Fascism as a word has a very negative connotation. When people hear that word, they think of Italy’s Fascist government under Mussolini, imperial Japan, or Germany under the Nazi regime. It’s a word way overused by the political left to attack us conservatives.
Under Russia’s Joseph Stalin, after World War 2, propaganda began to be released in the Soviet Union that suggested that the only alternative to fascism was socialism, and vise versa. The ideas of individual freedoms and liberties, free-market economics, constitutional law, and peace between nations, which are the bedrocks that together collectively are known as Classical Liberalism, or classical liberal values, were treated as if they never existed, or worse, were seen as identifying with fascism according to Stalin’s false propaganda, despite the fact that fascists opposed these values just like Soviet socialists did. Even today, people on the political left look at these bedrocks of classical liberalism, identify them with the Republican and Libertarian parties, which they claim are the political parties that represent fascism.
This way of looking at things is entirely false, though. Why am I saying this? Because in reality, fascism was always a form of socialism. Or, to be even more accurate, the terms fascism, communism, and socialism, when it comes to how they work, are more like fraternal twins – not cousins, not siblings, but also not identical twins. In my opinion, they are more similar than siblings are to each other, but less similar than identical twins.
So, what form of socialism is fascism? A form of socialism known as “national socialism.” Compare that to communism, which also goes by the name “international socialism.” Western politicians on the political left claim to support a form of socialism known as “democratic socialism,” that is, they claim it’s a form of socialism that is put in place democratically, where citizens vote, and choose to put into political office those politicians that bring into fruition and reality those policies they describe as socialist.
So, we have three different terms here that use socialism, that is, socialistic ideas, and apply them to society, to the state, and how the state operates over its citizens.
So, what’s the difference between national socialism, known as fascism, and international socialism, known as communism? National socialism took socialist principles and applied them to the well-being of whatever their state or country was. International socialism took socialist principles, and applied them to their own states, but desired to expand the realm where socialist principles were applied, and worked to get those socialist principles applied to other countries besides their own, with a final goal of the entire world being under the control of socialist policies.
Nazi Germany vs. the Soviet Union
Now let’s compare how countries that practiced national socialism vs. international socialism practiced their respective types of socialism, when it came to the world around them.
Nazi Germany, a country practicing national socialism, or fascism, was applying socialistic principles and policies that they thought were in the best interest of the German people. But Germany, under fascism, expanded by invading and taking over other countries around them. Why? Three reasons. First, they wanted the Germanic peoples in other nations to be part of a larger German nation, rather than be separated by political boundaries. Second, they wanted to use the resources found in these other countries to be used for their own self-interests and reasons – basically, a form of looting. Third, they wanted to subjugate other people groups that weren’t German, whom they thought to be inferior to themselves, to the Germans, and their fascist, that is, national socialist, government.
The Soviet Union, a state practicing international socialism, or communism, applied socialistic principles and policies to their own state, but had an ultimate goal of applying those principles to every country, every nation-state, on Earth. So, in keeping up with their ultimate goal, they would, when opportunity arose, invade nations, or take advantage of the fact that they were in charge of administering some nations, like in Eastern Europe at the end of World War 2, and forcibly make those nations practice socialist policies. Behind the scenes, the Soviet Union would still be “pulling the strings,” that is, controlling those other nations. In other words, these other nations were still under the political control and domination of the Soviet Union.
It’s interesting to note that in both cases, national socialism and international socialism, that socialist policies were imposed on a nation-state, and invasions of other countries would take place, where socialist policies were then imposed on those states. The only difference in those two forms of socialism, as I see it, wasn’t in the socialist policies themselves, since they both imposed those same type of policies, but was in the fact that in national socialism, known as fascism, the imposing nation derived their false sense of moral superiority first from their race or ethnicity (e.g. Germans believed they were racially superior to the Polish and Jews; and the Japanese believed they were racially superior to the Chinese and Koreans; etc.), and then secondly because they incorrectly believed in the moral superiority of the socialist type of framework; whereas in international socialism, known as communism, the imposing nation derived their false sense of superiority directly from their incorrect belief in the superiority of the socialist framework. Of course, it could be easily argued that in Nazi Germany, that it really was the false sense of superiority the Germans got from practicing their form of socialism that led them to believe that their race was superior, and which motivated them to invade and take over their neighbors, and if this is the case, then there really is not that much difference between national socialism and international socialism.
