Journal of COlltemporary Jlistory, 11 (1976), 157-18.

Leon Trotsky's Theory of Fascism

Robert S. Wistrich

Leon Trotsky's analysis of National Socialism (and of fascism· in

general) stands out in the Marxist literature of the 1930s as one of the
more coherenr attempts to describe and forecast the consequences
of 'this stupendous phenomenon of social psychopathology' for the
international labour movement. According to Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky
was the first Marxist theorist to grasp 'the destructive delirium with
which National Socialism was to burst upon the world.'l Though
by no means the only, or even the first Marxist writer to produce a
precise definition of fascism,2 it is true that Trotsky perceived more
clearly than most of his contemporaries the inner dynamics of Hitler's
movement which would enable it to seize power and eventually to
plunge Europe into a second world war. But Trotsky's insights into
the fascist phenomenon, even at their most illuminating, were always
limited by the framework of his Marxist ideology and his
overconfidence concerning the revolutionary temper of the European
working classes. .
Moreover his analysis of Nazism lost some of its force by his
dogmatic insistence on organically identifying fascism with the
last-ditch struggle of moribund capitalism. This prevented him from
fully perceiving the more modern political and technical attributes
of Nazi methods of domination and its ability to embrace all sections
of the German population and integrate them into the totalitarian
structure of the state. But it did not prevent him from subjecting
the official communist interpretation of fascism to a penetrating
critique for its abstract formalism and inability to differentiate between
particular stages and varieties of the fascist phenomenon. In this respect
and in his prognoses concerning the development of fascism after
1930, Trotsky's analysis stands favourable comparison with the more
sophisticated theories of independent Marxist thinkers like August
Thalheimer and Otto Bauer. 3 Its significance lay less in Trotsky's

157
158 Journal of Co lltelllporary History

ability to construct a convincing explanatory model for the rise of

fascism than in his appraisal of the errors of proletarian revolutionary
strategy which facilitated its success. This political realism allied to
his theoretical acumen make Trotsky's writings on fascism (especially
his articles on Germany 1930-33) still worth reading today. As he
wrote in his pamphlet IVbat Next? in January 1932. 'It is not enough
to understand only the "essence"of fascism. One must be capable of
appraising it as a living political phenomenon, as a conscious and
wily foe.'4

Leon Trotsky was still a leading figure in the Russian Bolshevik party
and the Communist International when fascism achieved its first
major success in Italy during 1922. Like Lenin, Zinoviev and other
Bolshevik leaders he did not initially regard Mussolini's victory as
more than a transitory phenomenon, though he recognized in it a
signal that the outcome of the class-struggle outside Russia could not
be taken for granted. The prevailing Bolshevik attitude which did
not take Mussolini seriously was summed up by Lenin's passing remark:
'Perhaps the fascists in Italy, for example, will render us a great service
by explaining to the Italians that their country is not yet sufficiently
enlightened and insured against the Black Hundreds. Perhaps this
will be very useful.'s Zinoviev, in a similarly flippant mood referred
to fascism as a historical 'comedy' and compared the parallel movement
in Bavaria to the abonive White counter-revolution during the Russian
Civil War. 6 The botched Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 gave a momentary
substance to Zinoviev's opinion that the fascists were 'fools' rather
than serious politicians.
There was however another view in the Communist International
during the early 1920s which interpreted Italian fascism and its German
variants much more realistically. Thus in 1923, Clara Zetkin,the veteran
German communist, described the fascist victory in Italy as the most
serious setback for world communism since the October Revolution.
She sharply distinguished Italian fascism from such
counter-revolutionary 'feudal-capitalist' regimes as that of Admiral
Horthy in Hungary. 7 Fascism, she declared, was a 'movement of
the hungry, the suffering, the frustrated,' of broad social strata,
including a substantial section of the proletariat. 8 Anticipating one
of the theses which Trotsky later adopted, she argued that fascism
was a historic punishment for the failure of the western working~lass
to complete what the Russian revolution had initiated. 9 The reformist
leaders of the Italian socialist party were primarily to blame for this
Wistrich: Leon Trotsky's Theory of Fascism 159

failure, but the fledging Italian Communist Party was also guilty of
having underestimated fascism. 10
Karl Radek, (the Comintern expert on Germany) like Clara Zekin
emphasized the need in 1923 to differentiate between various forms
of eounter'revolution, between fascism as 'the socialism of the petty-
bourgeois masses' and an open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Radek
even ad\"ocated a nationalist course for the German Communist Party
(KPD) in order to win the petty-bourgeois masses from fascism. In
a well·known speech he praised the patriotism of Leo Schlageter, a
Nazi martyr executed by the French in the Ruhr. 11
Trotsky was strongly opposed to any flirtation with 'national
communism,' which he unequivocally condemned when it again became
part of KPD propaganda in 1930. He also considered that the German
communist leadership under Brandler had 'enormously overestimated
the power of fascism' in 1923, in order to cover their so-called 'historic
capitulation' in a revolutionary situation. 12 In 1931, when German
fascism had become immeasurably stronger, he attacked the KPD
lcadership for slipping to the opposite extreme and grossly
underestimating the fascist danger. Trotsky saw a clear relationship
between these wrong evaluations of the relationship of forces out of
which grew 'a hesitating, evasive, defensive, cowardly policy.'13 His
fundamental premise in evaluating fascism was that only a determined
revolutionary strategy by the European communist parties to
overthrow capitalism, could prevent fascist ascendancy.
In the 1920s when Hitler was still an obscure adventurer and
Mussolini's fascism appeared to be a peripheral phenomenon belonging
to a backward capitalist country, it was difficult to theorize about
fascism in general terms. The relative novelty of the phenomenon
probably accounts for Trotsky's mistaken assessment of Pilsudski's
coup d'etat in Poland (May 1926) as an example of fascism. At a
session of the Polish Commission of the Executive Committee of
the Comintern (2 July 1926), Trotsky criticized the Polish Communist
Party for calling on the workers to support Pilsudski. He characterized
Pilsudski's coup as a 'plebeian' method of solving the problems of
decaying capitalism, parallel to Italian fascism.

These two currents undoubtedly have common features; their shock troops
are recruited . . . among the petty bourgeoisic; both Pilsudski and Mussolini
operated by extra-parliamentary, nakedly violent means, by the methods
of civil war; both of them aimed not at overthrowing bourgeois society,
but at saving it. flaving raised the petty-bourgeois masses to their fcet, they
both clashed openly with the big bourgeoisie after coming to power.14
160 Journal of COl/temporary History

Trotsky's point in drawing this rather facile parallel was that the
bourgeoisie in decline required fascism as a means of self-defence
but that it disliked employing such methods to resolve crises.
Even by Trotsky's own criteria the parallel was unsatisfactory
because it ignored those traits in Pilsudski's regime which were clearly
not fascist. but corresponded more closely to what he later designated
as a Bonapartist form of power. IS Writing in July 1934 on the same
topic, Trotsky conceded that Pilsudski had used the techniques
of a military conspiracy and trcated the workers' organizations 'in a
much more circumspect manner' than either Mussolini or Hitler.
lie attributed the lack of 'specific political weight' in Polish fascism,
its inability to usc mass terror and to destroy the proletarian
organizations, to the peculiarities and contradictions in the class and
national relationships within the Polish state. Not only had the
communists supported his coup, but according to Trotsky the 'growing
hostility of the Ukrainian and Jewish petty bourgeoisie towards the
Pilsudski regime made it, in turn, more difficult for him to launch a
general attack upon the working class.'16
Trotsky was more convincing in his evaluation of Italian fascism
which he used primarily as an example to illuminate the dangers
confronting the German proletariat between 1930 and 1933. The first
and most important lesson of the Italian experience to Trotsky I was
that it revealed the consequences which would ensue if the proletarian
vanguard failed to place itself at the head of the nation and to
transform the situation of all classes, including the petty bourgeoisie.
Italian fascism had come to power only after the 'disruption of the
revolutionary movement' of 1920. It had been made possible by the
fear and timidity of the Italian socialist leaders who had 'betrayed'
the revolutionary movement of the proletariat after it had seized
and occupied the factories and industries in September 1920. 17 ,In
the face of a fascist backlash, the Social Democrats had sought to
pacify middle·c1ass public opinion and 'restrained the workers with
might and main from giving battle to Mussolini's bands.'18 Trotsky
argued that this indecision availed them nothing, for the Crown and
the upper crust of the bourgeoisie had swung over to Mussolini and
the delayed call for a general strike turned into a fiasco. Once in power,
Mussolini though moving gradually, was able within two years to
complete the 'strangulation of all independent mass organizations.'
With regard to Hitler, the German Social Democrats had in Trotsky's
words repeated the same error 'more ponderously' and with less
temperament. Both reformist parties had failed to see that fascism
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 161

