Communist at heart fascist with wallet?

[ComradeMan]

Here's a philosophical question.

Someone once said to me... (talking within the Italian context).

"Man is naturally a communist in his heart and a fascist with his wallet- the proletariat are very right wing, the left wing comes from the well-meaning and disaffected bourgeoisie who rebel against the injustices they see perpetrated by their own class. As Cicero once said, man thinks first with his stomach. The problem is materialism and nought else."

This is very cynical I admit, and I have thought about this for a long time. What do you (personally) think?

[black_tambourine]

Seeing as postwar Italy had one of the largest and most powerful Communist parties in the West, with a predominantly working-class base (albeit a relatively "elite" and unionized section of said class), and seeing as Mussolini's support came overwhelmingly from the country's business and professional classes, I'm pretty sure this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

[ComradeMan]

Seeing as postwar Italy had one of the largest and most powerful Communist parties in the West, with a predominantly working-class base (albeit a relatively "elite" and unionized section of said class), and seeing as Mussolini's support came overwhelmingly from the country's business and professional classes, I'm pretty sure this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

1. The comment was in reference to modern Italy to start with. It was more specifically in reference to the fact that when the Italian left were briefly in power and there was a blitz against tax evasion all of a sudden their popularity fell enormously.

2. By the way, Mussolini was an ex-communist and as someone with Italian roots I can tell you now that all that bull about Mussolini not having support amongst the proletariat is the biggest myth going. Mussolini lost most of his support when he went to war and it is an unpalatable truth for many Italians but as one person put it... "It was funny how all the partisans appeared in 1943...."- exaggeration as it may be, there is a grain of truth here.

Re Mussolini... he was a sort of communist gone bad if you like.

I am not defending Mussolini whatsoever but there are many unpalatable truths for many Italiani about Mussolini and their own histories. But seeing as the comment was about modern Italy anyway....

[black_tambourine]

1. The comment was in reference to modern Italy to start with. It was more specifically in reference to the fact that when the Italian left were briefly in power and there was a blitz against tax evasion all of a sudden their popularity fell enormously.

2. By the way, Mussolini was an ex-communist and as someone with Italian roots I can tell you now that all that bull about Mussolini not having support amongst the proletariat is the biggest myth going. Mussolini lost most of his support when he went to war and it is an unpalatable truth for many Italians but as one person put it... "It was funny how all the partisans appeared in 1943...."- exaggeration as it may be, there is a grain of truth here.

Re Mussolini... he was a sort of communist gone bad if you like.

I am not defending Mussolini whatsoever but there are many unpalatable truths for many Italiani about Mussolini and their own histories. But seeing as the comment was about modern Italy anyway....

If the guy's statement was exclusively in reference to modern Italy, then he is taking a transitory, conjunctural phenomenon and making a sweeping philosophical generalization based on it. This is the bailiwick of sententious blowhards, who are a dime a dozen in any era. There's obviously merit in investigating why certain blocs of people seem to vote against their own class interest (a la What's the Matter With Kansas?), but any results of that investigation would not likely be reducible to talking points.

And I am well familiar with the political trajectory of Benito Mussolini. What would later become the Fascist Party was founded with a leftish economic platform in 1919, but this was quickly abandoned after it became evident that this wasn't going to get them any votes. Mussolini's rise to prominence was predicated almost entirely on exploiting fears on the part of southern landlords and northern industrialists about the left's growing power. When he first assumed office, Mussolini was basically Pinochet 50 years early, imposing strict austerity measures on public spending and eliminating or loosening most regulations on capital, as well as destroying the power of independent labor unions. It wasn't until around the time of the Great Depression that his regime switched to a more New Deal-esque "corporatist" model with public works programs, bank and farm subsidies, etc both to alleviate the recession and the prepare the way for Italian military expansionism in the Mediterranean region - these measures were not "liberal" in the economic sense, but their class character was still unmistakable. His government's only concentrated support among the working class came from a miniscule number of wonky "syndicalist" unions whose membership had read way too much Sorel, and whose prominence was artificially inflated by the government in return for their subservience.

[Pogue]

Here's a philosophical question.

Someone once said to me... (talking within the Italian context).

"Man is naturally a communist in his heart and a fascist with his wallet- the proletariat are very right wing, the left wing comes from the well-meaning and disaffected bourgeoisie who rebel against the injustices they see perpetrated by their own class. As Cicero once said, man thinks first with his stomach. The problem is materialism and nought else."

This is very cynical I admit, and I have thought about this for a long time. What do you (personally) think?

I personally think ideas are generated by the material circumstances of the everyday reality what we live in. As such, when the ruling idea of an epoch, to paraphrase Marx, are those of a ruling class of the industrial rich, i.e. the bourgeoisie, owners of media, industry and services, the predominant ideas of society will follow as such.

