upon the proletariat, destroy the policy of co-operation which the employers preached by the social-reformists and the trade union bureaucrats. These fights demonstrate even to the most backward elements of the proletariat the manifest connection between economics and politics.
Every big strike assumes to-day the importance of a great political event. In these struggles the parties of the Second International and the leaders of the Amsterdam International, far from lending aid to the working masses in their hard struggles, have even directly left them in the lurch and betrayed them to the capitalists and to the bourgeois governments.
It is one of the tasks of the Communist Parties to expose this continuous and unparalleled treachery, and to bring it to light in the daily struggles of the working masses. It ts the duty of the Communist parties of all countries to widen the scope of the numerous economic strikes that frequently break out, to deepen them and, wherever, possible, to lead them on to political strikes and combats. It is also the self-evident duty of the Communist parties to take advantage of the defensive struggles to so strengthen the revolutionary consciousness and militancy of the working masses that these struggles, given the proper forces, might turn the defensive into an offensive. The widening of the scope of these struggles by no means stultifies the systematically increasing antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The situation remains objectively revolutionary, and the slightest outbreak may become to-day the point of issue for great revolutionary struggles.
V. The International Fascism.
Closely allied with the capitalist offensive in the economic field, is the political offensive of the bourgeoisie against the working class, which finds its expression in International Fascism. In view of the fact that the general impoverishment affects also the middle class, including the State officials, the ruling classes can no longer depend on the bureaucracy as an absolutely reliable tool. This causes the bourgeoisie everywhere to create special white guards, directed against all the revolutionary aims of the proletariat, to crush in most brutal fashion every attempt of the workers to improve their position.
The salient features of the Italian Fascism—that "classical" Fascism which has now taken possession of that country for some time—consists of the fact that the Fascists, not content with establishing their own counter-revolutionary militant organisations armed to the teeth, seek also to gain ground by social demagogy, among the masses of the peasantry, among the lower bourgeoisie and even among certain elements of the working class, in order to make use of the general disappointment with so-called democracy.
The menace of Fascism lurks to-day in many countries—
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