I posted the following answer:
Unequivocally, no.
In any analysis of competing social systems, one must give the most important weighting to fundamentals. The underlying conflict is individualism versus collectivism, and the related free society based on individual rights versus statism. Superficial similarities may and do exist among opposing social systems, including Capitalism and Fascism. But that is not how one compares and evaluates social systems. The question always boils down to the fundamental attributes. The fundamentals define the systems, always. Fundamentals may overlap and conflict, as in the case of the mixed economy. But the essential conflict is always freedom versus government control. A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls.
Fascism is a form of statism. Capitalism as it is properly understood is a system of individual rights, free markets, and limited rights-protecting government, which acts as the people’s legally objective agent of self-defense. That’s the opposite of statism. Statism features centralized government control of all aspects of society, including economic and intellectual, in which individuals have no rights and exist only by permission of the state. Capitalism liberates the common person to control and govern her own life. I previously answered a similar QUORA question, ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘
Fascism originated in Italy. Indeed, the word “fascism” derives from the Italian word “fasci,” which literally means “group.” Fascism literally means “groupism”, an explicitly collectivist orientation. Consequently, I consider Benito Mussolini to be the definitive voice of and expert on Fascism. Since Capitalism stands for individualism, one can hardly make sense of the idea that Fascism is a form of Capitalism. Therefore, the answer to the question “Is Fascism a form of Capitalism?” is an unequivocal no.
Just as a slave whose master allows him a modicum of personal free choice is still a slave, so a state that allows business a limited amount of freedom is still a fascist state. Freedom by permission is a contradiction in terms. Freedom is acting by inalienable right, and nothing else. Freedom is acting without permission, not by permission.
With this preamble, the rest of thus essay is a republication, edited and expanded for clarity, of my answer to QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘
No, Fascism is not a form of Capitalism. Fascism and Capitalism are ideological antipodes. Here are some excerpts from THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM by Benito Mussolini and the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s “Philosopher of Fascism,”published in 1932. All italics are mine:
REJECTION OF INDIVIDUALISM AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE
Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism.
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will [sic] of man as a historic entity.
No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State (15). 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 recognizes 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 harmonized in the unity of the State (16).
8. Conception of a corporative state
(16) We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789. (Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 120)
The Ministry of Corporations is not a bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates. The Ministry of Corporations is an institution in virtue of which, in the centre and outside, integral corporation becomes an accomplished fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. Such a glance is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, in view of co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of Fascism in theory and in practice. (speech at the opening of the Ministry of Corporations, July 31, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 250). [Again, all emphasis is mine.]
Fascism thus rejects the very essential values that form Enlightenment liberalism, which form the philosophic core ofCapitalism. Capitalism emerged out of the Enlightenment ideals of individualism, including individual rights, and the autonomy of each individual to use his own reason to govern his own life. Fascism rejects individualism. Capitalism holds that the government is the individual’s agent whose powers are constitutionally limited to protecting his liberty rights, which protect intellectual, political, and economic freedom (such as rights to freedom of speech, religion and conscience, assembly, property, and free trade). In economics, this means the separation of economics and state, in the same way as the separation of church and state. Under separation, the government polices the markets for force and fraud, but otherwise doesn’t interfere in voluntary market activity. Fascism subordinates all individuals to the state, which allows no individuals or groups to freely operate “outside the state,” which “controls all forces acting in nature [including] political forces, moral forces, [and] economic forces.”
In every fundamental respect, Fascism and Capitalism are antipodes. So why do some people so often equate the two?
For one thing, many people equate Capitalism with capitalists. The mere existence of capitalists—investors, business, corporations, etc.—is not definitive proof of a capitalist system. Private enterprise must also be free of government interference or “partnership” (cronyism) to qualify as capitalist. Capitalists, narrowly defined as a business corporation, can exist under certain forms of statism, like fascism. Capitalism, in the broader ideological (or philosophical) sense, cannot.
