What Is Fascism?

[PAF]

Michael McKay
October 28, 2024

My friend, Robyn Harte-Bunting, expands on the graphic above:

“I think of Fascism as Socialism but with the appearance of private property.

“…State’s managers can do very well for themselves to a far greater extent than in a pure Socialist system, at least for a while [maybe a long while, especially if following on from a period of genuine prosperity generated by the free market, as in the US, which looks more corporatist than at any point in the past].

But the essence is that both systems generate the Misesian Calculation Problem and are fragile and unsustainable.

From this point of view, we have a distinction without a difference.

It doesn’t matter that Fascism is overtly violent while Socialism is covertly violent.

Fascism is currently unfashionable but all varieties of statism will f*** you up“.​

Robyn Harte-Bunting is an award-winning scholar and research fellow from Mises University (2010-2012). He currently resides in Vienna.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/what-is-fascism-2/


​

 

[fisharmor]

There are two points that I try to spread as much as possible nowadays.

Point 1: The best time to get your kid out of public school is the same as the best time to plant a tree.

Point 2: You can't own property in the United States.

 

[Voluntarist]

Benito Mussolini created the word "Fascism". He defined it as "the merging of the state and the corporation". He also stated a more accurate word would be "corporatism".

PAF, you've obviously been through this more than I have. Do you have the original Mussolini source for the quote? I'll grant that that's exactly what the economic system in Italy was at the time; but I've been unable to find where Mussolini wrote or said it.

Mussolini on the Corporate State

A Google(tm) search on January 12, 2005 turned up some 5,000 hits on the following quote:

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini

It is generally attributed to an article written by Mussolini in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana with the assistance of Giovanni Gentile, the editor.

The quote, however, does not appear in the Enciclopedia Italiana in the original Italian.

It does not appear in the official English translation of that article: Benito Mussolini, 1935, “The Doctrine of Fascism,” Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

And it does not appear in the longer treatment of the subject by Mussolini in: Benito Mussolini, 1935, “Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions,” Rome: ‘Ardita’ Publishers.

Where the quote comes from remains a mystery, and while it is possible Mussolini said it someplace at some time, a number of researchers have been unable to find it after months of research.

(If you have a source for the quote based on an actual original document that you copy and mail us, please let us know, and you will receive a free 3-year subscription to the Public Eye magazine)

It is unlikely that Mussolini ever made this statement because it contradicts most of the other writing he did on the subject of corporatism and corporations. When Mussolini wrote about corporatism, he was not writing about modern commercial corporations. He was writing about a form of vertical syndicalist corporatism based on early guilds. The article on Wikipedia on Corporatism explains this rather well.

The article concludes with some MUssolini quotes on the topic.

 

[PAF]

PAF, you've obviously been through this more than I have. Do you have the original Mussolini source for the quote? I'll grant that that's exactly what the economic system in Italy was at the time; but I've been unable to find where Mussolini wrote or said it.

Mussolini on the Corporate State

The article concludes with some MUssolini quotes on the topic.

I don't have the source for the quote, I believe it was written by a Mises author. But I did find this:

https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf

 

[Madison320]

According to Ayn Rand:


"Observe that both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.

Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means “property,” without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.

In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say “more honest,” not “better”—because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-​statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government —and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects."

Clearly what we have now is fascism. Look at how much more revenue the government gets from a business compared to what the owners get.

 

[Voluntarist]

I don't have the source for the quote, I believe it was written by a Mises author. But I did find this:

https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf

You probably didn't mean it the way you wrote it; but yeah, I wouldn't doubt that the Mises author made up the quote (based upon works he read from Mussolini).

My take from the link you posted is that the "corporation" in the quotation is not what we think of as a corporation today (though today's type of corporation, of government limiting liability to what individual investors have invested in the corporation, obviously existed in Mussolini's time). No, what Mussolini was talking about was guilds and trade unions as incorporated in "the whole" ("the corporation").

Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.
...
Is it not strange that from the very first day, at Piazza San Sepolcro, the word “guild” (corporazione) was pronounced, a word which, as the Revolution developed, was to express one of the basic legislative and social creations of the regime?

 

[Voluntarist]

Here's a thought experiment. Both Marxism and Fascism were devised as pseudo-socialist economic systems. So why is it that today's definition of Fascism (by Merriam Webster) is its political consequences:

a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

...yet Marxism is still defined by its economic principles rather than its own political consequences ... which include "exalting the state above the individual" as well as "being associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition" but perhaps missing out on race issues.

Maybe it's because the victors write history - and the only "hot war" that was fought against "Marxism/communism" was lost.