Social fascism

Social fascism was a theory supported by the Communist International (Comintern) during the early 1930s, which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model, it stood in the way of a complete and final transition to communism. At the time, the leaders of the Comintern, such as Joseph Stalin and Rajani Palme Dutt, argued that capitalist society had entered the "Third Period" in which a working class revolution was imminent, but could be prevented by social democrats and other "fascist" forces. The term "social fascist" was used pejoratively to describe social democratic parties, anti-Comintern and progressive socialist parties, and dissenters within Comintern affiliates throughout the interwar period.

At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928, the end of capitalist stability and the beginning of the "Third Period" was proclaimed. The end of capitalism, accompanied with a working class revolution, was expected, and social democracy was identified as the main enemy of the Communists. This Comintern's theory had roots in Grigory Zinoviev's argument that international social democracy is a wing of fascism. This view was accepted by Joseph Stalin who described fascism and social democracy as "twin brothers", arguing that fascism depends on the active support of the social democracy and that the social democracy depends on the active support of fascism. After it was declared at the Sixth Congress, the theory of social fascism became accepted by the world Communist movement.

The new direction was closely linked to the internal politics of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). After a faction fight inside that party following the death of Lenin in 1924, the victorious group around Stalin shifted decisively to the left, advocating the end of the mixed-economy New Economic Policy and declaring an intensification of the class struggle inside the Soviet Union. In a practical sense this meant treating peasants (then 80% of the population), especially the richer "Kulak" group, as class enemies and urging party cadres on to ever more ruthless action against them. An atmosphere of revolutionary fervour was created that saw any enemy of the ruling group around Stalin denounced as "wreckers" and "traitors" and this attitude was translated on to the international stage where both social democrats and communist dissidents were denounced as fascists.

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