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Contribution of the Central Committee of the (new)Italian Communist Party to the “International Theoretical Conference on Fascism and Imperialism in the 21th century in the imperialist heartlands” (Utrecht, November 28-29, 2025) promoted by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)

Dear comrades,

We thank you for the invitation to this Conference and wish it every success. Initiatives like this create and strengthen relations between communist parties of several countries around the world, helping their common action and mutual solidarity against the repression of the class enemy. They are an ingredient in the rebirth of the communist movement, which is the decisive factor in putting an end to the imperialist system and with it the ongoing Third World War, all the more so the more the participants develop a frank and open debate among themselves, openly present the analyses and lines of action on which they agree and disagree, and illustrate the features of the summation of their own experience and that of the communist movement of the last century, on which they base their analyses and lines of action.

In the call of this Conference, comrades of NDFP say that in the 21st century, the worsening crisis of imperialism has accelerated the return of fascist regimes throughout the world. This is an issue of extreme importance for the action plan of us communists to establish socialism and the specific lines in which we translate it into practice in the areas of organization, propaganda, and mass work. In our country, there are communist parties and organizations that claim that in Italy, namely with the installation of the Meloni government in 2022, "modern fascism" has been established.

At the same time, however, they neither adopt nor point out lines of action consistent with the existence of a fascist regime and what the experience of the victorious struggle against Nazism and fascism in the last century has taught (organizing clandestinely, armed resistance, etc.), indeed they often continue to operate as if we were, even with some distortions, in a "democratic country".

This contradiction confirms that, for the analysis of the course of events and the consequent practical line to adopt, it is necessary to understand more deeply what 20th-century fascism was and the nature of the political regime of the imperialist countries, drawing on the contributions of Lenin, Stalin, Dimitrov, and Mao Zedong and developing them adequately to the conditions that the class struggle has reached. Therefore, all the better to this Conference!

About the nature of 20th-century fascism and 21th-century fascists

In the communist movement, fascism is generally reduced to violence (Blackshirts and their "action squads", outlawing of political opposition, imprisonment, physical elimination) against political opponents internally and war against other countries externally. But reducing fascism to repression, propaganda, and war ultimately leads to considering a struggle as concluded when it is still very much open. If, with fascism, the imperialist bourgeoisie managed to enlist a significant part of the popular masses in the war solely through repression and propaganda (promises, parades, rituals, and ceremonies), what would prevent them from doing the same today? Especially since today they have even more pervasive and sophisticated tools both to repress and to divert and poison the consciences of the masses and create a public opinion favourable to their activities. Actually, fascism established itself and managed to stifle and contain for years the widespread rebellion of workers and peasants against the order of capitalists and the clergy by combining four lines: 1) violence against rebellious proletarians and peasants, against political opponents and in particular against communists (Gramsci was left to die by imprisoning and depriving him of healthcare), 2) demagogic promises, parades, rituals, ceremonies and slogans, 3) wars, 4) the creation of a public industrial and financial sector, social security, educational and welfare institutions, the public works sector and the military industry: the innovations and institutions that mimicked the Soviet Union and with which the bourgeoisie created in the imperialist countries a system of state monopoly capitalism.

This last factor, which Gramsci called "passive revolution" (revolutionizing the social system while remaining within the framework of capitalism, therefore without the organized and conscious participation of the popular masses, keeping them in the condition of a manipulated mass), was decisive, the one thanks to which fascism gained the consent and support of a part of the popular masses. Representatives of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois left (and those who, while calling themselves communists, are influenced by them) fail to consider that what the bourgeoisie did in the years following 1917 and until approximately 1976, it did in combination with the first wave of the proletarian revolution and in pursuit of the conscious and organized communist movement. On the one hand, in order to survive the bourgeoisie mimicked the Soviet Union with the public sector of the economy, public services, economic planning, etc., and on the other hand, resorted to war: not only in Italy with fascism and in Germany with Nazism, but also in the US (war and the New Deal). Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's Nazism, and F.D. Roosevelt's New Deal definitively established state monopoly capitalism in their respective countries mimicking, as far as the institutions implemented were concerned, the Soviet Union to the extent that it was possible to do so, while capitalist ownership of the productive forces and the freedom of private economic initiative of the capitalists remained intact. Similar processes occurred in France, Japan, and Great Britain, countries that differed from the Italy, Germany and the US mainly due to the colonial empires they possessed and the specific conditions of the class struggle.

