Ideological Roots of Fascism

[Redistribute the Rep]

I have some questions:


1. Does fascism have roots in the anti rationalism of the Romantacism movement? I've heard this said a couple of times but I'd like someone to elaborate on it for me as I'm not quite understanding this.

2. Is there a relationship between fascism and feudalism? Could fascism be said to be anti capitalist in a palingenetic sense?

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

Fascism can only arise in any meaningful way from conditions of a vicious capitalist crisis. Since the bourgeoisie has its own representatives in the parliament and still holds power, it tries to push the costs of the crises elsewhere, the natural target being the working-class. This is evident, for instance, from the recent crisis. However, talking historically, the working-class has its own organizations that allows them to fight back as opposed to passively accepting the costs of the crisis that are being pushed on them by the bourgeoisie.

So you have a naked class struggle in the context of an ideological capitalist crisis. In this struggle the petty bourgeoisie is being squeezed from both sides by both the working-class organizations and the bourgeoisie and has nobody to represent them. Here comes fascism, appealing to the petty bourgeoisie in the form of nationalism and more importantly by promising order. It promises the destruction of the working-class organization and its militancy as well as progressive reforms that theoretically should be paid the bourgeoisie in a form of more progressive taxes.

[Hagalaz]

But much of the National Socialist propaganda in the 20's and 30's was aimed at rural peasants. And they supported the fascists throughout the so called third reich.

[RedMaterialist]

I have some questions:


1. Does fascism have roots in the anti rationalism of the Romantacism movement? I've heard this said a couple of times but I'd like someone to elaborate on it for me as I'm not quite understanding this.

2. Is there a relationship between fascism and feudalism? Could fascism be said to be anti capitalist in a palingenetic sense?

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

Fascism first appeared (at least in its modern form) in the early 1920s, only a few years after the Bolshevik Revolution and shortly after the Soviet victory in the Russian Civil War. From the very beginning fascist ideology was directed first and foremost against international socialism. As soon as Mussolini began to accumulate power the industrialists started financing him. And, of course, the Liberals immediately sided with him against the Italian Socialists and Communists.

As to #3, fascism certainly, with its racism and anti-socialism, appeals to the petit-bourgeoisie but also to the peasant class. The peasants oppose rural collectivism and the petit-bourgeoisie oppose both the big capitalists and the communists.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels give this analysis of what fascism was to become:

While this “True”...

[i.e. the National Socialism of Germany and Italy]

Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.

To preserve this class...

[the petty bourgeoisie]

is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction — on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic...

[The True Socialism of Mussolini and Hitler thus appeared just in time to destroy both Bolshevism and capitalism.]

And on its part German Socialism...

[i.e., the German National Socialism of Hitler and the Italian Nationalism of Mussolini]

recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.

[who could have been more bombastic than Hitler and Mussolini?]


It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism,and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.(3)

Marx and Engels could not possibly have imagined the brutality this "true" socialism was to inflict on the world. Or that the villainous meaness of the model German and Italian man would come to be personified in Eichmann.

[Loony Le Fist]

2. Is there a relationship between fascism and feudalism? Could fascism be said to be anti capitalist in a palingenetic sense?

Many here would argue that fascism involves racism (such as anti-semitism). I think that one might be able to draw a very broad parallel in how they share an underlying principle that some people are destined to lead. Then again, I think all right-wing ideologies tend to spring forth from that authoritarian mindset. Mussolini has something illustrative to offer here that sort of broadens the definition of fascism beyond simply racist authoritarianism:

Benito Mussolini
Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.… National pride has no need of the delirium of race.

He was a far more intelligent fascist than Hitler was. If you haven't already, you should read The Doctrine of Fascism. I find it much more interesting politically than Mein Kampf, and provides a more general idea of the fascist mindset. Kampf seems more specific to Nazism.

I've heard reasonable arguments that previous existing examples of fascism were centrist economically akin to social democracies. I don't know how that would make them anti-capitalist, however, since some degree of capitalism continues to exist under them. I suppose it would do so as capitalism continues operation under fascist rule in the fiction book The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. While being a work of fiction, it provides a plausible mechanism for capitalist exchange to thrive within the Reich: albeit under certain control, of course. Capitalist exchange exists under social democracy, no?

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

Because fascist ideology creates a convenient scapegoat of a particular group of people. It is easier for the PB to teardown the poorest of society than to go after their true enemy. It provides a pathway for sociopsychological transference of anger onto a more easily vilified group. Then again, I happen to think that entire societies can suffer from sociopsychological disorders, as history and market behavior seems to suggest.

[Tim Cornelis]

1. Does fascism have roots in the anti rationalism of the Romantacism movement? I've heard this said a couple of times but I'd like someone to elaborate on it for me as I'm not quite understanding this.

Not sure if it's related to Romanticism.

