Fascism and ideology
Encyclopedia
Fascism and ideology is the subject of numerous debates. The position of fascism on the political spectrum is a point of contention.
. In The Republic (c. 380 BC), Plato advocated a system of elite minority rule by highly educated, intellectual rulers called philosopher king
s, who were allowed to exercise total control over the politics and security of a society. This argument has been considered an inspiration for fascism's promotion of elite rule by a supreme leader and a single-party state. Similarly, Vilfredo Pareto
's endorsement of an elite minority-led oligarchical
government was an influence on fascists. Mussolini and Margherita Sarfatti
identified Plato and Pareto as the sources of fascism's constantly changing character. They claimed that movement and correction of flaws in ideas renews an ideology and keeps it from becoming corrupt or outdated.
Mussolini modeled his dictatorship and totalitarian aims on Julius Caesar
. Mussolini described his personal admiration of Caesar, claiming that Caesar had "the resolve of a warrior and the resourcefulness of a wise man". The Fascists' March on Rome
in 1922 was based on the crossing of the Rubicon
river by Caesar and his forces when they seized power in Rome in 49 BC. Shortly after seizing power with the March on Rome, Mussolini went to the Roman Forum
and stood before the ruins to pay homage to Caesar. The Italian Fascist government presented Caesar as a national hero and had multiple
statues of Caesar constructed across Italy.
Mussolini studied The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli
and produced a thesis on it for the University of Bologna
in 1924. He admired Machiavelli as a capable statesman and a thinker. Mussolini identified Machiavelli's conception of "the prince" as the personification of the state and sympathized with Machiavelli's negative conception of most people as tending to be self-centred and unethical. Mussolini, like Machiavelli, claimed that populations were unfit to govern themselves, and that they needed leadership to direct their lives.
Fascism is believed to have been significantly influenced by the political concept of absolute monarchy
as conceived by Thomas Hobbes
in Leviathan
(1651).
Fascism is connected to the theories of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
. This connection to Hegelianism
is shared by Marxism
, but fascism focuses on the elements of Hegelianism
that Karl Marx
detracted. While Marxism focuses on the rationalist and empiricist
elements of Hegelianism, fascism focuses on its spiritualist
elements. Fascism's relationship with Hegelianism is linked to the nationalistic Italian neo-idealist movement, which adhered to Hegel's positive perception of the state and his advocacy of a corporative
organic
state. One of fascism's major philosophers, Giovanni Gentile
, was a Hegelian. Gentile faced opposition from some Italian Fascists, who attacked him for being too attached to Hegelianism and for being too dominant to be considered loyal to fascism and to Mussolini. After the Second Italo-Abyssinian War
, Gentile's influence in the National Fascist Party
(PNF) collapsed, with philosophical influence being centralized to Mussolini's will.
Mussolini was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche
's concept of übermensch
("overman" or "superman") and his themes of living dangerously, which were adopted and put into political practice by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio
, whom Mussolini also admired. D'Annunzio played an important role in bringing Nietzsche's themes into Italy. Like Nietzsche, d'Annunzio idealized the Renaissance
as a period of time during which übermensch ruled and the power of decadent
nobility
was disintegrating. Nietzsche, d'Annunzio, and Mussolini all held contempt for Christianity
, the bourgeoisie, democracy, and reformist politics. D'Annunzio supported the creation of a new state based on an aristocracy of intellectuals, a cult of strength, and opposition to democracy. He believed that the best ideology to exemplify Nietzsche's themes was aggressive nationalism
. During World War I
, d'Annunzio evoked Italian nationalist themes of irredentism
, claiming that Italy was the heir to the Roman Empire.
According to Dave Renton, fascism first emerged in France in the 1880s as an intellectual movement that absorbed and synthesised socialism and nationalism and created a new ideology of "a socialism without the proletariat".
Prior to becoming a fascist, Mussolini was a socialist influenced by Nietszche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence. Mussolini saw Nietzsche as similar to Jean-Marie Guyau
, who advocated a philosophy of action. Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, because of Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views. Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered due to the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic
reformism
and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism. By the 1900s, Mussolini's writings indicated that he had abandoned Marxism
and egalitarianism
in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism. Unlike fascists, however, Nietzsche did not admire the state; in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra
, he referred to the state as "the coldest of all monsters".
Mussolini's early political views were heavily influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini
, a revolutionary socialist who idolized 19th century Italian nationalist
figures with humanist
tendencies, such as Carlo Pisacane
, Giuseppe Mazzini
, and Giuseppe Garibaldi
. Alessandro Mussolini's political outlook combined the views of anarchist
figures like Carlo Cafiero
and Mikhail Bakunin
, the military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism of Mazzini. In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican
nationalist.
Syndicalist
philosopher Georges Sorel
is considered a major inspiration for both Bolshevism and fascism, both of which Sorel supported because they challenged bourgeois democracy
. Sorel's work Reflections on Violence (1908) claimed that violence could be moral, especially revolutionary violence that brought substantive positive change in society. Sorel rebuked Marxism, accusing it of becoming decadent and arguing that it should not resist the free market and free competition, because they would quicken the demise of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat. Sorel argued that socialists should reject the materialism and rationalism of Marx and instead adopt moral and emotional appeals of ideals and myths to promote their cause. He wrote that excessive rationalism is a trait of the bourgeoisie, and that the proletariat's mind is more "primitive", more able to accept myths. Sorel believed that this was beneficial, because the proletariat would be more willing to accept moral renewal. Reflections on Violence was highly popular amongst Italian revolutionary syndicalists, one of whom was Mussolini, who later acknowledged Sorel's influence on him, saying "What I am, I owe to Sorel".
Fascism initially had close connections to futurism
; the Futurist Manifesto
(1909) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
"glorified action, technology, and war" and promoted irrationalism over rationalism; the revolutionary entrenchment of modernist and violent art and aesthetics; the destruction of all past aesthetic traditions to liberate modern aesthetics; the promotion of patriotism and militarism
; and contempt of women and feminism
. Futurism, like fascism, identified the state in a corporatist
manner as an organic body connected to the nation. However, unlike fascism, the futurist conception of the state proscribed the continuation of democracy, with Marinetti arguing: "Italian democracy is for us a body which must be liberated", a liberation which would be achieved through technological development. Marinetti was initially drawn to fascism but rejected it when it adopted more moderate conservative aesthetics once it attained power in Italy.
Conservative
influences became a strong factor in Fascism in Italy in spite of its differences with other more revolutionary factions of the Italian Fascists. Conservatism in Italy was less of an organized political movement than other ideologies; it involved common social traditions, such as the emphasis of family, landownership, and faith in religion. Conservative nationalism was a particularly important ideological influence upon fascism. Italian Fascism was influenced by conservative nationalist Enrico Corradini
, writer of the prominent nationalist newspaper Il Regno and one of the founders and key members of the Italian Nationalist Association
.
Corradini combined nationalism with social Darwinism
and spoke of the need for Italy to overcome its weaknesses by accepting the "iron laws of race", including eliminating foreign influences, pursuing imperialism, incorporating workers into the nation, and regenerating the bourgeoisie, while opposing "feminine humanitarianism", liberalism, democracy, and socialism. Two prominent concepts promoted by Corradini inspired fascism: Corradini's theory of "war as revolution" and his theory of "proletarian nationalism". Though Corradini opposed the revolutionary socialism in Italy for its anti-patriotism, anti-militarism, internationalism, and its advocacy of class conflict, he and other nationalists admired its revolutionary and conquering spirit and, in a 1910 meeting of the Italian Nationalist Association, declared support for proletarian nationalism, saying:
Corradini also studied Sorel's Reflections on Violence and claimed that, in spite of some ideological differences between syndicalism and nationalism, he desired "a syndicalism which stops at the nation's shores and does not proceed farther".
