# Is fascism the natural state? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2011, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045 "2011-11-15T19:53:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/21 "2011-11-16T00:49:45Z")
Even if Bloom and Karlin are correct and individuals are subsumed to the needs of a social “superorganism” their argument that “violence is reality” doesn’t follow as a result. It would be more plausible that individuals would organize into a single superorganism that would encompass all of society. Violence and competition between societies might be temporary phenomena that we will put aside once we reach higher levels of development. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/22 "2011-11-16T00:55:02Z")
I don’t know about that. I would wager that today more people believe in war as the most lasting and powerful of man’s institutions than believe in God. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/23 "2011-11-16T01:02:36Z")
**Wesley,** you make many good solid rebuttals in your post above, but how much ice are they potentially going to cut with evolutionary theorists? They are, by now, very well practiced in burning to the waterline everything the rest of us consider important about human society, so that all that remains to depend upon is the ancient, the tribal, the atavistic. They then turn the premise on its head and claim those things aren’t just a pre-existing stage to civilization, but the root sources of _all_ that makes us human. Things that must be preserved and honored somehow - ironically enough, in their _unevolved_ state - to keep us thriving and robust and save us from becoming effete brains-with-legs or something. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/24 "2011-11-16T15:35:53Z")
I have no idea what you are talking about, **Beware of Doug**. First Social Darwinism is completely discredited in scientific circles. No evolutionary theorist takes it seriously. It lingers on in a few fringe thinkers, and the occasional wealthy person who feels the need to justify his riches. It has no scientific validity whatsoevder. Beyond that, I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re getting at. Please give examples from actual societies in history, with details. All I’m getting is that you have confused bitterness and cynicism with profundity, a common error. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/25 "2011-11-16T15:44:49Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > What do you think? Is Bloom wrong? Do you agree with him? Why? The main problem is the idea that there is any sort of “natural state”. You can either argue that any state produced by human action is by definition not “natural”, or you can argue that every human state is a natural result of the prevailing conditions (and therefore temporary). Once that is clarified, it usually turns out that people mean “the primitive state of Man”, and the speaker does not understand that this state was so horribly violent and strife-ridden that none of its qualities seen in isolation as virtue is worth risking a return to that state as a whole. For an in-depth understanding of this position as well as a demolition of all positions based on either the beatification or vilification of humankind’s prehistoric state, read Steven Pinker’s latest briliant book “The Better Angels Of Our Nature”. > [@](#): > > Either way, what might be his motivating force in writing such a book? He’s an asshole. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/26 "2011-11-16T15:52:41Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > **Wesley,** you make many good solid rebuttals in your post above, but how much ice are they potentially going to cut with evolutionary theorists? They are, by now, very well practiced in burning to the waterline everything the rest of us consider important about human society, so that all that remains to depend upon is the ancient, the tribal, the atavistic. They then turn the premise on its head and claim those things aren’t just a pre-existing stage to civilization, but the root sources of _all_ that makes us human.. If you think this is what evolutionary theory is about, you’re just as befuddled as Ben Stein. No mainstream evolutionary scholar makes the claim that reason and compassion are pointless and that we humanity may as well remain red in tooth in claw as we were in the prehistoric state. Unfortunately, scientifically illiterate humanities scholars bring this firmly preconceived notion to any discussion of evolutionary theory, and thus completely miss the point. The point is to understand the hurdles and obstacles humanity faces as we try to build a better society, which aspects of human nature we can turn to our favor, which ones we need to overcome. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/27 "2011-11-16T16:09:08Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Violence and competition between societies might be temporary phenomena that we will put aside once we reach higher levels of development. I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it. - Jack Handey ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/28 "2011-11-16T16:34:47Z")
Is fascism “natural”? Of course not, no system of government is. But is fascism doomed to failure, as the world “modernizes”? Not at all. Fascism is adaptable, and it couldn’t succeed if there weren’t a LOT of people prepared to accept it. Anyone who thought Western style democracy was inevitable was very foolish. All over the world, millions of people are looking to authoritarian Asian countries like China and Singapore for a new and (supposedly) better model. But… surely, the Chinese middle and upper classes will demand political freedoms, right? Not necessarily. As long as people are prosperous and comfortable, a LOT of them are perfectly happy to let the oligarchs retain power, and may even tell themselves that it’s for the best. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/29 "2011-11-16T17:42:44Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > I disagree. But the fact that you think that principle is valid explains a lot about your way of thinking. Every society has its collective consensus-ideas, conscious or unconscious, right or wrong, unanimous or dissented, about what is good or bad for individual members, as well as ideas about what individuals owe society, and what individuals owe other individuals, etc. That’s part of what a society **is.