QUORA: 'Can a fascist be a capitalist?'

 QUORA: Can a fascist be a capitalist?

I posted this answer:

In the narrowest economic sense, yes—if by “capitalist” one refers merely to the person(s) who own and run a business enterprise. National Socialism (e.g. Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler) features nominally private business corporations. Such businesses were so heavily controlled and regulated by the state that they were essentially extensions of the state, allowed to exist only to the extent that they primarily served some collective good as determined by the state. If you refer to the owners of these quasi-private corporations as “capitalists,” then in a sense a fascist can be a capitalist simply by the business maintaining a nominally private facade.

But to properly and completely answer the question Can a fascist be a capitalist?, one must distinguish between a capitalist and Capitalism. In the wider—and more important—philosophical sense, a fascist and a capitalist are total and complete antipodes. 

Capitalism is the social system of individualism; specifically the individual as the standard of moral value and focus of law its corollaries; freedom based on self-ownership and individual rights, limited rights-protecting government, freedom of voluntary trade, private property rights, limited democratic governance, and the morality of rational self-interest and rational self-determination. Capitalism rests on three essential pillars; intellectual, economic, and political freedom for the individual. Under capitalism, each individual owns his life, which means the right to self-govern; to be lived according to his own judgment so long as he refrains from violating the same rights of self-government of others. Under capitalism, the economy is separated from government in the same way as the separation of religion and state; so no one can use the power of government to advance his own economic interests or hamper others, at others’ expense, by force of law. The activating social principle of capitalism is voluntarism.

The best statement of the bare essentials of capitalism was made by America’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Fascism is a manifestation of collectivism; specifically the group as the standard of moral value, with its corollaries subordination of the individual to “society”, state supremacy, economic regimentation by government control, censorship, one-party rule, and the morality of altruism. The word “fascism” actually derives from fascio, which literally means “group”. Fascism, it follows, literally means groupism, the opposite of individualism. In explaining THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM, Benito Mussilini was brutally clear on fascism’s hostility toward Capitalism’s fundamental underpinnings, individualism and individual rights:

Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism [i.e., Enlightenment liberalism, including inalienable individual rights].

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 of man as a historic entity [i.e., mysticism]. 

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).

Thus, fascism is a manifestation of socialism. Clearly, a fascist can’t be a capitalist. A fascist is essentially a pragmatic communist. THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM makes clear and unequivocal: Fascism is as much a centrally planned social system—as thoroughly socialist—as communism. Fascism favors the same collectivist goals, but realizes that a minimal amount of economic freedom for private business is necessary to feed off of and prevent economic collapse. Unlike the impractical communists, the fascists recognized that government ownership of the “means of production” is not necessary to achieve socialism. Government control of the “means of production” is all that is required. Under fascism, society and the government are one-and-the-same: “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,” Mussilini explains. Under fascism, as under any form of socialism, democratic or not, the individual’s life belongs to the state as the representative of the “common good” or collective. The activating principle of fascism is force. 

The best statement of the bare essentials of fascism was attributed to one of fascism’s leading adherents, Benito Mussolini's admirer, Adolf Hitler:

“The party is all-embracing…” said Adolf Hitler upon taking power, “Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good…This is Socialism- not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape. Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over all, regardless of whether they are owners or workers…Our Socialism goes far deeper…[the people] have entered a new relation…What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.” (From Herman Rauschning’s The Voice of Destruction, as quoted in The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff, page 231-232. Emphasis added.) *

It’s true that, in the narrow economic sense, capitalists (business owners) may exist under fascism. But, to repeat, one must distinguish between the narrow economic concept capitalists and the social system Capitalism. Collectivism and individualism are antipodes. The foundational principle of fascism is that the individual has no moral right to live and exist for his own sake. The foundational principle of capitalism is that the individual has the moral right to live for his own sake. Therefore, fascism and Capitalism are antipodes. Philosophically, logically, and therefore in practice, a fascist can not be a capitalist, or vice versa. 

* [The attribution of this statement by Rauschning has subsequently been disputed by scholars. But the statement nonetheless captures the essence of the fascist approach to socialism.]

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