The historical development of capitalism in its imperialist phase continuously confirms Lenin’s thesis that, as the domination of monopolies deepens and the contradictions of the capitalist system intensify, the bourgeoisie progressively abandons its own “democratic” forms of rule and turns toward increasingly reactionary, authoritarian, and violent methods. This process corresponds to the objective necessity of maintaining class power in a context of crisis, inter-imperialist competition, and the potential rise of working-class struggle.

We are witnessing a resurgence of nationalist, chauvinist, racist, and openly reactionary currents. This resurgence expresses the sharpening contradictions of contemporary capitalism and is closely linked to the ongoing wars and to the preparation for new imperialist confrontations. The bourgeoisie in each country needs to rally “its” working class behind its own interests, and for this purpose it employs a wide range of instruments: nationalism, hostility toward foreigners, militarism, and anti-communism.

At the same time, the political systems of capitalist States — including those which for decades presented themselves as models of “liberal democracy” — display a clear tendency toward increasing the attack against the workers’ and people’s rights, the strengthening of repressive apparatuses, mass surveillance, and the criminalization of social struggle. Reaction advances not only through increasingly reactionary parties, but also through the adaptation of the entire political system to the needs of monopoly capital in times of profound instability and intensification of the efforts to strengthen its role in the imperialist rivalries.

More than three decades after the triumph of the counterrevolution in the USSR and the proclamation by bourgeois theorists of the “end of history,” reality has demonstrated the falsity of all illusions about the possibility of a peaceful and democratic world capitalism. The frequently repeated expression “rules-based international order” evoked a concrete model of relations among powers which is now in ruins. Lenin’s thesis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism — characterized by the tendency toward reaction along the whole line and the inevitability of wars for the division of markets, raw materials, and transport routes — acquires particular relevance in our era.

This tendency toward reaction should not be understood solely as the emergence of open dictatorships, although these cannot be excluded, but as a process of hardening bourgeois rule that includes the planned restriction of workers’ and people’s rights, the weakening of democratic control mechanisms, the growth of repressive apparatuses, and the systematic criminalization of working-class and popular struggle.

This tendency has a clear material basis. On the one hand, the pursuit of the maximum profit and the concentration of capital generate growing inequalities and more violent economic crises, which aggravate the situation and push broad sectors of the working class and middle strata into struggle. On the other hand, the struggle among imperialist alliances and powers for a new division of the world makes international stability increasingly precarious. Under these conditions, the bourgeoisie needs to secure its internal “rear,” and does so by disciplining its own people, by putting obstacles in the way of the class struggle, ensuring a relative social peace, and preventing class struggle from obstructing its international objectives.

Reaction therefore fulfills a dual function. Internally, it seeks to contain, divide, and disorganize the workers’ movement, limit its capacity for action, and hinder its independent political development. Externally, it prepares society to accept the aggressive foreign policy of its own bourgeoisie, including wars, sanctions, blockades, and arms races. Both dimensions are deeply intertwined: preparation for war requires internal cohesion under the leadership of the ruling class, and this cohesion is imposed through increasingly authoritarian mechanisms.

It is important to emphasize that this evolution does not depend exclusively on the coming to power of openly reactionary forces. Even under governments that present themselves as democratic or progressive, the State retains its class character. When circumstances require it, these same governments readily implement emergency policies, strengthen repression against the workers’ movement, and restrict the rights and social gains of our class.

Reaction is not a “return” to premodern political forms but a modern adaptation of bourgeois rule. It relies on advanced surveillance technologies, sophisticated propaganda apparatuses, and complex legal frameworks that give an appearance of legality to measures that are profoundly anti-worker and anti-popular. Domination thus becomes more technical, more bureaucratic, and often more difficult to identify as dictatorial in the classical sense — yet no less effective.

Understanding these developments is essential in order to avoid illusions in the supposed permanent stability of bourgeois democracy. Formal freedoms may expand or contract according to the needs of capital at any given moment. When contradictions sharpen and the danger of war approaches, or even more when they are more deeply involved in the war, the bourgeoisie resorts to more open and harsher forms of rule. For this reason, the struggle against reactionary phenomena must not be limited to the abstract defence of democracy, but must be directed against the economic roots that generate them: the domination of monopoly capital and the imperialist system as a whole.