Today, given the course of events produced by the bourgeoisie itself following the exhaustion of the first wave of the proletarian revolution (1917-1976) in the imperialist countries, the imperialist bourgeoisie is likely no longer able to promote a "passive revolution" like the one carried out by fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. In the imperialist countries, it is the bourgeoisie itself that is dismantling the public sector of the economy, public services, economic planning, educational, social security, and welfare systems, etc. What remains for the bourgeoisie? Repression, persecution of immigrants, war (but even Trump won the elections promising "no more wars"). The imperialist bourgeoisie is trying to mobilize directly for war, but it is shooting itself in the foot. This is why we say that Meloni's fascism is an imitation and repetition of formulas, gestures, and rituals; it is a mimicry of 20th-century fascism. Trump in the US, Meloni in Italy, Le Pen in France, AfD in Germany, and the other "fascists of the 21st century" have taken advantage of the political actions of the "left-wing" bourgeoisie (exemplified by the work of Obama in the US, Prodi in Italy, Hollande in France, and Schröder in Germany) who dedicated themselves to eliminating the achievements that the popular masses of the imperialist countries obtained when the communist movement was strong in the world.

When they come to power (or combine with other bourgeois parties) thanks to the anti-popular policies of the "left-wing" bourgeoisie, even the imitators of 20th-century fascism do nothing but work to eliminate the achievements obtained by the popular masses in the past (the "common program" of the imperialist bourgeoisie) and promote the Third World War. On this ground, we communists can and must attack the imitators of 20th-century fascists:

- mobilizing the popular masses against the reactionary and anti-popular measures of the bourgeoisie without settling for the "lesser evil," against the elimination of the achievements obtained in the last century without stopping at the "defense of the existing," against the expansion of the Third World War into which the general crisis of capitalism, which began in the second half of the 1970s, has already escalated;

- uniting in a common front all the forces that can be mobilized, from time to time and for the most diverse reasons, against parties and governments supporting the "common program" of the imperialist bourgeoisie and against even more reactionary exponents, parties and governments (such as Fratelli d'Italia and the Lega in Italy), maintaining our freedom of initiative to also do what the other organizations in the front do not do and to set an example for those who want to contribute more strongly and at a higher level to the common struggle.

This is the line, adapted to the current situation, indicated in the Report The Offensive of Fascism and the Tasks of the Communist International introduced by Dimitrov at the 7th and last congress of the Comintern (July-August 1935).

It is the lesson of the application of the popular front line in the victorious leadership of the revolution in China by the communists led by Mao Zedong, as opposed to the criterion summarized by the French Communist Party as "everything through the Front" and also followed by the Spanish Communist Party, the Italian Communist Party, and communist parties of countries occupied by Italian and German Nazi-fascists or by Japanese militarists in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In this way, we combine the struggle to prevent the most reactionary and criminal part of the bourgeoisie from asserting itself by exploiting the discontent of the popular masses themselves with the development of the first stage of the revolutionary people's war, the universal strategy of the proletarian revolution elaborated by Mao Zedong based on the lessons learned from the first wave of the proletarian revolution.

About the political regime of the imperialist countries

The political regime of imperialist societies is as contradictory as their economic structure. The imperialist bourgeoisie cannot do without the collaboration of the masses, and at the same time it must keep the masses out of power. Bourgeois society cannot escape this contradiction; it is a constitutive element of it.

There are different ways in which the bourgeoisie deals with the contradiction inherent in its regime, according to the peculiar characteristics of each socio-economic formation and according to the course of the class struggle. Since the beginning of the imperialist era, the following have developed and succeeded one another:

- terrorist regimes that face emergency situations and have a relatively short duration, disappearing ("returning to democracy") when they have fulfilled their historical task;

- "democratic" regimes in which universal suffrage and the legal recognition of the rights of organization, association, propaganda, etc., for the proletariat and the rest of the workers are accompanied by the substantial disempowerment of elected assemblies, the growth of the role of those bodies of state activity removed from the prying eyes of elected assemblies and unfriendly individuals (secret diplomacy, secret police services, dirty operations, extra-legal operations, action squads, the military-industrial-financial complex, etc.), and the preparation of a series of preventive measures designed to prevent the political power of the proletariat from growing to the point where it can seize power.

In his Report, Dimitrov emphasizes that even in the imperialist countries that called themselves "democratic," the political regime was no longer the bourgeois democracy that had established itself in Europe. He alludes to the transformation of the political system of the imperialist countries in the transition to the imperialist era, but not with the necessary emphasis to eradicate in the communist parties of the imperialist countries the electoralist/parliamentarist deviation inherited from the socialist parties. In 1916, Lenin explicitly stated that in his famous work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he had only dealt with the economic features of imperialism and not the political ones. Lenin pointed out that imperialism tends towards reaction, and Stalin clarified that the class struggle becomes more acute as the socialist revolution advances in the world and socialist countries progress towards communism.

The Communist International understood and confronted the terrorist regimes established by the bourgeoisie (fascism, Nazism, etc.), but it did not adequately understand that the regimes of the "democratic" countries (US, UK, France, etc.) had now become regimes of preventive counter-revolution. This made it easy for the revisionist theses of exclusively (or mainly) legal struggle and the democratic path to socialism to gain ground.

