Three main factors can be identified as contributing to the victory of opportunism over Marxism and Leninism at the Seventh Congress.

1. Many of the parties of the Comintern had only a passing acquaintance with Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, and had certainly not internalised it as a world outlook. In addition, parties such as the PCF and the CPGB had a euro-centric outlook which radically attenuated in their thinking the importance of events in, for example, China.
2. Since the Sixth World Congress in 1928 the international proletarian revolution had undergone major defeats including in China and Germany. The opportunists in the Communist International took this as creating a situation where ‘consolidation’ was of paramount importance rather than the mounting of any revolutionary ‘adventures’. The notion that only by extending proletarian revolution could the gains of 1917 and after be defended was dismissed as utopian.
3. The Soviets appear to have conspired in the ‘mood’ of safety first as defending the Soviet Union became an ‘internal’ matter of the Soviet Union defending itself rather than the Soviet Union being defended by the spread of revolutions. In other words, national interests began to become predominant over international class issues. The line of the Seventh Congress was essentially one of class collaboration.

Previously, in December 1933, the thirteenth plenum of the Executive Committee of the communist International had characterised fascism as follows,

"Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital."

The tenor of such an analysis is that there are sections of the bourgeoisie, the less reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist plus those not involved in finance capital who will be open to some sort of deal with Communists and other progressive elements on the question of fascism.

Arguably, in Germany and Italy the objective material circumstances permitted only fascism or socialism with bourgeois democracy a non-starter. The passive nature of the Comintern by 1935 can be seen in Dimitrov’s speech to the congress. Nowhere is the possibility of revolutionary activity considered and the highest aspiration is the defence of capitalist democracy against fascism. In total repudiation of a Leninist perspective Dimitrov went so far as to invite social democratic parties, which only a year earlier had been characterised as social fascist, to join with the Communists in single ‘parties of the proletariat’! In a complete repudiation of the notion that the proletariat should attempt to fight for state power Dimitrov suggested that Communist parties should subordinate themselves to the bourgeoisie by being prepared to participate in national governments of ‘struggle against fascism and reaction’. Much more could be said about this conference, for example it is here that Dimitrov made his notorious ‘national nihilism’ speech with its implication that proletarian nationalism could replace proletarian internationalism, however enough has been said to reinforce the point that ‘anti-fascism’ devoid of a fight for socialism, is ultimately reactionary. ‘Anti-fascism’ as a ‘thing in itself’ is nothing more than the left face of the bourgeoisie.

I have mentioned the 1935 conference because, despite their completely different antecedents and neo-Trotskyist world view, the SWP’s Anti Nazi League has much in common in terms of methodology. In particular it attempts to group all manner of disparate political forces under its banner who claim to be ‘anti-fascist’, i.e. who support bourgeois democracy. The ethos of anti-fascism relies on the lesser evil thesis, in this case that there exists a ‘democratic’ wing of the bourgeoisie who the working class can form a tactical alliance with against the ‘right-wing’ bourgeoisie. We hear this argument at every election period in Britain from the radical left in order to drum up support for voting Labour as the lesser evil than the Conservative party. In the final analysis the lesser evil argument is an argument for class collaboration.

The ANL use the term ‘nazism’ rather than ‘fascism’ because it fits in with their overall propaganda message that fascism is not British: ‘nazism’ is opposed by British nationalism. The organisation tends to downplay or ignore state racism. Despite the SWP’s constant rhetoric regarding the building of ‘socialism from below’ the ANL’s propensity for attracting celebrities and ‘important’ people, (although it is much less successful at this now), militates against working class self-activity.

The leitmotiv of the ANL which it has in common with most of the British left is support for Labour at election times. The point which Revolutionary Communist 9 made back in June 1979 that, "the politics of petit bourgeois socialism inevitably lead to covering up for the racist Labour party leadership" has been empirically verified numerous times since then. The ANL has two functions. "One is to restore credibility in the democratic machinery of the British state, mainly in its elections. The other is to take the anti-fascist message into the heart of the working class, in order to channel the class struggle back into support of the Labour Party, the unions and the democratic wing of capitalism."

In organisational opposition to the ANL is the Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) effectively controlled nationally by the anti-Leninist spontaneitist Red Action. I only know parts of the national picture, but the situation in Nottingham is that AFA is a part of Nottingham Anti-Fascist Alliance which unites all the anarchist, feminist and Trotskyist personnel whose only political agreement is opposition to the ANL/SWP. The opposition to ‘hierarchy’, and in fact to even a minimal level of co-ordination, means that NAFA is organisationally shambolic and ‘united’ only by anti-fascism. Much of the NAFA appeal, and this applies to the ANL also, is to humanitarian sentiments rather than class consciousness.

The so called ‘black defence committees’, ("self-defence is no offence"), have fortunately largely expired organisationally, but the ideology is still extant in the anti-fascist milieu. Socialists should vigorously oppose such conceptions because such committees, it is so obvious that it hardly needs saying, are a racial rather than a class response to fascism. Whatever the intentions the explicit result is that black and white workers are pitted against each other rather than workers being opposed to capitalists. Often the class collaboration of such outfits is disguised by notions of organising the ‘community’. ‘Community action’ is generally reformist and directed against pressuring the local council, the local police etc. to act against racism/fascism. At election times supporting Labour is almost a mandatory duty whatever the rhetoric.

‘Anti-fascism’ which is devoid of an anti-capitalist impetus is worse than useless because it inevitably leads to support, by the back door so to speak, for capitalism. Capitalist is counterpoised to fascism, and the fact that fascism is a particular method of organising the capitalist mode of production is ignored. In this manner state repression of black people tends to be attenuated as a cause of concern. Socialists need to stress that fascism is a product of capitalism in decay, i.e., that fascism rests on a materialist basis rather than the nonsense that, "fascism is like a cancer" which attacks ‘bad’ people on an individual basis. In the absence of workers committees which would attempt to join forces with workers in struggle against the symptoms of capitalism, unemployment, low pay, the socialist concern must always be to attempt to widen anti-fascist struggle to illustrate the class nature of society.

Ted Talbot.