Fascism

Fascism is a political system which commonly promotes statist nationalism, and government-directed economic practises such as corporativism and national syndicalism. Fascism emerged in Italy during 1919 following a period of social unrest, providing a Third Way and alternative to the popular socialist and capitalist movements of the time. Fascism was both revolutionary and traditionalist, opposing the class war philosophy of communism, instead supporting class collaboration.

The movement militantly opposed organized crime, corruption and other elements it deemed harmful to social progress, including an anti-communist stance; due to this some authors regard Fascism as an authoritarian system. When Fascism originated it was expansionist, however others focus almost entirely on domestic policy. The original movement under Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, which saw the birth of Giovanni Gentile's The Doctrine of Fascism is always defined of Fascism. However, some authors reject broad usage of the term Fascism in relation to other regimes, sometimes excluding certain parties.

Various subforms or movements which took influence from Fascism emerged during the early 20th century, such as Falangism, Austrofascism, 4th of August Regime, Estado Novo and National Socialism. Due to each of these movements having their own distinct features, the relationship between them remains a hotly debated topic. Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, there have been few self-proclaimed parties which identify as fascist. Since that time the term fascist has often been used as an pejorative epithet to describe political opponents, with little relation to the actual philosophies of fascism.

Terminology

Etymology

The term fascismo was coined by the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the Neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile. It is derived from the Italian word fascio, which means "bundle" or "union", and from the Latin word fasces. The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of rods tied around an axe, were an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrates; they were carried by his Lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. Furthermore, the symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. It is also strongly associated with the fascist militia "fasci italiani di combattimento" ("League of Combat"). Originally, the term "fascism" (fascismo) was used by the political movement that ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini.

Definitions

Main articles: Definitions of fascism and Fascism and ideology

Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have engaged in long and furious debates concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets. Since the 1990s, there has been a growing move toward some rough consensus reflected in the work of Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin, and Robert O. Paxton. According to most scholars of fascism, there are both left and right influences on fascism as a social movement, and fascism, especially once in power, has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the "far right" or "extreme right." (See: Fascism and ideology).

Mussolini defined fascism as being a collectivistic ideology in opposition to socialism, classical liberalism, democracy and individualism. He wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism:

Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.

Since Mussolini, there have been many conflicting definitions of the term fascism. Former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton has written that:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Paxton further defines fascism's essence as:

...a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."

Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism; anti-conservatism. He argues that common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism. Semiotician Umberto Eco attempts to identify the characteristics of proto-fascism as the cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, cult of action for action's sake, life is lived for struggle, fear of difference, rejection of disagreement, contempt for the weak, cult of masculinity and machismo, qualitative populism, appeal to a frustrated majority, obsession with a plot, illicitly wealthy enemies, education to become a hero, and speaking Newspeak, in his popular essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. More recently, an emphasis has been placed upon the aspect of populist fascist rhetoric that argues for a "re-birth" of a conflated nation and ethnic people.

Free market economists, principally those of the Austrian School, like Ludwig Von Mises argue that fascism is a form of socialist dictatorship similar to that of the Soviet Union.

Authoritarian and totalitarian state

Although the broadest descriptions of fascism may include every authoritarian state that has ever existed, most theorists see important distinctions to be made. Fascism in Italy arose in the 1920s as a mixture of syndicalist notions with an anti-materialist theory of the state; the latter had already been linked to an extreme nationalism. Fascists accused parliamentary democracy of producing division and decline, and wished to renew the nation from decadence. They viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution designed to protect individual rights, or as one that should be held in check. Fascism universally dismissed the Marxist concept of "class struggle", replacing it instead with the concept of "class collaboration". Fascists embraced nationalism and mysticism, advancing ideals of strength and power.

Fascism is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic, by way of a strong, single-party government for enacting laws and a strong, sometimes brutal militia or police force for enforcing them. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or group of people as superior to the individuals composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, leading to a cult of personality and unquestioned obedience to orders (Führerprinzip). Fascism is also considered to be a form of collectivism.