"Although fascist political movements were born out of the upheavals that accompanied the First
World War, they drew upon ideas and theories that had been circulating since the late nineteenth
century. Amongst the most significant of these were anti-rationalism and the growth of counter-
Enlightenment thinking generally. The Enlightenment, based upon the ideas of universal reason,
natural goodness and inevitable progress, was committed to liberating humankind from the
darkness of irrationalism and superstition. It was reflected in the ideas of the French Revolution
and was embodied, more generally, in liberalism and socialism. In the late nineteenth century,
however, thinkers had started to highlight the limits of human reason and draw attention to other,
perhaps more powerful, drives and impulses. For instance, Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that
human beings are motivated by powerful emotions, their ‘will’ rather than the rational mind, and
in particular by what he called the ‘will to power’. In Reflections on Violence ([1908] 1950), the
French syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847–1922) highlighted the importance of ‘political myths’,
and especially the ‘myth of the general strike’, which are not passive descriptions of political
reality but ‘expressions of the will’ that engaged the emotions and provoked action. Henri
Bergson (1859–1941), the French philosopher, advanced the theory of vitalism, based upon the
idea that living organisms derive their characteristic properties from a universal ‘life force’. The
purpose of human existence is therefore to give expression to the life force, rather than to allow it
to be confined or corrupted by the tyranny of cold reason or soulless calculation.

Although anti-rationalism does not necessarily a right-wing or proto-fascist character, fascism
gave political expression to the most radical and extreme forms of counter-Enlightenment
thinking. Anti-rationalism has influenced fascism in a number of ways. In the first place, it gave
fascism a marked anti-intellectualism, reflected in a tendency to despise abstract thinking and
revere action. For example, Mussolini's favourite slogans included ‘Action not Talk’ and
‘Inactivity is Death’. Intellectual life was devalued, even despised: it is cold, dry and
lifeless. Fascism, instead, addresses the soul, the emotions and the instincts. Its ideas possess little coherence or rigour, but seek to exert a mythic appeal. Its major ideologists, in particular
Hitler and Mussolini, were essentially propagandists, interested in ideas and theories very largely
because of their power to elicit an emotional response and spur the masses into action. Fascism
thus practises the ‘politics of the will’. However fascism is not mere irrationalism. What is
distinctive about fascism is not its appeal to non-rational drives and emotions, but rather the
specific range of beliefs and values through which it attempts to engage the emotions and
generate political activism.
Second, the rejection of the Enlightenment gave fascism a predominantly negative or destructive
character. Fascists, in other words, have often been clearer about what they oppose than what
they support. Fascism thus appears to be ‘anti-philosophy’ – it is anti-rational, anti-liberal, anticonservative,
anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, anti-communist and so on. In this light, some have
portrayed fascism as an example of nihilism, literally a belief in nothing, a rejection of
established moral and political principles. Nazism, in particular, has been described as a
‘revolution of nihilism’. However, fascism is not merely the negation of established beliefs and
principles. Rather, it is an attempt to reverse the heritage of the Enlightenment. It represents the
darker underside of the western political tradition, the central and enduring values of which were
not abandoned but rather transformed or turned upside-down. For example, in fascism, ‘freedom’
came to mean unquestioning submission, ‘democracy’ was equated with absolute dictatorship,
and ‘progress’ implied constant struggle and war. Moreover, despite an undoubted inclination
towards nihilism, war and even death, fascism saw itself as a creative force, a means of
constructing a new civilization through ‘creative destruction’. Indeed, this conjunction of birth
and death, creation and destruction, can be seen as one of the characteristic features of fascism.

Third, by abandoning the standard of universal reason, fascism has placed its faith entirely in
history, culture and the idea of organic community. For example, the counter-Enlightenment
German philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), had rejected universalism as
ahistorical: each nation is animated by its collective spirit, its Volksgeist, a product of its unique
history, culture and particularly language. Communities are therefore organic or natural entities,
shaped not by the calculations and interests of rational individuals but by innate loyalties and
emotional bonds forged by a common past. In fascism, this idea of organic unity is taken to its
extreme. The national community, as the Nazis called it, the Volksgemeinschaft, was viewed as
an indivisible whole, all rivalries and conflicts being subordinated to a higher, collective purpose.
The strength of the nation or race is therefore a reflection of its moral and cultural unity. This
prospect of unqualified social cohesion was expressed in the Nazi slogan, ‘Strength through
Unity.’"

2. Is there a relationship between fascism and feudalism? Could fascism be said to be anti capitalist in a palingenetic sense?

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

"At times both Mussolini and Hitler portrayed their ideas as forms of ‘socialism’. Mussolini had
previously been an influential member of the Italian Socialist Party and editor of its newspaper,
Avanti, while the Nazi Party espoused a philosophy it called ‘national socialism’. To some
extent, undoubtedly, this represented a cynical attempt to elicit support from urban workers.
Nevertheless, despite obvious ideological rivalry between fascism and socialism, fascists did
have an affinity for certain socialist ideas and positions. In the first place, lower middle-class
fascist activists had a profound distaste for capitalism, reflected in a resented of the power of big
business and financial institutions. For instance, small shopkeepers were under threat from the
growth of departmental store, the smallholding peasantry was losing out to large-scale farming,
and small businesses were increasingly in hock to the banks."