It’s interesting to note that after World War 2, when Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, made the false claim that we only had two choices, between either fascism or socialism, what he was really saying to us was that we only had a choice between two types of socialism, that is, between socialism of the national type (fascism) and socialism of the international type (communism). But, of course, anyone doing an analysis, a critique, of this either-or choice knows that we don’t have to choose any type of socialism at all, and that we have another choice – one that represents limited government, classical liberal values, and free-market capitalism, which is antithetical to any form of socialism, whether fascism or communism, or democratic socialism, which we’ll talk about soon.
In reality, if we’re to be honest, a choice between fascism and communism is really a choice between two groups of people that use socialism as a framework to give themselves absolute power. Absolutism, tyranny, despotism, and dictator-like leaders were the norm on both sides. It was two autocratic regimes competing against each other for power. It was basically a choice in who your tyrannical dictator would be, but both under the guise of some form of socialism.
Enter Democratic Socialism
Enter into this mix another form of socialism, one pushed by leftist politicians in the Western world, which goes by the name democratic socialism. And what is this democratic socialism? How does it differ from the two other forms of socialism we already established, known as national socialism and international socialism, or fascism and communism?
Democratic socialism differs from the two other forms of socialism being discussed in the way it comes into existence – at least this is the argument given by its proponents. We are still talking about applying the very same principles and policies to a nation, to a society, that were applied through the other forms of socialism, both fascism and communism, but in this case, so the argument goes, we get to vote in free elections to support politicians who will bring those policies to fruition, rather than have those policies imposed on us by force, against our will. Fascism and communism to them both represent a form of socialism imposed on people against their will, and that’s what makes them evil. But what makes democratic socialism better than those other forms of socialism, known as fascism and communism, is the fact that you are voting for it. It makes it something you freely chose, rather than being something imposed on you against your will. In their minds, if they can convince you to vote for it, and you’re freely choosing it, then that makes it okay and acceptable.
But, if this is the case, if this is the argument given by today’s democratic socialists as to how it’s different than yesteryear’s fascism, there’s a big glaring problem – the national socialist government, that is, the fascist government, that came to power in Germany came to power, not by force against the will of their people, but through free elections. The people freely chose to go in that direction as a nation; it wasn’t imposed on them against their will.
Think about how the proponents of national socialism were able to convince their own citizens to vote for that type of government. They did it by using every trick in the book, every rhetorical device, every manipulation they could think of, to convince their people to vote for their type of socialism. And what were those manipulations? You need look no further than the rhetoric being used by democratic socialists today to try to convince us to go their route. They referred to their policies as compassionate. They talked about “leveling the playing field.” They talked about the disparities between the “haves” and “have nots.” They propagated envy towards those that were financially better off than they were.
Once they convinced the people to elect them to office, this is where things started to make a turn for the worse and became more oppressive.
If you remember, socialism, and it doesn’t matter what form it takes, is about taking many of the functions of society, and centralizing control of those functions within a large government apparatus that controls all those different functions, rather than letting those functions be done in the private sector, or by free individuals and organizations in society. Socialists claimed to do this in the name of a more equitable and fair society. For example, instead of having a free market where customers freely choose what they want to purchase or not purchase, and the businesses providing those products and services, and privately deciding what direction to take their businesses to best meet customer needs and demands, the state takes over those functions, either by nationalizing business sectors to bring them under the state’s control, or by putting private businesses under the control of government officials, both direction which take the power of business and puts it in the hands of government.
In socialism, you take away many, or most, of the safeguards that protect against tyranny and despotism, because those same safeguards stand in the way of a big centralized government having large amounts of control over their citizens and economy, which is needed for socialism to function the way its proponents believe it should.