Another conservative nationalist from the ANI who became a Fascist was the prominent economic theorist Alfredo Rocco
. Rocco was a proponent of economic corporatism
and was a key figure in designing the fascist economic policies in Italy that mandated employers and workers to negotiate under the supervision and arbitration of the state, that enhanced state power over the economy, and that forbade trade union strikes. Rocco's economic policies were deemed conservative due to their repression of dissent by organized labour and the limited rights they accorded to workers, which resulted in animosity toward the policies by a number of fascists associated with organized labour.
Rocco, as Minister of Justice of Italy during the Fascist era, spoke of fascism constituting a "conservative revolution" that supported orderly and controlled political change to be carried out by elites who would create policy while resisting pluralism, independent initiative, and attempts at political change by the masses. Italian Fascist factions that favoured conciliation with traditional institutions like the monarchy were met with resistance by "Intransigent" Fascists, hardliners commonly associated with the militant Blackshirts
, who wanted the total entrenchment of Fascism as the basis of Italy's government.
The theories and perspectives of Oswald Spengler
also influenced fascism. In his work Decline of the West, Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed, involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when each reached its final form of civilization. Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence
until the emergence of "barbarian
s" to create a new epoch. Spengler viewed the Western world
as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan
urban and irreligious life, atomized
individualization
, and the end of both biological and "spiritual" fertility. He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome
and lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd. Other works by Spengler were also highly respected by fascists, including Der Mensch und die Technik
, Preussentum und Sozialismus
, and Year of Decision. Spengler's ideas were openly admired by a number of leading fascist figures, including Mussolini, Benedetto Croce
, and Alfred Rosenburg. While fascists respected Spengler's works, they typically rejected his fatalism
and pessimism. Spengler's staunch anti-Marxist views deeply impressed Mussolini.
Italian Fascist Corrado Gini
used Spengler's theory that populations go through a cycle of birth, growth, and decay to claim that, while nations at a primitive level have a high birth rate, as they evolve the upper class
birth rate drops, while the lower class inevitably depletes as their stronger members emigrate, die in war, or enter into the upper classes. If a nation continues on this path without resistance, Gini claimed, it would enter a final decadent
stage where the nation would degenerate, as noted by decreasing birth rate, decreasing cultural output, and the lack of imperial
conquest. At that point, the decadent nation, with its aging population, could be overrun by a more youthful and vigorous nation.
and left-wing ideologies: "If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century."
. When fascists have criticized capitalism, they have focused their attacks on finance capitalism
, the international nature of banks and the stock exchange
, and its cosmopolitan
bourgeois
character. Under fascism, the profit motive continues to be the primary motivation of contributors to the economy. Along with support of private property and the profit motive, fascists also support the market economy
.
Mussolini praised "heroic capitalism
", which he found useful, and criticized what he termed "supercapitalism
". He argued,
To Mussolini, the capitalism of his time had degenerated from original capitalism, which he called dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870) to static capitalism (1870–1914) and then finally to decadent
capitalism or supercapitalism, which began in 1914. Mussolini, in 1933 amid the Great Depression
, announced that modern supercapitalism was a failed economic system that was the result of the long-term degeneration of capitalism. Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption. Fascists argued that supercapitalism "would ultimately decay and open the way for a Marxist revolution as labor-capital relations broke down.
Mussolini argued that dynamic or heroic capitalism and the bourgeoisie
could be prevented from degenerating into static capitalism and then supercapitalism if the concept of economic individualism
were abandoned and if state supervision of the economy was introduced. Private enterprise would control production but it would be supervised by the state. Mussolini claimed that in supercapitalism, "[it] is then that a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously." Due to the inability of businesses to operate properly when facing economic difficulties, Mussolini claimed that this proved that state intervention into the economy was necessary to stabilize the economy.
Italian Fascism presented the economic system of corporatism
as the solution that would preserve private enterprise and property while allowing the state to intervene in the economy when private enterprise failed. Corporatism was promoted as reconciling the interests of capital and labour. Italian capitalist industrialists had opposed the Fascist government's intervention in arbitration of labour relations, and dominant groups in finance were strongly opposed to Mussolini's decision to reevaluate the Italian Lira
to be the same as the British Pound in 1926-1927. Gino Olivetti, head of the Italian Confederation of Industry, remained suspicious of the possibility of government intervention in the economy to support Fascist trade unions.
From 1937 to 1939, Mussolini encouraged Italians to foster an anti-bourgeois attitude by having Italians send in anti-bourgeois cartoons to be published in newspapers, and by denouncing "social games, five o'clock tea, vacations, compassion for Jews, preference for armchairs, desire for compromise, desire for money" as indulgent bourgeois practices. In 1938, Mussolini excalated a public relations campaign against the Italian bourgeoisie
, accusing them of preferring private gain to national victory. Mussolini ordered Fascist party members to detach themselves from bourgeois culture, including abstaining from going to nightclubs, drinking coffee, wearing formal evening dress and starching their collars, which were all considered bourgeois traits. That year, Mussolini's anti-bourgeois theme spoke of removing first-class compartments, dining cars, and sleepers on railroads, and possibly closing the stock exchange. Also in that year, Mussolini appointed Achille Starace
to his cabinet. Starace criticized Northern Italian bourgeosie for Fascism's inability to permeate across the Italian nation, accusing them of being pacifist and pro-England.
The German Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance
, the economic dominance of big business
, and Jewish influences within it. Adolf Hitler
, both in public and in private, held strong disdain for capitalism; he accused modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan
rentier
class. He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld. He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to it having an egotistic
nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy.
Hitler said: "It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will bow down before a higher god. Many things owe their existence solely to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the poorer." Hitler told one party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews." In a discussion with Mussolini, Hitler said that "Capitalism had run its course". In another conversation, Hitler stated that business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."
The Spanish Falange
also held anti-capitalist positions. Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera
in 1935 declared that "We reject the capitalist system, which disregards the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property and transforms the workers into shapeless masses prone to misery and despair". The Romanian Iron Guard
espoused anti-capitalist, anti-banking and anti-bourgeois rhetoric. The Arrow Cross Party
of Hungary held strong anti-feudal and anti-capitalist beliefs and supported redistribution of property.
and fascists in Europe
have held mutual positions on issues, including anti-communism
and support of national pride. Conservatives and fascists both reject the liberal and Marxist emphasis on linear progressive evolution in history. Fascism's emphasis on order, discipline, hierarchy, martial virtues, and preservation of private property appealed to conservatives. Fascists' promotion of "healthy", "uncontaminated" elements of national tradition such as chivalric
culture and glorifying a nation's historical golden age have similarities with conservative aims. Fascists also made pragmatic tactical alliances with traditional conservative forces in order to achieve and maintain power.
Unlike conservatism, fascism specifically presents itself as a modern
ideology that is willing to break free from moral and political constraints of traditional society. The conservative authoritarian right is distinguished from fascism in that such conservatives utilized traditional religion as the basis for their views while fascists focused based their views on more complex issues such as vitalism
, nonrationalism, or secular neo-idealism.
Many of fascism's recruits were disaffected right-wing
conservatives who were dissatisfied with the traditional right's inability to achieve national unity and its inability to respond to socialism, feminism, economic crisis, and international difficulties. With traditional conservative parties in Europe severely weakened in the aftermath of World War I
, there was a political vacuum on the right which fascism filled.
, rationalism
, individualism
, and utilitarianism
. Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national divisiveness. Fascists and Nazis, however, support a type of hierarchical individualism in the form of Social Darwinism
, as they believe it promotes "superior individuals" and weeds out "the weak".
One issue where fascism is in accord with liberalism is in its support of private property
rights and the existence of a market economy
.
