1. The world experiences today an unprecedented wave of concentration of capital. In more and more branches, a tiny group of monopolies share among themselves the world market. The 50 largest monopolies realise an annual production far bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of most of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
2. Within the monopolies the workers are submitted to extreme forms of capital’s economic dictatorship. Exploitation is at its maximum, destroying the health of the workers, causing death, leading workers to commit suicide while condemning an ever larger mass of people to unemployment.
3. The international institutions like the IMF and the World Trade Organisation are the institutional frameworks which impose the economic dictatorship of the multinationals on the entire world. In the name of "free enterprise", the monopolies impose the totalitarianism of the market, ruining entire countries and regions, plunging two billion people in living conditions unworthy of a human being.
4. The new phase of the general crisis of the world capitalist system, which began in 1971, has deepened since 1989-1991, the years of the counter-revolution and the integral restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
5. The deepening of the crisis has sharpened the rivalry between the three centres of world imperialism: the United States, the European Union and Japan. Operating on markets that are more and more internationalised, the imperialist centres intensify their neo-colonial domination in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They install military dictatorships and police states, organise coups and wars of aggression (Iraq, Panama, Yugoslavia, the Democratic Republic of Congo) and provoke reactionary civil wars (the republics of the former Soviet Union, Algeria, Rwanda).
6. The overwhelming majority of the six billion people living on our planet will not continue to tolerate this economic and political dictatorship of the monopolies, causing a series of genocides, forever.
7. Faced with rising popular resistance, the imperialist powers are increasing the number and improving the technological level of their repressive forces. Their police services and armies have acquired a more international character, essentially in the framework of NATO under US control, but also with the creation of a European army and with the military pact between the US and Japan. In their neo-colonies, the imperialist powers take direct charge of the formation and equipment of elite units in the armed and police forces in order to serve their strategy of domination.
8. The monopolies take direct control over the information and communication sector in order to extract maximal profit from it and turn it into ideological and political tools for the justification and glorification of their dictatorial reign. In this field, the "freedom of the market" is the freedom to spread the most malicious slanders and lies in order to combat the struggles of the workers and the oppressed peoples. In the hands of monopolies, the means of communication and information have become permanent political and ideological weapons against the workers and the oppressed peoples. They serve to make the workers "accept" the destruction of their democratic rights, and to make interventions, aggressions and genocides in the oppressed countries "acceptable".
9. Our world is living under the economic dictatorship of the monopolies and under the political dictatorship of the repressive forces which protect the "freedom to exploit" of these multinationals. In this context, more than ever bourgeois parliamentary democracy has become a trickery, a masquerade where the people have essentially the choice between various political forces which all defend the dominance of the monopolies and the totalitarianism of the free market. Elections have become an exercise of "democratic" legitimation of the dictatorship of the monopolies. After 32 years of Mobutist dictatorship in Congo (Zaire), France and the US estimated that Mobutu would probably win the elections scheduled for 1997. Indeed, dictator Eyadema of Togo, who for 30 years had been the most faithful ally of Mobutu, won the 1998 presidential elections in his country.
10. Today, the workers and the peoples of the world are facing fascisation, fascism and the danger of war, all inherent to imperialism.
11. The First World War and the Revolution of October 1917 ushered in the era of the general crisis of capitalism. Since that time, imperialism is characterised by a permanent tendency to fascisation. "To free competition corresponds democracy. To the monopoly corresponds political reaction", Lenin said. Imperialism is expansion externally, and political reaction internally. Imperialism is the negation of democracy and the generalised tendency to liquidate the democratic rights that allow for opposition to the system of exploitation and that make the struggle for socialism easier. The tendency to fascism is an inherent tendency of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the era of imperialism.
12. When the monopolies see their class interests threatened, when bourgeois democracy is no longer able to prevent the revolution or to realise the military aggressions required by the most reactionary circles of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie resorts to fascism.
13. The first goal of the fascist movement is the destruction of the revolutionary and working class movement and the submission, by terror, of the popular masses to the reign of the monopolies. Fascism adds to this open terror against the working class vanguard a pseudo-revolutionary or pseudo-democratic social demagoguery, aiming to turn the working class away from its organisations of struggle to submit her to organisations of class collaboration.
