FAQ U: What is Fascism?

I seem to have stepped into some shit when I published Fantastic Medieval Campaigns. The olds were, as expected, aghast at the (not so) “secret postface”. This was on one hand because they were mad that someone put politics in their elf game—such that there are “depoliticized” copies of the PDF floating around online, which is deeply hilarious and stupid if not also poetic. On the other hand, there were more “educated” complaints that I invoked a vulgar notion of fascism detached from historical context or specificity. I think this is an interesting topic to explore, since it is so contentious and revelatory of one’s own political perspective.

“The Fascist Manifesto” (1919)

This text is short enough that I could replicate it here, actually.

Italians!

Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.

For the political problem, WE DEMAND:

1. Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.
2. A minimum age for the voting electorate of 18 years; that for the office holders at 25 years.
3. The abolition of the Senate.
4. The convocation of a National Assembly for a three-years duration, for which its primary responsibility will be to form a constitution of the State.
5. The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.

For the social problem, WE DEMAND:

1. The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers.
2. A minimum wage.
3. The participation of workers’ representatives in the functions of industry commissions.
4. To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants.
5. The rapid and complete systematization of the railways and of all the transport industries.
6. A necessary modification of the insurance laws to invalidate the minimum retirement age; we propose to lower it from 65 to 55 years of age.

For the military problem, WE DEMAND:

1. The institution of a national militia with a short period of service for training and exclusively defensive responsibilities.
2. The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.
3. A national policy intended to peacefully further the Italian national culture in the world.

For the financial problem, WE DEMAND:

1. A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.
2. The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.
3. The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.

I wanted to show this in full because of how unhelpful it is, at least at a glance and in isolation. Seems like a social democratic platform, influenced especially by syndicalism. Some helpful additional context is that Benito Mussolini founded the early iteration of the fascist party to advocate for Italian nationalism and participation in World War I, unlike the socialist party which both of these things on account of being internationalist and viewing WWI as a conflict between imperialist powers. Take for comparison Lenin who saw WWI as an opportunity to launch a revolution in Russia that would transform a war of imperialism into one of class, in order to then inspire revolutions in Germany and Italy. Mussolini’s position instead was that Italy, then neutral, should enter the war to assert its national identity and settle the Mediterranean to combat overpopulation and colonize lesser peoples (a policy called spazio vitale, “living space”, homologous to the German Lebensraum).

Mussolini later wrote in “The Doctrines of Fascism” that this manifesto contained only the seeds of what would become the characteristic fascist doctrine. It’s still pro-democracy! But there are more important traits manifesting even at this stage, ones that I would identify as more essentially fascistic than authoritarianism as opposed to democracy: a State organized around class collaboration and settler colonialism in the name of a Nation. Interesting!

“The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932)

This essay is really divided into two parts: a philosophical proem by Giovanni Gentile, and a political treatise by Mussolini. Gentile’s piece posits a spiritual basis of humanity as such and of the State, saying that it is a man’s spiritual life as expressed by his relation to his family, his Nation, and his historical position that distinguishes him from mere animals. By extension, the State as the guarantor of these relations is the highest expression of this humanity. Gentile locates the individual as an implement of the State to carry out its functions and realize his own significance as a human being, since “Fascism reasserts the right of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.” Fascism is politically, culturally, and spiritually totalitarian, relegating all these realms under the State’s authority.

Mussolini’s piece is more straightforwardly political, in the practical sense. Fascism denies the “possibility or utility of perpetual peace”, since war is the ultimate confrontation with life or death on a mass scale that motivates individuals to fight or sacrifice themselves for their Nation. Fascism likewise denies material comfort or well-being as an end, which Mussolini thinks reduces the spiritual human being to a “vegetative”, animalistic existence. Finally, fascism strictly opposes political and economic liberalism as the elevation of individuals over the State. The fascist State’s basic function, therefore, is to perpetuate the Nation which gives individuals true happiness and spiritual significance in life.

