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- Let’s fight exploitation and nationalism
- “Revolution without borders” – Demonstration against the health pass
- Small clarification about FAFWATCH’s article
- The worst product of fascism? It’s antifascism!
CW’s Note: Since several months, a very heterogeneous and confused protest movement has been developing throughout the world, a protest that targets the anti-covid vaccine obligation, as well as the “health pass” that goes with it, and its consequences in terms of reinforcing the social control exercised by the State over the proletariat. This movement expresses itself with some virulence in France, and revolutionary militants try to infuse it with guidelines for a clear break with the capitalist order (like “Let’s fight exploitation and nationalism” or “The only perspective for a better life is the revolution!”) and thus they try to assume their tasks of direction. In Toulouse especially, comrades who organized a “revolutionary march” under the banner of “Revolution Without Borders” were physically attacked by a gang of a few dozen far-right activists. Although these comrades refuse to fall into the trap of anti-fascism, the opportunity was too good for all the local sectors of social democracy and leftism to cry wolf and try to sell us their adulterated ideological commodity for the thousandth time while spreading the motto “Toulouse Antifa!”
We therefore take advantage of the republication of several small contributions around these events to succinctly reaffirm our long-standing position on the question of fascism and antifascism, as well as the need to organize the self-defense of comrades and our struggles.
The critique of anti-fascism is fully a part of the global critique of the false bourgeois polarization of fascism versus anti-fascism, it should not be limited to the critique of frontism and activism, nor should it be separated from the totality of the anti-capitalist struggle. Fascism is not a third force; it is only one of the facets, one of daily manifestations among others of the State force. Historically, the proletariat always had to confront these organs of the State which are the employers’ militias (Pinkerton in the US, networks close to the SAC, the OAS and Peugeot in France), the pistoleros in Spain during the years 1920s, the White Guards and Armies, the death squads (Triple A in Argentina, Honor of the Police in France, GAL and Guerrillas of Christ the King in Spain during the 1970s) or the Free Corps in Germany and Hungary in 1919. The proletariat also had to always arm itself consequently to defend itself from threats and attacks against its living conditions and against the organization of its struggle.
In this sense, it is necessary to clarify the real content of the action of proletarian groups which act as self-defense groups against the State which in this case takes the form of armed fascists often ready to kill, because the use of expressions like “anti-fascist struggle” can only reinforce the confusion. The polarization fascism versus antifascism has only served to lock up any revolutionary advance in the defense of a lesser evil and therefore of the existing order, by mobilizing the proletarians for the defense of the State, to prepare the warlike confrontation on a terrain which is not that of our class. It is a global vision of the phenomena and a historical critique of anti-fascism that allow us to consider quite correctly the example of the so-called “Spanish war”: the latter was not only in an eminently practical way the coffin of the militant proletariat in this region but it also ideologically prepared the whole class of the exploited to accept to become recruited in the generalized massacre that was the so-called “second world war”.
For decades, some militant sectors have been also defending a “revolutionary antifascism”, considering that “genuine antifascism” should not only focus on the disappearance of fascists from the surface of the Earth, but should also strengthen the (revolutionary) change in society, a change that allows to get rid of the reasons why fascism appears, in opposition to what is called “democratic antifascism” that “comes from citizens’ initiatives” and that “paradoxically only helps fascism”. Obviously, even if some formulations are still ambiguous, there is a certain will to clarify things.
Nevertheless, we consider that it is somewhat counterproductive to want absolutely to “revolutionize” what is blatantly and fully counter-revolutionary from the outset: it is just as absurd to “revolutionize” anti-fascism as it is to “revolutionize” syndicalism or parliamentarianism. Following the lessons drawn by many militants, groups, collectives, parties…, we point out that the need for our class and its revolutionary minorities to organize against “fascist militias” can in no way correspond to any adherence (and even less in a structuring manner!) to anti-fascist ideology (which has already proven its harmfulness in history) but to a need for self-defense in their struggle as a minority to affirm their means of existence quite simply.
Let’s remember this essential lesson that the entire history of the workers’ movement has taught us for a hundred years: whether fascist or anti-fascist, democracy is always the dictatorship of Capital!
May Capital and its democracy die, as well as its fascists and anti-fascists!
Let’s fight exploitation and nationalism
Leaflet found during the demonstration against the health pass in Toulouse on September 4th, 2021 and published by Détruisons l’économie.
With the introduction of the Health Pass and the measures that accompany it, the State is once again applying the same strategy it has used since the beginning of the Covid epidemic: strengthening social control, setting people against each other, this time those who have the pass against those who do not.