The only institutions which struggle against these ideas are those of the working class, such as trade unions and our bonds of mutual aid (more prevalent earlier in the 20th century to today. So when the movement of the working class is stronger and thus prevalent ideas of everyones material circumstances are those of democracy, equality and solidarity, these ideas become prevalent, and we also have a revolutionary society (i.e. atmospheres of struggle breed revolutionary ideas and feelings because our ideas are shaped by our atmosphere/society).

The bourgeoisie is in a process of defending its class rule, i.e. its interests, against those of the working class, and so you will find that they will espouse the ideas that represent for their interests. Which aren't revolutionary ideas. That would be like black people developing the idea of white supremacy.

Socialism is a working class tradition. That has where it has found its highest expression. Alot of the theorists have been middle class, such as Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Proudhon, Kropotkin (although some have also been working class - Durruti springs to mind, but there others). Whilst theorists have theorised and influenced other intellectuals and many members of the working class, socialism, as the embodiment of working class struggle, has thus maintained a working class element, in the unions, and in the parties. Struggles, general strikes, revolutions, etc have all shown forms of working class socialist organisation - workers councils. Socialism is an ideology born out of working class struggle, contrary to what your friend says.

The quote doesn't make sense. I think its an example of someone trying to sound profound and failing. But yes, humans are motivated by their material conditions, if thats what you meant, and yes, people want to fulfill their needs as human beings. Socialism provides this fulfillment, by tapping into this need, which also needs a collective spirit, we can struggle to increase the power of our class with aims for social revolution and socialism.

[ComradeMan]

And the many Italians who will tell you, that until Mussolini came along they lived in abject poverty with malarial swamps and slums. I have had many of these discussions with the elder members of even my own family and they all seem to have a more blazé attitude to Mussolini than a modern Austrian/German would have to Hitler.

Remember the average man in the street does not necessarily read about or care about macro-economics and policy. What you say is certainly correct. But "resta sicuro bello mio", there were far more Mussolini supporters in Italy before the war than when Italy started to lose... hence the quote from Cicero being valid in a cynical sense back then.

You also have to see things in context too. Italy is still in many ways a Catholic country, back in 1919 it was Catholic with a capital "C"- the communists were unpopular or at least feared because of the events of the Russian Revolution. Again, remember that perception is often more powerful than fact.

In modern Italy there is no such thing as class ineterest any more, not amongst the majority. I am afraid that many who are supposedly leftwing would seem quite right wing if truth be known and they spoke their hearts whilst we have a worring trend to the right and such blatant nationalism all over the place it is embarrassing. If you watch Italian TV, having lived in another country, you notice who much seems to be nationalist propaganda. Even supposedly leftwing Italians come out with the same stuff in their so-called centri-sociali.

[ComradeMan]

The quote doesn't make sense. I think its an example of someone trying to sound profound and failing. But yes, humans are motivated by their material conditions, if thats what you meant, and yes, people want to fulfill their needs as human beings. Socialism provides this fulfillment, by tapping into this need, which also needs a collective spirit, we can struggle to increase the power of our class with aims for social revolution and socialism.

I think my elderly friend was using it more as a cynical "battuta" to satiricise the current Italian situation rather than present it as a serious theory... I think it was more a comment aimed at the Italians than at the ideologies... :)

[Dimentio]

1. The comment was in reference to modern Italy to start with. It was more specifically in reference to the fact that when the Italian left were briefly in power and there was a blitz against tax evasion all of a sudden their popularity fell enormously.

2. By the way, Mussolini was an ex-communist and as someone with Italian roots I can tell you now that all that bull about Mussolini not having support amongst the proletariat is the biggest myth going. Mussolini lost most of his support when he went to war and it is an unpalatable truth for many Italians but as one person put it... "It was funny how all the partisans appeared in 1943...."- exaggeration as it may be, there is a grain of truth here.

Re Mussolini... he was a sort of communist gone bad if you like.

I am not defending Mussolini whatsoever but there are many unpalatable truths for many Italiani about Mussolini and their own histories. But seeing as the comment was about modern Italy anyway....

Mussolini was not a communist, but a revolutionary social democrat and head editor of Avanti. Originally, the fasces was an agrarian non-marxist socialist movement with nationalist tendencies. Mussolini was under his early years a typical populist dictator in the style of Peron and other Latin American despots. It was first in 1936-1938 that he aligned fascism with nazism and started to turn Italy into a junior partner of the Third Reich.

Fascism and nazism are actually quite different from each-other, even though both ideologies attracted the very same segments of society, namely the rural population and the petty-bourgoeisie.

Lenin wrote an enthusiastic editorial about the events in Fiume, which were orchestrated by the fascist leader Gabriele d'Annunzio.