What is Fascism? And is it an imminent threat today? The election of Donald Trump in the US and the rise of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections has naturally been received with alarm by millions of people around the world. Some have even warned of a new rise of fascism. As Marxists, we feel it is important not to replace serious analysis with scaremongering and exaggeration. In this article, Rob Sewell - editor of Socialist Appeal - asks: what is fascism? And does it pose an imminent threat today?
They Have Forgotten the Main Thing (The municipal platform of the proletarian party) Published in Pravda No. 49, May 18 (5), 1917.Elections to the district councils being close at hand, the two petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Narodniks and the Mensheviks, have come out with high-sounding platforms.
Defence of Imperialism Cloaked with Deceptive Phrases Published in Pravda No. 47, May 16 (3), 1917.That is what the proclamation of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to the socialists of the world, published in today’s papers, amounts to. It has a lot to say against imperialism, but all these words are nullified by a single little phrase which reads:“The Provisional Government of revolutionary Russia has adopted this platform” (i.e., peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of nations).
