Modern Socialists proudly boast about being anti fascist. Groups like the International Socialist League, ANTIFA and the Democratic Socialists of America regularly warn of a rise of fascism and treat it like the ultimate enemy that must be vanquished at all costs.
This is done by design, of course. Few words are as negative as fascist; the horrors of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy are forever etched in the world’s memory for understandable reasons.
The triumph of the Socialist Soviet Union over Nazi Germany created the perception that socialism was indeed the antithesis of fascism. Since Stalin, socialists have used the evils of fascism to advance their popularity – if socialism is anti-fascist, then socialism must be good, right?
This narrative was effective in manipulating thousands across the West into becoming proud socialists. Unaware of the truth, they basked in their moral superiority, convinced they were on the right side of history.
The truth, however, is that socialism is not anti fascist at all. On the contrary, fascism has always been a form of socialism.
Benito Mussolini, the architect of fascism, used socialism as a foundation to create fascism. In his book, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Mussolini wrote that “The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. . . . It is opposed to classical liberalism . . . (which) denied the State in the name of the individual.”
The National Socialism used by fascists like Mussolini allowed private business to survive as long as it was directed by government subsidies and policy, a form of socialist control more commonly known as “crony capitalism,” where government rewards its political friends rather than allowing the operation of a free market.”
Similar to Marx in “The Communist Manifesto,” in his 1928 autobiography, Mussolini bemoaned liberal capitalism, stating that “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.”
Later on, in a 1945 speech in Milan, six days before his death, Mussolini described his fascist movement as follows: “In this case, there can be no doubt: we are the working class in struggle for life and death, against capitalism. We are the revolutionaries in search of a new order. If this is so, to invoke help from the bourgeoisie by waving the red peril is an absurdity.”
Sounds familiar, right?
Under Mussolini, Italy nationalised many, but not all, industries. They allowed a much larger degree of private property than the Soviet socialists did. However, said private business was heavily regulated, so it operated in the interests of the fascist government. The Italian state nationalised bankrupt corporations, increased government spending, increased the money supply, and boosted deficits.
By 1934, one Italian in five worked for the government. On May 26th, 1934, in a speech, Mussolini stated, “Three-fourths of [the] Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state.”(Gianni Toniolo, 2013). By 1939, Italy had the highest rate of state-owned enterprises in the world, aside from the Soviet Union. (Patricia Knight, 2003).
In 1943, after being rescued by the Nazis, Mussolini led the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in which he proposed additional “economic socialisation.”(Denis Mack Smith, 1982). In February 1944, Mussolini’s government created a “socialisation law” that called for more industries to be nationalised under government control. (Stephen J. Lee, 2016).
German National Socialism:
The word “Nazi” is arguably the word with the greatest negative connotations in the Western World. The Holocaust, the brutal occupations, the invasions of neighbouring countries – the atrocities the Nazis committed are innumerable and etched in our minds forever. The world order that rose from the ashes of the Second World War was created in part with the goal that Nazi ideology or something similar could never rise again.
Yet the one aspect of the Nazis that has curiously escaped common knowledge was their socialist ideology, even though “Nazi” literally stands for “National Socialism. People argue that because the Nazis killed other socialists, they couldn’t possibly be socialist, but this is simply false. Lenin killed communist rivals like the Mensheviks, communist Pol Pot was overthrown by communist Vietnam, and communist China’s greatest rival during the late 20th century was the Soviet Union. The idea that followers of totalitarian ideologies like socialism or communism don’t kill each other in pursuit of power is simply false.
The other belief is that because the Nazis and the Soviets were enemies and the Soviets were far left socialists, the Nazis had to be the opposite. This childlike assumption is also false because it ignores the real reasons why the Nazis and the Soviets hated each other, and it’s not their shared socialist views.
The Nazis were extreme nationalists, while the Soviets were internationalists. The Nazis believed in racial superiority and believed that Slavs – an ethnic group that comprised two-thirds of the Soviet Union – were inferior to the “Aryan race.” Both had expansionist goals at the expense of the other – the Nazis wanted lebensraum (living space) in the lands of the Soviet Union while the Soviet Union wanted to impose communist rule worldwide.
Yet these clashing ideologies and goals do not at all contradict the shared socialist beliefs of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The former of which I will now discuss.
Nazism believed that the individual citizen must serve the community, also known as the state. Hitler himself wrote this in Mein Kampf, “The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. . . . He willingly subordinates his own ego to the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.” This socialist belief in sacrificing personal liberty for serving the state was the ideology of the Nazis, highlighted by the slogan, “The Common Good Comes before the Private Good.”
The Official 25-Point Program of the Nazi Party, published in 1925, detailed this further. It explained that “the activities of the individual must not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the community and must be for the general good.”
