In his book The Nazis, Capitalism, and the Working Class (Haymarket, 2012), Donny Gluckstein provides in his conclusion the following list of relevant points, which I will recreate here in full:
"(1) Fascism is not some 'third way'. Its ideas are a grotesque and exaggerated expression of capitalist ideology, with its elitism and contempt for ordinary human beings. Its most pernicious expression is racism.
"(2) It works within the context of capitalism to preserve, by the most brutal methods, the dominance of the system and to secure it from internal threats.
"(3) Yet fascism is not a ruling class conspiracy. It seeks to create a mass movement out of the misery and despair that capitalism engenders, directing that energy down paths harmless to the ruling class.
"(4) The Nazi leadership uses democratic structures in order to build up support; but unlike other parties, its fundamental purpose is to destroy any form of democracy. Therefore, it cannot be treated in the same way as other democratic parties. There must be no platform for fascists.
"(5) Constitutional safeguards and parliamentary rules are no defense against fascism. If the crisis is deep enough, and the ruling class sees no other way out, it will allow the Nazis free reign.
"(6) Since fascism is rooted in class society, the most effective resistance comes from that class which has the most to lose -- the working class. Its life experience and position in society tend to engender forms of solidarity and collective action that are the very opposite of Nazism.
"(7) While political differences exist within the working class, the different currents within the movement need to unite in combating the common deadly enemy. An active united front to oppose Nazism is a vital tactic." (222)
Some brief historical context: Gluckstein traces the path between the failed revolution in Germany in 1918 and the eventual installment of Hitler and his Nazi party to power as the outcome of the compromises and anxieties of the German capitalist class. Germany had the strongest labor movement in the Western world in the early 20th century, and, in the wake of the disastrous First World War, they attempted a revolution against economic oppression in 1918. In November, the Kaiser was overthrown and the war was brought to an end, although months earlier desertions had brought about the unification of revolutionary soldiers' councils and workers' councils following the same pattern as Russia. Strikes ground industry to a halt. Unfortunately, compromise won the day: capitalists made significant concessions to labor, and the moderate-left, reformist SPD party led the way. As Gluckstein writes, "With the army in tatters, direct military collision with workers on a broad scale was not an immediate option. The relation of forces was clearly in labor's favor so a compromise strategy predominated. Its progress was smoothed by the influence of reformism in the working class. No doubt the mass of German workers wanted a better standard of living, plus freedom from exploitation and war; however, only a small minority regarded revolution as the necessary means to achieve it." (16) Leftists, mainly communists, continued insurrection into 1919, but where violently put down by the Freikorps, an independent remnant of the shattered German army financed by big business.
Despite this success in forestalling revolution, German capitalism never felt secure in its exploitation of labor, and eventually set upon a strategy of helping to take over the government politically, with the purpose of then ceding that control and destroying that government in return for the means to completely oppress the labor force. German capitalism backed the rise of the Nazi party throughout the late '20s and thereafter, endorsing the Nazi's determination to use legitimate political processes to gain sufficient power to then destroy those processes. Quoting Adolf Hitler, Gluckstein writes:
"'… pursue a new line of action … Instead of working to achieve power by armed conspiracy, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own constitution.' [Emphasis mine.]
"This did not mean he had altered his hatred for democracy which 'must be defeated with the weapons of democracy.' Goering put it equally crudely: 'We are fighting this state and the present system because we wish to destroy it utterly, but in a legal manner … we said we hated this state, [now] we say we love it -- and still everyone we knows what we mean.' This tactic has been well learnt by present day Nazi groups. Their public face can be respectable but their policies are still as dangerous, and those who believe that Nazis should be allowed free use of democratic rights to destroy them have not learnt from the past." (50) [Emphasis mine.]
To be successful within legitimate political structures, the Nazis had to appeal to at least a reasonably large sector of the German public, and they developed strategies to make themselves appealing to a post-war, post-depression populace. Again, quoting Gluckstein, who quotes Hitler:
"'In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility, because the broad masses of a nation … more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their head to fabricate colossal untruths and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously … The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.'
