Social fascism

The Comintern argued that capitalism had entered a Third Period in which proletarian revolution was imminent, but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces.

Overview

At the 6th World Congress of the Comintern in 1928, the end of capitalist stability and the beginning of the "Third Period" was proclaimed. The end of capitalism, accompanied with a working class revolution, was expected and social democracy was identified as the main enemy of the Communists. The Comintern's theory had roots in Grigory Zinoviev's argument that international social democracy is a wing of fascism. That view was accepted by Joseph Stalin, who described fascism and social democracy as "twin brothers", arguing that fascism depends on the active support of social democracy and that social democracy depends on the active support of fascism. After it was declared at the Sixth Congress, the theory of social fascism became accepted by many in the world communist movement.

The new direction was closely linked to the internal politics of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). After a faction fight inside that party following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, the victorious group around Stalin shifted decisively to the left by advocating the end of the mixed economy New Economic Policy and declaring an intensification of the class struggle inside the Soviet Union. An atmosphere of revolutionary fervour was created and saw any enemy of the ruling group around Stalin denounced as "wreckers" and "traitors", an attitude that was translated on to the international stage, where both social democrats and Communist dissidents were denounced as fascists.

Stalin stated in a speech in 1924:

Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins.

At the same time, under leadership of German Chancellor Hermann Müller the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) agreed with anti-communist parties that Stalinists were fascists. That led to mutual hostility between social democrats and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). These were additionally intensified in 1929 when Berlin's police, then under control of the SPD government, shot down Communist workers demonstrating on May Day in what became called Blutmai (Bloody May). That and the repressive legislation against the Communists that followed served as further evidence to Communists that social democrats were indeed "social fascists". In 1929, the KPD's paramilitary organisation, the Roter Frontkämpferbund ("Alliance of Red Front-Fighters"), was banned as extremist by the governing social democrats. A KPD resolution described the "social fascists" [social democrats] as the "main pillar of the dictatorship of Capital". In 1930, Kurt Schumacher of the SPD accused Communists of being "red-lacquered doppelgangers of the Nazis". In Prussia, the largest state of Germany, the KPD united with the Nazis in unsuccessful attempt to bring down the state government of SPD by means of a Landtag referendum.

After Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party came to power in Germany, both the KPD and the SPD was outlawed and thousands of members of both parties were arrested, including KPD leader Ernst Thälmann. Meanwhile, most SPD leaders had to flee in exile under Sopade. Those events made the Comintern do a complete turn on the question of alliance with social democrats and the theory of social fascism was largely abandoned. At the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935, Georgi Dimitrov outlined the new policy of the popular front in his address "For the Unity of the Working Class Against Fascism". This popular front dissolved with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The American historian Theodore Draper argued that "the so-called theory of social fascism and the practice based on it constituted one of the chief factors contributing to the victory of German fascism in January 1933".