was a mass movement which grew organically out of the collapse

of capitalism. The German Social Democrats saw their salvation in
IJindenburg just as their Italian forerun~ers had looked to Victor
Emmanuel and the Italian state for help.19 The German Communists
had also repeated the mistakes of their Italian comrades, ignoring
the lull in the revolutionary tide, opposing a united front and failing
to discern the 'partiClllar traits of fascism which spring from the
mobilization of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat.'2o The
Italian communists. except for Gramsci, could not even conceive
the possibility of a fascist seizure of power. 21 In 1922, however,
the Italian Communists were an infinitely weaker quantity than the
KPD in Germany and they had at least the excuse that fascism was
still a new phenomenon.
Trotsky recognized Italian fascism as a

spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank
and file. It is a plebeian movement in origin, directed and financed by big
capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum
proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masscs;
Mussolini, a fonner socialist, is a 'self-made' man arising from the
rnovement. 22

With its ability to draw broad strata of the population to its banner
and the 'socialist demagogy' of its leaders, Italian fascism could not
be equated with 'counter-revolutionary' dictatorship such as the Primo
de Rivera regime in Spain. 23 But it was the forerunner of the Nazi
movement and Trotsky predicted in January 1932 that 'Hitler's victory
in Germany would mean a new and a long lease of life for Mussolini.'24
Surprisingly, (and this was a drawback in his ~eory), he saw no'
essential difference between the two movements, either in terms of
their social content or their techniques of attaining and securing power.
lie argued that both Mussolini and Hitler utilized the masses of the
petty bourgeoisie to win power and then strangled these forces in the
vice of the bourgeois state apparatus. They were both exceptional
agitators, popular tribunes, whose momentum derived from the
movements they had forged. In contrast to Stalin (whom Trotsky
persisted in regarding as a mediocrity), Mussolini and Hider had
'displayed initiative, roused the masses to action, pioneered new paths
through the political jungle.'25 Mussoljni was 'mentally bolder and
more cynical,' with a greater responsiveness to the inter-relationships
between social classes, that Trotsky attributed to his schooling in
socialist thought. This Marxist background allowed Mussolini, 'after
162 jOllTllal of COlltcmporary History

he had jumped into the opposing camp, to mobilize the middle classes
against the proletariat. Hitler accomplished the same feat in translating
the methodology of fascism into the language of German mystieism.'26
Hitler had borrowed the forms and techniques of power from
Mussolini and both dictators sought consciously to reduce the
proletariat to an amorphous state and prevent its independent
crystallization by smashing the workers' organizations. The fascist
party in power did not however mean the rule of the petty bourgeoisie,
but on the contrary 'the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly
capital.' Trotsky correctly predicted that Hitler, like Mussolini, would
discard the 'socialistic' slogans and petty-bourgeois illusions of his
followers once he had assumed control of the state, His prognosis
in January 1932 for Italian fascism prefigured his analysis of the
likely emlution of German National Socialism a year later. Fascism
in Italy, Trotsky wrote, had become bureaucratic and thereby
approached 'very closely to other forms of military and police
dictatorship.'27 It had lost the social support of its chief reserve,
the petty bourgeoisie, and only 'historical inertia' enabled it to keep
the proletariat dispersed and helpless. Trots~y over'lptimistically
believed that this bureaucratic degeneration of fascism would be
one of the factors that would change the correlation of forces in
favour of the workers and lead to revolution from within. But as
he came to recognize after the victory of German National Socialism,
the immediate perspectives for the overthrow of fascism were far from
being imminent.
Even before Hitler's coming to power, he realized that 'the far
greater maturity and acuteness of social contradictions in Germany'
made Italian fascism 'appear as a pale and almost humane experiment
in comparison with the work of the German National Socialists.'7 8
Gut he took somewhat illusory comfort from the greater dynamism
of German fascism, assuming that it would 'wear itself out sooner
than its Italian precursor.'29 Nazism, likc Italian fascism, would
inevitably become transformed from a 'people's movement' into a
police apparatus. In Trotsky's self·fulfilIing dialectical schema, this
process of bureaucratization meant a weakening rather than a
strengthening of fascism, 'the beginning of its end.'30

Trotsky's theory of fascism in\'olved a complex dialectical

interpretation of events, the materials for which he forged out of his
critique of Comintern and KPD policies in the last years of the Weimar
Republic. Though he shared certain presuppositions with the
Wistrich: Leo/1 Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 163

theoreticians of the Com intern - notably the thesis that fascism

ultimately expressed the interests of finance-capital and was
inextricably linked to the crisis of monopoly capitalism - Trotsky
repudiated the arid formalism of Stalinist dogma. llis voluntaristic
Marxism precluded him from seeing in fascism a mere agent of
economic forces or an inevitable product of 'objective conditions'
such as the world depression, the cyclical crises of capitalism and
mass unemployment. Though guilty at times of sociological
reductionism and limited by his assumptions concerning the inherent
irrationality and barbarism of 'decaying' capitalism, Trotsky did at least
make a cOllcrete analysis of the social economic and political factors
in the rise of fascism. Above all, in his devastating critique of the
Comintcrn thesis of 'social Fascism' he showed a sharp eye for the
practical consequences of a false political theory.
This theory had been initia.ted in the early 1920s by Grigorii
Zinoviev, then President of the Comintcrn and) together with Stalin,
one of Trotsky's rivals for the leadership of the Russian Bolshevik
party.3! At the Fourth Congress of the Comintcrn in 1922, Zinoviev
had declared: 'Modem fascism in Italy is not so far rcmO\'ed from
Noske's Social Democracy, adapted to the given Italian
relationships.'32 This statement, an embryonic version of the theory
of social fascism, was in keeping with the Leninist tradition of
irreconcilable opposition to social democracy. Trotsky, at the time,
probably saw nothing objcctionabJ(: in the fact that Zinoviev blamed
the Social Democrats for the success of fascism and had highlighted
its counter-revolutionary role by reference to Gustav Noske. The
name of the German socialist Minister of the Interior who had put
down the Spartaeus uprising in Germany in 1919 was a by-word
in Comintcrn literature of the period for the violent repression of
the communist movement. Trotsky himself, along with Lenin and
Zinoviev, had done much to instill in the Third International the
belief that social-democratic 'opportunism' was the chief enemy of
the revolutionary proletariat. Zinoviev went a good deal further,
however, in his post-mortem on the failure of the German.communist
uprising in 1923.33 lIe asserted that the Italian socialist leaders, Turati
and D'Aragona, Pilsudski in Poland and even Ramsay MacDonald,
the British Labour Party leader, were 'Fascist Social Democrats.' In
an article of 1924, Stalin (at that time a lesser-known figure than
Zinoviev) echoed the President of the Comintcrn, observing: 'Social
Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. . . . They
are not antipodes, they are twins.'34 In 1924 such assertions were
164 Journal of Co Ilte lIlp 0 rary History

