So you've kind of gotta understand where the Bolsheviks/communists were coming from to understand social fascism.
The Bolsheviks were a faction in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, that is to say they were social democrats. Social Democracy evolved in the mid to late nineteenth century as a sort of broad spectrum left political front encompassing a lot of different tendencies that only had a few things in common, namely that they were not anarchists and that they tended to avoid official policies of violence, with the more moderate wings condemning violence while the more radical wings quietly supported it or carried it out. By the twentieth century, Marxism had firmly taken hold in social democratic circles, but that certainly doesn't mean a strict party line, and the Bolsheviks always found themselves to the left of the vast majority of European social democrats. They saw the second international fall into nationalism at the hands of social democrats and by the end of the 1920s they had completely split from the Mensheviks, purged a bunch of them, and assimilated a few.
Being the first socialist state, the Bolsheviks assumed that the rest of Europe would soon follow suit, particularly Germany, and in fact Germany was following suit with the November Revolution which was very similar to the Russian Revolution. By 1918, some communists had followed the Bolsheviks and established a communist party, but along with the radical wing of the social democrats, they failed to win a majority in the parliament and instead the conservative wing of the social democrats controlled the government. They established the Weimar constitution and began destroying the workers and soldiers councils by force. The conservative wing of the SPD ended the German revolution in 1919 where the Bolsheviks had advanced the Russian revolution just a few years earlier. From the communists's view, they stopped the world revolution.
The moderate wing of the SPD continued to suppress the workers and allow the freikorps to reign freely. Despite this, the KPD had been pursuing a united front policy through the beginning of the 1920s. The SPD would join the opposition by the end of 1920 and continue to lose relevancy, but would still support the violent suppression of worker's rebellions. They only won a few more seats in the 1933 elections than the KPD, and would serve as a constant roadblock to the KPD. This is why Stalin thought them no different than fascists.
So how does this apply today though? Well for starters, most of the social democratic parties in Europe were happily anti-communist after the war and went along with the neoliberal turn just fine. Today they're either irrelevant or the equivalent of the Democrats. In socialist states they usually form the right wing of the governing coalition and don't wield much if any power. In the rest of the third/colonized/peripheral world they vary. Ultimately it's going to be a case by case basis, but social democratic parties largely function as a relief valve in the imperial core for when tensions run too high.
My personal theory of fascism is that it is wrong to think of it as a distinct system from liberal democracy. It is the stick of bourgeois democracy. Social democracy is the carrot. The end goal of both is the preservation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie when threatened by a the worker's movement.
So you've kind of gotta understand where the Bolsheviks/communists were coming from to understand social fascism.
The Bolsheviks were a faction in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, that is to say they were social democrats. Social Democracy evolved in the mid to late nineteenth century as a sort of broad spectrum left political front encompassing a lot of different tendencies that only had a few things in common, namely that they were not anarchists and that they tended to avoid official policies of violence, with the more moderate wings condemning violence while the more radical wings quietly supported it or carried it out. By the twentieth century, Marxism had firmly taken hold in social democratic circles, but that certainly doesn't mean a strict party line, and the Bolsheviks always found themselves to the left of the vast majority of European social democrats. They saw the second international fall into nationalism at the hands of social democrats and by the end of the 1920s they had completely split from the Mensheviks, purged a bunch of them, and assimilated a few.
Being the first socialist state, the Bolsheviks assumed that the rest of Europe would soon follow suit, particularly Germany, and in fact Germany was following suit with the November Revolution which was very similar to the Russian Revolution. By 1918, some communists had followed the Bolsheviks and established a communist party, but along with the radical wing of the social democrats, they failed to win a majority in the parliament and instead the conservative wing of the social democrats controlled the government. They established the Weimar constitution and began destroying the workers and soldiers councils by force. The conservative wing of the SPD ended the German revolution in 1919 where the Bolsheviks had advanced the Russian revolution just a few years earlier. From the communists's view, they stopped the world revolution.
The moderate wing of the SPD continued to suppress the workers and allow the freikorps to reign freely. Despite this, the KPD had been pursuing a united front policy through the beginning of the 1920s. The SPD would join the opposition by the end of 1920 and continue to lose relevancy, but would still support the violent suppression of worker's rebellions. They only won a few more seats in the 1933 elections than the KPD, and would serve as a constant roadblock to the KPD. This is why Stalin thought them no different than fascists.
So how does this apply today though? Well for starters, most of the social democratic parties in Europe were happily anti-communist after the war and went along with the neoliberal turn just fine. Today they're either irrelevant or the equivalent of the Democrats. In socialist states they usually form the right wing of the governing coalition and don't wield much if any power. In the rest of the third/colonized/peripheral world they vary. Ultimately it's going to be a case by case basis, but social democratic parties largely function as a relief valve in the imperial core for when tensions run too high.
My personal theory of fascism is that it is wrong to think of it as a distinct system from liberal democracy. It is the stick of bourgeois democracy. Social democracy is the carrot. The end goal of both is the preservation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie when threatened by a the worker's movement.