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Month: September 2019

Six Months of Rio Governor Witzel in the Favelas, Part 2: Economic and Social Development

This is the second installment in a two-part article monitoring the actions of Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel since taking office, focusing on public security, governance, and social and economic development. Witzel was elected last October on a public security-driven campaign, promising to “protect police from potential conviction,” raising the question of who would benefit from said security. […]


30/09/2019

This is the second installment in a two-part article monitoring the actions of Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel since taking office, focusing on public security, governance, and social and economic development. Witzel was elected last October on a public security-driven campaign, promising to “protect police from potential conviction,” raising the question of who would benefit from said security. In this article, we analyze his achievements from inauguration to present day, as well as discrepancies between his rhetoric and practice. 

After taking office in January, Wilson Witzel provided his aides with a Plan of Directives and Priority Initiatives of the Rio State Government, outlining 104 goals to be reached within the first 100 days of government, and another 99 goals for the first six months. At the administration’s 100-day mark, the government released a separate document, titled “The Beginning of a New Future: 100 Days, Results from the Government,” as a follow-up. This document does not mention the goals set for 180 days (six months), nor has any new document assessing this period’s goals been published, making it impossible to track their progress.

This installment analyzes the main goals and actions of the Rio state government in its first six months, focusing on the “Economic Development and Regionalization” and “Human and Social Development” pillars as outlined in the government’s 100-day document.

3. Economic Development and Regionalization

Among the government’s declared achievements is the establishment of new parameters for Rio’s public water utility CEDAE‘s social rate, aiming to expand preferential rate coverage from 100,000 to 300,000 low-income families. The goal of creating a new rate-model by restructuring minimum fees is reportedly 80% complete. Separately, Witzel has expressed his intention to privatize CEDAE as a means of achieving fiscal recovery for the state. Specialists and social movements alike have condemned the prospect of privatization, affirming that the water supply must be kept public and universal, rather than managed for profit by the private sector. They maintain that privatization would increase inequality, as a private company would possibly seek increased fees or cease to operate in less profitable areas, such as favelas.

Another goal in this section, one that would allow a portion of the profits from the state lottery system (LOTERJ) to be applied to public security expenses (the current law states that they may be applied to school and hospital assistance, areas of public interest, educational, sport and cultural services), has disappeared from the 100-day document. Meanwhile, another goal, that of “resuming the cable car operations,” without specifying whether this refers to the cable car system in Morro da Providência favela or Complexo do Alemão‘s favelas, was not achieved in either location. The 100-day document states only that there exists a working group dedicated to restoring activity in Alemão.

The original goal of “creating the State Land Regularization Plan (PERF), allowing greater access to concession of use titles for housing in communities” became simply “create measures to draft the State Land Regularization Plan (PERF)” and was marked accomplished, though creating measures to draft the plan is very different from actually creating a plan. At the event marking 180 days in office, the governor announced that land titles would be granted to the residents of Morro do Preventório, in Rio’s sister city of Niterói across the Guanabara Bay. It was not clear, however, if this would constitute a resumption of work already being undertaken by the Land and Cartography Institute of the State of Rio de Janeiro (ITERJ), the body responsible for this regularization, or if the process would belong to a new program.

Among the original goals for the government’s 180-day mark was that to “identify, catalog and monitor families in hazardous areas and where to relocate them,” an idea that interacts with the security pillar goals, but does not appear in the 100-day government report, leaving it unclear whether or not this is taking place at all. Another goal, one that aims to “consolidate rural and urban settlements through the fostering of infrastructure works, delivery of equipment and supplies and projects to create jobs and income,” is ambitious, given that it does not define specific territories or a specific number of settlements that must be reached.

This section also mentions goals related to a program that the government claims to have initiated in the 100-day report, called Rumo ao Rio (Bound for Rio), and a kit to help attract major events. These include candidacy for the 2020 Global Summit on Urban Tourism, which relates to the goal of “strengthening security for tourists at attractions and tourist areas in the city of Rio”—favoring once again the security of tourists and residents of touristic areas over the rest of the city’s inhabitants—and the implementation of both the MotoGP World Championship and Formula 1 at the city’s new racetrack.

