Fascism

For the original version of the ideology developed in Italy, see Italian Fascism.

Fascism /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in mid-20th century Europe. Fascists seek to unify their nation through a totalitarian state that promotes the mass mobilization of the national community, relying on a vanguard party to initiate a revolution to organize the nation on fascist principles. Hostile to liberal democracy, socialism, and communism, fascist movements share certain common features, including the veneration of the state, a devotion to a strong leader, and an emphasis on ultranationalism, ethnocentrism, and militarism. Fascism views political violence, war, and imperialism as a means to achieve national rejuvenation and asserts that nations and races deemed superior should attain living space by displacing ones deemed weak or inferior.

Fascist ideology consistently invoked the primacy of the state. Leaders such as Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany embodied the state and claimed indisputable power. Fascism borrowed theories and terminology from socialism but applied them to what it saw as the more significant conflict between nations and races rather than to class conflict, and focused on ending the divisions between classes within the nation. It advocated a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky to secure national self-sufficiency and independence through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. Fascism supports what is sometimes called a Third Position between capitalism and Marxist socialism. Fascist movements emphasized a belligerent, virulent form of nationalism (chauvinism) and a fear of foreign people (xenophobia), which they frequently linked to an exaggerated ethnocentrism. The typical fascist state also embraced militarism, a belief in the rigors and virtues of military life as an individual and national ideal, meaning much of public life was organized along military lines and an emphasis put on uniforms, parades, and monumental architecture.

Influenced by national syndicalism, the first fascist movements emerged in Italy around World War I, combining elements of left-wing politics with more typically right-wing positions, in opposition to socialism, communism, liberal democracy and, in some cases, traditional right-wing conservatism. Although fascism is usually placed on the far right on the traditional left-right spectrum, fascists themselves and some commentators have argued that the description is inadequate. Following the Second World War, few parties openly describe themselves as fascist and the term is more usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The term neo-fascist or post-fascist is sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideological similarities to, or roots in, 20th century fascist movements respectively.

Etymology

The term fascismo is derived from the Latin word fasces. The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around an axe, was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate. They were carried by his lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The word fascismo also relates to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates.

The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements. For example the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke.

Definitions

Main article: Definitions of fascism

Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism. Each form of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow.

Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism". Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence". Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.

Paxton sees fascism as "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

One common definition of fascism focuses on three groups of ideas:

• The Fascist Negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism.
• Nationalist, authoritarian goals for the creation of a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture.
• A political aesthetic using romantic symbolism, mass mobilisation, a positive view of violence, promotion of masculinity and youth and charismatic leadership.

Position in the political spectrum

Fascism is commonly described as "extreme right" although some writers have found placing fascism on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult. Fascism was influenced by both left and right, conservative and anti-conservative, national and supranational, rational and anti-rational. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things. Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views.

Fascism is considered by certain scholars to be right-wing because of its social conservatism and authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism. Roderick Stackleberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the right, explaining that "the more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be."

Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s. A major element of fascism that has been deemed as clearly far-right is its goal to promote the right of claimed superior people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior elements.

Benito Mussolini in 1919 described fascism as a movement that would strike "against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left". Later the Italian Fascists described fascism as a right-wing ideology in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism, stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century." However Mussolini clarified that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue to fascists and stated that:

Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words.

A number of fascist movements described themselves as a "third position" outside the traditional political spectrum.

Fascist as insult

Main article: Fascist (insult)

Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word, often referring to widely varying movements across the political spectrum. George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'". Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times". "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-war organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".

Contrary to the common mainstream academic and popular use of the term, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an insult. Marxist interpretations of the term have, for example, been applied in relation to Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Herbert Matthews, of the New York Times asked "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?" J. Edgar Hoover wrote extensively of "Red Fascism". Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split, and likewise, the Soviets used the term to identify Chinese Marxists.

History

Further information: Fascism and ideology

Tenets

Nationalism

Nationalism is the main foundation of fascism. The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people. Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. European fascist movements all typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being inferior to Europeans. However beyond this, fascists in Europe have not held a unified set of racial views.

Historically most fascists promoted imperialism, however there were several fascist movements that were uninterested in the pursuit of new imperial ambitions.

Totalitarianism

Fascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state. The Doctrine of Fascism states, "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people." In The Legal Basis of the Total State, Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart".

Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production of educational and media materials. Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and to teach students to be obedient to the state.

Benito Mussolini promised a "social revolution" that would "remake" the Italian people. According to Patricia Knight, this was only achieved in part. The people who primarily benefited from Italian fascist social policies were members of the middle and lower-middle classes, who filled jobs in the vastly expanded government workforce, which grew from about 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs in 1930 alone. Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, with welfare rising from 7% of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.

Age and gender roles

Mussolini perceived women's primary role to be childbearers, while men were warriors, once saying, "war is to man what maternity is to the woman". In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families, and initiated policies designed to reduce the number of women employed. Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation", and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation. In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".

The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep house. This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour. The growth of Nazi power, however, was accompanied by a breakdown of traditional sexual morals with regard to extramarital sex and licentiousness.

