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	Workers Vanguard No. 926	5 December 2008

Popular-Front Strategy Disarms Working Class in Fight Against Fascism

Workers Revolution Will Avenge the Victims of the Holocaust

Germany

We reprint below a September 12 leaflet distributed in Berlin at the “Day of Remembrance and Warning” event on September 14 and then published in Spartakist No. 174 (November 2008), publication of the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany, section of the International Communist League.

We Trotskyists honor with revolutionary heart the fighters against the Nazi regime: the Jewish-Communist Herbert Baum Group, which fought in the underground; the heroic supporters of the Soviet Union such as Richard Sorge, Ozaki Hotsumi and the members of Leopold Trepper’s “Red Orchestra,” who carried out intelligence work in enemy territory; the Trotskyists like Abram Leon, who fought in the underground against Nazi occupation; and the countless other Red Army men, partisans, the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as the Wehrmacht deserters who went over to the side of the Soviets. Their heroism means for us commitment to class struggle against capitalism and its fascist henchmen. But the popular-frontist politics of the Day of Remembrance and Warning of the Berlin Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime—League of Antifascists [VVN-BdA] are counterposed to this struggle.

In their call to “Open your eyes—Don’t look away!” they say in regard to German fascism: “Millions let themselves be brought into line; the majority of Germans looked on,” thereby shifting onto the shoulders of the working class the responsibility of the German bourgeoisie for the seizure of power by the Nazis and their most horrific crime, the Holocaust—the industrial murder of the European Jews and of Roma and Sinti [Gypsies]—as well as the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and the other peoples of East Europe. It was not the working class that bore responsibility for the victory of fascism. In the face of the radicalization stemming from the world economic crisis at the end of the ’20s, the Nazis put at the disposal of the ruling class 600,000 Nazi SA thugs with paramilitary training to terrorize the entire workers movement, atomize it and smash its organizations. The Nazi takeover of power was not an accident of history but a conscious decision of the ruling class to preserve its power and prevent a socialist revolution.

The many millions of German workers organized in the SPD [Social Democratic Party], KPD [Communist Party] and the trade unions wanted to fight Hitler’s seizure of power. They were shamefully betrayed by their leaderships. Due to their loyalty to the capitalist order, the SPD leadership was ultimately more afraid of setting the working class in motion against the fascists than of their own annihilation through Hitler’s seizure of power. First they supported [President] Hindenburg as a lesser evil, and when he handed over power to Hitler, they sought—in vain—to arrive at some sort of arrangement with the Nazis. The most conscious workers, those who identified with the Russian October Revolution of 1917, were led by the Communist International (Comintern) under Stalin and the Thälmann leadership of the KPD into capitulation without a struggle. This is why the Stalinists bear special responsibility for the defeat of 1933. Instead of forcing the SPD into a united front, they attacked the Social Democratic workers as “social fascists,” and declared, “After Hitler, us.”

Contrary to the lie of collective guilt, intended to chain the working class to its own bourgeoisie, Trotsky, in May 1933, named those responsible for the capitulation without a struggle: “The masses wanted to fight, but they were obstinately prevented from doing so by the leaders.... 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. The inevitable demoralization of the Communist detachment, increasingly isolated from the proletariat, rendered impossible even a partial resistance. Thus the triumphal procession of Hitler over the bones of the proletarian organizations was assured” [“The German Catastrophe: The Responsibility of the Leadership”].

