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Oh, that embarrassing 7th Congress
The International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece recently published an article criticizing the Moscow International Anti-Fascist Forum. By this material the CPG theoreticians once again hit the ideological rock bottom, accusing the 7th Congress of the Comintern (1935) of errors and a problematic (read, unscientific) definition of fascism. Let us bear in mind that for the majority of parties the theoretical propositions of the Communist International of that time commanded authority then and are still valid today. Their study and analysis focus above all on how we can use the experience accumulated by the communists over many decades of struggle in practice today. And now the comrades from the CPG openly declared to all the anti-fascists that they disagree! Above all, the CPG ideologues targeted the Comintern definition, given by Georgy Dimitrov at the 7th Congress, of fascism which was in power:
Fascism is an overt terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of financial capital…
Fascism is not supra-class power and not the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over financial capital.
Fascism is the power оf financial capital itself. It is an organization for terrorizing the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and the intelligentsia.
Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its crudest form, cultivating zoological hatred of other peoples.
The CPG theoreticians take issue with Dimitrov’s naming of financial capital as the main sponsor of fascism. To make their case more convincing the CPG claims that Dimitrov’s definition is not only erroneous, but obsolete. Apparently this argument is directed against those who agree with the Comintern’s position. The argument goes that the definition was in many ways contingent, i.e. was given at the time when “the imperialist forces were planning to destroy the only socialist state in the world while the USSR sought to split the imperialist forces and take advantage of the contradictions between them.”
The most interesting part is that for all their critique of the propositions put forward by the 7th Congress, the CPG ideologues themselves have long been unable to come up with their own definition of fascism, hiding behind the reference to the 6th Comintern Congress (1928) which allegedly gave fundamentally different interpretations: “under certain historical conditions the onslaught of the bourgeoisie, imperialistic and reactionary, assumes the form of fascism,” while “the characteristics of fascism had been set forth in detail in the 6th Comintern Congress’ resolution on the international situation.”
However, if we look at where the CPG ideologues direct us, that is, at the materials of the 6th Congress, we see that there a clear definition had not yet taken shape and the analysis of the phenomenon was still in progress. Certain external features of fascism were revealed and enumerated: direct violence, struggle against the proletarian movement, achievement of political unity of all the ruling classes (banks, big industry, agrarians), tapping into the discontent of the broad strata of petty bourgeoisie and even of workers, social demagogy and so on.
We know that in 1928 fascism had not yet come into its own, had not assumed its highest form which would appear later in Fascist Germany. Even an aggressive foreign policy, an important feature of fascism, had not yet manifested itself clearly in 1928. We are also mindful of Marx’s advice to study phenomena in their mature form: “the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape.” That makes it absolutely clear that the 7th Congress of the Comintern knew about fascism much more than the 6th Congress. Accumulation of knowledge was also a factor. All the more so since those who analyzed fascism in both cases were practically the same people.
In the 1920s, when the communists had not yet fully studied fascism, any hardline bourgeois regimes were often branded as fascist. For example, the German communists in late 1920s believed that the Weimar Germany was already then a fascist state. However, the German (and other) communists were yet to see Hitlerism (i.e. a full-blown form of fascism) after 1933. That made it possible to theoretically distinguish fascism from other forms of bourgeois dictatorship (according to Lenin, any bourgeois-democratic state is at the same time a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) which always behaves towards the working class as an engine of class suppression (i.e. even if it has not yet developed into fascism). By identifying fascism as a special phenomenon it was possible to choose the most effective methods of struggle against that precise form of bourgeois dictatorship (for example, the tactics of popular fronts).
Fascism is the product of the era of imperialism, being its tool, and it is obvious that its main sponsor would be that part of capital which took shape in the imperialist era as the new dominant force, i.e. financial capital. Even if a country has diverse bourgeois strata, in the era of imperialism they are all dominated by financial capital, its most powerful part formed through the merger of financial and industrial capital which assumes ever more functions of direct running of the economy, including through the state machine, a danger against which the 6th Congress of the Comintern warned more than once.
