“Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of fascism. Fascism with a human face.” —Susan Sontag (1933-2004) speaking at a rally in support of Poland’s Solidarity movement’s suppression under martial law in 1981.
Although this blog is devoted to commentary on all matters traditional, I thought it pertinent and salient to cover a zeitgeist issue that cannot be ignored. With the recent election of several socialists to municipal offices in New York City, Seattle, and other American cities, we are witnessing in real time a newfound attraction to the snares of socialism. Although the title of this essay indicates fascism as the focus of this essay, fascism itself is a twentieth century ideology, having roots in older nineteenth century ideologies, particularly Marxism and its twin progenies, Socialism and Communism. These somewhat, selfsame ideologies are not all that new, having roots that go back centuries to earlier intentional communities of medieval Europe and the early centuries of the Common Era. The Lollards, Jacobins, Essenes, etc., to name just a few are beyond the scope of this essay, so as not to burden the reader with too much background history. Suffice it to say, that socialism and communism, as well as its offspring, fascism, like the poor, have always been with us, in some form or other. Fascism was borne out of the disruption of the First World War, and took root in Italy and later in Germany under the banner of National Socialism. While similar in their view of the state [1], fascism and socialism are not the same as we will see below.
[1] The word state, as used herein, refers to the national government as the ‘vessel’ containing the ‘contents’—all individuals and institutions subject thereto.
THE STATE
All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.—Benito Mussolini
This quote by Benito Mussolini encapsulates the essence of fascist ideology. It emphasizes that the state is the ultimate authority in all aspects of life—political, social, and cultural. It serves as the individual’s summit of loyalty and devotion. Fascism is not totalitarian in the popular sense of that word; nor does a fascist state necessarily exercise total control of civil society. Civil liberties, nongovernmental organizations, and private property, can exist under a fascist government—with one caveat: all the foregoing must subordinate their independence to the state. There is no room for dissent from, or opposition to, whatever is determined by the state leader to be in the best interests of the state.
Immediately after seizing power, the fascist party, ruling Italy from the time that Mussolini made his March on Rome in October 1922, took charge of the Italian state without recourse to arms. The first order of business was to restore order and stability to a nation torn by conflict. This required measures to stamp out roving gangs of thugs wreaking havoc throughout the countryside. Support for these measures was strongest among rural and conservative elements in society, such as industrialists, landed gentry, and veterans. The backing of the Catholic Church and its laymen organizations in supporting measures to stop the ongoing violence would prove decisive in conferring legitimacy on the fascist experiment in governing society.
After World War I, Italians had grown weary of rampant social and political unrest, which included nationwide strikes and violent protests. During this “Red Scare’ [2] period (1919-1922), socialists and ‘conservative’ elements of the population fought each other, sometimes in pitched battles, clashing over the direction of the nation in the chaotic aftermath of World War I, coupled with the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic that caused a death toll greater than that of all the war’s combatants.
[2] The ‘Red Scare’ was the threat of communism and socialism that took hold in the populations of Europe and the Americas after revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and Russia. The threats turned into reality in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (1917) and the Armistice ending the First World War. Although the term ‘Red Scare’ is applied strictly as an American phenomenon, it appeared first in Europe, then spread to the United States. The term is derived from the red flag, an internationally recognized symbol of communism and socialism. The revolutionary movements were perceived as hotbeds of radicalism that drew its inspiration and fervor from labor unions, workingmen associations, and anarchists. Strikes, bombings, and attempted coups became almost daily events through 1921-1922. By 1923, the acute threat of revolution diminished due to deportations and prison time under espionage and sedition statutes.
THE FASCIST PARTY
As a former socialist himself, Benito Mussolini recognized that attaining power under the banner of socialism would lose him support from key urban industrialists and rural gentry, believing that governing Italy without their support would be a disaster in the making. So, he would propose an alternative to the socialists. In 1919, he founded the Fasces [3] of Combat, which later evolved into the National Fascist Party (PNF). The party was seen as a strong, authoritarian alternative to the socialists. To avoid civil war, Mussolini was invited by King Victor Emmanuel III to form a government. On October 30, 1922, Mussolini arrived in Rome and was appointed Prime Minister, marking a transfer of power within the constitutional framework rather than through force.
[3] A fasces (from which we derive “fascism”), is a ‘bundle’ bound of wooden rods, and usually includes an axe and its blade. The fasces had been a symbol of power in Greco-Roman civilization. It represented a magistrate’s jurisdictional power possessed by the ruler to punish his subjects, through chastisement and disciplining with the rod; and beheading with the axe. The fasces icon has survived fascism itself, as a representation of magisterial power, law, and governance—and sometimes appears in heraldry and minted on coinage.
