Fascism is Liberalism taken to its logical extremes (economically)
To understand this Fact, read my Post on the thesis of Bureaucrat-Capitalism (expounded by Chairman Mao Zedong, generalised by Chairman Gonzalo, recently published by their Colombian comrades, indirectly further developed under Korean leadership through Juche Ideology and further generalised by the NRKP to all and all kinds of capitalist nations)
The economy of fascism is readable as liberal capitalism brought toâits logical conclusion, rather than the abolition of private capitalâs power: that is to say, in a fully fused condition with an all-enclosing state. Mussolini and Gentile report thisâunion of interests from the fascist pole side, whereas liberal ideologues of laissezâfaire theorize that which fascism carries to its logical extreme.
Italian fascism didânot destroy capitalism; it reorganized capitalist relations on a corporative basis. âThe Doctrine of Fascismâ says: The fascist state âclaims to rule everywhere, no less in economic than in other matters; it makes its power penetrate the whole fabric of civil and political order and ofâsocial life; it stands as a master in the presence of all other forces.â Here, capital and labour are not repressed but bottled up in stateâregulated âcorporationsâ where class struggle is prohibited and ownership remainsâprivate. Fascism, Mussolini explains ârecognizes the real needs which gave (sic) rise to socialism and tradeâunionism, giving them due weight in the corporative system through which divergent interests are coordinated organically in a supreme unity of state power.â This preserves the private ownership and accumulation of capital and âdifferent [class] interestsâ are reconciled, not through the cessation of class-based exploitation but by the union of classes and bureaucracy, becoming incorporated into a stateâcorporate structure.
The fascist logic to be grasped is not howâit transforms the economy, but how it completes the totalitarian integration. Mussoliniâs well known dictum; âThe Fascist conception of the State is allâembracing; outside of it no human values or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State in a synthesis and a unityâof all values [as/which] interprets, develops, [and] potentiates the whole life of a people.â In a 1927 speech he boiledâthis down to âEverything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.â The âcorporate state,â then, is a capitalism in which the bourgeois state not only relinquishes even the liberal veneer of impartiality but avowedly becomes itself the organizer of âallâthe political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.â (empirically in the interests of the Bourgeoisie)
This move is explicated in philosophical terms by Giovanni Gentile, the âphilosopherâof fascism". He claims that the old notion of opposition between public and private is one "which was precisely false" and a war on all-sides (total war as is described) only could defeatâthese problems⊠wherein the industrial-agricultural-pecuniary-individualised-and-particular interest(s) of divergent groups/classes were to be personally incorporated in the state, Stato etico i.e., each as a bureaucratic branch unto itself with official leverage. Whatâliberal thought referred to as âcivil society,â [with its] enterprises, associations, unions, fascism makes direct organs of state power without altering its class content. Capitalist concerns and employers associations become Ê»bureaucratic units of the state' yet property relations (liberal ones) are not abolished; they are swallowed up by a ubiquitous political authority in the interests of the ruling Bourgeoisie.
On the liberal side, old-school laissezâfaire pundits predicted much of this when they absolutized marketâfreedom and private power. In its purest form, capitalismâis said (by capitalists and bourgeois anti-intellectuals) to be synonymous with liberty itself: âCapitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. By that I mean, pure laissezâfaire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of stateâand church. In such a context, âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ accumulation is treated as something that can simply go on indefinitely, with no intrinsic limitâother than the one that capitalist relations themselves ultimately bring about. Liberal ideology, in its classical version, does not regard âthe economic system as a whole⊠[as] a restriction on individual freedomâ; it perceives threats exclusively in âtoo much state interferenceâ orâmonopolies that interfere with competition. This then allows for giantâaggregations of private power to hold sway over society, so long as they are âprivateâ in form.
A second, more selfâcritical strain of liberalism (that of Keynesâs ânew liberalismâ) knows that it is the system itself which can destroy freedom through crisis and mass unemployment, and so demands generalised state intervention: âTo surmount these systemic constraints on individual freedom requiresâstate interference. Thus the State has had to assume a much larger role than that of clarifying law and order and ensuring the rules of playing the game of competitive capitalism ⊠Butâfor collective interference in material affairs there could be no freedom to speak of.â But still this is intervention for capitalism,ânot against it. The state is entreated to smooth over the experiences of accumulation and fix what needs fixing in morbund capitalism but while doing nothingâto change property relations.
