Introductory Note
An international conference against fascism and war took place in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on March 17–20, 1923. The conference was held in the wake of the January 1923 invasion and occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops.
The conference was initiated by the Rhine-Westphalia factory committees with a call to all labor organizations to participate; the Communist International’s Executive Committee quickly accepted the invitation.
The nearly 250 delegates included representatives from Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Soviet Russia, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, India, and Switzerland. Envisioned as a united-front effort, the meeting was attended by representatives from a number of Communist parties, as well as by representatives from unions and other workers’ organizations. Although the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) leaderships turned down a request to participate, twenty-nine representatives from local units of these parties did so. Representatives from the Communist International’s Executive Committee, the Communist Youth International, and the Red International of Labor Unions also attended.
A prominent role was played at the conference by the Provisional International Committee for Combating Fascism. Formed on the Comintern’s initiative in January 1923, this committee had issued a call to the world proletariat for united action against fascism. Along these lines, it appealed to the Second International, the social democratic World Federation of Trade Unions, and syndicalist unions to join in the effort. Zetkin was chair of the Provisional Committee, and, as such, she played a central role in the Frankfurt conference, giving the main report on the struggle against fascism.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the Frankfurt conference elected an International Action Committee Against War and Fascism of twenty-one members, headed by Zetkin and French writer and Communist Henri Barbusse.
Below is the abbreviated account of Zetkin’s report to the conference published at the time in the Comintern press, translated by Sean Larson, together with the resolution adopted on the struggle against fascism.
Report on Fascism
The occupation of the Ruhr has fanned the flames of the fascist menace, which threatens all workers regardless of whether they are in the ranks of the meek Social Democratic organizations or the ill-reputed Communist ones. Fascism signifies the danger of the world proletariat sliding into a new world war, greater and more barbaric in its scope than all the barbarity, infamy, and crime that we experienced during the imperialist world war. But even beyond that, fascism’s nationalist slogans split and paralyze the working class. In this way, it threatens to destroy the fighting international proletariat, the sole power capable of defeating not only the giants of the French mining and steel industries but also the coal and finance magnates of Germany and the whole world.
In order to bring this struggle to victory, it is necessary to clearly understand the character of fascism. Some comrades judge it too simplistically, regarding fascism as a phenomenon of white terror, an expression of the fighting strength of the bourgeoisie. Despite the superficial similarities between the Horthy terror and fascism, they are in essence different phenomena. The white terror in Hungary came as a consequence of the forceful and—it must be said—not inglorious attempt by the Hungarian proletarians to bring down capitalism through the construction of a council republic. After the revolution was crushed, a small stratum of Junkers and militarists established their tyranny in this primarily agrarian country. Fascism in the modern industrial states is completely different. It takes shape as a broad-based mass movement, composed not only of petty bourgeois and smallholding peasants, but also of unenlightened proletarian forces.
Fascism is the expression of the economic decay of capitalism and the disintegration of the bourgeois state.
How was fascism able to develop into a mass movement that won out against the workers’ movement in Italy? This was possible only through the decomposition of bourgeois society. Broad swathes of the petty bourgeoisie and the intellectuals have lost their prewar conditions of life; they were not just proletarianized, they were pauperized. The bourgeois economy was incapable of securing the existence of these layers of the proletariat, dragging them instead into the lumpenproletariat. To these we can add the civil servants and employees, whose existence cannot be secured by a bankruptcy-threatened state. Once the firmest supports of the bourgeois state, they are now partly indifferent, partly hostile toward the bourgeois government. But fascist slogans are gathering support among many who previously put their faith in socialist slogans, who without any clear insight felt instinctively opposed to big capital and hoped for improvements through the taming of capitalism on the road to democracy. This hope was bitterly deceived by the reformist parties because, today, even reforms within bourgeois society can be achieved only by revolutionary class struggle. This group is joined by a number of decommissioned officers, a surplus of which was created during the war. The fascist organizations are fashioning themselves into a refuge for the politically homeless.
