Fascism: Origin, Development, Historical Characteristics, and Methods of Abolition

Definition, Core Characteristics, and Pillars of Fascism

• Definition & Class Essence: Fascism is defined as the open rule of terror exercised by the big bourgeoisie over society during the era of imperialism.

• Ideological Pillars:

  • Anti-labor and anti-communist doctrines designed to smash working-class organizations.
  • Chauvinism and racism used to divide the masses and foster xenophobic hatred.
  • Idealist worship of a single supreme leader, who is falsely portrayed as the absolute representative, savior, and embodiment of the nation and race.

• Political Nature: Fascism constitutes the unfiltered tyranny, despotism, and open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, stripping away all bourgeois-democratic forms.

• Economic Drivers: Fascism arises directly from the interests of the big bourgeoisie when it faces desperation due to the worsening crisis of capitalism and the growing revolt of the working and toiling masses.

• Cultural Strategy and Demagogy:

  • Rides on backward, reactionary, and feudal cultural elements.
  • Promotes historical myths and legends claiming that the nation or race was once glorious, but lost its greatness due to internal betrayal by communists, the toiling masses, and targeted racial, religious, or ethnic minorities.

• The Military Apparatus: The military serves as the most decisive instrument of fascism. It is utilized to violently suppress communists, progressives, the toiling masses, and national minorities, acting as the primary weapon for obliterating democratic rights and social justice.

Pre-Capitalist Prototypes and Historical Evolution Towards Fascism

• Pre-Capitalist Tyranny:

  • Slave Systems: The tyrannical slave master represents an early prototype of the fascist leader.
  • Feudal Systems: The cruel, absolute king or local feudal landlords embodied despotic, arbitrary rule.

• Parliamentary Democracy and Its Disruptions:

  • In ancient Greece, laws crafted by representatives of the slave-owning class, nobility, and freemen within parliament were defined as democracy; however, a tyrannical monarch could unilaterally dissolve parliament and govern by decree.
  • Under feudal monarchies, absolute kings ruled arbitrarily until the growth of the rising bourgeoisie and feudal barons led to internal class movements demanding constitutional limits and parliaments.
  • In England, the Magna Carta resulted from baron-led opposition under the financial slogan "no taxation without representation."
  • The downfall of the absolute monarchy during the French Revolution established constitutionalism and bourgeois parliamentarism as dominant governance models.

• Bonapartism as the Direct Precursor:

  • When the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution was halted by the Thermidorian reaction, Bonapartism emerged under Napoleon Bonaparte.
  • Bonapartism established militarist doctrine and military methods over civilian bureaucracy and state processes, suppressed civil liberties, and subjected the toiling masses to brutal state violence.
  • Bonapartism stands as the direct historical antecedent and precursor of modern fascism in the era of imperialism.

The Interwar Capitalist Crisis and the Global Rise of Fascism

• Impact of the Great Depression:

  • Triggered by the US stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression spread across Europe and Japan throughout the decade of the 1930s, driving the global expansion of fascism.
  • As economies collapsed and unemployment skyrocketed, the big bourgeoisie unleashed fascist forces to crush workers' parties, trade unions, and militant mass movements.

• Scapegoating and Mobilization of Mass Bases:

  • Fascist movements labeled militant labor movements (particularly under Communist leadership), the newly established Soviet Union, minorities (such as Jewish and Black populations), and opposing colonial peoples as "enemies of the state" and "devils."
  • These groups were scapegoated for the economic collapse and targeted with violent chauvinism and racism, enabling fascist parties to divide the working class and build a reactionary mass base.
  • This dynamic enabled fascist movements to seize control of the state and military machinery in Italy (1920s), Germany (1930s), and Japan (1930s).

• Drive Towards Imperialist War: Unresolved internal economic contradictions and escalating disputes between imperialist powers compelled fascist regimes onto the path of international aggression, culminating in World War II.

Imperialist Monopolies and Industrial Support for Fascist Regimes

• Structural Vulnerabilities of Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan were relatively the weakest among the major imperialist powers because they possessed few colonies, limiting their capacity to offload the burden of economic crises onto subjugated territories. As liberal and social-democratic politicians failed to pacify mass uprisings, the ruling capitalists turned to fascism.

• Monopoly Capitalist Backers of Nazi Germany:

  • Financial Institutions: Reichsbank, Deutsche Bank AG.
  • Industrial Monopolies: Krupp, Thyssen, IG Farben, Bosch, Blaupunkt, Daimler Benz, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Siemens, Volkswagen.