Fascist as epithet

Main article: Fascist (epithet)

The word fascist has become a slur throughout the political spectrum following World War II, and it has been uncommon for political groups to call themselves fascist. In contemporary political discourse, adherents of some political ideologies tend to associate fascism with their enemies, or define it as the opposite of their own views. In the strict sense of the word, Fascism covers movements before WWII, and later movements are described as Neo-fascist.

Some have argued that the term fascist has become hopelessly vague over the years and that it has become little more than a pejorative epithet. George Orwell wrote in 1944:

...the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.

Italian Fascism

See also: The Doctrine of Fascism, Actual Idealism, and March on Rome

Fascism was born during a period of social and political unrest following the First World War. The war had seen Italy, born from the Italian unification less than a century earlier begin to appreciate a sense of nationalism, rather than the historic regionalism. Despite the Kingdom of Italy being a fully fledged Allied Power during the war against the Central Powers, Italy was given what nationalists considered an unfair deal at the Treaty of Versailles; which they saw as the other allies "blocking" Italy from progressing to a major power. A significant example of this was when the other allies told Italy to hand over the city of Fiume at the Paris Peace Conference, this saw war veteran Gabriele d'Annunzio declaring the independent state Italian Regency of Carnaro. He positioned himself as Duce of the nation and declared a constitution, the Charter of Carnaro which was highly influential to early Fascism, though he himself never became a fascist.

File:Czarne koszule.png

Blackshirts and Mussolini 1922

The war had left Italy with inflation, large debts, unemployment aggravated by demobilisation of thousands of soldiers and social unrest with strikes, attempts at insurrection by anarchists, socialists and communists, as well as a breeding ground for organised crime. The democratically elected Liberal government had no means to control the unrest, so when Benito Mussolini took matters into his own hands to combat the social unrest by organising the paramilitary blackshirts, made up of former socialists and war veterans, Prime Ministers such as Giovanni Giolitti allowed them to continue. The government prefered this class collaboration orientated movement, to the prospect of a greatly feared bloody class war coming to Italy by the hand of the communists, following the recent Russian Revolution. Within The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle the initial stances of Fascism were outlined, requesting amongst other things voting rights for women, insertion of a minimum wage, insertion of an eight-hour workday for all workers and reorganisation of public transport such as railways.

File:Benito Mussolini Roman Salute.jpg

Mussolini giving a speech and performing the Roman salute towards his gathered audience.

By the early 1920s, popular support for the fascist's fight against "Bolshevism" had increased to around 250,000. The Fascisti were transformed into the National Fascist Party in 1921, with Mussolini being elected to the Chamber of Deputies the same year, enterting legitimate politics. The Liberals retained power but Prime Ministers came and went at a fast pace, Luigi Facta's government was particularly unstable and dithering. The fascists had enough of what they considered a weak parliamentary democracy process and organised the March on Rome in an effort to take power, with promises of restoring Italian pride, reviving the economy, increasing productivity, ending harmful government controls and furthering law and order. Whilst the march was taking place king Victor Emmanuel III made Mussolini Prime Minister and thus the march turned into a victory parade, the Fascists believed their success was both revolutionary and traditionalist.

Mussolini and the Fascists followed through domestically with elaborate public works programmes such as the taming of the Pontine Marshes, developing hydroelectricity, improving the railways which in the process improved job oppertunities. Economically Italy improved with the GNP growing at 2% a year; automobile production was increasing especially those owned by Fiat, its aeronautical industry was making advances. Mussolini also championed agrarianism as part of what he called battles for Land, Lira and Grain; he physically took part in these activities alongside the workers creating a strong public image. Due to this government-directed economic policy, Italy was able to avoid the Great Depression which hit more industrial nations. Through various outlets including everything from stamps to monumental architectural and sculptural works, the Fascists made Italians of every social class aware of the countries rich cultural heritage, including Roman, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods through to the modern age. Fascism declared war on the Mafia and organised crime, to defeat it the fascists did so on the terms which the Mafia itself had used for so long -- violence and honour. Mussolini recieved plaudits from a wide range of figures, such as Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud, Mahatma Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Edison. It was under Mussolini that the long standing Roman Question was concluded with the Lateran Treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, this allowed the Holy See to have a tiny microstate within the city of Rome; the move was brought about due to most Italians being religiously Catholic.