The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy "pure" German, "Aryan" fetuses remained strictly forbidden. For non-Aryans, abortion was often compulsory. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany. In 1935 Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders. The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not yet viable, and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.

The Nazis argued that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted, and undermined masculinity because it did not produce children. They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority. Open homosexuals were interned in Nazi concentration camps.

Economic policies

Further information: Economics of fascism

According to Bruce Pauley, Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalize it. However, according to Patricia Knight, they did, with the Italian Fascist government coming to own the highest percentage of industries outside the Soviet Union. The Nazis also nationalized some business. In fact, the "Twenty-Five Point Programme" of the Nazi party, adopted in 1920, demanded "the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations." Other scholars noted that big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Nazi and Fascist governments as it became increasingly organized. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals, and in exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies. Nazi Germany transferred public ownership and public services into the private sector, while other Western capitalist countries strove for increased state ownership of industry. In his book, Big Business in the Third Reich, Arthur Schweitzer notes that, "Monopolistic price fixing became the rule in most industries, and cartels were no longer confined to the heavy or large-scale industries. ... Cartels and quasi-cartels (whether of big business or small) set prices, engaged in limiting production, and agreed to divide markets and classify consumers in order to realize a monopoly profit.

Fascists pursued economic policies to strengthen state power and spread ideology, such as consolidating trade unions to be state- or party-controlled. Attempts were made by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to establish "autarky" (self-sufficiency) through significant economic planning, but neither achieved economic self-sufficiency.

Economic planning

Fascists opposed the laissez-faire economic policies that were dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.

Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. Nazis and other antisemitic fascists considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy". Fascist governments introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual." Private property rights were supported but were contingent upon service to the state. For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labour than he would find profitable." However, they promoted the interests of successful small businesses. Mussolini wrote approvingly of the notion that profits should not be taken away from those who produced them by their own labour, saying "I do not respect — I even hate — those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others".

According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies. The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7: "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation", then continued in article 9: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management." -->

References

Primary sources

• Gentile, Giovanni. 1932. The Doctrine of Fascism. Enciclopedia Italiana.
• de Oliveira Salazar, António. 1939. Doctrine and Action: Internal and Foreign Policy of the New Portugal, 1928–1939. Faber and Faber.
• Mosley, Sir Oswald. 1968. My Life. Nelson Publications.
• de Rivera, José Antonio Primo. 1971. Textos de Doctrina Politica. Madrid.
• Mussolini, Benito. 1998. My Rise And Fall . Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80864-1
• Ciano, Galezzo. 2001. The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943. Simon Publications. ISBN 1-931313-74-1
• Mussolini, Benito. 2006. My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism". Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-44777-4

Secondary sources

• Cyprian Blamires. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, US: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006.
• Costa Pinto, Antonio, ed. Rethinking the Nature of Fascism: Comparative Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 287 pages
• Evans, Richard J, The Third Reich in Power: 1933–1939, The Penguin Press HC, 2005
• De Felice, Renzo. 1976. Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice. Transaction Books. ISBN 0-87855-619-2
• De Felice, Renzo. 1977. Interpretations of Fascism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-45962-8.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2005. Pour une étude scientifique du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-11-7.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2006. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-46-X.
• Ben-Am, Shlomo. 1983. Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-822596-2
• Payne, Stanley G. 1987. The Franco Regime, 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-11070-2
• Vatikiotis, Panayiotis J. 1988. Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936–1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas. Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-4869-8
• Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914–45. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-14874-2
• Costa Pinto, António. 1995. Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation. Social Science Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-968-3
• Golomb, Jacob; Wistrich, Robert S. 2002. Nietzsche, godfather of fascism?: on the uses and abuses of a philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Griffiths, Richard. 2001. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism. Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-2918-2
• Lewis, Paul H. 2002. Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-97880-X
• Payne, Stanley G. 2003. Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism. Textbook Publishers. ISBN 0-7581-3445-2
• Paxton, Robert O. 2005. The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage Books. ISBN 1-4000-3391-8
• Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.
• Nolte, Ernst The Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
• Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Seldes, George. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.
• Seldes, George. Facts and Fascism. New York: In Fact. 1943, reprinted 2009. p. 288. ISBN 0-930852-43-5. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism, London, CSE Bks, 1978 ISBN 0-906336-00-7
• Kallis, Aristotle A.," To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 237–260.
• Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505780-5
• Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560–1991, Routledge, London.
• Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X
• Sauer, Wolfgang "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404–424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967. + -
• Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. [1989] 1994. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution., Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. + *Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp. 227 – 250
• Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pages 227 – 250
• Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)
• Gentile, Emilio. 2005. The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918–1925: The First Complete Study of the Origins of Italian Fascism, New York: Enigma Books, ISBN 978-1-929631-18-6
• Alexander J. De Grand Routledge, 2004. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: the 'fascist' style of rule

External links

• The Doctrine of Fascism
• Readings on Fascism and National Socialism by Various – Project Gutenberg