy is the conception and practice of class collaboration with capitalism and with the capitalist state....presentation of this line as the safe, peaceful, harmonious, 'democratic' and progressive advance to socialism - in contrast to the dangers of violent proletarian revolution
.... Fascism uses demagogy as a science for it dare not declare its aims openly, for it could build no mass support on the basis of its real aims.
....violent attempt of decaying capitalism to defeat the proletarian revolution and forcibly retard its own demise.
....basic contradiction of capitalism....social productive forces on the one hand and the relations of production on the other.... advance of technique outstripping the existing forms of social organization....leaders of capitalism were faced with a stark choice: either get rid of the existing forms of social organization (i.e., private ownership of the means of production)....or, in the interests of the maintenance of the system, long outmoded historically, suppress technique, restrict productive capacity downwards to the level of consumption of the impoverished masses, suppress class struggle, intensify class oppression, and resort to war as the only way out of the quagmire....revolt against the machine, against science, against parliamentary democracy, and trade war followed by a real war as the final 'solution'.
....existing capitalist forms are increasingly incompatible with the further development of production and utilisation of technique.
....advance of the productive forces must put an end to capitalism.... Or.... capitalism must bring the advance of production and technique to a grinding halt and plunge billions of people on this planet even further into poverty, misery and war.
.... only two paths - capitalism or socialism.
.... forcing the ruling monopoly capitalist class increasingly to supplement these democratic forms with new dictatorial and repressive methods - further concentration of executive powers, reduction of parliament to a farcical talking shop, increasing use of emergency powers and police violence, restrictions on freedom of speech, draconian anti-trade union legislation and violent suppression of strikes (e.g., the miners' strike of 1984-1985) and of demonstrations. This is not fascism yet, but it is an unmistakable trend in the direction of fascist forms of rule in all capitalist countries.
....an increasingly vicious cycle of violent crises, stagnation and decay....
....dictatorship of the proletariat as the condition precedent for the solution of the problems of our epoch.
....historically outmoded.... tens of millions of able-bodied human beings who are willing and able to work [discarded] as so much disposable scrap.
....objective conditions for this proletarian rebellion were already ripe from the beginning of the period of imperialism.... capitalism used three main weapons to defeat the proletarian revolution....
...civil and counter-revolutionary intervention ....
....placing in office social-democratic governments which then went on to do capitalism's dirty work for it, as intended all along. ....the instrument for carrying out the capitalist offensive - and by means far from democratic.... agent of the bourgeoisie in the working class... Social Democratic gentry, on their return, dutifully pronounced the triumph of capitalism over Marxism.... demoralizing the working class, destroying the latter's faith in a socialist future, and sowing illusions among them of a bright future under the conditions of capitalism.
....American loans and credits ....American Crash brought the whole structure of capitalist stabilization tumbling down.
[1929, 2008] ....unprecedented crisis of overproduction and glutted markets.
....economic collapse, and with it the collapse of all the theories and illusions of the stabilisation period, produced great disillusionment among the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat who had allowed themselves to be led up the garden path by Social Democracy. It was this disillusion which, inter alia, created the conditions for the advance of fascism among the petty bourgeoisie and in certain strata of the working class.
What is fascism?
....consummate expression, in certain conditions of extreme decay, of the chief tendencies and policies of capitalism in its imperialist stage.
....response in practice of the imperialist bourgeoisie faced with the threat of proletarian revolution.
....a counter-revolutionary mass movement....
....deploys a mixture of social demagogy and terrorist methods in order to crush the revolution and strengthen the dictatorship of finance capital.
[Social democracy defends monopolists by denying fascism's true origins].... an "anathema to the big landlords, the big industrialists and the big financiers, " ....
....nurtured and enabled to grow, saved from extinction in its early stages at the hands of the working-class movement, and finally put into power, thanks to the direct support of the bourgeoisie.
....In no country has fascism ever conquered power. [Capitalists placed it in power].
....assistance of the greater part of the state machinery - the army officer corps, the police and the judiciary who, while meting out the utmost of severity to the proletarian opposition, treated the fascists with benign leniency.
