Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It

Trotsky's Marxist Analysis of Fascism

Leon Trotsky wrote about fascism in real time. The essays collected in Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It were produced between the late 1920s and the mid-1930s, as Mussolini consolidated power in Italy and Hitler rose in Germany. Trotsky's analysis is specific and structural: fascism, he argues, is not simply reaction or authoritarianism. It is a mass movement of the ruined petty bourgeoisie, mobilized by capital in moments of acute crisis to smash working-class organizations and preserve the existing property relations.

Why It Still Circulates

The book remains the clearest and most concise Marxist diagnosis of fascism ever written. Trotsky distinguishes fascism from military dictatorship, from Bonapartism, and from ordinary conservatism, giving each its own category and logic. He also argues, with characteristic bluntness, that the German Communist Party's refusal to form a united front with the Social Democrats was a catastrophic error that handed power to Hitler. The Pathfinder edition is pocket-sized and has been continuously in print for decades, making it one of the most widely read pamphlets in the socialist tradition.

About This Edition

Author: Leon Trotsky
Publisher: Pathfinder
Format: Paperback