Dimitrios Patelis, Revolutionary Theory Groop, Greece
One could say that resistance to imperialism and fascism is a timeless and self-evident principle not only for communist revolutionaries, but also for every progressive human being.
However, neither imperialism nor the fascism associated with it are beyond time, but are historically concrete phenomena, which are changing in their forms and content in different historical eras and situations.
Insofar as they change historically, the struggle against them cannot remain unchanged. Moreover, such historical changes of imperialism and anti-imperialism, fascism and antifascism can be scientifically investigated only based on the dialectical development of the achievements of revolutionary theory and methodology.
Otherwise, there is a danger of the revolutionary movement being trapped in positions of ex post facto reaction to every action of the forces of imperialism and fascism, in a barren oppositional determination of positions, in a primitive and totally predictable counterpoint against the enemy. In this case, people not only turn the enemy and his action into their basic system of reference, but they definitively lose any initiative of their movements, initiative which is so important for the outcome of the struggle, condemning the movement to becoming the tail of the enemy.
The dialectical development of revolutionary theory and methodology based on the concrete investigation of the structure and history of contemporary social reality is the only path which offers the possibility of positive knowledge, of description, explanation and prediction, of positive determination of strategy and tactics. This is the opened by Victor Vazulin path with his discoveries in the “Logic of History” project.
Based on the imperative needs of the times and the circumstances of the First World War, Lenin proceeds to an accelerated exploration of the new stage of imperialism, monopoly capitalism, as the highest and last stage of capitalism, the eve of the socialist revolution. The scientific theory of imperialism was founded by Lenin who established that at the end of 19th – beginning of 20th century the capitalist mode of production acquired some new important features: in the development of productive forces-a high level of concentration of production leading to the formation of capitalist monopolies; in the sphere of production relations-the establishment of domination by these monopolies. The exploitation of the working class by the financial oligarchy of global imperialist capital takes place not only within individual nations, but on a worldwide scale.
According to Lenin, “domination, and the violence that is associated with it” (Lenin. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. I. Concentration of Production and Monopolies), which was introduced by monopolies into the economic relations of capitalism, caused in its political superstructure a turn from bourgeois democracy to reaction (up to the establishment of fascist regimes). All this enabled Lenin to draw the conclusion that capitalism had entered a special, imperialist stage of development: “imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance, in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism. Vol. 22, pp. 266-67).
Monopolisation of economy determines the historical place of imperialism as the highest stage of the development of capitalism, as decaying, parasitic and dying capitalism. It determines the peculiarities of functioning of all economic laws of capitalism at this stage, including the law of uneven economic and political development of capitalist countries. This unevenness is sharply increasing and acquiring spasmodic, conflicting character, which in the conditions of complete division of the world among the imperialist states generates world wars. The imperialist states and their coalitions pursue aggressive foreign policies, which reflect the striving of monopolies for world domination. Within the country this policy is accompanied by growing militarisation of the economy. Monopolisation leads to an ever-increasing socialisation of production and thereby to still sharper aggravation of class antagonisms, thus creating objective prerequisites for the victory of socialism.
Lenin, in correctly highlighting the basic features of this stage, emphasised the findings concerning the connection, of vital importance for the revolutionary movement of the time, between the law of unequal development under imperialism and the problematic of the “weak link in the imperialist chain” (on which the Bolsheviks’ methodical and effective revolutionary action is based) and the prospect of the outbreak of revolutionary situations that can lead to victorious revolutions, initially in a group of countries or even in one country (as it eventually happened in imperialist Tsarist Russia and its colonies). Several countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia currently fulfil the criteria of the “weak link” concept.
Thus, Lenin did not arbitrarily identify the “rentier states” which serve as the headquarters of the major monopolies and of financial capital and, today, of the huge multi-branch transnational monopoly groups and corporations. These states, together with such corporations, extract monopoly super-profits from the whole world, on a regional and global scale.
With his discoveries, Lenin’s aim was to develop the Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle under imperialism and concretise it, showing that the matter of the revolution is fundamentally linked to the study of this global dimension of exploitation. It is this, and the resulting uneven development that underpins his concept of the “weakest link” and clarifies the possibility and inevitability of the global revolutionary process – in contrast to the dogmatism and opportunism of the representatives of the Second International.