14. In its quest for power, fascism uses anti-communist, racist, nationalist or religious demagoguery. Fascism, a terrorist movement at the service of the monopolies, can resort to an "anti-monopolist" demagoguery in order to attract to its ranks the petty-bourgeoisie that is oppressed by big capital.
15. Fascism in power is the declared terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most aggressive elements of finance capital.
16. In some cases, fascism prepares its coming to power by organising reactionary mass movements. In other cases, it relies directly on bourgeois state power to organise its political conquest of the masses. In both cases, the essential instrument of the fascist dictatorship is the bourgeois or feudal-bourgeois state apparatus, the inherent tendencies of which are accentuated by fascism.
17. Bourgeois democracy and fascism constitute two forms of domination of big capital. The class character of bourgeois democracy and fascism is the same: they are two different forms of the dictatorship of big capital. The combination of repression and social or national-chauvinistic demagoguery is shared by both forms, but their mixture is different. Fascism is characterised by open terror against the revolutionary and working class movement, while bourgeois democracy tries to isolate and destroy the revolutionary and working class movement from within, using political, ideological and repressive means.
18. The elements of continuity between bourgeois democracy and fascism must be correctly understood. One must not underestimate the reactionary, fascist measures taken by the bourgeoisie and by social-democracy in the bourgeois democratic countries. These are necessary steps in the preparation for an openly fascist dictatorship.
19. There is no wall between the two forms of bourgeois dictatorship. The components of the terrorist form grow from within and supported by bourgeois democracy. In many cases, fascism came to power in a "democratic" way, using bourgeois legality. As was the case, for example, with Hitler in Germany. Fascism grows within bourgeois democracy and comes to power with its help, against a background of sharp political crisis of the democratic form of bourgeois dictatorship. Fascisation and fascism are two expressions of the unavoidable degeneration of bourgeois democracy in the era of imperialism.
20. The most democratic imperialist powers have always resorted to the methods of fascist dictatorship to maintain their domination over their colonies and neo-colonies. Confronted with struggles of national liberation, they used the terrorist dictatorial methods of monopoly capital’s most reactionary and aggressive elements. This was the case for France in Algeria, for Great Britain in Kenya, for the US in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. The use of fascist means in colonies and neo-colonies offers the military, the repressive forces and the politicians an experience which can be applied to the internal situation of the imperialist countries, if needed.
21. Since the coming to power of the fascists in Italy in 1921, the big monopoly bourgeoise has acquired much experience in the alternate use of the "democratic" and terrorist forms of its dictatorship against the popular masses. It is the same hand of the big bourgeoisie which is behind the alternation between the two political forms, bourgeois parliamentarism and fascism. In Chile, the big compradore bourgeoisie mobilised reactionary masses and the entire military apparatus to carry out the fascist coup of Pinochet in September 1973. But in 1990, it once more covered its dictatorship with parliamentary "democratic" forms, while keeping the chief of the fascist forces, general Pinochet, as head of the army! In Peru, under Fujimori, the democratic form of the parliamentary regime has been maintained and has been used to make the people accept the institution of a real fascist terror in all regions where people’s war was developing.
22. History shows that social-democracy bears an enormous responsibility for the victory of fascism in Germany. Right-wing social-democracy led the ferocious repression against the working class revolution in Berlin in November 1918. The first fascist groups were formed by elements of the army which had participated in these massacres. During the 1920s and in the beginning of the 1930s, German social-democracy submitted the workers to the dictatorship of capital, and violently repressed their struggles. Faced with the rise of Hitlerian fascism, it refused to organise a united anti-fascist front. Even after the coming to power of the Nazi party, German social-democracy continued to make open alliances with the fascist party. In Belgium, the chairman of the social-democratic party, Henri de Man, published a Manifesto in 1940, on behalf of his party, hailing the victory of the Nazi armies. In France, the great majority of the social-democratic representatives voted full powers for marshal Pétain, thus supporting the collaborationist Vichy regime. Thus, during the 1930s, from within social-democracy a pro-fascist current emerged, which we may call social-fascist.
23. During the 1930s, the communists were the most devoted partisans of the working class’ united struggle against fascisation and the threat of fascism. In most countries, the social-democrat leaders, because of their anti-communism and their fierce will to defend the capitalist system and the bourgeois state, refused the offer for a united front done to them by the communists.