not yet official Comintern dogma, nor did they determine the strategy
of the German Communist Party - hence Trotsky probably saw little
need to comment.35 It is nevertheless true that even at that time, the
KPD was depicting the Strcsemann coalition govcrnment. which
enjoyed the support of the Social Democrats, as the capitalist wing
of fascism. The SPD leaders were already being described as a 'faction
of German fascism under a socialist mask.' There could be no question
therefore, of a Communist coalition with 'fascist social democrats. 36
This attitude, based on the assumption that all bourgeois parties
(especially the Social Democrats) assumed a more or less 'fascist'
character with the decline of bourgeois society, did not become
obviously pernicious until National Socialism emerged as a serious
political factor in 1930.37 By that time the Comimern had officially
sanctified the theory of social fascism which emerged in its
fully-fledged Stalinist fo~ as a decisive clement in German Communist
policy. Underpinning the theory of social fascism was the proclamation
of the 'third period' (at the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern
in i 928) which announced the end of capitalist stabilization, the
radicalization of the masses, and predicted a final death-agony of
the capitalist system ending in proletarian revolution. 3s Trotsky
rejected this terminology ('a combination of Stalinist bureaucratism
and Bukharinist metaphysics') and the tactical turn of the Communist
International after 1928, which he forcsaw as having particularly
dangerous consequences for Germany. The KPD leadership under
Ernst Thaelmann was operating on the assumption that there was no
difference bet\veen the existing Weimar democracy and open fascist
dictatorship; the Communists depicted the whole development of
Social Democracy and of the reformist trade unions as being
responsible for the process of 'fascisization' in Germany.39
. lIence,according to the KPD, it was not the Nazis and the Stabibellll,
who were the primary representatives of fascism in Germany and
the main class enemies of the proletariat, but the Cabinet of Chancellor
Bruening (leader of the Catholic Centre Party) and his 'social-fascist
agents,' the 51'0. 40 In this interpretation the Social Democrats and
the Nazis represented two wings of fascism, but the former were
more active clements in the 'fascisization' process as well as the chief
social support of the bourgeoisie. 41 The conclusion to be drawn
from this aberrant analysis was that victory o\'er Nazism could not
be achieved without the total destruction of the 51'0.42
The electoral results of 14 September 1930 which brought a
spcctacular increase in the Nazi \'Ote from 810,000 (2.6 per cent)
Wisnich: Leoll Trotsky's 71Jeory of Fascism 165

to 6,409,600 (18.3 per cent) merely intensified the hard line of the
Communist leaders, Thaclmann, Remmele and Heinz Neumann, against
the SPD. They blamed the Nazi gains on the 'social-fascist methods'
of the social democrats. Dic Rote r~lIJ11e, the organ of the KPD,
dismissed the significance of the leap in electoral support for the
Nazis, declaring on 15 September 1930: 'Yesterday was lIerr Hitler's
"great day," but the so-called electoral victory of the Nazis is only
the beginning of their end.' Thaelmann, the leader of the KPD,
announced at the plenum of the Ecd (Executive Committee of the
Communist International) in April 1931:

We have soberly and firmly established the fact that 14 September [1930:
was in a certain sense Hitler's best day, and that afterwards will not come
better days but worse. This evaluation which we made of the development
of this party is confirmed by the events.... Today the fascists have no reason
for laughing. 43

Trotsky had no doubt that this was a complete misreading of the

situation and a self-justificatory attempt to conceal the real weakness
and mistakes of the KPD, its capricious policy, opportunist impotence
and failure to win a majority of the 8-9 million SPD voters to its
own banner. He pointed out that the gains of the KPD in the 1930
elections (its support increased by over a million, to 4,592,100 votes -
i.e. 13.1 per cent) were dwarfed by the leap in the size of the Nazi
vote. The elections had revealed a pronounced swing of the petty
bourgeois masses towards the 'most extreme imperialist reaction.'
The Nazis were unmistakably the party of 'coullter-revolutionary
despair: but nonetheless capable of drawing to their side 'many
sections of the proletariat.'44
Trotsky interpreted the gigantic growth of National Socialism
as a response to two central factors: 'a deep social crisis, throwing
the petty-bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary
party that would today be regarded by the popular masses as the
acknowledged revolutionary leader.'45 The electoral results had shown
that on the eve of a new revolutionary period it was fascism not
communism which had taken up a powerful starting position - hence,
to underestimate its forces might prove to be a catastrophic mistake
in the future.

Fascism bas become a rel1l dallger as an acute expression of the helpless

position of the bourgeois regime, the conservative role of the Social
166 jOllwa/ of COl/temporary History
Democracy in this regime, and the accumulated powerlcssnc~ of the
Communist Party to abolish it. 46

In this and many subsequent articles, Trotsky pointed out that

whereas the KPD had failed to weaken the Social Democrats with the
aid of the 'absurd theory of social fascism,' it was now threatened
by real Nazi fascism which would not hesitate to liquidate all those
material and moral positions that the workers had managed to win
under bourgeois democracy.47 He prophetically warned that 'the
coming to power of the National Socialists would mean first of all
the extermination of the flower of the German proletariat, the
destruction of its organizations, the eradication of its belief in itself
and in its futurc.'4 8 In December 1931, Trotsky wrote:

Worker-communists, you arc hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot

leave for anywhere; there are not enough p~ports for you. Should fascism
come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank"
Your sa!\'ation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the
Social Democratic workers can bring victory.49

Again and again he emphasized that the historic role of fascism was
to extirpate all independent proletarian organizations from the most
revolutionary to the most conservative; it would physically annihilate
'all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat' achie\"ed over the past
century by the Social Democrats and the trade unions. Trotsky's
definition of fascism distinguished it sharply from the emergency
decrees of the Bruening cabinet which were mere half-hearted,
unreliable and temporary measures compared with what the Nazis
had in view. 'Pascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal
force, and of police terror~ Trotsky wrote in January 1932, 'Fascism
is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all
elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society.'5o This
definition exposed as 'absolute balderdash,' the communist
identification of Social Democracy with National Socialism.
The so-called 'red referendum' of 1931 in which the communists
along with the Nazis campaigned to remove the SPD -led government
of Otto Braun and Carl Severing in Prussia was a practical illustration
of the KPD line which Trotsky foresaw would lead to disaster. The
KPD leaders, instead of working for a united front with the Social
Democrats, had adopted as their own the Nazi slogan of a 'people's
revolution,' and called on the Nazi masses to join with the communists
in a common struggle against the Versailles treaty, the Young Plan
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 167

and the government of finance-capital. 51 Trotsky condemned the

slogan of the 'people's remlution' for wiping away 'the ideological
demarcation between Marxism and fascism.' It could only reconcile
'part of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie to the ideology of
fascism.'52 The method of imitating the class enemy was for Trotsky
a classic illustration of the unprincipled, inconsistent and hollow
ideology of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which had trampled
revolutionary Bolshevik strategy into the dust. One could not aet
effectively against fascism with its own weapons by 'borrowing the
colours of its political palette, and trying to outshout it at the auction
of patriotism.'53
Trotsky's critique of the KPD leadership was based on a shrewd
appraisal of its real weakness as well as on a condemnation of its
ideological degeneration into the phraseology of petty-bourgcois
nationalism. 54 lie had recognized carlyon that it did not have the
support in the trade unions and factory committees or in the working
class at large, to wage a war on two fronts against both the Social
Democrats and the National Socialists. The zig-zags and vacillations
in its policies, its bureaucratic 'monolithism,' its empty talk of social
fascism, its flirtations with chauvinism, prevented it from making
inroads into Social Democratic support and becoming the magnet
of the remlutionary proletariat. What alarmed Trotsky the most
about these weaknesses w~s that the policy of the leadership 'in part
consciously and in part unconsciously, proceeds from the recognition
of the inevitability of a fascist victory .'55 The KPD was proceeding
from the wholly unrealistic assumption that both Social Democracy
and capitalism would have to be overthrown first, before fascism
could be repelled. Instead of realizing that Nazism was a life and
death question for the working class, it relegated the struggle against
it to a secondary task, since it claimed that under Bruening, fascism
ruled already. In Trotsky's words, the premise was 'that Hitler will
add nothing new; that there is no cause to fear Hitler; that Hitler
will only clear the road for the communists.'56
Trotsky ceaselessly pointed out that this betrayed 'an utter
misunderstanding of mass psychology and of the dialectics of
revolutionary struggle.'57 Once the working-class had allowed
adventurers like Louis Bonaparte or Mussolini to gain power, it had
proved impossible to sweep them away. No amount of speeches about
the future 'Soviet Germany' which would arise in place of Hitler,
could therefore alter the responsibility of the Stalinist bureaucracy
for the growth of German fascism. 58
168 jO/lrua/ of COlltemporary History