Lenin stressed the need to identify where the focal points of intertwined internal and external global contradictions arise, where it is easiest to break the weakest link of the global imperialist system. Thus, Lenin connects anti-imperialism with class struggle not superficially but essentially and internally. Anti-imperialism is not a rejection of the class approach – it is the class approach of our time: “The dialectics of history are such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real antiimperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene. […] We would be very poor revolutionaries if, in the proletariat’s great war of Liberation for socialism, we did not know how to utilise every popular movement against every single disaster imperialism brings in order to intensify and extend the crisis” (Lenin V.I. The Irish Rebellion of 1916. Collected Works, Moscow 1962, Vol. 22).
From the beginning of the 20th century, with the First World War (WWI), it became clear that, in the monopoly stage of capitalism, the periodic long-term structural crises of the system do not only incubate fiercely imminent scientific and technological revolutions (only partially and distortedly attainable under capitalism) but also waves of early socialist revolutions. Of the number of armed insurrections and revolutions that erupted in Europe after WWI, the Great October Socialist Revolution, which took place in Russia and its adjacent colonies, was victorious.
Beginning with the victory of the October Revolution and the other early socialist revolutions, the era of humanity’s global historical transition to communism has already begun. The era of the structural crises of the world capitalist system and the wars under imperialism now bear the stigma of the general crisis of the capitalist system, a system which has accomplished its historical mission, and therefore, it does not constitute only a barrier, an obstacle to the further development of humanity, but also the greatest reactionary and regressive force, a threat to the very existence of humanity and all life on planet Earth. This era marks the passage of the socialist perspective from the abstract possibility to actual historical process, to the law governed, necessary and attainable active process of revolutionary transformations.
Since then, capitalist development cannot be viewed in isolation from the course of early socialism. Similarly, early socialism cannot be viewed as detached from the course of the rest of the world, which is no longer under complete, structurally homogeneous and uninterrupted domination of imperialism.
Particularly after the WWI, emerged the necessity of the transition of imperialism to its State-monopoly stage. Historically, two forms and versions of state-monopoly regulation were used to prevent the working class from turning towards revolution, under the influence of the October Revolution, but also for war preparations:
1. in the form of the state interventionist measures proposed by bourgeois economists like Keynes, e.g. in the context of the “New Deal” in the USA, and
2. in the form of the imposition of a fascist dictatorship of the financial oligarchy for the militarization of the economy and society, in the face of the coming WWII (in Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.).
Fascism (Italian fascismo, from fascio = bundle, a sheaf, league) is an ideological and political trend and system of government that emerged during the period of the general crisis of capitalism (after the victory of the first early socialist revolution, the Great October Revolution). It represents the interests of the most reactionary and aggressive forces of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
“Fascism is not a form of state power “standing above both classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,” as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not “the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state,” as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. 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…. The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social, and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.”
Fascism promotes the terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive forces of monopoly capital, for the preservation of the capitalist regime, for the strengthening of the forces of imperialist reaction and counter-revolution, against the popular democratic forces of anti-imperialism, social progress, revolution and socialism/communism.
Fascist ideology and practice are characterised by extremely aggressive anti-communism, claims to subjugate the working class, intolerance, nationalism, chauvinism, and racism.
Fascist “movements” and regimes, despite their common characteristics, present certain differentiations and variations depending on the national and other historical peculiarities of their fields of application. A common feature is the association of fascism with the secret services of the bourgeois state, with the deep state, with paramilitary, organisations adjacent to the church, etc.
WWII began as a continuation of WWI, to resolve the unresolved contradictions of imperialism. However, after the attack on the USSR by a united Europe under Nazi Germany, the war became anti-fascist.
Global conflicts are an inherent element of the imperialist stage of capitalism, manifesting themselves with a periodicity corresponding to that of large-scale structural systemic crises. This periodicity also includes waves of revolutions and counterrevolutions.
The crushing of fascist Germany and its allies by the forces of the anti-fascist coalition in 1945 was a great defeat for fascism. As a result of the USSR and the world antifascist movement (spearheaded by the communists), crushing the axis of the ‘anti-Comintern’ pact, the camp of socialist countries in Eastern Europe in Asia and later in the Americas (Cuba) emerged after WWII.
Alongside the victories of the early socialist revolutions and with their internationalist support, a wave of anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and national independence movements emerged, which led to uprisings and revolutions of national liberation.
