The 100,000 far-right march in London last Saturday made evident what we have always known: fascism is not a marginal threat, nor an aberration of democracy. It grows directly out of capitalism and is tolerated and even cultivated by the same ruling class and state institutions that claim to defend order. To treat it as a sudden provocation is to deny its roots: fascism is one of capitalism’s weapons, used to divide the working class, scapegoat migrants, and defend the privileges of the few.
The Labour Party demonstrates this dynamic in its clearest form. Behind its veneer of progressive politics, it actively reproduces the logic of the far right. By scapegoating migrants, promising stricter border enforcement, and endorsing deportations, it reinforces the divisions capitalism depends on. Labour does not merely fail to oppose fascism but it directly strengthens it. In repeating the rhetoric of the ruling class and the reactionaries, it ensures that the social base of fascism is fed, while presenting itself as the supposed defender of democracy.
Meanwhile, the so-called “Left” continues the strategy that has shackled the workers’ movement since the 7th Comintern World Congress. It assumes fascism can be contained through alliances within parliamentary democracy and reforms under capitalism. A strategy that cannot lead anywhere but into the clutches of social democracy, in this case the Labour Party, the same force that is responsible for the fascist success.
So many times history has proved this strategy wrong. In France, Spain, Chile and more countries over and over again, in the moments of crisis social democracy claimed to defend democracy against fascism, but in reality it defended capitalism itself, preparing the ground for fascist rise. Those who defend the institutions of bourgeois democracy, instead of fighting for their overthrow, inevitably act as a shield for the capitalist system, creating the conditions in which reaction and fascism flourish.
The situation in Britain today confirms this reality. The working class faces intensified exploitation, while the established parties and leftist opportunist organisations converge in preserving the rule of capital, in some cases unleashing the weapon of fascist forces. Workers’ anger against the system, in itself a very progressive force, is thus misdirected.
Some people are drawn into the ranks of the far right, embodied today in Britain by figures such as Nigel Farage, whose career has been built on scapegoating migrants and whipping up nationalist resentment, or Tommy Robinson, who has openly incited hatred under the banner of defending “British values”.
But their appalling politics are not isolated aberrations but expressions of the same logic promoted by Labour and the Conservatives alike. Media platforms and sections of the state grant them visibility and legitimacy, ensuring that their rhetoric of fear and division paves the way for the next wave of reaction.
Other people, also horrified by such appalling developments, are drawn into illusions of reform, joining either social-democratic currents such as the new Corbyn-Sultana initiative, or mass campaigns like Black Lives Matter or Stand Up to Racism. Despite their commitment, these forces cannot but remain impotent in the fight against fascism, because they treat it as a discrete evil to be opposed within the framework of capitalism rather than as one of its instruments. By failing to confront the capitalist system itself, and seeking only to mildly or radically reform it, they cannot uproot fascism but merely cut back its latest growth, which will inevitably return.
This strategy, in turn, leads back into the orbit of the Labour Party – mistakenly seen as a last bastion against fascism, when in fact it is its first harbingers – thereby diffusing radical energy and redirecting it into the very structures that prepare the ground for reaction.
The far-right march itself revealed the destructive consequences of dividing the working class into “progressive” and “regressive” camps. Such a framework only serves capital, which thrives when workers are pitted against each other instead of united against the bourgeoisie. It is not a question of one “section” of the class being enlightened while another is backward, but of the whole class being systematically misled and fragmented by the mechanisms of bourgeois rule. The very language of “left” and “right” blurs the decisive line of division between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
To break the hold of fascism and opportunism alike, we must reject these false categories and root unity in the material, organisational, and ideological basis of class struggle. Only by organising workers of all backgrounds into a united front from below on the basis of their shared objective interests can the class overcome the divisions deliberately sown by capital and confront its real enemy.
Whether this is done with the hate-filled rhetoric of the reactionaries or the polite, social-democratic language of “democracy” makes no difference: both leave the class foundations of fascism intact, and therefore both clear the way for its renewed growth whenever capital requires it.
The only way forward is the construction of a revolutionary communist party that cuts all ties with social-democratic forces, gives political form to the anger of the exploited and directs the struggle not against scapegoats but against the capitalist system itself. Only such a party can strike at the roots of fascism by dismantling the order that produces it. Nothing less will suffice.