Society begins to move as the economic crisis develops. This social response then polarizes society. At this point the left and right side of the movement reach a point – a fork in the road – a polarization within their ranks. The left side of the movement begins to break between progressive and communist and the right side of the movement between reactionary and fascist.

A fascist movement is gathering force worldwide to maintain private property for the benefit of the few. This movement is emerging in response to an objective movement that is arising to organize society as a cooperative society based on the new tools. Much is at stake, and those revolutionaries who are fighting for a cooperative society need to be clear about what’s arising and what it represents so that the proper tactics can be used to carry humanity to victory.

Fascist movement

The fascist movement is composed of many different individuals and organizations, which are not monolithic, but they all want to take the country in the same direction and have the same goals. The goals of this movement are not reactionary. Unlike the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party, they do not seek to restore the social and political order of the past.

On the contrary those that make up the fascist movement want to take the country into the twenty-first century organized around the new tools of production, electronics. These individuals have a vision of reconstructing America. As the productive relations between workers and capitalists are torn asunder, they see the writing on the wall. Their goal is to preserve private property, even if it’s at the expense of the capitalist economic system. As the electronic revolution matures, the capitalist is becoming as outdated as the worker.

This is the crux of the social turmoil going on worldwide. The globe is caught in the throes of a social revolution. Angry masses are raging against skyrocketing food and energy prices and stagnating wages and unemployment in India, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco, Cameroon, Brazil, Panama, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and elsewhere. These protests have targeted governments’ handling of the crisis, are widespread, and gathering pace. As one British newspaper observed, they "may spark a new revolution.”

Millions of workers have been dispossessed of their livelihood – whether it is a small plot of land or their job in the urban centers or through wars – and have been uprooted from their home countries. Millions have been forced to migrate, leaving behind home and loved ones to join the global workforce. They are becoming the new global workers who trek the globe in search of work. Globalized production globalizes the producer.

Migration is going on from poor countries to rich countries; from poorer countries to poor countries. It’s not just transnational, but domestic too – from one region to another within one nation. This mass migration compounds the social and political problems faced in every country. The global worker within our midst is a constant reminder to domestic workers that capital is failing worldwide.

The United States is not untouched by the widespread social turmoil in other countries. “You can’t do this to people year after year – that is, upturn their lives, take away what they thought they had earned without provoking rather intense political reactions", a well known author and commentator William Greider warned in an interview with Amy Goodman, the host of the radio program Democracy Now. "People, out of their own distress and anger will organize their own politics, and they will make themselves seen and heard around this country.”

Recently, Admiral Dennis Blair, the new U.S. Director of National Intelligence, emphasized this point by warning the Senate Intelligence Committee that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps the gravest threat to stability and national security. Reports from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warn that "the consequences of prolonged economic downturn, real estate foreclosures, unemployment and the inability to obtain credit will create a fertile environment" for organizing from both the left and the right. (Department of Homeland Security, Right Wing Extremism, April 2009)

Such warnings are not going unheeded by either the capitalists or the revolutionaries.

Fascism's target

The target of the new fascist movement is the same dispossessed sector of the class that the revolutionaries on the side of the workers are going after. The industrial heartland of America – known as the Rust Belt – claims the highest concentration of the industrial proletariat in the country. Today, due to the electronic revolution this industrial heartland is becoming a wasteland of misery to the millions of dispossessed workers who once could count on good jobs, decent homes, affordable health care, and the wherewithal to provide their children with a college education and a stable future.

While made to feel ashamed to stand in the unemployment and food lines, and if lucky, to labor in the fields picking fruit and vegetables, these newly dispossessed are now meeting their counterparts who they had been taught to see as “welfare queens” and “deadbeat dads" and "illegal.” “What happened?” is a question that keeps resonating in their minds.

Dividing the workers

Ideology is what holds a movement together, any movement. The fascist movement is no different. How will they drum up this ideology? In the same way that German and Italian fascism had to proceed from the most violent and brutal elements of their national history, the rise of the fascist movement in America will do the same. Historically, the ruling class has used the ideology of white supremacy to rally the most bribed sector of the working class to their side. This tactic has been used to divide and conquer the workers at every potential juncture of class unity.

The isolation and oppression of the masses of African Americans is again being utilized, but under new conditions. The ruling class is attacking them, not simply because they are Black, but because they are poor. All their propaganda – that Blacks are "shiftless, can't hold a job, they have babies out of wedlock, they won't finish school, they use drugs, and they are criminally inclined" – is all to set the basis for this attack. The history of racism makes such fascist propaganda acceptable. From this stronghold, fascist propaganda can easily proceed to place the so-called white "trailer trash" and the "illegal" immigrants in the same category.

The tactic of white supremacy worked during the period of industry, developing nation-states, and imperialism. The material foundation existed for the ruling class to extend privileges to one section of the workers over another. The ruling class maintained the allegiance of a section of the white workers through bribery, which translated into higher wages and a higher standard of living than the rest of the workers. Electronic technology eliminates the need for workers and, as a result, the capitalists have steadily destroyed this system of bribery. Also being destroyed with it, however, are the bonds that kept those workers politically and ideologically tied to the capitalists.

The conditions are turning these workers from the political bulwark of capitalism to its weakest link. The workers – including the bribed workers – are awakening and beginning to realize they have been duped and used against their own interests. Once politically awakened they will unleash their wrath against their class enemies. This moment is objectively near.

Which way for America

The fascist movement is arising in America as a political response to the changes underway in society. The ruling class cannot rule in the old way and the developing fascist movement offers the means by which the masses of Americans can be turned toward supporting the ruling class in its efforts to transform society to protect its property and power.

But, they are moving against the tide of history. The new means of production confront society with the question: Either the continuation of private property with a fascist state to govern society or the creation of a cooperative society based on public property organized to distribute the abundance created by these new tools.

At times of extreme shifts in wealth and class formation, as we are witnessing today, movements surge to rally the working masses around their vision and solutions to society's problems. The big question today is which ideology will express and guide the rising movement of the workers today: an ideology that will crown a fascist movement with power, or an ideology that will crown the movement for a cooperative society?

Excerpted from Political Report of the LRNA Standing Committee,
March 2009

May.2009.Vol19.Ed3
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