. A number of fascist figures had previously been associated with — and later rejected — Marxism
, such as Benito Mussolini
and Kita Ikki
. Fascism was founded in Italy by a number of people formerly associated with the Italian Socialist Party
, including Mussolini, who opposed the Italian Socialist Party's internationalism. Other fascists, including the Nazis officially declared themselves to be socialists. Mainstream socialists have typically rejected and opposed fascism. Fascism is opposed to mainstream socialism for its internationalism
, universalism
, egalitarianism
, anti-nationalism
, horizontal collectivism
and cosmopolitanism
. Benito Mussolini considered Fascism as opposed to Socialism, "Therefore Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State; and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism..." Adolf Hitler at times attempted to redefine the word socialism, such as saying, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism."
. Fascism opposes communism's intention for international class revolution
. Fascists attack communists for supporting "decadent" values, including internationalism, egalitarianism, and materialism. Fascists have commonly campaigned with anti-communist
agendas.
Fascism and communism, however, have common positions in their opposition to liberalism, individualism, and parliamentarism
. Fascists and communists also agree on the need for violent revolution to forge a new era. While fascism is opposed to Bolshevism, both Bolshevism and fascism promote the single-party state
and the use of political party militias
.
as a failure. Fascists oppose it for its support of reformism
and the parliamentary system
that fascism reject.
, in particular Sorelian
syndicalism. The Italian Fascist regime officially acknowledged revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel
— along with Hubert Lagardelle
and his journal Le Mouvement socialiste
— as major influences on fascism.
The Sorelian emphasis on the need for a revolution based upon action of intuition, a cult of energy and vitality, activism, heroism, and the utilization of myth was utilized by fascists. Many prominent fascist figures were formerly associated with revolutionary syndicalism, including: Mussolini, Arturo Labriola
, Robert Michels
, Sergio Panunzio
, and Paolo Orano
.
, the political movement led by Adolf Hitler
in Germany
, is widely viewed as a form of fascism. The Nazis shared the extreme nationalism
, militarism
, anti-communism
of the Italian fascists, and Hitler admired Mussolini, going as far as to copy the Roman salute
used by Italian fascists and make it the basis of the Hitler salute
. However, the Nazis added racism
and anti-Semitism
to the original fascist ideas. The Italian fascists were not interested in racism at first, but by the 1930s adopted a staunch white supremacist
doctrine in Italian African colonies. In the early 1930s, there were tensions between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany over the increasing possibility of an Austria-Germany merger (Anschluss
), which would create a more powerful Greater Germany.
Italian fascism responded to Hitler's rise to power and need for alliance with Germany by increasingly adopting anti-Semitic rhetoric, and eventually anti-Semitic policies. In 1936, Mussolini made his first written denunciation of Jews by claiming that anti-Semitism had only arisen because Jews had become too predominant in the positions of power of countries, and he claimed that Jews were a "ferocious" tribe who sought to "totally banish" Christians from public life. In 1937, Fascist party member Paolo Orano
criticized the Zionist
movement as being part of British foreign policy, which aimed to secure a British hold of the area without respecting the Christian and Muslim presence in Palestine
. On the matter of Jewish Italians, Orano said that they "should concern themselves with nothing more than their religion" and not bother boasting of being patriotic Italians.
As a result of anti-semitic laws introduced in 1938, the fascist regime lost its propaganda director, Margherita Sarfatti
, who was Jewish and had been Mussolini's mistress. A minority of fascists were pleased with anti-Semitic policy, such as Roberto Farinacci
, who claimed that Jews through intrigue had taken control key positions of finance, business and schools. He noted that Jews sympathized with Ethiopia during Italy's war with that country, and that Jews had sympathized with Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War
. In its alliance with Nazi Germany, the fascist regime aided the Nazis in the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps, labour camps, and extermination camps during the Holocaust
. Italy established its own concentration and internment camps across its held territories, but these camps were not like those of Nazi Germany, as families were allowed to stay together and there was no campaign of deliberate mass murder.
Spanish
dictator Francisco Franco
, who is often considered a fascist, remained neutral during World War II. Hitler had supported Franco in his rise to power during the Spanish Civil War
, and Franco was sympathetic to the Axis
, but he refused Hitler's pleas for military assistance.
is a term used in political science
to refer to an ideology or organization that aims to control every aspect of life. For technological reasons, totalitarianism became an issue only recently. Before the 20th century, communications were not fast enough to allow a central government to collect information on a large number of its citizens in real time, the mass media
was not developed enough to allow the existence of all-pervasive propaganda
, and weapons were not effective enough to allow a relatively small number of armed soldiers to control a much bigger unarmed population. In the 20th century those technological barriers fell, and totalitarian government became a possibility.
Many authors have argued that totalitarian governments existed in the 20th century, though there is disagreement on which governments were totalitarian and which ideologies created them. Nazism
and Stalinism
are the two ideologies most often considered to be totalitarian, and Adolf Hitler
and Joseph Stalin
are the two people most often given as examples of totalitarian leaders. They both held absolute power in their countries and had personality cults built around them. They both used similar means - extreme forms of censorship
, police state
tactics, and mass murder
. In the early 1920s, Joseph Goebbels
and Otto Strasser
regarded Stalinism as a Russian form of Nazism and wanted to form an alliance with the Soviet Union. However, Hitler rejected their proposal at a Nazi Party meeting in February 1926. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did form a mutually beneficial non-aggression pact
just before the Second World War, but Germany later broke the agreement and invaded the Soviet Union.
Hannah Arendt
, in The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951), was the first author to give a lengthy description of a form of government called "totalitarianism", and she asserted that the governments of Nazi Germany
and Stalin's Soviet Union
fell under this category. However, she believed that Fascist Italy had not been totalitarian, but merely a traditional form of dictatorship
which did not submit the state to the party. Other authors, such as Karl Popper
, included Fascist Italy in their list of totalitarian governments.
Eric Hoffer
claims that mass movements like Communism, Fascism and Nazism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as decadent, with people "too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish" to sacrifice for a higher cause, which for them implies an inner moral and biological decay. He further argues that those movements offered the prospect of a glorious, yet imaginary, future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. Individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and a "fact-proof screens from reality" are established.
There is an ongoing debate on whether all fascist governments and Communist state
s can be considered totalitarian, or whether only some of them fit this description. It has been argued, for example, that the Soviet Union ceased to be totalitarian soon after Stalin's death. There are also critics of the notion of totalitarianism, who argue that the label "totalitarian" is too vague and tries to bring together governments that use similar methods but have little else in common. Primo Levi
, for instance, argued that there was an important distinction between the policies of Nazi Germany and those of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China
: while they all had their idea of what kind of parasitic classes or races society ought to be rid of, and they all used similar means to dispose of them, Levi saw that they identified their targets by very different criteria. The Nazis assigned a place given by birth (since one is born into a certain race), while the Soviets and Chinese determined their enemies according to their social position (which people may change within their life). Therefore, in Levi's view, revolutionary communists would accept the son or daughter of a wealthy capitalist as a productive member of society if he agreed to change his original social position and oppose capitalism; but to the Nazis, one born a Jew will always remain a Jew, and he is a parasite who must be disposed of. However, according to Michel Foucault
, in the 19th century the essentialist notion of the "race" was incorporated by racists
, biologists, and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "biological race" which was then integrated to "state racism
". On the other hand, Marxists transformed the notions of the "race" and the "race struggle" into the concept of "class struggle
." The theme of social war provides overriding principle that connects the class struggle and the race struggle. For Foucault, these concepts are neither independently derived ideologies nor alternate persuasive views; their etymology
is one and the same.