"There were two opposite trends in Nazi propaganda which at first sight appeared mutually exclusive, but in fact were complementary. On the one hand there was the attempt to divert attention away from social reality and any rational thought which might lead to a questioning of capitalist ideology … On the other hand there was the reverse approach -- 'the differentiation of target groups,' using carefully judged appeals which, despite all protestations to the contrary, addressed economic interest and class. All sorts of promises were made to a range of groups. The army would throw off the shackles of Versailles, students would have their educational efforts rewarded by well paid jobs, the young would see a dynamic new party in action while the old would witness a return to traditional values. Unmarried women would find a husband and be accorded high status, while men were told women would be put in their place -- Kirche, Kuche, Kinder -- at church, in the kitchen, and with the children. Civil servants' jobs would be secured yet taxpayers would pay less through reduction of state officialdom. Farmers would be able to charge higher prices, while consumers would get cheap food." (70)
Finally, there was the Nazi use of racism, both before and after they finally gained power in 1933. Although anti-semitism had certainly been a part of German culture and German politics prior to Nazi power, in general people disapproved of and defied Hitler's initial extreme repressions of Jews, including resounding resistance to the Nazi-orchestrated Kristallnacht. But as Gluckstein writes, "Once Kristallnacht was launched, more conventional capitalist considerations came in to play. The political costs could be offset by plunder. Since 1933, anti-semitism had walked hand-in-hand with sound business principles … the seizure of Jewish assets … gathered pace when Goering sought funding for the armaments program. Due to the November 1938 pogrom 35,000 Jews were bundled into concentration camps as a lever to force emigration and expropriation. They were released if they promised to abandon their wealth and emigrate." (174) Lest a false division be made between governmental and private capitalist expropriation of Jewish wealth, the takeover of the Kreditanstalt bank and associated chemical plants is illustrative: "In the days before the annexation [of Austria] the commercial negotiations were conducted from the Austrian end by two Jews -- Rothenberg and Pollack. When Austria was incorporated into Germany, Rothenberg 'was taken for a ride by uniformed Brownshirts … and thrown out of a moving automobile' while Pollack 'was trampled to death. The Kreditanstalt was gobbled up by the giant Deutsche Bank, and its subsidiary, the Pulverfabrik, fell to IG Farben.' With its heart set on the giant Petschek Group in Czechoslovakia, the Flick Concern encouraged Goering to pass an Aryanization Law and picked up its rival, valued at 16 million dollars, for a mere six million." (174) And so it is clear that German capitalism had a strong interest in Nazi racism.
It is worth drawing a distinction between this kind of capitalist racist violence and the racism present in regular people, Writes Gluckstein:
"[R]acism at the base of society, while influenced by ideology from above, tends to be driven by fear, anger, and frustration generated within society. To the extent that these emotions fail to find an outlet in challenging their real cause, capitalism, they can be channeled against scapegoats, an 'out-group' (such as the Jews). Although this is utterly misguided and ultimately self-defeating, such racism is conceived as a defense of the 'in-group'...
"Ruling class racism is different. Whether deliberate or not it is used to divide and weaken opposition forces, justifying the contemptuous treatment by the upper class of all other human groups in a hierarchy running from the 'superior' boss, to the 'inferior' worker, and the still more 'inferior' minority 'race'. Ruling class racism is thus a component in the broader notion of superiority and inferiority. It is not motivated by deluded defense of an 'in-group' as a whole, but defense of the ruling class interest. A society that sees human beings as factors of production, commodities to be bought and sold, used or thrown on the unemployment scrapheap, produced the Holocaust. Today the same driving force can take less violent forms, such as the destruction of food while millions starve, or the rationing of the poor's survival chances (through healthcare) while the rich enjoy maximum life potential." (176) [Emphasis mine]
And so both kinds of racism -- the racism of common people and the racism of the ownership class -- can be understood in the context of capitalist exploitation. The first is the product of misdirected frustrations and anxieties resulting from the lived experience of exploitation and perpetual economic jeopardy, which can be exploited to perpetuate the very marginalization that causes it; the second is a natural extension of a hierarchical ideology that sees humans as units of production of surplus value rather than people, and therefore more or less deserving of life based on their capacity for production for a small ruling elite. The Nazi fostered and exploited the former and actuated the latter to terrifying extremes.