The argument of the CPG ideologues that the 1935 formulas had been prompted by the confrontation of the USSR with the capitalist world looks somewhat absurd because the imperialists were intent on destroying the Soviet Union even in 1928, and yet the authors of the CPG document still consider it to be OK to cite the decisions of the 6th Congress. Did the imperialists hate the USSR and the October Revolution less in 1928 than in 1935? It doesn’t look like it.
It has to be said that the contrasting of the positions of the two last Comintern congresses is methodologically wrong. Instead of observing the scientific principle of historicity and showing how some decisions arise from others, the CPG ideologues have chosen the method of liberals who like, for example, to oppose the works of the young and mature Marx. It may influence immature brains, but we are dialecticians and we understand phenomena in their development.
We see that the CPG claims that the assessments and definitions of the 7th Comintern Congress were wrong do not stand the test of elementary facts and run counter to logic.
What drives the CPG, dogmatism or hegemonism?
What prompts the CPG to revisit Comintern arguments today, challenge the time-tested Comintern definition and claim that the popular front tactic in the struggle against fascism was a mistake? The CPG recently released a video which carries the same message: "Solidnet| Communist Party of Greece, Modern CPG Video “Historical Conclusions about Anti-Fascist Fronts. Modern Struggle Against Fascism (English, Russian)."
We believe there are several motives behind it. First, the CPG leadership sticks to its long-time but mistaken ideological line. Communists the world over know well this theoretical innovation emanating from the CPG which claims that practically all capitalist states in the imperialist epoch are imperialistic countries because of the universal dominance of the monopolies (“the imperialistic pyramid theory”). The CPG is even undeterred by the fact that Lenin openly spoke about a handful of imperialist states plundering the rest of the world. Now, pursuing their old unproven dogma, the CPG ideologues argue that all the capitalist countries (which they consider to be imperialist) are potentially poised to become fascist. How else can one explain the wish of the CPG leaders to divide all the capitalist countries into bourgeois-democratic and fascist ones? In our opinion, the comrades fail to distinguish fascism in power from manifestation of elements of fascism in ideology and politics. The former phenomenon is explained by the Comintern definition. The latter is in one way or another, increasingly characteristic of practically all bourgeois states.
As the 7 th Comintern Congress noted, "today the working masses in a number of capitalist countries have to choose not between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois democracy but between bourgeois democracy and fascism". Naturally, the conditions of working class struggle are more favorable under democracy, such as it is. But the Greek comrades simply brush aside this argument. If one follows the logic of the Greek communist party leaders, not only the states with an openly terrorist dictatorship of financial capital (see Dimitrov’s definition), but all the imperialist countries where fascist elements in ideology and politics are observed are fascist.
Thus the concept of fascism is watered down to become almost a synonym of capitalism and to be applicable to just about any bourgeois regime whether or not it conducts itself in an openly terrorist manner. Using this weird method is very dangerous: out-and-out fascists, like those in Ukraine, can be passed off as the emergence of a new nation and any bourgeois country can be accused of fascism. Thus, from the viewpoint of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany the Asad regime in Syria was a fascist dictatorship and its violent overthrow by the Islamists was a progressive democratic revolution. Some leftish elements accuse Belarussian president A.Lukashenko of being a dictator and slipping into fascism, like Zelensky.