Fascism has been falsely conflated with the swastika – the iconic symbol of German National Socialism, with its racial idolatry, state-sponsored violence, and perpetration of the holocaust. The fasces, an iconic symbol of fascism, is still denoted as a rule of governance, reminding its subjects of the severity of applied corporal and capital punishment by the state. Its subsumed ‘cousin,’ the swastika, on the other hand, has an ancient pedigree as a religious symbol. It represented a form of Hindu nationalism in India before the Common Era. Its religious significance is rooted in the earlier scriptures of the Vedas, later modified and influenced by the invasion of Indo-Iranian (‘Aryan’) peoples from Persia and the Eurasian steppes. The swastika has existed as a symbol of fertility and the harvest among the Indios of the American Southwest, specifically the Navajos. [Note: The author noted the swastika was embedded in the iconography of the State Capitol in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The tour guide stated that it represented a religious rite among the Native Americans in the area.]
Fascism has historically been conjoined with German National Socialism, for reasons that are ideological, not illuminative. Using the term Nazi rather than national socialism downplays it socialist aspects. To be reminded that Hitlerism was a form of socialism would offend the sensibilities of the true believer in socialism. After the defeat of the Axis powers, socialists in Europe and the USSR began to conflate Nazism with fascism. Naziism, Hitlerism, and non-socialist authoritarian governments are, shorthandedly, therefore labeled as fascist. Cf. Spain’s Francisco Franco.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN AUTHORITARIAN AND TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENTS
Was Fascism, as practiced in Italy, an exemplification of totalitarian rule? Or was it something else, a little lower, such as ‘mere’ authoritarianism? To clarify the distinction, we need to elaborate the features of each: what they have in common; where they differ; and how each of them have been manifested in history. This requires necessarily taking into account the historical circumstances that shaped the destiny of nations applying their ideologies in the international arena of realpolitik.
AUTHORITARIANISM
Authoritarian rule rejects multiparty democracy in favor of centralized power concentrated in a strong executive, or in a class of ruling oligarchs of a political party or military junta.
The authoritarian régime concerns itself solely to remain in power. It is not based on any ideology, such as the proletarian equalization associated with socialism and communism. Liberty and private property can exist – even flourish – under an authoritarian regime. Having no ideological axe to grind, authoritarian rulers have no desire to reengineer society by promoting novel schemes to change the world and human nature. Fascist rulers pay respect to strength; weakness is the worst evil. The state itself is the glory of the nation; neither the cult of the volk, nor the cult of the leader necessarily holds sway in a fascist society.
FASCISM AS AUTHORITARIAN
Fascism expresses belief in the absolute supremacy of the state over individuals and society. Mussolini’s statement about the state reflects a sort of collectivism, in which all subsidiary functions and personal identities are coextensive with the state’s goals. Thus, there is no distinction between personal individual goals and those of the state. Needless to say, fascism rejects democracy and individual rights. The state alone directs all human activity toward state goals. As fascism is nondemocratic, it rejects liberalism, in its claimed assertion that a priori individualism is the supreme value that the state ought to protect. Fascism rejects liberty as freedom and personal autonomy. The only right to protect is the right of the state. In defending the state’s rights, the central authority monopolizes education, controls media, and directs the economy. This disposes the state to do pervasive surveillance, i.e., spying on its subjects. “Nothing outside the state” is unvarnished state supremacy – the defining principle of fascist governance.
Defenders of Fascism claim a pedigree rooted in classical, Greco-Roman civilization. They assert that the state itself is like a living organism. According to Aristotle, all organisms have a built-in destiny to a final cause which is their end, which he calls entelechy. The end that is reached is one of self-realization— a “fulfillment” or actualization of one’s potential within, through achieving or attaining the inherent possibilities of one’s character, personality, talents, and endowments.
Before the state comes into being, there is a pre-existing entity – the nation. The state is the entelechy of the nation, representing an historically perpetuating lineage, a multitude unified by an idea. The State, as an ‘entelechy,’ gives form to the nation from within. It is not a ‘force’ of numbers, but, as it were, a type of spiritual force. It was not simply a mechanism to either expand or limit the spheres of individual liberties.
Despite claims to achieving a self-realized entelechy, Italy, among the three main “totalitarian” combatants of World War II—Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the USSR— had the least experience of organized, centralized rule that characterizes a state. Prior to Garibaldi entering Rome, the Italian peninsula was divided into warring city-states fueled by rivalries in trade and banking by the Medicis and magistracies fragmented into regional loyalties and multiple dialects. The biggest boast of the Italian fascist state was “the trains ran on time.” Mussolini failed in his military ventures in Abyssinia and Greece. Much of the Italian population were content to be Italian, not Roman. La dolce vita tugged at the heart of Italian life. Italians displayed little interest in imperium—to return to the glory of Cato and the Caesars. Much of Italian life remained outside the state.