"The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after."

— Giovanni Gentile in the The Doctrine of Fascism, signed by Benito Mussolini, 1933.

File:Giovanni Gentile.gif

Giovanni Gentile — The Philosopher of Fascism.

The Doctrine of Fascism is the official presenatation of the Fascist ideology; authored by Giovanni Gentile, approved by Mussolini and presented to the public in 1933. Gentile was a Sicilian who was influenced by the likes of Hegel, Plato, Croce and Vico; he introduced the idea of Actual Idealism. The Doctrine presented that the Fascist viewed the world quite apart from the mere constricts of currently political trends, but rather the wider picture of humankind. It rejected ideas of "perpetual peace" as fantasy and accepted man as a species constantly at war and those who met it achieved the stamp of nobility. It accepted that in general men who had made the most significant impact in history were conquerers such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte; the Roman Empire was of particular inspiration. It looked at Italy and saw that life for the state and by product the everyday person was of a better standard, under a single party fascist system than it had been in 1920 under a democratic liberal party. Mussolini thus spoke of democracy as "beautiful in theory, in practice it is a fallacy" and spoke in speeches of celebrating burying the "putrid corpse of liberty" to rapturous Italian applause.

It was the Acerbo Law of 1922, which had allowed Italy to become a single party system. The National Fascist Party had won the election with 65% of the votes, giving them 2/3 of the parliamentary seats. The socialists were bitter with this defeat and couldn't accept it, especially socialist Giacomo Matteotti who accused the Fascists of fraud. He was killed by Amerigo Dumini, for this Mussolini had Dumini tried and imprisoned but some socialists accused him of foul play, they protested by quitting parliament leaving the Fascists as the sole representatives. The means by which Mussolini generally dealt with political dissenters was to place them under arrest and have them sent to small Italian islands. Mussolini declared himself Duce from the Roman title dux meaning leader in 1925; though regarded a dictator by most popular historians, the Grand Council of Fascism was still in place and the king had the power to fire Mussolini, as would eventually happen.

Other variations and subforms

See also: European fascist ideologies

Movements identified by scholars as fascist hold a variety of views, what constitutes as fascism is often a hotly contested subject. The original movement which self-identified as Fascist was that of Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party, his intellectuals such as Giovanni Gentile produced The Doctrine of Fascism and founded the ideology. The majority of strains which emerged after the original fascism, but are sometimes placed under the wider usage of the term self-identified their parties with different names, major examples include; Falangism, National Syndicalism, Integralism and National Socialism as well as various other designations.

Falangism

See also: Falangism and Falangism in Latin America

Austrofascism

See also: Austrofascism

4th of August Regime

See also: 4th of August Regime

Estado Novo

See also: Estado Novo (Portugal) and Estado Novo (Brazil)

National Socialism

Main article: Nazism

See also: Arrow Cross Party, Iron Guard, Ustaše, and Rexism

Although the modern consensus sees Nazism as a type or offshoot of fascism, some scholars, such as Gilbert Allardyce and A.F.K. Organski, argue that Nazism is not fascism — either because the differences are too great, or because they believe fascism cannot be generic. A synthesis of these two opinions, states that German Nazism was a form of racially-oriented fascism, while Italian fascism was state-oriented.