The new racetrack in turn may remind readers of the old racetrack, demolished in 2012 for the construction of the Olympic Park, causing the violent eviction of almost all of the families of the Vila Autódromo community. Just as in the case of the Olympic Park, only one consortium participated in the tender for new racetrack. The tender has previously been blocked by the Public Prosecutor’s Office due to the absence of environmental impact studies surrounding the project’s effects on the neighborhood of Deodoro, which is home to a large remaining patch of urban Atlantic rainforest.

The insistence of successive administrations on attracting large events for the city flies in the face of evidence that these events carry overwhelmingly negative legacies, as they have provoked everything from evictions and gentrification, affecting the right to housing for thousands of families, to excessive state spending, contract corruption, and underused constructions.

4. Social and Economic Development

For the government’s 180-day goals, the goal of “developing a policy of attending to families enduring social hardship” and “developing activities for the protection and promotion of food security” shows no mention of progress. What the government has done is re-register 1,340 families in the social rent support program, which corresponds to 20% of beneficiaries, and conduct attendance and monitoring of 1,571 people and family members of victims of rights violations. The document does not specify how this attendance is undertaken, what type of rights violations are included, or how this relates to the total number of victims.

In the 100-day results document, Witzel claims to have implemented a program called Citizenship Action by the Leão XIII Foundation. There is no online presence for this program, either on the government’s official website or in the government daily registry. If created, the program would confusedly hold the same name as the non-profit organization created by beloved activist-sociologist Herbert de Sousa, known as Betinho, in 1993.

The document includes other achievements not found in the Directives Plan, such as the “implantation” of the Novo Olhar (New Vision) program, giving free eye exams and glasses to the population. The program has been in existence since at least 2017 (it would be more accurate to stipulate the continuation or maintenance of the program). The document also mentions the reorganizing of shelters, without specifying what this means. Recently, the governor defended obligatory internment in shelters for homeless people with issues of mental illness and drug addiction.

The 100-day document also includes goals related to mega-events, including a bid for the 2019 World School Games (which is 90% complete) and attracting events such as UFC Rio de Janeiro, the Rio Open, the World Surf League, Rally dos Sertões 2020, Red Bull sports events, and the South American Mixed Martial Arts Championship. It is not clear how these events will contribute to the social and human development of the state’s residents. The governor also promised reforms of the Rocinha favela’s sport center, though this was not part of the Directives plan.

This article first appeared on the RioOnWatch Website. Reproduced with permission from the author.

Photo Gallery – 22 September 2019 Against the Repression in Egypt

photos by Hossam El-Hamalawy. Reproduced with permission


photos by Hossam El-Hamalawy. Reproduced with permission

Photo Gallery – 21 September 2019: Demonstrating for a woman’s right to choose

photos by Phil Butland, Kate Cahoon, Dimitra Kyrillou and Marie Rose. Reproduced with permission


photos by Phil Butland, Kate Cahoon, Dimitra Kyrillou and Marie Rose. Reproduced with permission

ARE GERMAN GREENS ON THE LEFT?

Berlin Bulletin No. 163    August 31 2019


Comments on “Germany’s Future Is Being Decided on the Left, Not the Far Right” by Noah Barkin in “The Atlantic”, August 28, 2019 (used by portside, August 29)

True enough, as this article points out, the German party called The Greens has certainly soared to an amazingly strong position in the political spectrum;  it is even grasping for the very top job soon to be vacated by Angela Merkel, with some hope for success. But placing it on “the Left” is not at all so certain. It may be green in its environment program but in terms of political hues, unlike its American namesake, it is by no means so clearly in the red, or leftist, rainbow sector.

The party began nearly fifty years ago as a radical, angrily-attacked antidote to the stolid West German scene. With its feminist, anti-establishment, equalitarian and above all environmentally conscious words and actions, symbolized by wearing sneakers to government receptions and hand-knitted sweaters to parliamentary sessions, its break with traditions was almost a shade of Woodstock ten years earlier.

But its “realo” faction outscored its “fundis”, pragmatic “realists” beat leftist “fundamentalists”. When it joined a government coalition with the Social Democrats on the federal level in 1998, its radical aspects retreated. The major break came when Joschka Fischer, its leader and foreign minister, sent German bombers against Serbia, a brutal war crime based on lies (now increasingly coming to light). It was the first time since 1945 that Germans in uniform (in planes) killed people outside their national borders, and was made possible by German unification nine years earlier – and by the Greens. In its years sharing the helm of state, until 2005, a whole series of measures were also passed against Germans at home –hitting hardest at the jobless and at pensioners, while the wealthy were not just spared but richly rewarded with a multibillion cut in taxes.

