Comments on: The roots of Fascism and the seeds for its defeat https://johnriddell.com/2018/12/12/the-roots-of-fascism-and-the-seeds-for-its-defeat/ MARXIST ESSAYS AND COMMENTARY Wed, 12 Dec 2018 21:11:51 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.10 By: geoff1954 https://johnriddell.com/2018/12/12/the-roots-of-fascism-and-the-seeds-for-its-defeat/#comment-10726 Wed, 12 Dec 2018 21:11:51 +0000 https://johnriddell.com/?p=5194#comment-10726 Any serious study of the first four congresses of the Communist International, including Zetkin’s enormously important role, will confirm that the political concept of the United Front was developed under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, prior to 1923. (The collections of documents from the Third and Fourth congresses also gathered and edited by John Riddell and Mike Taber are essential reading in this respect and others concerning Comintern history.)

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/897-to-the-masses

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/472-toward-the-united-front

I do not raise this to minimize Zetkin’s political role in understanding either fascism or the need for the United Front. Zetkin’s role in opposing the ultra-left errors of the leadership of her own party in Germany prior to 1923, was absolutely key in the decision by Lenin and Trotsky to wage a fight at the Third Congress against the political views behind those errors and for what became known as the united front approach.

In this respect the appendices to the collection of Third Congress documents, including Zetkin’s account of her discussions with Lenin at that time, are both deeply enjoyable reading and fundamental to understanding the issues involved.

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