This brings us to the second motive that drives CPG ideologues. Today’s Greek communist party tries to organize the international communist movement, for which thanks are due to it. On the other hand, they took well-earned compliments for organizing several Solidnet meetings of communis and workers’ parties as recognition of their theoretical genius and began to show signs of intolerance of others’ opinions, a kind of communist arrogance when the comrades determine who is right and who is deluded single-handedly without heeding the objections and alternative opinions. Attempts began to be observed to subdue the world’s communist movement. At a certain point the CPG leaders began to see themselves as “first among equals,” forgetting about equality and seeking to garner satellites. The CPG leaders simply demand that the communist parties of various countries stop questioning the usefulness of their ideological alchemy. If they claim that war is imperialistic on all sides and all the participants are fascists, then there can be no special methods of fighting the real living fascism. The CPG keeps repeating the mantra that only the working class and the communists are capable of struggling against fascism and capitalism (quoting Berthold Brecht). But if the working class in some country is not yet ready for broad independent action and the communists have not yet gained the support of the working masses the CPG sees no need to unite diverse anti-fascist forces in the struggle against the main source of danger and the spawning ground of fascism. Thus, the CPG theoreticians effectively promote a wait-and-see attitude even when there is a clear sense of the danger of fascism (according to Dimitrov’s definition). In other words, according to the Greek theoreticians (who see China and the USA as being equally imperialistic) anti-fascists have to wait for the moment when the workers arise and sweep away capitalism in the PRC and the USA, and then fascism will be no more, and there can be no other way.
You are under attack by fascists? The communist ideology is banned, the native language is baited, opponents are killed en masse and burned alive? Well, in the opinion of those who challenge the Comintern tactics, forming a common front against the brown plague holds out little promise. We are supposed to wait until the proletariat is ready for a revolution. If you resist fascism right now, are fighting it and looking for anti-fascist allies in other political camps (i.e. not only among communists) then the CPG will promptly brand you as national- chauvinists and even as accomplices of imperialism. And yet Lenin already in his time said: “Denying any possibility of national wars under imperialism is theoretically wrong, historically patently mistaken, and practically equals European chauvinism…”.1
The CPG as a brake on the struggle against anti-fascism
In practice all this is highlighted by the situation around the Special Military Operation (SVO in Russian letters), the military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine (in fact Ukraine has the backing of the imperialist West, including Greece, a NATO member). The Russian Communist Workers’ Party has always been highly critical of the bourgeois regime which has taken shape in the RF. But we have demanded that it take certain actions and admit that, objectively speaking, so far only this regime was able in 2014 to give arms to the anti-fascists in Donbass, and in 2022 committed its army to counter the Ukrainian Bandera fascism which is de facto a puppet of the Western imperialistic financial capital. But for the help of the bourgeois RF to the resisting Donbass, the Nazi thugs could well have fulfilled their promise “we’ll kill off all of you.” The experience of Odessa and the punitive actions in Donbass leave no doubt about the seriousness of their intentions.
Ukraine under Zelensky today is obviously a Fascist country (according to the Comintern’s scientific definition). Indeed, Ukraine’s political leaders themselves openly admit that they are the followers of Bandera and Shukhevich, who were Hitler’s allies. The sponsor of fascism in this case is Western financial capital. The country is at the mercy of “storm-troopers,” (“territorial recruitment centers”), “Azov” thugs and other rabid nationalists, all the communist and workers’ organizations have been banned, Soviet and communist symbols have been outlawed and the Russian language has effectively been banned. A whole religious confession, Orthodox Christians, is heavily discriminated against. There is no doubt about the overtly terrorist character of the Zelensky regime. Manifestations of fascism in ideology and politics are observed in modern capitalist Russia as well. But so far these are sporadic manifestations that have not developed into state policy. Communists operate legally, the workers’ movement exists (even if only in an embryonic state), monuments to Lenin are not being pulled down all over the place. There is no racial, linguistic or religious discrimination in state policy (although isolated cases are not infrequent). Financial capital in the RF is not assuming an openly terrorist form of dominance, apparently because it feels no need for it. Moreover, the RF, for all the desire of the ruling class to range itself with the leading Western countries, is conducting the SVO in order to avert a military defeat of Russia, in order to prove that the Russian bourgeois class is capable of exploiting the country’s natural and human resources itself and wants to trade without any sanctions and limitations. Thus, the SVO performs a positive protecting function since a dismemberment of Russia is certainly not in the interests of the working class of Russia and the world. For all that the RF is a real bourgeois dictatorship (in the form of limited bourgeois democracy). But to oppose its actions in assisting Donbass and suppressing fascism in Ukraine means to help the Nazis.
