Is Trump a Fascist?

Editorial Board

Discussions on fascism must first be based in a historical understanding of what it is, how it emerges, and its purpose, as well as the revolutionary response to it.

Fascism—what it is and what it is not

There are good, observable reasons why the regenerating mass movement is primed to label Trump and his cronies as fascist: blaming everything on fictitious enemies, the disregard for the legal system resulting in capricious and arbitrary rule of an armed gang in service to the most vicious imperialists, the withering away of democratic rights or outright abolition of them, the naked and gross subservience to the cult of the corporation, and of course reactionary white terror on a large scale.

The problem is that none of these things are unique to Donald Trump or his service to US imperialism. In fact, the trend of things becoming more reactionary is an inevitable part of the process of the decomposition of imperialism; it is a response to its crisis and its desperate life-saving measure. Power to the executive and presidential absolution increased under the previous, supposedly non-fascist government as well, and it has all gotten more extreme under Trump since his last go around as the butcher-in-chief. The democratic rights of the people have always been restricted and stomped upon, but not to the degree of the fascist system of government. We observe the fact that the US ruling class is still currently able to maintain their rule over the masses by the old method of bourgeois democracy, no matter how farcical it is and has always been; simply put, the ruling class even in the extreme crisis we currently observe does not need fascism.

In its International Line, the Communist Party of Peru writes about the US’s political and economic system like this: “The U.S. has an economy centered on non-state monopoly of property; politically, it develops a bourgeois democracy with a growing restriction of rights. It is a reactionary liberalism; militarily, it is the most powerful in the west and has a longer process of development [than the social-imperialist USSR].” Of course we would note that since the fall of the social-imperialist USSR, the US is the world’s sole-hegemonic imperialist superpower.

The basic departure point for understanding fascism vs reactionization of imperialism is the definition raised by comrade George Dimitrov at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International: Fascism is “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” This definition is still true today, but incomplete—one must have with it an understanding of the modern bourgeois state and its resulting crisis of democracy.

Comrade Dimitrov continues: “Fascism is not a form of state power ‘standing above both classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,’…. It is not ‘the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state,’…. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.”

From this we can gather that fascism tends to emerge to prevent the real or imagined threat of revolution, to counter the combativeness and organization of the masses, none of which are at a fever pitch in the US currently owing to the uneven development of the world revolutionary situation.

It must be noted that this definition has served our communist fighters who defeated fascism in World War II: our comrades of the Soviet Red Army, the People’s Liberation Army of China, and the countless Partisan formations; it was these forces who made the greatest sacrifice to stop fascism, under the careful and correct guidance of comrade Stalin, whose name and honor as a Great Leader of communism we will always defend.

Chairman Mao Zedong expressed the problem of the bourgeois state in “On New Democracy”, where he explains: “As for the question of ‘the system of government’, this is a matter of how political power is organized, the form in which one social class or another chooses to arrange its apparatus of political power to oppose its enemies and protect itself. There is no state which does not have an appropriate apparatus of political power to represent it.”

The bourgeois state acts as the armed administrative wing of the bourgeoisie and this fact does not change whether democratic or fascist; the state uses terror, unbridled terror for fascism and terror with a democratic facade which offers certain restraint and formal rights for those who can afford them. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is always reliant on reactionary white terror, but it seeks, like social democracy and the bourgeois trade unions, to be a mediator in the class conflict erupting between the owners of industry and finance on one hand and labor on the other, and nonetheless in the interests of the capitalists. With fascism, the state loses all semblance of mediation.

With the emergence of fascism from bourgeois democracy, political power does not change hands—merely the system of government is changed. As a result, fascism is slippery in its ever-changing ideology; it can present itself as constitutional defenders, or opposition to constitutions. What has to be examined is the organization of the apparatus of political power the imperialist ruling class utilizes today.

Chairman Gonzalo delineates fascism as follows:

“For us fascism is the negation of liberal-democratic principles, the negation of the bourgeois-democratic principles which were born and developed in the eighteenth century in France. These principles are being abandoned by reactionaries, by the bourgeoisie world-wide. So it was that the First World War that made us see the crisis of the bourgeois democratic order, that’s why later fascism emerged. […] We see fascism also on the ideological plane as an eclectic system without a defined philosophy. It is a philosophical position made up of fragments chosen from here and there according to what’s most useful. […] We understand corporativism as the setting up of the state based on corporations, which implies the negation of parliamentarism. This is an essential point […] What do they want? They want the formation of corporations, that is to organize the producers and all members of society along corporativist lines. Let’s assume that the small factory producers, the agricultural producers, merchants, professionals, students, the Church, the Armed Forces, and the Police Forces all name their delegates and, in this way form a corporative system. […] With regard to identifying fascism with terror, with repression, we think that this is a mistake. What’s involved is the following: if one remembers Marxism, the State is organized violence, that is the classic definition. All states use violence because they are dictatorships. How else would they assert themselves to oppress and exploit? They couldn’t do it. Consequently what happens is that fascism develops a broader, more refined, more sinister violence. But to identify fascism as being the same as violence is a crass error. […] We must understand that fascism means a more refined violence, and the development of terrorism, yes, but that is not the totality of it but a component, it is fascism’s means of unfolding reactionary violence.”