24. Hitlerian fascism wanted to fulfil an essential mission to maintain the imperialist system that was shaken by a deep crisis: to eliminate the communist party in Germany and to destroy socialism in the Soviet Union. Anti-communism and the desire to conquer the raw materials, the labor force and the huge market on territory of the Soviet Union, were the main engines in Hitler’s preparation for war. But thanks to the great sense of tactics of Stalin and the Bolshevik party, Hitler was forced to begin his campaign for world domination by waging war against his imperialist peers, England and France.
25. Between 1928 and 1941, under the leadership of Stalin and the Bolshevik party, the Soviet Union radically transformed itself from a backward agricultural country to a modern industrial power. Socialist industrialisation, the collectivisation and mechanisation of agriculture and the generalisation of a scientific and technical education constituted three great revolutions realised by the classes of workers and peasants. These allowed for the building of a powerful Red Army equipped with modern weapons. The Red Army and the Soviet people have shown an unequalled heroism during the great patriotic anti-fascist war. At the cost of 24 millions lives, the Soviet Union defeated the Nazi aggression armies and broke, almost on its own, the last Hitlerian resistance in Berlin.
26. Immediately upon the defeat of the Nazi armies, the US acquired world hegemony, took over the fight started by the German fascists, and became the leader of the world’s most reactionary anti-communist forces. The US welcomed on its territory more than 10,000 former German, Lithuanian, Russian and other Nazi’s. They played an essential role in the anti-communist crusade launched by US imperialism even before the end of the Second World War. Already during the war, general Patten proposed to alter the alliance and march upon Moscow, together with German divisions. The US dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with no military reason at all, Japan being ready to capitulate. This crime against humanity was, first of all, a warning to the Soviet Union.
27. In its anti-communist campaign, started in 1945, US imperialism improved on all techniques invented by Hitlerian imperialism. The US propaganda took as central theme: "Fascism and communism are twins". Its goal was to denigrate and slander communism in an even more violent way than did the Nazi’s. The "recycled" former Nazi’s in the US were the first ideologues of this campaign. From the start, fascism of the American kind was covered with the language of "democracy".
28. The hunt for communists and progressives, launched by McCarthy in a truly fascist style, was conducted in the name of the defence of "American democracy". Dimitrov, the great fighter against Nazism, said in 1947: "The fascist tendencies in the US are ideologically masked with the aspects of "Americanism", "defence of the free initiative", "safeguard of democracy", "support to the free peoples", "defence of the free institutions", "safeguard against totalitarianism". The people who restored fascism in the US are not so naïve that they would mechanically repeat the ideology spread by Goebbels and Rosenberg and that failed catastrophically... This is why they mask their aspirations to hegemony and cleverly use the ideas of "freedom", "democracy" and "peace". The forms of fascist ideology appear to have changed but their content remains the same. It is the aspiration to world domination. "
29. The war of aggression against Korea, led by US imperialism, was the direct continuation of Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union. The Korea war was part of the global strategy of the US to liquidate all socialist countries, mainly China and the Soviet Union, with military means. The victory of the Korean resistance, supported by China and the Soviet Union, caused the failure of that strategy.
30. For more than 35 years, the US continued the political, ideological and military war to destroy the socialist countries. They gathered all the fascist forces of the world under the umbrella of the World Anti-Communist League. After the final destruction of socialism in the Soviet Union, the latter changed its name into World League for Democracy and Freedom. In 1990, US imperialism, aided by the internal counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, was finally able to achieve what Hitler had started in 1941-1944 with the help of the Ukrainian fascists.
31. The destruction of what was left from socialism in the Soviet Union and in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe in 1989-1991 caused an unprecedented wave of anti-communism. It freed the most reactionary forces and gave new life to the ideas and positions of Nazi fascism. There is a direct relation between the so-called "historical victory of democracy over communism" in 1989 and the rise of fascism in the imperialist countries as well as in the former communist countries. When the Berlin wall disappeared, Hitler rose from his grave.
32. The new phase of the general crisis of capitalism that we live in since 1990 is characterised by a process of rampant fascisation, taking place all over the world, in the imperialist countries as well as in the new capitalist countries in the East and in the neo-colonial countries.