Trotsky had no doubt that the failure of the Communist Party

to bring about a united front against Hitler was a major cause of his
victory. Instead of exploiting the contradictions between social
democracy and fascism, it had sabotaged the possibility of joint
proletarian action by repulsing the social-democratic workers and
throwing them back in the arms of their 'reformist' leaders. 59 The false
strategic conceptions of the KPD had led to a demoralization of the
proletariat, a sapping of its will to resist fascism. As a result the
wavering petty bourgeoisie had

swung over in its overwhelming majority to the side of National Socialism. _.

because the proletariat. paralyzed from abo\'e. proved powerless to lead
it along a different road. The absence of resistance on the part of the workers
heightened the self-assurance of fascism and diminished the fear of the big
bourgeoisie confronted by the risk of civil war. . . . Thus the triumphal
procession of Hitler over the bones of tho:: proletarian organizations was
assurcd. GO

Trotsky did not of course overlook the historic responsibility of the

Social Democrats in preparing the road for Hitler's victor)', though
he hardly expected a correct revolutionary strategy from 'the
politicians of reformism.' His critique of the SPD centred on its blind
confidence that the Weimar Constitution and the norms of bourgeois
legality would suffice to withstand Hitler's assault. By appealing to the
state apparatus, the police and even the Reichswehr to safeguard it
from the National Socialists, the Social Democrats were merely
prolonging the agony of the capitalist regime and strengthening the
mass basis of fascism. G1 This was thoroughly in keeping with the essence
of the SPD as a bourgeois party 'which is good for nothing at all under
the conditions of social crisis.'G 2 Like the other bourgeois parties,
(Trotsky claimed), the Social Democrats feared the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat more than fascism. Ever since 1918,
it had been implanting in the working class 'the belief in the eternity
of capitalism.' The SPD policy of 'reformism' had deprived the
proletariat of its capacity to lead the petty bourgeois masses 'and
thereby converts the latter into cannon fodder for fascism.'G3 It had
tolerated Bruening, \'on Papen and Schleicher in order to preserve
its numerically large and powerful organizational apparatus. The
Social Democrats would continue to support any bourgeois government
that allowed them to function within the constitutional framework.
Though Trotsky was convinced that there was an irreconcilable gulf
between the character of the SPD and the Communist Party, and
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Theory of Fascism 169

that the socialist leaders had no stomach for the fight against fascism,
he hoped nonetheless that the working-class masses who supported
the party could be won over to a more militant posture. Hence his
emphasis on the irreducible conflict of interests between fascism
and the Social Democrats. Time and again he stressed that Hitler
in power would destroy not only the proletarian vanguard but also
the bourgeois-parliamentary regime on which the existence of Social
Democracy final1y dcpendcd. 64 Needless to say, Trotsky's warnings
were dismissed hy the socialist and especially the communist leaders,
who on Stalin's promptings, attacked him as a 'panic-monger' and
even as a 'fascist agent.'
Reviewing the lessons of the German catastrophe in May 1933.
Trotsky concluded:

One eannot, unfortunately, deny the superiority of the fascist over the proleta-
rian leadership. Rut it is only out of an unbecoming modesty that the beaten
chiefs keep silent about their own part in the \ictory of Hitler. There is
a game of draughts and there is also the game of losers·win. The game that
was played in Germany has this singular feature, that Hitler played draughts
and his opponents played to lose. As for political genius, IIitler had no need
for it. The strategy of his enemy compensated largely for anything his own
strategy lacked.65

Like other re\'olutionary Marxists, Trotsky natural1y linked the

emergence of fascism to the structural crisis in a decaying capitalist
society. Many of the features in National Socialism had therefore
to he seen in the context of the peculiarities of German capitalism.
He argued that as the productive forces in Germany became more
and more highly geared, German capitalism found itself 'strangled
within the state system of Europe.'66 Already under the Hohenzollern
dynasty the German bourgeoisie; had sought to reorganize Europe
by means of war in order to secure its needs. With the decline of
capitalism under the Weimar Republic. a more decisive policy was
required by finance capital to change the balance of forces in its favour.
on the domestic and the international front. But Trotsky always
emphasised the fact that the big bourgeoisie. led by finance capital,
could not hold power without the support of the urban and rural
petty-bourgeois masses, the remnants of the old and new middle
c1asses.67 The big bourgeoisie in Germany, as in Italy. France and
other European countries, did not turn to fascism until the
intensification of the :;ocial crisis necessitated a political replacement
for Social Democracy. The· financial bourgeoisie adopted a vacillating
170 jOllwal of Contemporary llistory

poslllon because it feared that the 'surgical intervention of fascism'

might prove too risky a therapy for bourgeois society. Trotsky argued
that it only financed fascist organizations when the time for half-way
measures to save capitalism had passed, and the pressure exerted by
the proletariat became too intense to rely on constitutional methods.
But before the big bourgt>oisie became convinced of the ine\itabilit}'
of the fascist path, a section of it attempted to resolve the situation
by recourse to a Bonapartist military-police dictatorship. Trotsky
regarded the Bruening regime in Germany, and its successors, the
cabinets of \"On Papen and General Schleicher, as illustrations of his
thesis. 68 In his view they represented a temporary, unstable form
of bourgeois dictatorship enforced by reliance on the army and police.
Their social basis was too weak to permit dccisive measures against
the working class organizations or to create a new social equilibrium.
The function of the Brucning regime, for example, was to hold the
balance between the forces of the proletariat and of fascism, to fill
in 'the lull before the battle, before the forces are openly matched.'
In this situation where neither side could win by parliamentary means,
a government claiming to stand above parliament, social classes. and
political parties was required. The classic example of such a form
of government had been the Bonapartist regime in 19th century France.
In Germany this role was now being played by the octagenarian
field-marshal, Hindenburg, who had been elected with the votes of
the Social Democrats and Catholic Centre, as well as the conservative
right, to defend the Weimar Constitution.69 I1indenburg had selected
von Papen as his Chancellor, but the core of the Bonapartist
combination was (as Trotsky immediately observcd) General von
Schleicher, who had the support of the Reichswehr. 7o
The regime of military-police dictatorship was in essence a
bureaucratic, pre-fascist government in the intcrcsts of thc propertied
classes. It was different from fascism becausc it preceded the
revolutionary convulsions of civil war and was an attempt by the ruling
classes to avoid its risks and uncertainties. 71 The Junkers, the
industrialists and the bankers preferred the rulc of von Papen and
Schleicher to placing themselves in the hands of Hitler's brown shirted.
followers. They hoped thereby to neutralize the two irreconcilable
camps by an extra-parliamentary dictatorship which they could more
easily COntrol.
Trotsky's analysis stressed that in a period of declining capitalism,
the big bourgeoisie depended on an organized mass movement of
the petty bourgeoisie to hold Marxism in check, but that it did not
Wistrich: Leon Trotsky's Tbeory of Fas cis III 171

want the complete victory of fascism. It hoped to restrict the function

of National Socialism to directing the hatred and despair of the
exploited petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat.72 Trotsky utilized
this differentiated analysis to expose the abstract character of the
Stalinist theory of fascism. Since Thaclmann and the KPD leadership
could perceive no difference between Papen-Schleicher and Hitler,
they were not alert to the rcal danger of National Socialism.