Ideological origins
Fascism is based upon a number of ideologies from across the political spectrum. Benito Mussolini had a strong attachment to the works of PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. In The Republic (c. 380 BC), Plato advocated a system of elite minority rule by highly educated, intellectual rulers called philosopher king
Philosopher king
Philosopher kings are the rulers, or Guardians, of Plato's Utopian Kallipolis. If his ideal city-state is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" .-In Book VI of The Republic:Plato defined a philosopher...
s, who were allowed to exercise total control over the politics and security of a society. This argument has been considered an inspiration for fascism's promotion of elite rule by a supreme leader and a single-party state. Similarly, Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto , born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist and philosopher. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices....
's endorsement of an elite minority-led oligarchical
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
government was an influence on fascists. Mussolini and Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti was a Jewish Italian journalist, art critic, patron, collector, socialite, and one of Benito Mussolini's mistresses.-Biography:...
identified Plato and Pareto as the sources of fascism's constantly changing character. They claimed that movement and correction of flaws in ideas renews an ideology and keeps it from becoming corrupt or outdated.
Mussolini modeled his dictatorship and totalitarian aims on Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
. Mussolini described his personal admiration of Caesar, claiming that Caesar had "the resolve of a warrior and the resourcefulness of a wise man". The Fascists' March on Rome
March on Rome
The March on Rome was a march by which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party came to power in the Kingdom of Italy...
in 1922 was based on the crossing of the Rubicon
Rubicon
The Rubicon is a shallow river in northeastern Italy, about 80 kilometres long, running from the Apennine Mountains to the Adriatic Sea through the southern Emilia-Romagna region, between the towns of Rimini and Cesena. The Latin word rubico comes from the adjective "rubeus", meaning "red"...
river by Caesar and his forces when they seized power in Rome in 49 BC. Shortly after seizing power with the March on Rome, Mussolini went to the Roman Forum
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...
and stood before the ruins to pay homage to Caesar. The Italian Fascist government presented Caesar as a national hero and had multiple
statues of Caesar constructed across Italy.
Mussolini studied The Prince
The Prince
The Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus . But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after...
by Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
and produced a thesis on it for the University of Bologna
University of Bologna
The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...
in 1924. He admired Machiavelli as a capable statesman and a thinker. Mussolini identified Machiavelli's conception of "the prince" as the personification of the state and sympathized with Machiavelli's negative conception of most people as tending to be self-centred and unethical. Mussolini, like Machiavelli, claimed that populations were unfit to govern themselves, and that they needed leadership to direct their lives.
Fascism is believed to have been significantly influenced by the political concept of absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government in which the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, his or her power not being limited by a constitution or by the law. An absolute monarch thus wields unrestricted political power over the...
as conceived by Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
in Leviathan
Leviathan (book)
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil — commonly called simply Leviathan — is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan...
(1651).
Fascism is connected to the theories of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
. This connection to Hegelianism
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
is shared by Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, but fascism focuses on the elements of Hegelianism
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
that Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
detracted. While Marxism focuses on the rationalist and empiricist
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
elements of Hegelianism, fascism focuses on its spiritualist
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
elements. Fascism's relationship with Hegelianism is linked to the nationalistic Italian neo-idealist movement, which adhered to Hegel's positive perception of the state and his advocacy of a corporative
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
organic
Organicism
Organicism is a philosophical orientation that asserts that reality is best understood as an organic whole. By definition it is close to holism. Plato, Hobbes or Constantin Brunner are examples of such philosophical thought....
state. One of fascism's major philosophers, Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of Benedetto Croce. He described himself as 'the philosopher of Fascism', and ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini. He also devised his own system of philosophy, Actual Idealism.- Life and thought :Giovanni...
, was a Hegelian. Gentile faced opposition from some Italian Fascists, who attacked him for being too attached to Hegelianism and for being too dominant to be considered loyal to fascism and to Mussolini. After the Second Italo-Abyssinian War
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire...
, Gentile's influence in the National Fascist Party
National Fascist Party
The National Fascist Party was an Italian political party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of fascism...
(PNF) collapsed, with philosophical influence being centralized to Mussolini's will.
Mussolini was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's concept of übermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
("overman" or "superman") and his themes of living dangerously, which were adopted and put into political practice by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
, whom Mussolini also admired. D'Annunzio played an important role in bringing Nietzsche's themes into Italy. Like Nietzsche, d'Annunzio idealized the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
as a period of time during which übermensch ruled and the power of decadent
Decadence
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
was disintegrating. Nietzsche, d'Annunzio, and Mussolini all held contempt for Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, the bourgeoisie, democracy, and reformist politics. D'Annunzio supported the creation of a new state based on an aristocracy of intellectuals, a cult of strength, and opposition to democracy. He believed that the best ideology to exemplify Nietzsche's themes was aggressive nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, d'Annunzio evoked Italian nationalist themes of irredentism
Irredentism
Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged. Some of these movements are also called pan-nationalist movements. It is a feature of identity politics and cultural...
, claiming that Italy was the heir to the Roman Empire.
According to Dave Renton, fascism first emerged in France in the 1880s as an intellectual movement that absorbed and synthesised socialism and nationalism and created a new ideology of "a socialism without the proletariat".
Prior to becoming a fascist, Mussolini was a socialist influenced by Nietszche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence. Mussolini saw Nietzsche as similar to Jean-Marie Guyau
Jean-Marie Guyau
Jean-Marie Guyau was a French philosopher and poet.Guyau was inspired by, amongst others, the philosophies of Epicurus, Epictetus, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Fouillée, and the poetry/literature of Pierre Corneille, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset.- Life :Guyau got his...
, who advocated a philosophy of action. Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, because of Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views. Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered due to the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
reformism
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism. By the 1900s, Mussolini's writings indicated that he had abandoned Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism. Unlike fascists, however, Nietzsche did not admire the state; in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885...
, he referred to the state as "the coldest of all monsters".
Mussolini's early political views were heavily influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini
Alessandro Mussolini
Alessandro Mussolini was the father of Italian Fascist founder and leader Benito Mussolini. He was an Italian revolutionary socialist activist with Italian nationalist sympathies. Mussolini was a blacksmith by profession. Mussolini was married to Rosa Maltoni, a schoolteacher, who became the...
, a revolutionary socialist who idolized 19th century Italian nationalist
Italian nationalism
Italian nationalism refers to the nationalism of Italians or of Italian culture. It claims that Italians are the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic descendants of the ancient Romans who inhabited the Italian Peninsula for centuries. The origins of Italian nationalism have been traced to the...
figures with humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
tendencies, such as Carlo Pisacane
Carlo Pisacane
Carlo Pisacane, Duke of San Giovanni was an Italian patriot and one of the first Italian socialist thinkers.-Biography:...
, Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
, and Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...
. Alessandro Mussolini's political outlook combined the views of anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
figures like Carlo Cafiero
Carlo Cafiero
Carlo Cafiero was an Italian anarchist and champion of Mikhail Bakunin during the second half of the 19th century.-Early years:...
and Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, the military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism of Mazzini. In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
nationalist.
Syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
philosopher Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J...
is considered a major inspiration for both Bolshevism and fascism, both of which Sorel supported because they challenged bourgeois democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. Sorel's work Reflections on Violence (1908) claimed that violence could be moral, especially revolutionary violence that brought substantive positive change in society. Sorel rebuked Marxism, accusing it of becoming decadent and arguing that it should not resist the free market and free competition, because they would quicken the demise of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat. Sorel argued that socialists should reject the materialism and rationalism of Marx and instead adopt moral and emotional appeals of ideals and myths to promote their cause. He wrote that excessive rationalism is a trait of the bourgeoisie, and that the proletariat's mind is more "primitive", more able to accept myths. Sorel believed that this was beneficial, because the proletariat would be more willing to accept moral renewal. Reflections on Violence was highly popular amongst Italian revolutionary syndicalists, one of whom was Mussolini, who later acknowledged Sorel's influence on him, saying "What I am, I owe to Sorel".
