Fascism Revival – A Statement by the Political Bureau¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) intervenes in a debate provoked by the re-emergence of Oswald Mosley and other fascist groupings in post-war Britain. The core argument is that the fascist revival is, at this stage, a preliminary regrouping of scattered forces, not a mass movement. The decisive factor for the RCP is not the immediate physical threat of fascism, but the political orientation required to combat it. The party’s primary task must therefore be propaganda, not street-level confrontation.
The central polemic is directed against two targets: the Communist Party (Stalinists) and the Labour Government. The RCP attacks the Communist Party’s slogan demanding the Labour Government ban fascist organisations. The RCP argues this is a superficial and dangerous tactic. It deliberately obscures the class nature of the struggle by failing to demand independent working-class action. By calling solely on the capitalist state to act, the Stalinists paralyse workers’ initiative and confuse them about fascism’s real character as a weapon of capitalist reaction. The RCP insists its own superficially similar demand is fundamentally different. For the RCP, demanding action from the Labour Government is a pedagogical tool, a means to expose the Labour leaders’ essential capitalist and anti-working-class role. The demand is conceived as an integral part of, not a substitute for, organised working-class activity through unions and factory organisations. It is a lever to encourage extra-legal mass action, not a request for state protection.
The text draws on a Marxist analysis of the state and social democracy. It argues that the Labour Government, like Churchill’s wartime coalition, is a guardian of capitalist interests. History demonstrates the utter incapacity of social-democratic leaders to fight fascism, whether in or out of office. Any anti-fascist laws passed by a Labour Government would remain paper measures so long as the existing state apparatus—police, army, judiciary—remains under capitalist control. Only a soviet government can genuinely expropriate the capitalist class and abandon imperialism. The RCP’s strategy is therefore to use the fascist issue to accelerate the workers’ disillusionment with Labour, mobilising them through transitional demands to bring pressure on the government, while patiently explaining that the Labour leaders are not anti-capitalist. The RCP distinguishes its line from the cowardly complacency of the Labour bureaucracy, which offers abstract defences of “democracy” or argues that action would drive fascism underground. The resolution is designed to win over the best elements of both the Communist Party rank and file and the Labour movement.