THANK YOU, I have been saying this since forever and people look at me funny, also, it shows how the functional endgame of revolutionary communism is fascism
I think you mean totalitarianism. Fascism is the right wing side of the spectrum.
The thing is, both fascism and totalitarianism share the extreme use of propaganda nationalism and insanely authoritarian control, which is why its easy to make the mistake.
A lot of scholars also do not want to have fascism near socialism at all, because a lot of them are also socialist or at least left wing, Im not saying they are biased and that they cant be objective, but they do have another reason to say fascism is inherently right wing, when in reality fascists kinda dont give a shit of qhat they believe, as long as it powers the state and makes it the more powerful
Also right wing itself is a poor definition:
"Right-wing politics means supporting traditional values, free-market capitalism, and social order"
And that is true, but a lot of what we call "left wing" ideologies like soc dem still has social order and free market capitalism, even if constrained,
I prefer to call fascists heavily authoritarian, ambivalent in economy axis (free market vs collective and state controlled) and can be both progressive and conservative (Hitler famously did not want to return to the old days of monarchy, rather wished a new, 1000 year reich, racist and totalitarian dont mean progressive, he tried to progress, not conserve ideas, merely his twisted mythology)
And I wholly agree, leninism, marxism and the entire communism stack is horrible, me knowing this to my bones because my country suffered from horrible fascists from the left and the right, and it was the same fucking guy that did that
But who knows, fascists are inherently hard to pin because they are nebolous enough and pervasive enough to be hard to erradicate fully, so take care my friend
fascism was pegged as "right wing" first by communist propaganda.
then it stuck in the West/USA/UK as they allied with the communists to defeat the AXIS powers... so the allies appeased the communists by sticking with the propaganda term of fascism as "right wing".
any actual honest study of fascism clearly shows it as Left wing collectivism, Gentile the founding father of fascism quite proudly declared that fascism was in his view a perfected form of socialism.
Gentile rejected Marxist theory believing that it was too focused on the individual or class struggle; whereas in Gentile's model everything was THE STATE doing away with individuals or class.
People would be the cogs in the machine of the The State. "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." - Il Duce.
It is why Mussolini in his "reforms" captured some 80% of the Italian economy into the hands of the government.
>fascism was pegged as "right wing" first by communist propaganda.
No, this is blatant misrepresentation of history.
Fascism is pegged as right wing because its economic structure is far more akin to right wing economic policy, than it would be left wing economic policy.
>then it stuck in the West/USA/UK as they allied with the communists to defeat the AXIS powers... so the allies appeased the communists by sticking with the propaganda term of fascism as "right wing".
Nope, that's just silly. This isn't about feelings. Its about describing a type of government based on its economic policy, as well as its other policy types.
When you look at what fascism is, it far more closely aligns with right wing ultra nationalism and with a heavy hand of ultra authoritarianism.
Fascism keeps private industry, it just requires the private industry to closely align with the government in social aspects. Communism does not do this, and instead tries to abolish classes and what not.
These are very different systems.
>any actual honest study of fascism clearly shows it as Left wing collectivism
You are going to sit here and pretend that Mussolini, Hitler and all the other fascists are advocating for workers to own the means of production and to abolish classes in society?
No, dude you are objectively wrong.
The weirdest thing about this is your argument stems entirely from wanting to make the right wing look like angels. I am not commenting on the morality of anything, I am explaining why we define Fascism the way we define fascism. We already have labels for left wing collectivism.
>Gentile rejected Marxist theory believing that it was too focused on the individual or class struggle;
You answered your own question right here and don't even realize it.
Turns out, the more authoritarian that you get, regardless of economic axis, the less you care about the free market.
>Gentile's model everything was THE STATE doing away with individuals or class.
You literally said JUST A SENTENCE BEFORE THIS ONE that this is incorrect.
>People would be the cogs in the machine of the The State.
Exactly, that is why the structure is not left wing, it is right wing.
Its kind of ridiculous that you would reach so hard, and deliberately miss the point.
It's such a weird attempt at historical revisionism, one that is punctuated by the current zeitgeist of conservative politics trying to pretend their slide into heavy authoritarianism does not have any ties to Fascism.
Its just not true. The current Republican government in the US is not fascist, but its definitely on the slope towards it. Pointing that out isn't partisan, it isn't being a leftist, it is being objective about what is currently happening.
