We have retrieved from the archives of a comrade this old text, which is over 20 years old and which at that time was distributed mainly in English in Eastern Europe, but also in France and Spain. We have made a few minor corrections, but we would still like to draw attention to the ideological categorization that remains in the text, according to which the dictatorship of capital is structured around the poles of "democracy" versus "dictatorship" (even with the use of quotation marks) - a categorization that tends to avoid the deep essence of the social dictatorship of capital, which is in fact precisely and truly democracy (i.e. its type of democracy), serving primarily as a negation of class antagonism and its conflictuality.
Like any political material related to our class and our struggle, this text must be subjected to lively criticism. Therefore, discuss it and highlight the contradictions in order to strengthen our common critique of capital.
1. The essence of anti-fascism consists in the struggle against fascism by promoting democracy, by opposing one to the other, that is, a struggle not to destroy capitalism, but to force it to abandon its aspiration to become totalitarian. By promoting this utopia, anti-fascism very concretely deflects class antagonisms; there are no longer two opposing classes - proletariat versus bourgeoisie, two opposing projects - communism/anarchy versus capital, the destruction of the old world versus its preservation, the abolition of class society and the imposition of human needs versus the dictatorship of value; but instead there are bourgeois polarizations: "democracy" versus "fascism", "constitutional state" versus "police state", "citizens" versus "military", "parliamentarianism" versus "one-party dictatorial regime". In the "best" case, fascism is identified with state totalitarianism. All these bourgeois campaigns are a real denial of class antagonisms, of their age-old and irreconcilable struggle; therefore, in this sense, they are the domination of democracy. To join the game of anti-fascism is to strengthen what we think we are fighting against. The current anti-fascist campaigns led by the bourgeoisie (along with the fascist campaigns) aim to restore national unity around the state in order to force the proletarians to join in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. They also allow today, as before, to restore polarization in order to provoke a new war which (according to our class enemies) will give impetus to a new cycle of accumulation...
2. The problem is therefore not that "democracy" guarantees a milder exploitation than "dictatorship" (if we use the generally accepted categories introduced by social democracy) - everyone "would rather" be exploited Swedish-style than tortured Brazilian-style. But do we have a choice? In fact, we have no choice in the way we are exploited. It is always the state of capital that changes the forms of its dictatorship according to its needs for valorization. This "democracy" will become a "dictatorship" as soon as it becomes necessary. The state can only have one function, which it can perform "democratically" or "dictatorially".
3. Fascism can only be explained by taking into account the preceding period: the crushing of the revolutionary wave of 1917-1921 by the social democracy (Russia, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc.). It was social democracy that first of all disarmed the proletariat ideologically and practically and suppressed its uprisings militarily. In Germany, the "Free Corps", led by the socialist Noske, were the spearhead of the campaign to restore order. Fascism, like its big brother Stalinism, "only" finished the work of the counter-revolution, finishing off the already defeated proletariat. The so-called dictatorship always comes after the proletarians have been defeated by democracy with its trade unions and left parties. Anti-fascism obscures this fundamental reality by identifying fascism with the "forces of evil" and reducing it to an "irrational," ahistorical "reaction" coming from nowhere. The confidence in fascism in the thirties can be explained by the fact that it partially implemented the program of social democracy: "improving" the "standard of living," important public works, reducing unemployment, etc.
4. The main tactic of all anti-fascist fronts is to loudly label the state as "fascist" (for example, in France the slogan CRS = SS), which has the same effect as condemning the political parties at the head of the state. In both cases, criticism of the state is hidden behind the condemnation of those who govern it. Moreover, anti-fascism means promoting and strengthening democracy and therefore its state.
5. Anti-fascism constantly reminds us of the mass murders committed by the Nazis, which serves to justify the war by giving it a humanitarian character, thus concealing the reality that war is a material necessity for capital, allowing for the liquidation of the surplus mass of productive forces in a short time. But every war inevitably needs a justification in order to mobilize the proletarians under its banners. The fight against fascism has made it possible to justify the massacre of more than 50 million proletarians by promoting the fight against "totalitarianism". Yet, even in a pacifist and bourgeois-humanist analysis, the Nazi death camps are not the only "horrors" of war: for example, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the murderous and massive bombings of major German cities, the massacres in Setif in Algeria carried out by the French army in May 1945, on the very day of the "Liberation," etc.
