Fascism – what it is and isn’t

Philip Stott

Donald Trump’s return to power has shocked and angered millions in the US and internationally. Completely understandably, there is great concern about what this will mean for the working class including immigrants and undocumented workers facing bans and deportations. Additionally, women face further attacks on abortion rights, and LGBTQ+ people face even more obstacles in the continuing fight for equality.

Trump’s early moves in his second term of office to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and threats to do the same on the EU will , if implemented, increase the recessionary pressures in the world economy, including driving up inflation while impacting the jobs and living standards of US workers. 

The reality of Trump’s anti-working class policies was masked by claims he continually made during the US presidential election campaign that he was standing up for American workers. The economy and the cost of living were key factors in his election victory. For example, among the 45% of respondents who said they were worse off compared to four years ago, 80% voted for Trump.

At the same time, the state ballots to enshrine abortion rights showed a majority, including in five states that went to Trump, support legalised abortion. 

These examples, added to the unionisation drives and the strike wave that US workers have been engaging in recently – 70% of the US public see unions in a positive light – point to contradictory processes. Yes, there is the rise of racist and right wing populist forces, mainly electoral at this stage, in the US and internationally, but at the same time there is a growing militancy and a radicalisation against the conditions of life under capitalism today. And both of these can be true at the same time – and can exist in the thought processes of the same person. 

Indeed Trump’s victory is a distorted reflection of these contradictions. And because he won’t be able to solve the crisis of US capitalism he will become the victim of these self-same contradictions. In other words, whole sections of US workers who voted for Trump will move against him. 

The electoral gains being made by the far right and populist right forces internationally reflect similar trends. Amidst stagnating and crisis-ridden capitalist development, there is growing hatred of the political establishment, including both traditional capitalist parties like the Tories in Britain and former bourgeois workers’ parties, such as Starmer’s Labour government. This political vacuum, for example, is a key factor in the rise of Reform UK in the polls in Britain recently.

It is only the absence of viable working class and socialist mass parties that is allowing the rise of right populism to take place to the extent that is has. Once in power, the parties of the populist right tend to disappoint those layers who voted them into power in the first place. 

This is the case in Argentina under Milei and was also the case after Trump’s first presidential term, when he lost the election in 2020 to Biden. Fundamentally, right populists offer no alternative to the continued rule of capitalism within the confines of the nation state. No matter how many tariffs that a Trump protectionist presidency imposes, it will not improve the lives of working class Americans.

With the far-right AfD likely to make gains in the German federal elections later this month and Reform UK poised to enter the Scottish parliament in 2026, the urgent need to forge a political alternative to reaction and division is evident on an international level. That’s why Socialist Party Scotland, while fighting against all forms of oppression day to day, advocates the building of a new mass workers’ party to offer a viable alternative to the racists. 

Fascism – is a return possible? 

Is the working class internationally facing the unstoppable rise of racism, the far right and even the return of fascism in this era? The answer to that question must be no—not if the correct steps are taken, for example, by trade unions and the working class in building mass struggle and helping to create a socialist political alternative.

Some young people horrified by the rise of Trump et al have expressed their disgust at the rise of the far/populist right with the use of the term fascist. That is understandable. But for Marxists, terminology has to be precise and have a clear scientific content.

In a recent column for the National newspaper, former SNP MP Mhairi Black commented on Trump’s inauguration as US president: “So, Nazis are back in power. I do not say that lightly but rather because it is what the evidence tells me.” But is it accurate to say that?

Fascism was diagnosed by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who participated in an international struggle against the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, as a form of civil war. Moreover, one where a mass movement of “the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of de-classed and demoralised lumpenproletariat – all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy” is mobilised “to smash the working class, destroy its organisations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery”. 

This is precisely what Trumpism, Farage et al lack, and it is why we don’t use the term fascist to describe them. Fascism relied on the physical extermination of the workers’ movement and its organisations – and most often utilised large paramilitary forces to achieve this. The bourgeois – or a majority of them – went over to fascism because it was the last throw of the dice. At that time, it was the only way they could see to maintain their rule amid revolutionary upheaval by the working class during the economic crisis of their system.

Indeed this conclusion of Trotsky, defended by Socialist Party Scotland, is echoed by Mhairi Black – perhaps she has read some of Trotsky – when she wrote: “It was only when the conservative elite and business class grew frustrated at their lack of control and were threatened by the rise of communism and socialism that they began to see Hitler as a useful pawn. Believing that authoritarian rule was the best way to protect their power and money, the wealthy elite and Hitler found a common enemy – the political left.” 