While fascism emerges in both imperialist and Third World countries, the fascism in the latter is on the basis of the dictatorships of foreign finance capital managed by the lackeys of imperialism.

Previous Examples of Fascism in Imperialist Countries

To better understand the above let us take four examples, in chronological order, of imperialist countries reorganized as fascist: Japan from the Meiji Restoration through the Showa Era, Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, and the USSR between 1956 and 1991.

Japanese Fascism

To begin our examination of how fascism in the imperialist countries develops, we must look at the first emergence of fascism, its essential emergence in Japan before the formal fascism of Italy. This is very important because what is essentially fascist often conceals its form, and in rare instances there are even fascist forms which are not really fascist in essence. To understand this process in Japan, the real homeland of fascism, we encourage studying the role of US colonialism in Japan, and how this helped bring about the Meiji Restoration; it is in this period following 1868 that fascism really takes shape. Japan’s industrialization through imperial control and its forcing of monopolies under state control were unique in the historical development of capitalism which led it to develop imperialism rapidly.

The ideological backbone of the Meiji Restoration was that Japan was a divine country, that its emperor was God, that God was human, that all humans were equal before him, and that God is the only ruler of the people. The Meiji Restoration was Japan’s capitalist revolution. Capitalism developed in Japan along the lines of worshiping the God emperor; after the Sino-Japanese War (1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1905) Japan became imperialist.

The particular development of Japanese capitalism and its quick development into imperialism provided the conditions for fascism. The military was seen as the only “pure” organization with loyalty to the Emperor, and the military itself favored direct state control over the economy. Heavy state planning and extensive social-welfare programs were intended to both bloat military spending and stave off the threats posed by socialism and the popularity of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Japan’s corporativist model predates the Italian fascist model which would come later. Indeed, Japan was already on fascist footing by the time its Communist Party was constituted; history proves the imperialists in Japan anticipated the threat posed by the CP.

Militarist fascism in Japan came to full fruition in the early 1920s. Japan’s imperialists were threatened by the rise of Communism and its condition as an industrial island caused panic about the loss of its colonial possessions. There was also major labor unrest on the island itself; in order to preserve and expand Japanese colonialism, put down labor unrest, and overcome the economic crisis, the military under the right-wing emperor and the central bank owned by the imperial family abolished the constitutional monarchy and parliament. Externally, they began a war of conquest using Manchuria as the platform.

According to Keiko Hiraoka, Chairman of the Japanese People’s Front: “The military and Japanese warlords all carried out fascist policies by order of the Emperor. In other words, they carried out their policies by ‘playing with the enemy.’ For this reason, it is called Japanese Militarist Fascism.”

Italian Fascism

Italian fascism is useful to consider because it is where the term comes from; according to bourgeois historians, this is where fascism arises for the first time, though this is not correct—the common mistake they make is considering fascism an ideology first and foremost rather than a system of government. Fascism is always ideologically eclectic. Italian fascism was simply the first instance of formal fascism, but its essence already existed in Japan. The ideological eclecticism of fascism is well indicated in that, by 1940, Mussolini would order “his” Doctrine of Fascism to be rounded up and destroyed. According to him, he had simply changed his mind about some of its positions.

Fascism as fascism, that is formal fascism, presented itself as a negation of both liberalism (individualism) and socialism, viewing the former—especially the democratic and progressive aspects of classical liberalism—as weak, and viewing socialism (communism) as the main danger to their reactionary nationalism. Thus it framed itself as simultaneously revolutionary and anti-communist—counter-revolutionary in the extreme.

Fascism sought to force collaboration between the industrialists, workers, and the state in order to suffocate the class struggle in the interests of the big monopolies and finance capitalism. In order to accomplish industrial might, the Italian fascists invested heavily into welfare and public works. This was understood as a necessary measure to combat the demand for actual socialism. With the economic crises affecting Italy in the first half of the 1920s, by 1925 the fascist state would secure its domination over the economy. Fascism here begins to make leaps in the organizing of the state and society along corporate lines.