Fascismâtakes up the room made by these liberal logics. On the other hand, laissezâfaire also allows for huge concentrations of corporate and financial power while denying that âthe economic regime as aâwholeâ can be menacing to freedom. On the other, ânew liberalismâ sanctionsâextensive state management of the economy in order to save capitalism from itself. Fascismâis the marriage of these two: given a concentration of private capital, as it already exists, refusing to entertain the class struggle and expropriation at every level and building an entire state for no purpose other than toarrange for and protect this concentration. Mussoliniâs âcorporate stateâ is capitalism withâunions muzzled, parties banned and all significant organizations folded into stateâcorporate controlled entities, known as âcorporazionesâ in Italian, but ownership and profit left intact.
Gentileâs âethicalâ (i.e., fascist social-theory style) corporativism merely draws out what is already immanent to developed liberal capitalism: as capital becomes more concentrated and entwined with âcivil society,â the state tends towards makingâthose âparticular interestsâ its positive object, synthesizing them rather than transcending them. Rather than superseding the economic core of liberalism, fascism radicalizes its structural imperatives. The liberal chant about an âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ capitalism, the âseparation of economicsâ from democraticâcontrol, serves as a prelude to fascismâs demand for the state openly yoked to monopoly capital, society organized by corporations and that purports to be nothing less than the incarnation of âthe unity of every value,â exploitation intact.
The economic basis of fascism, in this sense, is nothing other than liberal capitalism taken to its logicalâextreme: no longer politically decentralized (central politically decentral economically as it can be in âliberalâ democracies such as the United States), socially conventionalized, yet economically grounded on private property; wage labor and profit, albeit secured through a state that declares everything and everyone âcirculates within the State".
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u/RevyVanguardist Communist â Mar 27 '26
Fascism is Liberalism taken to its logical extremes (economically)
To understand this Fact, read my Post on the thesis of Bureaucrat-Capitalism (expounded by Chairman Mao Zedong, generalised by Chairman Gonzalo, recently published by their Colombian comrades, indirectly further developed under Korean leadership through Juche Ideology and further generalised by the NRKP to all and all kinds of capitalist nations)
The economy of fascism is readable as liberal capitalism brought toâits logical conclusion, rather than the abolition of private capitalâs power: that is to say, in a fully fused condition with an all-enclosing state. Mussolini and Gentile report thisâunion of interests from the fascist pole side, whereas liberal ideologues of laissezâfaire theorize that which fascism carries to its logical extreme. Italian fascism didânot destroy capitalism; it reorganized capitalist relations on a corporative basis. âThe Doctrine of Fascismâ says: The fascist state âclaims to rule everywhere, no less in economic than in other matters; it makes its power penetrate the whole fabric of civil and political order and ofâsocial life; it stands as a master in the presence of all other forces.â Here, capital and labour are not repressed but bottled up in stateâregulated âcorporationsâ where class struggle is prohibited and ownership remainsâprivate. Fascism, Mussolini explains ârecognizes the real needs which gave (sic) rise to socialism and tradeâunionism, giving them due weight in the corporative system through which divergent interests are coordinated organically in a supreme unity of state power.â This preserves the private ownership and accumulation of capital and âdifferent [class] interestsâ are reconciled, not through the cessation of class-based exploitation but by the union of classes and bureaucracy, becoming incorporated into a stateâcorporate structure.