Crises under capitalism are inevitable manifestations of its internal contradictions. Socialized production constantly clashes with the private appropriation of the fruits of labour, periodically generating crises of overproduction and overaccumulation, the destruction of productive forces, mass unemployment, and the impoverishment of broad layers of the population. Under imperialism, crises acquire an even greater dimension, as they combine with the extreme concentration and centralization of capital and the intensification of competition on a world scale, among other factors.

In every crisis, millions of workers lose their jobs or see their living and working conditions deteriorate. Small traders, peasants, and self-employed professionals are ruined under the pressure of monopolies. Sectors of the petty bourgeoisie become proletarianized or live under the constant threat of proletarianization. This process generates frustration, insecurity, and fear for the future, creating fertile ground for the penetration of reactionary ideologies.

Intermediate strata occupy a contradictory position. They are not part of the monopoly bourgeoisie, but neither do they automatically identify with the proletariat. In periods of relative stability, they may oscillate between reformist and conservative positions. In times of deep crisis, however, their social instability translates into political and ideological instability. They seek rapid solutions — promises of order, protection, and the recovery of a lost or threatened position.

It is precisely in this context that nationalism and chauvinism find particularly receptive ground.

Nationalism cannot be analysed as an abstract ideology detached from the relations of production and the class interests it expresses. Under capitalism, every dominant form of nationalism is ultimately linked to the needs of the bourgeoisie. In the imperialist stage of capitalist development, nationalism assumes an increasingly reactionary and aggressive character.

Nationalism presents the nation as a harmonious community of interests, erasing class divisions within it. From this perspective, workers and capitalists appear as members of the same national body, united by history, culture, language, or religion. This conception serves a specific ideological function: replacing class consciousness with an abstract national consciousness that obscures the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour on behalf of the “national interest”.

Chauvinism constitutes a particularly aggressive form of nationalism. It does not merely exalt what is one’s own, but denigrates other peoples, cultures, or States, presenting them as inferior, threatening, or hostile. This ideology serves the foreign policy of imperialist powers by justifying interventions, sanctions, economic blockades, and wars under the banner of defending the homeland, national security, or even supposedly universal values.

These reactionary ideologies offer simple explanations for complex problems. They distort reality and protect monopoly capital and the laws of capitalist development which are responsible for the ruin of millions, they redirect attention toward external or internal enemies: other countries, international institutions, migrants, or cultural and religious minorities. Crisis ceases to appear as the product of a system that has overcome its historical limits and is instead presented as the consequence of foreign interests, incompetent leadership, or the loss of sovereignty.

Monopoly bourgeoisie promotes these interpretations and encourages and channels them whenever they serve its interests. Although certain sectors of big capital benefit from growing global economic interdependence, all share an interest in preventing the anger and frustration of the workers’ and people’s majority from being directed against capitalist property and the power of monopolies. Nationalism thus serves as an ideological diversion, transforming potential struggle against exploitation into national, cultural, or ethnic resentment.

The crisis also undermines the traditional forms of social mediation that for decades helped integrate sectors of the working class into the system: relatively stable employment, limited social mobility, access to housing, and mass consumption. As these material foundations erode, illusions in social progress within capitalism also weaken. Yet if the working class lacks strong organizations and a clear revolutionary political orientation, discontent may be captured by reactionary forces offering a false national community as a substitute for class solidarity.

Racism and xenophobia also play a concrete economic role in this process. Immigrant workers, often concentrated in the most precarious sectors, are used as cheap and flexible labour. The bourgeoisie benefits from this situation while simultaneously supporting — and often promoting — positions that portray these same workers as responsible for unemployment or falling wages. In this way a double advantage is obtained: exploitation is intensified and the proletariat is divided, weakening its capacity for collective struggle.