• Monopoly Capitalist Backers of Fascist Italy:

  • Financial Institutions: Banco di Roma, Banco di Napoli, Banco di Sicilia.
  • State Industrial Holding: Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), which held direct control over major industrial sectors.

• Monopoly Capitalist Backers of Militarise Japan:

  • Zaibatsus (Joint Banking and Industrial Monopolies): Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda, Mitsui.

• Post-WWII Preservation: Following the military defeat of the Axis powers, these corporate monopolies were preserved by the United States and its allies to maintain political and economic control over the defeated nations.

The Historical Role and Betrayal of Social Democracy

• Degeneration of the Second International:

  • Under Karl Kautsky's leadership, social democrats became parliamentary appendages of the bourgeoisie, adopting theories of ultra-imperialism, social chauvinism, and social pacifism.
  • At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, almost all social-democratic parties betrayed proletarian internationalism by voting for imperialist war budgets and supporting their respective national bourgeois armies (with notable exceptions such as the Bolsheviks).
  • Social democrats rejected the October Revolution of 1917 and Karl Lenin's strategy of transforming imperialist war into revolutionary civil war.

• Suppression of the 1919 German Revolution:

  • During the German Revolution of November 1918 and the revolt of January 1919, Left social democrats Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg established the Spartacus League and proclaimed a Free Socialist Republic.
  • Right social-democratic leaders in power colluded with the military to violently crush the uprising and murder Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

• Social Democracy as "Social-Fascism":

  • Social democrats acted as social-fascists—socialist in words, fascist in deeds—by crushing proletarian revolutions, approving anti-worker emergency decrees under the Weimar Republic, and rejecting communist calls for an anti-fascist united front.
  • As the Weimar Republic decayed under severe economic crisis, the monopoly bourgeoisie discarded social democrats and backed the Nazi Party, leading to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933.

Mechanics of Fascist State Capture and Terror

• Tactical Advantages and Paramilitary Violence:

  • Fascists used organized paramilitaries to attack labor strikes, smash protests, and assault communist party structures with police complicity.
  • Paramilitary Formations: SA (Brownshirts) in Germany (which later evolved into the SS), Blackshirts in Italy, and organized criminal gangs in Japan.
  • Fascist organizations systematically infiltrated the officer ranks of the regular police and military forces.

• State Power Consolidation:

  • Upon entering government, fascist leaders weaponized executive, legislative, and judicial branches to declare "states of emergency."
  • Power was concentrated in an autocrat or ruling junta, civil liberties were suspended, and communist and socialist parties were outlawed.

• Secret Police Apparatuses: Fascist states deployed specialized secret police apparatuses to extrajudicially eliminate democratic opposition:

  • Germany: Gestapo.
  • Japan: Kempeitai.
  • Italy: OVRA.

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) as Precursor to World War II

• Historical Significance:

  • Represented the first major European war following the Russian Civil War and foreign intervention, serving as the strategic testing ground for World War II.
  • Pitted Francisco Franco's fascist Falangists against the Spanish Republican government, supported by communists, anarchists, liberals, and international anti-fascist volunteers under the International Brigade.

• Reasons for Franco's Victory:

  • Franco's forces possessed cohesive military structure and superior numerical concentration, whereas the Republican side suffered from loose organizational coordination.
  • Nazi Germany provided direct, specialized military assistance inside Spain—most notably through advanced tank units and air force support.
  • Geopolitical distance and border blockades prevented the Soviet Red Army from delivering direct troop support to Spain.

• Filipino Participation and Internal Class Divide:

  • Filipino stevedores and members of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in New York joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight in Spain.
  • Ordinary Spanish mestizos from the Philippines traveled to fight for the Republic.
  • Conversely, reactionary Spanish mestizos of the Philippine big comprador class and Dominican friars supported the Falangists.
  • Philippine Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon publicly expressed outrage when Dominican friars played the Falangist anthem during an official function at the University of Santo Tomas (UST).

The Anti-Fascist Popular Front and World War II Geopolitics

• Comintern Policy (1934–1936):

  • The Communist International formally established the Anti-Fascist Popular Front policy to build global alliances against fascist expansion.
  • Exposed Japanese imperialist propaganda that falsely claimed Japan was liberating Asian nations from Western colonialism.
  • In the Philippines, Popular Front unity compelled the US administration and Quezon's Commonwealth government to release imprisoned Communist Party leaders to prepare for anti-fascist defense.

