The increasing threat of war between the U.S. and Chinese bosses is putting tremendous pressure on the U.S. ruling class to move rapidly towards fascism in the U.S (see Editorial, page 2). The use of federal police to attack protesters in Portland has brought the rise of fascism to the fore. Many people are hoping that electing presidential candidate Joe Biden and putting the liberal politicians at the helm of the Democratic Party back in control of the White House will stave off fascism. But the liberal bosses backing the Democrats are the biggest and most desperate section of a divided U.S. ruling class and will, themselves, move towards fascism as they become more desperate in the face of an increasingly volatile world situation. Electing Biden or the Democrats will not spare the working class. The only path forward as capitalism sinks deeper into crisis is the fight for communist revolution.
Fascism is the future of U.S. capitalism
Fascism arises as the crisis between the imperialists is driving the capitalists to prepare for war by forcing discipline onto their own ranks and the working class. The Big Fascist U.S. bosses are no longer the dominant power they have been and can no longer rule in the old way. The Big Fascists are the main wing of the ruling class centered within finance capital. They include big banks like JP Morgan Chase and major industries like Exxon Mobil with massive international interests. They are being challenged around the globe and losing.
To try to hold onto their position, the bosses use fascism to try to gain control of internal struggle between factions of the ruling class, to discipline members of their own class, and force the working class to accept and unite with the bosses around economic and political preparations for war.  Under these pressures the capitalist class resorts to the tools of fascism, mainly crushing dissent within their own ranks and among the working class to achieve their needs, while still trying to ensure some degree of popular support from workers to fight and die in massive imperialist war.
The Big Fascists are likely to crush the Small Fascists
The Small Fascists, represented by the Koch, De Vos and Mercer families among others, acquired their wealth through domestically centered industries including domestic energy interests in oil and natural gas. They’re style of fascism relies on a predominantly white racist base and is less concerned with the anger and division it generates with masses of workers. Their approach is to rely on a smaller, whiter military while defending a shrinking empire. They rely on old style KKK racism to build a movement to overthrow the Big Fascists. Trump and his Small Fascist backers are and will brutally attack the working class should they stay in control of the White House, but they are most likely going to lose to the Big bosses who are building their own kind of fascism.
The Big Fascists are trying to create conditions that will allow them to build a large multi-racial military that will fight and die in a war with China and/or other big imperialists. The Big Fascist liberals are willing to crush dissent among the working class. From the day of George Floyd’s murder in May the mass uprising of multi-racial protesters was met by overwhelming police assault under the direction of liberal mayors from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Chicago, New York and Portland. These liberals pay minor lip service to police reforms, while backing the cops who attack  protesters. But they also realize that they need Black and Latin workers to go along with a military draft and accept large numbers of casualties without rebelling.
The Big Fascists are having enormous trouble disciplining members within their own wing of capitalists to build that kind of fascist society. Many of the capitalists are absorbed in accumulating personal wealth and not in the broader needs of the ruling class. To get ready for war the Big Fascists need to make major societal changes. They have to get the healthcare industry to give up much of its profits to get better at keeping the working class minimally healthy. The real estate bosses must try to limit their greed and undo some of the racist segregation in neighborhoods and schools that drive up property values.
Likewise, the Tech industry must go along with the war needs of the Big Fascists to control the internet and stop taking money from the Small Fascists and the Chinese and Russian bosses. Once the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election, they launched an offensive to reign in these undisciplined capitalists. The four tech giants Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the richest man in the world worth $181 billion, Tim Cook of Apple, worth $625 million, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook worth $86 billion and Sundar Pichai of Google worth $1.2 billion appeared at a House hearing (NYT 7/31). They were  being investigated under anti-trust laws as monopolies that could be broken into smaller companies but the real goal is to bring them into the Big Fascists’ control.
Big Fascists are the greater danger
The Big Fascists understand that they need to win the widest possible base of support within the working class. The creation of an enormous military requires the participation of Black, Latin and Immigrant as well as white men and women workers. Currently over 60  percent  of the military is white and at higher ranks the number increases to 80 percent  (CFR, 7/13). Extensively integrating the military is a strategic necessity of the Big Fascists in order to win popular support for war.
Hence we see the recent move by the Department of Defense, in direct opposition to Donald Trump and the Little Fascists, to ban the Confederate flag from all military bases; the decision to rename all military bases currently named after Confederate generals with names of loyal generals; and the apology by Commander of the Joints Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and Department of Defense head Mark Esper for their part in the call up of military forces to Washington, DC in June (WP, 6/11). Their message is clear – the U.S. military will not be used to advance the cause of the Small Fascists as they have larger needs for the blood and toil of our class.
The bosses build for war, we must build for communist revolution
Capitalism in crisis is trying to scare and coerce our class to fight for one side or the other. The only way we can fight for our interests as the working class is by building an international, revolutionary, communist movement to overthrow capitalism and build a society that serves the needs of the workers of the world. Progressive Labor Party is building that movement.