.... mass base by appealing preponderantly to the petty bourgeoisie (also crushed by monopoly capital), as well as the lumpen proletariat and the demoralized sections of the working class, helped along by the robber barons of finance and industry, as well as the big landed magnates, all of whom supported it financially and directed it politically.
Once in power, casting aside its anti-capitalist rhetoric, fascism revealed itself in its true colours as "a terrorist dictatorship of big capital" (Programme of the Comintern, 1928).
"Fascism arises where a powerful working-class movement reaches a stage of growth which inevitably raises revolutionary issues, but is held in from decisive action by reformist leadership … Fascism is the child of reformism" (R Palme Dutt, Labour Monthly, July 1925).
....revolutionary movement in Italy.... broken.... by its own internal weakness and lack of revolutionary leadership - by reformism.
....Fascism appeared....AFTER the proletarian advance had already been broken from within and widespread disillusion set in, thanks to the Turatis and D'Aragonas of Italian reformism.
....a continuation of bourgeois policy into novel forms in the new conditions.
German Social Democracy.... opportunism, parliamentary cretinism and corruption, and the economist politics of trade-unionism, had made increasing inroads into the Party.
....defeat of the 1918 revolution by Social Democracy, the basis was laid for the subsequent rise of fascism.
....Social Democratic leadership were driven solely by a burning desire to "save Germany from Bolshevism", that is, to save capitalism.... fascism grew to power under the protection of Social Democracy.
.... fascism utilised the widespread discontent, economic hardship and universal anger
....German Social Democracy.... completely identified itself with capitalism and the regime of Versailles and with wholesale repression of the proletarian masses.
.... economic crisis....class-conscious workers passed to communism, the politically backward elements crossed to the camp of fascism.
....weakened and discredited Social Democracy no longer able to check the growing advance of communism....
....consequent polarization o society into two clearly-defined hostile camps....
....bourgeoisie was in desperate need and in a hurry to wipe out the social gains of the 1918 Revolution in the field of wages, hours and social legislation....
.... capitalism now had to put the workers into the straitjacket of Draconian measures of economic hardship. To achieve this aim, in view of the existence of a powerful Communist Party, with a strong and rising influence in the working class, and the declining influence of Social Democracy, German capitalism needed new - and naked - forms of dictatorship.
....policy of the 'lesser evil', Social Democracy supported the Brüning dictatorship's [1930-1933] hunger decrees and attacks on the workers.
.... weakened the workers' front, disorganized the proletarian ranks, and played right into the hands of fascism.
....initiative, and the gains from widespread hunger and want, which ought to have strengthened the proletarian camp, passed instead to fascism.
[January 1933 SD Party] ....rejecting any joint action against Hitler on the spurious ground that, as he had assumed power legally he should not be opposed....
....preparing the ground for the complete victory of fascism and destroying, step by step, the resistance of the working class.
....November 1932 elections reflected the rising working-class resistance: while the Nazi vote fell by 2 million and the Social Democratic vote fell by 700,000, that of the Communist Party rose by 700,000 to nearly 6 million.
he ebbing of the fascist tide, as reflected in the November 1932 election.... convinced the bourgeoisie to hasten fascism's rise to power before the latter's stock should have irretrievably sunk and that of communism have risen to dominance.
....sapping of the German working-class will to resist had been effected not by fascism but by Social Democracy....
....April 1932, Severing went on record as saying: "The Social Democratic Party no less than the Catholic Party, is strongly inclined to see Herr Hitler's Nazis share the government responsibility"
....Social Democracy eagerly resorted to the plea that now Hitler had a "democratic mandate" it was not justifiable to oppose him save as a "loyal parliamentary opposition".
....parliamentary cretinism to its logical absurdity of supporting a fascist terrorist regime because it had a majority in Parliament, albeit a rigged majority....
[Kautsky].... writing pieces embellishing the Hitlerite regime as founded on mass support.
....Social Democracy....ignoring the conditions of terror under which the election of 5 March was held, and then use this mockery of an election as providing a legitimate mandate for the fascist regime.
....leadership of the trade unions declared....common enemy was communism, and that their 'socialism' was a "German affair" (Sozial Demokratischer Pressedient, 9 March, 1933....central executive committee of the trade unions gave an official call to the workers to participate in Hitler's May Day.
