In line with growing ‘Third Period’ conceptions, which placed nearly all political questions into the framework of an imminent struggle for power, the Communist-called International Anti-Fascist Congress was held in Berlin during March, 1929.

‘International Fascism and How to Combat It’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No. 16. March 29, 1929.

(Unanimously Adopted Resolution of the International Anti-Fascist Congress.)

Fascism is the outcome of imperialist war, the shattering of the capitalist regime and the general crisis of post-war times; of the bankruptcy of the parliamentary system and of the decay of the system of the bourgeois parties, whose petty-bourgeois fundament is rebelling against the deterioration of their standard of living and shrinking from the threatening social revolution. Fascism, which has seized power in a number of countries under petty-bourgeois-reformist slogans, such as “social peace “reconciliation of the classes”, soon proved to be open a direct dictatorship of the upper classes under the guidance organised finance-capital. It is the form in which the bourgeoisie is trying to maintain the shaken capitalist system oppression and exploitation against the attack of the revolutionary proletariat.

But even seven years after the seizing of power by Italian Fascism the general crisis of capitalism is not on the wane, but continues to grow more acute. The maintenance of Fascist dominion is a proof not of the stabilisation of capitalist power, but of its permanently critical state and of its decay.

In the countries which are ruled by Fascism, the individual classes which stand aloof from or oppose the Fascist regime are the working classes: the proletariat and the toiling peasantry. The fight against Fascism is under the circumstance nothing but a form of the class fight of the exploited and oppressed masses of the people against the capitalists and landed proprietors.

Under the iron yoke of Fascism more than 150 million people in Europe alone are at present held down, gagged and exploited. The bloody scourge of Fascism reigns in Italy, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Lithuania. In Asia the Fascist Kuomintang has gagged the Chinese workers and peasants and is exterminating the best revolutionary champions; in Japan Fascist shock troops are being organised under the open protection of the government against the awakening revolutionary Labour movement; the imperialistic rulers of Indonesia employ Fascist methods of terror in order to combat and overthrow the movement for national freedom. In Latin America, Fascist rule of terror is raging in Chile Cuba and Venezuela. The danger of Fascist upheavals and coup d’Etat menaces a great number of countries in which the bourgeois democratic system still prevails, while in a number of other countries the Fascist movement is making marked progress. For instance, in Austria, which up to quite recently was one of the most democratic countries, Fascism has come to the fore and constitutes a direct menace to Labour.

Wherever Fascism imposes its rule it destroys the cultural life of the nation. In order to maintain its power it allies itself with all the reactionary forces of the army and the church.

The aggravation of the Fascist danger of the whole of Europe is closely connected with the menace of a new murderous imperialist war. The imperialists of all countries are preparing to drive the working masses once more to the slaughterhouse and are organising a predatory attack on the Union of the Socialistic Soviet Republics.

A further cause of the consolidation of Fascist elements in countries where bourgeois democracy prevails is the recent development of the Labour movement, outlined by the mighty wave of strikes, economic fights and revolutionary mass demonstrations and the rebellion of the exploited broad peasant masse against the capitalist rulers. The constantly approaching perspective of war and of revolutionary mass fights against the growing oppression and danger of war are causing the bourgeoisie to use Fascist fighting methods in ever increasing measure against the working class and the whole of the toiling population.

Social Democracy and the leaders of the Amsterdam trade unions, which are more and more merging with bourgeois machinery of State and the heads of capitalist trusts, are preaching the idea of “economic peace” and “reconciliation of the classes” amidst the open fight which the bourgeoisie is waging against the revolutionary Labour movement. These are the same mendacious slogans under which Mussolini organised his march on Rome in October 1922 and imposed Fascist rule. Reformism is preparing the way for Fascism everywhere. While its “left” wing promotes Fascism by holding the workers back from the fight against Fascism, the right wing does not shy at an open alliance with Fascism for the combating of the revolutionary proletariat and its organisations. The International Anti-Fascist Congress draws the attention of the workers of all countries to the seriousness and the magnitude of the Fascist danger, which is threatening their very life, and it calls upon them to put their whole strength and all their resources into the fight for the defence of the working class and the toiling peasantry against the establishment of a sanguinary Fascist regime.