After WWII, fascism was temporarily weakened but not completely eradicated. After the defeat of the revolutionary movement in Greece, a monarcho-fascist regime was imposed by the foreign intervention-occupation of Britain and the USA with their local collaborators, followed by short-lived pseudo-democratic regimes, and then by another openly fascist military junta imposed by the CIA, the USA and NATO (1967-1974). Fascist dictatorships were successively installed in a number of countries through imperialist interventions and coups: South Korea, South Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and several other countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The character of the current war may share some similarities, but it is qualitatively and essentially different from the two previous ones, due to the era, the context and the character of the powers that are de facto involved in it. Therefore, the attitude of the progressive, anti-imperialist and communist forces cannot be determined mechanistically, through metaphysical analogies, as if nothing had changed since 1914 or 1940 until today… The WWIII has many elements in common, but even more and major differences from the WWII. It arose from the unresolved contradictions of the new stage of imperialism.
The current stage of imperialism is the stage of transnational monopoly imposition, of the attempt to completely subordinate humanity to the most powerful international multi-branch monopoly groups, the Transnational corporations (TNCs) to the most powerful in terms of capital, to the imperialist countries and their transnational organs. The sphere of circulation (export of goods and capital) no longer plays a dominant role in the structure of the relations of production of the present stage of imperialism. This role is now played by the sphere of production itself, distributed on a planetary scale and rooted in the technologies and organisation of this production. At this stage, the division of the world between the most powerful international multi-branch monopoly groups and between the most powerful imperialist countries in terms of capital (which are the main TNCs countries of residence) on the basis of inequality and the extraction of monopoly super-profits on a global scale has been completed, while a rapid shift of power is taking place with the rapid progress of the PRC and the emergence of a new pole led by the latter and Russia (BRICS, etc.): the pole of the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism.
WWIII is leading to the rapid shrinking of the parasitic capacities of the pole of the traditional imperialist centres. Imperialism lead by USA, despite the rampant push towards fascism in the countries of its territory, no longer has the need to establish typical outright fascist regimes in the frontline imperialist countries (as in inter-war Germany) with the claim to develop an antagonistic military-industrial complex and armed forces competitive with those of the USA, independent and self-sufficient. This would challenge the de facto US hegemony in this axis. The regime in the imperialist countries and the satellite countries of its near periphery today succeeds in effectively manipulating the working class and the wider popular strata through consensual means and ways.
Fascism today is even more deeply linked to the ideology and practices of extreme neo-liberalism, social Darwinism and “postmodern” irrationalism.
The US-NATO-EU imperialist axis is instrumentalising and “exporting” fascism and nazism to install its subordinate regimes in countries that until the 1980s were part of the USSR, Yugoslavia or other countries that passed through phases of early socialism in Europe, South Korea, etc.
During WWIII, fascism functions as an instrumentally useful and expendable “strike force” in proxy wars against those who resist the continuation of its domination, against the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism. This is evident in the way the imperialists are treating the people of Ukraine today (as “cannon fodder”) against the people of the rebellious Donbass since 2014, and against Russia and its allies since 2022. The same fate awaits tomorrow the peoples of Poland, Moldova, the Baltic States, South Korea, Taiwan, Greece and other Balkan countries, Latin America countries etc.
This is also the role of the Zionist racist formation of Israel, the proxy state and war arm of the US-led axis, which has been the brutal occupying power in Palestine for 7 decades, launching repeated genocidal operations against the Palestinian people, while acting as an aggressive imperialist bulwark and arm of the axis in this strategically important region.
During WWII, the formation of an anti-fascist front at national and global level to crush the fascist/anti-communist/anti-Comintern axis constituted a strategic objective. The USSR, the Third International and the global communist movement concentrated their forces on this objective. The Soviet foreign policy and diplomacy exploited the inter-imperialist contradictions with extraordinary skill to divide the imperialist world of that time, to inactivate a significant part of the imperialist powers (Great Britain, USA, France, etc.) and to integrate them in the anti-fascist alliance against the axis.