What tends to happen is that the socialist ideology creates an excuse to put into place a new framework of government control over its people, a new state apparatus, the same apparatus that allows a leader to take total control – which very quickly can evolve into totalitarianism and despotism. That is what happened with Hitler in Nazi Germany. That is what happened with Mussolini in Fascist Italy. And that is what has happened lately in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro – electing socialist leaders allowed those leaders to strip the safeguards that protected their country’s citizens against tyranny and despotism by their government, because those same safeguards hindered the type of large and powerful centralized government that is key to practicing socialist policies. And the tyrannical leaders just took off from there.
Many advocates of socialism in the west, including in my own country of the United States, tend to separate Chavez and Maduro from socialism, and just look at them as evil despotic tyrants. They say that we cannot look at those two men that were and are in control of Venezuela as the epitome of socialism, because socialism is completely different than what those two men represent. But that separation in people’s minds is incorrect, in fact, is terribly naïve, because it leads people to end up going down the same path that leads to tyranny, the same path most recently gone down by Venezuela, which is what you are doing when you support socialism.
You may not think tyranny and despotism will happen to you, but you are setting yourself up, setting up the structures that leads to tyranny, and dismantling the safeguards that protect against tyranny, when you support socialism. You may call it democratic socialism, but you’re talking about the very same policy ideas and government structure that played themselves out in the past as national socialism and international socialism, that is, fascism and communism.
Take our own government here in the United States. Consider the way our government is set up. We have many safeguards that were deliberately put in place with the intention of protecting us against abuse of power, and one person or group of people having too much power. We divide our power into three branches, that each serve as a check and balance of power on each other. We created a constitution that was about putting into code the rules of government, which was, most importantly, about limiting the size of government, and limiting the amount of control it has over our lives. These are just two of many safeguards that we have in place. In order for socialist policies to be installed, we would have to take away those protections against abuse of power, and in so doing, we would be setting ourselves up for a powerful person at the top of the political ladder to give themselves unlimited power “for the sake of socialism.” In this regard, socialism, if brought to fruition in our country, could lead to tyranny, just like it led to tyranny in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the past, and in Socialist Venezuela today.
Socialism’s Connection to Fascism
Now that I’ve talked about one aspect of the connection between socialism and fascism, and how democratic socialism fits into all this, let’s go back in time and give you some more facts to help you see the historical connections that fascism had with socialism.
Fascist Italy and Mussolini
Where did the word “fascism” come from? We can trace the word back to Benito Mussolini, the leader of Fascist Italy, who coined the term to be used in place of “national socialism.” From that standpoint, we can see that there is a connection between what we historically called fascism, and what we today call socialism.
Even more, Mussolini had always been an advocate and propagandist for socialism. His political leanings came from the political left, not the political right. For years, before Mussolini pushed national socialism, which he called fascism, he was a pusher of international socialism. He spent years crusading against the principles of what we call classical liberalism and capitalism in order to lay the ideological groundwork for his type of socialism, which he branded as “fascism.”
In fact, as part of his strategy to propagandize and push fascism, he wrote a book, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions. Among the other leftist things he said in the book, he wrote that “The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. . . . It is opposed to classical liberalism . . . [which] denied the State in the name of the individual” You can see from this quote that he was a pusher of big government, something pushed by the political left, and was opposed to classical liberalism, which is a set of freedoms endorsed by the political right and opposed by the political left.
If that wasn’t enough, let me give you another quote by Mussolini: “The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature’s plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice the individual.” I don’t know about you, but to me, this quote suggests that individuals, within the ideology of fascism, just like as in today’s socialism, should not be given freedom and liberty, where they can freely choose what to do with their life, and what direction they should take their life, but should only be looked at as subjects of the state, which the powerful elite that control it can use for their own purposes. It sounds like something straight out of the political left, not the right.
Mussolini went on to harshly denounce capitalism and free markets. He believed that fascism was a reaction against the materialistic concept of happiness and implored his audiences to reject 18th century economic literature, most likely referring to Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations.
