The following is a short essay by renowned historian and comrade Augustín Guillamón about the complimentary function of fascism and antifascism in the modern context of corporate multinationals and generalized precarity and ecocide. The focus is on the current situation in the spanish State but one can easily draw parallels with the political situation in the rest of the democratic world.
The political division of the bourgeoisie, facing the constant threat of the proletariat, behind their two faces of fascism (the extreme right Vox, but also PP and Ciutadans) and parliamentary democracy (PSOE, Podemos and nationalists*TN) converge in a common strategy of the bourgeoisie, in defense of their historical class interests.
Originally published in catalan by the CGT’s Revista Catalunya, 11th of January, 2021
source: http://www.revistacatalunya.cat/?p=1490
Fascism and Antifascism
The medias of communication are the voice of their master and of the big capital that finances them. The discredited, falsifying and corrupt socialists and populists of the sole party PP-PSOE desperately need the fascist bogeyman to keep themselves on the political stage, and furthermore, [to make it look] as if they were different options.
Rights and freedoms have entered into contradiction with the defense of the interests of capital on part of the State. This contradiction leads the bourgeoisie to renounce its own democratic ideology and reveal the repressive character of the State, which must defend the interests of big capital by EVERY MEANS, including those that suppose the abolition of democratic rights and freedoms.
Democracy and fascism aren’t opposed, but rather they are complimentary; be it in an alternating manner or in unison. Podemos and their proposal for an antifascist alliance is complemented by the fascism of Vox: it’s attempted to subject the proletariat to the alternative between fascism and antifascism, obstructing any anticapitalist route whatsoever.
Podemos makes a call to defend capitalist democracy, fanning the fears of the fascist bogeyman Vox: Watch out, the wolf is coming! Let’s defend this corrupt and exploitative system, because fascism would be even worse!
The political division of the bourgeoisie, facing the constant threat of the proletariat, behind their two faces of fascism (the extreme right Vox, but also PP and Ciutadans) and parliamentary democracy (PSOE, Podemos and nationalists*TN) converge in a common strategy of the bourgeoisie, in defense of their historical class interests.
The function of socialdemocracy (PSOE and Podemos) is that of deviating the struggles of the proletariat from their historical objective of class emancipation and, therefore, anticapitalism, in order to conduct it to the defense of bourgeois democracy. It’s necessary to prepare the altar of the sacred antifascist unity of all classes, in order to proceed to carry out all the “necessary” economic sacrifices, including those of the democratic freedoms and the quality of life of the workers.
Vox lacks a program, because one hundred percent of its intended political project can only be called the free reign of savage capitalism and the enslavement of the proletariat: franquism as a solution. Fascism is not a product of the reactionary layers of the bourgeoisie, nor is it the product of a feudal society, but to the contrary it is the product of an advanced capitalism which, in the face of the galloping economic crisis that is approaching, passes on to the offensive.
There’s an essential continuity between democracy and fascism, in the same way that in the 19th century there existed a basic continuity between democracy and liberalism. The socialdemocratic and fascist methods, instead of taking turns in government, tend to fuse themselves. Podemos and Vox are two different paths to defend the same interests: those of big financial capital and the multinationals.
PSOE and Podemos, and others, ask us to joyfully accept the current savage, corrupt, and decrepit capitalism in order to save ourselves from fascism.
Fascism and democracy were just two different forms of the government of capitalism. However, today, capitalism is an obsolete system, which can only offer us misery, horror and death. For the first time in history the possibility is presented of the disappearance of the human species and all sorts of life from the face of the earth, due to the unrestrained and excessive exploitation of natural resources by a savage and suicidal capitalism. Nevertheless, as this affects the immediate benefits of the multinationals, the governments can do nothing in the face of a looming disaster.
The alternative is not fascism or antifascism, because both of them defend the capitalist system, while they deceive us with a false confrontation.
Twenty years ago, fascism and democracy were two different forms of government of the capitalist State; forty years ago, they were two alternating forms, which the States applied in function of the existing relation of forces; today, they have fused and are barely different dispositions of the same method of government, savage exploitation of nature and generalized attack on the conditions of life of the proletariat.
Globalization gradually changes the rules of the game. A new corporate class arises (less than one per cent of the population), manager of the multinationals, of an international character, scope, life, habits and interests, opposed and different from the business class of a national character and scope. This confrontation provokes new phenomena, like Brexit or catalan independentism. The national States are incapable of reconciling or representing the interests of a proletarianized middle class and some national bourgeoisies in danger of extinction. Parliamentary democracy gives way to a democratic totalitarianism, devoid of real rights and freedoms.
Among proletarians the unemployment, indigence and precarity increase to a paroxysmal level. New and discarnate phenomena arise like the poor worker, with starvation wages and misery. This new corporate class lacks geographic roots and is totally indifferent and alien to the social, ecological, or labor-related issues. The democratic governments are made into hostages of this new corporate class, which they don’t control in any way, as they could still do with the businesses of a national character.
Thus, the formal appearance of the western democracies hides the tyrannical management of the international economy by this minoritarian and elitist corporate class, independent from the feeble national States, that subject and subordinate everything to the benefits and interests of the great signature multinationals, that neither pay taxes nor comply with the legislation in force, contaminate to no limit or measure, or threaten to go off to another place.
Let’s go deeper, purge, and sharpen the theory, because the battles of tomorrow are of a gigantesque magnitude and we’re playing for the existence of the human species.
In capitalism there’s no future.
Agustín Guillamón
* Translator‘s Note: To clarify, we assume this refers to the regional nationalist parties of a generally centrist bourgeois character which are spread out along the autonomous regions of the spanish State.