And so now we can think through a comparison between the capitalism and racism of Hitler's Germany and the capitalism and racism of Trump's America, including the operations of the Nazi political machine and the GOP political machine. To begin with, there are important similarities between their political operations.
The campaign strategy of Donald Trump, and the policy goals of the GOP generally, are strikingly akin to the methods and goals of the Nazis. Trump's campaign deployed the same tactics described by Hitler and implemented by the Nazi party. Trump's "big lie" took several forms, perhaps the most stunning of which, in the immensity of its obvious falsehood, was the Wall and the notion that Mexico was going to pay for it. The MIT Technology Review calculates that a wall such as the one proposed by Trump would cost between $27 and $40 billion, with the higher figure the more likely one. It will have to cover more than 1,500 miles of isolated terrain. And the Mexican government has flatly refused to contribute to its construction, calling it "racist." Trump has declared that the Wall is going forward, and Paul Ryan has promised $8ish billion from congress for its construction, nowhere near enough for the project, but enough to hand out large contracts to cronies and Trump's own companies.
Likewise, Trump has promised a deportation force to immediately round up almost 11,000,000 undocumented immigrants and deport them. From The New York Times:
"'I can't even begin to picture how we would deport 11 million people in a few years where we don't have a police state, where the police can't break down your door at will and take you away without a warrant,' said Michael Chertoff, who led a significant increase in immigration enforcement as the secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.
"Finding those immigrants would be difficult, experts said. Police officers across the country would need to ask people for proof of residency or citizenship during traffic stops and street encounters. The Border Patrol would need highway checkpoints across the Southwest and near the Canadian border. To avoid racial profiling, any American could expect to be stopped and asked for papers …
"To prevent flight after arrest, the authorities would have to detain most immigrants awaiting deportation. Existing facilities, with about 34,000 beds, would have to be expanded to hold at least 300,000, Mr. Sandweg estimated, perhaps with tens of thousands of people in detention camps, similar to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II ...
"The millions of immigrants from Central American countries, China, the Philippines, India, and other noncontiguous nations would have to be flown home at the federal government's expense. Arranging flights would in itself be a huge and very costly task …
"By any tally, the costs would be enormous. The American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning research group, calculated the federal outlay to be at least $400 billion, and then only if the deportations were stretched over 20 years.
"But the proposals' main flaw, former officials said, is that they are unrealistic. 'Unless you suspend the Constitution and instruct the police to behave as if we live in North Korea,' Mr. Chertoff said, 'it ain't happening.'"
While it is entirely possible that Trump could intend to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law while he spends hundreds of billions of expropriated dollars to violently round people up, ship them to camps in cattle cars, and then fly them abroad, his deportation plan as promised is impossible, and proposing it as a feasible immigration policy is, along with its complementary Wall, an outlandish lie -- of exactly the sort Hitler calculated would pass muster with the masses.
In general, Trump's strategy of promising everything to everyone closely matched the Nazis's throughout his campaign. In Pittsburgh alone, he promised to return steel-making jobs that have been largely lost to irreversible automation, coal jobs that were lost to natural market forces with the advent of gas fracking and necessary environmental regulations, and even to resurrect a statue of the pedophile-abetting Joe Paterno in State College. In general the Republican Party has long promised a return to "traditional values," by which they mean a roll-back of LGBT rights and women's healthcare access, and the bolstering of police practices that jeopardize and infringe on the rights of black and brown Americans, most notably support for a return to the unconstitutional "stop and frisk" practice.
These promises made Trump particularly popular with white Americans, although the claims that he found his base of support in the "working class" were exaggerated; according to New York Times exit polling, Trump won majorities in income groups only over $50,000, and it was clear since the primaries that Trump's base voters, like the GOP base in general, have incomes well over the national median. In the first 23 primaries, Trump voters' median income was $72,000, well over the national median of $51,000, per Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight.
More worrisome than these campaign practices, though, are the similarities between Trump and the GOP's intentions for government after having been elected. The Nazi party was explicit among itself that its goal was to legitimately obtain power within the extant German system for the purpose of then dismantling that system, which is exactly what it then did. The GOP has made it equally clear that its objective once in power is to erode democratic systems and dismantle the government from within.
