Fascism: Left, Right, or Neither?

• Author: Gindler, Allen

What is the place of fascism in the spectrum of political doctrines? At present, there is no consensus among political scientists and economists, and the question has been extraordinarily politicized and distorted amid ideological battles. From the very beginning, fascism was depicted by Marxists as belonging to the Right, while Fascists themselves wanted to build a society that transcends the Left-Right paradigm. However, few voices in academia have noted that practical implementation of the Fascists' ideas, inherited from the works of revolutionary and national syndicalists, exhibited predominantly leftist characteristics.

How should we situate fascism? This article does not claim to be an exhaustive analysis of fascism nor a detailed overview of existing approaches. The conclusions drawn are based on my earlier work on the theory of the political spectrum and on the works of other social scientists. I agree with scholars who consider genuine fascism a phenomenon that has received a deep theoretical basis inside the Franco-Italian cultural complex (Sternhell, Sznajder, and Asheri 1994) and a practical embodiment precisely in Mussolini's Italy. Any other imitations of the Italian fascist state in Europe should not be considered real fascism or a generic pan-European phenomenon (de Felice [1969] 1977; Gentile 2002). Moreover, German National Socialism is not congruent to Italian fascism, regardless of their seeming similarity (Bracher 1970; Sternhell, Sznajder, and Asheri 1994; Pipes 1999; Gottfried 2016). The article is limited to the question of assigning Italian fascism its proper place on the political spectrum. Doing so will determine whether fascism is a unique and independent phenomenon, merely a flavor of the socialist movement, or a logical development of imperialism--the highest and decaying stage of capitalism, according to Lenin (Lenin 1963 [1917]).

The fascist regime was established in 1922 in Italy and lasted twenty-three years, through the end of World War II in 1945. (1) Although it was short-lived from a historical perspective, its basic ideology and practice have confounded political scientists until the present day. There is no consensus among various political and academic circles (sociological, historical, and economic) regarding its place on the political spectrum. Fascism has become the most controversial politico-economic doctrine, and no answer has yet been found that satisfies all interested parties.

The reason is that fascism was theoretically conceived as a compromise between liberal capitalism and socialism and, as such, was deemed to possess the properties of both doctrines. One of the disputing parties exaggerates the features of individualism in fascism and asserts that it belongs to the reactionary form of capitalism. Another sees the features of collectivism and classifies fascism as a kind of socialism. Finally, the third argues that fascism occupies its own unique niche on the political spectrum: it is neither on the left nor the right.

The study of fascism has rarely been able to free itself from ideological shackles and prejudiced attitudes. The problem of fascism, instead of being simplified, was artificially overcomplicated. Constantin Iordachi pointed out, "Paradoxically, however, the extraordinary proliferation of fascist studies seemed to bring more confusion than light to the field, throwing it into a state of perpetual crisis" (2010, 12). When an issue has been in constant crisis for over a century, it must be admitted that either honest mistakes were made in the study, or steps were taken by some stakeholders to obscure the search for truth.

The unprecedented ambiguity in defining and understanding fascism was, first of all, the result of vicious interspecific struggles among different socialist currents. In particular, the initial response to the phenomenon of fascism predictably came from the communist camp in the interwar period, which also marked the beginning of the direct and thoughtful falsification of the nature of genuine fascism.

Bolsheviks insisted that fascism did not dismantle a capitalist state. They asserted that fascism was the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie, which had captured the state's machinery. The Marxist-Leninist arguments were as follows: The fascist core consisted of former social-chauvinists, reformists, and revisionists, who, in Lenin's words, "went to the right" and therefore were agents of the petty bourgeoisie. It follows, then, that fascism is a counterrevolution organized by this reactionary class stratum. Trotsky stated, "Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the uprising of the Italian proletariat" (1932, 7).

However, the identification of fascism with the petty bourgeois counterrevolution turned out to be a rather unconvincing and to some extent emotional explanation. Indeed, as a subclass that did not receive due attention in Marxism--except that it had to disappear from the face of the earth because of its tendency to concentrate capital--could it arrange a counterrevolution? Surely other more powerful and understandable forces described by Marxism had to be involved.

Of course, the Marxist ideologues immediately found such counterrevolutionary forces. Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov asserted that "fascism in power was ... the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital." Furthermore, he stated, "Fascism is the power of finance capital itself" (1935). The communist camp began discrediting fascism on several fronts. They did not accept a mass character of the fascist movement; they described bourgeoisie of all ranks as a driving force of the fascist counterrevolution; they theorized about various forms that fascism could take in different countries and assigned all authoritarian regimes to fascism, except the Soviet one.

Such lines of thought have remained unchanged for years and were reinforced after World War II, as the Soviet Union and Western allies were victors, and the Left had an opportunity to write and rewrite history at will. Marxists tried hard to camouflage the actual features of fascism, producing several conflicting explanations of the phenomenon that all insisted the doctrine has nothing to do with either socialism or the worker movement.

Reverberation of the Marxist approach can be found in many scientific treatises on fascism and its place on the political spectrum that appeared after World War II. The prominent German scholar Ernst Nolte proposed a "fascist minimum" that described fascism as an anti-Marxist and anti-liberalist movement with the aim of totalitarianism. Nolte posited, based on the old Marxist position, that fascism and National Socialism belong on the right, as "counterrevolutionary imitation of the revolutionary Left." His succinct explanation can be found in the catchy slogan: "Without Marxism there is no fascism" (1965, 21).

James Gregor (2009) considered fascism to be left-wing. He interpreted fascism as a convoluted version of Marxism, and their relationship as species belonging to the same genus. Sternhell, Sznajder, and Asheri (1994) argued that fascism was a revision of Marxism and not a variety of Marxism or a consequence of Marxism. Sternhell suggested that fascism transcends the Left-Right paradigm, thus occupying a yet undefined place on the political spectrum. Paul Gottfried considered fascism a phenomenon of the Right. He pointed out, "From the perspective of interwar Europe, however, revolutionary nationalists who favored corporatist economies did not really belong to the Left .... They occupied a different situation as enemies of the Left and particularly the Bolsheviks" (2016, 38).

The libertarian position, especially promoted by the Austrian School of Economics, firmly designated fascism as a genuine socialist doctrine. Ludwig von Mises analyzed two patterns for the realization of socialism. He wrote:

The first pattern (we may call it the Lenin or the Russian pattern) is purely bureaucratic. All plants, shops and farms are formally nationalized (verstaatlicht); they are departments of the government operated by civil servants. Every unit of the apparatus of production stands in the same relation to the superior central organization, as does a local post office to the office of the postmaster general.

The second pattern (we may call it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers (Betriebsfuhrer in the terminology of the Nazi legislation). ([1949] 2008, 717)

At present, fascism is most commonly perceived as an ultra-right ideology in people's minds, mass media, and academia. This is mostly based on outright leftist propaganda and misinterpretation (and even at times misrepresentation) of historical truths. When examining this issue from an academic perspective, there tends to be one-sidedness in the definition of socialism, predominantly from the point of view of materialist philosophy, which excludes fascism from its list of collectivist doctrines.

The question of whether fascism belongs to one or another wing of the political spectrum is based primarily on the solution of two interrelated problems: the method of constructing a political spectrogram and finding the definition of the socialist minimax. The resolution of the first issue will establish the factors influencing the polarization of the political spectrum and its form, dimensions, and axes. Finding the socialist minimax means defining the minimum set of attributes that uniquely define socialism and that encompass the maximum number of leftist doctrines. When the answers to the questions posed are given, it will be possible to assess whether fascism fits the definition of socialism and determine its place on the political...