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Toward Social-Fascism — The "Rejuvenation" of the Socialist Party
By A. B. MAGIL

"The fascists are nationalists, imperialists, war-mongers, enemies of Socialism, enemies of democracy, stranglers of the independent labor movement, workers' assassins and so on.  The social-fascists are acting as a rule like the fascists, but they do their fascist work not with an open face, but behind a smoke-screen, as is done in war..  This belongs to the nature of social-fascism: imperialist policy in the name of internationalism, capitalist policy in the name of socialism, abolition of the democratic rights of the toilers in the name of democracy, abolition of reform in the name of reformism, assassination of workers in the name of labor politics, and so on.  The pathos of 'pure' fascism is expressed in the slogan of 'the nation' and in the open incitement to imperialist expansion.  The pathos of the social-fascists is expressed in the slogan of keeping up the State.  'We have saved the State!' 'Without us the State would have perished!'"—Comrade Kuusinen's Report on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Communist International, Tenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

I.

AMERICAN capitalism, faced with the Gordian knot of its mounting contradictions, which it cannot untie, but must cut with the ruthless sword of war, no longer finds the simple type of class collaboration adequate to check the revolt of the working class.  While capitalism itself reveals increasing tendencies toward more violent, more centralized, more fascist methods of repression, social-reformism, whose ties with capitalism have grown stronger as its ties with the masses of the toilers have weakened, is itself being drawn more and more into the orbit of fascism.  In this the reformists react to pressure both from above and below: from their masters, the capitalists, on the one hand, and from the revolting rank and file on the other.  The two chief agencies of American social-reformism, the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor, are, by using fascist methods, seeking to maintain the position they have won for themselves in capitalist economy,

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