By disregarding the social and political distinctions bctween BO!lapartisl1l,

that is, the regime of 'civil peace' resting upon military-police dictatorship,
and fasci.sm, that is the regime of open civil war against the proletariat,
Thalmann deprives himself in advance of the possibility of understanding
what is taking place before his vcry eyes. 73

The real task of the Papcn-Schleicher regime was 'to avoid civil
war by amicably disciplining the National Socialists and chaining
the proletariat to police fetters.'74 German Bonapartism, as Trotsky
suggested, needed a powerful fascist party in order to exist at alI,
but that did not make it identical with fascism in power. Fascism
was the reaction of bourgeois society to the specific threat of
proletarian revolution, but as long as this danger was not imminent,
the ruling classes preferred a Bonapartist dictatorship. The great land-
owners, finance capitalists and generals who stood behind Papen
would only turn to Hitler in the last resort.
Trotsky's conceptual distinction between Bonapartism and fascism
alIowed him to make an acute analysis of the contradictions in the
'counter-revolutionary camp.' He realized that the camarilla of property
owners and East Prussian Junkers in the German Nationalist Party
who made common cause with Hitler, did so only because he had
become indispensable. 7 5 But the Nazis even in February 1933 were
only one of several armies at the disposal of the possessing classes - the
Reichswehr, the police and the Stahlhelm were not yet in Hitler's
hands. The National Socialists, Trotsky pointed out, would only
achieve complete victory if they successfully provoked the semblance
of civil war, in order to forcibly suppress the workers' organizations. 76
Trotsky's Bonapartist model was designed to explain the
transitional, intermediate situations through which a parliamentary
regime passed over into fully-fledged fascism. In contrast to Stalinist
theory, it recognized the fact that finance capital did not act in a void,
that it had 'to reckon with other strata of the bourgeoisie and with
the resistance of the oppressed classes.'77 Stalinist theory had produced
an absurdly indiscriminate lumping together of such diverse political
172 jOllmal o[Co/ltelllporary History

figures as Primo de Rivera, Chiang Kai-Shek, Masaryk, Bruening,

Severing, Dollfuss, and Hamsay MacDonald as representatives of fascism
along with Hitler and Mussolini. 78 The importance of the I30napartist
model was that it permitted a more flexible analysis of the methods
used by finance capital to preserve the social system in a period of
crisis. At the same time it was a warning-signal to the proletariat of the
imminence of fascism, 'the last period in which the proletariat vanguard
can gather its momcntum for the conquest of power.' The outcome
of the social and political crisis reflected in the establishment of a
government of the sabre above the classes ultimately depended on
the degree of working class preparedness and mobilization.
Nevertheless, Trotsky mistakenly interpreted the so-called 'fascist'
riots of 6 February 1934 in France which brought into being the
Doumergue government (a very weak form of I3onapartism) as a
prologue to civil war: 'The perspective of the passage from Bonapartism
to fascism is pregnant with more formidable disturbances and
consequently also remlutionary possibilities.'79 Bonapartism in the
epoch of dcclining capitalism was however by its very nature a
short-term, inherently unstable regime. Unless the proletariat was
able to mobilize itself effectively for the conquest of power, the
Bonapartist dictatorship would give way to the more stable fascist
regimes of the Mussolini-Hitler type, capablc of eliminating the
contending classes from the political arena.
Trotsky never made an absolute logical division between the
categories of Bonapartism and fascism. As a Marxist, he argued that
in the social sense, both types of regime represented the hegemony
of finance capital adapted to changing conditions. But the logic of
the fascist system in power would make it draw closer to the
Bonapartist model, once it was forced to muzzle the masses by means
of the state and police apparatus. As it gradually lost its mass social
base and was forced to oscillate between the classes, fascism inevitably
became 'regcnerated into Bonapartism.'80 How long this process
of the withering away of fascism would last, Trotsky was not prepared
to forecast. But his defiant revolutionary optimism convinced him
that it was impossible 'to keep the proletariat enchained with the
aid merely of a police apparatus.'81
This overconfidence in the revolutionary character of the European
working classes was visible even in his last judgements on the subject
of Bonapanism and fascism. Writing in August 1940 after the fall
of France, he rejected the epithet of fascism for 'the despicable [,crain
regime.' lie described the Petain government as a 'senile form
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Theory of Fascism 173

of Bonapartism of the epoch of imperialist decline.'82 Precisely for

this reason, Trotsky prematurely concluded that it 'contains no element
of stability and can be overthrown by a revolutionary mass uprising
much sooner than a fascist regime. 83

Trotsky was well aware that the model of Bonapartism formulated

by Marx in the nineteenth century, while valuable for describing
the trallsition to a fascist regime, was inadequate for comprehending
the nature of a movement like National Socialism. In comparison
with Hitler, Louis Bonaparte or' for that matter even Mussolini were
mild, almost humane dictators. Nevertheless in analyzing the Nazi
movement 'a broad current whose ideology is composed of all the
putrid vap<;JUrs of disintegrating bourgeois society,'84 Trotsky relied
on a stereotyped picture of petty-bourgeois social psychology. Hitler's
army of officials, clerks, shopkeepers, tradesmen and peasants belonged
in his eyes to the vacillating intermediate classes. In point of social
consciousness, he suggested, 'the great bulk of the fascists consists
of human dust.'85 Given these Marxist a~sumptions about the
irresolution and inability of the petty bourgeoisie to pursue an
independent, revolutionary policy it was difficult for Trotsky to
imagine that the Nazis could be victo~ious in an actual trial of strength
with the proletariat. In terms of class consciousness and fighting
capacity, the soldiers of the proletarian army were 'immeasurably
superior, more trustworthy and more steadfast than the soldiers of
Hitler's army.'86 In spite of his clear-sighted criticisms of the errors
in communist and socialist strategy, Trotsky simply could not believe
that the great mass organizations of the German proletariat would
capitulate without a struggle and concede victory to the Nazis without
a civil war. Nevertheless though Trotsky's Marxist prejudices led him
to despise and underestimate the petty-uourgeoisie as a class, he did
not make the same mistake with Hitler, whose abilities as a strategist,
organizer and propagandist he partly recognized. Trotsky saw the
secret of Hitler's success in his ability to make himself 'the focus
of anonymous historic forces' and to lead the mass 'in the direction
in which it pushed him.'87 From a Marxist standpoint, Nazism could
however only appear as the party of co/illter-revolutiollary despair,
though Trotsky did not deny that it also drew behind it many sections
of the proletariat. In January 1932, for example, he observed:

The workers are by no means immunized once for all against the innuence
of fascism. The proletariat and the pettY bourgeoisie interpenetrate, especially
174 jOllmal of COl/temporary History

under the present conditions, when the reserve army of workers cannot
but produce petty traders and hawkers, etc., while the bankrupt petty
bourgeoisie effuses proletarians and iumpenproletarians. 88

Trotsky noted that many salaried employees, technical and

administrati\'e personnel were going over from support for Social
Democracy to the Nazis. More importantly, not only a stratum of
the labour aristocracy, but also a layer of the milIions of unemployed
(who had previously swelIed the ranks of the Communist party) were
being won over by Nazi propaganda. The National Socialists by
wedding 'anarchist demagogy to conscious reactionary aims' were
therefore penetrating the proletariat from above and from below. 89
But Trotsky's perception of this phenomenon did not change his
view that Nazism was essentialIy a middle-class movement which
agitated the frustration and despair of the petty bourgeoisie to a
white heat. In June 1933 he wrote:

In National Socialism everything is as contradictory and chaotic as in a night-

mare. Hitler's party calls itself socialist, yet it leads a terrorist strUggle against
all socialist organizations. It calls itself a workers' party, yet its ranks include
all classes except the proletariat. It hurls its lightning bolts at the heads of
the capitalists, yet it is supported ,",y them. It bows before Germanic traditions,
yet aspires to Caesarism, a completely Latin institution. 90

For Trotsky, the Nazi ideology was a mishmash of contradictory

elements that reflected its constantly fluctuating mass base and its
petty-bourgeois origins. The force of this movement did not lie in
the 'immense poverty of National Socialist philosophy,' but in the
chaos of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's c0ll11ter-revollltiol/ary
realism in exploiting the weakness of his adversaries. The pseudo-
constitutionalism of the Nazis was one example to Trotsky of Hitler's
ability to lull his enemies into a false sense of security.

