“believe. More and more, recently, the word fascist has…”

believe. More and more, recently, the word fascist has been hurled at a wide range of reactionaries North and South, from Cosgrave to Craig, but this has especially found its focus in the paramilitary, loyalist groups; the UVF and UDA. _ Obviously the nature of organisations which ~ eontrol so much of the Protestant working class is an important question for Irish revolutionaries. But is the UDA fascist, and if not, what does it represent, what is its ideology? Before we consider these questions, though, we need to have a clear idea of what in fact fascism Be A MARXIST ANSWER The term fascist has certainly been used to — -describe a bewildering range of states and individuals, from the racist George Wallace to the colonels’ regime in Greece. But what resemblance do these bear to the phenomenon that was successful in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy in the 1930's?

Very often, each description or use of the term has a grain of truth in it. But they all tend to.fall down, as an adequate definition, because they hit on only one aspect as the central characteristic of fascism and then mechanically apply that to all situations. For instance: ‘Wallace uses racial chauvinism and extreme nationalism — so did Hitler — Wallace must be a fascist. There is a strong secret police in South Africa — there was in Nazi Germany —. South Africa must be a fascist state.’ However fascism, for Marxists, like any other social form, has to be seen as a whole. Just picking on one or two of its outward features isn’t going to give any insight into the key questions of its class nature, which class it benefits, and its historic role.

Trotsky in the 1930's made a thorough analysis of German National Socialism (see Trotsky: The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany ). He was, in fact, the only Marxist of the time to realise the full dangers posed by fascism, and to advocate tactics which would smash it. From this emerge a few basic points.

First, although the seeds of fascism exist in any bourgeois state, a fascist movement only = stands a chance when that state is in grave crisis. It is in fact a last ditch attempt of the capitalist class to radically change the balance of forces in production in their favour. The bourgeoisie will only resort to the drastic . measure of civil war, with all the social upUDA military-style funeral in Armagh.

The Plough June 1973 Page 4 heaval and risks it entails, if the conditions no longer allow them to make sufficient profits under the ‘usual’ norms of law, order and bourgeois democracy.

PROLETARIAT There is only one way to achieve this, and here lies the vital difference between the racist or ~ strong states and fascism: the proletariat must . be decisively defeated, atomised and declassed This does not:mean merely smashing the most advanced layers of the class, the vanguard and extreme left, although of course that will hapSir Edward Carson in action. class organisations, trade unions, and social democratic parties, so that the class is reduced to an amorphous mass and kept there by a deep rooted bureaucracy. As Trotsky pointed out; having taken the risk of unleashing civil war, the bourgeoisie demands‘a thorough job. _ But how can the bourgeoisie, a relatively small section of the population, achieve such a systematic destruction of the class identity of millions of workers. Of course, by themselves, the bourgeoisie are hardly adequate to the task. A mass movement is needed to do the ~ anti-working class. against the capitalists. workers.

Fascism in Germany: work — one that is sufficiently dissatisfied to resort to violence, but also anti-communist and Here emerges the third important factor, the petit-bourgeoisiec. In the ‘death-agony’ of capitalism, the petit-bourgeoisie will naturally suffer. They are driven to despair by rising inflation, which leaves liquid assets valueless and hits small inefficient units of production first; by‘ the failure of bourgeois democracy; and by high unemployment, which affects professional sectors as well as the proletariat. The time is ripe for a mass movement and they are easily persuaded that their woes can be traced to the activities of'the working class. Easily persuaded, that is, unless revolutionaries have used the crisis to show these layers that their interests lie with the working class and This is the barbarism Marx posed as the alternative to revolutionary socialism in the era of decaying capitalism. Terror gangs roaming the streets, a secret police with its roots deep in It is precisely because the consequences of fascism are so grave for the working class, that revolutionaries must not cry ‘wolf.’ As Mandel ‘says in his introduction to The Struggle Against *To declare the first skirmishes to be the decisive battle‘and to give the impression that fascism (whether ‘creeping’ or ‘open’) . is identical with the rather ineffective CRS in Paris or the West Berlin police thugs (read RUC?), is to dull the masses’ awareness of ‘the truly horrible danger that a fascism armed with today’s far more advanced .

technology would represent, It is to make the same fatal error that the KPD (German Communist Party in the 1930’s) _ imperialism.

leaders made from'1930-1933, when they characterised Bruening, Papen, Schleicher and Hugenberg as the incarnation of fascism, which in turn led the workers to approach.

conclude that the monster wan’t nearly as bad as it was made out to be.’ tRELAND 1973?

Ever since the formation of the Ulster Volunteers under Carson, large numbers of the Protestant working class have been mobilised, ” or organised in support of British Imperialism, under the leadership of right-wing de magogues. Fhey have drilled in para-military style, and have carried out pogroms against the Catholic working class. Many of the elements of these reactionary mass‘movements have been characteristic elements of fascism, but they differ on all occasions in one important respect from fascism. Whereas the most important single fact about a fascist organisation is that it aims to smash all working class organisations, the dynamic of the reactionary Protestant organisations has been to-maintain a position of ascendancy and to support British Imperialism, in so far as it in turn supported a ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.’ To this end they have attempted to smash the democratic movements of the Catholic working class; they have formed one side of the classic racist situation of competition for jobs and houses. Racism is often an element of .fascism, and fascist ideologues have attempted A major problem in advancing the struggle for socialism in Ireland consists in understanding how the Cathohc'and Protestant workers can tz united in a common fight see British Virtually all sections of the Irish Left are conscious of this problem. Yet very little progress has been made in posing an amswer to it. The usual attitude is characterised by a belief that some form of organic unity already exists and the task of socialists is merely to make both sides conscious of this unity.

The great danger of such an approach is that it leads to a schematic political perspective for the . current struggle. One need only think of the utopian fantasising of some of the Left, which sees in the rise of the UDA and LAW an inde- ~ pendent awakenirig of the Protestant workers. Needless to say the same people see in the rise of the IRA and the republican movement a smothering of the initiative of the Catholic workers. This glaring contradiction in the Left’s position emphasises the unscientific basis of its CONSISTENT A much more consistent schematism is represented by the Officials. Their belief in the essential organic unity of the Catholic and Protestant workers leads them to arbitrarily divide the struggle into three distinct and separate stages. While they do not imagine that itis yet possible to unite both sides in a joint battle against imperialism and, for socialism, they claim in their Freedom Manifesto that there is sufficient unity to allow a common _. campaign for basic democratic rights. Accor- _ dingly they dogmatically separate the struggle for democracy from the struggle for unification, independence and socialism.

Because of this schematic plan, the Officials have been unable to grapple with the reality of the situation in the Six Counties. They have persistently failed to acknowledge, never mind explain, the hostile and bitter reaction of-the Protestant workers to even the minimal demand of the Catholic community for normal democratic rights. Rather than deal with the weaknesses of their analysis they have sought to cover them up, by laying the responsibility for the Protestant reaction at the feet of the Provos. However it is an historical fact that -the Provos came into existence precisely because of this reaction. The foolhardy accusations of ‘agents of imperialism’ etc. hurled ~ against the Provos. have served only to increase _the isolation of the Officials.

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Fascism is stalking the streets of Belfast, or so the papers of a few left groups would have us

pen. But it is also a a of all working =

the community and the bourgeoisie able to impose any conditions it requires on to the