Fascism

Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. Similar political movements spread across Europe between World War One and World War Two and took several forms such as Nazism and Clerical fascism. Neofascism is generally used to describe post-WWII movements seen to have fascist attributes.

Fascism and other totalitarian regimes

Some historians and theorists regard fascism and "Soviet Communism" (or more specifically, Stalinism) as being similar, lumping them together under the term "totalitarianism". Friedrich Hayek argues that the differences between fascism and totalitarian forms of socialism (see Stalinism) are rhetorical rather than actual. Others see them as being so dissimilar as to be utterly incomparable.

Related Topics:
Soviet - Stalinism - Friedrich Hayek

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According to the libertarian Nolan chart, "fascism" occupies a place on the political spectrum as the capitalist equivalent of communism, wherein a system that supports "economic liberty" is constrained by its social controls such that it becomes totalitarian.

Related Topics:
Libertarian - Nolan chart

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Hannah Arendt and other theorists of totalitarian rule argue that there are similarities between nations under Fascist and Stalinist rule. They condemn both groups as dictatorships and totalitarian police states. For example, both Hitler and Stalin committed the mass murder of millions of their country's civilians who did not fit in with their plans.

Related Topics:
Hannah Arendt - Dictatorship - Police state - Mass murder

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In 1947, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book entitled "Planned Chaos". He asserted that fascism and Nazism were socialist dictatorships and that both had been committed to the Soviet principle of dictatorship and violent oppression of dissenters. He argued that Mussolini's major heresy from Marxist orthodoxy had been his strong endorsement of Italian entry into World War I on the Allied side. (Mussolini aimed to "liberate" Italian-speaking areas under Austrian control in the Alps.) This view contradicts the statements of Mussolini himself (not to mention his socialist opponents), and is generally viewed with skepticism by historians. Critics of von Mises often argue that he was attacking a straw man; in other words, that he changed the definition of "socialism" in his book, for the precise purpose of accommodating fascism and Nazism into it.

Related Topics:
1947 - Austrian - Ludwig von Mises - Alps - Straw man

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Critics of this view point out that Mussolini imprisoned Antonio Gramsci from 1926 until 1934, after Gramsci, a leader of the Italian Communist Party and leading Marxist intellectual, tried to create a common front among the political left and the workers, in order to resist and overthrow fascism. Other Italian Communist leaders like Palmiro Togliatti went into exile and fought for the Republic in Spain.

Related Topics:
Antonio Gramsci - 1926 - 1934 - Italian Communist Party - Common front - Palmiro Togliatti

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The Marxist concept of dictatorship of the proletariat alluded to by Von Mises is not the same as the dictatorship concept employed by fascists, argue proponents of communism. Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to mean workers' democracy, or dictatorship by the working class, rather than dictatorship by the capitalist class. They claim that this concept had been distorted under Stalin to mean dictatorship by the General Secretary over the party and the working class. In this, Stalin deviated from Marx, and therefore it cannot be said that the Stalinist form of government is Marxist. Opponents of Communism, however, argue that the Soviet Union was dictatorial already under Lenin.

Related Topics:
Dictatorship of the proletariat - General Secretary - Lenin

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The fascist economic model of corporatism promoted class collaboration by attempting to bring classes together under the unity of the state, a concept that is anathema to classic socialism.

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The fascist states from the period between the two world wars were police states as were many post-WWII communist states. Conversely, there have been multi-party socialist states that have not been police states, and non-socialist states that have been police states.

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Examples of police states in modern times, outside of the Communist world, include:

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• Afghanistan under the Taliban;
• Brazil under Getulio Vargas (fascism-like state) and also during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1986;
• Burma (Myanmar) under the current military dictatorship;
• Chile under General Augusto Pinochet;
• the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang;
• Iran under the Mohammad Ali Shah, as well as under the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and later on under the Islamic Republic;
• Iraq and Syria under Ba'athist dictatorships;
• South Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, etc. during certain periods of their recent history;