Fighting Fascism - Clara Zetkin Red Book Club

“Fascism is the strongest, most concentrated, and classic expression at this time of the world bourgeoisie’s general offensive. It is urgently necessary that it be brought down."

As fascism continues to become more violent and brazen internationally, the question of how to fight it becomes ever more urgent. In Fighting Fascism: How To Struggle and How To Win by Clara Zetkin the esteemed German Communist delivers her 1923 address to the Third Plenum of the Communist International which included her defintion of fascism, an analysis of its origins and what social, economic and political conditions led to the rise of fascism in Italy, tragically accurate and prescient warnings about the development of fascism in Germany, why the fight against fascism must be taken up by the entire proletariat and more. We also comment on fascism in the USA, discuss how to struggle against and overcome fascism and why we can never forget the devastating impact that fascism has had on the world.



Please note that this episode was recorded before the racist murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis Police Department and it is for this reason that this and the subsequent uprisings and protests that followed aren't discussed in this episode.



This episode is part of our series on Marxist-feminists. As Mao and Thomas Sankara have said, “Women hold up the other half of the sky.” Red Book Club recognizes that including the voices of nonmen in our studies is not a niche activity, but is in fact an essential step in gaining the most comprehensive view of the material conditions of the past and present that we possibly can; therefore we’ve planned this series to amplify the ideas that nonmen have been bringing to the conversation for centuries. From Federici’s analysis of women as a means of primitive accumulation to Luxemburg’s essay of the benefits of revolution vs the impossibility of reform, each of these works confronts history and the movement for social change through the lens of the experiences of nonmen in society. Follow us on Twitter at @RBCpod or www.twitter.com/RBCpod and feel free to message us if you need links to companion resources or have any questions. You can also find us on our new site at www.rbcpod.wordpress.com  where you can find ebook copies of the works that we're covering and more.

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Outro music: Song  of Choice - Peggy Seeger