....huge number of workers in the big factories rejected their leaders' calls and stayed away from the Nazi May Day parades....clear that the Social-democratic leadership's grip on the workers was inadequate to serve fascist ends, straight away on 2 May, the Nazis seized the unions, amalgamated them into their own labour front, marched their leaders into prison, and in their place appointed Nazi functionaries.
....role of Austrian Social Democracy was thus in fact exactly parallel to that of the German. The power of the workers' revolution was deliberately destroyed by Social Democracy in the name of bourgeois 'democracy....
....role of Social Democracy is crucial in the accession of fascism to power.
....continuance of capitalist rule rests on the splitting of the working class; that the single most important danger to capitalism is a united working class.... capitalism needs a social basis beyond its own narrow ranks.... provided by Social Democracy, which rendered capitalism the "indispensable service of anchoring their rule in the people, and thereby being the actual and final bearers of this rule. "
What.... is the social basis of Social Democracy?
....privileged conditions, based on concessions, of the upper layers of the working class....labour aristocracy.
....end of stabilization with the outset of the economic crisis, however, which compelled the bourgeoisie to wipe out the earlier concessions to the working class, and with this to undermine Social Democracy, carried the danger of opening the sluice gates for the influence and victory of communism. With the undermining of Social Democracy, thanks to the crisis of capitalism, "…the bourgeois rule will be faced with the necessity of setting up a military dictatorship. This stage would mark the beginning of the phase of the incurable sickness of bourgeois rule. As the old sluice mechanism can no longer be sufficiently restored, the only possible means of saving bourgeois rule from this abyss is to effect the splitting of the working class and its tying to the State apparatus by other and more direct means. Herein lie the positive possibilities and the tasks of National Socialism. "
....Social Democracy....instead of leading the masses to the revolution proclaimed by them, led them to the new formation of bourgeois rule.
....fascism relies for its social base on mainly the petty bourgeois strata, the declassed elements and backward workers....
....Social Democracy bases itself on the privileged strata of the organized working class....baleful and disorganising role, preventing the emergence of a united working class front to confront and defeat fascism.
....fascism relies mainly on coercion, along with deception, Social Democracy relies mainly on deception, along with coercion.
Fascism.... is "an abortion consequent on the miscarriage of the proletarian social revolution" (R Palme Dutt, op. cit. p. 157).
Social Democracy .... twin aims of defeating the working-class revolution and helping to reconstruct the badly-battered structure of capitalism.
....argued that the collapse of capitalism was not in the interests of the working class; that, on the contrary, the working class needed a prosperous and prospering capitalism as a means for its advance to socialism ("it is useless to socialize misery", wrote Kautsky)....
.... incorporating Social Democracy and the trade unions under its control into the state structure of monopoly capitalism....
....Social Democracy.... objectively making all the necessary preparations for the ideology of fascism and easing the latter's rise to state power.
....fascists....indulge in hypocritical moralist cant about keeping present-day society 'unspoiled' and keeping 'healthy' the workers' minds....
....Gangster exploits accompanied by propaganda stuffed full of high moral tones is characteristic of a dominant class in a decadent society which has outlived its historical usefulness.
"Marx said very truly that the greater the development of antagonism between the growing forces of production and the extant social order, the more does the ideology of the ruling class become permeated with hypocrisy. In addition, the more effectively life unveils the mendacious character of this ideology, the more does the language used by the dominant class become sublime and virtuous …" (Fundamental Problems of Marxism, English edition, 1929, p.82).
....task of fascism is to build a mass movement, popular in form and reactionary in content, it is characterized by its manipulation of every backward feeling and base instinct in human feeling, by the unscrupulousness of its programme, which is put together to appeal to every section of society without the slightest regard to consistency, and by the shamelessness of its abrupt changes of front and repudiation of its own platform.
....Krupps, the Thyssens, the Deterdings and the Hohenzollerns doled out large amounts of money to the Nazis for conducting 'socialist' propaganda, knowing full well its deceptive nature.
....We must talk the language of the embittered socialist workmen. … or else they wouldn't feel at home with us.