During WWII, the imperialist powers had the “luxury” of dividing into two camps due to the irreconcilable inter-imperialist contradictions. Thanks to the brilliant foreign policy of the Soviet Union, however, a rift was driven between them. Of course, we know what kind of allies they were – even those who joined the anti-fascist coalition against the axis of the Anti-Comintern Pact…
On the contrary, during WWIII, inter-imperialist conflicts cannot play an important role due to tectonic rearrangements in the global balance of economic, political and military forces. Any continuation of the parasitic imperialist function of the Euro-Atlantic axis, any prolongation of its declining course requires, for existential reasons, the open consolidation and subordination of the former colonialist and the present neo-colonialist imperialist powers into a unified, united, aggressive axis led by the USA. This is evident in the imposition of ultimatums, the humiliation of the EU and Germany in terms of energy, etc. with new forms of cannibalism, economic and military strangulation and coercion by US imperialism (destruction of gas pipelines, deindustrialisation, subordination of the military-industrial complex to US purposes, increasingly direct involvement and transfer of the costs of supporting the nazi regime in Ukraine to the EU and NATO countries, etc.).
The bourgeois counterrevolutions in the USSR and in the early socialist countries of Europe led to crude imperialist interventions in collaboration with sections of the newly formed local bourgeoisie, to civil wars, separatist nationalist movements, the fragmentation of countries, coups and a series of fascist-style dictatorships. Typical are the cases of the racist regimes of the three Baltic ‘democracies’, openly led for decades by the descendants and spiritual successors of Nazi collaborators, with the full support of the US-NATO-EU. These regimes have imposed apartheid on the ‘non-natives’, who are institutionally considered as ‘non-citizens’…
Similar coup regimes were imposed in the states that emerged from the US-NATO-EU foreign intervention, the “civil war”, the “colour revolutions” and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but also in the formations that emerged from the counter-revolution and capitalist restoration in the USSR. Such was the “Black October” of 1993 in Russia under B. Yeltsin, the juntas in Georgia and especially the successive coups in Ukraine, culminating in 2014, which led to the imposition of an openly nazi-racist regime by the Euro-Atlantic axis and the unleashing of a genocidal war against the insubordinate population of south-eastern Ukraine.
Fascism is the spawn of capitalism in the stage of imperialism, it is its aggressive vanguard, especially today in the midst of the escalating WWIII.
All these characteristics make it clear that the world capitalist system today is not in the stage of 20th century imperialism, whose defining feature was state monopoly regulation at the level of the nation state, a particular form of forced militarisation was the “classical” fascism of the inter-war period.
Moreover, in contrast to the necessity of fascist/counter-revolutionary repression of the then strong revolutionary movement, the regime in the imperialist countries and the satellite countries of its near periphery today – seemingly, in the near future – succeeds in effectively manipulating the working class and the wider popular strata through consensual means and ways. This manipulation has now been consolidated through takeovers, corruption, fraud, demagogy and the undermining of the workers’ movement by its opportunist agents, but above all through atomisation and patterns of consumerism.
The bourgeois regime achieves this by handing out crumbs of its parasitism, using the resources from the siphoning off of monopoly super-profits from around the world. It also achieves this through extreme alienation, individualism and competition, through the undermining of even the biological core of personality and the family, in combination with all the means and ways of undermining and invalidating the constitution of the revolutionary subject and the subject in general. As the imperialist countries are drastically cut off from their sources of parasitism throughout the world, the ability of the financial oligarchy to buy off, corrupt etc. the domestic working class at the trade union, ideological/political and cultural levels will also decrease. This will lead to a mass organic reintegration of the working class of the imperialist countries into the world revolutionary workers’ movement – under conditions of weakening imperialism and strengthening the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism on the planet – and will put the late socialist revolutions in the imperialist metropolises on the agenda.
At the stage of transnational-monopoly imperialist imposition, the very instrumental use of fascism is subject to the transnational planning of the aggressor axis led by the USA.
Entire countries and peoples are placed under brutal and open foreign management, turned into expendable “private military companies” of the aggressor Euro-Atlantic axis.
However, fascism was and remains the most consistent misanthropism and anti-communism, the most militant fighting force of counter-revolution, of the financial oligarchy of imperialism.
The struggle against fascism must be consistent, patriotic and internationalist/anti-imperialist, aiming its arrows at the attacking imperialist axis led by the USA and at the reactionary policies of every government that, through NATO-EU, facilitates fascist actions and supports nazi-fascist proxy regimes, such as those of Ukraine and the Zionist state of Israel.
