Anti-Fascist Quote Search
June 29, 2018 6:47 AM   Subscribe

Hey, I'm looking for a quote I remember reading earlier this year. I think I read it in Marxists In Face of Fascism: Writings by Marxists on Fascism From the Inter-war Period by David Beetham, but I'm not sure, and I've been unable to find it going back through the text. It was probably from a similar text, I tend to think Trotsky himself but that may be an error on my part.

I think the quote was about 3rd Internationalists and the theory of social-fascism, which equated democratic socialism with fascism. It was something very much like "these people are saying it does not matter if our organisations are already destroyed, if socdems are the same as fascists then we've already lost and we may as well give up on the rev now", organisations referring to unions, socialist parties, etc.

The argument being that if demsocs/socdems are not the same as the hard right, because they tend to leave working-class organisations intact. If one argues that they are the same, then one is in effect arguing that those organisations are wholly ineffective even in the face of the restrictions on their operations ds/sd place on them, as opposed to their complete obliteration and illegalisation under hard-right regimes. It feels like a really useful quote, and whatever chapter of whoever it is in I'd like to read over again. Unfortunately, there's way too much noise in the signal to google this quote, as far as I can tell.
I know it's unlikely that anyone will have this exact quote floating around in their head, but if anyone knows an ask section where I might have more luck, I'd also appreciate such information. I don't tend to think Yahoo Answers will help me if AskMeFi can't :(
Ta.
posted by AnhydrousLove to Law & Government (2 answers total)
 
Best answer: It definitely sounds like Trotsky to me, too, but I'm away from my copy of Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front (which is where I probably would have read it) and so can't look for the specific quote. A number of his writings from the period are available here, so maybe do a ctrl+f for key phrases in each article to see if you can locate it?
posted by the return of the thin white sock at 10:53 AM on June 29, 2018


Response by poster: Thanks, I've tried ctrl+F etc, but no luck. I don't remember the exact wording well enough. Ah well, I'm sure it'll turn up in the future sometime. I think you're right about the source though.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:38 AM on July 3, 2018


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