This first goal it has pursued through gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement efforts that largely target voters by race. By manipulating voting districts to make opposition victory all but impossible, and throwing up unnecessary legal barriers to voting, the Republican Party has systematically undermined democracy with the powers it initially gained by obtaining legitimately elected offices. Trump has announced a plan to "investigate" his wild lie that 3 million people voted illegally, only in Democratic states; this is nakedly an announcement of his intent to purge voter rolls of opposition voters. (This, too, is reminiscent of Hitler's practices: proclaim the lie that would need to be true to justify what you are about to do, as a way of announcing what you are about to do.)
Furthermore, it has long been the stated agenda of the GOP to reduce the reach and function of government. This is well-illustrated by Trump's cabinet picks. Trump's pick for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is Ben Carson, who will oversee a $47 billion agency with no experience with any of its programs or any experience in government whatsoever. Alex Schwartz, professor of Urban Policy at the New School and author of Housing Policy in the United States said in The American Prospect, "With a Republican-controlled Congress and presidency, subsidized housing and fair housing would be under threat no matter who is HUD Secretary. But unlike previous HUD secretaries under Republican presidents, Carson is entirely lacking in qualifications, and is unlikely to champion any aspect of HUD's mission." In his confirmation hearing, Carson repeatedly repudiated the role of government and expressed a desire to reduce or eliminate its footprint. (Although his lack of general knowledge of the functioning of the department made specifics impossible for him to give and any one agenda impossible for him to commit to.)
Trump's appointment to be Secretary of Education is Betsy DeVos, who, like Carson, has no qualifications for the position whatsoever. In her confirmation hearings, she asserted that she thought states should not have to comply with a federal law requiring public schools to provide free and appropriate education to students with disabilities, although she also seemed not to understand the law at all. She refused to agree that federally funded schools should be held to the universal standards of accountability. She refused to support regulations that protect students from extreme private school debt. She supports charter schools that do not outperform public schools but do drain money away from public education. She supports a voucher system that would gut public schools but provide no adequate educational pathway for most students, and has generally campaigned for the privatization of all education. She has said that she wants schools to "advance God's Kingdom."
These and appointments like them have only one purpose -- to erode and eventually destroy government. Appointing people to lead government departments who have no ability to run those departments, and who have openly stated their opposition to those departments' programs and government spending and functioning generally, is an explicit tactic of destruction. The most succinct example of this is Trump's appointment of Rick Perry to be the Secretary of Energy, after Perry campaigned on eliminating the Department of Energy. (Although he now claims he no longer holds this view.) He has also shown no real understanding of the department he has been appointed to head or what it does.
Besides Trump's appointments, the GOP has campaigned for years to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, and Paul Ryan with much Republican support has pushed for the "privatization" of both Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which, in practice, dismantles and ultimately paves the way for the complete destruction of all three programs. Trump's appointment to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, also supports the dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
This is a multi-pronged, party-wide agenda of destruction-from-within. Having reached government office through the legitimate political system beneath the veneer of respectability, Republicans immediately and consistently eroded and continue to erode democratic systems and the functioning of government itself. It is a program stunningly in line with the Nazis' prior to 1933.
Now that the similarity between the tactics and agenda of Trump's Republican Party and the Nazis has been established, we can examine the roles of capitalism and racism in the current American situation, in light of their roles in Hitler's Germany.
The dissimilarities between pre-1933 Germany and modern America reside in the relative strength of Labor. Whereas in Germany labor and trade unionism were the strongest in the world in the first part of the 20th century, American labor and its union movement has been at a seemingly endless disadvantage for years, with the working class beset by falling wages while union membership continues to decline. German capitalism felt so threatened by labor's economic power that it was ultimately willing to concede its own political power to fascism in return for fascism's promise to permanently and completely subjugate workers. Although recent activism like the Fight for Fifteen indicates a possible way forward for American labor, it's obvious that the working class in modern America enjoys nothing like the power German labor did in the '20s and early '30s.
