The U.S. capitalist class is currently facing a degree of instability unprecedented in recent years.
 Los Angeles demonstration against Minutemen, July 7. Photo: Bethany Malmgren |
The imperialist adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have not led to the military and political victories that Washington planners had anticipated. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat and tens of thousands more have been wounded—meaning that the war is being felt in cities and towns across the United States. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and other people in the cross hairs of corporate greed who have died in these wars.
Added to these military problems is the growing instability in the U.S. capitalist economy. Gas prices continue to soar. Layoffs are on the rise.
This is the context for the growing resistance and rising class consciousness among widening sectors of the U.S. working class.
From the beginning of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, millions of people across the country and around the world took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to show their opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq. Although this massive public display of opposition was unable to avert the invasion, it signaled the beginning of a shift in class consciousness.
More worrisome for the U.S. ruling class, however, are signs of the rising struggle of workers on a class basis. This was evident in the many local and nationwide marches and other protests culminating in the historic May 1 national boycott and strike across the United States. This was a reaction to the ultra-reactionary immigration legislation proposed in late 2005 that would have further criminalized one of the most vulnerable sectors of the U.S. working class, undocumented immigrants.
The combination of capitalist instability and rising class consciousness raises the danger of the rise of fascist currents in society. Revolutionaries and progressive forces must be aware of the danger and be prepared to combat it.
There are always small, ultra-rightist and neo-Nazi groups in capitalist society that promote racism and reaction. These groups are held in reserve by the ruling class to divide the working class and terrorize oppressed communities. They are kept in check and on the borders of legality, but maintain extensive links to the police and elements in the military.
What has raised concern in recent months, though, has been the right-wing anti-immigrant vigilante organizations like the Minutemen. These groups are becoming more prominent with the rise of the immigrant rights movement.
The Minutemen started as a small group of white ranchers who valued their property rights over the human rights of undocumented workers. Now, it has become a national organization receiving mainstream media attention and political backing from high levels of bourgeois political forces.
That raises a number of important questions for working-class and progressive activists. Is the Minutemen a fascist movement? And what is the correct way to fight them?
What is fascism?
 Class solidarity and militancy is key to fighting fascism. Here, volunteers in the fight against Spanish fascism in the 1930s. |
The word “fascism” is often used in an unscientific manner by a wide spectrum of political forces. Inevitably it brings to mind the ideology of German and Italian imperialists during World War II, who fought a destructive war against both the imperialist democracies and against the Soviet Union.
So Bush refers to Hezbollah and Hamas as “Islamic fascists”—trying to paint these resistance forces as enemies of working people. While few progressive activists would be confused by this pro-imperialist propaganda, it does have an impact on mass consciousness by virtue of being broadcast so widely by the big business mass media.
On the other hand, a number of leftist political forces label capitalist repression of all types—its cops, its military and its court system—as fascist. According to this logic, every capitalist state is fascist—in that every capitalist state is built on the violent enforcement of its exploitative rule. It diminishes the particular features of fascist rule and the special tasks of fighting it.
Marxism, as a social science, attempts to understand the historical and material basis for political and social trends in order to advance the class struggle. From that perspective, important to understanding fascism are those specific features as they occurred in history that may be generalized to draw lessons for today.
The classic examples of fascism were in Italy under the leadership of Benito Mussolini from 1922 until the end of World War II and in Germany under the leadership of Adolph Hitler from 1933 to the end of the world war. The origin of the word “fascism” dates back to the rise of the Fascist movement in Italy in the 1910s, which Mussolini later joined.
The Fascist movement in Italy rose to power at a time of tremendous crisis for Italy’s capitalist class. The Italian communist movement was making tremendous strides in its scope and militancy, bolstered by the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Communist-led demonstrations were sweeping the country following the end of World War I in 1917. Factory councils were formed, giving the working class real organization and power.
General strikes were met by the organized opposition of the state and the bosses. In September 1920, the factory councils occupied factories across the country. Capitalist property relations of private ownership were in doubt.
Mussolini’s Fascists mobilized large sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, who had fallen into ruin in the post-war economic collapse. “Blackshirt” thugs attacked strikers and peasant organizers. The Italian ruling class, shaken to its core, threw its weight behind Mussolini’s party to save themselves from crisis. “Making the trains run on time,” Mussolini’s slogan at the time, corresponded with the bourgeoisie’s dream for restored capitalist stability.
The mass base of Italian fascism among the ruined petty-bourgeoisie combined with the financing and support from the ruling-class elite made this form of rule distinct from other forms of state rule under capitalism. Only in a period of great crisis will the big bourgeoisie trust its rule in the hands of what it normally considers “rabble.”
The first task of Mussolini’s Fascist government in 1922 was the liquidation of progressive forces. None were spared repression over the next years of consolidated Fascist power. Union organizers, communists, social democrats and even progressive intellectuals were killed, imprisoned and driven into the political underground.
The complete smashing of all independent working-class organization was accompanied by the creation of labor-management partnerships—of course, subordinated to management. Another key to Fascist rule was the enforcement of ideologies emphasizing the unity of interests of the working class and the owning classes and de-emphasizing class struggle. This took the form of corporatism and extreme nationalism.
Italian fascism was ultimately crushed in the aftermath of Italy’s defeat in World War II. Key to that defeat was the armed Partisan movement, led by the communists who had been driven underground.