Mhairi Black is entirely correct to equate the capitalist class’s turn to fascism in the 1920s/30s with the fear of losing control of society to the working class through a socialist revolution. Yet the rise of fascism, a catastrophe for the working class in Germany, Italy and Spain, was only possible because of the missed opportunities to overthrow capitalism by the working class in the post-first world war revolutionary wave.

As Trotsky described it: “In all the countries where fascism became victorious, we had, before the growth of fascism and its victory, a wave of radicalism of the masses – of the workers and the poorer peasants and farmers, and of the petty bourgeois class.” 

In describing the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1920s – the first example of its kind in Europe, he goes on to say: “In Italy, after the war and before 1922, we had a revolutionary wave of tremendous dimensions; the state was paralysed, the police did not exist, the trade unions could do anything they wanted – but there was not a party capable of taking the power. As a reaction came fascism.” In other words, the working class and socialism had the first, second and third opportunities to take the power. 

“In Germany, the same. We had a revolutionary situation in 1918; the bourgeois class did not even ask to participate in the power. The social democrats paralysed the revolution. Then the workers tried again in 1922–23–24. This was the time of the bankruptcy of the Communist Party – all of which we have gone into before. Then in 1929–30–31, the German workers began again a new revolutionary wave. There was a tremendous power in the Communists and in the trade unions, but then came the famous policy (on the part of the Stalinist movement) of social fascism, a policy invented to paralyse the working class. Only after these three tremendous waves did fascism become a big movement.”

And to emphasise the point as clearly as possible, Trotsky concluded: “There are no exceptions to this rule – fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.” 

The same was true in Spain in the 1930s. A time when Trotsky declared that not one but ten revolutions could have been made by the working class – had a revolutionary party matching the determination of the masses existed. That such a clear-sighted political force did not exist was the key reason why, in the end, Franco’s forces eventually took power. 

It was the defeat of the revolutionary wave after the first world war – with the exception of Russia where the working class and the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky carried through the elimination of capitalism and landlordism – that gave the opportunity for the bourgeois to turn to fascism try and assert control. 

Trotsky described vividly just how far the ruling class were prepared to go to ensure untrammelled control of society free from the fear of revolutionary challenge: “but it means first of all for the most part that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism …”

Capitalism means increased authoritarianism 

Today, capitalism is increasingly authoritarian and prepared to use its control of the state apparatus to hack away at democratic rights, including the right to strike and protest. The recent attempt to impose martial law in South Korea by presidential decree threatened to provoke a mass movement of workers shows that authoritarian tendency. But also its limits, including those imposed by the fear of provoking mass struggle, as in South Korea, against their rule were they to go too far in using such dictatorial methods.

As it currently we are a long way from fascism – the balance of class forces internationally lies still in favour of the working class – which is not to say that every attempt to remove or curtail democratic rights has to be fought by the workers’ movement, it must. Nor ruling out theoretically that the ruling class will turn once again to their own version of the ‘solution’ of fascism when faced with a mortal challenge to their rule in the future. 

However, the bourgeois will be very reluctant to take that road again. Not least because one of the consequences of the fascists coming to power in the 1920s/30s was, while ultimately still basing themselves on the capitalist mode of production, the bourgeoisie lost control of the state machine.

The rise of fascism in Europe led directly to the outbreak of the second world war and eventually the loss of large swathes of the globe who were excluded from imperialist control following the end of the war and the strengthening of Stalinism. Further losses were suffered by world capitalism as a result of the victories of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions that followed not long after the second world war. 

What is also different from the 1930s is the balance of class forces which have shifted in favour of the working class. If Trotsky is correct, that fascism is a mobilised mass movement of the middle layers of society – small business people ruined by the crisis, the middle class, a section of the peasantry and the most backward sections of the working class – then there has been a big change in the class composition of society compared to a century earlier.

Today, though industrialisation, urbanisation and the development of the global economy, the working class is far greater in number and specific weight in society that at any other time in history. Even in the advanced capitalist countries workers occupy a far bigger section of society than ever before. 

Today, 57% of the world’s population lives in urban areas – that compares to just over 30% in 1960. By 2050 it’s expected that 70% of the global population will live in urban areas. While those figures don’t give a breakdown in terms of social class – the working class is immeasurably stronger than it was at the time of the rise of fascism. The emergence of the Chinese working class alone, particularly since 1990, has added almost 400 million to the world’s proletariat. 

Added to this is the increasing tendency towards the proletarianisation of large sections of the previous middle layers of society as the capitalist crisis has deepened. Teachers, civil servants, college and university lectures and others have joined the trade union movement and were at the forefront of the strike wave in the UK in 2022/23 for example. 