First the labor unions were brought under state ownership, bolstering fascist trade unions which would later also integrate. Membership in the state-owned fascist union was compulsory for all workers. While the state preserved sole mediating rights, in this arrangement the monopolists, increasingly integrated into the corporativist state, really had the final say. The forced monopolization under Italian fascism proceeded through the state cartels. State control over monopolies was common, however direct nationalization was less so. This would soon change by 1934, when the fascists claimed that the state owned and controlled over ¾ of industry. By 1939 the Italian state owned more of the economy than any other capitalist country in the world.

German Fascism

Corporativism under Hitler was not pre-armed with state monopoly capitalism, but developed it through point 13 and 14 of the Nazi Party program: “We demand nationalization of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).” And “We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.” In point 24 it says “a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: THE COMMON INTEREST OVER INDIVIDUAL INTEREST”. To initiate this process, the Nazi fascists implemented sweeping privatizations of existing state-owned monopoly capitalism to force mergers in the interests of the reorganized fascist apparatus, but the ruling class of Germany did not change and the state itself did not change hands.

Hitler’s government undertook massive public spending, severe austerity, and slave labor, and the state intervention in the economy led to its ultimate instability and dependence on military spending. By forcing corporate mergers and providing favorable contracts, the Nazis secured the support of the German monopolists—more often than not party members themselves. Of course, labor unions were crushed and fascist unions in the grip of the state replaced them. Everything became oriented toward military spending and rearmament.

In 1933 the German Labor Front (DAF)—which was part of and subordinate to the Nazi regime—began the process of becoming the only “union” by seizing the assets of all the unions crushed by the state. Almost right away collective bargaining would be banned and those appointed by Hitler in the DAF would be tasked with maintaining labor peace, increasing the rate of exploitation and driving up production.

Just like within labor, the monopolists, educators, artists, and clergy loyal to fascism would converge in government.

Soviet Social-Imperialist Fascism

Chairman Mao indicated that following the death of Comrade Stalin and the military coup carried out by Nikita Khrushchev, capitalism had been restored and the former socialist country had become socialist in name only and imperialist in reality. In 1964 he stated to the leaders of China’s state planning that: “The Soviet Union today is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a fascist German dictatorship, and a Hitlerite dictatorship. They are a bunch of rascals worse than De Gaulle.”

His instruction to the intellectuals was that they had to covey this in their theoretical work; it was not hyperbole, sensationalism or exaggeration. So what did he mean by “worse than De Gaulle”? Charles De Gaulle of France, borrowing in part from Bonapartist tradition (not dissimilar to the US), carried out the reorganization of the bourgeois democratic state on the basis of presidential absolutism, an ultra-reactionary response to the threat posed by the sea of armed masses, once led in part by the Communist Party of France, which had by that time sunk into revisionism. While De Gaullism negated balance between executive and legislative branches in favor of the executive (title V of the 49^th French Constitution), the Soviet social-imperialists had near total state ownership. When the state was transformed from a proletarian state to a bourgeois state, it began to more closely resemble Hitler’s Germany than De Gaulle’s France.

The expression of corporativism of Germany re-emerges in the Soviet Union. Under Khrushchev and those who would come after, the labor unions went under the control of the fascist state, becoming fully subservient to it, transforming from apparatuses of proletarian democracy serving socialism into apparatuses to facilitate brutal exploitation engorging the new imperialist bourgeoisie. This is why the PCP in its International Line confirms, “The USSR is economically based on a state monopoly, with a politically fascist dictatorship of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and is a top-level military power although its process of development is shorter [than that of the USA]”.

Dangers of Mistaking Reactionization for Fascism

Trump’s administration is ultra-reactionary and the most naked expression of the reactionization of the old-state inherent in the decomposition of US imperialism—it springs from its rotten entrails. It is evidence of US imperialism’s frantic desperation to maintain its hegemony over the world, but it is not fascist because it does not seek to establish the corporativization of society through the re-organization of the apparatus of government on a corporate basis. Trump’s policies do not reflect the development of fascism in any imperialist country: there are no massive public works, there is no extensive welfare, no threat of socialism making these necessary, and, importantly, they do not represent the agenda of dramatically increasing state ownership of the economy and means of production.

In the US the vast majority of industry belongs to the private sector, to which the state is in service; the state does not plan or command the economy, nor does it own a considerable portion of it. The sections which the state owns are often limited to infrastructure, public services, and a few utilities, which are all coming under threat of privatization. This is what the Republican gang hopes to wield the state bureaucracy to accomplish. It is the typical form of demo-liberal bourgeois government only in rapid decomposition, a naked and unstable reactionization—a process which, corresponding to the economic base of US society, spreads throughout the entirety of society, but exists independently of Trump’s will.