Nazism differed from Italian fascism in that it had a stronger emphasis on race, in terms of social and economic policies. Though both ideologies denied the significance of the individual, Italian fascism saw the individual as subservient to the state, whereas Nazism saw the individual, as well as the state, as ultimately subservient to the race. Mussolini's Fascism held that cultural factors existed to serve the state, and that it was not necessarily in the state's interest to interfere in cultural aspects of society. The only purpose of government in Mussolini's fascism was to uphold the state as supreme above all else, a concept which can be described as statolatry. Where fascism talked of state, Nazism spoke of the Volk and of the Volksgemeinschaft

The Nazi movement, at least in its overt ideology, spoke of class-based society as the enemy, and wanted to unify the racial element above established classes however, the Italian fascist movement sought to preserve the class system and uphold it as the foundation of established and desirable culture. Nevertheless, the Italian fascists did not reject the concept of social mobility, and a central tenet of the fascist state was meritocracy. Yet, fascism also heavily based itself on corporatism, which was supposed to supersede class conflicts. Despite these differences, Kevin Passmore (2002 p.62) observes:

There are sufficient similarities between Fascism and Nazism to make it worthwhile applying the concept of fascism to both. In Italy and Germany a movement came to power that sought to create national unity through the repression of national enemies and the incorporation of all classes and both genders into a permanently mobilized nation.

Nationalism

All fascist movements advocate nationalism, especially ethnic nationalism and seek to integrate as many of their dominant nationality's people and as much of their people's territory into the state. Fascists support irredentism and expansionism to unite and expand the nation. However an authoritarian or ethnic nationalist movement or regime does not necessarily denote a fascist regime, as other key elements are needed for such a definition.

Dictatorship

A key element of fascism is its endorsement of the leadership of a dictator over a country. The leader of the movement is often literally known as the "Leader" (Duce in Italian, Führer in German, Conductator in Romanian). Fascist leaders are not always heads of state but are always the head of government of the state, such as Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy.

Military policy

Fascists typically advocate a strong military that is capable of both defensive and offensive actions. In Germany and Italy under Hitler and Mussolini, enormous amounts of funding was dedicated to the military. In some fascist regimes, the fascist movement itself has a paramilitary wing which is included in the armed forces of the country, such as the SS in Germany and the MVSN in Italy, which are devoted directly and specifically to the fascist movement.

Fascism and Religion

According to a biographer of Mussolini, "Initially, fascism was fiercely anti-Catholic" - the Church being a competitor for dominion of the people's hearts. The attitude of fascism toward religion has run the spectrum from persecution, to denunciation to cooperation. Relations were close in the likes of the Belgian Rexists (which was eventually denounced by the Church), but in the Nazi and Fascist parties it ranged from tolerance to near total renunciation. Nazism, for example, was typically hostile to religion, arresting hundreds of priests in the late 1930s and eventually consigning thousands of them to concentration camps.

Mussolini, originally an atheist, published anti-Catholic writings and planned for the confiscation of Church property, but eventually moved to accommodation. Hitler was born a Roman Catholic but renounced his faith at the age of twelve and largely used religious references to attract religious support to the Nazi political agenda. Mussolini largely endorsed the Roman Catholic Church for political legitimacy, as during the Lateran Treaty talks, Fascist officials engaged in bitter arguments with Vatican officials and put pressure on them to accept the terms that the regime deemed acceptable. In addition, many Fascists were anti-clerical in both private and public life. Hitler in public sought the support of both the Protestant and Roman Catholic religions in Germany, but in a far more muted manner than Mussolini's support of Roman Catholicism. The Nazi party had decidedly pagan elements and there were quarters of Italian fascism which were quite anti-clerical, but religion did play a real part in the Ustasha in Croatia.

One position is that religion and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic wetanshauungen" claiming the whole of the person. Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible, and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion. Such political religions vie with existing religions, and try, if possible, to replace or eradicate them. Hitler and the Nazi regime attempted to found their own version of Christianity called Positive Christianity which made major changes in its interpretation of the Bible which said that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but was not a Jew and claimed that Christ despised Jews, and that the Jews were the ones solely responsible for Christ's death.

In Mexico the fascist Red Shirts not only renounced religion but were vehemently atheist, killing priests, and on one occasion gunned down Catholics as they left Mass.

Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anticlerical, they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely, such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, being put off while they dealt with other enemies.

Economic planning

Further information: Economics of fascism

Fascists opposed what they believe to be laissez-faire or quasi-laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. People of many different political stripes blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way " between capitalism and Marxian socialism. Their policies manifested as a radical extension of government control over the economy without wholesale expropriation of the means of production. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They also introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors.