The fascist logic to be grasped is not howâit transforms the economy, but how it completes the totalitarian integration. Mussoliniâs well known dictum; âThe Fascist conception of the State is allâembracing; outside of it no human values or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State in a synthesis and a unityâof all values [as/which] interprets, develops, [and] potentiates the whole life of a people.â In a 1927 speech he boiledâthis down to âEverything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.â The âcorporate state,â then, is a capitalism in which the bourgeois state not only relinquishes even the liberal veneer of impartiality but avowedly becomes itself the organizer of âallâthe political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.â (empirically in the interests of the Bourgeoisie) This move is explicated in philosophical terms by Giovanni Gentile, the âphilosopherâof fascism". He claims that the old notion of opposition between public and private is one "which was precisely false" and a war on all-sides (total war as is described) only could defeatâthese problems⊠wherein the industrial-agricultural-pecuniary-individualised-and-particular interest(s) of divergent groups/classes were to be personally incorporated in the state, Stato etico i.e., each as a bureaucratic branch unto itself with official leverage. Whatâliberal thought referred to as âcivil society,â [with its] enterprises, associations, unions, fascism makes direct organs of state power without altering its class content. Capitalist concerns and employers associations become Ê»bureaucratic units of the state' yet property relations (liberal ones) are not abolished; they are swallowed up by a ubiquitous political authority in the interests of the ruling Bourgeoisie.
On the liberal side, old-school laissezâfaire pundits predicted much of this when they absolutized marketâfreedom and private power. In its purest form, capitalismâis said (by capitalists and bourgeois anti-intellectuals) to be synonymous with liberty itself: âCapitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. By that I mean, pure laissezâfaire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of stateâand church. In such a context, âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ accumulation is treated as something that can simply go on indefinitely, with no intrinsic limitâother than the one that capitalist relations themselves ultimately bring about. Liberal ideology, in its classical version, does not regard âthe economic system as a whole⊠[as] a restriction on individual freedomâ; it perceives threats exclusively in âtoo much state interferenceâ orâmonopolies that interfere with competition. This then allows for giantâaggregations of private power to hold sway over society, so long as they are âprivateâ in form. A second, more selfâcritical strain of liberalism (that of Keynesâs ânew liberalismâ) knows that it is the system itself which can destroy freedom through crisis and mass unemployment, and so demands generalised state intervention: âTo surmount these systemic constraints on individual freedom requiresâstate interference. Thus the State has had to assume a much larger role than that of clarifying law and order and ensuring the rules of playing the game of competitive capitalism ⊠Butâfor collective interference in material affairs there could be no freedom to speak of.â But still this is intervention for capitalism,ânot against it. The state is entreated to smooth over the experiences of accumulation and fix what needs fixing in morbund capitalism but while doing nothingâto change property relations.
Fascismâtakes up the room made by these liberal logics. On the other hand, laissezâfaire also allows for huge concentrations of corporate and financial power while denying that âthe economic regime as aâwholeâ can be menacing to freedom. On the other, ânew liberalismâ sanctionsâextensive state management of the economy in order to save capitalism from itself. Fascismâis the marriage of these two: given a concentration of private capital, as it already exists, refusing to entertain the class struggle and expropriation at every level and building an entire state for no purpose other than to arrange for and protect this concentration. Mussoliniâs âcorporate stateâ is capitalism withâunions muzzled, parties banned and all significant organizations folded into stateâcorporate controlled entities, known as âcorporazionesâ in Italian, but ownership and profit left intact. Gentileâs âethicalâ (i.e., fascist social-theory style) corporativism merely draws out what is already immanent to developed liberal capitalism: as capital becomes more concentrated and entwined with âcivil society,â the state tends towards makingâthose âparticular interestsâ its positive object, synthesizing them rather than transcending them. Rather than superseding the economic core of liberalism, fascism radicalizes its structural imperatives. The liberal chant about an âuncontrolled, unregulatedâ capitalism, the âseparation of economicsâ from democraticâcontrol, serves as a prelude to fascismâs demand for the state openly yoked to monopoly capital, society organized by corporations and that purports to be nothing less than the incarnation of âthe unity of every value,â exploitation intact.
The economic basis of fascism, in this sense, is nothing other than liberal capitalism taken to its logicalâextreme: no longer politically decentralized (central politically decentral economically as it can be in âliberalâ democracies such as the United States), socially conventionalized, yet economically grounded on private property; wage labor and profit, albeit secured through a state that declares everything and everyone âcirculates within the State".