However, CPG ideologues disagree with such an assessment of Russia. They meticulously catalog a range of alarming phenomena (from official promotion of reactionary authors Solzhenitsyn and Ilyin to the presence at the front of the nationalist Sabotage and Reconnaissance Group “Rusich.” This represents an attempt to equate Ukraine and Russia as essentially similar regimes. In other words, the Greek communist party ideologues do not distinguish state policy and fascist trends in ideology and politics which exist in practically all bourgeois states.
Such assessments would not find favor with the citizens of Donbass who have been shot at by Bandera Ukraine from various weapons since 2014 when they staged an anti-fascist uprising of which the nucleus was formed by the working class, tractor drivers and miners. However, ignoring the suffering of the peoples of the former USSR is fashionable among the Western politicians whose actions are increasingly marked by the wish to take revenge for their defeat by the USSR in 1945. It is odd that modern CPG leaders have found themselves among these politicians.
The CPG leaders see the ongoing military conflict as merely an “inter-imperialist” one and Russia’s goals as being as predatory as those of the USA and the EU. They ignore the fact that capitalist Russia is sustaining colossal damage from Western sanctions and has during the course of the war (under highly mysterious circumstances) lost the North Stream pipelines, which was the key source of income of the Russian oligarchs and the RF budget. Even more puzzling is the fact that such principled CPG anti-imperialist analysts turn a blind eye to the expansion of American imperialism to the EU market, the damage to the economy and hence the interests of the working classes of European countries. Thus, the USA and the EU have been applying pressure and forcible methods to Russia for a long time already and the true goals of this pressure are not a secret. The secret is why the CPG leaders do not want to see this.
The RCWP believes that the Russian bourgeoisie, still cherishing its imperialistic fantasies, in this ongoing conflict is fighting for its own survival, and does not want to see their country dismembered and turned into a semi-colony or dependency. Opinion leaders of imperialist countries have repeatedly suggested that Russia should be dismembered into several parts to facilitate their subjugation and exploitation. That is why the bourgeois regime in the RF has to confront the imperialistic West which has initiated the creation of the fascist regime in Ukraine in order to bring pressure to bear on Russia and to weaken it. In parallel the RF bourgeoisie is forced to help the peoples of Donbass and Ukraine to liberate themselves from the fascist Bandera-style yoke. The working people of Russia on the whole support the anti-fascist goals of the SVO, being aware that a return of the country to the dependent situation (like in the 1990s) and its dismemberment would be disastrous and poses a mortal danger to the whole people.
In 2014 a proletarian revolution in eastern Ukraine was impossible for objective reasons as its working class had not yet matured enough to independently act under socialist slogans. But the workers of Donbass and the communists managed to pool their efforts with various other bourgeois, Orthodox and even pro-monarchy anti-fascist forces and rebuff the onslaught of the Bandera punitive forces. Spontaneously, the time-tested tactic of popular fronts, joint action against fascism, was pressed into service. This tactic has proved itself in the new conditions of the 21st century, the Bandera lot failed to destroy the people’s republics, which rejected rapid fascization.
And yet this vibrant, combative anti-fascist resistance, which is a salvation of the peoples, is condemned by the CPG ideologues who consider the creation of popular fronts to be a blind alley and in fact invite people seeking to struggle against fascism to wait for a squeaky clean revolutionary situation to emerge in order to stage a model proletarian revolution that would sweep away capitalism with all its fascist attributes. Metaphorically speaking, the CPG theoreticians, who have lost touch with reality, citing unsuccessful use of the tactic of popular fronts in some countries, above all in Greece, deny the very idea of a common front. In essence they reject Lenin’s theory of alliances and the use of cracks in the capitalist camp. Today the CPG ideologues are little short of suggesting that we should wait for revolutions to happen in the USA and the PRC. Is it a worthwhile wait?
