What's Fascism Anyway? And Why?

A somewhat timely discussion of fascism's class base, function, and ideology

Sintesi Fascista, Alessandro Bruschetti, 1935 — Futurist pro-fascist artwork

Suppose you ask a dozen people what fascism is: What will they say?

More likely than not you will get a dozen different answers, and half of them will be vague lectures about how fascism escapes definition because of its inherent irrationality. A seemingly random definition will often follow this—miraculously found despite its supposed irrationality—mixed with various aspects Umberto Eco may have listed (they didn’t check before answering) in his famous ‘Ur-Fascism’ essay and maybe some bits and pieces of Robert Paxton’s ‘Anatomy of Fascism’.

They will talk to you about ultra-nationalism (what is ‘ultra’ about it?), fear of difference (difference in what?), the cult of action (are fascists anarchists now?), half-remembered pieces of Orwell’s (terrible) fables and maybe if you’re lucky, that it has something to do with the working class or the middle class (whatever that is exactly). If you’re unlucky? They’ll call it left-wing, make up things about national socialism, and leave it at that.

None of those points—well, except the last one—are exactly wrong, but they approach the issue at a confused level by looking at the outward expressions of fascism, instead of searching for its interior motive and necessity. The question is less about what fascism is, but rather about why fascism and all its horrors must be in the first place.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with not having a rigorous definition of fascism on hand at a moment’s notice, but especially those who understand themselves as anti-fascists should be able to identify their primary enemies in clear terms, and more importantly the enemy’s support base, or they will inevitably find themselves fighting confused battles along incoherent lines, using dysfunctional tactics against god-knows-what.

Is Trump a fascist? Is MAGA a fascist movement? Is the United States a fascist state altogether? Why not? What gives? What does that have to do with the Nazis? How do we stop them? And what the fuck is finance capital, and why does it need suburban homeowners to shoot communists and union organizers in the head?

These are all interesting questions in their own right, but what is often more practical is to grasp the general terms of an ideology instead of its specific expressions—that way, the trends that produce it can be noticed before they are in full force, and resisted before they find full expression. In the case of fascism, this expression is generalized terror and violence; something best avoided.

I’ll try to approach some of those questions with this article by looking for their general expression in the most desperate, severe, and final weapon of capitalism at a time when it really counts.

Fascism’s Class Base — The Petit Bourgeoisie and Finance Capital

Fascist ‘Action Squads—Squadristi’ in Lucca, 1922

The marriage of interests fascism must accommodate is a rather unhappy one, and nowhere does that dysfunction become clearer than in the death pact it creates between the bottom rung of capital owners and the very top—the pact between the petit bourgeoisie and finance capital, fused by a sudden (seeming) convergence of interests.

Trying to trace the early points of this development is a bit like trying to identify a predator by the corpses it leaves behind in its wake. The task isn’t impossible, but the corpses of the left alone do not make fascism. Commonly cited examples of proto-fascist movements are the arch-reactionary ‘Freikorps’ militias used to crush the German revolution of 1918/19, the antisemitic and chauvinistic ‘Black Hundreds’ Movement supported by the Tsarist regime to carry out some of the vilest crimes of the late Russian Empire, and increasingly the post-reconstruction formations of the Ku-Klux-Klan, using racialized violence against black workers on behalf of a white, quasi-aristocratic planter class.

All of them certainly show elements of fascism, in particular through ideological expression and the origin of its most radical base, but in undeveloped forms. Broadly it can be said that those who stand at the forefront of fascist violence are of a petit-bourgeois background, while the concrete interests they represent are those of whichever form of capital ownership is dominant in their time and immediate circumstances—this, in a microcosm, is the class base of fascism, but it cannot find its full potential without the support of finance capital.

Fascism as a fully-fledged movement was born, or rather developed to a point of functional expression, in the small towns of northern Italy, and the vast stretches of agricultural land between them. This is no coincidence: In the immediate post-WW1 period a sharp line of conflict developed between impoverished and increasingly class-conscious agricultural workers and the owners of the land they worked, themselves increasingly frustrated by socialist organisations reigning in their exploitation of profits.

The small and large landowners, themselves indebted to finance capital through vast sums of credit taken during the meagre years of the war, cooperated with violent self-styled paramilitary groups—most often formed by the sons of the very same landowners after their return from the war—to smash socialist organisations and unleash a wave of violence against rural day laborers who were organized in their ranks. This is the genesis of the squadristi—the blackshirts.

At first confined to rural northern Italy the movement quickly assumed the role of the state—or rather transitioned organized class-based violence to a new form of statehood, away from ‘ordinary’ bourgeois dictatorship to its fascist form—which had failed to adequately represent the interest of landowners against socialist power, and with that the larger interests of finance capital.