The quarrels between vaccinated and non-vaccinated make any solidarity between the exploited more complicated and prevent them to identify what causes the successive crises we are living: i.e. it is the capitalist system and not a colleague, a neighbor, a friend…
On the other hand, they want to accustom us to submit to ever more regular controls. Police powers are strengthened, identity checks are generalized, and they are subcontracted to an ever increasing part of the population. Not surprisingly, it is thanks to the support of technology that this policing takes place.
The already harsh living conditions of undocumented migrants will be even worse. On the other hand, commodities, various international traders and tourists from the richest countries will continue to move from one country to another without difficulty, while people who do not have the right documents will have more and more trouble at the borders and while travelling.
It is against this dynamic of accelerating social control that we intend to fight.
If we fight against the pass, it is not because we are opposed to vaccination, but against capitalism and the different tools it uses to maintain itself, contrary to certain components of the movement that are there for reasons antagonistic to ours: the far right has always been opposed to the overthrow of the system.
It has always ensured maintenance of the established order, of bourgeois morality, cloistered behind the borders that it defends at all costs. The designation of scapegoats has always been part of its practices. They are nothing but scavengers, who want to strengthen themselves through this movement to establish an even more authoritarian society.
Faced with the health pass, faced with the deterioration of our living conditions that the economic crisis will bring, faced with the layoffs that are sure to happen, faced with the reform of unemployment or pensions, rather than being complacent with the far right:
The only perspective for a better life is the revolution!
Source in French: https://twitter.com/bk122LR/status/1435681863037820929/
English translation: The Friends of the Class War
“Revolution without borders” – Demonstration against the health pass
This text was written by people who participated in a revolutionary march during the demonstration against the health pass, on Saturday September 11th 2021, in Toulouse.
Why a revolutionary march?
We wanted to hold a revolutionary march to defend an orientation: the one that links the demonstrations against the health pass to the uprising of the Gilets Jaunes and more widely to the great wave of revolt that has been shaking the world since then.
Why “Revolution without borders”?
We wanted to insist on the borderless character of the revolution, because we know well that the attacks against the exploited, the policing which generalizes, may take different forms according to the countries but follow globally the same approach: to crush the proles, to divide us in order to better exploit us.
Some political tendencies would like to make a clean sweep of the practices and struggles of these last years.
They try to limit the protest to authorized spaces and reduce the struggle to partial demands, such as the freedom to consume without a pass, while more and more factions of the population simply do not have the financial possibility to consume.
The hostility of these tendencies to take the revolutionary path opened by the GJ, whereas they favor the status quo or the reaction, this is what gave confidence to the fascist groups. The latter that attacked the revolutionary and gilet jaune march counted on a lack of solidarity from the rest of the demonstration. But the demonstrators didn’t hear it that way and together the demonstration cleared the fascists, before the cops gassed the whole place.
And now?
We reiterate our opposition to the social control embodied by the health pass, and especially to the deterioration of our living conditions, to the layoffs and dismissals that are coming!
Long live the revolution without borders
Let’s build the solidarity of all the exploited
Source in French: https://iaata.info/Cortege-revolution-sans-frontiere-Manif-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-4927.html
PDF in French: https://iaata.info/IMG/pdf/sans_titre-3.pdf
English translation: The Friends of the Class War
Small clarification about FAFWATCH’s article
Published on September 15th, 2021.
A text that ignores the revolutionary perspective of the march in order to hide behind a “pacifist and democratic” strategy. The exact opposite of what was carried by the revolutionary march attacked by the fascists.
Fafwatch’s text about the attack on the demonstration (to be found here [in French] https://iaata.info/Toulouse-attaque-fasciste-contre-la-manifestation-anti-pass-sanitaire-4931.html) is in turn an attack against the position that the revolutionary march tried to carry in the demonstration.
In this respect, it is not insignificant to see that the revolutionary march against exploitation and nationalism has become merely, once it had been put through the wringer of the innocentist antifascism of this text, a march against exploitation and nationalism.
So it is not surprising to see the text hiding behind the defense of a “democratic and pacifist” demonstration. Basically: innocent pacifist citizens exercising their right to demonstrate were attacked. The position of exteriority of this text is obvious here. Whereas the revolutionary march assumes itself as a part of the demonstration, while taking sides for a revolutionary future, against the interclassist, citizenist, legalist and democratist tendencies, but also confusionist and nationalist ones, Fafwatch posits antifascism as a kind of bunch of vigilantes external to the struggle, which stands up for innocent citizens. A militia that defends the inoffensiveness of the movement is not revolutionary at all (euphemism).