Something noteworthy is that Mussolini considers fascism to be “not reactionary, but revolutionary.” The Nation as a form is basically transhistorical if not the very motor of history, but fascism itself is a new methodology of “totalitarianly” organizing the State towards the perpetuation of the Nation—an approach, Mussolini stresses, that has not yet been tried although it was certainly inspired by the likes of the “illiberal” Napoleon III and Bismarck. The main point of distinction is that absolute monarchy was a political expression of a “closed, uncommunicating” ruling caste, whereas fascism subjugates all economic classes under the State for the perpetuity of the Nation. (Of course, this mostly benefits the national and petite bourgeoisie, which is the point.)

This essay helps us move towards a pretty specific definition of fascism: a totalitarian State organized around the perpetuation of a Nation. Fascist totalitarianism entails “class collaboration”, in that economic classes as well as individuals deny their particular interests in favor of the Nation’s interests, under the guidance and authority of the State. Also important is that fascism considers itself a theoretical and practical antithesis to Marxism. Although Mussolini views fascism as a third position relative to liberalism and socialism (i.e., in this case, communism or Bolshevism), he spends most of his effort trying to distinguish fascism from socialism on philosophical and political grounds. Makes sense, being a Marxist-turned-Nietzschean and a communist-turned-syndicalist.

“Report on Fascism” (1924)

I wanted to go back in time to 1924. “The Doctrine of Fascism” elucidates the historical context and development of fascism with eight years of hindsight, but (Italian) communists analyzed fascism in-depth less than two years after the march on Rome. Amadeo Bordiga, a delegate of the Communist Party of Italy, gave this report at the Third Internationale. He remarked, funnily enough, that he warned them about fascism at the previous congress in 1922, only for him to return to Italy the day before Mussolini actually took power.

Bordiga characterizes fascism as a political movement of the petite bourgeoisie, especially “ex-servicemen and intellectuals”, who desire to rebel both against the proletariat and the big bourgeoisie. He argues that, relative to the existing bourgeois parties, fascism does not really contribute anything new to the ideological side of things. Rather, it is entirely a new method of political and military organization. It is proof, he argues, that the liberal State is insufficient to protect bourgeois interests, now requiring extrajudicial violence to “stabilize” capitalist society. Fascism offers this new organization, and it does so under the banner of national identity. Yet fascism, as much as it appears to the national bourgeoisie as a solution, cannot really resolve the class antagonisms inherent to capitalist society.

With respect to proletarian interest, then, fascism is entirely reactionary rather than revolutionary. This is exemplified, Bordiga argues, by the fact that the fascists did not need to exert violent force in order to seize state power. The fascists threatened violence, but that was all. Bordiga explains:

Instead of fighting, a compromise was reached, and at a certain moment the struggle was, so to speak, put on hold, postponed. This was not because the King, at the right moment, refused to sign the decree of martial law, but because the compromise had evidently been prepared a long time before. The fascist government therefore established itself in the normal way: after the resignation of the Facta government, the King summoned Mussolini to form a new cabinet. The leader of this self-styled revolution reached Rome from Milan in a sleeping car, and at every stop along the way he was cheered by official representatives of the State.

At the same time, he stresses that the fascists are not revolutionary because there was no armed struggle. That much was already apparent from their economic interests and political platform. Fascism is merely a development or an orientation of the liberal state threatened by the compounding contradictions of capital. It’s not just reactionary: it’s reformist!

Trotsky wrote a similar thing ten years later, but I don’t think it says anything new besides also being late to the party.

Three New Deals (2006)

I love getting to cite Austrian economists. The high priests of the haute bourgeoisie, on occasion, see things as they are. Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR, by Wolfgang Schievelbusch, explores the close relationship between fascism and American politics in the 1930s. You can find reviews published by the Mises Institute and the CATO Institute.

Obviously, a lot of Schievelbusch’s arguments are inane and kind of stupid, revolving around Roosevelt’s authoritarianism and cult of personality. He characterizes these aspects as “soft fascist” in that Roosevelt’s government retained civil liberties (for some—put a pin in it), whereas Mussolini and Hitler’s governments were more overtly totalitarian. Muh private business! Etc. More interesting is his political and economic analysis, arguing that FDR’s New Deal and Mussolini’s fascism both transcended ‘traditional’ liberalism in favor of an economy driven by a paternalistic state. Not (Marxist) socialist, but class-collaborationist. Mussolini and FDR expressed admiration for each other’s platforms prior to World War II, and journalistic publications in Nazi Germany likewise praised FDR’s apparent adoption of “National Socialist” policies.¹