This military cunning, no matter how simple in itself, secretes a tremendous

force, for it leans upon not only the psychology of the intermediate parties,
which would like to settle the question peacefully and legally, bUt, what
is more dangerouS,upon the gullibility of the national masses. 91

Trotsky noted this same cunning and audacity at pia}' in Hitler's

diplomacy, which enabled him in the late 1930s to outmanoeuvre
western statesmen as well as Stalin by exploiting their political
weaknesses and fear of endangering the status quo. 92 In June 1933
Tr.otsky warned: 'It takes more than hysteria to seize power, and
Wistrich: Leon Trotsky's Theory of Filscism 175

method there must be in the Nazi madness.'93 Hitler's policy for

reconstructing Europe was undoubtedly 'a reactionary-utopian medley
of racial mysticism and national cannibalism' but by playing on
European (especially British) fears of Bolshevism, he was nevertheless
obtaining for Germany the right to arm herself. 94
Trotsky distinguished then, between J litler as a formidable tactician,
and Nazism as a rag-bag of mythological ideas which gave expression
[0 all kinds of diffuse mass grievances and dissatisfactions.
Anti-Marxism, anti-rationalism, anti-materialism, anti-intellectualism -
these were all different manifestations of the endemic confusion in
the K/eillbiirger mentality. For Trotsky, Hitler's concept of the nation
as the emanation of racial qualities, was simply 'the mythological
shadow of the petty bourgeoisie itself, a pathetic delirium of a
thousand-year Reich: 95 The 'zoological materialism' of the Nazis,
like the rest of their ideology, was borrowed at second hand; their
racialism merely reflected the delusions of the impo\"erished petty
bourgeoisie and the belief of the most barbarous classes in Germany
in their own special superiority.96 Racialism in practice resolved
itself, according to Trotsky, into a form of economic liberalism, freed
from the constrictions of political liberty. Its concrete expression
lay in 'impotent though savage outbursts of anti-Semitism.' For the
Nazis, the pogrom was 'the supreme evidence of racial superiority'
but their anti-capitalism was only a chimera, which abstracted usurious
or banking capital from the economic system in its totality.

Uowing down before capitalism as a whole, the petty bourgeois declares

war against the evil spirit of gain in the guise of the Polish Jew in a long-
skirted caftan and usually without a cent in his poeket. 97

Trotsky did not take \"ery seriously this Nazi ideology, which he
once described as the 'refuse of international political thought.' As
a Marxist he found it more convenient to attribute it to the 'undigested
barbarism,' the 'cultural excrement' vomited up by a moribund
capitalist society.98 Trotsky thereby underestimated and trivialized
the sources and consequences of fascist barbarism, just as he evaded
the issue by dismissing Hitler's millions· of followers as 'human
rubbish: 99 His analytical ac~teness enabled him to forecast more
or less accurately the logic of Nazi expansionist policies, but his Marxist
presuppositions prevented him from seeing the full implications of
J litler's totalitarian racist ideology.
176 Joumal of COl/telllporary History

Trotsky's theory of fascism retains certain distinctive features which

mark it off from other socialist and communist efforts to come to
grips with the phenomenon. IOO He did not for example believe that
it was an inevitable stage in the development of capitalism, nor that
it was determined by economic necessity in a dialectical sense. Trotsky
placed much greater emphasis than most Marxist theoreticians on
the crisis and failures of proletarian leadership in bringing about the
victory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Once the proletariat failed
to seize power in a decaying capitalist society, the substitution of
fascist dictatorship for bourgeois democracy was on the agenda.
Trotsky explained this failure not by an appeal to 'objective conditions'
but by 'the inability of the degenerated and completely rotten parties
of the proletariat'IOI to follow the example of the Bolshevik
revolution. Fascism was a direct result of the triple bankruptcy of
bourgeois democracy, "social democracy and the communist parties.
The fascist parties were able in his opinion, to win the masses of the
petty bourgeoisie" and a part of the proletariat, because their own
leadership wa~ more audacious and exhibited a fierce will-to-pO\ver.
This activism of the fascist movements was a historic re\'enge for
the opportunism of both the ~ocial Democratic and western communist
parties, who had forgotten that .Marxism was a set of directives for
revolutionary action. Trotsky constantly returned to this theme in
the late 1930s, remarking that the development of fas'cism was an
irrefutable proof of the faet that the working class had been tragically
late in fulfilling the task imposed upon it by the decline of
capitalism.I02 In his more pessimistic moods he sometimes appeared
to include the masses themselves in this indictment, More often, as
in his last article in October 1940, Trotsky placed the blame firmly
on the failures of the working-class leadership. Fascism, he declared,
was able to conquer power 'only in those countries where the
conservative" labour parties prevented the .proletariat from utilizing
the revolutionary situatipn and seizing poweL'103 This had been
true in Germany in 19.18-19,1923:24 and even in 1929 a direct struggle
for power was still allegedly possible.

In all these three easc;s the Social'Democracy and the Comintern criminally
and viciously disrupted the conquest of power and thereby placed society
in an impasse, Only undcr these conditions and in this situation did the
stormy rise of fascism and its gaining of power prove possible,104

fA second, less distinctive feature of Trotsky's theory was his analysis

Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 177

of the temporary coalition between the big bourgeoisie and the mass
movements of the petty bourgeoisie, whose historic function was
to wear down and demoralize the proletariat by mass terror and street
warfare. In Trotsky's writings on Nazism, which were characterized
by a special polemical verve and sense of urgency, he constantly
stressed that the fascist goal was the total destruction of proletarian
mass organizations. 105 For this purpose a military dictatorship or a
police state was in itself insufficient.
Trotsky rejoined orthodox communist theory in his depiction of
the fascist movements as gendarmes of finance capital set in motion
by the need of the big bourgeoisie to preserve its social hegemony,
even at the risk of its eventual political expropriation. 10G Like a
number of other independent Marxist thinkers, (notably Otto Bauer
and August Thalheimer), Trotsky also used the model of Donapartism
to highlight the inter-relations between social classes that favoured
the emergence of fascism. Trotsky however, dismissed Thalheimer's
approach as too academic and argued that it ignored the qualitative
difference between Bonapartism and fascism. Unlike traditional
Bonapartist dictatorships, founded on the support of the army,
bureaucracy and police, fascism was only possible under conditions
of industrial monopoly capitalism which produced the mass basis
for these 'plebeian' movements. 107
Despite the parallels in their theory of fascism, Trotsky was even
harsher in his estimate of Otto Bauer, whose practical policies he
considered as the embodiment of sociahicmocratic 'impotence.'
Otto Bauer did not believe in the possibility of a proletarian offel1sive
against fascism after the ebbing of the revolutionary flood in 1923,
whereas Trotsky's wllole theory was geared to this premise. The exiled
Bolshe\ik leader argued that unless the proletariat defined the struggle
for power, it would inevitably lose the vacillating middle strata of
the population to fascism. In the tactics of Austro-Marxism, Trotsky
saw only a continuation of that sterile and passive defence of bourgeois
democracy through which the Social Democrats had already
chloroformed the working class in Germany.1 08 Trotsky's contempt
for Austro-Marxism and other forms of social-democratic 'reformism'
reflected his Bolshevik intransigence, shaped by the October Revolution
of 1917. Inevitably however, the stabilization of fascist regimes in
the 1930s and the degeneration of the workers' state in the USSR
called for a reappraisal of this revolutionary perspective. Trotsky
was obliged, for example, to admit that in techniques of government,
in the cult of the infallible leader and in its methods of propaganda,
178 joumal of Colltclllporary History

there was a certain kinship between Hitler's Nazi dictatorship and

Stalin's personal plebiscitary regime. Nevertheless Trotsky stilI insisted
that the existence of a planned economy and state ownership of the
means of production in the USSR was a crucial qualitath'e difference
which marked off Stalinism from Nazism and fascism. Trotsky
maintained that the 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' was still inviolate
under fascist rule, since its social hegemony was strengthened, even
though it had abdicated politically.109 Conversely, the proletariat
was stilI the 'ruling class' in the USSR, even though it had been
politically expropriated by a rapacious and parasitic bureaucracy.lIO
With this unconvincing theoretical argument, Trotsky opposed those
of his former followers who claimed that there was a convergence
between the fascist, Nazi and Stalinist regimes.
Some of these ex-disciplcs like Bruno Rizzi, James Burnham and
Max Schachtmann expounded the thesis that under different facades
the govcrnments of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and even Roosc\'elt were
moving towards a new form of class domination, a global system of
bureaucratic collectivism. Though Trotsky himself had insisted for
more than a decade on the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism.
he could not accept a theory which made the fascist and Stalinist
bureaucracy into a new illdependem ruling class and thereby calIed
in question the achievements of the October Remlution itself.
There was however an undeniable note of pessimism in Trotsky's
last writings, scarcely concealed by the increasingly doctrinaire
character of his pronouncements. This is already presaged in his
mistaken assessments of the French political situation in the mid-1930s,
whi.ch lack the incisiveness of his earlier writings on Germany. Trotsky
had misinterpreted the riots of February 1934 by the semi-fascist
Croix de Feu as a prelude to future civil war. In fact he consIderably
ove'restimated the chances of success for a genuinely fascist ma~s
movement in France, flippantly dismissing the argument that national
peculiarities played any role in the resistance to fascism. l l l His attacks
on the Popular Front strategy of Leon Blum, Maurice Thorez and
Marcel Cachin altogether lacked the political realism of his earlier
critique of the policies adopted by the German left. He saw in the
Popular Front only the 'rotten refuse of reformism,' accusing it of
'paving the way for fascism,' even when it had successfully thrown
back the fascist leagues} 12
Equally doctrinaire was his position on support for the Western
democracies in the struggle against fascism during 1939-40. Arguing
in a style reminiscent of the KPD a decade earlier. he now asserted
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 179