Fascism initially had close connections to futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
; the Futurist Manifesto
Futurist Manifesto
The Futurist Manifesto, written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was published in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna on 5 February 1909, then in French as "Manifeste du futurisme" in the newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909...
(1909) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
"glorified action, technology, and war" and promoted irrationalism over rationalism; the revolutionary entrenchment of modernist and violent art and aesthetics; the destruction of all past aesthetic traditions to liberate modern aesthetics; the promotion of patriotism and militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
; and contempt of women and feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. Futurism, like fascism, identified the state in a corporatist
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
manner as an organic body connected to the nation. However, unlike fascism, the futurist conception of the state proscribed the continuation of democracy, with Marinetti arguing: "Italian democracy is for us a body which must be liberated", a liberation which would be achieved through technological development. Marinetti was initially drawn to fascism but rejected it when it adopted more moderate conservative aesthetics once it attained power in Italy.
Conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
influences became a strong factor in Fascism in Italy in spite of its differences with other more revolutionary factions of the Italian Fascists. Conservatism in Italy was less of an organized political movement than other ideologies; it involved common social traditions, such as the emphasis of family, landownership, and faith in religion. Conservative nationalism was a particularly important ideological influence upon fascism. Italian Fascism was influenced by conservative nationalist Enrico Corradini
Enrico Corradini
Enrico Corradini was an Italian novelist, essayist, journalist and nationalist political figure.-Biography:Corradini was born near Montelupo Fiorentino, Tuscany....
, writer of the prominent nationalist newspaper Il Regno and one of the founders and key members of the Italian Nationalist Association
Italian Nationalist Association
The Italian Nationalist Association, Associazione Nazionalista Italiana was Italy's first nationalist political party founded in 1910. under the influence of Italian nationalists such as Enrico Corradini and Giovanni Papini...
.
Corradini combined nationalism with social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
and spoke of the need for Italy to overcome its weaknesses by accepting the "iron laws of race", including eliminating foreign influences, pursuing imperialism, incorporating workers into the nation, and regenerating the bourgeoisie, while opposing "feminine humanitarianism", liberalism, democracy, and socialism. Two prominent concepts promoted by Corradini inspired fascism: Corradini's theory of "war as revolution" and his theory of "proletarian nationalism". Though Corradini opposed the revolutionary socialism in Italy for its anti-patriotism, anti-militarism, internationalism, and its advocacy of class conflict, he and other nationalists admired its revolutionary and conquering spirit and, in a 1910 meeting of the Italian Nationalist Association, declared support for proletarian nationalism, saying:
“We are the proletarian people in respect to the rest of the world. Nationalism is our socialism. This established, nationalism must be founded on the truth that Italy is morally and materially a proletarian nation.” Manifesto of the Italian Nationalist Association, December 1910.
Corradini also studied Sorel's Reflections on Violence and claimed that, in spite of some ideological differences between syndicalism and nationalism, he desired "a syndicalism which stops at the nation's shores and does not proceed farther".
Another conservative nationalist from the ANI who became a Fascist was the prominent economic theorist Alfredo Rocco
Alfredo Rocco
Alfredo Rocco was an Italian politician and jurist.Rocco was born in Naples.He was Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Urbino and in Macerata , then Professor of Civil Procedure in Parma, of Business Law in Padua, and later of Economic Legislation at "La Sapienza" University of Rome,...
. Rocco was a proponent of economic corporatism
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
and was a key figure in designing the fascist economic policies in Italy that mandated employers and workers to negotiate under the supervision and arbitration of the state, that enhanced state power over the economy, and that forbade trade union strikes. Rocco's economic policies were deemed conservative due to their repression of dissent by organized labour and the limited rights they accorded to workers, which resulted in animosity toward the policies by a number of fascists associated with organized labour.
Rocco, as Minister of Justice of Italy during the Fascist era, spoke of fascism constituting a "conservative revolution" that supported orderly and controlled political change to be carried out by elites who would create policy while resisting pluralism, independent initiative, and attempts at political change by the masses. Italian Fascist factions that favoured conciliation with traditional institutions like the monarchy were met with resistance by "Intransigent" Fascists, hardliners commonly associated with the militant Blackshirts
Blackshirts
The Blackshirts were Fascist paramilitary groups in Italy during the period immediately following World War I and until the end of World War II...
, who wanted the total entrenchment of Fascism as the basis of Italy's government.
The theories and perspectives of Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
also influenced fascism. In his work Decline of the West, Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed, involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when each reached its final form of civilization. Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence
Decadence
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
until the emergence of "barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
s" to create a new epoch. Spengler viewed the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
urban and irreligious life, atomized
Atomization
Atomization or Atomizer may refer to:* The conversion of a vaporized sample into atomic components in atomic spectroscopy* An apparatus using an atomizer nozzle* Atomizer Geyser, a cone geyser in Yellowstone National Park...
individualization
Individualization
Individualization may refer to*discrimination or perception of the individual within a group or species**identification in forensics and intelligence*the development of individual traits...
, and the end of both biological and "spiritual" fertility. He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
and lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd. Other works by Spengler were also highly respected by fascists, including Der Mensch und die Technik
Der Mensch und die Technik
Der Mensch und die Technik is a book written by Oswald Spengler in 1931. The book was a response by Spengler to dispel confusion by readers of his previous book The Decline of the West who believed he was hostile to technology...
, Preussentum und Sozialismus
Preussentum und Sozialismus
Preußentum und Sozialismus is a book by Oswald Spengler published in 1919 that addressed the connection of the Prussian character with socialism....
, and Year of Decision. Spengler's ideas were openly admired by a number of leading fascist figures, including Mussolini, Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
, and Alfred Rosenburg. While fascists respected Spengler's works, they typically rejected his fatalism
Fatalism
Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
and pessimism. Spengler's staunch anti-Marxist views deeply impressed Mussolini.
Italian Fascist Corrado Gini
Corrado Gini
Corrado Gini was an Italian statistician, demographer and sociologist who developed the Gini coefficient, a measure of the income inequality in a society. Gini was also a leading fascist theorist and ideologue who wrote The Scientific Basis of Fascism in 1927...
used Spengler's theory that populations go through a cycle of birth, growth, and decay to claim that, while nations at a primitive level have a high birth rate, as they evolve the upper class
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
birth rate drops, while the lower class inevitably depletes as their stronger members emigrate, die in war, or enter into the upper classes. If a nation continues on this path without resistance, Gini claimed, it would enter a final decadent
Decadence
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
stage where the nation would degenerate, as noted by decreasing birth rate, decreasing cultural output, and the lack of imperial
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
conquest. At that point, the decadent nation, with its aging population, could be overrun by a more youthful and vigorous nation.
Fascism's relations with other political and economic ideologies
Mussolini saw fascism as opposing socialismSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and left-wing ideologies: "If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century."
Capitalism
Fascism has had mixed relations regarding capitalism. Fascists commonly have sought to eliminate the autonomy of large-scale capitalism to the state. Fascists support the state having control over the economy, although they support the existence of private propertyPrivate property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
. When fascists have criticized capitalism, they have focused their attacks on finance capitalism
Finance capitalism
Finance capitalism is a term in Marxian political economics defined as the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. It is characterized by the pursuit of profit from the purchase and sale of, or investment in, currencies and financial...
, the international nature of banks and the stock exchange
Stock exchange
A stock exchange is an entity that provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and...
, and its cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
character. Under fascism, the profit motive continues to be the primary motivation of contributors to the economy. Along with support of private property and the profit motive, fascists also support the market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
.
Mussolini praised "heroic capitalism
Heroic capitalism
Heroic capitalism or dynamic capitalism was a concept that Italian Fascism took from Werner Sombart explanations of capitalist development...