33. Since the destruction, in 1990, of what was left of socialism in the Soviet Union, all over the world we witness the rise of mafia-like states (40% of the economy of Russia is in the hands of mafia organisations, Albania is controlled by the drug and prostitution mafia). We witness the disappearance of the state to the advantage of criminal networks related to the imperialist powers (Albania, Tadjikistan, Chechnya, Somalia, occupied Congo). We witness fascist-like aggressions and embargos against independent and sovereign countries (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Congo).
34. Fascisation consists of reinforcing the system of repression, setting up a system of generalised spying on the population, reinforcing the executives in power, criminalizing and prosecuting communists and leaders of people’s struggles, undermining the right of organisation and the right to strike, exerting institutional racism against migrants and refugees, and of violently repressing people’s struggles. This fascisation takes on different forms and relies on the classical bourgeois parties, among which, in Europe, social-democracy is playing a leading role.
35. Fascisation is part of the imperialist powers’ preparation for big wars on a world level, to be waged in order to maintain a system of domination that is shaken by economic and financial crisis.
36. At the same time, by organising the rise of genuine fascist parties the big bourgeoisie is constituting a reserve force in case bourgeois democracy would not be able to stop the revolutionary movement.
37. The growth of the fascist parties throughout the imperialist world and the fascists’ participation in government in Italy and Austria helps the bourgeoisie to present the fascists as "acceptable" elements. This makes it easier for the bourgeoisie to put fascists into power, whenever the conditions for her own survival so require.
38. It is on the instigation of the imperialist powers that fascist regimes were established in a number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and in some former socialist countries.
39. In the oppressed countries, regimes like the one of Pinochet in Chile, of Fujimori in Peru and of Turkey have rightly been qualified as fascist. They are terrorist dictatorships of the most reactionary factions, that are most closely related to the extreme Right in the imperialist countries. Pinochet gave Milton Friedman a free hand to make Chile a testing ground for extreme liberalism.
40. In today’s world, the main source of fascism is the policy of world hegemony implemented by US imperialism and its allies, the European Union and Japan. It is very difficult for them to guarantee their neo-colonial domination over the former Soviet Union and the other former socialist countries and over the peripheral capitalist countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America with the methods of bourgeois democracy. The fascist occupation regime in Kosovo and the fascist religious regime in Chechnya are testimony to this as regards the former socialist countries; the religious fascist regime in Afghanistan, the military-fascist regime in Turkey and the ethno-fascist regime in Rwanda as regards the oppressed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
41. In today’s situation, the world anti-fascist front is first and foremost an anti-imperialist front. It gathers the countries that maintain some socialist principles, notably China, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam and Laos, the Third World countries and peoples that are fighting for their political and economic independence, and also the former socialist countries that are opposing imperialist domination. All revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces in the capitalist world are also part of it.
42. Within the imperialist countries, the contradictions between the forces of fascism and the forces of bourgeois democracy may, at certain times, become sharp and can lead to political clashes. In the imperialist camp, antagonist contradictions may appear as well between fascist countries and countries that maintain some elements of bourgeois democracy. The communists and the popular forces can exploit these contradictions in the enemy camp and form anti-fascist fronts with certain factions of the bourgeoisie.
43. The main point is that the communist parties keep their ideological and political positions intact, that they win over the masses to a revolutionary anti-fascist struggle and prepare them to put an end, in a later phase, to the capitalist system, of which fascism is but a product.
44. In the developed capitalist countries, defending the revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles of the oppressed countries is essential to any anti-fascist policy. Another essential element of anti-fascism is denouncing the wars of aggression, the reactionary civil wars and the terrorist regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as criticising fiercely their political and ideological justification.
45. In the imperialist world, fascisation is excluding the popular masses from all essential decisions in the economic, political and military fields. Under monopoly capitalism, democracy has become the hoax of the century. Communists must nurture the aspirations to people’s democracy that necessarily emerge among the masses. The struggle against fascisation and fascism and for a radical democratisation of society is an integral part of preparing for socialist revolution, the latter being the only way towards genuine democracy for the popular masses.
46. The building and continuous strenghtening of the communist party and of revolutionary mass organisations, the building of an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist united front and the building of people’s armed forces are the main weapons in the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle.
47. The economic laws inherent to monopoly capitalism are pushing the world towards fascism, war and barbarity. Only the national-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution can save humanity and assure it of a future of dignity, democracy, culture and prosperity.
(20.08.00)