that there could be no question of a 'united front' with the 'imperialist'

democracies against Hitler and Mussolini. This would only 'provide
support for blackest reaction in Germany and Italy' and strengthen
the yoke of Western imperialism over the colonial peoples. 113 In
March 1939 he informed a group of Palestinian Trotskyists that
'proletarian defeatism' was the only consistent Leninist(J),
internationalist policy to adopt in the face of a new 'imperialist' world
war. Democracy, like fascism was now identified as a tool of
imperialism. l14 I Icnce, support for the military victory of the
democracies over fascism would be an unforgivable relapse into 'social-
patriotism.' It would be tantamount to whitewashing the enslavement
of the French colonies, of 350 million Indians by the British Empire
and of Latin America by Anglo-Saxon imperialism. In other words,
to fight for democracy against German, Italian and Japanese fascism
would be to encourage the most slavish dependence on foreign
imperialism, at least in a colonial context. 115 Trotsky advocated a
similar policy of 'proletarian defeatism' for the European
working-classes.
These pronouncements suggest that the exiled Trotsky was
increasingly out of touch with reality in his last years. Perhaps not
surprisingly, his definition of fascism also assumed a markedly dogmatic
charactcr, Icss conspicuous in his earlier writings. Hitler's expansionist
policies were now described as an accelerated form of decadent
imperialism, inherent in decaying monopoly capitalism. The totalitarian
structurc of German fascism was exclusively attributed to the colossal
productive forces of German capitalism, which would have to seek new
outlets through war, whatever the political regime. In his last articlc
in October 1940, Trotsky pessimistically wrote:

The totalitarian State, subjecting all aspccts of cconomic, political and cultural
life to finance capital, is the instrument for creating a supernationalist State,
an imperiali~t empire, the rule over continents, the rule ovcr the whole
world. 116

Though he had littic doubt that Hitler's New Ordcr would fail,
Trotsky by now believed that if capitalism survivcd, superfascism
would become necessary to preserve the 'dictatorship of the trusts.'
Thc only factor which could prevcnt this dcvelopment would be the
transformation of the imperialist war into a new re\·olutionary wave
in accordance with the Leninist strategy of 1917. Though the working
class had failed to stop Mussolini, Hitler and Franco, Trotsky
remained faithful to the pristine Marxist vision, that it alone could
180 JOllrnal of COl/temporary History

be the historic agency of revolutionary change. To admit otherwise

would be to call into question the entire Marxist view of capitalist
society. In that case Marxism would become just another ideology
and its programme a mere utopia.

NOTES

1. Isaac Deutscher, Tbe Propbet Ollteast, Trotsky 1929-1940 (Oxford

1963),129.
2. See Wolfgang Abendroth, ed., Fascbismlls lind Kapitalis1nlls. Theorien
iiber die soziJlen Urspriinge Imd die Flwktioll des Fascbismus (Frankfult 1967)
including the classic Marxist interpretations of fascism by August Thalheimer,
Herbert Marcuse, Arthu; Rosenberg, Otto Bauer and Angelo Tasca.
3. For Thalheimer and Otto Bauer, see ibid, 19-38 and 143-67. Also the
important article by Gerhard Botz, 'Genesis und Inhalt der Faschismustheorien
Otto Bauers' in International Review of Social Jlistory (l974), Vol. 19, 39·45.
4. 'What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat' (27th January
1932), in Leon Trotsky, Tbe Struggle Against Fascism in Gennany (London
1975),213.
5. The comment was made at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern
(NovemberJDecember 1922). See V. I. Lenin, Werke (Berlin East, 1962), Rd. 33,
417
6. See Siegfried Rahne, "Sozialfaschismus" in Deutschland. Zur Geschichte
cines Politischen Begriffs' in InleTllational Review of Social Jlistory (1965),
Vol. 10, Pr. 2, 21M£.
7. Clara Zetkin, 'Ocr Kampf gegen den Faschismus,' (Protokoll der
Konferenz der Erweiterten Exekutive der Kommunistischen Internationale,
Moskau 12·13 Juni 1923) in Ernst Nolte, cd., Theorien iiber den Fascbismus
(Koln 1970),88.
8. Ibid,89,92·93,107.
9. Ibid,89.
10. Ibid, 90'92,95.
11. Karl Radek, 'Leo Schlageter, der Wanderer ins Nichts' in Die Rote
Fabne, 26 June 1923.
12. 'The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in Germany'
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Tbeory of Fascism 181

(26 September 1930) in Leon Trotsky, op. cit., IS.Trotsky alleged that Brandler
(a member of the Spartakusbund and a founder of the KPO) 'in spite of all our
warnings monstrously exaggerated the forces of fascism.' The Bolshe\ik leaders
made Urandler the scapegoat for the failure of the German Communist uprising
in 1923.
13. Trotsky, op. cit.
14. 'The Only Road' (14 September 1932), in Trotsky, op. cit., 270.
15. See 'Uonapartism and Fascism' (15 july 19H) in Trotsky, op. cit.,
456-57 for a partial admission that the I'ilsudski regime was Bonapanist. Also
Isaac Deutscher, op. cit. 276 and Henryk Wereszycki, 'Fascism in Poland' in
Peter F. Sugar, cd., Nalit'e Fascis/ll in Ihe Successor SIJleS, 1918-/945 (Santa
Barbara 1971),85-91.
16. 'Bonapartism and Fascism' in Trotsky, op. cit., 457.
17. 'Lessons of the Italian Experience', (27 January 1932), Leon Trotsky,
op_ cit., 164-65.
18. Ibid,165.
19. Ibid,166-67.
20. Ibid,167.
21. Ibid.
22. This assessment was first made in a letter to an English comrade,
published in The MililanI (16 january 1932). See Leon Trotsky, Fascism - IVbat
Is It a"d How 10 Figbl II (New York 1972), 5.
23. Trotsky, Tbe Slmggle AgainSI Fascism, op. cit., 168,argued that failure
to distinguish between different types of capitalist reaction and to analyze the
specific nature of fascism, was 'vulgar radicalism' which would paralyze the
will to resistance of the working class.
24. Ibid,166.
2S. Quoted in Isaac Deutscher, Heretics and Uenegades and olber Essays
(London 1955), 84.
26. 'What is National Socialism?' (IO june 1933) in Trotsky, Tbe SII'uggle
Against Fascism, op. cit., 409.
27. 'What Ne>..,?' in ibid, 166.
28. 'Germany, the Key to the International Situation' (26 November 1931),
ibid,89.
29. 'How Long Can Hitler Stay?' (22 june 1933) in ibid, 423.
30. Ibid.
31. See Theodore Draper, 'The Ghost of Social·Fascism' in Commenlary
(February 1969),29-42.
32. Prolokoll des Vierten Kongresses der Kommullisliscbe" lnternalionale
(l923), 920. Also Theodore Draper, 'The Strange Case of the Comimern' in
Surrey (Summer 1972), Vol. 18, no. 3,121.
33. G. Zinoviev, Die I.ebren der delltschen Ereignisse (l924) and the
comments by Draper in 'The Ghost of Social-Fascism', op. cit., 30.
34. j. V. Stalin, 'On the International Situation' (20 September 1924) in
SocbineniiJ (Moscow 1947) Vol. 6. Reproduced as 'Stalins These vom Sozial-
faschismus' in Hermann Weber, cd., Der Deulsche Kommunismus. Dokumellle
(Kfiln 1964),180-81.
35. See Leon Trotsky, Pyat Let Kominlenza (Moscow 1924-2S), Vols 1-2,
563.
182 Journal of Colltc1I1porary History

36. l3ahne, op. cit., 223-24.