", which he found useful, and criticized what he termed "supercapitalism
Supercapitalism (concept in Italian Fascism)
Supercapitalism was a concept that developed in Italian Fascism. Italy's Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, claimed that at the stage of supercapitalism, "a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention...
". He argued,
I do not intend to defend capitalism or capitalists. They, like everything human, have their defects. I only say their possibilities of usefulness are not ended. Capitalism has borne the monstrous burden of the war and today still has the strength to shoulder the burdens of peace. ... It is not simply and solely an accumulation of wealth, it is an elaboration, a selection, a co-ordination of values which is the work of centuries. ... Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story.
To Mussolini, the capitalism of his time had degenerated from original capitalism, which he called dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870) to static capitalism (1870–1914) and then finally to decadent
Decadence
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...
capitalism or supercapitalism, which began in 1914. Mussolini, in 1933 amid the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, announced that modern supercapitalism was a failed economic system that was the result of the long-term degeneration of capitalism. Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption. Fascists argued that supercapitalism "would ultimately decay and open the way for a Marxist revolution as labor-capital relations broke down.
Mussolini argued that dynamic or heroic capitalism and the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
could be prevented from degenerating into static capitalism and then supercapitalism if the concept of economic individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
were abandoned and if state supervision of the economy was introduced. Private enterprise would control production but it would be supervised by the state. Mussolini claimed that in supercapitalism, "[it] is then that a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously." Due to the inability of businesses to operate properly when facing economic difficulties, Mussolini claimed that this proved that state intervention into the economy was necessary to stabilize the economy.
Italian Fascism presented the economic system of corporatism
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
as the solution that would preserve private enterprise and property while allowing the state to intervene in the economy when private enterprise failed. Corporatism was promoted as reconciling the interests of capital and labour. Italian capitalist industrialists had opposed the Fascist government's intervention in arbitration of labour relations, and dominant groups in finance were strongly opposed to Mussolini's decision to reevaluate the Italian Lira
Italian lira
The lira was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2002, the Italian lira was officially a “national subunit” of the euro...
to be the same as the British Pound in 1926-1927. Gino Olivetti, head of the Italian Confederation of Industry, remained suspicious of the possibility of government intervention in the economy to support Fascist trade unions.
From 1937 to 1939, Mussolini encouraged Italians to foster an anti-bourgeois attitude by having Italians send in anti-bourgeois cartoons to be published in newspapers, and by denouncing "social games, five o'clock tea, vacations, compassion for Jews, preference for armchairs, desire for compromise, desire for money" as indulgent bourgeois practices. In 1938, Mussolini excalated a public relations campaign against the Italian bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
, accusing them of preferring private gain to national victory. Mussolini ordered Fascist party members to detach themselves from bourgeois culture, including abstaining from going to nightclubs, drinking coffee, wearing formal evening dress and starching their collars, which were all considered bourgeois traits. That year, Mussolini's anti-bourgeois theme spoke of removing first-class compartments, dining cars, and sleepers on railroads, and possibly closing the stock exchange. Also in that year, Mussolini appointed Achille Starace
Achille Starace
Achille Starace was a prominent leader of Fascist Italy prior to and during World War II.-Early life and career:Starace was born in Gallipoli in southern Italy near Lecce. He was son of a wine and oil merchant....
to his cabinet. Starace criticized Northern Italian bourgeosie for Fascism's inability to permeate across the Italian nation, accusing them of being pacifist and pro-England.
The German Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance
International finance
International finance is the branch of economics that studies the dynamics of exchange rates, foreign investment, global financial system, and how these affect international trade. It also studies international projects, international investments and capital flows, and trade deficits. It includes...
, the economic dominance of big business
Big Business
Big business is a term used to describe large corporations, in either an individual or collective sense. The term first came into use in a symbolic sense subsequent to the American Civil War, particularly after 1880, in connection with the combination movement that began in American business at...
, and Jewish influences within it. Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, both in public and in private, held strong disdain for capitalism; he accused modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
rentier
Rentier
A rentier is an entity that receives income derived from economic rents, which can include anything from the income derived from intellectual property to real estate. Associated terms include* Rentier capitalism* Rentier state...
class. He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld. He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to it having an egotistic
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....
nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy.
Hitler said: "It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will bow down before a higher god. Many things owe their existence solely to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the poorer." Hitler told one party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews." In a discussion with Mussolini, Hitler said that "Capitalism had run its course". In another conversation, Hitler stated that business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."
The Spanish Falange
Falange
The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....
also held anti-capitalist positions. Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera
José Antonio Primo de Rivera
José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquis of Estella , was a Spanish lawyer, nobleman, politician, and founder of the Falange Española...
in 1935 declared that "We reject the capitalist system, which disregards the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property and transforms the workers into shapeless masses prone to misery and despair". The Romanian Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
espoused anti-capitalist, anti-banking and anti-bourgeois rhetoric. The Arrow Cross Party
Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party was a national socialist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which led in Hungary a government known as the Government of National Unity from October 15, 1944 to 28 March 1945...
of Hungary held strong anti-feudal and anti-capitalist beliefs and supported redistribution of property.
Conservatism
ConservativesConservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and fascists in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
have held mutual positions on issues, including anti-communism
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
and support of national pride. Conservatives and fascists both reject the liberal and Marxist emphasis on linear progressive evolution in history. Fascism's emphasis on order, discipline, hierarchy, martial virtues, and preservation of private property appealed to conservatives.
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
culture and glorifying a nation's historical golden age have similarities with conservative aims. Fascists also made pragmatic tactical alliances with traditional conservative forces in order to achieve and maintain power.
Unlike conservatism, fascism specifically presents itself as a modern
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
ideology that is willing to break free from moral and political constraints of traditional society. The conservative authoritarian right is distinguished from fascism in that such conservatives utilized traditional religion as the basis for their views while fascists focused based their views on more complex issues such as vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
, nonrationalism, or secular neo-idealism.
Many of fascism's recruits were disaffected right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
conservatives who were dissatisfied with the traditional right's inability to achieve national unity and its inability to respond to socialism, feminism, economic crisis, and international difficulties. With traditional conservative parties in Europe severely weakened in the aftermath of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, there was a political vacuum on the right which fascism filled.
Liberalism
Fascism is strongly antithetical to liberalism. Fascists accuse liberalism as being the cause of despiritualization of human beings and transforming them into materialistic beings in which the highest ideal is moneymaking. In particular, fascism opposes liberalism for its materialismMaterialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
, and utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
. Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national divisiveness. Fascists and Nazis, however, support a type of hierarchical individualism in the form of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, as they believe it promotes "superior individuals" and weeds out "the weak".
One issue where fascism is in accord with liberalism is in its support of private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
rights and the existence of a market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
.
Socialism
Fascism has mixed relations towards socialismSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. A number of fascist figures had previously been associated with — and later rejected — Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, such as Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Kita Ikki
Kita Ikki
was a Japanese author, intellectual and political philosopher who was active in early-Shōwa period Japan.-Background:Born on Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, Ikki Kita’s real name was Kita Terujirō...
. Fascism was founded in Italy by a number of people formerly associated with the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
, including Mussolini, who opposed the Italian Socialist Party's internationalism. Other fascists, including the Nazis officially declared themselves to be socialists. Mainstream socialists have typically rejected and opposed fascism. Fascism is opposed to mainstream socialism for its internationalism
Internationalist/Defencist Schism
The terms 'Internationalist' and 'Defencist' were commonly used to describe the broad opposing camps in the international socialist movement during and shortly after the First World War. Prior to 1914, anti-militarism had been an article of faith among most European socialist parties...
, universalism
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...
, egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
, anti-nationalism
Anti-nationalism
Anti-nationalism denotes the sentiments associated with the opposition to nationalism, arguing that it is undesirable or dangerous. Some anti-nationalists are humanitarians or humanists who pursue an idealist form of world community, and self-identify as world citizens. They reject chauvinism,...
, horizontal collectivism
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...
and cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
. Benito Mussolini considered Fascism as opposed to Socialism, "Therefore Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State; and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism..." Adolf Hitler at times attempted to redefine the word socialism, such as saying, "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism."
Communism
Fascism is strongly opposed to communismCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Fascism opposes communism's intention for international class revolution
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
. Fascists attack communists for supporting "decadent" values, including internationalism, egalitarianism, and materialism. Fascists have commonly campaigned with anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
agendas.
Fascism and communism, however, have common positions in their opposition to liberalism, individualism, and parliamentarism
Parliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
. Fascists and communists also agree on the need for violent revolution to forge a new era. While fascism is opposed to Bolshevism, both Bolshevism and fascism promote the single-party state
Single-party state
A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election...
and the use of political party militias
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
.
Democratic socialism
Fascism denounces democratic socialismDemocratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
as a failure. Fascists oppose it for its support of reformism
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
and the parliamentary system
Parliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
that fascism reject.
Syndicalism
Italian Fascism had ideological connections with revolutionary syndicalismSyndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, in particular Sorelian
Sorelianism
Sorelianism refers to the advocacy or support of the ideology and thinking of French revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel. It typically refers to the anti-individualist, anti-liberal, anti-materialist, anti-positivist, anti-rationalist, spiritualist syndicalism that Sorel promoted...
syndicalism. The Italian Fascist regime officially acknowledged revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J...
— along with Hubert Lagardelle
Hubert Lagardelle
Hubert Lagardelle was a French syndicalist thinker, influenced by Proudhon and Georges Sorel. He gradually moved to the right and served as Minister of Labour in the Vichy regime under Pierre Laval from 1942 to 1943....
and his journal Le Mouvement socialiste
Le Mouvement socialiste
The Le Mouvement socialiste was a revolutionary syndicalist journal in France founded in 1899 by Hubert Lagardelle and dissolved in 1914. Other key founders included Karl Marx's grandson Jean Longuet and Émile Durkheim's nephew Marcel Mauss...
— as major influences on fascism.
The Sorelian emphasis on the need for a revolution based upon action of intuition, a cult of energy and vitality, activism, heroism, and the utilization of myth was utilized by fascists. Many prominent fascist figures were formerly associated with revolutionary syndicalism, including: Mussolini, Arturo Labriola
Arturo Labriola
Arturo Labriola was an Italian revolutionary syndicalist and socialist politician and journalist.-Biography:...
, Robert Michels
Robert Michels
Robert Michels was a German sociologist who wrote on the political behavior of intellectual elites and contributed to elite theory...
, Sergio Panunzio
Sergio Panunzio
Sergio Panunzio was an Italian theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism. In the 1920s, he became a major theoretician of Italian Fascism....
, and Paolo Orano
Paolo Orano
Paolo Orano was an Italian psychologist and syndicalist politician and writer who later became a leading figure within the National Fascist Party.-Syndicalism:...
.
Nazism
NazismNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, the political movement led by Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, is widely viewed as a form of fascism. The Nazis shared the extreme nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, anti-communism
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
of the Italian fascists, and Hitler admired Mussolini, going as far as to copy the Roman salute
Roman salute
The Roman salute is a gesture in which the arm is held out forward straight, with palm down, and fingers touching. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle; in others, it is held out parallel to the ground. The former is a well known symbol of fascism that is commonly perceived to be...
used by Italian fascists and make it the basis of the Hitler salute
Hitler salute
The Nazi salute, or Hitler salute , was a gesture of greeting in Nazi Germany usually accompanied by saying, Heil Hitler! ["Hail Hitler!"], Heil, mein Führer ["Hail, my leader!"], or Sieg Heil! ["Hail victory!"]...
. However, the Nazis added racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
to the original fascist ideas. The Italian fascists were not interested in racism at first, but by the 1930s adopted a staunch white supremacist
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
doctrine in Italian African colonies. In the early 1930s, there were tensions between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany over the increasing possibility of an Austria-Germany merger (Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
), which would create a more powerful Greater Germany.
Italian fascism responded to Hitler's rise to power and need for alliance with Germany by increasingly adopting anti-Semitic rhetoric, and eventually anti-Semitic policies. In 1936, Mussolini made his first written denunciation of Jews by claiming that anti-Semitism had only arisen because Jews had become too predominant in the positions of power of countries, and he claimed that Jews were a "ferocious" tribe who sought to "totally banish" Christians from public life. In 1937, Fascist party member Paolo Orano
Paolo Orano
Paolo Orano was an Italian psychologist and syndicalist politician and writer who later became a leading figure within the National Fascist Party.-Syndicalism:...
criticized the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
movement as being part of British foreign policy, which aimed to secure a British hold of the area without respecting the Christian and Muslim presence in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. On the matter of Jewish Italians, Orano said that they "should concern themselves with nothing more than their religion" and not bother boasting of being patriotic Italians.
As a result of anti-semitic laws introduced in 1938, the fascist regime lost its propaganda director, Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti was a Jewish Italian journalist, art critic, patron, collector, socialite, and one of Benito Mussolini's mistresses.-Biography:...
, who was Jewish and had been Mussolini's mistress. A minority of fascists were pleased with anti-Semitic policy, such as Roberto Farinacci
Roberto Farinacci
Roberto Farinacci was a leading Italian Fascist politician, and important member of the National Fascist Party before and during World War II, and one of its ardent anti-Semitic proponents.-Early life:...
, who claimed that Jews through intrigue had taken control key positions of finance, business and schools. He noted that Jews sympathized with Ethiopia during Italy's war with that country, and that Jews had sympathized with Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. In its alliance with Nazi Germany, the fascist regime aided the Nazis in the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps, labour camps, and extermination camps during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Italy established its own concentration and internment camps across its held territories, but these camps were not like those of Nazi Germany, as families were allowed to stay together and there was no campaign of deliberate mass murder.
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
dictator Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, who is often considered a fascist, remained neutral during World War II. Hitler had supported Franco in his rise to power during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, and Franco was sympathetic to the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
, but he refused Hitler's pleas for military assistance.
Totalitarianism
TotalitarianismTotalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
is a term used in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
to refer to an ideology or organization that aims to control every aspect of life. For technological reasons, totalitarianism became an issue only recently. Before the 20th century, communications were not fast enough to allow a central government to collect information on a large number of its citizens in real time, the mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
was not developed enough to allow the existence of all-pervasive propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, and weapons were not effective enough to allow a relatively small number of armed soldiers to control a much bigger unarmed population. In the 20th century those technological barriers fell, and totalitarian government became a possibility.
Many authors have argued that totalitarian governments existed in the 20th century, though there is disagreement on which governments were totalitarian and which ideologies created them. Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
are the two ideologies most often considered to be totalitarian, and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
are the two people most often given as examples of totalitarian leaders. They both held absolute power in their countries and had personality cults built around them. They both used similar means - extreme forms of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, police state
Police state
A police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
tactics, and mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
. In the early 1920s, Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
and Otto Strasser
Otto Strasser
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser was a German politician and 'left-wing' member of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Strasser was part of the ‘left-wing’ faction of the party, along with his brother Gregor Strasser, and broke from the party due to disputes with the ‘Hitlerite’ faction...
regarded Stalinism as a Russian form of Nazism and wanted to form an alliance with the Soviet Union. However, Hitler rejected their proposal at a Nazi Party meeting in February 1926. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did form a mutually beneficial non-aggression pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
just before the Second World War, but Germany later broke the agreement and invaded the Soviet Union.