The same process is evident among the rival imperialist mafia as well; their tone and superficial talking points only intend to conceal it. This is a condition which has made the fight for control of the bureaucracy one of increasing bitterness and intensity, with increased hostility and threats, driving the ruling class desperately to try to drag the masses into an increasingly absurd electoral farce.

When used as a label to conceal the process which is unfolding independently and in both parties, fascism is a mistaken diagnosis which first diminishes what fascism is. This label rejects history by way of false comparison, and in so doing disarms the people in the fight against the ruling class and its increasingly reactionary state, pivoting them only against this or that administration and almost always with a course back toward electoralism, into acts of voting for an equally reactionary force representing the same essential process.

The revisionists, like the Democrats, raise the slogan of “Trump’s fascism” to essentially “save US democracy”. On one hand, there must be a fight to conquer and defend democratic rights, preserving all the people’s conquests, but on the other hand this operates on an illusion that the type of rotten bourgeois democracy in the US is not reactionary and in the interests of imperialism. Underneath it all is a grand trafficking in the people’s struggles, which helps the Democratic mafia re-establish its mass base; it seeks to use the people for its own ends and offers no emancipation. It becomes clear enough if one examines any of the popular protests under their influence against Trump or Musk, which are often adorned with the imperialist flag and guided by reactionary, jingoist, and chauvinist slogans, backing specific programs of US imperialism such USAID or inter-imperialist rivalry with Russia.

The Democratic mafia raises the specter of fascism to scare people into supporting their plummet along the same trajectory as those they deem fascist. The recent election proved this: after calling Trump a fascist, Harris called for a peaceful inauguration for Trump and peaceful transition into what she just called fascist. Once this was accomplished, the Democrats began milking the protest movement. Here fascism is rhetorical flourish to insult one’s enemy and impassion one’s desired base.

The goal of socialists is not to save the decomposing reactionary bourgeois democracy, but to prove to the masses that there cannot exist a workers’ democracy so long as finance capital exercises its dictatorship; to teach the people that as long as it does, the rejection of democratic rights, the concentration of power around the president, and unbridled white terror will continue to develop. This means necessarily combating and resisting the root cause and not this or that manifestation of it.

Just as it was in the 1940s, the revisionists use fascism as an excuse to tie the American worker to the tail of the imperialist ruling class in order to broker “social peace” and get more crumbs to bloat their already flabby bureaucracies. These deals made by revisionists are deals with the devil. This is a fact one can see with their own election failures, their hemorrhaging of membership and lack of influence among society. Revisionism here meets its objective insofar as it disarms and disorients the class.

On the other hand, there are those who claim that the US has always been a fascist country. While this ultra-left deviation contains a correct aspect of anti-electoralism, its incorrect assessment of fascism serves to facilitate the development of fascism. If state terror is equated with fascism, then every state in history can be deemed a fascist state; the term loses all meaning, leaving such forces unable to identify fascism when it does arise and therefore unprepared to deal with it. Rather than a dialectical materialist assessment that understands the development of fascism under certain historical conditions, the ahistorical perspective that everything reactionary is fascist disregards contradictions among the enemy, puts the masses in the enemy camp, and gives rise to hysteria and pessimism.

This viewpoint typically comes from anarchist and postmodern conceptions of the state and power, which sees organized power and hierarchy to be the problem, thus labeling the state as inherently fascist. It makes no distinction between the revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie and its degeneration, or between the bourgeois state and the proletarian state. Similarly to fascism, postmodernism negates the progressives aspects of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism during the revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie. Also like fascism, the natural conclusion to this is extreme subjectivism, irrationalism, and anti-communism.

Taken to its logical conclusion, such a viewpoint opposes organization, centralization, collective discipline, and the strategic conquest of power by the proletariat. It promotes alliances on superficial criteria while alienating the masses; it makes a mockery of the Left and pushes workers away. Meanwhile, actual fascists as well as the bourgeois parties take advantage of this to pursue their witch hunts against the Left and carry out their reactionary mass work among the working class, opening them up to demagoguery and reactionary populism.

Many honest people fall into the rhetoric of the combined forces of revisionism, the Democratic mafia, and the anarchists because there are enough similarities in appearance with fascism. It is therefore the responsibility of serious Marxists not to tail behind, but to act as historical materialists, insisting that the process of reactionization will only get worse as long as the ruling class remains the monopolists and financiers. The Worker insists that the best weapon of our class is organization, and the fighters our class has generated must come to the mature realization that our principle task is to reconstitute the Communist Party, which can generate the necessary fighting organizations around itself in the difficult but glorious struggle to conquer power.

Image: Donald Trump at a Turning Point Action conference in 2023, Gage Skidmore, Flickr

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: