The Mystery of Fascism. (A long but interesting read.)

Libertarian Alliance ^ | 20 Oct 03 | by David Ramsay Steele

[.cnI redruM]

Mussolini - as he would like to have been remembered

You're the top! You're the Great Houdini! You're the top! You are Mussolini! (1)

Soon after he arrived in Switzerland in 1902, 18 years old and looking for work, Benito Mussolini was starving and penniless. All he had in his pockets was a cheap nickel medallion of Karl Marx.

Following a spell of vagrancy, Mussolini found a job as a bricklayer and union organizer in the city of Lausanne. Quickly achieving fame as an agitator among the Italian migratory laborers, he was referred to by a local Italian-language newspaper as "the great duce [leader] of the Italian socialists." He read voraciously, learned several foreign languages, (2) and sat in on Pareto's lectures at the university.

The great duce's fame was so far purely parochial. Upon his return to Italy, young Benito was an undistinguished member of the Socialist Party. He began to edit his own little paper, La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle), ferociously anti-capitalist, anti-militarist, and anti-Catholic. He took seriously Marx's dictum that the working class has no country, and vigorously opposed the Italian military intervention in Libya. Jailed several times for involvement in strikes and anti-war protests, he became something of a leftist hero. Before turning 30, Mussolini was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, and made editor of its daily paper, Avanti! The paper's circulation and Mussolini's personal popularity grew by leaps and bounds.

[.cnI redruM]

Fascists are just another offshoot of Marx.

[sirshackleton]

Read that earlier today. Excellent article.

[Eva]

While it is true that fascism is just an evolution of Marxism, it is also true that the New Third Way, touted by the Clintons, Tony Blair and many of their European allies, is yet another evolutionary re-incarnation of Musollini's Third Way. The only real difference between the New Third Way and the old one is that the new Third Wayers use the cult of the environment in place of nationalism to unify and stir emotional support for their socialistic, statist beliefs.

[hedgetrimmer]

Don't forget communitarianism, for which Karl Rove is a staunch supporter.

Communitarian management of the North Sea fisheries is the reason the cod fisheries are collapsing right now, FYI. Any time you have a communistic management of anything, it will destroy itself over time.

[kitkat]

BUMP

[keithtoo]

Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Amin, Qhaddafi, Hussein, Ho Chi Min, Castro, Ceacescue (sp?), Milsovic, Kim Jong Il, - All Blood-Dripping Socialists

Of course the sorcerer's apprentice, Hillary is ready and waiting for her turn.

[marron]

How can a movement which epitomizes the extreme right be so strongly rooted in the extreme left?

That comes out of a misunderstanding about what constitutes left and right. Communism and Fascism are two sides of a single coin. The differences are minor, primarily in that "left" fascism was subservient to Moscow and was therefore the good kind, and "right" fascism was independent and therefore evil.

Left fascism proclaimed itself to be internationalist, whereas "right" fascism used nationalism as a part of its driving force, although as the article pointed out, both had elements of nationalism and internationalism in approximately equivalent proportions. The Marxists ran industry directly as a government entity, while the Fascists ran industry while leaving it nominally in the hands of its private owners. But in neither case was free enterprise permitted in the basic industries.

Much of what we call socialist government in the modern world probably has more in common with the fascist model than it does with the Stalinist model, but the differences get pretty abstract.

The problem comes when we try to picture ourselves as being somewhere centered on this left-right continuum between the two, Marxism and Fascism. The idea that US Republicanism is somewhere just right of center between Marx and Mussolini, while the Democrats are somewhere just left of center between the two, is fallacious, and contributes to much of the misunderstanding as to who we are. It even confuses some of our own people, and it causes arguments in which the two sides of the argument talk past each other, without actually talking to one another.

Modern US conservatism is rooted in classic liberalism, which promotes individual liberty, limited government, property rights, and so forth. Classic liberalism, modern US conservatism, has nothing to do with the two great collectivist philosophies, it is something completely separate. We are not on the continuum between two collectivist theories because we are not collectivists. We are on our own continuum, the Burkeans, the Jeffersonians, the Hayekians, the Lockeans, the Randians. We vary according to the level of respect for traditional institutions, for religion, for democratic compromise. We vary on some issues of foreign policy, some preferring a more proactive policy and some tending toward isolationism. But we are none of us collectivists, therefore we are none of us either left or right. The model doesn't apply.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>Classic liberalism, modern US conservatism, has nothing to do with the two great collectivist philosophies, it is something completely separate.

True, but we'd get pilloried if we declared ourselves a bunch of radicals.

[expatpat]

He took seriously Marx's dictum that the working class has no country......

Now we now why the socialists are so unpatriotic, and why Clinton gave China technical assistance.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>>>He took seriously Marx's dictum that the working class has no country......

No, in general, the working classes are as patriotic as it gets. Particularly, in the US. It's the elitists and multilateralists who are 'above jingoism' to the point that they sell nuclear weapons to the largest and best armed fascist regime on the planet.

[Truth666]

"In October and November 1914, Mussolini switched to a pro-war position."
This is the first key issue. The article ignores it.

[Truth666]

Same thing a few lines later : "In 1917 he was seriously wounded and hospitalized, emerging from the war the most popular of the pro-war socialists" - ignoring why

[.cnI redruM]

Christopher Hitchens made the same progression in 2001. It will hardly win him a fellowship at The Heritage Foundation. Mao Tse Tung was exceedingly pro-war. So much so that both Stalin and Hochiminh garrisoned their borders against the man. Bellicosity for the sake of bellicosity does not, in and of itself, make anyone less left wing.

[what's up]

Super long article, and too much to absorb, but I did find it interesting to read that Marxism reached a crisis in the 1890's because they found that capitalism was actually working.

It seems that is when they switched their model to a more totalitarian type.

[r9etb]

Communitarian management of the North Sea fisheries is the reason the cod fisheries are collapsing right now, FYI. Any time you have a communistic management of anything, it will destroy itself over time.

Gee, and all this time I thought it was people with fishing nets....

[Truth666]

I agree, but my question is different : why did he switch ?

[expatpat]

You misunderstood my point: I wasn't agreeing with Marx' dictum, but pointing out that socialists believe in it and practice it. (But you are right that most Western socialists are from the intellectual 'elite', not the workers -- the former have no common-sense.)

[StriperSniper]

Bump for later.

[Maelstrom]

Been tryin' to tell you guys this for about a year now.

Yes, Fascism evolved from Socialism.

This article showed up here about a year ago. Freepers are on top of this.

[Maelstrom]

This is true of all socialists excepting only those in Asia, and even then the heads of the socialists *used* the intellectual 'elite' in the form of students to achieve their goals.