Sectors of the petty bourgeoisie undergoing proletarianization may in turn become a social base for ultranationalist movements promising to restore a lost order, protect the domestic market, and punish supposed enemies responsible for “national decline”. Historically, this sector has been a key component in the rise of fascist and authoritarian movements. Although forms vary today, the social function of such currents remains similar: acting as an ideological and political battering ram against the organized workers’ movement.

Nationalism also fulfils a disciplinary function in relation to war. As inter-imperialist tensions intensify, the bourgeoisie needs the people to accept economic sacrifices, social cutbacks, and ultimately the possibility of sending their children to war. The discourse of defending the homeland, national honour, or external threats prepares the masses ideologically to accept these costs in the name of a supposedly common interest.

For us, combating nationalism does not mean denying the existence of nations or the cultural particularities of peoples. It means exposing the way in which the bourgeois class uses these elements to perpetuate its power.

Imperialist wars do not erupt suddenly nor exclusively as the result of diplomatic decisions or military movements. They are preceded by a prolonged process of material, political, and ideological preparation. Just as States reorganize their industries, strengthen military alliances, and modernize their armies, they also work systematically on the consciousness of the masses in order to make acceptable what under normal circumstances would encounter much greater resistance: participation in conflicts that do not serve the interests of the working class.

The history of the twentieth century clearly demonstrates how the rise of aggressive nationalism preceded the great imperialist conflagrations. Before 1914 and before 1939, the ruling classes carried out intense chauvinist campaigns to secure the support — or at least the passivity — of their populations.

This ideological preparation is an inseparable dimension of inter-imperialist confrontation. Powers compete not only for markets, raw materials, and strategic routes, but also for the legitimacy necessary to justify this competition before their own populations, even when it takes the form of open war. Nationalism and chauvinism are central tools in this process, though they are not the only ones.

One of the mechanisms employed is the systematic construction of an enemy. Through the mass media and multifaceted propaganda, the image of other States, peoples, or social groups is gradually shaped as a threat. Their actions are interpreted exclusively as aggression, while one’s own actions are always portrayed as defensive or inevitable. This tactic serves to divert attention from internal problems and to generate fear and insecurity, thereby strengthening national cohesion around the political and military leadership of the State.

Another key element is the normalization of militarism. The presence of the armed forces in public life becomes increasingly commonplace: military parades, official commemorations, and advertising campaigns that present the army as a guarantor of peace or as a provider of humanitarian assistance. The military industry is portrayed as a strategic sector for employment and technological innovation, while its ultimate purposes remain concealed. In this context, increases in military spending are justified as necessary investments in national security, even while social expenditures are reduced.

Domestically, this preparation is accompanied by the stigmatization of those who oppose the foreign policy of their own State. Internationalist and anti-militarist positions, consistently antiimperialist, are depicted as naïve, irresponsible, or even traitorous. Social pressure and the strengthened propaganda of the bourgeois media seek to isolate forces that expose the imperialist character of contemporary conflicts. In situations of heightened tension, this pressure may escalate into legal persecution, censorship, or open repression.

All these processes intensify as inter-imperialist contradictions deepen. Economic and geopolitical disputes translate into trade wars, sanctions, blockades, and regional conflicts that serve as testing grounds for larger confrontations. Each international crisis becomes an opportunity to reinforce narratives of permanent threat and the necessity of constant preparation.

This ideological preparation has direct consequences for the working class. Workers are not only asked to accept cuts and sacrifices in the name of war economy and national security, but may ultimately be called upon to participate directly in war, whether as soldiers in the slaughterhouse of imperialist war or as work force subjected to the intensification of exploitation and emergency regimes with an escalation of repression. Yet their objective interests do not coincide with those of the bourgeoisie of any country in these conflicts.

The response to this ideological offensive must be based on defending the unity of the working class and the struggle for real peace, for the interests of the peoples and without falling into the claudicant positions of bourgeois pacifism, working decisively so the masses make their own the basic position that only a revolutionary solution can ultimately put an end to imperialist war.

