Martin Suchanek, speech at the LIS meeting in Buenos Aires, 7. December 2024
Comrades, the rise of the far right is one of the greatest threats facing the working class and all oppressed people.
And it is on the rise, as not only the victory of Trump in the US elections demonstrates. In Germany, the AfD (Alliance for Germany) will massively increase its share of the votes from 10,4% in 2021 to 16 to 20% in February 2025.
But, to be clear, the rise of the far right is a global phenomenon, which we can see on all continents, in imperialist and semi-colonial countries, even though it takes very different forms. Today, most of the far right are not fascist, but right wing populist parties, movements and forces. And, whilst they differ in many respects – they all share some features: All direct their politics against migrants and refugees, against national minorities, against the gains of the women’s and LGBT movements and, in spite of a certain social demagogy, also against the gains of the working class.
They all combine their reactionary policies with a massive attack on the “establishment”, presenting themselves as those who will bring “the people” back to power. By the elite they do not mean the capitalist class, but sections of the political institutions and of the bureaucratised leaderships of trade unions and reformist parties. And, of course, the very real privileges and betrayals of those forces of the “centre” or centre-left of the political spectrum provide a fertile ground for a mix of real scandals and reactionary demagogy and irrationalism. We could see this in the reactionary anti-vax movements or amongst those who deny global warming and the environmental crisis.
They also all stand for a purely nationalist agenda. Just as Trump stands for “America first”, the AfD stands for “Germany first”, Putin for “Russia first”. Therefore, whilst the far right applaud each other, they do not and cannot have a common international agenda. Quite the opposite, they stand for a more determined, aggressive, nationalist cause. The AfD even goes so far as to see the EU and the Euro as “exploiting” Germany. And whilst this is rejected by the German bourgeoisie and all its mainstream parties at the moment, such a policy may well be gaining support from sections of the ruling class, if the crisis of the EU deepens, which it almost certainly will.
All this is not accidental. The rise of the far right is a reactionary product of the capitalist crises which opened in 2008 and whose root causes – the overaccumulation of capital and declining rates of profit – have not been overcome, but indeed become more profound. They have led to a massive sharpening of global capitalist competition and of the struggle for the redivision of the world between the old imperialist powers like the US, but also Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and their international economic and military institutions on the one side, and the new imperialist powers, China and Russia. And whilst we can see the emergence of such blocs, they are themselves not homogeneous as we can see in the relations between the EU states and the US.
A key part of the far right’s agenda in the imperialist countries, is to make their countries fit for this global competition – and they want to do so, by marginalising or eliminating all who they perceive as an obstacle to “more national” unity. This includes rights and gains made by the working class, the women’s movement, democratic rights.
Whilst we should not blind ourselves to the real differences between the far right and the established forms of bourgeois rule, we must be aware that, in government, the “democratic” or liberal bourgeois parties, as well as reformist parties, have themselves implemented a lot of measures the far right demands or wants to be imposed in an even more radical way.
The sealing off of the European Union from migrants and refugees, and the denial of basic democratic rights for the most oppressed sections of the population in the European countries, has in most cases been imposed by “centre” or even centre-left governments. The expansion of NATO and the increase in arms spending has been imposed by a broad coalition of conservative, liberal, social-democratic and green parties, sometimes even with the support of so-called Left parties.
Moreover, the neo-liberal cuts, subsidies for the rich and for banking and industrial capital during the pandemic and crises, attacks on wages, social provisions, privatisation – all those were implemented by the “democratic” bourgeoisie. And, all too often, they have been implemented with the agreement and consent of the leaders of the reformist parties and the large trade unions.
This leads us to a very important point to understand the rise of the far right. A whole sector of the liberal or petit bourgeois left, but also of reformists or even sections of the far left, somehow see the rise of the right as an inevitable, almost natural, response to the crisis. There is of course an element of truth in this, since every crisis tends to radicalise all classes and, therefore, sections of the petit-bourgeoise, the middle classes and part of the bourgeoisie, look to reactionary answers to the crisis. But we have to explain why, in the current situation, the far right rises massively everywhere, whilst the workers’ movement and the left are on the defensive, including important sections of the working class and poor supporting the far right, at least in the elections.
This leads to the question of politics and the class struggle. The initial response to the capitalist crisis after 2008 clearly was not one of looking to the right, but actually a global turn to the left. Even the ruling classes were aware of that. Faced with the global recession, they raised the question “Was Marx right?” And, plainly speaking, he was.
Even more importantly, however, we have seen a massive rise of the class struggle, leading to revolutionary situations and movements in the Arab Spring or to a pre-revolutionary situation on Greece, which led to the breakdown of governments, the collapse of PASOK and the rise of the neo-reformist Syriza. These mass movements, that posed the question of revolution or counterrevolution, were, however, defeated and the defeats had a profound effect on the balance of class forces and weakened the confidence, consciousness and internationalism of the working class.