• Soviet War Strategy:

  • Aware of Hitler's anti-communist war aims detailed in Mein Kampf, Joseph Stalin entered into the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939 to gain critical time to relocate industrial plants beyond the Ural Mountains and manufacture weaponry.
  • The pact temporarily limited Nazi troop deployment on the Soviet border in Poland.
  • When Germany invaded in June 1941, the USSR fought with self-reliant military industrial capacity.
  • Stalin joined the Allied Powers (with the UK and US) to force Germany into a two-front war. Western powers intentionally delayed opening the second European front to allow Nazi Germany to weaken the Soviet Union.

• Strategic Turning Point and Partisan Warfare:

  • The Red Army broke the Nazi war machine at the Battle of Stalingrad, launching a strategic counteroffensive to Berlin. The Soviet Union lost $27\,million$ lives in the Great Patriotic War.
  • Partisan armies in Italy, Greece, France, and Eastern Europe conducted guerrilla operations that triggered internal uprisings and supported Red Army offensives.
  • In Asia, the Chinese Red Army led by the Communist Party defeated Japanese fascist forces (1937–1945), creating the strategic foundation for the 1949 liberation of China.
  • Japan maintained its non-aggression pact with the USSR until 1945 while waging wars of conquest across China and Southeast Asia (1941–1945).

Critique of Bourgeois Historiography and Anti-Communist Frameworks

• Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

  • Japan was already militarily defeated and preparing surrender terms before August 1945; the atomic bombings constituted an unnecessary massacre of civilians.
  • The US dropped the weapons to assert exclusive post-war occupation of Japan and prevent Soviet participation in Japan's surrender.
  • On August 6, 1945, honoring Yalta commitments, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan; Soviet forces defeated Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchuria, forcing the surrender of $1.6\,million$ Japanese troops.

• Refutation of Equivalence Models:

  • Rejection of Seymour Martin Lipset's sociological framework, which positions monopoly capitalism as a "golden mean" of moderation while equating communism and fascism as radical extremes.
  • Correct Structural Framework: Monopoly capitalism occupies the center between its own two operational instruments—bourgeois liberalism and fascism.
  • Critique of the Frankfurt School (including figures like Martin Heidegger) and anti-authoritarian writers like Hannah Arendt for equating communist state power with fascist totalitarianism.

• Post-War Integration of Nazi Officials: Following WWII, Western Allied powers integrated former Nazi military, intelligence, and scientific officers into the FBI, the OSS (later the CIA), and covert military programs.

Post-World War II US Imperialism and Global Puppet Dictatorships

• US Anti-Communist Hegemony:

  • Following WWII, the United States assumed the role of leading imperialist power and primary flag bearer of global anti-communism, killing an estimated $25\text{ to }30\,million$ people in global conflicts and interventions.
  • Waged direct military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

• Global Roster of US-Backed Fascist Dictatorships:

  • Asia: Chiang Kai-shek (China), Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee (South Korea), Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu (Vietnam), Lon Nol (Cambodia), Suharto (Indonesia—responsible for massacring over $1\,million$ communists and killing up to $3\,million$ total), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines).
  • Latin America: Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), Efraín Ríos Montt (Guatemala), Jorge Videla (Argentina), Getúlio Vargas, Castello Branco, Costa e Silva, Emílio Garrastazu Médici, and Ernesto Geisel (Brazil), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), François and Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti).
  • Africa & Middle East: Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire/Congo), Idi Amin (Uganda), P.W. Botha (South Africa), Zia Ul-Haq (Pakistan), Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran).

• Counterinsurgency Infrastructure: The US State Department, CIA, and Pentagon collaborate to supply military aid, weapons, and counterinsurgency training (focusing on state terror, torture, and psywar) to puppet regimes to overthrow anti-imperialist or liberal governments.

Specific Manifestations of Fascism in the Philippines

• The Ferdinand Marcos Dictatorship (1972–1986):

  • Declared Martial Law in 1972 to institute an open rule of terror on behalf of the big comprador and landlord classes.
  • Abolished Congress, suspended elections, controlled Comelec, established the ruling Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) party, subordinated the judiciary to military tribunals, and shut down or seized independent mass media.
  • Responsible for state violence resulting in at least $100\,000$ deaths (including massacres targeting the Moro people).

• The Rodrigo Duterte Regime:

  • Replicated Marcosist fascism through extrajudicial killing campaigns, militarization of civilian government agencies, martial law in Mindanao, and the enactment of the Anti-Terror Act.
  • Manipulated the 2019 elections, attacked critical mass media (such as closing ABS-CBN), and utilized pandemic lockdowns for public plunder and civil suppression.

