The Origins of Fascism

Fascism made its appearance as a dominant force between 1922 and 1945, with paler reflections coming before 1922 and after 1945. It was essentially the experience of one generation, largely European, but not entirely so. Its orgins are plural, divergent, and imprecise.

I. Questions of Definition

Simply listing some of the movements which made their appearance in this time will make that point rather clearly:

1. Action Francaise (ultra-conservative, secular Catholic French nationalism)

2. Karl Lueger (pan-German, anti-semitic Catholic socialism, largely in Vienna)

3. d'Annunzio (electoral rodomontade in Trieste, influence on Mussolini)

4. military pronunciamientos in Spain

5. Mazini and his "Young Italy"

6. Frankfurt Parliament (Einheit, Freiheit, Macht)

7. Burke and Carlyle.

The latter three are more problematical than the first four examples of fascist ideas and movements. We could add many more examples to this list, and no doubt will as we go along.

Communism is an international doctrine which has gradually been adjusted to differing natinal circumstances. Fascism is the exact opposite: it is a series of non-intellectual, even anti-intellectual national reactions artificially united and transformed into an international doctrine by the facts of power. The history of fascism, as an ideology, is largely the history of this transformation.

II. International Doctrine

1. The liberal breakthrough of the mid-nineteenth century generated the intellectual raw material of fascism. Liberalism was largely the work of the educated middle classes.

2. The old elites of Europe (aristocracy, landlords, churches) nursed their wounds and meditated revenge ont he upstart bourgeoisie.

3. Many of the fascist ideas were simply absurd archaisms, eg. the racist theories of Gobineau, who sought to preserve the hierarchical principle by associating it with a Teutonic master race.

4. No one could have predicted that the heraldic archaisms of Young England, the hierarchical clericalism of Pius IX, the anti-semitism of Gougenot de Mousseaux, the racialism of Gobineau would become part of a 20th century myth which would nearly conquer the world.

5. But circumstances would change. The bourgeois triumph would become a bourgeois retreat. That same European bourgeoisie, which had been liberal in its days of triumph, would, in its days of retreat, borrow and reanimate these phantoms generated byt he retreating forces of an older regime.

6. Some political thinkers did indeed foresee the future:

Lord Acton predicted that the organic structure of society would become impatient with continuous laissez faire. Jacob Burckhardt believed that the liberal, democratic juggernaut was leading to disaster and would in the end be overtaken by very illiberal, undemocratic drivers who alone would be able to steer it. And these new masters, unlike the old ruling dynasties, would be Gewaltmenschen, terrible simplifiers who would "rule with utter brutality." Burckhardt even predicted that this brutal tyranny would first appear in industrial Germany.

7. In the 1890s Burckhardt seemed an unduly pessimistic Cassandra. ...

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6. Some political thinkers did indeed foresee the future:

7. In the 1890s Burckhardt seemed an unduly pessimistic Cassandra. In 1918 the Cassandra had become a prophet - the economic foundations of liberalism had begun to crack.

8. In 1917 the Russian Revolution had broken out. From 1917 to 1923 the Russian Communists preached not socialism in one country but world revolution. This was the catalytic force which gathered up the intellectual debris of the Gobineaus and the Gongenots and rearranged it in a new, dynamic pattern. Faced byt he terrible threat of bolshevism, the European middle classes, recently so confident, took fright.

So, fascism as an effective movement was born of fear.

Each stage in the rise of European fascism can be related to a moment of middle-class panic caused either by economic crisis or by its consequences, the threat of socialist revolution.

1. The success of the socialists in the Italian elections of 1919 made Italian fascism a political force.

2. Hitler's Munich Putsch in 1923 came in the year of the great inflation when the communists figured on seizing power in Berlin.

3. Hitler's rise to power in the state followed the great depression of 1929 to 1932.

4. The Spanish Falange was a response to Spanish anarchism. Franco's coup was the response to the electoral victory oft he Popular Front.

European fascism, then, was a political response of the European bourgeoisie to the economic recession after 1918, or more directly tot he political fear caused by that recession. So, above all, it was anti-communist. This anti-communism was one oft he few things that made it international. Other than that and its social base, it was heterogeneous and varied widely from country to country. There were two basic reasons for this heterogeneity. One is historical; the other is structural.

Historically fascism was essentially nationalist. Structurally it was always something of a coalition. Italian fascism and German fascism were necessarily more distinct than Italian communism and German communism would be. Behind the vague term fscism there lie in fact two distinct social and political systems. These are both ideologically based, authoritarian, and anti-parliamentary liberalism. But they are different and the confusion between these essentially different systrems is an esstial factor in the history of fascism. These two systems can be described as clerical conservatism and dynamic fascism. Every fascist movement was compounded of these two elements in varying proportions and the variety of mixtures relates in some degree to the class structure of the society involved.

