I don’t think that Krupp, Volkswagenwerk, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, Röchling, Büssing and other companies that continued to thrive after giving all that material and support to the fascists in Germany during the war would agree with that.
Sure, but someone who died in a gulag and someone who died in a concentration camp would probably find some common experiences to talk about.
And if you had paid attention you would had seen that I already granted that.
Once again, my main point is that what the American Right is trying to do now with their definition of fascism is bananas.
I’m still not seeing how fascism (in practice) was not a poisonous form of right wing populism.
What, read the whole thread when my initial “meh” post in response to the first few posts summarized my feelings on the topic perfectly?
The obvious rarely needs stating, let alone repeating.
Unfortunately we are in the era of infotainment news. What you see as obvious is clearly missed by many here, and it is not just for them or you that I post to point that out.
It was, it was; but that was only one side of it. It was also, like Communism, rule by a particular kind of intellectual or pseudo-intellectual – or perhaps “artist” would be a better term – with an all-encompassing world-view much more complex and grandiose than the Stormtrooper’s instinctive snarling at the loathsome Other.
Sure, but the important thing is that fascism, communism and liberalism are identical. :rolleyes:
Which makes the phrase “Triumph of the WIll” a lot more meaningful than a snappy slogan. Thanks!
Not quite. Liberals are commiefascists without the balls. 
So why did American conservative politicians support the Nazis? And why did American corporations do business with the Nazi regime?
Every modern ideology was somehow influenced by Rousseau: liberalism, conservatism, communism, socialism, fascism.
Agreed. But note that this does not at all contradict Trotsky’s characterization (quoted by **Olentzero **above).
Hitler could never have risen to sufficient national prominence *to get the workers’ vote *without the aristocratic junkers. And they helped him in the beginning because of their fear of communism.
I think the only sensible way to conceptualize fascism is as a reaction to communism. Both are 20th century phenomena and both opposed capitalist liberalism. But communism saw itself as the solution to capitalism and voice of the exploited/workers. Fascism was the defense of the oligarchs against communism, because only a passionate appeal to a mythical history of Western civilization / nationalism could garner the emotional devotion necessary for the poor to oppose a movement that would help them.
Though some aristocrats would later lose their wealth (some would experience a net gain), the initial motive to was to hide class divisions with the cloak of nationalism. Meanwhile, the state would aid the corporations with their daily operations, though the products/benefits could be distributed arbitrarily, as there was no overall philosophy other than irrational worship of the state and nationalist mythos.
Thus, fascism is merely a tool used to perpetuate capitalism by creating the feeling of social belonging (and combating feelings of anomie) without creating the civil society of communism.
I suppose you can analyze the question from an abstract, philosophical point of view, as well as a concrete, political perspective, and obtain different conclusions.
Just because some Nietzsche’s ideas were adapted by fascists doesn’t mean his own political motivations and affiliations were significant. Nietzsche was no fascist, and the political consequences of accepting his philosophy can only called pro-individualist–but not supportive of any particular economic or political system.
Fascist alliances are matters of convenience and advantage; I don’t see any inherent guiding principle there.
Fascism makes the most sense as an emotional support for capitalism (and against communism), than a self-propelling movement.
I don’t suppose Rousseau had fascism in mind either, but it would have been impossible, or at least highly unlikely, without him; and Reilly’s point is that it would have been impossible without Nietzsche, and he is probably right. He does not say that makes Nietzsche a fascist. Philosophers long have debated, and we have sometimes debated in GD, just what Nietzsche meant by “the Will to Power” – maybe it was power over others, or the collective power of a nation, which certainly is what the Nazis meant by it; or maybe “power” was a mistranslation of a concept better expressed in English as “freedom,” of the individual liberated from tradition. There are passages in his writings to support both interpretations.
Hitler, at least, was a true believer with a genuine world-view. He hated Communism, but he had no love at all for capitalism. And Mussolini’s corporatism was definitely meant as an alternative to capitalism. N.B.: The word does not mean “rule by business corporations” – that would be corporatocracy, which describes no fascist state yet established.
I think you pretty much answered your own question with this excellent bit of writing further on down your post:
The only thing I’d add is that in Germany, the ruling capitalist class felt itself paralyzed, unable to make any serious moves to reestablish its dominance because of the strength of the working-class movement in Germany. They’d learned several very hard lessons during the 1920s and were pretty well aware that if they tried anything funny they’d probably have another revolutionary situation on their hands. Moreover, the working class on the march would have taken chunks of the lower middle class with it, so when the Nazis came around and said “We can organize the middle class in order to smash the workers” the bosses started throwing cash.
(Note: I would disagree with your classification of communism as a 20th-century phenomenon, though - the Manifesto was written in 1848, and the lessons Marx drew about the working class smashing the state were taken from the Paris Commune in 1871. Otherwise, spot-on analysis, IMO.)
N.B.: All that ruling-class support gave the Nazis the boost they needed to win – but it did not call them into existence. And when Hitler took power, the capitalists soon learned that he, not they, was master.
Never argued that it did. I believe I’ve pretty clearly shown where the social base of support for Nazism came from, and that it was never a workers’ party (which is another aim of socialists).
Not just Germany either. What our “friends” on the right ignore as they try desperately to distance themselves from their swastika-clad relatives is the depth of the crisis in which capitalism found itself at the time.
Capitalists were faced with the genuine likelihood of revolution. It had happened in many countries in Europe including Germany after the Great War, and even the UK, the poster child for gradualism and coopting the working class had seen a police strike in 1919 (I believe) and the General Strike. It really had the potential of being the End Times.
So capitalists were faced with a choice. They needed to deal with unemployment, as unemployment led to working class unreast, and potentially revolution. But, they also needed unemployment, because it undercut the power of organized labor and allowed wages to be suppressed and profits to increase. What came along, and seemed perfect to them, was fascism. Reduce unemployment through, in particular, a rearmament based boom, but at the same time eviscerate working class organizations such as unions, and thus allow wages to be kept pressed down. Throughout the Nazi period, the gains of the alleged economic miracle went to capitalists, and to the middle classes, and not to the working class.
But what was overlooked was how this was to be paid for. Naziism was a ponzi scheme. The only way that the massive debts incurred could be paid was by outright theft. There wasn’t enough left to steal from the domestic working class, so there was no choice but to invade other countries. On top of that, if you buy the military (especially the German military of the time) shiny pretty new toys, it is going to want to use them at some point.
Fascism, and Naziism in particular, was capitalism’s response to the crisis it saw itself in during the early 20th century. That it took liberal democracies who faced off the same crisis through welfarism to save capitalism in continental Europe is more than a little ironic to me.
The irony is that you guys are yourselves looking at the situation through an economic and class-based analysis. The fascists did not, and that is exactly the difference between them and the communists.
In fact, the lens through which the fascists approached matters really has little in common with the traditional political left or right, and is barely comprehensible by people who are not fascists (i.e. almost everyone).
Left or right, people these days tend to make appeals to reason, particularly in matters economic and social. Both are operating with a set of assumptions and theories about how society and money ‘really’ works. They are not compatible assumptions and theories, but they are alike in having strong opinions on these matters.
The fascist theorizers simply did not care for such things, as they did not care for rationality itself. Emotion and will counted for more.
Well fascism saw itself as a response to class based politics - replacing class unity with national unity.