** Sometimes these ideas are norms enforced by law or social pressure, sometimes they are simply things “everybody knows” and the person who does otherwise is considered foolish. But no society is without norms. And no society is normalized as a swarm of completely atomistic individuals interacting solely according to their individual rights and interests and judgments, with “public opinion” a meaningless abstraction. Not even Libertopia would be like that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/30 "2011-11-16T17:48:30Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Is fascism “natural”? Of course not, no system of government is. > > But is fascism doomed to failure, as the world “modernizes”? Not at all. Fascism is adaptable, and it couldn’t succeed if there weren’t a LOT of people prepared to accept it. More on that [here.](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) > [@](#): > > So, are we really just back where we started at the beginning of the 20th century, waiting for some crisis that will delegitimize the existing establishments and start the ball rolling again? One way to look at the 20th century is as one long recoil from the process of globalization. It was only in the 1990s, for instance, that international capital flows again reached the levels relative to the economies of the major countries that they had reached before the First World War. Similarly, it is only recently that international trade in general became as important as it was around 1900. What happened thereafter was that the governments of the leading nations sought to gain unprecedented control of their countries’ destinies. Partly this was accomplished by war, partly it was accomplished through the creation of command economies. Stalinism was simply Lloyd George’s “War Socialism” made permanent, something that happened in greater or lesser degree throughout the West. In every case, the goal was to replace the power of capital with the power of the will, whether the will was that of an electorate or of a would-be Nietzschean superman. When, starting in the 1980s, the military and economic systems of command began to be relaxed, the world economic system began to look again something like the way it had looked before these measures were implemented. The process of globalization began again. So did the attempts to stop it. > > It would be wrong to say that all attempts to stop globalization of economics and communications and culture are fascist. Most resistance to universalism comes from a positive desire to preserve local identities and traditions. Such things may or may not be worth preserving. The balance between the local and the universal is not something that can be dictated categorically. Fascist nationalism, in contrast, was perhaps just an improvisation, made necessary by the fact that nations states were the largest units that fascist elites could hope to control. At a deeper level of fascism is the ideal of the universal empire, of the whole world subject to a single will. The goal is repeatedly deferred only because it is obviously so much harder to achieve. > > Fascist statecraft is by its nature manipulative, a game that elites play with deluded masses. The fascists in the ‘20s and ‘30s did not come to power by promising to create a society beyond good and evil. They did it by promising people things that really were good, such as safe streets and private property and a country with a culture they could recognize. The opponents to fascism too often fell into the trap of opposing these things simply because the fascists endorsed them. This is an important point for the world’s liberals (or progressives, or whatever they call themselves locally) to keep in mind. As for the conservatives, they must beware of the company they keep. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/31 "2011-11-16T17:52:51Z")
The thesis is wrong from start to end and the people espousing Social Darwinism only reveal themselves as armchair Nietzsche-wannabees who failed real Evolution in biology, human development in biology and history, human history, human culture … basically, they talk about how societys are without knowing anything about society. All higher mammals\*, esp. our closest relatives, live in groups, not alone. Why? Because they need the cooperation of groups to survive. Why did humans develop proper language from the pre-language that apes use? Because they needed it for cooperation for hunting and defense and everything else. Language then allowed passing on of knowledge, which allowed further development. Contrary to the Tarzan or Conan image of the strong hero with muscles doing everything himself, the reality of survival in the wilderness is cooperation: for finding food, shelter, protection (Standing watch on your own is impossible for longer than a few days) and also procreation. And contributions to the survival of the group can come from any individual, regardless of strength. 10 man of average strength will be better at spearing a mammoth and moving it than 1 superstrong man. 10 man talking together will come up with more ideas than one super-smart genius. In “Science of Discworld”, there is a small story about computer programs playing evolution (they don’t give footnotes, but you can probably find it in a good journal database). A competition was held and people were asked to send in programs that emulated behaviour. Hundreds of programs were sent in, some of them short, some very long. The programs were set loose in a virtual enviroment to find food, fight and have sex with each other. After one round, the sucess was evaluated, unsuccesful programs were deleted (killed off), successful ones were copied (cloned) and the next round was run. The winner was a simple program with four lines. The instructions? “When meeting another program for the first time, be friendly = cooperative”. “When meeting another program again, act as it did last time” (Repay friendliness with friendliness, enmity with enmity). - Bears are solitary, but that’s because their only enemy are other bears and humans with guns. They need their own habitat so they don’t eat it empty. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/32 "2011-11-16T17:57:55Z")
EuroDopers, how visible/powerful is fascism in Europe today? I mean fascism-as-such, something more ideological than Berlusconi. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/33 "2011-11-17T05:53:19Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > EuroDopers, how visible/powerful is fascism in Europe today? I mean fascism-as-such, something more ideological than Berlusconi. Berlusconi a fascist? He’s just an Italian, right-wing Ted Kennedy really. For starters the French have the whole Front National. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045/34 "2011-11-17T14:27:03Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Berlusconi a fascist? He’s just an Italian, right-wing Ted Kennedy really. > > For starters the French have the whole Front National. And how “fascist” is that? (Let’s set the bar a bit higher than “hostile to immigrants.” Proper fascism gotta have the will-to-power in it.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-fascism-the-natural-state/603045.md?page=1)