Somehow, whenever the Greens gain state power, in those years on the national level or in state-level cabinet posts, their militancy often gets diluted like over-watered coffee in a bad café.

Strong on equality for women, LGBTI rights, on opposing racism, hatred of foreigners and neo-fascists of every new brand and variety, they gained their big new increase in strength largely thanks to growing awareness by millions of the rapid destruction of our environment, felt clearly in rising temperatures, droughts and floods. Their sins in federal cabinets were largely forgotten after 2005; indeed, a major plus point is currently their simple absence from any wimpy federal government.

But it’s better not to look too closely at their actions on state levels. After fighting long and conspicuously against further extending the huge Frankfurt airport – “Save our environment!” – they made the then unusual decision to join in a state government with the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU). When their leader became deputy minister president and economics minister, they somehow forgot opposition and approved the extension (though the Herr Minister himself was somehow unable to attend its fancy opening ceremony, with or without sneakers and a wool sweater.

A year ago a majority of Germans, with the Greens among the loudest, celebrated the decision to save the ancient Hambacher Forest between Cologne and Aachen after its passionate defense by countless demonstrators, with some holding out in tree huts. Rarely mentioned was the fact that five years earlier, when the Greens shared coalition posts with the Social Democrats ruling the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, their three cabinet ministers had all approved cutting down the forest in favor of open pit lignite coal digging.

Another example is from northern Schleswig-Holstein. While handsome Green national co-chair Robert Habeck loudly calls for capping rent levels – an urgent demand now heard on many sides – the three-party coalition up there, with the CDU and the Greens and the openly pro-capitalist Free German Party (FDP), quietly lifted the existing state lid on rent increases. Again the Greens bowed to their “Christian” partner.

In the state of Baden-Wurttemberg in southwest Germany the Greens also joined in a coalition with the CDU-rightists, but this time, in the first and only case thus far in Germany, as head of a state government. But here, too. their somehow still popular, tall, scratchy-voiced Minister President Winfried Kretschmann seemed to overlook his Green roots. His roots searched richer soil; the giant Daimler-Benz maker of Mercedes cars is centered near his capital, Stuttgart. As he has often made clear, he knows which fertilizer is most advantageous. For years his special sleek green Mercedes government vehicle was famous for its 441 horse power. “I am very big and I need to travel quickly” he explained. (But a critical journalist asked if he really needed a speed of up to 150 mph.)

When even greater speed is necessary, he flies. Dismissing the highly-publicized demands of Robert Habeck for an ecological  ban on domestic flights in Germany he said: “I don’t think much of all that moralizing … We shouldn’t dictate people’s style of life.” That also seems to apply when Daimler, like Volkswagen, BMW and the others go in for a bit of leaded exhaust pipe trickery.

The Greens have been finding it ever easier to abandon earlier inhibitions about teaming up with the right-wing Christian CDU – and making all kinds of compromises while doing so.

In this way, they seem to be replacing the Social Democrats, who have long been doing the same thing – and thus moving currently to the brink of disaster; their membership has halved, their status in national polls is now at 13 percent. This has forced them into an almost desperate hunt for new leaders; about a dozen male-female duos now choke the field of candidates, somewhat like US presidential campaigns. It is also forcing them to add an almost forgotten left-sounding timbre to their voices, at least when elections approach.

The Greens also speak in progressive tones – and still take some positions in that direction. Maybe a fitting symbol for them would be some kind of mixed bag, some contents generally attractive, others attractive only as coalition partners for the CDU, for unlike the Social Democrats they have almost no complicating ties to the union movement, hence must make no traditional bows in that direction. The Green membership was largely based on once rebellious collegians, most of whom are now highly educated, upper middle-class professionals. It is not yet clear if this base is now broadening.

When it comes to foreign policy, they are more Russophobic than any other party, always from a purely humanitarian standpoint, of course, like some American politicians on both sides of the aisle.  While the Social Democrats sometimes lean here and there towards diplomacy in a world threatened constantly by the menace of atomic war, the Greens lean all too often toward confrontation.

But the Greens are not a monolithic bunch. Some members and some local groups still recall progressive trends from their past – and not exclusively restricted to well-spoken words.