Nevertheless, capitalism's agenda has always been the same, in all times and places: extract as much surplus value as possible from its workforce by any means available. The lower the worker's wage, the less she enjoys in terms of benefits that operate in any sense as a cost to the capitalist, including a safer and more pleasant working environment, the less value the owner extracts. Therefore any opposition to this extraction is seen negatively by capitalism's ownership class; anything that stands in the way of the ever more-complete exploitation of the worker is seen as a barrier to be demolished. And so modern American labor's relative weakness compared to German labor's strength in the '20s does not alter the feelings and goals of modern American capitalists per se; even the token resistance of American labor, even the below-subsistence modern minimum wage is still a barrier to capitalist exploitation, and that will impel American capitalists to align themselves with the political entity most dedicated to the disruption of any and all protections for American workers. This has been the Republican Party for decades: their willingness to oppose minimum wage increases, safety and environmental regulations, healthcare and childcare assistance, and even education assistance that would elevate workers' class consciousness as well as increase their bargaining power with improved skill sets has earned them the financial and cultural backing of the ownership class.
The political arrangements of modern America are different than pre-WWII Germany. Whereas a greater number of parties in Weimar Germany made power more diffuse, which therefore made capitalists' support more diffuse, the American two-party system produces a greater concentration of capitalist political support. (This is not to say that business does not spread its political coercion across both parties; it certainly does. But it is also certainly the case that business works with Democrats when it has to, or as a hedge on its bets, as opposed to the Republican Party, which it openly aligns with.) Nevertheless, the general goals of capitalists are the same in both times and places, and so the general principles with which capitalists approach politics are the same: support the political party or parties that will aid and abet the greatest exploitation of the working class.
Throughout the '20s and even into the '30s, German owners found Hitler distasteful and offensive; he lacked the veneer of respectability, he was course and nakedly racist in his public statements, he had a history of illegality and violence. But ultimately, they backed his Nazi party when it was clear that it would be their route to complete worker oppression -- they were even willing to cede their own direct power in government by abetting the destruction of democracy and the installation of a fascist regime in return for that regime's promise and obvious pattern of the subjugation of labor. American capitalism has come halfway down this path: Donald Trump was obviously an embarrassment to a capitalist establishment that throughout the GOP primary tried to elevate any and every available alternative candidate to this vulgar, racist man with a history of illegality and violence. But when other options failed, they did not oppose him, and began to line up behind him; they were already behind his party.
Of course, many average men lined up behind Trump as well, including working (white) people. To repeat Gluckstein: "... fascism is not a ruling class conspiracy. It seeks to create a mass movement out of the misery and despair that capitalism engenders, directing that energy down paths harmless to the ruling class."
In the wake of Trump's election, there were many "think pieces" on his support in "white working-class" America. Almost all of them focused on the so-called "economic anxiety" of this class, and its attendant calamities like the heroin crisis. Taking these analyses on their faces, they point directly to what Gluckstein cites as the source of mass support for fascism. Capitalism has finally left the white American worker in a shambles. First, capitalism simplified labor through its division into routines any person could perform; as Marx said in Wage Labor and Capital, "the more simple and easily learned the labor is, the lower the cost of production needed to master it, the lower do wages sink, for, like the price of every other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production." (214, The Marx-Engels reader, Tucker, 2nd Ed., Norton, 1978) Secondly, capitalism used automation not only as Marx described it in 1847, to replace "skilled labors with unskilled, men with women, adults by children." (215) (This last we have not yet returned to, thankfully.) Capitalism by the late 20th and early 21st centuries used automation to replace workers completely with machines -- 85% of job losses between 2000 and 2010 in America were due to automation. American industrial productivity has been steadily on the rise -- industry just no longer employs human workers. And so, out of work, (white) American workers have been driven to "misery and despair," as Gluckstein puts it.
