its characteristics? How will its development take place? In Trotsky’s posthumously published 1944 tract, Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It, he noted: "The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery." Amadeo Bordiga Amadeo Bordiga argued that fascism is merely another form of bourgeois rule, on the same level as bourgeois democracy or traditional monarchy, and that it is not particularly reactionary or otherwise exceptional. Clara Zetkin An early study of fascism was written by Clara Zetkin for the Third Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1923: Fascism is the concentrated expression of the general offensive undertaken by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat.... fascism [is] an expression of the decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy and as a symptom of the bourgeois state’s dissolution. We can combat fascism only if we grasp that it rouses and sweeps along broad social masses who have lost the earlier security of their existence and with it, often, their belief in social order.... It will be much easier for us to defeat Fascism if we clearly and distinctly study its nature. Hitherto there have been extremely vague ideas upon this subject not only among the large masses of the workers, but even among the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat and the Communists.... The Fascist leaders are not a small and exclusive caste; they extend deeply into wide elements of the population. By others Laurence W. Britt In the Spring 2003 issue of the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, Laurence W. Britt, who is described as "a retired international businessperson, writer, and commentator" published "Fascism Anyone?", which included a list of 14 defining characteristics of fascism. The list has since been widely circulated in both modified and unmodified forms. In a newspaper interview in 2004, Britt expanded and clarified the meaning of some of the points in his list, and discussed how they applied to the United States at that time. The headers for Britt's original list, without his sometimes extensive explanations, are: "Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism" "Disdain for the importance of human rights" "Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause" "The supremacy of the military/avid militarism" "Rampant sexism" "A controlled mass media" "Obsession with national security" "Religion