6. The development of capital leads to two main consequences: the subjugation of the workers and therefore the peaceful or violent destruction of the revolutionary movement; as well as competition with other national capitals, and hence war. Capitalist social relations are built and structured around competition and the affirmation of nations as a support, as a material basis for wars. Each nation creates its own nationalism, which competes with the neighboring nationalism; each nation seeks to monopolize the market share of its neighbor. Every nationalism is imperialist in nature and as a result contributes to wars. Every nation carries within itself the seeds of imperialism, even the so-called progressive nations of the "third world": Vietnam, Nicaragua, etc.
7. The triumph of capital is never as complete as when workers mobilize in its support, believing that it can "change life." "Dictatorship" and "democracy" are rather two ways of controlling the proletariat - either by forcibly integrating it or by incorporating it through "its" organizations: trade unions, parties, associations, etc. Consistent anti-fascism consists in strengthening the state, always presented as "democratic," "constitutional"... while at the same time the proletariat is tied to it through "citizen participation."
8. For all reformers of capitalist society, democracy is seen as an element of socialism - an element that is already present in the world today. According to their conception, socialism would be truly full democracy. The struggle for socialism would consist in acquiring more and more democratic rights within capitalism. This is a social-democratic ideology called "gradualism". Anti-fascism will always lead to the strengthening of totalitarianism; its struggle for a "democratic" state (which it is in its essence!) strengthens the state. For revolutionaries, socialism, communism and anarchy mean the complete destruction of the social relations of capitalism, and hence of its classes, its state, its democracy. We must not improve and therefore ultimately strengthen what we are fighting against. Fascism and anti-fascism are part of one whole; they are the two jaws of the same trap that is crushing us.
9. When the proletarians voluntarily and resolutely side with democracy, anti-fascism and the state, they lose all ability to defend their own class interests, deny themselves as a revolutionary class destructive of this class society, and strengthen what they claim to be fighting against: the state. From the moment the proletarian movement is confined within the boundaries of the state, it no longer exists (i.e., no longer exists) as an autonomous movement.
10. The communist movement can only win if the proletariat goes beyond the framework of a simple uprising (even an armed one) that does not attack the system of wage labor itself.
11. The Spanish War was used to polarize the proletariats of the whole world - both from the "fascist" and the "democratic" countries - around the opposition "fascism - anti-fascism", thus preparing the "Holy Alliance" of 1939-1945. This is a general repetition of the Second World War, in the same way that the Balkan War is for the period 1914-1918. The bourgeoisie always seeks to formalize alliances, to polarize competing countries, to induce the proletariats to join its banners, in order to give a strong material basis to its decision - i.e. war.
12. By supporting the existing state in its "democratic" form, in order to prevent it from becoming "dictatorial", anti-fascism disarms the proletariat ideologically and materially, by falsifying and denying the antagonism that opposes them to the state - the state of capital. In this way, anti-fascism delivers the proletarians to repression, calling on them to end the struggle against the class enemy. But the latter is determined to continue to the end. This is precisely what it does, among other things, during the bloody clashes in Barcelona in May 1937. The lack of a rupture between the proletarians and the revolutionaries with anti-fascism, and in a broader sense with social democracy, is what leads them to defeat and death.
13. For the radicalized periphery of the proletariat, the Spanish War served as the beginning of the justification for the (future) war against fascism. The proletarians, who had until then refused to accept the "Holy Alliance" even against Nazi Germany, but had nevertheless resisted, went so far as to accept it as the "lesser evil" compared to a fascist victory. The great ideological function of the Spanish War was therefore to polarize those wavering around the alternative of "democracy" versus "fascism," presented by both sides as the only possible answer to "plutocratic" or "fascist" totalitarianism. In 1936, as in 1940 or 1914, social democracy was always at the forefront of mobilizing the proletariat for war.
Anti-fascism is a formula for confusion!
Fascism or anti-fascism - the dictatorship of capital is democracy!
The fight against fascism begins with the fight for social revolution!
https://www.anarchy.bg/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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