From there it was a short way to Rome for Mussolini and his mob because they already had the backing of the real power behind the proverbial (and in Italy’s case literal) throne.

What is the base of this new fascist state? It certainly represents the same interests as ordinary bourgeois states—primarily those of finance capital, the pinnacle of the capitalist class in our age, and the classes in alliance with it. The difference is in the form of its rule, and the measures it takes to ensure its survival.

Georgi Dimitrov, prime anti-fascist theoretician of the Communist Internationale, defined fascism’s class base as follows:

“No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.” — Dimitrov, Main Report delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International, 1935

Of course, and this is the crux of the issue, finance capital does need to mobilize a mass base to actually conduct this ‘terrorist vengeance’, and here the most precarious elements of the petit-bourgeoisie and proletarians who have no connection to class-based mass organisations are easiest to capture for reactionary measures—the very same people who under different circumstances could be turned into allies for a proletarian movement.

The role of the petit-bourgeoisie, today represented by the small business owner, the local contractor, the disappearing farmer, the struggling landlord and the millions of suburbanites who feel like their very existence is tied to their status as a landowner however marginal, is that of the violent enforcer of the open terrorist dictatorship of finance and monopoly capital—along with the declassed elements of the proletariat, growing every day. They are a tool for this new form of state, and their interests will always remain secondary to monopoly capital, easily discarded if necessary.

There is a reason why Hitler sidelined and destroyed the SA (his initial brown-shirted paramilitary) once his party had taken power, why Mussolini let the squadristi bleed themselves to death in Italy’s colonial wars, and why Franco slowly but steadily worked to diminish the actual fascist movement once it had lost its usefulness after the civil war. The petit bourgeoisie is a means to an end for the terror of the most reactionary sections of monopoly capital, once they have changed the fabric of the state to suit their needs.

Let us now look at the prime function of this terrorist state of capital in motion.

Fascism’s Function — The Abolition of Working Class Power

Smashed storefront after the ‘Reichskristallnacht’ pogroms, 1938

The most immediate enemy of the nascent fascist movement is the class-conscious working class and its organisations, because of the simple fact that its interests are diametrically opposed to monopoly capital, now holding sway over large sections of the petit bourgeoisie. At the same time, this organized working class is the only principled resistance against the new form of state, turned instrument of terror.

Subsequently, the organisations of the working class need to be crushed without delay when they resist, and then steadily re-integrated into harmless forms by the fascist state, to harness their productive potential.

Famously, after being handed the office of chancellor by the aged President Hindenburg, Hitler cemented his dictatorship with the Reichstag fire by blaming it on the communist party and gaining emergency powers through the Enabling Act of 1933. Where did he turn the violence of the state first? Against the communists, social democrats and their respective unions, shortly followed by all other representative bodies of the working class. This isn’t just an incidental consequence of the particular political situation in Germany or even a simple follow-up of the anti-Marxist tendencies inherent to fascism, but rather the goal of fascism itself—to crush any chance of revolutionary working-class power.

Why did the German Hitlerites call themselves the National *Socialist Worker’s* Party? Why did the Italian blackshirts and their supporters insist, that their National Fascist Party upholds a third position apart from capitalism and socialism? Why does the MAGA movement as such appeal to a vague (and white) working-class identity above all else?

The answer lies in the dual function of fascism—undermining organic working-class organisations, and replacing them with *national* alternatives, which are in truth nothing except the most brutal and open form of exploitation, designed to dupe the working class into compliance.

Let us take a look at the German example:

Upon assuming state power the nazi movement did not only use its open terrorist dictatorship to arrest communists and social democrats while banning unions, but also imposed alternative forms onto the working class. The most influential of these, and most relevant for our purposes, was the so-called ‘Deutsche Arbeitsfront - German Worker’s Front’ (DAF). After banning all independent unions, the nazis made membership mandatory for what was effectively the entirety of the industrial proletariat, ‘representing’ 32 million people at its height. Unlike a typical union organisation, independent or not, capitalists also ‘joined’ the ranks of the DAF.

What was this organisation for then? Strikes were already banned before the DAF was even established, and any bargaining agreements were in the hands of pre-selected NSDAP party officials who in practice followed orders from the employers themselves. The nazis called it a ‘true national community [Volksgemeinschaft] for all Germans’ but of course, nothing the nazis said can be taken seriously—more on this in the next section—without considering the unspoken terms of class rule.

The DAF and its equivalent organisation existed in all fascist forms of state even those not fully realized. They formalized the mass exploitation of millions of proletarians by capital, in even more brutal terms than under ordinary bourgeois rule, while painting it over with a flimsy brush of ‘unity’ and ‘national community.’ Some may call this class collaboration, but this is in actuality a falsehood and a capitulation to fascist propaganda—there is no such thing as class collaboration in fascist reality, instead, the idea of collaboration is fed to the declassed domestic workers, while enabling their full subordination to finance capital in preparation for ruthless imperialist war.