Both today’s socialism, and yesterday’s fascism, advocated for pervasive government planning of the economy and society. Mussolini promised, because he actually believed, that centralized government planning would “introduce order in the economic field,” as opposed to the supposed “chaos” of capitalism. He worked to nationalize as many business sectors as he possibly could, and those businesses that weren’t nationalized were put under the control of government regulatory agencies that dictated orders to all businesses and all industries, rather than let them self-determine their own directions based on meeting their customer needs. Even the labor unions were brought under complete state control. All of this was, in the minds of fascist leaders, about getting rid of the “chaos,” and put everything under the control of governmental “coordination.” Remember, the goals achieved by Mussolini’s regime were the same as the goals wanted by today’s socialists – government control of the means of production. And government control means that taxpayers foot the bill by paying high levels of taxes.
And it goes on. One of the propagandists for Italian fascism was an apologist by the name of Fausto Pitigliani. He said: “The function of private enterprise is assessed from the standpoint of public interest, and hence an owner or director of a business undertaking is responsible before the State for his production policy.” In other words, once again, businesses and industries weren’t free to determine their own directions in order to best meet their customers’ needs, but instead the elite that ran the state controlled what direction a business would take, based on their own ideas of what the public interest was.
Italian writer Gaetano Salvemini documented early fascism in Italy meticulously in his book, Under the Axe of Fascism, where he points out that “In December 1932 a fascist financial expert . . . estimated that more than 8.5 billion Lira had been paid out by the government from 1923 to 1932 in order to help depressed industries. From December 1932 to 1935 the outlay must have doubled.” What he was saying is that the massive amounts of government regulation and taxpayer bailouts of failing favored industries that was done under Italian fascism meant that it, like any other form of socialism, became an economic failure, where government expenditures far outdid tax revenues, even when taxes were already sky high.
Okay, so enough about Fascist Italy. Let’s move onto Nazi Germany, and its form of fascism.
Nazi Germany and Hitler
So, Nazi Germany is today, according to the left, the epitome of what fascism was, although Hitler never referred to the Nazis as fascist, but as national socialists. When people on the political left today compare right-leaning politicians to the Nazi Germans, what they’re trying to do is to prove that there’s a connection between today’s political right and historical fascism. But there’s a big problem with this supposed connection. It’s totally incorrect. It’s a falsity if ever there was one.
For starters, where do you think the name NAZI came from? It was basically a shorthand for the German-language acronym of their political party, which in English would be translated as the National Socialist German Workers Party. Obviously, it was a political party that represented a form of socialism.
German fascists, just like the Italian Fascists and the Soviet Communists, waged a relentless and never-ending propaganda campaign against classical liberal values and capitalism. They also opposed constitutionalism and parliamentarianism. They looked at classical liberal values, including the ideas of individualism and individual freedoms as outdated, old-fashioned, and archaic – this included the ideas promoted by Adam Smith and John Locke.
For example, Hitler wrote in his Mein Kampf: “The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. . . . He willingly subordinates his own ego to the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.” Think about what Hitler was saying here – he was saying that the state wasn’t an apparatus to protect our individual freedoms and rights, which allows for individualism; he was saying that it should be the other way around, and individuals are subjects of the state, basically an apparatus to allow the state, that is, the elite that control the state, to do their bidding. In Hitler’s philosophy, the individual didn’t have any rights, but only duties to the state.
If you looked at the Official 25-Point Program of the Nazi Party, published in 1925, you would find that it laid out what those duties were. To make a long story short, individual activities would only be accepted if they worked towards the “common good,” and Hitler, as head of the political elite, would decide for all of Germany what that “common good” was. The same idea played out in Soviet Russia, where Stalin, as head of his country’s political elite, would decide what was in the “common good” for his country. And Mussolini would decide that “common good” for Italy. Of course, what did these men, these leaders of their respective countries, the political elite, decide was in their common interest? To go to war against those who they saw as a threat to their “common good.” And what was a threat to their “common good?” Any person or group or nation they saw as a threat to maintaining their own political power.
Another thing that the Nazi Program called for was the socialization of all land without any compensation. They called for the “abolition of unearned incomes,” and the “nationalization of all associated industries.” They called for education of children at state expense, and turned schools into national socialist indoctrination academies. They created a scapegoat with the Jews, who were singled out as personifying the hated and despised capitalist system that the Nazis wanted to destroy, which, of course, evolved until the Jews were looked at as the end-all-be-all reason behind all of their country’s problems, many of which were caused by the Nazi’s socialist policies themselves.
The Nazi’s also had other demands within their program. Besides their “abolition of unearned incomes,” they also called for the “breaking of debt slavery,” the “nationalization of all associated industries,” and an “expansion of old age welfare on a large scale.” The schools were brought into the picture, as the German leaders saw the schools as a way to indoctrinate children into their socialist ideology “as early as the beginning of understanding.”
They needed the media, such as radio and movies and newspapers in their time period, to be used for pushing their propaganda, and to stop all opposition to their system of socialism – they didn’t want what they called “known lies,” that is, the truth of what fascism was, to be spread, so they put the media under strict government control to suppress and stop that opposition.
Here’s another thing: a lot of the prominent people who took charge of the Nazi party in the early 1930’s came out of international socialist, or communist, backgrounds. The common characteristic of German journalists who supported the Nazi party was that they opposed classical liberalism and were anti-capitalist, just like many people on today’s political far left are.
According to the economist Hayek, the Germans, under Nazi control, nationalized about half of the German economy, and then took effective control of the rest of it through extensive and pervasive regulation and regimentation of all industry and agriculture, just as Italy had done under Mussolini, something that we might also refer to as “crony capitalism.”
So, Let’s Sum It All Up
Fascism, as with any form of socialism, is really, at its core, an attack on classical liberalism, the philosophy that underpins capitalism, as well as being an attack on capitalism itself. According to Mises, the principle features of classical liberal values include property rights, freedom, peace, equality under the law, acceptance of the inequality of income and wealth based on the reality of human uniqueness, limited constitutional government, and tolerance – these are all things that are important in modern societies.
We should recognize that human beings own themselves, and should not be owned by anyone else, and especially not by the government. If this were not the case, then why is human history chock full of slaves trying to revolt from their masters and trying to bring freedom for themselves? We definitely should not be viewed as pawns in a political chess game operated by the political elite for their own selfish purposes. All forms of socialism, including fascism, believes exactly the opposite, and don’t look at individuals as free to choose their own directions in life, but instead look at them as subjects of the state, or pawns of the political elite, which the state can use for their own purposes.
If I were to make a comparison here, classical liberalism spells individualism, and lots of liberties and freedoms, while fascism spells big government with lots of control of your life, with little amounts of liberties and freedoms.
Italian and German Fascism nationalized many of their industries, just like many of today’s socialists want. The ones that weren’t nationalized were heavily regulated and regimented to serve “in the best interests of the nation as a whole,” as defined by the elite that ran government, just like the “crony capitalism” pushed by today’s big government proponents. The powerful elite that controlled the government used their power and control for their own purposes, rather than let individual people, and the market, determine their own best interests. In other words, yesteryear’s fascists practiced the very policies that today’s “socialists” want to practice.
Today’s socialists, like yesterday’s fascists, both hold that individuals must serve “the community” as defined by the state. This is quite the opposite of classical liberalism, and today’s political conservatives, which look at the state as an apparatus that is designed and intended to protect the individual’s liberties and freedoms.
All forms of socialism, just like the form known as fascism, tolerate no opposition, destroys any political competition, and seems to be at continual war with individuals, families, private organizations, religious institutions, businesses and industries, and local and state governments that oppose their big government agenda, or of which interfere in the imposing vision pushed by the political elite for how to order society. Socialists today, just like fascists in the past, believe in total control of society at all levels, and they want to control you. Where’s the freedom in that?