Other than nationalization of certain industries, private property was allowed, but property rights and private initiative were contingent upon service to the state. For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labor than he would find profitable." According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies. The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7:

"The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation," then goes on to say in article 9 that: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

Fascism also operated from a Social Darwinist view of human relations. Their aim was to promote "superior" individuals and weed out the weak. In terms of economic practice, this meant promoting the interests of successful businessmen while destroying trade unions and other organizations of the working class. Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."

Economic policy in the first few years of Italian fascism was largely liberal, with the Ministry of Finance controlled by the old liberal Alberto De Stefani. The government undertook a low-key laissez-faire program - the tax system was restructured (February 1925 law, 23 June 1927 decree-law, etc.), there were attempts to attract foreign investment and establish trade agreements, efforts were made to balance the budget and cut subsidies. The 10% tax on capital invested in banking and industrial sectors was repealed, while the tax on directors and administrators of anonymous companies (SA) was cut down by half. All foreign capital was exonerated of taxes, while the luxury tax was also repealed. Mussolini also opposed municipalization of enterprises.

The 19 April 1923 law abandoned life insurance to private companies, repealing the 1912 law which had created a State Institute for insurances and which had envisioned to give a state monopoly ten years later. Furthermore, a 19 November 1922 decree suppressed the Commission on War Profits, while the 20 August 1923 law suppressed the inheritance tax inside the family circle.

There was a general emphasis on what has been called productivism - national economic growth as a means of social regeneration and wider assertion of national importance. Up until 1925, the country enjoyed modest growth but structural weaknesses increased inflation and the currency slowly fell (1922 L90 to £1, 1925 L145 to £1). In 1925 there was a great increase in speculation and short runs against the lira. The levels of capital movement became so great the government attempted to intervene. De Stefani was sacked, his program side-tracked, and the Fascist government became more involved in the economy in step with the increased security of their power.

In 1925, the Italian state abandoned its monopoly on telephones' infrastructure, while the state production of matches was handed over to a private "Consortium of matches' productors." In some sectors, the state did intervene. Thus, following the deflation crisis which started in 1926, banks such as the Banca di Roma, the Banca di Napoli or the Banca di Sicilia were assisted by the state.

Fascists were most vocal in their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. Some fascists, particularly Nazis, considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy". Nevertheless, fascists also opposed Marxism and independent trade unions.

According to sociologist Stanislav Andreski, fascist economics "foreshadowed most of the fundamental features of the economic system of Western European countries today: the radical extension of government control over the economy without a wholesale expropriation of the capitalists but with a good dose of nationalisation, price control, incomes policy, managed currency, massive state investment, attempts at overall planning (less effectual than the Fascist because of the weakness of authority)." Politics professor Stephen Haseler credits fascism with providing a model of economic planning for social democracy.

In Nazi economic planning, in place of ordinary profit incentive to guide the economy, investment was guided through regulation to accord to the needs of the State. The profit incentive for business owners was retained, though greatly modified through various profit-fixing schemes: "Fixing of profits, not their suppression, was the official policy of the Nazi party." However the function of profit in automatically guiding allocation of investment and unconsciously directing the course of the economy was replaced with economic planning by Nazi government agencies.

Anti-communism

Main article: Anti-communism

The Russian Revolution inspired attempted revolutionary movements in Italy, with a wave of factory occupations. Most historians view fascism as a response to these developments, as a movement that both tried to appeal to the working class and divert them from Marxism. It also appealed to capitalists as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Italian fascism took power with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist-led unrest led many conservatives to fear that a communist revolution was inevitable (Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci popularized the conception that fascism was the Capital's response to the organized workers' movement). Mussolini took power during the 1922 March on Rome.