Here’s the problem: Schievelbusch’s argument is from the perspective of the white haute bourgeoisie. It’s more interested in how big American businesses and entrepreneurs were impacted by FDR’s government, which tilted the scale in favor of the petite bourgeoisie and the white proletariat (again, put a pin in it!). The big bourgeoisie cares ultimately about the bottom line, which FDR was pushing down, and it’s not like they would be the ones thrown into camps anymore than the Italian or German ones were. In fact, a placated (white) proletariat keeps them from seeking more radical solutions to their class interest, so it’s really to the benefit of everyone (white) to throw the (white) proletariat a bone. I wonder where this is going.

Settlers (1983)

Oh yeah! We’ve seen that the most liberal representatives of the big bourgeoisie saw FDR’s New Deal as a “soft fascist” (uwu?) platform, at least insofar as it (only kind of) inconvenienced them. The distinction between “soft” and “hard” fascism was that the former, despite its economic offenses against big businesses, retained civil liberties rather than becoming fully totalitarian. The problem is that this only holds true for a subset of the population, namely white people.

Black revolutionaries in the 60s and 70s understood white people as constituting a nation, especially one colonizing other nations of black people, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, and Asian Americans, among others. All these other “nations” were (generally speaking) propertyless, deprived of civil liberties, and violently repressed. If white America is a nation unto itself, then the USA is best described as a State organized around the perpetuation of the white Nation, wherein white people of different economic classes collaborate towards a common national interest.

J. Sakai, the author of Settlers, goes beyond simply identifying the USA as a fascist government. That’s not really useful, and it’s subject to argumentation about what qualifies something as fascist. After all, maybe true fascism only originates from the Italian region of Europe, and everything else is just an imitation. Instead, he situates modern American politics in the context of settler colonialism as early as the sixteenth century when petit bourgeois Anglo-Saxons traveled to the New World in order to establish for themselves a new Nation (in the process, slaughtering American Indians and importing black slaves en masse).

This event set in motion the development of American history thenceforth, and the continued repression of those “colonies” as well as ones imported later on, like immigrants from Europe and Asia. The nature of this repression was economic, political, and violent. Of course it entailed the deprivation of “civil liberties”, but more specifically it entailed (in various cases) genocide, enslavement, mass internment, involuntary sterilization, military occupation, and bombing.

Since Nazi Germany took specific inspiration from the USA’s history and then-contemporary policies (the genocide of American Indians, the repression of black people via Jim Crow laws, and racist anti-Asian immigration laws), it might be more accurate to say that fascism was (or is) a European reinterpretation of an originally American approach to politics. The New Yorker article above is a review of James Q. Whitman’s book Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, which I have on my reading list.

Conclusion

So, what is fascism? I'm content to identify it as a political orientation where a State is organized around the perpetuation of a Nation or similar category, in order to facilitate class collaboration and settler colonialism (which the ruling ideology takes for the means of fascism, rather than the ends). Even if one were to distinguish fascism as a phenomenon specific to the early-to-mid twentieth century, that does not discount its continuity with petit bourgeois political movements before and after that time, especially ones geared towards nationalism and settler colonialism. This continuity is philosophical, political, social, and economic. If "fascism" as a word is inapt to describe similar phenomena, then it is at least part of some set of counterrevolutionary petit bourgeois nationalisms which share material circumstances, ideological concepts, and political methodologies.

I don't really want to talk about OD&D, or at least not in this post, but hope this shines light on the "secret postface".

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1. Keep in mind, “National Socialism” substitutes class struggle for national or racial struggle. I hesitate to say that Nazism is not “true” socialism because fascism has as much a historical claim to the term “socialism” as communists do, and saying it’s just a misnomer not really elucidate anything. Instead, I’ll say: they’re fascists reacting to the crises of capitalism and to the threat of communist revolution. It’s important to keep in mind, as Marx and Engels did, that not all who identify as “socialist” are really interested in proletarian revolution or anti-capitalism as such. Fascists and Nazis fall neatly under the “petit-bourgeois socialist” umbrella. ↩︎