War and fascism reproduce each other. A necessary condition for the working people’s uprising is the destruction of both fascism and the imperialism that instrumentalises it when it’s appropriate. They go together, one cannot be done without the other. Imperialism is the matrix that produces and reproduces fascism at every historical stage and in every era.
These conditions also radically change the character of today’s fascism-nazism, transforming it into an instrument of war, intervention and coups d’état, into an “exportable” model of transnational monopoly imposition of regimes that act as subordinates, outposts and strike forces of the unique and deadly aggressive unified US-NATO-EU axis.
Therefore, in contrast to WWII, today, during WWIII, the strategically important frontal policy, the victorious policy of alliances, must give priority to the consistent and militant anti-imperialism, to the prioritisation of the aggressor united US-NATO-EU-Zionism axis as the №1 enemy of humanity, whose tool is the current versions of fascism.
It is only through the consistent frontal anti-imperialist struggle that antifascism/antinazism today gains meaning and is organically linked to the socialist aims of the communists. Those who do not put forward consistent antiimperialism in today’s struggle are objectively acting in a disorientating and undermining way.
The most consistent version of this deception is linked to the irrational metaphysical dogma/ideological construction of the “imperialist pyramid”, which the current leadership of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) shamelessly promotes. Based on this anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist deception, all existing states on the planet are projected as “more or less imperialist”, fully and/or “in the making”. Therefore, according to similar doctrines, today we do not have a singular WWIII with many fronts/battlefields on the planet, but a multitude of conflicts of undefined character, “bourgeois settling of accounts between imperialists/ bandits”, so that both antifascism and anti-imperialism are practically undermined and devoid of meaning…
Due to the effective theoretical and methodological intervention and ideological confrontation, WAP managed to expose on an international level the fallacy of the ideological construction of the “imperialist pyramid” and the undermining role of its agents and propagandists for the movement. As a result, any reference to this terminology is now treated with irony; thus, the opportunists who struggled so hard to introduce this dogma are now avoiding any reference to the words “imperialist pyramid” … This fact by itself constitutes a major success of the WAP. However, the opportunists of the “Communist” Party of Greece are continuing with the same intensity to promote the opportunist line of “equal distances” in the WWIII. A line which is aimed to confuse the movement, so that the aggressive imperialist axis remains practically out of the picture, and the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism are presented as “enemies of the movement”!…
During WWIII, a coordinated anti-fascist action within the framework of a global militant anti-imperialist front with the communists at the forefront is necessary. Also necessary is the theoretical, ideological and practical struggle against the forces of opportunism and revisionism, which sow confusion and discord, which deny the necessity of a frontal anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle, which separate fascism from imperialism.
There is an urgent need for a great front in which the unity of the people, the youth, the women, and the working class is forged against imperialism, for the defeat of NATO, the anti-people and anti-working-class policies of the governments that are the lackeys of imperialism, fascism, the state, deep state and transnational terrorism, with a view to the socialist revolution and the unification of humanity, communism.
The escalation of WWIII due to the aggression of the imperialist axis includes the strong possibility of a brutal attempt to invade and to occupy Venezuela and other Latin American countries by the US imperialists.
The establishment and strengthening of proxy fascist regimes in Latin America are a key tool for achieving the imperialists’ goals. The award of the Nobel Prize to CIA agent Maria Corina Machado is part of the plans for violent regime change and the imposition of a fascist-type proxy regime in Venezuela.
This is precisely why a militant frontal anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle is needed in Venezuela, in Latin America and all over the world. In this struggle the role of the World Anti-imperialist Platform is irreplaceable.
UNDERSTAND FASCISM DEEPLY, IT WILL NOT DIE ON ITS OWN, CRUSH IT!
DEATH TO FASCISM AND IMPERIALISM!
DEFEAT FOR THE CRIMINAL U.S.-NATO-EU IMPERIALIST AXIS!
VICTORY TO THE UNITED FORCES OF ANTI-IMPERIALISM AND SOCIALISM!
LONG LIVE THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!
LONG LIVE THE HEROIC PEOPLE OF VENEZUELA, UNYIELDING FIGHTERS FOR INDEPENDENCE AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND FASCISM!
DEATH TO FASCISM AND IMPERIALISM!
SOLIDARITY IS THE WEAPON OF THE PEOPLES AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM!
YANKEES GO HOME!
