I’m a fan of Marxist poster C_Plot on Reddit. I’ve gained a lot of good insights from them. Here, they talk about what fascism is/isn’t, but not in a way that excludes other angles on it imo. Link to Reddit in the post but I’m copying & pasting the whole comment here so you don’t have to go there to see it. Overall I agree but would love to hear your takes.
Fascism is not at all an ideology. Fascism is a tactic to maintain tyrannical class-rule. So fascism is not extreme capitalism. However, fascism is a tactic to maintain tyrannical capitalist class rule with a rise in the conscious of the oppressed classes. In feudalism, the ruling class rule by divine right. The bourgeois revolutions shattered that and promoted the view that “all are created equal”.
Republicanism (even in a stunted constitutional monarchy form), along with legislative supremacy, threatens the reign of the capitalist ruling class unless either the working class submits obsequiously to capitalist tyranny OR the franchise of the working class can be diverted into basal hatreds and bigotries through the tactic of fascism. If the working class remains steeped in obsequiousness, the capitalist tyrants can maintain the myth of rule of the People and republicanism. However as consciousness rises, even slightly, and the working class becomes conscious of themselves as an oppressed class, the ruling class panics and promotes hatreds and bigotries toward a cultivated out-group set and promises to smite the members of that out-group.
Those anti-Agápē hatreds and bigotries come to dominate what passes for civic discourse. Instead of government administering our common resources and addressing our common concerns, as civic discourse, the hatreds and bigotries of the out-group members and the hyper oppression of the out-group eclipses all genuine civic discourse. The fascist tactic allows the capitalist ruling class tyrants to maintain their rule while maintaining the semblance of a republic (though recently a return to divine right for tyrants is being promoted too).
Therefore capitalism cannot sustain itself without the docility of oppressed classes or instead the panic and pervasive deployment of the fascist tactic. That is not about societal decay but the decay of the tyrannical reign of the capitalist ruling class itself. So fascism is entirely about the capitalist counterrevolution reaction to the socialist call for advancing the bourgeois revolutions beyond capitalist tyranny.
We have been conditioned, like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water, to accept fascism as the very water in which we swim. Fascism was the result of the Great Depression, not because of the downturn in the economy itself but because of meager advances in working class consciousness. It’s just that the fascist tyrants demanded we never use the proper moniker to delineate what they had imposed upon us (rampant ridicule of those using the term “fascist” as if it is absurd to use the term when instead it is entirely appropriate).
I like the conceptualisation of fascism by Cesaire and Foucault, that it’s a boomerang effect from exporting democracy abroad: https://medium.com/religion-bites/discourse-on-colonialism-by-aimé-césaire-793b291a0987
First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is [assaulted] and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.
And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.
Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.
This needed to be said again
Liberals sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Slava Ukraini!!!
Liberals reaping: The police are flying drones overhead and Europe is collapsing. What the fuck.
I swore we had an emote for Foucalt’s Boomerang, but emote search is pretty janky so idk
Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us.
The biggest flaw in their argument is that it implies fascism cannot exist outside the imperial core, which I don’t think is true at all. For example, you can’t call Pinochet a fascist because Chile isn’t an imperialist power. At best, you can say that Pinochet is a neocolonial stooge working on behalf of his neocolonial colonizer but isn’t himself a fascist, which is obviously untrue.
Pinochet might not have been in the imperial core, but his regime was an outgrowth of it because it only succeeded with Nixon’s approval. With those Cold War puppet states that you could call fascist, their political economy was shaped by their US sponsorship and it reflected the extremely right-wing American government. They were the Mini-Me Hitlers standing next to the big Hitler.
Overall, good argument. The one minor quibble I’d have is that the underlying root of fascism bubbling up to the surface is when the contradictions in capitalism become apparent and the stability of capitalism is threatened, by a wide variety of potential causes. This often causes a rise in class consciousness, but not always. So fascism can emerge without a rise in class consciousness as a “preemptive” move to stop it before it starts.
I agree that this is probably the most important point of view for understanding fascism, but imo the post strays a little too far from “emphasizing a single relation for presentational reasons” towards the territory of “one-sided and therefore wrong.” It could be made more technically correct by using the word “primarily” a few times.
Also, the use of the word “tactic” to me implies (probably not meant by the original poster) a sort of intentionality and pragmatism that fascism doesn’t necessarily have for the bourgeoisie. You could maybe see it as a tactic of capital itself abstracted away from capitalists, but then we are getting a bit dizzyingly abstract.
Capitalism as it is usually defined is not an ideology either, it’s a system of economic relations. The ideology most associated with it is liberalism.
I think the idea of fascism not being substantially ideological is undermined by the obvious point that it’s closely conjoined with capitalism. Also, even what they are describing, the lionizing of ingroup preference, is ideological, and you can easily point to other features that are more characteristic of fascism than their explanation (which I think is overly tainted by Hitlerian Nazism rather than a broad view of fascist ideologies), most particularly the fantasy that class collaborationism can be perpetuated forever if we just subordinate all classes to the state, which is somehow not a bureaucratic or military class of its own, on the basis of some sort of egoistic nationalism.
Also, even what they are describing, the lionizing of ingroup preference, is ideological
I can’t say I follow or agree on this point. I think this just the method of practical carrot-and-stick behavior modification. The promises of in-group rewards means even a Jewish person will become a a Nazi, or Candace Owens will become MAGA. Then fear of losing in-group status is what keeps people in line: Carlie Kirk back to toeing the party line over his audience after one phone call.
