In his ‘Firm in Principle’ article in WW 703 Benjamin Klein seeks to defend his (and the CPGB’s) position that no platforming fascists whenever possible is not always correct. This position says we should seek to destroy the fascists’ arguments in democratic debate just as the communists did in Germany in the early 20s. Let us first say that it is of course wrong to demand that the state bans the fascists, though we would not rush to their defence if it did. We would oppose legislation to take away civil rights to free speech etc. for the good reason that we know that it would be used almost exclusively against the left. Historical experience has shown this to be correct. So it is not the fascists rights we defend against repressive legislation but our own and those of the organised working class.

Comrade Benjamin can only cite one instance in defence of his debate the fascists position; ‘in the early 1920s the Communist Party of Germany actually organised debates with German fascist groups, including the Nazis, attracting large numbers. This tactic led to an increase in influence for the communists, to the recruitment of many who were impressed not only by its power to mobilise, but by their arguments. And, believe it or not, members of the far right would themselves be won over’.

Aside from the fact that it is impossible to prove that even short term this tactic worked it legitimises what was one of the worst errors of the early Comintern. In a speech delivered on 21 June 1923 to the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International Karl Radek sought to conciliate the fascists on the grossly opportunist grounds that both Communists and Fascists were opposed to the Entente and the fascist Leo Albert Schlageter, who was executed by the French in April for opposing the occupation of the Ruhr, was really a hero who ‘sought to serve the German people’.

The editors of Labour Monthly, (Vol. 5 No 3 September 1923), in reprinting Radek’s speech say “Radek, on behalf of the Communist International sent forth this message into the heart of the Fascist camp – a message of sympathy and comprehension for the ideals and heroism of the Nationalist struggle, inspiring the followers of Fascism among the masses, but relentlessly exposing the double dealing anti-nationalism and subservience to Big Business and the Entente on the part of their leaders and showing that the only way for the realisation of their hopes and ideals and the freedom of the German nation lay through the proletarian revolution”. This was surely the wrong united front; it was neither anti-imperialist nor anti capitalist. Surely the allies needed by the communists were the workers who supported the SPD, this was the united front called for in the circumstances. What were these older, more conservative but highly organised class conscious workers to think of this speech? It could only be seen as a pact against them, particularly as their leaders Ebert and Noske had recently crushed the communist revolution in1919 and then successfully called them out on a general strike to defeat the fascist Kapp Putch counter revolution of 1920.

Is that really the example we want to follow? This is some of what Radek had to say, “If those German Fascist, who honestly thought to serve the German people, failed to understand the significance of Schlageter’s fate, Schlageter died in vain... against whom did the German people wish to fight: against the Entente capitalists or against the Russian people? With whom did they wish to ally themselves: with the Russian workers and peasants in order to throw off the yoke of Entente capital for the enslavement of the German and Russian peoples? … His comrades in arms swore at his graveside to carry on his fight. They must supply the answer: against whom and on whose side?”

They were to ‘throw off the yoke of Entente capital’ but Radek certainly was not asking fascists, the stormtroopers of finance capital, to overthrow German capital. That would be plainly silly. Anyone could supply the answer with the benefit of hindsight but the Comintern really should have had a bit more foresight. Trotsky’s fight against Stalin’s failure to understand fascism was severely undermined by his own history on this; Lenin was already bedridden. The Stalin-Hitler pact does not seem so strange when we look at Radek’s speech. The German Stalinist’s mistakes in advocating ‘after the Nazis us’ even after Hitler had taken power and was preparing the concentration camps is understandable if we look at this history. It is clear that comrades even today do not understand fascism and entertain ridiculous libertarian notions like trying to recruit some of them by democratic debate. Forget it comrades, do not give the fascist space to live and breath while we still can before they control the state and give us no space to live and breath.

Comradely Gerry Downing