This conforms to their political program. The present state is to be replaced by a kind of neutered entity that stands above the parties and classes. The program varies not only from country to country but even within a single country. It is not only the intense ruination brought about by defeat in war, as in Germany, that prepares the ground for fascism. This is proven by the fact that fascism has triumphed in Italy. Mussolini founded his first organizations in March 1919 with an explicitly republican program, which made the finest promises to the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, to the workers and the agrarians alike. In reality only one point of the program has been retained from the first day until now: bitter hostility to the socialist workers’ organizations.
The Italian premier Giolitti, whose beheading Mussolini was demanding in those days, could have easily tamed the movement, but he preferred to place it in the service of the bourgeoisie. The agrarian elements pouring into the fascist camp knew they had to take a hard stance regarding Mussolini’s republicanism. The antagonism between agrarian capital and industrial capital, the one longing for the old social relations of bondage, the other wishing to establish a modern industrial state, continues within the party to this day. It is primarily due to the effects of the economic crisis that the fascist organizations could grow to such an extent, even though in May 1920 they mustered only 4,000 votes in their stronghold of Milan. Punitive expeditions were organized; trade union and cooperative headquarters were burned to the ground; leaders of the workers’ movement were murdered. The number of fascists is now thought to be half a million, and the strength of their military units when they seized power was estimated at 300,000 men. On top of this, national corporative associations that reject the class struggle were created, economic organizations that brought together workers, employers, and mid-level employees of all stripes in a given line of work. With the class-conscious workers suppressed by bloody force and the scourge of hunger, chased out of work and driven from their homes, the fascist organizations could raise their numbers to half a million members, although they are not by any means all convinced fascists. Mussolini made the further attempt to utterly corrupt the “free” trade unions by offering them participation in government.
The disgraceful offer was a failure, not by any merit of the unions however, but rather because of the resistance put up by the industrial and agrarian financiers of the fascists.
All of this was possible only because the Italian Socialist Party did not understand that it needed to assemble the working masses into a resolute power steeled to fight. Instead of opposing force with force, it wanted to take on fascism with moral sermons and sweet flute-like melodies. It is a vital necessity for the proletariat of all countries to draw the lesson from the Italian example: There can be no wavering, no backing down. We must undertake the struggle against fascism with vigor from the very first moment.
Italian fascism is already extending its web into Germany. It has an organization in Berlin. The Hitler gangs who reign in Bavaria are already transforming it into a fascist state. How else can you explain the shameful treatment of political prisoners except as the terror of fascism? Although in Bavaria the fascist program is exhausted by the phrase “beat up the Jews,” the program of the North German organizations is full of pseudo-revolutionary phrases, though without concrete measures for their implementation and all of it cloaked in the steel armor of the national ethos.
We must grapple with this national ideology explicitly. We still hold to the words “the proletarian has no fatherland,” because everything that could make a fatherland into a fatherland is extracted by capitalist exploitation, up to and including the very light of the sun. In spite of this, the proletariat is connected to the material and cultural wealth which is the product of many generations, and which it alone can transfer to coming generations. That is why the proletariat will create its fatherland through its own efforts, by constructing its government and constituting itself as a nation.
It is time to draw the practical conclusions. In every country, committees made up of proletarians of all parties must be organized for systematic struggle against fascism. But the first rule must be: self-defense of the workers, in order to confront force with force.
We must take on the organization of the self-defense groups in the factories, of control committees to supervise and prevent the transport of weapons and troops. The arming of the workers is important not only for the fight against fascism, but also for the conflict with capitalism as a whole. The clamor of the bourgeois press demonstrates that they understand this well: Weapons in the hands of the working class mean the disarming, the overpowering of the bourgeoisie.
In order to combat fascism internationally, above all the fascist government in Italy, we need an international action committee. It must gather material and conduct propaganda and, beyond that, take up the fight for the immediate release of all revolutionary fighters thrown in jail by the fascists. In recent weeks approximately 8,000 workers were put behind prison walls. Here too the international committee must complete the work prepared by the national committees, namely the boycott of fascist Italy.