And by the way, a real job of investigation and snitching is made from the images of the scene to establish the responsibilities, a real work of cops! Who cares to bring the evidence, with three pictures, about who carried the bag with their gear? Or if the act was premeditated? If not in the hope that the cops will seize these images to arrest them? Moreover, the call for the State to try and convict these fascist groups is clear in this text.
The revolutionary perspective is in fact swept away by this text in favor of an innocentist denunciation in due form.
And the text is nearly ending with the importance of going to vote in the next elections in order to counter the far right (because the fascists will “put a brown ballot in the box next May”).
So let’s recall what the banner attacked was saying: Down with the State, the cops and the bosses. Revolution without borders.
Defending the status quo of an inoffensive, democratic and pacifist demonstration plays indeed into the hands of tendencies that pave the way for these fascists. See the text published on iaata here [in French and English]:
https://iaata.info/Cortege-revolution-sans-frontiere-Manif-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-4927.html
Source in French: https://iaata.info/Petite-mise-au-point-a-propos-de-l-article-de-FAFWATCH-4932.html
English translation: The Friends of the Class War
The worst product of fascism? It’s antifascism!
CW’s Note: Here are some “working theses” about the bourgeois polarization fascism versus antifascism. They are not an absolute, neither a bible and even less a “holy text” that should be necessarily signed, but just a preliminary for a more extensive discussion on this issue.
We have dug out from the archives of a comrade this old text, which is a more than 20 year old text and which had at the time circulated mainly in English in Eastern Europe, but also in France and Spain. We made some small corrections but we would like, however, to point out the ideological categorization remaining in the text according to which the dictatorship of Capital is articulated around the poles “democracy” versus “dictatorship” (even with the use of quotation marks), a categorization which tends to elude the deep nature of the social dictatorship of Capital which is precisely and really democracy (i.e. ITS democracy!) as mainly the negation of class antagonism and its conflictuality.
Like all political material of our class and our struggle, this text needs to be lively criticized. So, discuss it and provide the contradiction to strengthen our community of criticism against Capital.
1/ The essence of antifascism is based on struggling against fascism by promoting democracy, opposing one to the other, that is to say struggling not to destroy capitalism but to force it to renounce to become totalitarian. By promoting this utopia, antifascism diverts very concretely class antagonisms; there are no longer two classes confronting: proletariat against bourgeoisie, two projects opposing: communism/anarchy against Capital, destruction of the Old World against conservation of this one, abolition of class society and imposition of human needs against dictatorship of Value; but instead of this there are bourgeois polarizations: “democracy” versus “fascism”, “constitutional State” versus “police State”, “civilians” versus “the military”, “parliamentarianism” versus “one-party dictatorial regime”. At “best”, fascism is identified with State totalitarianism. All these bourgeois campaigns are the negation in acts of class antagonisms, of their secular and implacable struggle; therefore they are in this sense the reign of democracy. Playing the game of antifascism is to strengthen what we think we fight against. The current antifascist campaigns led by the bourgeoisie (along with the fascist campaigns) aim to reconstitute the national union around the State, in order to push proletarians to adhere to the reproduction of the capitalist social relation. They allow also today, as well as yesterday, to recreate a polarization for triggering a new war allowing (according to our class enemies) to boost a new cycle of accumulation…
2/ Therefore the problem is not that “democracy” ensures a milder exploitation than “dictatorship” (to use the conventional categorizations introduced by Social Democracy): everyone “would prefer” to be exploited in the Swedish way than to be tortured in the Brazilian way. But do we have the choice? Indeed, we have no choice in the way we are exploited. It is always the State of Capital that changes the forms of its dictatorship following its needs of valorization. This “democracy” will transform itself into “dictatorship” as soon as it will be necessary. The State can only have one function, that it performs “democratically” or “dictatorially”.
3/ Fascism is explainable only by taking the preceding period into account: the crushing of the revolutionary wave of 1917-21 by Social Democracy (Russia, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc.). It is first and foremost Social Democracy that ideologically and practically disarmed the proletariat and repressed militarily its insurrections. In Germany, the Free Corps led by the socialist Noske were the spearhead of the campaign of restoring order. Fascism, as its great brother Stalinism, did “only” complete the work of the counterrevolution by finishing off a defeated proletariat. The so-called dictatorship comes always after proletarians have been defeated by democracy, with its trade-unions and its left-wing parties. Antifascism conceals this fundamental reality by identifying fascism with the “forces of evil” and reducing it to an “irrational”, a-historical “reaction”, coming from nowhere. The credibility of fascism in the thirties could be explained by the fact that it implemented partly the program of Social Democracy: “improvement” in “living standards”, important public works, reduction of unemployment, etc.