But what allows fascism to activate this misery and despair for political purposes? Racism. The differences in America's racist heritage and Germany's are too many to outline here. But the underlying functioning of racism as a driver of white alignment with Trump and the GOP is much the same as the "in-group" defense that Hitler mobilized with anti-Semitism -- and the most avid anti-Semites among Hitler's early supporters were the SA, or Storm Troopers, who were also the most economically marginalized, largely unemployed in the post-depression years. Trump spent his campaign repeating a narrative of Central American, and particularly Mexican, immigrants coming to America to "steal jobs" as well as to commit violent crimes; and China further manipulating and destroying the American labor market. These two foreign racial forces were used to erroneously explain the real sufferings of working people, which were really caused by the exploitation of American capitalism itself. At the same time, general racist fear was added to with narratives of "Islamic extremism" targeting America through, among other peaceful Muslim groups, war refugees. And finally, Trump drew on the unique, long-standing racist resentments of white Americans in relation to Black Americans. Painting all Black American neighborhoods as hellscapes of violence, poverty, and unemployment, and openly courting racism and racist support, Trump signaled over and over again that he would help his white supporters "take America back," and make it "great" again. Any retreat to a past-tense America requires the undoing of civil rights protections and gains of equality by minority Americans; Trump's supporters were explicitly racist (as was Trump), and racist incidents have only increased since his election.
Ironically, the sufferings of white American workers under capitalism since the Depression came very late in the round. Black and brown Americans have already gone through the depredations of a America's racialized capitalism, which only came last for whites; having already subjugated "inferior" workers, it turned its attention to those workers who, according to America's distinct capitalist hierarchy, were "better than" their Black and brown counterparts, but still "inferior" to their capitalist bosses. The hierarchy of American racism runs from the capitalist ownership class, down to white male workers, and then down further to those held in less esteem, white women and men and women of color. But it is just this racialization of capitalism's economic hierarchy that intensifies white working resentment. For the post-war decades of American middle-class ascendancy, what prosperity there was to be attained under capitalism accrued almost exclusively to white Americans. They were cognizant of this disparity, but in general believed it was acceptable, having ideologically aligned themselves with the inherent hierarchy of American racist capitalism -- they thought themselves better than workers of color, but also, dangerously, failed to reckon themselves as also occupying an "inferior" relative position to the capitalists themselves; working-class whites made common cause with capitalists and defended racist capitalist exploitation because they wrongly assumed they were the equals of the white ownership class by virtue of race alone. The subsequent depredations upon the white working class were therefore not only economically traumatic; they were psychologically traumatic. Exploited, after all, as had been the workers of color they had held themselves superior to, white workers were confronted with the proof that they had always been "inferior" themselves -- in fact, their bosses thought them no better, in the end, than their Black and brown coworkers. Within the capitalist hierarchy, this inferior position was always obvious, although the capitalist culture industry worked hard and successfully to obscure that fact. But within the racial hierarchy, this sudden leveling out was not only surprising but humiliating and enraging to racist whites.
Gluckstein maintains that racism is not only an expression of "in-group" defense among workers, but also a tool wielded by capitalists to channel the rage and despair generated by capitalist exploitation safely away from the actual villains toward racialized scapegoats. Although written in 2012, this is a precise description of Trump's tactic with white working-class voters. Suffering from capitalist exploitation, but already filled with resentment from having had to confront the falsity of their self-presumed racial superiority, it was easy for the GOP over many years (starting with Nixon's "Silent Majority" and accelerating after Reagan's implementation of deregulation, globalization, and imposition of neoliberalism, but reaching its apotheosis with Donald Trump) to use racism to channel white working-class rage away from the actual culprits behind their suffering to the racist scapegoats of Black Americans, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, and the Chinese.
And so we see that a quick comparison of Hitler's Germany and his Nazi party with Trump's America and the GOP is not only warranted, but alarming in its findings. Going forward, we must remember Gluckstein's warning: to give no platform to fascists, and to resist the urge to allow them the tools of democracy, since they will only use them to destroy democracy from within. Furthermore, although there are legitimate and important differences on the American political left, it cannot allow itself to fall into the traps that the German communist KPD and reformist moderate-left SPD did -- the KPD denouncing the SPD as no better than the fascists, the SPD vastly underestimating the threat of Hitler and his Nazis, normalizing and even attempting to compromise with them. The American left must present a united front against Trump and the GOP, and it must allow working Americans to lead the way, as it is ultimately most in their interests to thwart the capitalist class and its political right hand. This requires the raising of consciousness through outreach and education -- but it must also include a complete and unrelenting purge of racism among the white working class, which is not only morally repugnant, but completely counterproductive to a unified struggle for all workers' rights, including theirs, against capitalism and fascism.
