A book on fighting fascism by the German revolutionary Clara Zetkin
Fighting Fascism—How to Struggle and How to Win by Clara Zetkin
Zetkin, the German revolutionary, was one of the first socialists to realise the threat posed by fascism and to analyse its unique character.
She had stood alongside Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the 1919 German Revolution.
By 1923 it became obvious to Zetkin that Mussolini’s victory in Italy had intensified the international threat of fascism.
She understood that fascism was a new movement and was not simply another example of the terror regularly dealt out by the capitalist class.
Zetkin argued that fascism was a mass movement which assumed an anti-elite rhetoric and drew in layers of the lower middle classes and some workers who were enraged by the destruction of their livelihoods.
Fascism could only be challenged by a united front in which Communists worked alongside all those who had an interest in defending themselves from the fascist threat.
Fascism—What it is and how to fight it by Leon Trotsky
Trotsky outlined most clearly and comprehensively both what fascism is and what strategies are needed to smash it.
He describes how at moments of intense crisis the capitalist class will turn to fascism to preserve its rule.
Trotsky shared Zetkin’s view that the capitalist crisis created the basis for fascism, but the failures of reformism to deliver significant change played an important role in feeding the fascist fires.
The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany by Leon Trotsky
Trotsky’s writings on Germany in the 1930s are both prophetic and powerful. His desperate calls to the German working-class to unite against the fascist threat are a vital guide for socialists and anti-fascists today.
Hitler’s Nazis never won majority support in German elections. The combined forces of the German Communist Party and the German Social Democratic Party could have overwhelmed the Nazis.
The Communists, however, were under the influence of Russia’s Joseph Stalin and refused to unite.
Tragically, Trotsky was too isolated and vilified by the Stalinists for his message to prevail.
Blood and Power—The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism by John Foot
Foot’s history of Italian fascism draws on the accounts of those involved to present a powerful account of the class violence at the heart of fascist movements.
Following the First World War, Italy reeled in shock. Its economy was in ruins and fascism was born.
Mussolini’s fascists, with their black shirts, guns, knives and truncheons launched a wave of terror against peasants’ and workers’ organisations.
In the dead of night, lorries of fascists would surround the homes of trade union leaders who they would kidnap.
The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition—Fighting back from lynching to abolition by Jeanelle K Hope and Bill Mullen
This book excavates an inspiring tradition of black-led anti-fascism which includes campaigns against lynching and Jim Crow segregation.
The authors position fascism within capitalism and imperialism, endorsing Walter Rodney’s, “Fascism was a monster born of capitalist parents.
“Fascism came as the end-product of centuries of capitalist bestiality, exploitation, domination and racism—mainly exercised outside of Europe.”
The final chapters explore how contemporary thinking about the abolition of the penal system relate to the anti‑fascist struggle.
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