4/ The essential tactical of all antifascist fronts is to paste noisily the fascist label on the State (for example in France the slogan: “CRS=SS”), which has the same effect as to denounce the political parties at the head of the State. In both cases, the criticism of the State is concealed behind the denunciation of those who run it. Furthermore, antifascism means promoting and strengthening democracy and therefore its State.
5/ Antifascism constantly reminds the Nazi massacres, which serves to justify this war by giving it a humanitarian character, and thereby, to conceal the reality that the war is a material necessity for Capital, allowing to liquidate in a few time a surplus mass of productive forces. But each war necessarily needs a justification to recruit proletarians under its flags. The struggle against fascism allowed justifying the massacre of more than 50 million of proletarians by promoting a struggle against “totalitarianism”. And nevertheless, even with a pacifist and bourgeois humanist analysis, the Nazi’s death camps were not the only “horrors” of the war: for example, atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murderous and massive bombings on big German cities, massacres of Sétif in Algeria by the French army in May 1945, on the very day of “the Liberation”, etc.
6/ The development of Capital results in these two main consequences: the obedience of workers, and therefore the soft or the violent destruction of the revolutionary movement; and the competition with the other national capitals, therefore the war. The capitalist social relation is built and structured around competition and the establishment of nations as a support, as a material basis for wars. Any nation produces its nationalism, which is competitive with the neighbor nationalism; any nation tends to monopolize its neighbor’s market share. Any nationalism is imperialistic by essence and as a result contributes to wars. Any nation contains within it the seeds of imperialism, even the so-called progressive nations of “third-world”: Vietnam, Nicaragua, etc.
7/ Capital’s triumph is never as complete as when workers are mobilized for it, believing it could “change life”. “Dictatorship” and “democracy” are rather two ways to control the proletariat, either by integrating it forcibly or by associating it through “its” organizations: trade-unions, parties, associations, etc. Consequent antifascism consists in strengthening the State, always presented as “democratic”, “constitutional”… while attaching the proletariat to it, by “involving people”.
8/ For all the reformers of the capitalist society, democracy is conceived as an element of socialism, element already present in the world today. Socialism would indeed be a total democracy in their conception. The struggle for socialism would consist in getting more and more democratic rights within capitalism. This is a Social Democratic ideology named gradualism. Antifascism will always result in increasing totalitarianism; its fight for a “democratic” State (it is so by essence!) consolidates the State. For revolutionaries, socialism, communism, anarchy means total destruction of the capitalist social relation, therefore of its classes, its State, its democracy. We do not have to improve, and therefore ultimately to strengthen, what we struggle against. Fascism and antifascism are part of a whole; they are the two jaws of the same trap crushing us.
9/ When proletarians join voluntary and militantly the side of democracy, antifascism, and the State, they lose all capacity to defend their own class interest, they deny themselves as a revolutionary class, destructive of this class society, they strengthen what they pretend to fight: the State. There is no (that is to say no more) autonomous proletarian movement from the given moment when it locks up in the State limits.
10/ The communist movement can only overcome if proletarians go beyond the mere uprising (even armed) that does not attack the wage system itself.
11/ Spanish war was used to polarize proletarians from all over the world, from “fascist countries” as well as “democratic countries”, around the opposition fascism-antifascism, and prepared thus the Sacred Union of 1939-1945. It was a general repetition of the second world war, the same way the Balkans war was for 14-18. The bourgeoisie always seeks to formalize alliances, to polarize competing sides, to push proletarians to join its flags in order to give a strong material basis to its solution: i.e. war.
12/ Through support to the existing State under its “democratic” form in order to avoid it to assume the “dictatorial” form, antifascism does disarm proletarians ideologically and materially by falsifying, by negating the antagonism that opposes them to the State, the State of Capital. Antifascism hands thus proletarians over to the repression by calling to stop the struggle against the class enemy. But the latter is determined to carry on to the end. That’s what it did, among others during the bloody struggles of Barcelona in May 1937. It’s the lack of rupture of proletarians and revolutionaries with antifascism, and more globally with Social Democracy, that led them to defeat and death.
13/ For a radicalized fringe of the proletariat, the Spanish War will serve as beginning of justification for the (future) war against fascism. Refusing so far the Sacred Union, even against Nazi Germany, proletarians who had yet resisted, came to accept it, as a “lesser evil” compared to the fascist victory. The great ideological function of the Spanish War will therefore be to polarize the waverers around the alternative “democracy” against “fascism”, presented on both sides as the only possible response to the “plutocratic” or “fascist” totalitarianism. And in 1936, as in 1940 or in 1914, it’s always Social Democracy that is at the forefront in mobilizing proletarians for war.
Antifascism is a formula of confusion!
Fascist or antifascist, the dictatorship of Capital is the democracy!
The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle for social revolution!