• Clerico-Fascism:

  • Defined as the integration of reactionary religious authority with military state violence to preserve ruling class dominance.
  • Promoted historically in the Philippines by specific Jesuit figures (e.g., Walter Hogan, Archie Intengan), politicians (e.g., Raul Manglapus, Manuel Manahan, Norberto Gonzales of the PDSP), and groups like Opus Dei.
  • Distinction: Reactionary clerical instigators must be distinguished from the Catholic mass base and progressive religious organizations such as the Christians for National Liberation (CNL).

Modern Revisionism, Social-Fascism, and Capitalist Restoration

• Internal Subversion Mechanisms:

  • Modern revisionism represents the most dangerous internal threat to socialist states, originating among petty-bourgeoisified party bureaucrats and intelligentsia.
  • Revisionists liquidate proletarian class dictatorship under the false claim that class struggle has ended, converting state apparatuses into monopoly bureaucrat capitalism and social-fascism.

• Degeneration of the Soviet Union: From Khrushchev to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Soviet modern revisionists sapped state resources through bureaucrat corruption and arms races, culminating in the formal dissolution of the USSR and private asset grab by bureaucrat capitalists.

• Capitalist Restoration and Imperialist Trajectory in China:

  • Following Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping and revisionist factions staged a coup in October 1976, purging revolutionaries who led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966–1976).
  • Beginning in 1978 under "reform and opening up," revisionists restored capitalism faster than in the USSR: returned assets to the old bourgeoisie, privatized state enterprises via management leases, dismantled the commune system, and opened to foreign monopoly capital.
  • China operates as a fully capitalist and imperialist power: suppresses internal Maoist movements and striking workers, collaborates with the military junta in Myanmar, and forcibly occupies exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and continental shelves in the South China Sea.

The Crisis of Monopoly Capitalism and Contemporary Fascist Currents

• Four Historical Stages of Capitalist Crisis:

  • First Stage (1898–1914 to WWI): Emergence of modern imperialism, interimperialist war, and the 1917 October Revolution.
  • Second Stage (Interwar to WWII): Great Depression, global rise of fascism, interimperialist war, and expansion of the socialist camp.
  • Third Stage (Post-WWII to Cold War): US global hegemony, national liberation movements, rise of Soviet revisionism, and capitalist restoration in ex-socialist states.
  • Fourth/Current Stage (Late 1970s / Post-2008 to Present): Neoliberal globalization, severe overproduction, hyper-financialization, asset bubbles, and sharpening interimperialist rivalries.

• Economic Stagnation in Imperialist Centers:

  • United States: Carries the world's largest debt burden and trade deficits; economic growth is bloated by asset overvaluation in financial services and high tech; employment metrics are padded with part-time jobs.
  • Western Europe / Germany: Germany holds economic supremacy in Europe, but suffers from chronic crisis of overproduction and mass structural unemployment.
  • Japan: Trapped in economic depression since its 1990 financial bubble burst and the 1997 East Asian financial crisis; actively rearming beyond self-defense parameters.
  • Russia: A weakened ex-socialist imperialist power under comprador big bourgeois rule; highly vulnerable to military-fascist dictatorship due to NATO expansion and Western encirclement.

• Rising Right-Wing Trends: Economic ruin under neoliberalism fosters rising currents of chauvinism, racism, and fascism across Western capitalist nations, positioning fascist groups to seize initiative from traditional bourgeois parties.

Strategic Lessons and Methods of Revolutionary Resistance

• Tactics Against Economic Crises and Rightist Groups:

  • Utilize legal rights of free expression and assembly to arouse, organize, and mobilize the broad masses.
  • Maintain strict underground operational methods and secret party structures even where legal, exposing only a small fraction of the party.
  • Uphold the right of the masses to bear arms for self-defense, while avoiding premature exposure of armed workers or party networks.

• Protracted People's War in Semicolonial, Semifeudal Countries: In nations such as the Philippines and India, chronic structural crises permit the immediate development of Protracted People's War—encircling the cities from the countryside to build the people's army, worker-peasant alliance, and united front.

• Directives for Activists and Political Prisoners:

  • Adhere to the principle: "Fight, fear not!"
  • Maintain deep integration among the mass base; counter threats through collective organized defense or retreat to countryside underground structures when targeted for state assassination or abduction.
  • Political prisoners utilize mass defense organizations such as SELDA and Karapatan to wage human rights and legal defense struggles.

• Conditions for Ending Fascism:

  • Fascism can only be ended through revolutionary armed struggle and anti-fascist united fronts that smash the ruling state machine.
  • To prevent post-revolutionary capitalist restoration, socialist societies must practice continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship, maintaining working-class leadership across all superstructural, economic, and cultural spheres.