.... US, Britain and France - spent more on armaments and had far greater records of global plunder and violence than the fascist states - Germany, Italy and Japanese. In fact, one of the reasons for the development of fascist forms of government and an aggressive foreign policy in the latter group was that German imperialism was deprived of its 'rightful' share - in proportion to its actual or potential strength - of world plunder. The first group, on the other hand, was made up of relatively 'sated' imperialists, gorging on world plunder, who were bent upon holding on to their ill-gotten gains. Thus, whereas the first group showed at least some interest in questions of 'security', the latter group of 'hungry' imperialists was bent upon repartition of the world.
....Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF), the fascist party in Britain, had its origins directly in the Labour Party.
....formed with 6 Labour MPs and one Conservative MP....
.... fascism is nurtured and helped to grow, in some countries to assume power, not against the wishes of the bourgeoisie and the state, but with their tender loving care and assistance. It develops through the forms of bourgeois democracy, through the systematic, methodical and step-by-step strengthening of the coercive state apparatus, the institution of emergency powers, and the restriction of the rights of the working class - this process being greatly accelerated by reformist and constitutional illusions engendered by Social Democracy, which paralyse the will of the working class to resist. When the ground has thus been fully prepared in the conditions of bourgeois democracy, and the workers' movement disrupted and disorganised, only then is the final blow delivered by the bourgeoisie, with the establishment of fascist dictatorship.
....arrival of fascism....extreme sharpening of the contradictions of capitalism; it is an indication of the extent of its parasitism, decadence and moribund nature.
....finance capital tears the mask off its face and, casting aside the entire parliamentary democratic façade, confronts the working class with its open, naked and terroristic dictatorship in an endeavor to prolong the life of a historically doomed system.
....compelled to preach to the masses contempt for the peaceful methods and legality which hitherto had been the bourgeoisie's best protection. It is compelled to reveal to all that which was formerly concealed by the bourgeoisie and its Social-democratic, Liberal and Conservative hacks, namely, that real class rule resides outside of parliament; that all honeyed, hypocritical and refined phrases about the power of reforms and parliament alike, with which the bourgeoisie had hitherto lulled the working class to sleep, were "in fact frauds, straw men put up in order to fool the people" (Lenin, The Constitutional Crisis in England, 1914), which can be abruptly torn down by the bourgeoisie in whose hands resides real power.
[Today] The 'democratic freedoms' in the heartlands of imperialism are built on the foundation of colonial slavery and imperialist loot. But with the undermining of this foundation, through anti-imperialist revolutionary movements and the economic crisis of capitalism, with the consequent diminution of profits, the bourgeoisie in these countries is obliged to attack the working class, withdraw the concessions, do away with genuine reforms and introduce 'reforms' which destroy the post-Second World War gains of the working class, thus contributing to the intensity of the class struggle and revolutionary awakening of the working class.
....these attacks are being carried out through the agency of Social-democratic governments, which is helping to expose Social Democracy, even further than before, as the agent of the bourgeoisie that it has been ever since 1914. If the deepening economic crisis of imperialism and the actions of Social Democracy in the service of imperialism help to impel the proletarian masses by causing widespread disillusionment, as they surely must at some stage, provided that there exists a genuine Marxist-Leninist vanguard, the bourgeoisie of even those imperialist states, such as Britain, which have hitherto been regarded as model 'democracies', would be compelled to look at new forms to ensure the continued existence of its rule....
.... fight against fascism.... by a united and determined working class against all the attacks of finance capital in the economic and political field - against anti-trade union laws and wage cuts; against the so-called anti-terrorism legislation; against racist immigration and asylum laws which are solely aimed at sowing divisions in the working class by shifting the blame for the ills of capitalism on to the backs of the unfortunate victims of imperialist plunder, brigandage and war; against restrictions on the right to free speech and assembly, and so on and so forth.
....stronger the resistance of the working class against the attacks of finance capital, the more difficult it becomes for the latter to go over to open fascism, with the added advantage that such resistance is decisive for winning over to its side the wavering petty bourgeois layers of the population.
.... We approach the future with total contempt for the grotesque actions of the doomed, decadent and parasitic enemy - finance capitalism ....
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