A-Infos (en) Bulgaria, FABL: The worst fruit of fascism? It's anti-fascism! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

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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