In Dimitrov’s words once again:

“Fascism is war, declared the Congress [of the Communist Internationale]. Coming to power against the will and interests of its own countrymen fascism seeks a way out of its growing domestic difficulties in aggression against other countries and peoples, in a redivision of the globe by unleashing a world war. As far as, fascism is concerned, peace is certain ruin.”—Dimitrov, Fascism is War, 1936

Here we can find an internal contradiction, vital for understanding the fascist ‘mode’ of bourgeois dictatorship: It attempts to construct mass politics around the interests of a tiny, fractional minority, for the exact purpose of making mass politics against the interests of that minority an impossibility—all in the name of keeping the rate of profit intact.

This crass contradiction in its material base can only be covered up, and mutually reinforced, by an equally crass superstructure. Let’s talk about the finer details of fascist ideology.

Fascism’s Ideology — ‘The Class Enemy is no more!’

SS members rally at Nuremberg, 1936

Fascist ideology is in many ways a sort of mirage. Smoke and mirrors. A shadow on the wall, decorated by muscular men in uniforms, mass rallies and bloody violence.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that fascists of different stripes and different levels of influence didn’t genuinely believe in these delusions. There is no need to turn the Hitlers and the Himmlers of the world into entirely rational actors in order to understand that the material base of fascism implies rational (and horrific) goals—the fact that those goals have to be considered rational under imperialist capitalism is a damning indictment of the economic system that produces these outcomes, not an excuse.

Acquiring Lebensraum (Living Space) in the East can be a project of extermination in the service of a mythology of racial supremacy, while also fulfilling the need of an aspiring, self-sufficient imperialist hegemon to acquire vast agricultural lands through settler colonialism.

Forcing millions of enslaved workers into taking part in the mass production of German armaments and heavy industry can be an expression of a delusional ideology demanding that the ‘Untermensch—subhuman’ is used as a base for menial labor while the Aryan ‘Herrenrasse—master race’ must struggle for their destiny, while at the same time providing a convenient way to fuel the unsustainable war economy of fascist regimes, that are necessary for further imperial conquest.

In short—and Michael Parenti put it best in his work on ‘rational fascism’—the ideology itself is confused, nonsensical and contradictory, but all of that serves to cover up the most radical, reactionary and brutal form of imperialism known to humankind. This is something perfectly rational for a system that needs to fuel its economy with the destruction of hundreds of millions, detached from all morality.

In fact, this ideological confusion serves a very specific purpose of covering up the contradiction that exists in the material base—a contradiction between a fanatical mass movement in the service of the narrowest section of society imaginable: Monopoly capital. This internal confusion isn’t just a coincidence, but rather part of the program, since fascism must be able to adapt to a variety of different national circumstances while fulfilling the need to empower capital to crush its enemies with ruthless efficiency.

Here too we can find the role of antisemitism, uniquely developed in German national socialism but present in all fascist movements to some degree, ironically including Israeli fascism—this deserves its own article, which I might write at some point—re-appropriated in the form of an international arab conspiracy. Sartre cut through to its functional necessity when he said:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.”—Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 1944

It would be too vulgar to simply attribute this fanaticism and radical rejection of rationality to contradictions at the base since the superstructure itself also feeds back into the material base, particularly when it comes to its social reproduction. Why else would the nazis have invested considerable effort into carrying out their ‘final solution’ even when it was eating up resources dearly needed for the war? Was this in the rational interest of monopoly capital? Of course not. Here the fascist movement itself, radicalized throughout the war, subsumed the interests of capital into a pure expression of genocidal ideology.

Fascism needs a scapegoat because it tries to convince the majority of the population that their enemies are eternal, insidious, magical and untouchable—all while their real enemies are already in power—to justify unending struggle, inside and out.

This is the final core aspect of fascism—it is inherently self-destructive because, in its attempt to paint over the contradictions of capitalism, it only intensifies them into absurdity and horror.

Whatever fascists say about themselves and their supposed aims can’t be trusted. Everything about their supposed beliefs can be discarded at a moment’s notice because it only exists in the service of violence against their enemies. All they can do is try to cover up the sheer horror and primal urge that Umberto Eco described quite well in his essay on ‘Ur-Fascism’. Nothing about this is complicated or needs any further analysis. Capitalist horror is stripped of its final layers of metaphor, decoration and fetishism while turning toward open terror against all who would stand against it.

That is fascist ideology—smoke and mirrors and terror, with a dose of unending struggle against false enemies.

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Thank you for reading.

Next time I’ll talk about how fascism can be resisted, fought and ultimately defeated. If you want to read that and support my work, you can do so here: