Yannick Mallmann | Communist Organization (KO, Germany)
Dear comrades,
If we look back at the debate in the Communist International between 1922 and 1935 on the rise of fascism in Europe, we quickly realise that the comrades were not concerned with forming a ‘pure’ concept of fascism. Instead, there was an urgent need to correctly understand fascism within the sharp class struggles in order to orientate the workers’ movement.
The debate of the Communist International holds a wealth of lessons for us today. On the one hand, for example, the premature equation of terror and repression against the labour movement with fascism was criticised, a tendency that we can still recognise today. On the other hand, the specific tasks in the fight against fascism as a movement and in power, whether in Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Poland, or Germany, were developed in controversial discussions. The general crisis of imperialism that was established with the victory of the October Revolution formed the decisive background to the rise of fascism. Looking at the connection between the economic crisis and the contradictions of the monopoly capitalist world economy on the one hand and the promotion and implementation of fascist regimes on the other provides us with important tasks for today. What we need are substantial economic analyses of imperialism today. For us in Germany, we realise that we still have to work on many questions about the penetration of the economic crisis of German monopoly capital, and the significance of the increase in inter-imperialist contradictions.
However, it is clear that the self-proclaimed West is in a deep historical crisis today. The model of hegemony of Western European and North American imperialists, which began with colonisation and the emergence of capitalism and still commands the exploitation of the peoples of the world today, has been severely disrupted. This order is being called into question economically by China and politically and militarily above all by Russia, which has not subordinated itself to NATO dominance. The objective questioning of the Western order seems to be increasing in proportion to the growing violence with which it must be enforced.
The danger of German monopoly capital falling behind in international competition is forcing the ruling class to launch drastic attacks against the working class, such as extending working hours, attacking workers’ rights, cutting social benefits, and lowering real wages. These attacks on the living standards of the working class are, at least in tendency, pushing the previous monopoly capitalist integration model, which relies on the labour aristocracy, to its limits. The crisis thus always becomes a saw in the social mainstay of capital.
The external war is the decisive crystallisation point of fascisation in Germany on several levels. Firstly, the most important: NATO has declared Russia and China to be enemies and, in addition to the hybrid wars already being waged, is preparing even more extensive wars against both countries. While the US is focusing on China, the war against Russia is being prepared in Europe. It has already been officially scheduled for 2029. These preparations for war are accompanied by far-reaching attacks on democratic rights. It involves the preparation of martial law and emergency decrees, the declaration of compulsory military service and the possibility of switching to a war economy. Overall, it is about a state mechanism of force that does not allow dissent, covers up opposition and censors opposing opinions, arguing that it is acting as the enemy’s fifth column.
These material causes and measures of fascisation are accompanied by a broad front of historical revisionist rehabilitation of Hitler fascism. Since its foundation, the Federal Republic of Germany has supported Ukrainian fascists who are openly in the tradition of the Banderite SS collaborators and came to power with the Maidan coup in 2014. The role of the Soviet Union in the liberation of Germany and Eastern Europe is being rewritten. Old enemy stereotypes against the ‘Russians’ are being rehashed. It is the repetition of the front against Russia that particularly tightens the propagandistic links to the First and Second World Wars. The new German Foreign Minister recently put this in a nutshell when he said: “Russia will always remain an enemy for us.” A new fighting force against Russia is the so-called German Volunteer Corps, which is recruited from the ranks of the German fascist party ‘Der III. Weg’ (the third path) and has recently been officially integrated into the Ukrainian army. German fascists are now being educated, trained, and armed by NATO in the war against Russia.
This tendency to openly rehabilitate fascism goes hand in hand with an apparent contradiction: the bourgeois appropriation and turn of anti-fascism into an ideology of domination. Germany’s open complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians is legitimised by the ruling class with historical German guilt. In keeping with the logic of the famous sentence: ‘When fascism returns, it will not say: “I am fascism.” No, it will say: “I am anti-fascism,” political opponents are labelled as fascists, and an alleged anti-fascism in the form of German ‘reason of state’ is feigned.
The ruling class, as well as fascist movements, are ideologically extremely pliable. They will always dress themselves up as representatives of the honest and just aspirations of the working class. It is precisely in this sense that monopoly capital promotes both liberal and fascist forces and keeps its methods of rule and legitimization models open. The role of the Alternative for Germany is thus that of a reserve which, on the one hand, has close ties to monopoly capital and, on the other hand, has developed into a rallying point and hub for the entire spectrum of fascist think tanks and thugs, with a relevant and growing number of supporters and connections right through to the working class and youth.
It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the fascisation we are currently experiencing in Germany must also end in fascism. In order to pursue this question further, it is worth emphasizing some important developments and differences to the international situation of class struggle in the 1920s, which we would like to discuss further. In the decades following the Second World War, the ruling bourgeoisies of the West were able to carefully rehearse the application of complementary techniques of rule. In West Germany, emergency decrees, occupational bans, and street terror by fascist gangs set up by the secret service were permanently fused with the structures of the bourgeois-democratic order. The imperialists’ openly competing ambitions to rule were also curbed on the basis of closely interwoven economic units under US leadership. Thus, it is NATO, which was established with the help of German fascists, that has served as the starting point for the promotion and enforcement of fascist regimes since its foundation. The absence of revolutionary class struggles, which began with the October Revolution after 1917 in the context of a worldwide wave of class struggle, is particularly evident in Germany. And yet its crisis is forcing the German monopoly bourgeoisie to massively increase the rate of exploitation, undermining its own social support and necessarily creating the space that the revolutionary labour movement will reclaim.
We now see it as our task, on the one hand, to name with absolute clarity the background to the attacks on the working classes, to uncover the causes of the aggressive war policy, to reveal the role of NATO and, on the other, to organise anti-fascist-anti-imperialist resistance against the fascising bourgeois democracy, its liberal and fascist representatives. At the same time, it is important to recognise and support the scope for anti-imperialist struggle opened up by the contradictions of the crisis of imperialism. We are grateful for the exchange platform that the World Anti-imperialist Platform offers. At a time when imperialism is calling for battle against the peoples of the world, our weapon lies in strong international organisation and solidarity. Let us forge this weapon and close our ranks.
In this spirit: Long live international solidarity.
