Once again on fascism in Britain¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: "Once Again on Fascism in Britain"
This chapter is a polemical rejoinder to the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), defending the Workers' International League (WIL) against charges of chauvinism and veiled support for the imperialist war. The core argument is that the RSL has deliberately misrepresented the WIL's position on fascism in Britain, resorting to dishonest quotation and Stalinist methods of polemic rather than Marxist clarity.
The central dispute turns on the WIL's claim that Mosley could only come to power "on the basis of German bayonets." The RSL had attacked this formulation, arguing that fascism cannot be imported and that a German conquest would produce a Bonapartist regime, not a fascist one, while weakening British fascism. The WIL retorts that the RSL has omitted the preceding sentence from their thesis, which states unequivocally that "there can be no question of fascism in Britain in the period opening up." Far from using the Hitler bogey to justify support for the war, the WIL had already established that fascism was not on the order of the day. The chapter quotes the WIL's earlier 1941 reply to the RSL, which argued that revolution would come before fascism in Britain, except in the event of a Nazi occupation — and even then, the resulting regime would lack mass support and rest entirely on foreign bayonets, not constituting fascism in the Marxist sense.
The polemic draws heavily on Trotsky's last article on fascism, which the WIL claims as the basis for their analysis. The RSL is accused of reading without absorbing, and of "double book-keeping" — a method the WIL associates with Stalinism. The chapter also cites Lenin's remark that a sectarian can make as many errors in two lines as would require a book to answer, dismissing the RSL's quibbles and distortions as a waste of time.
A further contradiction is exposed: the RSL simultaneously accuses the WIL of pushing the perspective of workers' power "into the background" and of painting the situation "in revolutionary colours" as though on the eve of seizure of power. The WIL notes that it cannot be guilty of both, and suggests the RSL's refusal to study the actual orientation of the working class explains their sectarian errors.
The chapter is notable for its frank admission that the WIL would regard a Nazi occupation of the British isles with horror — but no more so than an Anglo-American occupation of Germany. This symmetry is defended by reference to Trotsky's description of the fall of France as a catastrophe for all Europe. The WIL insists this is not chauvinism but elementary honesty, and demands that the RSL observe basic rules of polemical integrity.