37. See 'What Next?' in Trotsky, TlJe SIn/gg/e Against Fascism, 01'. cit.,
127 where he approvingly quotes the Iralian communist leader Togliatti (Ereoli),
for opposing this assumption at the Sixth Congress of the Com intern (1928).
At that time Togliatti had argued that fascism 'rejects all the Social Democracy;
it persecutes it relentlessly; it deprives it of all legal means of existence; it forces
it to emigrate:
38. For the Russian background to these events, see Dietrich Geyer,
'Sowjetrussland und die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung 1918-1932' in
Vierteljabrsbefte fiir ZeitgesclJiclJte Uanuary 1976),32-37.
39. 'Faschismus und Oemokratie in der Thesen der "PO (1931/2)' in Weber,
op. cit., 158.
40. Rede Ernsc Thaelmanns auf der Plenartagung des ZK der KPD am 19
Februar 1932 in Berlin, 'Oer Faschistische Kurs der Briining-Regierung', ibid,
157-58.
41. Ihid.
42. Ernst Thaelmann, 'Die "PO im Vormarsch', in Die K011l/llllllisliscIJe
lllterllationa/e, 15 February 1931.
43. Quoted in 'The Tragedy of the German Proletariat: The German Workers
Will Rise Again - Stalinism, Never!' (14 March 1933) in Trotsky, Tbe Struggle
Against Fascism, 01'. cit., 381.
44. 'The Turn in the Communist International. .. :, ihid, 13-14.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. lbid,26-7.
48. 'Germany, the Key to the International Situation' in ibid, 89.
49. 'For a Workers' United Front Against Fascism' (8 December 1931)
in ibid, 109.
50. 'What Next?' in ibid, 112-13.
51. 'Offener Brief der KPD an die "Werktiitigen Wahler der NSOAP und
die Mitglieder der Sturmabteilungen", in Die Rate Falme, 1 November 1931,
in Weber, 01" cit., 155-57.
52. 'Thalmann and the "People's Revolucion" (14 April 1931) in Trotsky,
The Stmggle Against Fascism, op. cit., 34.
53. 'Against National Communism!' (Lessons of the 'Red Referendum'),
25 August 1931, in ibid, 61.
54. Ibid,63.
55. 'For a Workers' United Front. . ' in ibid, 101.
56. 'What Next?', in ibid, 148.
57. Ibid.
58. Even after Hitler came to power, the "PO persisted for a cime with
the theory of social fascism. See [nlematiollal Press Correspo,idence, 9 March
1933, containing the Resolution of the Presidium of the ECCI.
59. 'The German Catastrophe: The Responsibility of the Leadership' (28
May 1933) in Trotsky, 1°he Struggle Agaillst Fascism, 01'. cit., 401.
60. Ibid,402.
61. 'What Next?' in ibid, 116-17.
62. Ibid,123.
63. 'The Only Road', in ibid, 273.
Wistrich: Leoll Trotsky's Theory of Fascism 183

64. Ibid, 276.

65. 'The German Catastrophe', in ibid, 405.
66. 'The Only Road', in ibid, 258-59.
67. 'The Turn in the Communist International', in ibid, 12-13.
68. 'German Uonapartism' (30 October 1932) in, ibid, 325·31.
69. Ibid,327.
70. 'The Only Road', in ibid, 267.
71. Ibid,265.
72. Ibid,272.
73. Ibid, 281.
74. 'German Donapartism' in ibid, 325.
75. 'Defore the Decision' (5 February 1933), in ibid, 338-39.
76. Ibid,341.
77. 'Bonapartism and Fascism', in ibid, 452.
78. Ibid, 451. Sec also Trotsky, The Revo/zllion i11 Spai11 (New York 1930,
22.
79. Ibid,453.
80. Ibid, 456.
81. Ibid,458.
82. 'Bonapartisrn, Fascism, and War' (20 August 1940), in ibid, 468.
83. Ibid.
84. 'The Only Road', in 272·73.
85. 'Germany, the Key to the Intcrnational Situation', in ibid, 93.
86. Ibid,94.
87. 'What is National Socialism?', in ibid, 406-8.
88. 'What Next?', in ibid, 217.
89. Ibid. See also the detailed study by Max II. Kele, Nazis and \Yorkers.
National Socialist Appeals to GentIan Labor, 1919-1933 (University of North
Carolina Press, 1972).
90. 'The German Puzzlc' (August 1932), in Trotsky, The Struggle Against
Fascism, op. cit., 252.
91. 'What Next?', in ibid, 212.
92. See IYriti'1gS of Leon Trotsky 1938-39 (New York 1974),17-21,216-19,
232-34,350 re.
93. 'Hitler and Disarmament' (2 June 1933) in \Yritings of LeOl1 Trotsky
1932-33 (New York 1972),246.
94. Ibid,247-57.
95. 'What is National Socialism?', in Trotsky, Tbe StnLggle Against Fascism,
op. cit., 410·11.
96. Ibid,411-12.
97. Ibid, 412. For a detailed discussion of Trotksy's attitude to anti-semitism
see Robert S. Wistricli, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky (London
1976>,191-207.
98. 'What is National Socialism?', in Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism,
op. cit., 413.
99. In February 1933, Trotsky stilI referred to Hitler's millions of supporters
as 'human rUbbish', sec 'Uefore the Decision', in ibid, 341.
100. See Detlef IIorster, 'Widerstand des Proletariats in Deutschland' in
D. IIorster, M. Nikolinakos (cds.) 1st die Epocbe des FascbiSl1lUS bccndct?
184 jOllmal of COl/temporary History

(Frankfurt 1971), 234-46 and Ernst Mandel's introduction to The Stmggle

Against Fascism, '01'. cit., xix-xxxii. Both these accounts (especially that of
Mandel) seem to me excessively determinist and to exaggerate the importance
of economic over political factors in reviewing Trotsky's analysis of fascism.
101. 'A Contribution to Centrist Literature' (15 November 1938), IVritings
of Leon Trotsky 1938-39,01'. cit., 118.
102. 'Bonapartism, Fascism, and War', in Trotsky, The Struggle Agaillst
Fascism, 01'. cit., 467.
103. n,id,468.
104. Ibid.
105. Compare Togliatti's statement made in 1928 (and quoted by Trotsky,
ibid, 126) that fascism 'depends upon the systematic annihilation of each and
every form of the independent organizations of the masses.'
106. Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism, 01'. cit., 454-55. The classic
communist formulation can be found in G. Dimitrov, The lVorking Class Against
Fascism (London 1935 >, 10 - 'Fascism in power is the open terrorist dictatorship
of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of
finance capital.'
107. Ernst .\Iandel, 01'. cit. xxx (Introduction to Tbe Strllggle Against Fascism)
108. 'Austria's Turn Next' (23 March 1933), in lVritings of Leon Trotsky
1932-33, 01'. cit., lSI-56, 'What Must the Social Democratic Opposition no?'
(3 May 1933) in ibid, 226-28, 'Diplomatic and Parliamentary Cretinism' (13
June 1933) in ibid, 271.
109. Leon Trotsky, Tbe Class Nature of tbe Soviet State. The lVorkers'State
and tbe Questioll of Thermidor and llonapartism (London 1973), 7.
110. Leon Trotsky, Tbe Revolution Betrayed (London 1937),234-36.
111. See his letter to Maurice Dommanget, 'The Task of Revolutionary
Teachers' (10 August 1934) in IVritings of Leon Trotsky 1934-35 (New York
1971),67.
112. Trotsky's Diary ill Exile (Cambridge, Mass. 1958),199.
113. 'A Step Towards Social Patriotism. On the Position of the Fourth Inter-
national Against War and Fascism' (7 March 1939) in lVritings of l.eon Trotsky
1938-39,01'. cit., 207-13.
114. 'Phrases and Reality' (19 September 1938) in ibid, 20-21.
115. 'Fight Imperialism to Fight Fascism' (21 September 1938) in ibid,
26-27.
116. 'Bonapartism, Fascism, and War', in Trotsky, The Stmggle Against
Fascism, 01'. cit., 462.