Out of inertia, the communist parties continued, even in the imperialist era of capitalism, to refer to the political system of the imperialist countries with the expression "bourgeois democracy," but this hides the profound transformation they underwent in the transition to the imperialist era of capitalism. As the popular masses, mobilized by the conscious and organized communist movement, not only demanded improvements (with strikes, demonstrations, protests, etc.) but also made use of the institutions and mechanisms of bourgeois democracy, the bourgeoisie had to suppress their initiative and divert the formation of the popular masses. Therefore, it develops a regime of preventive counter-revolution that takes the place of bourgeois democracy, usually masking itself as bourgeois democracy, that is, cloaking itself in the institutions and structures of democracy that the bourgeoisie had used to its advantage against the nobility, the clergy, and the monarchy. The transition from bourgeois democracy to a regime of preventive counter-revolution is, along with the transition from cyclical crises to crises of absolute overproduction of capital, one of the main transformations that occurred in the imperialist era: at the beginning of the 1900s in the Anglo-Saxon imperialist countries and after 1945 in the others. With preventive counter-revolution, the bourgeoisie recognizes that the masses have assumed a new role in the movement of society, quite different from when they were composed of dispersed and isolated workers, each grappling with the peculiarities of their own lord. It knows it is sitting on a barrel of explosives. Its activity towards the masses is aimed at promoting division into parties and factions that do not correspond to the actual conflicts of interest between the popular masses and the imperialist bourgeoisie, diverting their attention and passions from real problems towards trivialities and fantasies, and encouraging escapism from reality (superstitions, drugs, virtual world, shows, myths).

It has developed a more refined technique of power that systematically utilizes the most modern discoveries of biological, technological, and psychological sciences, whose development it promotes on a large scale. It has extended the widespread use of physical and spiritual drugs. However, unlike what the theorists of "total social control" claim, what the bourgeoisie cannot eliminate is the daily and pervasive experience of exploitation and oppression inherent in capitalist social relations. Therefore, the regime of preventive counter-revolution leaves a thousand loopholes open for our activity. The bourgeoisie, in order not to provoke the masses and to exploit them better, limits the use of repressive tools to revolutionaries, vanguards, and promoters. This also gives ample room for maneuver to revolutionaries who are not of a different colour from the masses, who can blend in with the masses. So, revolutionary politics implies a careful and scientific (in the sense that it is learned through experience) combination of clandestine work and public work.

The terrorist regimes of the bourgeoisie arose in the 1920s and 1930s in Italy first, then in other countries of Central Europe, in Germany and in Spain, precisely because in these countries the bourgeoisie had not yet established a system of preventive counter-revolution adequate to the strength of the revolutionary mobilization of the masses.

We are still under a regime of preventive counter-revolution, but the imperialist bourgeoisie needs to increasingly resort to reactionary mobilization to try to maintain its dominion over the masses precisely because its system of power has weakened: the regime of preventive counter-revolution is shaky. The second of its five pillars (economic concessions) has already collapsed, the fifth (the highly selective nature of repression) is shaken by the spread of militarization, war, and repression, the third (mass participation in elections following bourgeois parties) and the fourth (the mass organizations of the regime) are severely disrupted, the first (the manipulation of consciences) is the one that has the strongest hold, but without the others it remains suspended in mid-air.

This makes the clash between revolutionary and reactionary mobilization of the popular masses more open.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, the founders of the conscious and organized communist movement, pointed out that "communists distinguish themselves from other revolutionaries because they have a more advanced understanding of the conditions, form, and results of the class struggle and on this basis they always push it forward." To pursue their immediate and historical aims, communists must base their line of action on the objective conditions in which the class struggle takes place: today they must base it on the characteristics of the imperialist era. During the first wave of the proletarian revolution, the exponents of the communist parties in the imperialist countries paid little or no attention to the nature of the imperialist era. This was one of the factors that determined the inability to promote the socialist revolution until the establishment of socialism, despite the heroism, dedication to the cause, and fidelity to the ideals of communism of millions of communists, despite the conspiracy and armed struggle against Nazism and fascism. The accumulated delay in the scientific understanding of the reality of imperialism still contributes today, in the field of mass activity, to keeping communists bogged down in the two historical flaws of economism and electoralism, while the transformations that have occurred in the imperialist era, both in the economic field (i.e. the production of the material conditions of human existence as commodities has become a secondary aspect of the valorization of capital and the activities of the bourgeoisie – although it remains their ineliminable basis – and is subordinated to the valorization of capital through financial and speculative operations) and in the political field (i.e.the transition from bourgeois democracy to regimes of preventive counter-revolution), lead to the same conclusion: the promotion of demands-based struggles and participation in bourgeois political struggle must be consciously aimed at the establishment of socialism.

We wish a fruitful debate to the Conference: may it pave the way for developments that will contribute to the rebirth of the communist movement throughout the world.

Central Committee of the (new)Italian Communist Party