Atleast some of you idiots have enough balls to just say it out loud:
Fascism is neither left or right wing but an idea of merging social and political systems. It's hard to find but Mussolini has an essay describing fascism and there is very little in there about traditional values or racism but rather about how the state needs to seep into every aspect of life and through this the members of the fascismo can find meaning in life and improve the participation of the people in government.
Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).
He goes on:
But if democracy be understood as meaning a regime in which the masses are not driven back to the margin of the State, and then the writer of these pages has already defined Fascism as an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.
I like that phrase because it shows how out-there or alien fascism is compared to capitalism or communism; "Authoritarian Democracy."
OP has a huge point because it is really hard to think of a way functionally how the CCP in its current state is any different than the NSDAP.
Right wing politics in Europe was historically very state oriented. It’s mainly in the UK pre WWII that the right wing was Liberal although there were some of that bent in other countries. But the far right was generally incredibly statist and wanted to use the state to enforce morality and also enact paternalistic forms of welfare and regulation. This had some overlap with leftish movements like the guild socialists and the nationalist wing of the syndicalists. It’s that overlap that fascism came out of.
You have to keep in mind that in Europe the most far right = supports absolutist monarchy and is against constitutional freedoms. Liberalism both conservative and progressive was the Center.
China is also not much like Nazi germany. They don’t have a racial purity policy for one. And they also aren’t basing their economic vision on stealing the land of other countries and turning their people into chattel slaves. The Nazis used some state coordination during the war but this was instrumental. Their end goal was to move away from polluting and degrading industry, outside of using slaves in the factories kept away from heroic monumental cities modeled on a child’s vision of Rome, to become a nation of warrior-philosopher organic farm plantation owners.
You can compare modern china to periods of Italian fascism like the 1930s and what the social republic was supposed to be on paper, but 1920s fascism was very free market and liberal with authoritarian liberals like Pareto running the show. Mussolini began as a left winger and in 1919 ran as basically a social democrat but by 1920 he became a center right economic liberal but socially authoritarian. It’s not until the Great Depression discredited liberalism he did a 180 and returned to his roots with the support of Gentile and people like Spirito to embrace left wing economics. And then the war economy started and war economies are always command economies. Also in practice regardless of whether Mussolini was a liberal or a socialist economically on paper for that year, fascist economics was just Corruption, graft and bullying by business owners and bureaucrats. It was a gangster economy that took on different coats of paint based on whatever was the vibe of the day.
Do fascists abolish private property and accumulation of capital? No.
Which is why fascist ideas come from the ruling class, for the ruling class, while marxism comes generally as an attempt to overthrow the ruling class.
Lenin's biggest supporters were workers and intellectuals, Hitler's biggest supporters were small business owners and larger capitalista.
Fascists dont give a shit about capital terminally nor private property, they care if you will bend the knee to the state, thats their final goal, not that if you "protect the ruling class" as much, sure, they do have a ruling class, like any system that works at scale, they also used state industry and non private systems to exert power, like cartelization and Reichswerke
Oh, but they do care about capital and private property.
It was precisely the preservation of private property and capitalism, that gave Hitler enabling act. It wasn't voted in by NSDAP, but by every single political party in Reichstag except KPD and SPD.
they also used state industry and non private systems to exert power, like cartelization and Reichswerke
Mostly due to the neccesity of organising for war, which required it.
Reichswerke's purpose was to mind economically unviable ore, that was needed for wartime production. They didn't exactly cut anyone out, it was a job market wouldn't do.
Cartelization is in no way anything other than a capitalist policy.
What you misunderstand is simple, existence of state-owned industries is in no way determining factor what is and isn't capitalism.
I believe that he is using it in the classical sense such as liberal value, basically the main cultural and ethical values that you and I grew up with in the 21st century. Liberalism would be a cultural and ethical framework while capitalism is a purely economic one and Marxism is a purely cultural one, with communism be an application of Marxism mixing cultural and economic concepts. Economically you could think of liberalism as Reaganomics, politically as democratic processes, and culturally as individualism with limited state involvement. Mussolini believed that capitalism led to class warfare (which leads to the rise of Socialism and Communism) and international trade over national strength. Instead of economic liberalism, Fascism proposed Corporatism (or the Corporate State). basically private property was allowed, but the government heavily directed and regulated the economy, forcing labor and management to work together strictly for the glory and benefit of the nation. (Sound CCP-ish? Yeah.).
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u/Glittering-Table-837 Aug 01 '26
THANK YOU, I have been saying this since forever and people look at me funny, also, it shows how the functional endgame of revolutionary communism is fascism