Most important will be preventing imports from Britain and the United States, without which Italy cannot go on. The most effective way to fight fascism in Italy, however, is and remains fighting fascism in every individual country. To this end, workers everywhere must join forces to enter into battle. In Russia, the proletariat has emerged from all the horrors of the white terror, having defeated all of its enemies. This they could do because they possessed the faith that can move mountains, the faith in their own power. The German proletarians too must hold firmly to this faith. Only then will it find the strength to fight and to win. (Enthusiastic applause)
Summary remarks
The relative stability of the bourgeois state in France flows from the low level of development of French capitalism, which has not yet brought the class antagonisms to their extremes. The imperialist ascendancy of France in Europe would change that. The conference cannot entirely agree with the suggestions of the Italian comrade [Combiancchi]. We must not replace Marxism with the biblical principle, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Individual terror is unable to bring the self-confidence of the proletariat to fruition. Our most effective weapon is organized mass struggle. Not only must we put down fascism with force, we also have to vanquish it politically. Let us go forward in our struggle against the general offensive of capital, against the fascist terror, for the construction of a workers’ government and, beyond that, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can provide the guarantee that the proletariat will be rid of every form of counterrevolution.1 (Loud applause)
Resolution on the Struggle Against Fascism
An additional task is imposed on the working class, that of fighting victorious fascism in Italy, and fascism being organized all over the world. It must overcome fascism politically and organize effective means of self-defense against fascist violence. For this purpose, the following measures must be adopted:
1.Labor parties and labor organizations of every tendency must form a special body in each country for leading the struggle against fascism. The duties of such a body are as follows:
(a) Compilation of facts on the fascist movement in their own countries.
(b) Systematic education of the working class as to the hostile class character of the fascist movement, by means of newspaper articles, pamphlets, posters, meetings, etc.
(c) Organization of self-defense among the working class by means of enrolling and arming self-defense troops. Organization of workers’ control committees to prevent the transport of fascist bands and their weapons. Ruthless suppression of all fascist attempts to terrorize the workers and hinder the expression of their class will.
(d) Inclusion of all workers, of whatever party, in this struggle. Appeal to all labor parties, trade unions, and all proletarian mass organizations, to join in defense against fascism.
(e) Combat fascism in parliaments and all public bodies.
(f) Special attention to antifascist education among working youth, from whose ranks the fascists enlist most of their recruits. The revolutionary youth organizations should take part in the activity of all the proletarian organizations of self-defense.
2.The forces of fascism are organized internationally. It is therefore imperative that the fight against fascism also be organized internationally. For this purpose, an international workers’ committee must be formed. In addition to serving as a vehicle for exchanging experiences, this committee will above all be entrusted with the organization of the international struggle, to be conducted chiefly against Italian fascism. Leading elements in this struggle are:
(a) An international campaign of enlightenment by means of newspapers, pamphlets, pictures, mass meetings, etc., showing the absolutely anti-working-class character of Italian fascist rule, and the systematic destruction of all labor organizations and institutions by fascism.
(b) The organization of international mass meetings and demonstrations against fascism, against the representatives of the Italian fascist state abroad, etc.
(c) Utilization of parliaments; appeals to parliaments, especially to their labor fractions, and to international labor organizations, to send commissions to Italy to examine the situation of the working class.
(d) Struggle for the immediate liberation of all imprisoned revolutionary proletarian fighters.
3.Material and moral support for the persecuted working class of Italy by collecting money, finding homes for refugees, aiding their work abroad, etc. International Red Aid must be further developed to this end. The workers’ cooperatives should be appealed to for help.
(a) The international committee of action is commissioned to consider all possibilities of a moral, political, and material boycott of the fascist government.
(b) The conference commissions the international committee of action to put itself into communication with the “Provisional International Committee for Combating Fascism,” and with the organizations formed by it, for the purpose of establishing a permanent committee.
It is imperative to hammer into the minds of workers that the fate of the Italian working class will be their own fate, if they do not undertake energetic revolutionary struggle against the ruling class in order to prevent the less-class-conscious elements from being recruited to fascism. Labor organizations must therefore advance against capital with the utmost energy, for the protection of the broad masses of working people against exploitation, oppression, and extortion. They must oppose the pseudo-revolutionary demagogic watchwords of fascism with an efficiently organized mass struggle. Further, they must crush with all their might the first attempts at fascist organization in their own countries.