The problem of rising movements that run against the limits of their own inner weakness – link the massive international feminist movement with the global women’s strikes. Again, these political crises of the workers’ movement and other progressive movements ultimately are a result of the crisis of leadership of the working class at all levels. Those defeats, and the policies of the existing reformist leaderships during the pandemic and during the Ukraine war, when faced with the rising global competition, have all contributed to this crisis of leadership and deepened it, so that even massive struggles which could have changed the situation, like the struggle against the pension reforms in France, did not realise their potential.
All in all, the leaderships of the working class, but also of most of the social movements, have resorted to a policy of “national unity” when faced with crisis, with the pandemic or with war – and they do so today when faced with the crisis of capitalism and with the rise of the far right. In Germany today, we are not only faced with the far right, like in many other European countries, massive redundancies have been announced in the car industry, in chemicals, at German rail. We have seen one large warning strike at Volkswagen with tens of thousands of workers and there will be another on Monday. This could have an enormous impact on the class struggle not only in Germany, but in the whole of Europe, if the trade unions would wage an all-out struggle against the cuts of all jobs, against all closures and coordinate this not only in Germany, but in the whole of Europe. But the trade union leaders – like the bureaucrats everywhere – want to use these mobilisations just to let off steam and to bring the bosses to the negotiation table for a “not too bad” compromise.
Such a policy for the trade unions as well as, on the political level, for reformist parties of implementing neo-liberalism with a human face, implementing racism with tears and militarisation with moralist garbage is just fake news. And maybe the biggest fake news and political deceit is the fairytale that, faced with the raise of the right, the only alternative is “unity” with the democratic bourgeoisie. This can only lead to defeat. Not only will it not lead to the decline of the far right, it will serve as a catalyst for its growth, allowing it to present itself as the only alternative for the people.
Faced with this situation, we need a clear and thought out revolutionary and internationalist answer.
The rise of the right and the crisis have brought us to a defensive situation in most countries. But they also brought about movements and struggles to resist the far right. Moreover, this is very clearly linked to the social, economic and political crisis, the environmental catastrophe, the rise of racism and attacks on democratic rights etc.
As revolutionaries, we need to intervene and build such movements where we can. We need to call on all working class forces, including the trade unions and reformist parties, to break with the bourgeoisie, to break with social partnership and to unite in struggle. We are well aware, that in most cases, the bureaucrats will reject, sabotage or betray a common struggle. The policy of the united front is needed because only mass struggle and movements can defeat the rise of the right, not just movements of the left or the vanguard. Secondly, we have to expose the reformist or radical petit-bourgeois leaders in the eyes of those workers, youth and oppressed who still have illusions in them including the illusion that they are a lesser evil and safety net of some sort against the right. Therefore, a bold policy of intervention and the united front has to be combined with concrete demands not only for what is clearly needed to stop the far right but also open criticism of these misleaders.
That needs to be combined with the struggle for the building of new revolutionary parties where we are, for parties which can provide a strategy and programme from the present defensive to the offensive, a programme which can lead from the struggle against the far right and the capitalist offensive to the struggle for power.
In the transitional programme, Trotsky makes it very clear when he points out that the capitalist crisis, the decay of bourgeois society, the impending wars and environmental catastrophe, do not make the demands of the minimum programme obsolete, but allows or, better, requires, linking them to the struggle for power.
For us, the struggle against the rise of the far right is not a struggle separated from the struggle against cuts, layoffs, war, racism, gender oppression, national oppression or against authoritarianism. It is an integral part of the struggle against the root cause of these forms of exploitation and oppression – the capitalist, imperialist system as a whole.
The far right presents a reactionary programme for a reactionary transformation of bourgeoisie society as a whole, whilst, of course preserving and defending capitalism.
Our programme must be one for the revolutionary, socialist transformation of society as a whole. And it must be an international programme, a programme for global revolution, since socialism can and will only be built on an international level – or it will not be built at all.
If we want to fight for such a programme, we must also fight to create the means to implement it. That is the creation of a new, revolutionary International.
In the last year, the ITO, the LIS and our organisation, the League for the Fifth International, have developed profound agreement on understanding the current global situation, which is marked by a struggle for the redivision of the world by the imperialist powers, we have profound agreement on some of the key questions of the international class struggle, the war in Ukraine and the Palestinian liberation struggle against the Israeli genocide, backed by the imperialist powers.
We want to go further. We agree on the need to regroup revolutionaries internationally on the basis of a principled revolutionary programme and a healthy method of construction. We are well aware, that such an organisation would still be far from what we need, a new revolutionary international – but it would be a larger and politically stronger international tendency fighting to achieve that goal, fighting for the task of our times – the overcoming of the crisis of leadership.