http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/fascism.html

excerpts:

| 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.
. . .

| 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.
. . .

| 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.

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

| 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.”
. . .

| 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 by
| the 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.
. . .

| Historically fascism was essentially nationalist. Structurally it
| was always something of a coalition.
| … 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.
| … These two systems can be described as
|
| [***] clerical conservatism and
|
| [***] dynamic fascism.
|
| Every fascist movement was compounded of
| these two elements in varying proportions …
. . .

| 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).
. . .

| 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.
. . .

| 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
. . .

| 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 it was in
| Germany that the fascist dictatorship was most complete. In Spain
| there was no social basis for fascism.
. . .

| Western New England College
| All pages © 1998 Gerhard Rempel.