The three states in Eastern Germany now facing elections (two of them on Sunday) will be forced to decide on coalitions; no party will be strong enough to rule alone, most likely not even in two-party tandems.  In both Thuringia (due to vote in October) and Berlin, the Greens, Social Democrats and the LINKE (Left) have long since combined to get a majority of seatsand form the government. This will very likely happen now in Brandenburg; in Saxony it may even be necessary for those three to accept the CDU as boss in a four-way attempt – if only to keep the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD) out of office. With German politics ever more chaotic, the elections and weeks that follow will be of critical importance. Millions are waiting with bated breath!

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And again I want to mention that my book “A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee” with descriptions, reflections, conclusions, plus many anecdotes and some jokes, is now available. If any of you have read it – and liked it – perhaps you can tell that to your addressees. If you didn’t like it – then, instead, tell me!

“Antifa” – The origins of classic antifascism and its red flag

The origins of radical antifascism


The strategy of Antifascist Action can only be understood in the context of the policy of the German Communist Party (KPD) at the time, which in turn was framed by Stalinism. With the rise of Stalin in the USSR during the 1920s and the liquidation of what remained of the 1917 Russian revolution, the communist parties of the world turned into instruments of Soviet foreign policy.

For some time following 1928 (while they were completing the counter revolution inside the USSR), it suited the new Russian leaders to use very radical ultraleft rhetoric, in what was known as the “third period”. According to this position, all of Europe was in the hands of fascism. It is true that Italy was controlled by Mussolini’s fascists, but in Germany the establishment parties — the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats — were still in charge. This was no problem for the Stalinist theory; they were simply branded as fascists and in the case of the German Social Democratic Party, the SPD, as “social fascists”. (See Rosenhaft 1983, pp28ff.).

So during the rise of Hitler the KPD, in general, fought against the Nazis, but always from the viewpoint that the SPD was an enemy as or more dangerous than the fascists themselves.

According to Poulantzas: “there seems to have formed a ‘current of opposition’ [within the KPD] in 1931… which advocated both a stronger fight against Nazism… and that the main blow be struck not against social democracy but against Nazism. However, nothing was done” (Poulantzas 1970, p216).

In 1932, the KPD group in the regional parliament of Baden presented a bill to ban the Iron Front and the Reichsbanner, the Social Democratic Party’s combat organisations (Poulantzas 1970, p210. The KPD central leadership condemned the proposal). Needless to say, the occasional calls the communists made to the SPD rank and file to join the KPD’s anti-fascist struggle didn’t sound convincing.

At times the KPD came worryingly close to the Nazis. In the Land, or region, of Prussia, in summer 1931 the Nazis began a campaign to overthrow, through a referendum, the SPD’s regional government. Initially the KPD refused to support them, but after the intervention of Moscow, the party supported the fascist campaign (Gluckstein 1999, p114, Poulantzas 1970, p213).

In November 1931 the KPD newspaper published an open letter to the “fellow workers” of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the stormtroopers, declaring that “as honest fighters against the hunger system, the proletarian supporters of the NSDAP have joined the United Front of the proletariat and carried out their revolutionary duty” (Rote Fahne, 1 November 1931, cited in Gluckstein 1999, pp113-114). On 18 May 1932 —exactly the period in which the Antifa movement was being prepared— the KPD organised a public meeting with the participation of a Nazi speaker and three hundred NSDAP supporters. (Rote Fahne, 20 May 1932, cited in Gluckstein 1999, p113).

In November 1932 — just months before Hitler’s takeover, and months after the creation of Antifa — both the KPD and the Nazi trade union, the NSBO, celebrated their collaboration —their “united front”— in organising a wildcat transport strike in Berlin. (Gluckstein 1999, p116).

The creation of Antifaschistische Aktion

Already in the 1920s, the KPD had had a combat force called Rotfrontkämpferbund or “League of the Red Front Fighters.” Officially banned in 1929, in fact the organisation continued to function. However, in order to act more openly, the KPD announced in its press, in May 1932, the launching of Antifaschistische Aktion, Antifascist Action. The inaugural event — of which there is a famous photo, of a huge hall decorated with the anti-fascist red flag — was held in June 1932.

Initially some KPD leaders wanted the Antifa movement to be more than just a front for the party. There was talk of a possible understanding with the socialists, and in the photo of the founding congress you can see a socialist banner. But this open attitude didn’t last long.

