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The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany
These writings by Leon Trotsky on the rise of fascism in Germany were aimed at changing the course of the German Communist Party (KPD). With a correct policy, this party would have been able to stop the rise of National Socialism and prevent Hitler’s victory. They represent a vital contribution to Marxism.
Trotsky insisted that the victory of fascism in Germany was not inevitable. Hitler was able to come to power only after the mass socialist and communist parties had shown themselves to be politically bankrupt in the course of the entire period following the end of World War I.
He stresses that the passage of the radicalized petty bourgeoisie into the camp of fascism was not a necessary process. Had the KPD fought the Nazis with a decisive and energetic policy and not with empty phrases, many of them would have joined its ranks.
By rejecting a united front with the social democrats, by delivering ultimatum after ultimatum to the Social Democracy and—in some instances—working with the Nazis against them, the KPD pushed the social democratic workers, who were very critical of their leaders, back into their arms. It paralyzed the working class and demoralized its own members, paving the way for Hitler’s coming to power.
“It is absolutely correct to place on the Social Democrats the responsibility for the emergency legislation of Brüning as well as for the impending danger of fascist savagery. It is absolute balderdash to identify Social Democracy with fascism,” Trotsky wrote.
The criminal policies of the KPD paralyzed the working class, permitting Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933. As Trotsky wrote, “An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. To say this openly and publicly is our direct duty toward the proletariat and its future. In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.”
Trotsky insisted that the victory of fascism in Germany was not inevitable. Hitler was able to come to power only after the mass socialist and communist parties had shown themselves to be politically bankrupt in the course of the entire period following the end of World War I.
He stresses that the passage of the radicalized petty bourgeoisie into the camp of fascism was not a necessary process. Had the KPD fought the Nazis with a decisive and energetic policy and not with empty phrases, many of them would have joined its ranks.
By rejecting a united front with the social democrats, by delivering ultimatum after ultimatum to the Social Democracy and—in some instances—working with the Nazis against them, the KPD pushed the social democratic workers, who were very critical of their leaders, back into their arms. It paralyzed the working class and demoralized its own members, paving the way for Hitler’s coming to power.
“It is absolutely correct to place on the Social Democrats the responsibility for the emergency legislation of Brüning as well as for the impending danger of fascist savagery. It is absolute balderdash to identify Social Democracy with fascism,” Trotsky wrote.
The criminal policies of the KPD paralyzed the working class, permitting Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933. As Trotsky wrote, “An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. To say this openly and publicly is our direct duty toward the proletariat and its future. In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.”
| Author | Leon Trotsky |
| Publisher | Pathfinder |
| Publication Date | 2007 |
| Pages | 562 |
| Publication Type | Paperback |
| ISBN | 978-0-87348-136-6 |
Trotsky founded the Left Opposition in 1923, which was established to oppose the growth of bureaucratism, nationalism, and inequality in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership. He was an outspoken defender of the perspective of internationalism against the program of "socialism in one country", which the Stalinist bureaucracy advanced as part of the defense of its own power and privileges. Because of his intransigent opposition to Stalinism, he was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, sent into exile in Central Asia in 1928, and ultimately banished from the Soviet Union in 1929. In 1933, Trotsky warned that the policies pursued by the Stalinist Communist Party in Germany, if not changed, would pave the way for the coming to power of Hitler by politically disorienting and organizationally disarming the working class in the face of the fascist threat. After his warnings were proven correct, Trotsky concluded that Stalin's betrayal of the German working class meant that the Third International could not be reformed. In 1938, he founded the Fourth International. Trotsky was murdered in 1940 in Mexico, where he had been given asylum, by a Stalinist agent. In addition to his political work, Trotsky was a major Marxist theoretician. He elaborated the theory of "permanent revolution", which explained why an economically backward country like Russia was driven onto the path of socialist revolution despite the fact that it had a comparatively low level of capitalist development. Trotsky's theory ultimately formed the basis for the October 1917 revolution. His letters and articles explaining the class nature of the Soviet state, written in the context of an inner-party debate that took place in 1939-1940 within the Trotskyist movement and collected in the volume In Defense of Marxism, are a brilliant example of the application of the dialectical materialist method to the analysis of contemporary political questions and problems of party program and perspective. Trotsky's prediction, outlined most explicitly in The Revolution Betrayed, that unless the working class in the USSR regained power through a political revolution, the Stalinist bureaucracy would bring about the restoration of capitalism, was proven correct by the events of 1989-1991. Additional information about Trotsky's political biography, his role in Soviet and world history, and his treatment at the hands of modern historians can be found here: |
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