At this stage, the balance of class forces rules out the capitalist class turning to fascism and attempting to the smash the workers’ organisations. The pendulum of history is preparing a radicalisation to the left and increased struggle against capitalism internationally. Only in the wake of a series of revolutionary defeats for the working class, in one or a series of countries, would the ruling class take the road of imposing a dictatorship 

The limits to bourgeois democracy

In the advanced capitalist nations bourgeois democracy – voting every few years for a government to administer for capital’s interests – is their favoured option. While in the neocolonial world military-police dictatorships are routinely utilised by corrupt bourgeois regimes where capitalism is too weak to even sustain a facade of democracy. Yet these dictatorships, while utilising some of the brutal methods of fascism, tend to rest on a very narrow base of society and are not scientifically described as fascist. 

Nevertheless, bourgeois democracy is becoming less reliable for the ruling class. The hollowing out of the social support for the main capitalist parties is an international phenomena. The rise of right populist formations – and sometimes the tendency to transform some of traditional parties into right populists, like, to a degree, the Tories in the UK and more sothe Republicans in the US, are limiting the preferences open to them. 

In the case of Trump 2.0, the bourgeois hope to limit the damage he can do to their system though exerting class pressure. At the same time – at least over the last couple of decades – the lack of genuine workers’ parties has been a boost for the ruling class. Even then, they are facing increasing problems in finding and sustaining stable instruments for their rule. And there is no prospect of that becoming any easier in the future. 

In the longer term it is certainly not ruled out that the ruling class, or sections of them, will turn to fascist organisations and paramilitary forces to be used against the working class. Not necessarily to hand over power to fascism, but to use them to weaken and intimidate the workers movement. The bourgeois do not base themselves on ‘democracy’ as such. It’s a useful tool to to hide the inner workings of capitalism behind a facade of parliamentary democracy. But if this limited democracy was to leading to unreliable ends – for example the election of a left wing socialist government – then they would seriously consider attempting to do away with it.

As the Tory MP Sir Ian Gilmour argued in his book in the 1970s – “ Conservatives do not worship democracy. For them majority rule is a device…. majorities do not always see where their best interests lie and then act upon their understanding. For Conservatives, therefore, democracy is a means to an end not an end in itself. In Dr Hayek’s words, democracy ‘is not an ultimate or absolute value and must be judged by what it will achieve’. And if it is leading to an end that is undesirable or is inconsistent with itself, then there is a theoretical case for ending it.” That theoretical case was and will be in the future the threat of socialism. 

The defence of democratic rights, the right to strike, to vote, to organise, to join trade unions etc. was won by the struggle of the workers’ movement, not handed down by the ruling class. The capitalist elite face an overwhelmingly superior force of numbers railed against them. The only reason they have remained in power for so long is their control of the state machine, developing the productive forces for a time that has now ended, and the lack of political and organisational cohesion of the working class. But that is beginning to change. 

While there is still a long way to go, the revival of class struggle in a series of key countries, the US, Britain, Germany, France are a harbinger of the future. Capitalism is beset by a series of crises that it cannot resolve. They will not give up power without a fight. And will be prepared to turn increasingly to reaction, including arming fascist groups and a wholesale attack on democratic rights. That’s why the struggle for socialism is the struggle for democracy.

United Front 

Trotsky advocated the use of the United Front tactic in the 1930s to defeat fascism – and it still is a crucial weapon in the arsenal of Marxism today. The United Front can be summed up as ‘march separately, strike together!’ The different mass political organisations of the working class – in the case of Germany in the 1930s the trade unions, the Communist Party and the Social Democracy – should work together to defend themselves and to face down the fascist threat. 

However, Marxists should also maintain their political independence rather than subscribe to a joint programme with the reformist leaders. In this way, it would have been possible to defeat the threat of the rise of Hitler while struggling to overthrow German capitalism. Instead Stalin and the other leaders of the Comintern (Communist International) imposed a policy of social fascism on the CP in Germany – which in effect meant seeing the German Social Democrats as the same as fascists – thus playing a role in weakening the workers’ movement and opening the door to the victory of Nazism and all of its horrors, including the Holocaust. 

Socialism is the only way to put a permanent end to the threat of fascism and the other forms of reaction that the capitalist system brings. It is the only way of guaranteeing the living standards of the working class and of the middle layers in society. 

Mass workers’ organisations, armed with a Marxist programme, can win people away from the propaganda of both the populist far-right and the fascists, and restrict their ability to recruit. That is why the struggle to defeat the racism, reaction and the threat of fascism is rooted in the struggle to end capitalism and build a socialist future. And why the building of a mass revolutionary party and international based on the ideas of Trotsky and the Bolsheviks is so essential. 

• For more reading on Trotsky and the fight against fascism see Fascism – What it is and how to fight it