Under pressure from Moscow, the KPD leadership quickly made it clear that Antifa would oppose not only the Nazis but also the SPD: “Anti-Fascist Action means untiring daily exposure of the shameless, treacherous role of the SPD and ADGB [socialist trade union] leaders who are the direct filthy helpers of fascism” (Rote Fahne, 1 July 1932, quoted in Gluckstein 1999, p115).

As it had been doing since 1929, with the Antifa movement the KPD insisted that in order to fight against fascism it was necessary to fight against capitalism. A pact with the SPD was, therefore, unthinkable. Faced with some attempts to create unity from below, the KPD leader, Thälmann, warned in September 1932 against “dangerous conceptions such as ‘unity above the heads of all the leaders’… Such tendencies can bring the greatest damage” (Poulantzas 1970, p212).

In January 1933, just over half a year after the creation of Antifa, Hitler came to power. The KPD leaders, faithful to their “theory of the third period”, gave this fact little importance, insisting that he would not last long and that “After Hitler, we will take over!” (Wilde 2013). Despite all the KPD’s revolutionary rhetoric, and its hundreds of thousands of members, the Nazis took control of Germany almost unopposed.

It must be said that the SPD was not any better. The Social Democratic leaders accused the Communists of being “Red Nazis”, comparable to Hitler’s followers. The best response to fascism, they insisted, was defending the Constitution and the rule of law. To fight against the Nazis, as the communists did, was to lower themselves to their level. And more things in the same vein. In short, the policy of the SPD against Hitler was also disastrous.

Antifa against antifascist unity

There was an alternative. The Russian revolutionary, Trotsky, defended the policy of the united front; an alliance of all left wing organisations — especially the KPD and the SPD — against the Nazis, without hiding the political differences.

In September 1930, for example, he wrote: “What will the Communist Party ‘defend’? The Weimar Constitution? No,… [the] Communist Party must call for the defence of those material and moral positions which the working class has managed to win in the German state. This most directly concerns the fate of the workers’ political organizations, trade unions, newspapers, printing plants, clubs, libraries, etc. Communist workers must say to their Social Democratic counterparts: ‘The policies of our parties are irreconcilably opposed; but if the fascists come tonight to wreck your organization’s hall, we will come running, arms in hand, to help you. Will you promise us that if our organization is threatened you will rush to our aid?’ This is the quintessence of our policy in the present period.” (Trotsky 1930). He continued to insist on this vision until the victory of Hitler. (See also, for example, Trotsky 1931 and Trotsky 1933).

Trotsky had very few followers in Germany but still they tried to put their policy into practice. One of them, Oscar Hippe, recounted the experience later.

During 1931 the Trotskyists in Germany called on the other workers’ parties to push for a united struggle against the Nazis. They specially called on the KPD to help create action committees against fascism with the participation of all the workers’ parties, unions, factory committees, etc. If they were created, these committees should be united through a founding congress to establish a movement throughout the country.

They did not just make statements; where they had a real base, they fought to build united movements against fascism. In Oranienburg, a city near Berlin, much of the local KPD had gone over to the Trotskyists, and Committees for the United Front were established. Their rallies in different neighbourhoods of Oranienburg attracted some six hundred people. Different sectors of the left participated in these committees, including KPD activists, and in some neighbourhoods the SPD as a party.

Hippe adds, however, that “the KPD always tried to break up the committees”. It is interesting that the experience of the united struggle against fascism fostered unity in other areas. A unitary unemployed workers’ movement was established in Oranienburg, which led a demonstration of 2,000 people to the town hall. The leadership of the KPD did everything possible to sabotage the unitary model. In Berlin, they mobilized the communist youth — activists who probably also belonged to the Antifa movement — to attack with clubs and stones those activists who put up posters or painted slogans in favour of the united front against fascism. (Hippe 1991, pp128-132).

In the end, neither Trotsky’s warnings nor his followers’ attempts to put their strategy into practice managed to break the resistance of the two big parties, except in isolated cases such as those described above. Hippe explains that at the beginning of 1933, “The desire for unity existed among large parts of the working class; only the leaders of the two workers’ parties worked against it. The KPD did not want to back down from its theory of social fascism, while the leaders of the SPD played down the dangers and based themselves on parliamentary activity. We went into 1933 in the knowledge that the victory of Fascism could no longer be prevented. In the final four weeks, our activities increased in spite of everything… “(Hippe 1991, p136).