The International Anti-Fascist Congress regards the participation of numerous representatives of labouring strata closely connected with the working class as a promising symptom of the revolutionary awakening in the ranks of the overwhelming majority of workers. Constantly growing circles of the people are beginning to realise that they can wage a real fight against Fascism, which is nothing else but a representative of predatory big capital, only as long as they stand shoulder to shoulder with the class-conscious proletariat under its revolutionary class organisation.

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The International Anti-Fascist Congress warns the working masses against the pernicious illusion that the bourgeois democratic State affords even the slightest protection against the establishment of Fascist rule. Experience shows that in all capitalist States bourgeois democracy merely paves the way for Fascism and that the Social-Fascist policy of the reformists leads directly to the victory of Fascist reaction. The bourgeois State power, even in its democratic form, arms for the defence of capitalist profits the white guards, the strikebreaker bands and the counter-revolutionary fighting organisations against the proletariat and accords them every kind of favour and support. It concentrates all the weapons of suppression and persecution and all the instruments of terror against the revolutionary labouring masses. It thereby lifts Fascism into the saddle. The International Anti-Fascist Congress solemnly declares to the labouring masses of all countries that the fight against Fascism in all the spheres of political and economic life must be carried on ruthlessly with any and every weapon, including armed revolutionary mass action.

The genuine anti-Fascist shows his determination by the strength and resolution with which he fights against Fascism in his own country. The International Anti-Fascist Congress stigmatises the vacillating attitude of those who satisfy themselves with moaning over the victims of Fascism in foreign countries while remaining the allies of the reactionaries in their own country. The Congress declares that in those countries in which Fascism already holds power, the liberation of the toilers from the Fascist yoke must in the first place be the work of the labouring masses of the country in question. The anti-Fascist fight is a proletarian and revolutionary fight. The overthrow and the destruction of Fascism is unthinkable apart from the violent overthrow and complete destruction of the order of society, the result and expression of which is Fascism: decaying capitalist society. The return to capitalist democracy, the restoration of the bourgeois democratic State, as preached by the agents of capital, means nothing else but the continuation of the Fascist rule of violence in other veiled forms, as is shown, for example, by the substitution of Lianchev or Zankoff in Bulgaria and of Maniu for Bratianu in Roumania.

The real fight of the million-headed masses in town and country against the Fascism, which oppresses and exploits them, is seen in the form of the indefatigable and stubborn daily fights of the proletariat against wage reductions, lengthening of working hours, price inflation, taxes, every kind of economic exploitation and of political and cultural reaction, against the danger of war, exceptional laws and White Terror, against social fascism in the trade union movement, against the Fascist ally, the clergy, and against the pacifist democratic ideology, which favours Fascism. This fight which is, at the same time, the fight for right of combination and assembly, freedom of the Press. for the release of the prisoners, for the abolition of national oppression and for the emancipation of the colonial peoples, must be coordinated with and subordinated to the political fight for the defeat of the Fascist regime, for the extirpation of everything that might lead to a restoration of the Fascist regime, for the overthrow of capitalism, for the creation of workers’ and peasants’ governments.

This social purport of the anti-Fascist fight makes of it an integral part of the world front of the proletariat against imperialism.

The International Anti-Fascist Congress proclaims to the suppressed and subjugated, Fascist-ridden and tortured masses of workers and peasants in Italy, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Roumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Lithuania, China, Japan and the Latin-American and colonial countries:

Your cause is our cause, it is the cause of the proletariat of the whole world! It is the sacred duty of the working class of all countries to do its utmost to defend and support our tortured brothers languishing in the chains of Fascism. The working class of all countries takes under its protection the masses of harassed and hunted victims of Fascism. It is fighting in warm solidarity for the release of the prisoners and exiles of Fascism. It is fighting with all its strength against the intervention of the bourgeois States against the anti-Fascist movement of freedom. The International Anti-Fascist Congress proclaims the unwavering and irreconcilable fight, the offensive of the world proletariat against bloodthirsty Fascism and against all its agents and allies.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n16-mar-29-1929-inprecor.pdf