When I refer to the Italian Fascist state as a sort of collective, I mean that the national government is the entity that the Italian people recognized as their primary attachment of loyalty, rather than to subordinate or superordinate entities. As collective, I am not referring to mass psychological herding behavior towards state goals. Because fascism has no set of normative principles to guide the young in its idealism, a fascist state cannot ascend to ‘higher values.’ Rather, it stagnates. The state simply lacks the capacity to guide and control entire societies. Whereas in non-collective societies, such as democracies, republics, or monarchy— individuals and institutions must, for themselves, through freedom and initiative, find their rightful place in the state.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM
As the name implies, National Socialism derives its principles from two antecedent political ideologies of the nineteenth century—Nationalism and Socialism. The philosophical foundation for Germany’s view of itself in the context of fascist typology is a hendiadys, a one through two: it is the expression of a single idea that the nation and socialism are a unity of the volk and the state. But the unity is dubious. The volk represents the spirit of the nation. German Nationalism, like any other form of nationalism, is grounded in the aspirations, history and experience of a people. National spirit, expressed as the inexhaustible strength and vitality of national feelings, is not so easy to vanquish or destroy. Socialism, on the other hand, conflicts with national aspirations, with a marked hostility to nationhood. Socialism, in its drive to suppress nationhood, also suppresses individual personality. The socialization of the nation might have as its natural corollary the crushing of the national spirit.
Socialism, unlike nationalism, negates the spiritual value of the person, believing itself capable of conducting humanity to a better state and to happiness itself. Through collective and scientific procedures, socialist Germany mechanized and ‘molded’ man by all-encompassing, pervasive propaganda.
Due to its lack of a moral framework and its inspirational incompetency, the fascist/socialist state can neither foster a moral and spiritual adhesion to socialism, nor can it consecrate a relationship of mutual love and loyalty of the person with such a State. They believe they can reorder spiritual and ‘moral ends’ to collectivist goals that are communal and social, rather than personal, and thereby furnish an ethical basis and a superior justification to secure legitimacy for, and loyalty to, the collective. This is a confused collectivistic mysticism, that is partly romantic and partly revolutionary, when expressed as the ‘will of the people’, or the ‘progress of humanity’ – abstractions they believe can foster personal loyalty to the state.
SOCIALISM AS TOTALITARIAN
The chief characteristic of a totalitarian régime is its readiness to use the coercive power of the state, using terror, if necessary, to stamp out opposition. It holds power through its control of the apparatus of political repression: through its monopolization of political, social, economic, and cultural institutions.
Totalitarianstates completely control the public square and civil society. Totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all political power is held by an unelected individual, who is known under an almost infinite number of titles such as il Duce, emperor, Fuhrer, president, ruler, leader, “Dear Leader,” etc. The right to privacy, i.e., the right to be left alone, is not recognized under totalitarian rule.
Totalitarian states have been proposed in numerous forms and cultural settings. The earliest well-known proposal describing such a state was in classical antiquity, in the Republic (Res Publica) proposed by Plato. The twentieth century philosopher Karl Popper asserts, rather, that totalitarianism originated in humanist philosophy. It has since morphed into a ‘totalist’ instrumental value characterized by a penchant for calculation and control, which characterizes the modernist spirit.
A totalitarian government attempts to control most aspects of human life, such as the nation’s industrial policy; permitted, authorized forms of cultural expression; and severe limits on freedom to form associations ‘outside’ the state. Totalitarianism features a comprehensive, encompassing view of reality and “truth,’ in which all opposition is censored or crushed. Authoritarian regimes also censor and crush all opposition—although they don’t necessarily require its subjects to view the state as an idol of worship. Like the imperium of ancient Rome, the right to worship one’s own ‘gods’ was assured strong state protection. Both socialism and totalitarianism recognize no preexisting, primordial institutions to the state. The family, the volk, culture, church, and society have no natural rights, except for what the state might give in its generosity. [4] According to this view, the family, volk, etc., are mere ‘creatures,’ created by the ‘creator’ state. [5] Thus, the state begets the nation, rather than the other way around. The state itself is a creature, created by alliances, coalitions, federations, revolutions, and, in general, people who believe in and share a common destiny, which they want to continue in unison as one people. The state, as a creature, was ‘created’ by households, civil society, and subsidiary institutions which were ‘already there,’ i.e., preexisting, before there ever was a state.