Pacts with the bourgeoisie, and with Hitler

To complete the picture of the lack of principles of the Stalinist leaders who had promoted the strategy of Antifascist Action, we must remember what they did over the following years. After the terrible defeat represented by the destruction of the German working class— the strongest in Europe — in 1933, the foreign policy of the USSR made a 180-degree turn. In 1934, Moscow began to promote the politics of the popular front. Only two years after helping divide the German working class because of their differences with the Social Democrats, now the communist parties had to ally with “the progressive bourgeoisie”.

In 1935, Stalin signed a military pact with France, then still one of the world’s leading imperialist powers. Pierre Laval signed the deal on behalf of the right-wing government of France. Months before, Laval had met and come to an agreement with Mussolini, giving the green light to the imperialist ambitions of fascist Italy in Africa. Far from insisting on opposition to capitalism as a precondition, with the popular fronts the communist parties repressed those sectors of the left and of the working class that wanted to break with capitalism — all in the name of maintaining “unity”. The central objective of this policy was a broader pact, which was not achieved at that time, between Stalin’s USSR and the imperialist bourgeoisies of Great Britain and France.

When this strategy failed, Stalin did another about turn in 1939 and came to an agreement with Hitler. Again, one assumes that he did not demand that the Nazi leader reject capitalism.

Conclusion

The disastrous failure of the anti-fascist action strategy should serve as a warning to activists who want to stop fascism today. Sadly, in general, that is not the case. In a future article we will look at how sectors of the current antifascist movement repeat many of the mistakes of the past, running the risk of repeating the same tragic end.

Postscript of 2019

I just discovered an article entitled “For the organisation of the Anti-Fascist United Front in the Workplaces”, in the Euskadi Roja(newspaper in Euskadi of the Communist Party of Spain), 23 December 1933. Eleven months after Hitler took power, they continued to reproduce the tragic errors of the Antifa strategy.

The call starts well:

The European Anti-Fascist Workers’ Congress decided to elect a Central Committee of Workers’ Antifascist Unity of Europe [whose tasks include]:

3. Intensify the efforts to constitute the broadest antifascist front of all workers, employees, petty bourgeois, poor peasants and intellectuals in the fight against fascism and imperialist war.

The creation of the broadest front of struggle of all anti-fascists, without distinction of party, union tendencies or religion, of all those who are ready to unite to annihilate fascism…

The problem is that this apparent desire for unity was not real. A few lines later we read that they propose:

5. A determined fight against all saboteurs of the antifascist united front and tirelessly denounce the support provided by the Second International and the reformist trade union leaders who have paved the way for Hitler, Mussolini, Pilsudksi, etc., who have sabotaged the anti-fascist struggle and who aim to continue to lend their support to fascism.

That is to say, just as in Germany in 1932, they were proposing a united struggle “without party distinction”… on the basis of denouncing the social democrat party. As we have seen, a few months later, Moscow began to turn towards the strategy of the popular front, of pacts (without conditions or denunciations) with the “progressive bourgeoisies”.

This article originally appeared in David Karvala’s Spanish-language book El Antifascismo del 99%. The chapter explores the origins of “antifa” (an abbreviation of the German name “Antifaschistische Aktion”), which was an organization of the German Communist Party in the 1930s. Reproduced with permission

Bibliography

Gluckstein, Donny (1999), The Nazis, capitalism and the working class, Bookmarks, London.

Hippe, Oscar (1991), …and red is the colour of our flag, Index, London.

Karvala, David (2012), “La larga sombra del estalinismo”.

Poulantzas, Nicos (1970), Fascismo y dictadura: La tercera internacional frente al fascismo [There seems to be no online version in English]

Rosenhaft, Eve (1983), Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929-1933. Cambridge University Press.

Trotsky, Leon (1930), “The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in Germany”, 26 September 1930, Available at

Trotsky, Leon (1931), “The Impending Danger of Fascism in Germany: A Letter to a German Communist Worker on the United Front Against Hitler”, 8 December 1931.

Trotsky, Leon (1933), “The United Front for Defense: A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker”, 23 February 1933.

Wilde, Florian (2013), “Divided they fell: the German left and the rise of Hitler”, en International Socialism 137, winter 2013.