On the surface, fascism may look like “a form of Capitalism.” By contrast, Communism, the collectivist cousin of Fascism, abolishes even superficial private enterprise. But below the surface, Fascism and Communism are fundamentally alike—both are statist. Unlike Fascism’s ideological cousin, Communism, Fascism “allows'' a veneer of private ownership. But it is not genuine private ownership, as under Capitalism. A system by which ownership of enterprise is nominally private but over which total control is exercised through the state is in no essential respect private ownership. Genuine private ownership of business or property such as is sanctioned and secured under Capitalism implies not just a name on a document but the owner’s right of voluntary acquisition, control, use, disposal, and management. Clearly, Fascism features control, use, disposal, and management only through or by permission of the state, allowing private individual action “only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.” Marxists seize on this superficial equivocation to link Capitalism with Fascism. And they have been quite successful at this ruse. This helps Communism set itself apart from its chief socialist rival, Fascism.
But in fact, Communism and Fascism are ideological cousins. Fascism is guild socialism expanded to include all groups as identified by the state, all of which can operate only “within the sphere of the state.” Fascism differs from Communism only superficially. Essentially, there is no difference. Both are virulently anti-individualist. Both are collectivist, or group supremacist (Fascism actually derives from fascio, which literally means “group”). Both are mystical, believing in the collective as a kind of deity separate from and supreme over the individual, for whom the state carries out what it says is the deity’s will, much like a priest, rabbi, or ayatollah represents God’s will in traditional religion. Socialists merely define the deity differently—to the communist, it’s the “proletariat”, for the Italian fascist, the” universal”, for German National Socialism, or NAZISM (an offshoot of Fascism), the race. For any kind of socialism, a deified collective is fundamental. Both Fascism and Communism are uncompromisingly totalitarian statist. Both are variants of socialism; Communist socialism is internationally oriented, Fascist socialism is nationalist. The Fascist is merely more “practical”, seeking to tailor its socialism in a way that makes it more palatable to specific national and cultural realities. For example, to avoid total economic collapse, the Fascist preserves some semblance of private initiative and profit. Fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer--that is, nominal private ownership of business but controlled by the government. A Fascist, to put it simply, is essentially a pragmatic Communist, packaging its socialism to more easily appeal to a Western culture that reveres private property rights and private enterprise. The historian Steven Pinker (and others) refers to Communism and Nazism as ideological “fraternal twins.” *
Communism and Fascism are akin to rival underworld crime families fighting a turf war. Just as crime families are united in their antipathy to the rule of law, fascism and communism are united in their radical opposition to Capitalism. The only opposite to both Fascism and Communism, and all variants thereof, is the system whose government recognizes and protects individual rights equally and at all times. That system is Capitalism. So, “Is fascism a form of capitalism?” Capitalism derives from Enlightenment liberal ideology. Fascism explicitly rejects Enlightenment values—derided by Mussolini and Gentile as “all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism.” So the answer is obviously no, Fascism is not a form of Capitalism.
Please note once again that I consider Mussolini to be the definitive authority on Fascism, in the same way as Marx is the definitive voice on Communism. Fascism arose in Italy and, as I’ve said, is an Italian-derived term. Please note also that social systems must be judged on their fundamental philosophic principles, not superficial appearances.
For a more thorough understanding, I recommend reading THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM in its entirety, including all footnotes. As to Capitalism, properly understood as a system of political/economic/social organization, I recommend Andrew Bernstein, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic, and Philosophic Case for Laissez Faire and Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights. I also recommend The Declaration of Independence, the United States of America’s Founding document, which states in highly essentialized form, especially in the second paragraph, the basic Enlightenment principles that enable Capitalism to emerge. For those especially interested in the philosophic transition that led to the Declaration, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson is invaluable.
* [Professor Steven Pinker stresses this point in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Nazism, he explains, is a partial offshoot of Marxism:
The appearance of Marxist ideology in particular was a historical tsunami that is breathtaking in its total human impact. It led to the dekamegamurders (SIC) by Marxist regimes in the Soviet Union and China, and more circuitously, it contributed to the one committed by the Nazi regime in Germany. Hitler read Marx in 1913, and although he detested Marxist socialism, his National Socialism substituted races for classes in its ideology of a dialectical struggle toward utopia, which is why some historians consider the two ideologies “fraternal twins.” (Page 343)]
Related Reading:
The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein
Socialism vs. Welfare Statism: Why These Terms Matter
Don't Equate the Essence of Socialism to Capitalism
Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society
Fascism: Back Door to Socialism that Obama and the Left Well Understand
We Need a Deeper Understanding of Socialism
A is A, and Socialism by any Other Name...
Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard
QUORA: ‘Fascism was not opposed to private property or capitalism, so how can it be described as Marxist or socialist?’
QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian by George Reisman