III. Clerical Conservatism

1. Clerical conservatism was a direct heir of the aristocratic conservatism over which the bourgeoisie triumphed in 19th century. The Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII (1891) gave clerical conservatism its charter.

2. In 1920 the Church everywhere sought to resist socialism and offered the alternative of an ordered, hierarchical, undemocratic, corporative state. This notion of a state found realization in Spain, Portugal, Austria, and Hungary.

3. These countries established clerical conservative states largely because their social structure had not changed very much since the 1890s.

4. In the highly industrialized countries the middle class was not only the effective ruling class but had also absorbed large sections of the other classes. In these countries the landed classes were turned into tributaries of the middle class. The middle class in industrialized countries also drew to itself, largely out oft he working class, a large "lower middle class" (artisans, shopkeepers, petty civil servants, skilled workers).

IV. Dynamic Fascism

The lower middle class, in fact, provided the social force of "dynamic fascism".

The 1890s were the incubatory period of fascism. There were at least three prominant philosophers who became the teachers of this new generation of fascists. The ideas of these teachers were, of course, frequently grossly perverted by their pupils:

1. Georges Sorel: illusions of progress; necessity of violence; utility of myth

2. Vilfredo Pareto: the iron law of oligarchy; perpetuation of the elite

3. Friedrich Nietzsche: idea of the superman as a law unto himself

Thus fascism proper, what we can call dynamic fascism, was a cult of force, contemptuous of religious and traditional ideas, the self-association of an inflamed lower middle class in a weakened industrial society. This is radically different from ideological conservatism, the traditional clerical conservatism of the older regime, now modified and brought up to date fort he 20th century. both are authoritarian and both are hierarchical, but that is were the similarity stops.

The differences were, however, confused by their common front against communism in the 1920s and sometimes the confusion was deliberately designed by the fascists themselves. For instance: Hitler, the fascist, posed as a conservative to get power. General Franco, the conservative, posed as a fascist to get power.

This confusion was exploited by the dictators Hitler and Mussolini: in each case the Catholic Church played a significant and positive role. it did so because with the conservative classes generally it supposed that dynamic fascism could be used as the instrument of clerical conservatism. In each case the calculation proved to be wrong. The Church by its opportunism gave itself not a tool but a master.

Both in Italy and Germany the fascist party moved into power through a similar door. The door was held open for it by the Catholic Church. Like the church, the conservative classes in both Italy and Germany supposed that, by patronizing Mussolini and hitler, they had enlisted mass support for a conservative program. These vulgar demagogues, they thought, could be used to destroy socialism at the grass roots, or rather, in the streets. Then they could be discarded. In fact the reverse happened. It was the conservative patrons and their ideas who were discarded, the vulgar demagogues that survived.

This happened because neither Hitler or Mussolini were interested in being conservative rulers. Both were revolutionaries who relished the possibility of radical power. In both Italy and Germany the fascist dictators saw a basis for that power - the lower middle calss made radical by social fear. Themselves familiar with this class, its aspirations and fears, they believed that they culd mobilize it as a dynamic force int he state and therby realize ambitions unattainable by mere conservative support.

But how was such dynamism to be realized?

1. They could not advocate an internal redistribution of resources because they claimed to represent the whole nation, not just one class.

2. By some improvements and greater efficiency.

3. Most specifically by internal or foreign aggression - the gospels of nationalism and racial superiority lent themselves to this. so we have the spoliation of a social outgroup (the Jews) at home and the conquest of inferior races abroad.

Little by little the conservative classes who had brought the fascist dictators to power found themselves the prisoners of that power. They were imprisoned because that power, in a highly industrialized society, had another, and wider base.

Thus the dynamism of fascism depends directly ont he existrence of a strong industrial middle class and ont he malaise of that class. Germany was more highly industrialized than italy and ti was in Germany that the fascist dictatorship was most complete. In Spain there was no social basis for fascism. After a few fascist utterances, Franco allowed himself to be absorbed into conservative society of which he was really the champion.

Much oft he fascism oft he interwar period was artificial. An artificial odor was temporarily imposed on native conservative movements byt eh example or domination of Germany and Italy.

The extent to which international fascism was really a generalization of the German model by means of German power is illustrated byt he racialism and anti-semitism which is often regarded as an essential feature of it. With the collapse of German power, the unifying force has dissolved and today it is impossible to speak any longer of fascism in a significant way.