"The origins and meaning of fascism have provoked considerable historical interest and often
fierce disagreements. No single factor can, on its own, account for the rise of fascism; rather,
fascism emerged out of a complex range of historical forces that were present during the interwar
period. In the first place, democratic government had only recently been established in many
parts of Europe, and democratic political values had not replaced older, autocratic ones.
Moreover, democratic governments, representing a coalition of interests or parties, often
appeared weak and unstable when confronted by economic or political crises. In this context, the
prospect of strong leadership brought about by personal rule cast a powerful appeal. Second,
European society had been disrupted by the experience of industrialization, which had
particularly threatened a lower middle class of shopkeepers, small businessmen, farmers and
craftsmen, who were squeezed between the growing might of big business, on the one hand, and
the rising power of organized labour, on the other. Fascist movements drew their membership
and support largely from such lower middle class elements. In a sense, fascism was an
‘extremism of the centre’ (Lipset, 1983), a revolt of the lower middle classes, a fact that helps to
explain the hostility of fascism to both capitalism and communism.

Third, the period after the First World War was deeply affected by the Russian Revolution and
the fear amongst the propertied classes that social revolution was about to spread throughout
Europe. Fascist groups undoubtedly drew both financial and political support from business
interests. As a result, Marxist historians have interpreted fascism as a form of counter-revolution,
an attempt by the bourgeoisie to cling on to power by lending support to fascist dictators. Fourth,
the world economic crisis of the 1930s often provided a final blow to already fragile
democracies. Rising unemployment and economic failure produced an atmosphere of crisis and
pessimism that could be exploited by political extremists and demagogues. Finally, the First
World War had failed to resolve international conflicts and rivalries, leaving a bitter inheritance
of frustrated nationalism and the desire for revenge. Nationalist tensions were strongest in those
‘have not’ nations that had either, like Germany, been defeated in war, or had been deeply
disappointed by the terms of the Versailles peace settlement, for example Italy and Japan. In
addition, the experience of war itself had generated a particularly militant form of nationalism
and imbued it with militaristic values."

Source: Political Ideologies, Andrew Heywood.

[Lord Testicles]

But much of the National Socialist propaganda in the 20's and 30's was aimed at rural peasants. And they supported the fascists throughout the so called third reich.

What's your point? That the third reich tried to and successfully cultivated support with the section of the population which is most likely to fall for the anti-rational, romanticist nonsense that was the "blut und boden" bollocks.

[Red Commissar]

With regards to no. 3 , the early fascism in Italy got its start during the Biennio Rosso, "Red Years/Biennium", a series of strikes that took place in Italy between 1919-1920. What would give rise to the blackshirts were paramilitaries who protected shopowners and other properties in cities that were undergoing strikes from workers, some of whom organized their own militias to protect against police, private security, mobs, and what not.

Many of these paramilitaries drew from veterans of WWI and were often financed by local petite-bourgeoisie and in some cases bourgeoisie themselves. It must be remembered that during this time in Europe it was a period of upheaval and the success of the Bolsheviks in the former Russian Empire, with the media playing up the atrocities as well as the stories of emigres losing everything and settling into many areas of Europe. These people feared the same class upheaval was coming, and they got a taste of that with Biennio Rosso.

Once Mussolini's fascists became integrated into the fabric of Italy once the Biennio Rosso was neutralized, they made it a point to appeal to the same petite-bourgeois sentiments in the sham election of 1924 which made absolute the dominance of the fascists in Italy's state. Many of the deputies that stood for the fascists were former Liberal Party deputies who had abandoned their party- long a representative of the bourgeoisie in all its forms in Italy- both out of a careerist concern as well as the perception the fascists were the best means to check against communist subversion as they saw it.

[Martin Luther]

I have some questions:

I'll talk about fascism as it was in the interwar period. Modern fascism (Jobbik, Svoboda, Golden Dawn) exists in different conditions and has its own characteristics.

1. Does fascism have roots in the anti rationalism of the Romantacism movement? I've heard this said a couple of times but I'd like someone to elaborate on it for me as I'm not quite understanding this.

Yes. But so did a lot of things. I can't really explain much more. For example, their opposition to Marxist materialism was closely related to this. They were idealists.

2. Is there a relationship between fascism and feudalism? Could fascism be said to be anti capitalist in a palingenetic sense?

No? Fascism had very little if anything to do with feudalism. By the time fascism developed and took power, the bourgeoisie had already become the ruling class in the West.

3. In what ways does it appeal to the petit bourgeoisie?

It is reactionary and also provides an answer to the threat from the bourgeoisie proper. This is still the case for modern fascism and its opposition to globalization.

Back in the day, the single most important factor in the spread of fascist ideology was 'middle class' fear of the Soviets.