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The Militant, 15 July 1933

Oskar Fischer (ed.)

Leninism versus Stalinism


What Stalinism Said
About Democracy and Fascism


From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 35, 15 July 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Stalinism did not recognize as its task, to arouse the working class against the threatening danger of Fascism. On the contrary, the Stalinists took pains to “demonstrate” anew day in day out, that “between democracy and Fascism there is no basic difference.” Nothing was more qualified to make the workers underestimate the danger of Fascism than this distorted formula of Stalinism.

* * * *

They in our ranks who erroneously act along the line of a belief in the existence of a basic contradiction between bourgeois democracy and Fascism, between the social democracy and. Hitler’s party, are harmful and fatal to the Communist movement. Indeed, this is our chief danger.
(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., April 1931, Kommunistische Internationale, No. 16, April 1931, page 703)

From this we draw the first conclusion – that only a bourgeois liberal can construe a counter-distinction between bourgeois democracy and a Fascist regime, and can assume that we are dealing here with two basically different political forms ...
(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., Kommunistische Internationale, No. 16, April 1931, page 703)

The fact that the bourgeoisie is obliged to suppress the workers’ movement by means of Fascist methods does not mean that the upper classes no longer rule as before. Fascism is not a new kind of governmental method to be distinguished from the system of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. He who thinks so is a liberal.
(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum, April 1931, Komm. Internat., No. 17–18, May 1931, page 773)

The Fascist dictatorship offers no basic distinction from bourgeois democracy, through which also the dictatorship of finance capital is carried out.
(Resolution of the C.C. of the C.P.G. on the decisions of the XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., May 1931)

The Leipzig party convention confirmed fully the correctness of the resolution of the IX (?) Plenum of the E.C.C.I., which declared that in our parties the counter-posing of Fascism and bourgeois democracy is a liberal interpretation.
(Martynov, Komm. Internat., May 1931, No. 2, page 895)

But even worse is the fact that in spite of the conclusions of the XI Plenum, in spite of the masterly clarification of the problem as presented in the final words of comrade Manuilsky, there have appeared in our ranks tendencies towards a liberal counter-distinction of Fascism and bourgeois democracy, of the Hitler party and social Fascism.
(Thaelmann, Some Mistakes in Our Theoretic and Practical Work, Die Internationale, November–December 1931, page 487)

Germany demonstrates ... that the transition of democracy to Fascism is an organic process, which does not have to take on the form of unusual and explosive occurrences but can be accomplished gradually and in a “bloodless” way.
(Werner Hirsch, Fascism and the Hitler Party, Die Internationale, January 1932, page 28)

The objective situation in Germany is a striking and incontrovertibly practical argument against the liberal counter-distinction between Fascism and democracy, Social Fascism and Hitler Fascism. – By no means at all, therefore, is it the task of Communists to search with extra-strong spectacles for any possible differences between democracy and Fascism.
(Werner Hirsch, Die Internationale, January 1932, page 31)

On the other hand, as the National Socialist movement swells out, the Hitler party, too, offers stronger support for the bourgeoisie. This process will soon – at the latent in Connection with the Prussian elections – place again on the order of the day the question of the open participation of the Nazis in the government. Through this, the role of the socialist party of Germany will in no wise be weakened.
(Thaelmann, Some Mistakes in Our Theoretic and Practical Work, Die Internationale, November–December 1931, page 485)

Also in the event that the Nazis are taken into the government, there can be no question that the bourgeoisie will refuse the cooperation of the social democracy in the carrying out of the Fascist dictatorship.
(Die Internationale, January 1932, page 4)

The XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I. has swept aside the artificially constructed counter-distinction between bourgeois democracy and Fascist dictatorship. By this it has rendered an invaluable service to the Communist parties in their fight against social Fascism. The XII Plenum has demonstrated that so-called “classic” Fascism does not exist and cannot exist, and that all confusing theories, basing themselves on the history of Italian Fascism, about the Fascist need of first striking down the working class, are bloodless abstractions.
(Schwab, The Nature of the Fascist Dictatorship, Konmunistische Internationale, No. 10, January 1933, page 19)

 
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