Fascism

Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme Sorelian syndicalist political views along with nationalism.Benito Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism regards fascism as right-wing and collectivist, but it also declares that fascism is sympathetic to ameliorating the conditions that brought about the rise of left-wing political movements, such as class conflict socialism and liberal democracy, while simultaneously opposing the egalitarianism associated with the left. "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century." ... "We are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and thus the century of the state. It is eminently reasonable for a new doctrine to make use of still-vital elements from other doctrines," ... "Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people." (p. 14) "The Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry. Dead and done for are feudal privileges and the division of society into closed, uncommunicating castes. Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State." ... "Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State." (p.15) "In rejecting democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism, the habit of collective irresponsibility, the myth of felicity and indefinite progress." ... "Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage." Doctrine of Fascism. Though normally described as being on the far right by non-fascists and far-left by fascists, there is a scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both the left and the right.

Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They claim that culture is created by the collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus they reject individualism. Viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they see pluralism as a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.

They advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. They identify violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.

Fascism rejects the concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favor of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will. They oppose liberalism (as a bourgeois movement) and Marxism (as a proletarian movement) for being exclusive economic class-based movements. Fascists present their ideology as that of an economically trans-class movement that promotes ending economic class conflict to secure national solidarity. They believe that economic classes are not capable of properly governing a nation, and that a merit-based elite of experienced military persons must rule through regimenting a nation's forces of production and securing the nation's independence. Fascism perceives conservatism as partly valuable for its support of order in society but disagrees with its typical opposition to change and modernization. Fascism presents itself as a solution to the perceived benefits and disadvantages of conservatism by advocating state-controlled modernization that promotes orderly change while resisting the dangers to order in society of pluralism and independent initiative.

The Class Character of Fascism
Georgi Dimitrov,one of the most important marxist thinker of the 20th century, defined fascism "as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital. This well-known sentence was part of bigger presentation on the VII. World Congress of the Communist Third International in the year of 1935, on which antifascist strategies were discussed by the revolutionary workers movement. These topics were discussed due to the recent establishment of fascist dictatorships in Germany and in Austria. Fascists tend to support a "third position" in economic policy, which they believe superior to both the rampant individualism of laissez-faire capitalism and the severe control of state socialism.  Italian Fascism and most other fascist movements promote a corporatist economy whereby, in theory, representatives of capital and labour interest groups work together within sectoral corporations to create both harmonious labour relations and maximization of production that would serve the national interest. However, other fascist movements and ideologies, such as Nazism, did not use this form of economy.