Below is a repost from October 8, 2017, that discusses the origin and meaning of fascism as a form of socialism, which means it belongs on the left side of the left-right political and economic continuum. Following this repost, I have added a postscript on racism. For a detailed presentation of why the German form of fascism, Nazism, was totalitarian socialism, see George Reisman’s essay, “Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian.”
Slinging unfriendly epithets today has become sport, so I thought I’d throw out a few myself.
Political
leftists can be described as intellectually bankrupt, hate-filled,
envy-ridden fascists. They’re also postmodern progressives, but,
unfortunately, they don't consider those terms to be insulting. I do.
Let me start with the left-right political spectrum.
It goes back to the 1789 French National Assembly. Aristocrats and
churchmen, supporters of the king, sat on the right, while the
revolutionaries, some of whom were legitimate classical liberals, sat on
the left.
In the ensuing two hundred years, the terms have
varied in nuanced ways, but essentially the left has been understood as
home of the good guys (socialists, statists, progressives) and the right
as home of the bad guys, especially fascists, reactionaries and other
conservatives, and thanks to the communists, capitalists.*
In my
undergraduate school days of the late ‘60s, the spectrum was described
as a horseshoe. At the top of the curve, in the middle, was democracy,
so all of us good guys were middle-of-the-roaders who, of course,
believed in voting and compromise. After all, there is and can be no
perfectly free society and extremists, especially those who stick to
principle, were dangerous.
No distinction between the compromise of principles and options was made (1, 2).
As
some have pointed out, and I agree, the spectrum is best thought of as a
straight-line continuum from the left—total control of life and economy
by the state—to the right—laissez-faire capitalism (or liberalism in
the classical tradition). In the middle is the so-called mixed economy, a
mixture of freedom and dictatorship.
Statism is the general term
that identifies the left with its two inconsequential variants,
socialism and fascism. This means that fascism is “right” only in the
sense that it is on the “right side of the left.”
Socialism,
though, is not just control, but ownership, of life and economy. Lenin’s
metaphor of the socialist state was that it would be a giant post
office and we would all work for and be controlled by, or rather, belong
to, the postal service, aka the state, “under the control and
leadership of the armed proletariat.” (State and Revolution, p. 44, emphasis added.)
Though its roots go back earlier,
fascism came about when Mussolini broke off from the socialist party
and had to come up with something different. (Mussolini and Hitler were
socialists to their core.) Unlike Lenin, Mussolini, and later, Hitler,
inherited an industrial economy with large degrees of private life and
property.
The Italian word fascio
means workers’ league, which is consistent with Mussolini’s socialism,
so Mussolini used it in 1914 and ‘15 and eventually adapted it to fascismo in 1921 to describe his “vision.” The private sector was allowed to continue in name only—he would have destroyed it, as Lenin nearly did,
if he had nationalized everything—but it was controlled and regulated
by a large and militant “deep state,” i.e., government bureaucracy.
Initially, Mussolini and the fascists adopted guild socialism, modeled on the Fabianism
of Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Syndicalism and corporativism were other
terms used. All three differ only in who is going to control and
regulate the economy, and how the control is to be exercised. None
worked, so Mussolini increasingly adopted the Nazi approach to control,
as well as Nazi tactics. Both Mussolini and Hitler copied the tactics of
Lenin and Stalin.**
Entrepreneurs, as a result, ceased to exist. “In the terminology of the Nazi legislation,” says Ludwig von Mises, they became shop managers. (Human Action, p. 717. See also Planned Chaos, chap. 1, 7, and 8 and Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy). Fascism, as Mises identified, is socialism of the German pattern, differing only superficially from the Russian version.
Nominal
private control and ownership of life and economy is what we have today
in the United States, and have had increasingly since the 1890s with
the beginnings of the early progressive era (Applying Principles, pp. 110-13).
It
is therefore not a stretch to describe our political and economic
system as fascistic. It is not a system of liberty, classical
liberalism, or laissez-faire capitalism.
Now I say the left is
intellectually bankrupt because it has no new ideas to offer. It relies
on the postmodern abandonment of reason and logic (Marx’s polylogism
updated) to brand anyone who disagrees with them a hate-filled racist,
misogynist, and homophobe. No arguments or facts are given. Only the
shouting of collectivist clichés.
The louder and longer the shouting goes on, the assumption apparently is, the more their falsehoods will be believed.
But
it is the leftists who are hate-filled—because of their seething,
hostile yelling. They also are envy-ridden. This last has been
well-documented in Helmut Schoeck’s thorough analysis of envy
and the motivations for statism. (Redistributionism, after all, means
taking wealth from those who have earned it and giving it to those who
have not.)
I have a recommendation for the more sincere Democrats
who feel uncomfortable with our current Weimar-like culture and are in
search of new ideas to promote: look at Grover Cleveland.
A
Democrat, Cleveland was the last US president who advocated classical
liberalism. He served two unconnected terms, 1885-89 and 1893-97. In
1888 he won the popular election against Benjamin Harrison, but lost the
electoral vote. (His supporters, interestingly, did not whine about
having the election stolen!)
Cleveland was a strict
constitutionalist who vetoed more bills than any president until
Franklin Roosevelt’s determined efforts to protect his
progressive-inspired welfare state. Cleveland’s vetoes slowed the early
progressives’ juggernaut toward statism.
The fascist left is
nearly indistinguishable from its socialist and communist brethren. All
use state-initiated coercion to achieve their ends.
The liberal
right—the liberalism of the classical tradition—repudiates
state-initiated coercion of any kind and guarantees protection for those
freedoms to take action called individual rights.
The social and economic theory of liberty is a free society of laissez-faire capitalism.
* Recall that communists and fascists
in the United States were bosom buddies until Hitler invaded Russia in
1941. At that point, communists equated fascism with capitalism and
started calling anyone who disagreed with them a fascist. Recall also
that Marx, Engels, and Lenin considered communism and socialism to be
synonyms.
**And anyone today who wears black clothing and calls
themselves “anti-fascists” are, by their apparel and tactics, mimicking
Mussolini’s blackshirted goons.
Postscript (10/8/2025). “Racism,” Ayn Rand writes, “is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage . . . . Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.” As a form of collectivism, racism will be found in some form in all dictatorships, whether communism, fascism, or socialism. Why? Because dictators need scapegoats, to blame for the country’s problems and “to use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers.”
In other words, racism is not an essential distinguishing characteristic of Nazism. It is an essential trait of dictatorship. In today’s postmodern, nihilistic world, the wannabe dictators, without knowledge of or care about history, or of any care of or understanding for the concepts they are using, freely sling the words “racist” and “fascist” at their chosen scapegoats, white males in particular, or anyone who works in or runs a business.
