SPREAD OF FASCISM.

Evening Star, Issue 21519, 18 September 1933, Page 1

SPREAD OF FASCISM.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Your leader of September 16, under the above heading, starts out by saying: “ Twelve years ago the dread of the world was an extension of Communism. Communism failed to extend to any effectual purpose. It had a brief and brutal hour of control in Hungary; it threatened some of the Baltic States. Since then, so far as it exists as a governing power, it has been confined to Russia, where, properly speaking, it is not Communism that prevails—that will only come, if it ever does, when all the sceptics of Bolshevism have been converted or ‘ eliminated ’ —but the dictatorship of a class.” Then you go on to show the other dictatorship, Fascism, which is also in the interests of a class, but this you do not mention. The Russian brand of dictatorship is wielded by the more enlightened section of the many, with the sanction of the great majority of the many iu the interests of the many, against the few who have in the past unsurped the function of exploiters of the many in their own interests for private profit. Fascism, in Itlay, Germany, and other lesser States, is the last stand of Capitalist exploitation of the many, and is against the workers. To show how this works out let me just refer to the International Labour Conference reported in the July issue of ‘Headway,’ the official organ of the League of Nations Union. The workers’ delegations made protests against the Italian and German workers’ delegates to the conference on tho grounds that they did and could not represent the trade union movement. The Italian delegate has been subjected to this treatment previously, but this time it was merely formal, but Dr Ley (the German delegate) was referred to by one interjection from another delegate as a gaoler, not being the proper person to represent the prisoners; The consequence was that the Italian, German, and Japanese delegates had to appeal to the Selection (or General Purposes) Committee, and this committee allowed all to be included. This paper says : “It is generally understood that tho Italian and German workers were upheld by the employers’ group, together with the German, Italian, and Japanese Governments, against the United Workers’ Group, the other Governments abstaining." This proves that the system of Fascism as it operates in Italy and Germany to-day is not, in the opinion .of the United Workers’ Group of other countries, representative of the trade union movement in. those two countries, nothwithstanding Fascism has been in operation in Italy for ten years. If a system that has had such a spin, and, moreover, a favourable spin, cannot even now be included in a favourable workers’ delegation to Geneva this, to me, is sufficient evidence of its misfitness as an organisation representative,-.of the ..workers.... ' Russia (may. be j classed as being ruled by a dictatorship; but there is no such discrimination against the Bolshevist regime, and what is is gradually being obliterated, because as the workers’ state becomes stronger and better understood this will be eliminated, and that is why Soviet Russia is so much detested by the capitalist world. No such detestation is exhibited against Italy or Germany.—l am, etc., P. Neiison. September 17. [Our article distinctly said: “Fascism, which means the dictatorship of another class.” Almost certainly it represents a much larger class in Germany and Italy than does the “ dictatorship of the proletariat,” developed bv the city workers, in Russia.—Ed. E.S.]