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, in The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism is a book by Hannah Arendt which describes and analyzes the two major totalitarian movements of the twentieth century, Nazism and Stalinism...
(1951), was the first author to give a lengthy description of a form of government called "totalitarianism", and she asserted that the governments of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and Stalin's Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
fell under this category. However, she believed that Fascist Italy had not been totalitarian, but merely a traditional form of dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
which did not submit the state to the party. Other authors, such as Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, included Fascist Italy in their list of totalitarian governments.
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer was an American social writer. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983...
claims that mass movements like Communism, Fascism and Nazism had a common trait in picturing Western democracies and their values as decadent, with people "too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish" to sacrifice for a higher cause, which for them implies an inner moral and biological decay. He further argues that those movements offered the prospect of a glorious, yet imaginary, future to frustrated people, enabling them to find a refuge from the lack of personal accomplishments in their individual existence. Individual is then assimilated into a compact collective body and a "fact-proof screens from reality" are established.
There is an ongoing debate on whether all fascist governments and Communist state
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
s can be considered totalitarian, or whether only some of them fit this description. It has been argued, for example, that the Soviet Union ceased to be totalitarian soon after Stalin's death. There are also critics of the notion of totalitarianism, who argue that the label "totalitarian" is too vague and tries to bring together governments that use similar methods but have little else in common. Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
, for instance, argued that there was an important distinction between the policies of Nazi Germany and those of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
: while they all had their idea of what kind of parasitic classes or races society ought to be rid of, and they all used similar means to dispose of them, Levi saw that they identified their targets by very different criteria. The Nazis assigned a place given by birth (since one is born into a certain race), while the Soviets and Chinese determined their enemies according to their social position (which people may change within their life). Therefore, in Levi's view, revolutionary communists would accept the son or daughter of a wealthy capitalist as a productive member of society if he agreed to change his original social position and oppose capitalism; but to the Nazis, one born a Jew will always remain a Jew, and he is a parasite who must be disposed of. However, according to Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, in the 19th century the essentialist notion of the "race" was incorporated by racists
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, biologists, and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "biological race" which was then integrated to "state racism
State racism
State racism is a concept used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to designate the reappropriation of the historical and political discourse of "race struggle", in the late seventeenth century....
". On the other hand, Marxists transformed the notions of the "race" and the "race struggle" into the concept of "class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
." The theme of social war provides overriding principle that connects the class struggle and the race struggle. For Foucault, these concepts are neither independently derived ideologies nor alternate persuasive views; their etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
is one and the same.
See also
- Definitions of fascismDefinitions of fascismWhat constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments is a highly disputed subject that has proved complicated and contentious. Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have engaged in long and furious debates concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets.Most...
- Doctrine of FascismDoctrine of Fascism"The Doctrine of Fascism" is an essay written by Giovanni Gentile, but credit is given to Benito Mussolini. It was first published in the Enciclopedia Italiana of 1932, as the first section of a lengthy entry on "Fascismo"...
- Economics of fascismEconomics of fascismThe economics of fascism refers to the economic policies implemented by fascist governments.Nevertheless, some scholars and analysts argue that there is an identifiable economic system in fascism that is distinct from those advocated by other ideologies, comprising essential characteristics that...
- FascioFascioFascio, plural -sci /'faʃʃo, ʃi/ is an Italian word literally meaning "a bundle" or "a sheaf", and figuratively league, and which was used in the late 19th century to refer to political groups of many different orientations...
- FascismFascismFascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
- Fascist socializationFascist socializationThe Congress of Verona in November 1943 was the only congress of the Italian Republican Fascist Party, the successor of the National Fascist Party. At the time, the Republican Fascist Party was nominally in charge of the Salò Republic, a small fascist state set up in Northern Italy after the Allies...
- Fascist symbolismFascist symbolismAs there were many different manifestations of fascism, especially during the interwar years, there were also many different symbols of Fascist movements...
- Japanese nationalismJapanese nationalismencompasses a broad range of ideas and sentiments harbored by the Japanese people over the last two centuries regarding their native country, its cultural nature, political form and historical destiny...
- The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle
- Neo-fascismNeo-FascismNeo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. The term neo-fascist may apply to groups that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism or any other fascist leader/state...
- Neofascism and religionNeofascism and religionNeo-fascism and religion refers to debates about the relationships between neo-fascism and various religions.Some scholars, using the term neo-fascism in its narrow sense, consider certain contemporary religious movements and groups to represent forms of clerical or theocratic neofascism, including...
- Neo-NazismNeo-NazismNeo-Nazism consists of post-World War II social or political movements seeking to revive Nazism or some variant thereof.The term neo-Nazism can also refer to the ideology of these movements....
- The New Deal and corporatismThe New Deal and corporatismWhen Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the United States in March 1933, he expressly adopted a variety of measures to see which would work, including several which their proponents felt would be inconsistent with each other...
- ProducerismProducerismProducerism, sometimes referred to as "producer radicalism," is a right-wing populist ideology which holds that the productive members of society are being exploited by parasitic elements at both the top and bottom of the social and economic structure....
- FalangismFalangismFalangism is the political ideology of the Spanish Falange as well as derivatives of it in other countries. In its original form, Falangism is widely associated as a fascist ideology, the Spanish Falange denied this, claiming it was not a copy of any foreign movement...
- Yellow SocialismYellow socialismYellow socialism has two meanings. It is primarily a system of government devised by Pierre Biétry in 1904, that offers the working classes a contrasting alternative to "red socialism" . It was prominent in the early twentieth century prior to World War I, competing with Marxism for the minds of...
- Business NationalismBusiness nationalismBusiness nationalism is a right-wing economic nationalist ideology held by a sector of the political right in the United States.Business nationalists are ultraconservative business and industrial leaders who favor a protectionist trade policy and an isolationist foreign policy...
- National ConservatismNational conservatismNational conservatism is a political term used primarily in Europe to describe a variant of conservatism which concentrates more on national interests than standard conservatism as well as upholding cultural and ethnic identity, while not being outspokenly nationalist or supporting a far-right...
- George SeldesGeorge SeldesGeorge Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
, early reporter of US fascism. - Horst-Wessel-LiedHorst-Wessel-LiedThe Horst-Wessel-Lied , also known as Die Fahne hoch from its opening line, was the anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945...
, a German song that encapsulates much of Fascist ideology.
General bibliography
- De Felice, RenzoRenzo De FeliceRenzo De Felice was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era.-Biography:He was born in Rieti and studied under Federico Chabod and Delio Cantimori at the University of Naples. During his time as student, De Felice was a member of the Italian Communist Party...
Interpretations of Fascism, translated by Brenda Huff Everett, Cambridge ; London : Harvard University Press, 1977 ISBN 978-0-674-45962-5. - Hughes, H. Stuart. 1953. The United States and Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914-45. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 978-0-299-14874-4
- Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.
Further reading
- Seldes, GeorgeGeorge SeldesGeorge Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers. - Reich, WilhelmWilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. - Gentile, Emilo. 2003. The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-97692-7
- Black, EdwinEdwin BlackEdwin Black is an American Jewish syndicated columnist, and journalist specializing in the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany, among other topics...
. 2001. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation Crown. ISBN 978-0-609-60799-2
External links
- The Doctrine of Fascism signed by Benito Mussolini (complete text)
- The Political Economy of Fascism - From Dave Renton's anti-fascist website
- Fascism and Zionism - From The Hagshama Department - World Zionist Organization
- Fascism Part I - Understanding Fascism and Anti-Semitism
- Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt - Umberto EcoUmberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's list of 14 characteristics of Fascism, originally published 1995. - Site of an Italian fascist party Italian and German languages
- Site dedicated to the period of fascism in Greece (1936-1941)
- Text of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
- Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler by Jacques R. Pauwels