The good news remains that the ruling class have no need, and no desire to see fascists in government. On the contrary, the fascists represent the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, not the bourgeoisie, and their interests are antagonistic to those of the ruling class. It is why the state, which is the state of the ruling class, has acted to limit the damage that could be done by Brexit, and the Brexitories, as well as by Trump. It does so by typically bureaucratic and Bonapartist methods, rather than by open political conflict, mobilising class forces for such a struggle. It can use the courts, the financial markets, and so on as effectively against the far right and petty-bourgeoisie, as it can against the working-class.
Expect the Italian far right government to break apart very quickly under pressure of its own contradictions, along with the external pressure of markets that will be applied to it, just as the far right, Brexitory government of Truss has faced such pressure in its first days, with the removal of the Kamikwarzi Chancellor, his replacement by the prominent Remainer, Jeremy Hunt, and even for yet another leadership challenge.
But, that is fortunate for us, at this time, and those conditions will not last forever. The existing workers parties are worse than useless. They are riddled with opportunism and electoralism, itself a foundation for their popular frontism in search of purely electoral majorities at any cost. As in the 1950's and early 60's, the road forward for the working-class, now appears to be around, or over, those existing workers parties, pulling them along with us, in our slipstream, eroding them like stones in a fast flowing river, and, in the process, accumulating the material for new or renewed parties fit for the task.
Workers are on the move, as they feel firmer ground beneath their feet, as economies are again responding to the dynamic of the long wave, despite attempts to hold it back, now using the deliberate imposition of high energy costs, resulting from NATO's boycott of Russian oil and gas, to try to soak up workers' disposable income. Instead of accepting that, they are demanding higher wages to cover those higher energy costs and the rest of the inflation caused by the policies of "money" printing. They are refusing to accept the demands of politicians like Reeves that we simply put our faith in the election of a right-wing, Blue Labour government sometime in the future.
That does not mean making the mistakes that the syndicalists of the SWP made in that earlier post-war period, of ignoring politics, or Labour as the workers party. A real solution can only be a political solution, which requires a political party to fight for it. For now, in Britain, that party is still the Labour Party, just as it is the Democrats in the US, SPD, PD in Germany, Italy and so on.
But, for Marxists, our focus, here and now, must be to concentrate on those real workers struggles, to turn the best elements of the workers' parties out towards them, whilst taking the most advanced elements of the workers direct struggles into those political arenas, and engaging them as allies, to transform those parties, to demand the removal, deselection and so on of the overtly pro-capitalist elements, or else, if that becomes impossible, to break them apart, and to establish new mass socialist workers parties from the material provided.
Such a focus requires us not to engage in any kind of conciliation and accommodation with forces to our right, of the kind proposed by Paul Mason et al, which amounts to liquidationism, let alone to continue the errors of Popular Frontism seen most recently in Italy, but quite the opposite, to sharpen, even more, the Marxist programme, and the solutions we put to workers, in contrast to the continued inevitable failures of the liberals, social-democrats and reformists. Rather than rotten electoral blocs to try to temporarily deny the far right parliamentary majorities, we propose a fighting unity, on the streets, in the workplaces, and in the communities. Our mantra is march separately, strike together.
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