[4] The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God— in which president John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address, warned against the abolition of man by the state.
[5] A creature is, by definition, the product of a creator. God, man, or some other form of intelligence can create, ex nihilo, or from some primal ‘substance.’ On the matter of education, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that “the child is not the creature of the state.” Parents are the real creators, therefore have the primary responsibility of teaching the child, rather than the state. [Pierce v. Society of Sisters, (1925)]
THE LIMITS OF SOCIALISM
Socialism not only rejects God, but rejects man, qua creator. While wholly ignoring and indifferent to man’s potential to create, in rejecting a metaphysics of man, socialism affirms that man in society form associations for the sake of material advantage alone. Thus, Socialism has no true social authority. It only rests on temporal and material advantages. It has arisen primarily out of Liberalism, which rejects appeal to ‘outside’ metaphysical considerations. It is the father of [democratic] Socialism, in which the son rejects the father, that pervades morality and culture. Its eternal siren call is a call to topple and destroy – never to build. The mania for the ‘new’ is better left to the futurists and the Marxists, who like to exalt a ‘brighter tomorrow’. We should not seek what is new, but that which is normal, because it conforms to principles of perennial validity.
It is said that “all roads to hell are paved with good intentions.” Good intentions alone are not enough to ensure positive outcomes; where there is no vision, no end-in-view, the people perish in gulags. The binary distinction between oppressor and oppressed is, like class war, an overthrow. It is not the construction of anything new, but destruction of existing society. It aims at no future. It is will-to-nothing. Any oppressor will fill the void, as has happened throughout history—to struggle against real or imagined enemies – kings, churchmen, capitalists, fascists—and now in our own day, white supremacists.
THE WITHERING AWAY OF THE STATE
“The state is not abolished, it withers away” — Friedrich Engels
Before General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of command of the US forces in Korea in 1951, he asserted that the United Nations’ “Police Action” required waging war that went beyond the limited goals of a police action. In his words, ‘there is no substitute for victory.” His commander-in-chief, President Harry S. Truman, thought differently. An armistice among the combatants restored the 38th parallel as the border between North Korea and South Korea. The president asserted that this was not the right time, nor the right war, nor the right place, to wage a large-scale land war.
In his farewell address to a Joint Session of the US Congress, General MacArthur reminded his audience that as a professional soldier, he lived by duty and honor to his country always, always. In the twilight of his life, he reminded his listeners that soldiers are not quite done when they exit the stage. For, in his words, “old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” He concluded his career not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Unlike General MacArthur’s ‘fading away’ from the pages of history, the millennial old idea of socialism does not fade away. It represents a constant in history, like cicadas coming back to life with a loud, whirring bang every 17 years, only then to go quiet and die in a whimper. As a state never dies, it certainly does not fade away. Nor does it “wither away” as when a houseplant is not regularly watered. What withers away is the dream of a stateless communism. Socialism, having waged perpetual revolution against the oppressor state, cannot do without the state. Without a state, socialists have no power. In its pre-revolutionary stage, the state merely subsists as an abstract villain of revolutionary proletarians. The socialist state is unable to reconfigure the economy and public administration without coercive measures, i.e., surveillance, secret police, and an archipelago of gulags. What withers away is any teleological purpose of the state. The political outcome of all socialist states is permanent violence to the body politic, especially to a class of refuseniks who do not go along with the socialist agenda.
Marxist theory holds that state socialism transforms the state from a “government of persons” into an “administration of things.” But who, other than “persons,” can administer “things”? Moreover, theories of what a socialist state will look like after the revolution never specify who will be responsible for managing production and resources. Who will plan, organize, and staff the bureaucracies necessary for coordinating budgets and reporting compliance with five-year plans? It is a socialist fantasy to think that a state will wither away—to function without permanent bureaucratic management.
A communist society will still “need” the state to protect its sovereignty. Thus, the state would likely grow, not fade away. This involves an inherent contradiction in the appeal to socialism: that everyone ought to live at the expense of the state. However, they forget its corollary: that the state lives at the expense of everyone. The still unanswered question is who will fill the bureaucracy or produce anything? Only command and control from the top down can resolve the contradiction.
Socialism is not utopian. It leads to a leveling mediocrity of grayness. It is a “pie in the sky” fantasy for a future heaven on earth in which no one may stand apart from the herd. It would be a dystopia, in which permits and licenses would be needed for almost everything, especially those things that are of inestimable value, such as starting a family.
Under socialism, the only things that wither away are freedom and happiness.