The rise of Nazism
Many of the same features were displayed in the growth of German fascism. After World War I, Germany was economically devastated. The Treaty of Versailles, the provisions imposed by Great Britain, France and the United States in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat, was felt as a terrible humiliation to many Germans, particularly the German bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. The provisions included war reparations so onerous that they led to a collapse of the currency and hyperinflation that wiped out the savings of the German middle class.
So while millions of workers joined the Communist Party and even more were organized in the Social Democratic Party, the perceived humiliations and economic privations were used to recruit other layers of the population into Germany’s rising fascist current, the “National Socialist” Nazi Party.
Like the Italian Fascists, the Nazis relied on socialist-sounding demagoguery to enlist wide sectors of the devastated petty bourgeoisie. Even more than the Fascists, the Nazis relied on extreme racism and anti-Semitism to blur class antagonisms and to impose a phony “national unity” between the workers and the bosses.
As in Italy, after the Nazis seized absolute power in Germany they mobilized petty bourgeois elements—in the form of Storm troopers, SS Blackshirts, and the Gestapo—to crush communists and other working-class organizations.
The ultra-racist nationalism of German Nazism unleashed a turn of events that led to horrifying crimes against humanity. Hitler and the Nazi leaders sent millions to their deaths in concentration camps and slave labor facilities. Those not considered “truly German”—Jews, Romani, immigrants, gays and lesbians, disabled workers and communists, along with all progressive and resistance forces—were systematically slaughtered under the banner of German imperial expansion and the “unity of the fatherland.”
The mobilization of the petty bourgeoisie into a mass terror campaign against the revolutionary working class has been utilized on other occasions. Franco’s Spain and the early years of Pinochet’s Chile after the 1973 coup are other examples.
The lessons of anti-fascist struggles
These experiences—and the heroic efforts on the part of the working-class organizations to fight the fascists—have contributed to a shared experience among revolutionaries on how to confront a fascist threat.
 Activists do not wait for fascists to take power to confront them. Los Angeles, July 7. Photo: Bethany Malmgren |
Most important is recognizing when such a threat exists. Mobilizing such wide layers of the population, even on a purely demagogic basis, is not something the ruling class does lightly—but when it does, the working class must be prepared.
Second, working-class organizations must be prepared to put aside political or tactical disagreements to form a common front against the fascist threat. While different organizations will, of course, maintain their differences in slogans and strategy, the immediate defensive tasks of protecting ourselves from liquidation and the more general task of defeating the fascist threat is the pressing order of the day.
Finally, the working class must be prepared to defend itself arms in hand, organized into class-based militias. When there is a fascist threat, it is a life-or-death question.
Organizing against the Minutemen
The extent of the crisis in the United States is not yet at the level where the ruling class is resorting to a fascist mobilization. Up to now, the U.S. ruling class has been able to maintain its exploitation within a “normal” and “legal” framework—that is, the “normal” and “legal” repression against political activists and working-class and oppressed communities that characterize life under capitalism.
However, as elements of a general capitalist economic and political crisis come together, the ruling class has fascist paramilitary and political forces on reserve. For decades, fascist groups like the Ku Klux Klan have been sporadically mobilized to crush union organizing and civil rights activism.
That is the danger that the Minutemen pose for the U.S. working class. The Minutemen appeal to the patriotic, racist and xenophobic backward elements within the white working class in order to break class unity and stir up racism in U.S. society. They are an armed group terrorizing undocumented workers who try to make the dangerous journey across the Mexican border into the United States.
For this reason, revolutionaries and progressive activists do not wait for the threat of fascism to grow to prepare to mobilize against fascist and fascist-like groups. These groups represent a dangerous current in modern society—especially for immigrant workers, but for the whole working class as well. The same forces that are organizing now against immigrant workers will be mobilized against unions, anti-war, and other progressive organizations and will try to scapegoat other national minorities or oppressed groups.
That is why the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with other progressive forces, have confronted the Minutemen whenever they attempt to organize in working-class communities or to terrorize undocumented workers and their allies. By confronting the Minutemen, revolutionaries stand side-by-side with the most oppressed sectors of the working class. In these organizing efforts, we continue to help build class consciousness among all workers.
The role of the state
In the course of these struggles, wider layers of activists are learning the real roles of the capitalist media and state in defense of class exploitation. To those who argue that the Minutemen and other fascist-like groups are fringe elements and should be ignored, the vast police protection granted to their demonstrations—along with the wide media coverage—are proof that their strength is not in their numbers.
For example, a small Minutemen demonstration took place along Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, Calif., on July 8. As the racists prepared to spew their anti-immigrant filth in the heart of the diverse, working-class neighborhood, cops attacked the counter demonstrators! Several activists in the ANSWER Coalition—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism were shoved to the ground, beaten and arrested. Some were hospitalized.
Video footage of the assault showed the Minutemen yelling encouragement to the cops, gleefully chanting “LAPD!” as innocent protesters were attacked.
But these efforts by the Minutemen and the cops to stop progressives from protesting the march were unsuccessful. Despite the intimidation and violence, hundreds rallied against the Minutemen, chanting, “Cops and the Klan go hand in hand!”
At the historic March 25 immigrant rights demonstration in Los Angeles, where over a million people marched, one protester brought a sign reading, “You have awoken a sleeping giant.” That sign pinpointed the U.S. ruling class’ greatest fear—that the multinational working class will awaken in mass struggle. Taking seriously the fight against incipient fascist groups is one hallmark of an organization dedicated to carrying that struggle through to its revolutionary ends.