From a historical perspective, the Comintern won the war (1939-1945) against the fascist anti-Comintern pact. But in the opinion of the CPG specialists, the Comintern did not act correctly. There the views of our Greek opponents are in some ways similar to those of our Russian anti-Sovieteers. They argue that the war was won by the Soviet Union, but this had nothing to do with socialism because people were simply fighting for their Motherland. To listen to our Greek comrades, the Comintern won, but it won in spite of the “misguided” tactics of creating popular anti-fascist fronts. We, the members of the RCWP, could call such a concept of Marxism a morbid parody of Marxism, a tactic of revolutionary rhetoric and a strategy of justifying retreat without struggle against the most brazen imperialistic reaction.
Questions which have been brewing for years
We do not consider the ideologists of the Greek communis party to be fools who do not understand the consequences of their ideological arguments. Strenuous efforts are being exerted to make the proletariat, which needs organizational help here and now, drop its guard. Why is the Greek communist party calling on the peoples to distance themselves from the struggle against real fascism taking place in real time by bringing in various anti-fascist forces? Does not the CPG leadership understand that the communists and the workers’ movement would fare a hundred times much better in conditions of admittedly truncated and constantly shrinking bourgeois democracy and in the legal space than under fascist regimes, hiding in the woods or in the underground, without a broad access to the workers? Why does the party which itself exists legally in a NATO country, that imperialist bloc, which has “the green light” from its country’s ruling class to engage in political and economic activities, to be elected not only to the Greek but also to the European parliament, try to control the international communist movement, while arrogantly rejecting any criticism, appoint its allies as the solely right kind of communist parties, and conduct measures that split the parties it does not like? Why does it avoid a theoretical discussion and simply throws dissenting parties out of the editorial board of the International Communist Review? What gives the CPG the right to consider itself to be the leader of the world communist movement? Has recent history (the last quarter of a century) furnished this party with objective prerequisites of an early revolution? Nobody has heard about it, indeed the theoretical question “Is a revolution possible in Greece as a single country?” remains open.
The RCWP has more than once seen the publication of its party materials in the international Solidnet outlet delayed. The RCWP is aware of the political and material support the CPG has rendered to dodgy former members of our party who tried to steal our party’s internet outlets several years ago. We see that the CPG treats other parties in a similar way.
Are not the CPG ideologues overreaching themselves in considering their party to be an indisputable arbiter sticking labels and throwing undesirables out of international bodies? Or is it the case that the CPG leaders have turned their opposition activities into a mode of its existence in bourgeois society? Preaching to a protest electorate, ensuring communication and protests of malcontents but not daring to challenge the essence of imperialism for fear of reprisals.
Yes, all this prompts many questions.
One would like to hope that healthy forces within the CPG exist which will put an end to this bloated political alchemy which does considerable harm to the world communist movement.
Going back to the beginning of this article let us recall that the Greek comrades did not attend the Anti-Fascist Forum. First, because it took place in “the capital of a capitalist country whose leadership is openly engaged in a war and uses anti-fascism as a cover.” And second, because they disagree with the main conclusions of the Forum.
The RCWP, too, has serious differences with the CPRF and with the Platform in assessing events and the role of Russia and China in the anti-imperialist struggle, but we deemed it our duty to take part in the Forum and express the Marxist viewpoint to our comrades in the joint struggle. The Greek comrades have dodged the struggle. They were conspicuously absent among the anti-fascists, as they were absent in the ongoing war in Donbass. There they would be faced with living fascists whom our comrades are fighting, but the Greek comrades are not there. They think the war is not being waged in the right way.
Perhaps there is something wrong with the way it is being waged, but shirking the struggle against fascism is more wrong. For communists, it is a disgrace.
Ideological Commission of the CC RCWP
1V.I.Lenin . Complete Works, vol.30 p. 133