The betrayal of 1933 was followed by the no less treacherous turn of the Comintern to the popular front, which subordinated the working class to an illusory “democratic” wing of the bourgeoisie in the name of the fight against fascism. Numerous revolutions were led to defeat in this way. In Spain, the popular front defeated the workers revolution that began in 1936, paving the way to power for Franco’s fascists. It is precisely these popular-frontist politics that dominate the call for the Day of Remembrance and Warning. The very first sentence of the call sounds like a hymn of praise to bourgeois democracy: “Seventy-five years ago the Nazis, together with conservative elites and supported by big industry, paralyzed Weimar democracy within a few weeks.” Both the capitalist Weimar Republic and Nazi rule represented the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. For the ruling class, the question was maintaining their rule. The foundation of the “Weimar democracy” praised by the VVN was the drowning in blood of the workers revolution of 1918-19 by the Freikorps, which was commanded by the Social Democrats Noske and Ebert and from which the Nazi organization arose. Along with tens of thousands of revolutionary workers, almost the entire leadership of the young KPD was murdered. Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches and Eugen Leviné were victims of this counterrevolutionary terror.

No wonder that the bourgeois Greens support the call; together with the SPD they sent Bundeswehr troops to the Balkans [in 1999]—in the name of “antifascism”—for the first time since the Second World War. In the name of bourgeois democracy, the supporters of the call are assisting the bourgeoisie with ideological rearmament for their next battle to redivide the world. For the leaderships of the Stalinists and social democrats, the collective guilt lie that “the majority of Germans looked on” also serves to deny their own responsibility for the Nazis’ ability to come to power without a fight.

The call appeals to the bourgeois state: “Nazi-type organizations must be banned.” This is a dangerous illusion. The fascists are the reserve army of the bourgeoisie. It is this racist, capitalist state that pulls the strings of the Nazis, not only via its agents in the leadership bodies of the NPD and other such organizations, but also via its own racist campaigns that serve as marching orders for the fascists. The campaign to eliminate the right of asylum at the beginning of the ’90s led to the pogroms of Rostock and Hoyerswerda, and Roland Koch’s campaign against youths of immigrant background this spring led to an increase in racist terror, such as the incendiary attack in Dautphetal.

Calls for bans are always utilized by the bourgeoisie and its state to launch attacks on the entire workers movement, immigrants and the left. Laws “against extremism” are always used against the left and the workers movement. Thus in 1993, when court proceedings to ban the fascist FAP were formally initiated, this was simply a cover for banning the PKK and 35 other Kurdish associations. Instead of directing powerless appeals to the bourgeois state, we Trotskyists fight for worker/immigrant mobilizations to stop the Nazis! This is in the tradition of the struggle by Trotsky’s Left Opposition for a proletarian united front against Hitler’s seizure of power in the early ’30s. Ultimately, capitalism—which breeds and hatches the Nazis—must be overthrown by workers revolution.

Nazi terror today is a result of capitalist counterrevolution in the DDR [East Germany]. There is not a word about this in the call. As early as 1989-90, we warned that capitalist counterrevolution would bring with it an increase in racism, women’s oppression, unemployment and Nazi terror. The counterrevolution was wind in the Nazis’ sails. The Stalinists bear responsibility for this tremendous defeat: Gorbachev gave the green light for the annexation (Anschluss) of the DDR by West German capitalism. The SED-PDS [ruling Stalinist party] tops acquiesced in this betrayal, became the PDS [Party of Democratic Socialism], and made counterrevolutionary reunification their own cause.

Against imperialism and internal counterrevolution, we Trotskyists stood for unconditional military defense of the deformed workers states of East Europe and of the Soviet degenerated workers state, down to the last barricade. It was on this basis that we fought in the DDR in 1989-90 against capitalist reunification and for a red Germany of workers councils through proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy in the East and through socialist revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie in the West. Only in this way could the breeding ground for the fascists have been finally eliminated in Germany. Today we defend the remaining deformed workers states of China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam.

Drawing the correct lessons from history is today more pressing than ever. The politics of the VVN-BdA organizers of the Day of Remembrance and Warning, as expressed in the call, draw the wrong lessons from the rise of the Nazis and the struggle against these murderous scum; these politics are an obstacle to the necessary proletarian struggle against fascism and against capitalism, which breeds it. Capitalism must be swept away by workers revolution. To do this we need to build a multiethnic revolutionary workers party, as part of the reforged Fourth International, which opposes every form of exploitation and oppression.