Fascism, the Right, and the Left

What is fascism, and what place does it occupy in political philosophy? There is more to that question than the standard identification with the extreme right, as echoed by the encyclopedia Britannica:

Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

This characterization doesn’t fit well on the conventional left-right axis of the political spectrum. For one thing, the mainstream left also entertains communitarian beliefs and favors “the good of the nation” against individual interests. Its devotion to democracy and liberalism, at least in the classical sense, is rather doubtful. Apart from its populist variant, the mainstream left does favor a hierarchy between elected officials and expert bureaucrats on the one side, and the populace on the other side. Finally, if we look at socialism à la Maduro or at communism, the practical difference with fascism wears thin. The favored political constituencies of the two regimes differ but often overlap. For example, the common people easily rally behind strongmen of either the extreme left or the extreme right, and even move from one side to the other over time.

The kinship between the extreme right and the extreme left suggests that the conventional axis left-right is not a satisfactory model. The left and the right share more than is apparent. The proper simple model would be a circle where the extreme left and the extreme right meet on a common arc. Alternatively, an important dimension seems to be missing. This becomes rather obvious when we ask historical experts in fascism about the foundations of their ideology.

Alfredo Rocco was a law professor and an adviser and friend of Benito Mussolini. In a 1925 speech, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism,” which Mussolini said he “endorse[d] throughout,” Rocco proclaimed (as reproduced in Carl Cohen, Ed., Communism, Fascism, and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations, 1972):

For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. (p. 323)

Individual rights are only recognized in so far as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of Fascism. (324)

Or ask Benito Mussolini himself, the founder of fascism. In his 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana article on “The Doctrine of Fascism,” he explained (reproduced op. cit.):

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State. … It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. (330)

The nation is created by the State, which gives to the people, conscious of its own moral unity, a will and therefore an effective existence. … The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right.” (331)

Fascism could be defined as an “organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.” (336)

It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the “Right,” a Fascist century. If the nineteenth was the century of the individual (Liberalism means individualism) it may be expected that this one may be the century of “collectivism” and therefore the century of the State. (337)

When one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State. (338)

In his 1936 book published by the Dante Alighieri Society of Chicago, The Philosophy of Fascism, Mario Palmieri (perhaps a pseudonym) cited a well-known fascist motto (reproduced op. cit.):

All is in the State and for the State; nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. (351)

A bit farther, the author evokes

the vision of Italy dreaming once more dreams of glory, dreams of greatness, dreams of empire. (357)

What these quotes illustrate is that fascism and communism—and, to a different extent, the right and the left—both negate individual choices as subordinated to collective choices made through the state. Both the left and the right are collectivist and opposed to the individualism of classical liberalism and libertarianism. This distinction between collective and individual choices seems to be the main line of fracture in modern ideologies.