In periods marked by the rise of reactionary forces and the general hardening of political systems, an old slogan reappears with renewed strength: the need for “unity” to halt the far right, defend democracy, or preserve institutional stability. Under various formulations — “anti-fascist front,” “popular front,” “progressive bloc,” or “cordon sanitaire” — political collaboration between workers’ organizations and supposedly democratic sectors of the bourgeoisie is proposed. This orientation involves a serious strategic error: subordinating the class struggle to the interests of one fraction of the ruling class and, in practice, to the whole of the exploiters.

The starting point of this conception is the idea that a section of the bourgeoisie exists with which the working class can share long-term strategic objectives against another, more reactionary section. A distinction is thus established between a “democratic” or “anti-fascist” bourgeoisie and an “authoritarian” or “fascist” one, presenting the former as a potential ally of the workers’ movement. This perspective obscures the fundamental unity of the bourgeoisie as an exploiting class and its shared interest in preserving private ownership of the means of production and the power of capital.

Differences between bourgeois factions certainly exist, but they concern the pace of reforms, geopolitical orientation, or different methods for defending capitalist exploitation. They do not alter the class character of the bourgeois State. In periods of stability, certain factions may prefer to maintain certain “democratic” stance or offer limited concessions to the workers’ movement in order to disarm it and ensure social peace. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that when crisis intensifies and class struggle threatens to overflow established frameworks, even these “moderate” factions readily resort to authoritarian measures, restrictions of rights, and repression.

Subordinating working-class politics to the “defence of democracy” under bourgeois leadership leads, in practice, to the ideological disarmament of the proletariat. Workers are asked to postpone their demands, moderate their struggles, or support governments that implement anti-worker policies in the name of a lesser evil. The central contradiction is shifted away from that between capital and labour and toward an abstract opposition between democracy and authoritarianism that leaves the capitalist framework intact. The working class is thus encouraged to see itself primarily as citizens, as “the people,” or as a nation — rather than as an exploited class with its own objective interests antagonistic to those of the bourgeoisie.

This perspective has particularly harmful consequences in the international sphere. In the name of defending democracy against external threats, the integration into military blocs, increases in military spending, and participation in imperialist interventions are justified. In this way, the working class is called upon to close ranks with “its” own bourgeoisie not only domestically but also internationally, thereby breaking solidarity with the proletariat of other countries.

The historical experience of the communist movement demonstrates that whenever political independence has been abandoned in favour of strategic alliances with the bourgeoisie, the result has been the strengthening of opportunism and the weakening — or even liquidation — of revolutionary strategy.

However, none of this implies adopting an indifferent attitude toward the advance of reactionary forces. It means that they must be fought from an independent class position, linking the defence of workers’ and popular rights with the struggle against the system that generates these forces. The working class has an interest in defending and expanding their democratic rights, but not in preserving the power of the bourgeoisie, which is ultimately prepared to curtail those rights whenever it considers it necessary.

As inter-imperialist contradictions deepen and traditional forms of bourgeois governance lose legitimacy, various currents have emerged that present themselves as “progressive” alternatives to the dominant order but place their central emphasis on the recovery of national sovereignty. These positions — often described as sovereigntist, patriotic, or defenders of the national economy — criticize certain consequences of the global expansion of capitalist relations of production, such as industrial relocation, precarious labour, or the erosion of productive structures. However, they do so without proposing a break with the capitalist economic foundation itself.

The starting point of these currents that revolve around socialdemocracy and influence the communist movement is the idea that the central problem is not capitalism as a mode of production but its “deregulated,” “globalist,” “neoliberal,” or “unipolar” form. They contrast this with a supposedly more balanced model of national development, characterized by greater State intervention, protection of strategic sectors, and redistributive social policies.

This approach shifts the central contradiction from the class terrain to the national terrain. Instead of opposing workers and capitalists, it opposes the nation to foreign powers, the people to global elites, and the national economy to foreign capital. Although it may incorporate language that appears close to that used by communists, its horizon is not the transcendence of capitalism but its reorganization within national boundaries. In this way, the illusion is fostered that a “patriotic” capitalism is possible that harmonizes the interests of the classes under the direction of a strong State.

