This Time We Fight for Communism
“I’m sure that you are still waiting for a detailed explanation of what has this international struggle to do with my being here,” wrote Canute Frankson in 1937. “Since this is a war between whites who for centuries have held us in slavery, and have heaped every kind of insult and abuse upon us, segregated and jim-crowed us; why I, a [Black man] who has fought through these years for the rights of my people, am here in Spain today?”
Frankson was a Jamaican-American machinist and a Communist. He was one of ninety Black volunteers in the 2,800-member Abraham Lincoln Battalion who fought the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. With International Brigade volunteers from all over the world, they fought a fascist coup led by General Francisco Franco and supported by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
“We are no longer an isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against an immense giant,” wrote Frankson. “If we crush Fascism here, we’ll save our people in America, and in other parts of the world from vicious persecution, wholesale imprisonment, and slaughter.
“On the battlefields of Spain there is no color line, no discrimination, no race hatred. There’s only one hate, and that is the hate for Fascism.
“We will crush them. We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim-crow trains, no lynching. That is why I’m here in Spain.”
US History students wondered why anyone would voluntarily risk their life in a fight so far from home.
“I wouldn’t go all the way over there unless I had to,” said Jose.
“Were their families from Spain?” asked Katrina.
“They were fighting for what they believed in,” answered Mark.
“They saw that everything was related,” explained Olivia. “Once you take a stand to fight against racism and exploitation, you see that you have to join with other people to fight it everywhere. We’re all one working class.”
The fight against fascism is international. Black communists had fought against lynching. They had joined with workers of all “races” to fight against evictions and against exploitation in the automobile factories. They knew that fascism had to be fought in Spain.
Fascism is capitalism with the mask off. The pretense of democracy is dropped, and the brutal essence of wage slavery is revealed for all to see.
International communist leaders made a deadly error in 1935. They told Communists like Canute Frankson to fight fascism first and for communism later. They formed a united front with “lesser-evil” capitalists against fascism. They defeated Hitler and Mussolini in World War II although Franco stayed in power until he died of old age in 1975. But they left capitalism intact around the world.
We are enduring the results of that error today. In Trump’s USA, in Modi’s India, in Putin’s Russia, in Bukele’s El Salvador we see the emergence of open fascists. Capitalism worldwide is again in crisis and moving towards World War III. We cannot make the same mistake as communists made in the 20th century—fighting the symptoms but not the disease.
This time around we must link our fights to the capitalist system. The fight against racism, against deportations, against the genocide in Gaza, against the dehumanization of our LGBTQ+ siblings. The capitalist system sucks our blood, terrorizes and murders us and our class siblings, and is destroying life on the planet.
We must not form a “united front against fascism” but a mass revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism worldwide and build communism. That’s what the International Communist Workers’ Party organizes in schools, factories, and barracks today.
Read Our Pamphlet about Racism
“To End Racism: Mobilize the Masses for Communism” here