Throughout Europe, numerous aristocrats, conservative intellectuals, capitalists and industrialists lent their support to fascist movements in their countries that emulated Italian Fascism. In Germany, numerous right-wing nationalist groups arose, particularly out of the post-war Freikorps used to crush both the Spartacist uprising and the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

With the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, liberalism and the liberal form of capitalism seemed doomed, and Communist and fascist movements swelled. These movements were bitterly opposed to each other and fought frequently, the most notable example of the conflict being the Spanish Civil War. This war became a proxy war between the fascist countries and their international supporters — who backed Francisco Franco — and the worldwide Communist movement, which was aided by the Soviet Union and which allied uneasily with anarchists — who backed the Popular Front.

Initially, the Soviet Union supported a coalition with the western powers against Nazi Germany and popular fronts in various countries against domestic fascism. This policy largely failed due to distrust shown by the western powers (especially Britain) towards the Soviet Union. The Munich Agreement between Germany, France and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the western powers endeavored to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The lack of eagerness on the part of the British during diplomatic negotiations with the Soviets served to make the situation even worse. The Soviets changed their policy and negotiated a non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. Vyacheslav Molotov claims in his memoirs that the Soviets believed this agreement was necessary to buy them time to prepare for an expected war with Germany. Stalin expected the Germans not to attack until 1942, but the pact ended in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Fascism and communism reverted to being deadly enemies. The war, in the eyes of both sides, was a war between ideologies.

Even within socialist and communist circles, theoreticians debated the nature of fascism. Communist theoretician Rajani Palme Dutt crafted one view that stressed the crisis of capitalism. Leon Trotsky, an early leader in the Russian Revolution, believed that fascism occurs when "the workers' organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat."

Fascism, sexuality, and gender roles

Further information: Gender role

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A poster depicting a woman kissing the Italian Social Republic war flag.

There has been a revival of interest in recent times, among many academic historians, with regard to the so-called "cult of masculinity" that permeated fascism, the attempts to systematically control female sexuality and reproductive behavior for the ends of the State. Italian fascists viewed increasing the birthrate of Italy as a major goal of their regime, with Mussolini launching a program, called the 'Battle For Births', to almost double the country's population. The exclusive role assigned to women within the State was to be mothers and not workers or soldiers;Template:Page cite needed however, Mussolini did not practice what some of his supporters preached. From an early stage, he gave women high positions within Fascism, and in Germany, the leader of one of the major feminist organizations pleaded with Hitler to be incorporated into the Nazi Party as early as 1928. Fascists have generally been opposed to the concept of women's rights per se, preferring the traditions of chivalry to guide male-female relations.

According to Anson Rabinbach and Jessica Benjamin, "The crucial element of fascism is its explicit sexual language, what Theweleit calls 'the conscious coding' or the 'over-explicitness of the fascist language of symbol.' This fascist symbolization creates a particular kind of psychic economy which places sexuality in the service of destruction. According to this intellectual theory, despite its sexually-charged politics, fascism is an anti-eros, 'the core of all fascist propaganda is a battle against everything that constitutes enjoyment and pleasure'… He shows that in this world of war the repudiation of one's own body, of femininity, becomes a psychic compulsion which associates masculinity with hardness, destruction, and self-denial."

References

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Gentile, Giovanni. 1932. The Doctrine of Fascism. Enciclopedia Italiana.
• de Oliveira Salazar, António . 1939. Doctrine and Action: Internal and Foreign Policy of the New Portugal, 1928-1939. Faber and Faber.
• Mosley, Sir Oswald. 1968. My Life. Nelson Publications.
• de Rivera, José Antonio Primo. 1971. Textos de Doctrina Politica. Madrid.
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• Ciano, Galezzo. 2001. The Ciano Diaries, 1939—1943. Simon Publications. ISBN 1931313741
• Mussolini, Benito. 2006. My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism". Dover Publications. ISBN 0486447774

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• Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.
• Nolte, Ernst The Three Faces Of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
• Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Seldes, George. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism,London, CSE Bks, 1978 ISBN 0906336007
• Kallis, Aristotle A. ," To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 237-260.

• Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505780-5
• Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991, Routledge, London.
• Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X
• Sauer, Wolfgang "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404-424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967.
• Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. [1989] 1994. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution., Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006 , pages 227 – 250
• Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)

External links

• The Doctrine of Fascism