Naturally, Hitler would decide what was the “greater good,” just as Mussolini would do the same for Italians, Stalin would do for the Soviets, and later Mao would do for the Chinese.
The Nazi Program also called for “ruthless war upon all those whose activities are injurious to the common interest.” This included “usurers” and “profiteers” who “must be punished with death.” It sounds no different to many modern-day socialists celebrating the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson.
The Nazi Program condemned private banking by calling for “the abolition of the slavery of interest” and called for the socialisation of land “without compensation” and the “prohibition of all speculation in land.” Another mirror image of what socialist Zimbabwe would later do in taking land from farmers without compensation.
Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda and one of Hitler’s right-hand men, was very clear about the socialist roots in Nazi ideology:
“We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists.”
– Der Angriff editorial, May 27, 1929
“Socialism is the ideology of the future.” – Letter to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow as quoted in Goebbels: A Biography
“The bourgeoisie has to yield to the working class … Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers’ victory over filthy lucre. That is socialism.” – Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, Ralf Georg Reuth, 1992
“We are socialists, because we see in socialism, that means, in the fateful dependence of all folk comrades upon each other, the sole possibility for the preservation of our racial genetics and thus the re-conquest of our political freedom and for the rejuvenation of the German state.” – Why We Are Socialists? Der Angriff (The Attack), July 16, 1928
While in power, the Nazis would put these socialist beliefs into practice. The Nazis reorganised industries into corporations directly controlled by the Nazi Party. Economic historian Peter Temin writes about this in Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning. Peter notes that,” The Nazis reorganised industry into 13 administrative groups with a larger number of subgroups to create a private hierarchy for state control. The state could therefore direct a firm’s activities without acquiring direct ownership of enterprises. The pre-existing tendency to form cartels was encouraged to eliminate competition that would destabilise prices.”
The Nazis called this process privatisation, but in practice, it saw the owners of large corporations become Nazi party members. Either the corporations were bought out or board members were forcibly removed and replaced by Nazi party members.
One significant example of this was the IG Farben and the Junkers aeroplane factory. IG Farben was a chemical company created in 1925 by Carl Bosch and Carl Duisberg, who were both Jewish. The company had a capitalisation of around a billion marks by 1926. By 1938, all of the company’s Jewish workers had been removed, and the Nazis had replaced the supervisory board.
We see other socialist policies enacted during the Nazis’ rule as well. In 1936, the Nazis enacted price and wage controls. This was done to manage the inflation that the Nazis utilised in 1933 to rearm and dramatically increase the size and scope of the state. Naturally, shortages of basic goods would follow, but the Nazis cared little.
Economist historian Friedrich Hayek claimed, in an essay titled “Nazi-Socialism,” from his book “The Road to Serfdom”, that “The socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognised.” Hayek claims that the Nazis nationalised around 50% of the German economy, then controlled the rest of it through substantial regulation and regulation.
Despite being ideological adversaries, fascism and communism share one striking similarity. In practice, both fascism and communism will create a bureaucratic and dominating state that will impose itself on every aspect of the country it is implemented. Directly or indirectly, that state will do all it can to control the economy and erode personal liberty.
The reason for this similarity is that both fascism and communism are forms of socialism. In all its forms, socialism will ban opposition, attack personal liberties and take as much control of society as it possibly can.
Fascism is a form of socialism; the idea that fascism is some offshoot of capitalism could not be further from the truth.
This article was submitted anonymously.
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(Photograph: Tim Sheerman-Chase, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
References:
Jeffrey Herbener, “The Vampire Economy: Italy, Germany, and the US,” Mises Institute, October 13, 2005.
George Seldes, “The Fascist Road to Ruin: Why Italy Plans the Rape of Ethiopia,” The American League Against War and Fascism, 1935.
Gianni Toniolo, editor, The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification, Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 59; Mussolini’s speech on May 26, 1934.
Patricia Knight, Mussolini and Fascism (Questions and Analysis in History), New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 65.
Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography, New York: NY, Vintage Books, page 13, 1982
Stephen J. Lee, European Dictatorships, p. 171-172, 2016.
Goebels quotes –
Tepes, V. (2024, September 4). ‘Right-Wing Nazi’: The greatest lie of the 20th century. RAIR Foundation. https://rairfoundation.com/right-wing-nazi-greatest-lie-20th-century/
Temin, P. (1991). Soviet and Nazi economic planning in the 1930s. Economic History Review, 44(4), 573–593.
Kennedy, J. (2022, July 5). Yes, they were socialists: How the Nazis waged war on private property. Mises Institute. https://mises.org/mises-wire/yes-they-were-socialists-how-nazis-waged-war-private-property
Hayek, F. A. (1944). Nazi-socialism. In The road to serfdom. University of Chicago Press.
I completely agree with all this writers comments no good has ever come socialism look at the what the arsehole Starmer has done to the UK.
meant to say come of socialism.