In practice, these proposals reinforce the notion of a community of interests between workers and national capitalists. Calls are made to “defend our companies,” “protect our industry,” or “compete as a country” in the global market. Yet “our” companies remain capitalist enterprises that base their profitability on the exploitation of wage labour. In times of crisis or intensified international competition, they will demand wage reductions, labour flexibilization, and public subsidies just as readily as any other. As long as private ownership of the means of production and the logic of profit accumulation remain intact, the State will continue to act as the guarantor of the interests of "its" bourgeoisie.

Moreover, in a world dominated by large imperialist alliances and internationalized value chains, no national capitalism can escape the pressures of global competition. Protectionist or reindustrialization policies may alter certain balances, but they cannot eliminate the need to compete for markets, investments, raw materials, or transport routes. Thus, “sovereigntism” can easily lead to economic and geopolitical rivalry with other states, fuelling the very tensions that underlie imperialist conflicts.

These currents may disorient sectors of the working class that perceive the destructive effects of the internationalization of capital. They offer a partial diagnosis — loss of economic sovereignty, subordination to bourgeois inter-state institutions, deindustrialization — but propose a solution that does not address the root of the problem: private ownership of the major means of production and the integration of national economies into the imperialist system.

In this framework, proletarian internationalism is sidelined or reinterpreted. Solidarity and joint struggle of workers of different countries is replaced by the priority of defending “national” employment and production, even if this means competing with workers from other nations. This reinforces the fragmentation of the working class on a global scale, making it difficult to build common responses against monopolies and imperialist blocs.

Another fundamental limitation of these proposals is their reliance on the bourgeois State as a neutral instrument that could be used for the benefit of the majority. They forget or deny that the State in capitalism is not an arbiter above classes, but rather an apparatus of bourgeois domination. Even when it adopts regulatory or interventionist measures, it does so to guarantee the reproduction of the exploitative system as a whole. Thinking that this State can be gradually transformed into an instrument of emancipation without a revolutionary rupture leads to reformist dead ends.

In periods of sharpening of the crisis and international tensions, so-called "sovereignism" can also slide into openly chauvinistic positions. The defence of sovereignty without class criteria can become hostility toward other peoples, justification for border closure policies, or support for geopolitical disputes presented as a defence of national interests.

The growth of nationalism and chauvinism, and reaction in general may culminate in fascism, but not every nationalist, chauvinist, or reactionary position is fascist in itself. Narrow definitions mean that nothing or everything is fascism. In fact, mass penetration doesn't occur solely through nationalism or appeals to race, homeland, or religion; it also occurs through the promotion of individualism.

Fascism, understood as a form of rule of monopoly capital under conditions of acute crisis and threat to its domination, requires the mobilization of discontented masses outside a class axis. It cannot present itself openly as the dictatorship of big capital. Instead, it must appear as a mass movement with an anti-elite, national, and regenerative discourse directed against internal and external enemies.

Nationalism and chauvinism, in particular, provide the ideal ideological framework for this operation.

First, extreme nationalism promotes the dissolution of class contradictions within a supposedly homogeneous national community. Under the flag, the differences between exploiters and exploited are presented as secondary to the need to defend the nation. This fiction is fundamental to fascism, which seeks to politically integrate sectors of the proletarianized petty bourgeoisie and disoriented sectors of the working class into a project that, ultimately, serves the interests of big capital.

Chauvinism adds an aggressive and exclusionary component to this scheme. The nation is not only exalted, but also defined in opposition to enemies that threaten it from without or within. National minorities, migrants, political opponents, workers' organizations, and communists are labeled as foreign bodies, traitors, or agents of foreign powers. In this way, their marginalization, persecution, and ultimately, their elimination from political and social life are legitimized.

Historically, fascism has served, in specific circumstances, to divert social discontent generated by capitalist crises and has been the tool of monopoly capital to impede and block the advance of the revolutionary workers' movement. Without underestimating the role of fascism as a reserve for the dictatorship of monopolies, the conditions are not the same today; the circumstances that gave rise to classical fascism are not present at this time.

