What is Fascism?¶
Core Argument¶
Trotsky’s 1931 letter, written from exile in Istanbul, is a polemical intervention aimed at sharpening the Marxist understanding of fascism against the Comintern’s tendency to flatten all counter-revolutionary dictatorships into a single category. He insists that fascism is not merely any form of bourgeois reaction, but a specific historical phenomenon with a distinct social base, mode of emergence, and class character. The core argument is that fascism must be defined scientifically, not by the fact of dictatorship alone, but by its mass, plebeian origin and its mobilisation of the petty bourgeoisie, slum proletariat, and even sections of the working class through socialist demagogy, all directed and financed by big capital.
Trotsky draws a sharp contrast between Italy and Spain to illustrate his point. Mussolini’s fascism, he argues, was a spontaneous mass movement arising from below, with new leaders from the rank and file—Mussolini himself a former socialist and a “self-made” man. Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, by contrast, was a military-bureaucratic coup carried out from above by an aristocrat using existing state and military forces. Trotsky rejects the Comintern’s labelling of the Spanish dictatorship as fascist, calling it incorrect and insisting on the necessity of distinguishing between different forms of bourgeois rule. The fascist militia’s tension with the old military institutions in Italy had no parallel in Spain.
Applying this framework to Germany, Trotsky sees an analogous movement to Italy’s, rooted in the urban petty bourgeoisie and peasantry, with leaders deploying socialist rhetoric to build a mass base. He then turns to England, where he argues the social base for fascism is far narrower because the proletariat constitutes the overwhelming majority and the peasantry is insignificant. He acknowledges the possibility of a new middle class—state functionaries and private administrators—forming such a base, but treats this as a supposition requiring analysis, not a certainty. He warns against treating a Mosley dictatorship as an imminent danger, calling such talk prophecy rather than prognosis.
The letter is also a tactical directive to English comrades: they must not isolate themselves within the Left Opposition but engage with the Communist Party, Independent Labour Party, and Labour Party, where the first tremors of the crisis are producing cracks in the established labour movement. Trotsky’s method is insistently Marxist: definition must precede prediction, and the concrete analysis of class forces must replace abstract labelling.