The fascists are the vehicle for this fight. On the one hand, the fascists ideology is one based upon the mobilisation of the petty-bourgeoisie. It is “anti-capitalist”, in the sense of being superficially hostile to large-scale monopoly capital; it is nationalistic in outlook, and able to rally the lumpen elements around racist and conspiracist tropes; and its methods are based upon a violent break-up and suppression of the organised labour movement, which forms the immediate concern of the ruling class. The liberal-bourgeois representatives, i.e. the conservative social-democratic politicians within the conservative and social-democratic parties, may look on aghast at the growth of such forces, but, as seen in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, in the 1920's, and 30's, these liberal-bourgeois politicians have already been abandoned by the class they seek to represent. The petty-bourgeoisie, already in the camp of the reactionaries, is joined by the bourgeoisie itself, i.e. by the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, and the forces of its state.
As Trotsky points out, therefore, the attempt to create a popular front, to oppose the fascists, in such conditions is pointless, because such a popular front can only be with the liberal bourgeois politicians who no longer represent anything other than a ghost class. A popular front only allows these politicians to obtain seats in parliament on the back of the workers parties in the alliance, but the workers themselves must abandon their own independence in order solely to obtain this mirage of broad support. Such popular fronts insist on the workers remaining inside the remit of bourgeois-democracy, and because they confuse the winning of elections, and governmental office with state power, they inevitably demobilise and disorient the working-class, when that state, as the state of the ruling-class, then turns on them, and sides with the fascists, as happened in Spain in 1936, Chile in 1973 and so on. The workers could only have been prepared for such events had they been warned of them in advance, and had a revolutionary party began to organise them in defence squads and workers militia.
Fascism, however, is to be understood as conservative rather than reactionary. Unlike the reactionaries who represent the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, fascism represents, in these specific historical conditions, the interests of the owners of fictitious-capital. It represents the same interests as the conservative social-democrats, interests which those politicians cannot represent, within the confines of bourgeois-democracy, in these specific historical conditions. Once having seized power, the fascists set about utilising the state power to destroy the petty-bourgeois and lumpen elements within their ranks; in Germany those elements were represented by the Strasserites.
The fascists then set about the use of the state to reorganise the economy in the interests of large scale socialised capital. The owners of fictitious capital see increased revenues in the form of interest on the loans they provide to the state to undertake such infrastructure spending, and as the profits of large-scale industry increases, they see their dividends increase too. Superficially, national socialism under fascism appears identical to national socialism under Stalinism, and its no wonder that an enthusiastic supporter of the Moseley Memorandum of the 1930's, setting out such policies, was Nye Bevan and other statist social-democrats.
A range of organisations are described as popular fronts, which aren't, but which are popular frontist in nature, i.e. they are cross class organisations. Stalinists have been the biggest force behind such organisations, in line with the adoption of the popular front, as the principle tactic of Stalinism since the 1930's. The development of “anti-imperialist alliances” and “anti-monopoly alliances” are typical of such cross class organisations. They are thoroughly reactionary in nature, for the reasons that Lenin describes in relation to the same kinds of populism put forward by the Sismondists and Narodniks. Rather than seeking the further development of capitalism, and of the revolutionary elements within it, such movements seek to hold back the development of the most advanced elements of capitalism, and to align with and foster the less mature, reactionary forms of capital. So called “Anti-Capitalist” movements are usually of this type too, their aim being to hold back or turn back capitalist development, rather than to push forward through it to Socialism.
As an indication of the deterioration of the Left in general, it is not just the Stalinists that have been the driving force of such cross class movements, and popular fronts. The SWP in the 1970's, became a major force in such developments through things such as the Anti-Nazi League, but also most Left groups fell into similar cross-class alliances, such as CND, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and so on, which itself reflected the weakness of many of those smaller organisations, who criticised the nature of these organisations, but were unable to avoid their gravitational pull. In the last two decades, the SWP and its splinters became inseparable from such popular frontist, cross-class alliances, and the unprincipled politics that goes with them.
Although, such organisations are not themselves popular fronts, because they do not represent electoral alliances, and so do not require an abandonment of socialist ideas and programmes, the reality of these organisations is that that is what happens, because those that create them, in order to attract and retain the wider political representation they crave, are forced to limit the platform of the organisation itself to the bland, bourgeois politics that the liberal politicians, religious leaders and so on will accept. Indeed, in the case of the SWP, and its Respect abomination, it is not even just liberal politicians whose support is sought, but that of outright reactionaries such as George Galloway and Islamic religious leaders. In all these cases, as with the experience of popular fronts throughout history, when the liberal and other bourgeois political representatives have obtained what they require, and at a time of their choosing, they cut free from the workers' representatives, and turn against them.
The lesson of history taught by Marxist analysis is to avoid popular fronts like the plague. The weakness of revolutionary socialism means that, as with Marx and Engels in 1848, we are forced into an undeclared popular front inside the social-democratic parties, in order to obtain the ear of workers, via their mass organisations. The alternative is the sterility of sectarianism of all those that seek to build their own alternative in splendid isolation. But, as Marx and Engels did, we have to recognise the nature of our position within these parties, and protect against the danger of opportunism. It is necessary to see our sojourn as a temporary tactic as a means of building the mass revolutionary Workers' Party as a real alternative. It is necessary to see ourselves in Engels' words, as a wing of those bourgeois parties, and to act to defend our own political and organisational independence within them.
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