Democracy, Bonapartism and Fascism: Class Struggle in the 1930s

The inter-war years were a time of deep crisis, class struggle and revolutionary opportunities.

The economic crisis produced a crisis of democracy itself. The ruling class, with nothing to offer, ran out of means to keep the workers at bay. As Trotsky explained, under the intensity of the class struggle and international conflict, “the fuses of democracy blow out”.

What followed was a succession of Bonapartist regimes — i.e. military-police dictatorships — each paving the way for Hitler.

Trotsky, expelled by Stalin from the Communist International and hounded across the globe, fought to arm revolutionaries with this perspective: a Marxist understanding of the crisis, the rise of Bonapartism and fascism, and the only road forward — to win the confidence of the masses and prepare for power.

In the writings on Germany and France included in this volume, Trotsky sought to educate communists in the method of Marxism — how to analyse the world and determine the correct tactical line.

After the Second World War, Ted Grant, following in Trotsky’s footsteps, explained the rise of Mussolini in Italy and the British Blackshirts, the capitalist’s backing of these gangs, and how workers can mobilise to smash them. He insisted on the need to analyse post-war Europe concretely, and not rely on “ready-made abstractions”.

These selected works illustrate the fundamental skill every revolutionary must master: learning to apply the Marxist method, and use it to explain the world in order to change it. In our time, we face again a deepening crisis of capitalism. Trotsky’s and Grant’s writings arm us for the battles ahead.