Of course, a specific analysis must be carried out in each country. In any case, we do not absolutize the fact that the international proletariat currently lacks the necessary conditions of political organization and revolutionary leadership to constitute an existential threat to the capitalists. 

The crisis of the international communist movement has not yet been overcome, but in any case, we communists who work for the revolutionary regrouping of the communist movement take into account that the dead ends of the system and the imperialist war can lead to an intensification of the class struggle, and we are called to be prepared and to prepare the working class for any event, with the revolutionary overthrow as the main objective.

But the revolutionary workers' movement possesses the potential afforded by the very reality of capitalist development. Regardless of rhetoric, propaganda, and violence, capitalist exploitation persists, and therefore the objective conditions for a revolutionary crisis remain. The bourgeoisie, in this sense, has learned historical lessons well and is aware that the proletariat is its principal, existential enemy, and actively works to prevent its organization and class struggle, to assimilate it. For this reason, the open resort to fascism is not yet a necessity for the ruling class. Yet the growing normalization of reactionary positions creates the conditions in which fascist organizations could once again be used if the need arises, just as occurred in Germany, Italy, and Spain during the 1920s and 1930s. Today, the embryonic emergence of various expressions of “squadrismo1” can be observed internationally, such as the ICE in the USA.

Among the tasks to be explored further regarding the phenomenon of reaction, it would be pertinent to analyze in greater detail all the transitions between bourgeois democracy and fascism. On the one hand, the transition that occurs between bourgeois democracy and fascism after the cycles of reactionary upsurge, but without forgetting also the subsequent transition between fascism and bourgeois democracy, which can provide interesting data on these processes.

1 “Squadrismo” was originally the name given to the phenomenon of creating paramilitary fascist groups in Italy in the beginning of the 1920’s. We use it as synonym of “paramilitary fascist groups” today. 

In this context, the tasks of communist and workers’ parties cannot be limited to moral denunciations of racism or authoritarianism. Our Parties should address the phenomenon at its root: capitalism in its imperialist phase. 

The struggle against reaction cannot be separated from the question of power. Limiting ourselves to defending a bourgeois-democratic model as the lesser evil without challenging the economic foundations that sustain it leads to a defensive struggle subordinated to interests alien to the working class. We must analyze more deeply the role that the exhaustion of the social democratic period can play in the growth of fascism, which can initially be expressed in the form of depoliticization.

Some sectors present the Chinese model as an alternative, citing its interventionism and even a supposed nationalist/patriotic character. These sectors consider China an alternative to the decline of the US, an example of this “new capitalist progressivism” and the future of capitalism. Ultimately, progressivism always ends up becoming the basis of development for reformism. Struggles for social justice, outside of revolutionary frameworks, reproduce capitalist frameworks and disappear as soon as they lose their usefulness.

Only workers’ power, based on the socialization of the concentrated means of production and on the centralized and democratic planning of the economy, can eliminate the material foundations that generate nationalism, chauvinism, reaction, and imperialist war.

This strategic orientation must guide the work of our parties. Without organized communist intervention capable of explaining the real causes of social discontent and pointing toward a solution in terms of workers’ power and socialist-communist construction, the political vacuum will be filled by reactionary forces.

It is our duty to expose and denounce the connection between nationalist propaganda, militarization, and the interests of monopolies. Against the logic of imperialist war, we must oppose proletarian internationalism and the struggle to transform wars between peoples into class struggle against the bourgeoisie of each country.

The global expansion of capitalist relations and the resulting unequal economic interdependence cannot be confronted through a retreat into forms of “national capitalism,” whether more or less regulated or protected. Immediate demands linked to the defence of full and stable employment, health and education systems public and free, public housing, etc., must be integrated into an independent class perspective that does not subordinate workers’ interests to the competitiveness of the national bourgeoisie.

Finally, it is essential to strengthen the organized communist presence in workplaces — the only solid foundation for resisting both exploitation and the penetration of reactionary ideologies — while maintaining political and ideological independence from all fractions of the bourgeoisie and avoiding the annulment or dilution of the communist program within fronts of interclass alliances.