Learning from the bravery of Clara Zetkin
I’ve just ordered my copy of Clara Zetkin’s Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win. Haymarket Books recently reprinted the report on fascism that Zetkin made to the Communist International in 1923. Note that date. This was at a time when fascism was taken less than seriously, not only by the capitalist class, but also by socialists.
Zetkin knew better. The Great Depression was still in the future but this remarkable woman had the foresight to see the appeal of fascism to those who were being left behind by capitalism and so-called liberal progress.
As Chris Hedges puts it in an article on Zetkin from February:
She warned that the longer the stagnation and rot of a dysfunctional democracy went unaddressed, the more attractive fascism would become.
We know that the right fears historical truth. History for them is about a mythical time of national grandeur: facts that undermine this fantasy are dismissed as treasonous or lies. The only real response to this is education. That may be a case of educating ourselves, of course, as the humanities come under increasing threat in our educational establishments.
The history of the last century is a great place to start, especially as we appear fated to repeat much of its worst aspects
Hedges again:
History has amply illustrated where political paralysis, economic decline, hypermilitarism and widespread corruption lead.
For would-be fascists, this welcome descent again into war and hatred is a chance to get right what was foiled in the 1940s. To ensure that — this time — there is no possiblity of a social contract or civic justice or a welfare state to undermine the purity of the corporate state.
The Hedges article ends with a short extract from the speech Zetkin made in the Reichstag in 1932 — she was 74 and Germany’s oldest elected member of parliament. The rise of the Nazis was almost complete. She didn’t go quietly. Here is part of that speech:
All those who are menaced, all those who suffer, all those who desire freedom must join the united front against fascism and its representatives in government. Working people must assert themselves against fascism. That is the urgent and indispensable precondition for a united front against economic crisis, imperialist war and its causes, and the capitalist mode of production.