It’s a brutally effective way to prey on people where they’re vulnerable: primal fears and desires.
You can phrase things mechanistically if you like and then nothing is ideological except for a purely aesthetic, Nietzschean sort of ideology, but I said the word “lionizing” for a reason. I don’t mean just the strategy of favoring your ingroup, I mean the set of social values in which you should do such a thing even if it was hypothetically to your detriment (a hypothetical that the Nazis and notoriously Imperial Japan had people frequently realize) because it is good and it is just to do so.
I think ideals do exist, I think “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” can only be explained as an ideology because it places an intrinsic value on people, not a practical value. It exists regardless of who the ruling party is.
I mean the set of social values in which you should do such a thing even if it was hypothetically to your detriment (a hypothetical that the Nazis and notoriously Imperial Japan had people frequently realize) because it is good and it is just to do so.
I never got the sense it was about a sense of universal goodness that exists independently of the ruling party, but because earning approval of the ruling in-group could help you earn carrots and escape sticks.
Remember that the inherent virtue of serving and sacrificing for your country that has long been a central element of America’s civic religion.
See also JD Vance:
There’s this old-school—and I think a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
Of course, this is closer to Confucianism than anything you’ll find in the New Testament, and actual Confucianism is another great example of ingroup preference as a set of values as well as a supposedly pragmatic approach to social organization.
Lol, JD Vance lying out his mouth. Do you think JD Vance believes in self sacrifice for himself? Do you think JD Vance loves Hispanic Americans? Or immigrants? Or Palestinians?
No, what JD Vance loves is encouraging other people to self sacrifice, to perpetuate genocides at home and abroad, to make himself and his billionaire donors richer and more powerful.
Like how Christo-fascists have nothing to do with Christian values, they appropriate the aesthetics and rhetoric only to the extent that it gets them what they want.
Obviously he doesn’t have any interest in self-sacrifice, and Trump has opened a Bible maybe three times in his life, but it would be absurd to think there isn’t a major element of their evangelical support who don’t hold the values promulgated by these lying careerists, whether because the careerists are advocating for them or because the careerists knew these were already popular values. Vance was just an example, I could have just as easily cited Benjamin Franklin talking about how natural it is to want to see one’s own race proliferate.
Yes, but holding those values doesn’t make them fascists, it does make them vulnerable to fascists who appropriate the aesthetics of their values.
Fascism is not arising out of their values, it is exploiting their values.
Of course, this is closer to Confucianism than anything you’ll find in the New Testament,
Vance is basically summarizing the Confucian argument against Mohism’s universal love, which more or less maps one-to-one with agape. In general, it’s fascinating how Mohists and early Christians were so similar.
I think there are likely more than just the 2 “tactics” they describe (a docile populace or a fascist ruling class). This could be generalized to talking about how capitalism has its inherent contradictions, and these as two ways of delaying some of those contradictions. We’ve seen many crises throughout capitalism’s history, and thus far they’ve all been further delayed rather than leading to the collapse of capitalism as an economic mode. Fascism is just one of these many delaying tactics.
My opinion is that fascism is a set of ideologies that, when they have ‘won’ their struggle, has been with the support of a faction of the bourgeoisie.
Fascism was the result of the Great Depression
Not a historian, but it’s the first time that I’ve read this, and I suspect it is ahistoric state-unitian exceptionalism.
I think people need to be familiar with a latter slavery apologist named Fitzhugh. He’s pretty much a 19th century fascist or proto-fascist. The main difference between Fitzhugh and older slavery apologists like Calhoun is that Fitzhugh was actually aware of socialism but obviously rejected them as the reactionary (proto)-fascist clown that he was. And like all fascists since, he does that obnoxious fascist thing where he offered mild critiques of capitalism and tried to recuperate some socialist concepts for fascist ends.
though recently a return to divine right for tyrants is being promoted too
protestantism where their pope is the president
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I think this is another interesting answer to the thread you linked to.
I’m not sure what people mean when they say it. IMO fascism is one of the potential outcomes of long or deep crisis in capitalism. We are seeing fascism rise around the world again because neoliberalism never really figured out how to resolve social, economic and geopolitical issues that began with the last recession and were probably exhasterbated by the pandemic.
If it means “fascism is aggressive capitalism” or “capitalism always becomes fascism” or that “fascism is simply a trick of the capitalist ruling class” then I agree, it’s a bad and incorrect argument. I don’t think it’s necessarily incorrect as there is a link between fascism and capitalism during economic or hegemonic crisis… I just think the phrase isn’t clarifying and like you imply it seems only as a rhetorical tool to make the link between capitalism and fascism. I’ve been using a slightly more specific version that “fascism is an illiberal attempt to contain capitalist class struggle within the nation-state.” I think that makes the link to fascism and crisis in capitalism without implying some deterministic historical formula of fascism means the fall of capitalism is at hand.
This 1920s report by Clara Zetkin is one of the early attempts by socialists to understand fascism as a distinct thing - also predates any liberal or mainstream analysis which didn’t really start happening until after WWII. It’s from 1923 so lacks a lot of our hindsight and she thought the movement was so incoherent that it would fall apart from internal differences… but reports about early Mussolini are kind of eerie at the movement in terms of echos and parallels to some contemporary counties. She does call it a sign of “decay” or something like that so maybe this is the origin of that meme version of “fascism is capitalism in decay”.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1923/06/fascism-report-comintern.htm
Does it make sense to have a fascism that progresses, and is enacted, without fascists?
