The far-right/fascist mobilisation on Saturday in London was the largest ever by the far right in Britain.
It is, indeed, a wake-up to the left and all who stand for democracy. Fascism is on the march here, as elsewhere.
But those on the left who believe that this can be countered, and that the arguments of the fascists can be answered, by appeals to liberal reforms while leaving the system untouched are seriously mistaken.
Those of us who believe that the answer to the rise of the far-fight and fascist forces is to argue for a systemic change must not lower our sights. We must raise them.
Our goal has to be for a fundamental break with the capitalist system that drives exploitation, division, wars and climate catastrophe and which creates the conditions in which far-right authoritarian and fascist ideas can grow..
We must get better organised. We need our arguments to be better presented and we need to answer in detail the lies and false claims of the far-right/fascist leaders.
This must include those of us who agree on this finding a way to work together in YourParty to win this new party to a vision of a completely different form of society – a socialist society.
There are many other points to be made about how we confront the racists and fascists on the street but this, too, depends upon an understanding of the threat of fascism and that its defeat ultimately depends on the working class coming to power and abolishing the system that gives birth to fascism.
We don’t want billionaires like Elon Musk – the darling of the British far-right & fascists – determining our future.
We want to see a world without billionaires, a world without classes; where the resources of the world are owned by everyone, and planned democratically for the needs of everyone.
That means fundamental change – not a few reforms while leaving the exploitative capitalist system intact.
I think I agree to this much; anti- fascism is not what we need, but socialism. Calling for a desperate unity with capitalist outfits is not the solution.
A mobilisation against only one faction of the capitalist class, namely the fascists, implies support for capitalist democracy itself. The theoretical justification behind this is that workers should support the lesser evil amongst the bourgeoisie political factions. Our political ancestors in the Italian left argued from the early 1920s that fascism represents another strategy to crush the working class, and that there is a continuity between “democracy” ( under capitalism) and “fascism”. The relationship between “democracy” and “fascism” is symbiotic. Both should be fought equally.
The logic of anti-fascism is to resist fascism by defending bourgeois democracy. A brief glance at history shows that the Italian democratic bourgeoisie paved the way for Mussolini, while in Germany, the social democrats Noske and Scheidemann paved the bloody path to the Weimar Republic and the Weimar bourgeoisie brought the Nazis to power. Capitalist democracy and fascism are little different as far as the exploited are concerned.
Mobilisation to support any faction of the bourgeoisie is not a mistaken strategy, it is fatal and counter-revolutionary strategy. It is this which Stalinists, Trotskyists and the degenerated Communist International supported in the 1930s and are again supporting today. History has shown how it has led to hundreds of thousands of proletarian deaths while leaving the capitalist class firmly in power. The most blatant example of this was the Spanish Civil War. However, we need also to remember that anti-fascism was the mobilisation call for the Second World War, a war with deaths numbered in tens of millions. Revolutionary defeatism is the only strategy the proletariat can use to end imperialist war. Mobilisation on the basis of anti-fascism in imperialist wars is the complete opposite of revolutionary defeatism.
More … https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-12-13/anti-fascism-against-the-working-class