What is fascism?

The word “fascism” is often used – and mis-used – to describe politicians and policies which are perceived to be somehow aligned with totalitarian ideas. But while it is often apparent right-wing policies that are described as fascist, in fact, fascism shares its ideological roots with progressive politics.

Indeed, to understand fascism, we need to start with the ideas of G.W.F. Hegel, the German enlightenment philosopher, whose dialectic theory of progress as an inevitable journey from darkness to enlightenment as driven by the resolution to contradicting ideas, was fundamental to the development of most of left-wing political thought. The most important heir to Hegel was Karl Marx, who “stood Hegel on his head” with his dialectic materialism and argued that rather than needing to speculate about conflicts in our consciousness, there were plenty of contradictions plainly visible in the material world, in particular, the contrast in life conditions between the bourgeoisie (the dominant capitalist class) and the proletariat.

The Marxist theory of how class conflict would spur revolution would go on to influence left-wing revolutionaries and other thinkers throughout the 20^th century, but of course, there were many thinkers of the Hegelian school who were sceptical about Marxist class warfare and did not believe that proletarian revolution was the inevitable next stage in the Hegelian dialectic. One such sceptic was the Italian Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), who rejected Marx’s materialism and turned his philosophy in a more traditional Hegelian direction, though with important differences. In essence, Marx had proposed that the dialectic state is objectively existing in the material world, a posteriori (i.e. observable) regardless of any individual’s thinking. This was rejected by Gentile, who saw the dialectic process as composed of the various oppositional views held by individuals. Developing what he called actual idealism, he proposed the that the Hegelian Spirit, the idealist force driving the dialectic process, is comprised not of such individual thoughts but by the thinking that exists “upstream” of those; the “mean” of these various interests.

Fascism is the political consequence of these philosophical foundations. As such, Gentile believed that the state must be a vehicle for expressing the unified thought of the Spirit, and at its core, fascism is therefore less about actual policies than about who should control and direct society. For Gentile, the answer to that question is always: the state. Fascism, then, in total accordance with Hegel (and Marx), sees liberty not at the individual level, but at the level of the state. People should not act freely but rather; they should accept the will of the collective, and hence the state, as an expression of the will of the people.

Between 1927 and 1932, Gentile co-wrote Doctrine of Fascism with Benito Mussolini, the founder of the National Fascist Party (of which Gentile was a member and whom he represented in the Senate for over two decades as well as briefly as Minister of Public Education), who would go on to take Italian fascism in a more extreme and nationalistic direction. Influenced by Gustave Le Bon’s 1895 book The Crowd, which suggested that individuals swept up in a crowd lose their ability to think for themselves, Mussolini took his politics in a populist direction: he understood that to sway the masses, you needed not tell them the truth but rather what they wanted to hear. Mussolini was also heavily influenced by Georges Sorel, a Marxist and anti-democratic ideologue who theorised that what he called myths, unifying stories which appeal to people’s existing inclinations, could be used to mobilise the masses. Sorel’s focus was on strikes as a means of forcing the workers’ revolution, but Mussolini was sceptical of class warfare’s antagonisms between groups of the same nation and focus on international class solidarity, so instead, the Italian Fascists developed the myth of Italian nationalism (and, therefore, state) around which to rally the people and to which everything else was subordinated. The Italian nation’s greatness would be realised when it “translates into reality the force of its spirit”, in other words, by influencing the Hegelian dialectic to shape world history. It is this “greatness of the nation” which is the focus of fascism, precluding dogmatism around actual policies.

While Benito Mussolini developed his strain of Italian Fascism, in Germany, the National Socialists were equally inspired by the core fascist doctrine – and they would prove much more successful in mobilising Nationalism into civilian and military cohesiveness. From Sorel, the fascist had taken an acceptance that violence was necessary and legitimate, and that war was to be glorified. Expansion of the nation – imperialism – manifested the nation’s vitality, but while the Italian Fascists had to settle for conquests of Ethiopia and Libya, the Germans had their minds set on European domination; an obsession that would start a global war which cost more than 50 million human lives. It should be noted that the Nazis, in particular, were influenced by several non-progressive thinkers, notably the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (though Hitler probably misunderstood Nietzsche, who would likely have been unimpressed with being associated with Nazism), as well as the British proponent of social Darwinism, scientific racism and eugenics, Sir Francis Galton. Indeed, probably the most important intellectual difference between Italian Fascism and Nazism is the Nazis’ focus on race in addition to nation as the unifying characteristic, as captured by their slogan “Blood and Soil.”

After WW2, fascist movements never regained power anywhere close to what they had, and these days are largely confined to moderately successful neo-fascist parties in Italy and Greece as well as sporadic fringe neo-fascist/Nazi movements. But that has not prevented the term fascist being slung around in the political debate, most often as a means of denigrating and dismissing policies which have no meaningful association to what fascism is about. Indeed, the fascist movements are more about who should be in power and what to achieve rather than how to achieve it. Marx would abolish private property, but in line with the idea of there being only one thought at the centre of the dialectic process, Gentile saw private and public ultimately as an unnecessary distinction and this led to him advocating for the corporatist system of state control of private industry. The Italian Fascists wanted to create an alliance between capital and labour, under fascist control.

So, what is fascism? Well, it is neither left-wing nor right-wing in the normal sense of how we use these terms today. Fascism is not opposed to the market or private ownership, but it sees a core role for the state to direct and use these to further its own interest. It is fundamentally collectivist, but it rejects the concept of class as important. It is openly totalitarian. The fascist has an essentially progressive view of history; sees nationality (and, to an extent, race) as a core political value; elevates the nation state above all other interests and would see it expand its international influence; is hostile to democracy; believes the government can and should direct the economy and the lives of its citizens in pursuit of its goals; and is openly prepared to use violence, war and hard authoritarianism to achieve these ambitions.