The concept of a “far left” that is opposed to a “far right” is false. The systems placed on the two ends of that spectrum, including socialism, fascism, and Nazism, are all rooted in communism. And all of them share beliefs in core communist concepts, including state collectivism, planned economies, and class struggle.
All of them were merely different interpretations of Marxism, and played heavily in global politics just after World War I, at a time when the ideas of Karl Marx failed to materialize and communists had gone back to the drawing board.
Before we get into the history of these divergent systems, however, we first need to understand the rift between socialism and communism.
Socialism was described in Marx’s theory of the five stages of civilization. After he helped frame the concept of “capitalism” as a society in which people are able to trade freely, he proposed that after capitalism would come the stage of “socialism,” followed by “communism.”
Socialism was the stage that Vladimir Lenin described as the “state-capitalist monopoly,” in which a dictatorship has seized control of all means of production.
The idea was that a communist regime would use the absolute power of the socialist “dictatorship of the proletariat” to destroy all values, all religion, all institutions, and all traditions—which would theoretically lead to the communist “utopia.”
In other words, socialism is the political system, and communism is the ideological goal. This is why followers of communism argue that “true communism” has never been achieved. The system has thus far failed to utterly destroy human morals and beliefs, although it has taken the lives of more than 100 million people over the last 100 years.
“Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ were synonyms,” Bryan Caplan, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, states in the chapter on communism in “The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.”
“Both referred to economic systems in which the government owns the means of production,” Caplan states. “The two terms diverged in meaning largely as a result of the political theory and practice of Vladimir Lenin.”
Of course, the failings of Marx’s predictions is also what gave rise to the many interpretations of communism that emerged following World War I. These included Leninism, fascism, and Nazism.
As the world boiled in the turmoil that led to World War I between 1914 and 1918, many communists looked to the words of Marx, who in the 1848 “Communist Manifesto” said, “Workers of the world, unite.”
Yet, the workers of the world did not unite—at least not how Marx envisioned. Instead of rallying behind communism, they largely rallied behind their respective kings and countries.
In addition, the livelihood of workers became better under capitalism, as opposed to Marx’s predictions that it would become worse. Then, when the communist revolution did happen, it did not happen in the “late-stage capitalist” societies which at the time were Britain and Germany, but instead in Russia.
And instead of the Bolshevik Revolution being the “proletariat” against the “bourgeoisie,” as Marx predicted, it was the military and intelligentsia against the feudal Russian tsarist system.
The series of events largely disproved Marx’s predictions, and it sent communists of the time back to the drawing board, as was noted by bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza in his book “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.”
After Lenin, the next communist revisionist to take the world stage was Benito Mussolini, who took from World War I the lesson that nationalism was more uniting than the idea of a worker’s revolution. He thus revised Marxism into his new system of fascism, using the collectivist principle of “fasci,” which refers to a bundle of sticks reinforcing the handle of an ax.
Mussolini explained his concept in his 1928 autobiography, in which he states, “The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.”
According to “Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime” by Richard Pipes, “No prominent European socialist before World War I resembled Lenin more closely than Benito Mussolini. Like Lenin, he headed the antirevisionist wing of the country’s Socialist Party; like him, he believed that the worker was not by nature a revolutionary and had to be prodded to radical action by an intellectual elite.”
Then soon after, Adolph Hitler emerged with his re-branded socialist system under the banner of “national socialism.”
Taking advantage of the fact that the German people had been divided by new national borders established by the armistice, Hitler used identity politics to rally his followers.
The policies of the Nazi Party followed the communist model, D’Souza notes, and the 25-point program included universal free health care and education, nationalization of large corporations and trusts, government control of banking and credit, the splitting of large landholdings into smaller units, and similar policies.
In addition, D’Souza states, “Mussolini and Hitler both identified socialism as the core of the fascist and Nazi Weltanschauung [way of life]. Mussolini was the leading figure of Italian revolutionary socialism and never relinquished his allegiance to it. Hitler’s party defined itself as championing ‘national socialism.’”
Like all other communist ideologues, Hitler was also viciously opposed to the traditional capitalist system. Just as Lenin blamed wealthy farmers, and Mao Zedong blamed landlords, Hitler transferred blame to a single group of people—the Jews.
As D’Souza states, “Nazi anti-Semitism grew out of Hitler’s hatred for capitalism. Hitler draws a crucial distinction between productive capitalism, which he can abide, and finance capitalism, which he associates with the Jews.”
The conflict that later took place between the various systems during World War II was not a battle of opposite ideologies, but instead a fight over which interpretation of communism would prevail.
According to “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek, “The conflict between the fascist or national-socialist and the older socialist parties must indeed very largely be regarded as the kind of conflict which is bound to arise between rival socialist factions.”
We can thank historical revisionism and plenty of mental gymnastics for the current narrative that socialism is somehow separate from Nazism and fascism and, even more so, the belief that these concepts are somehow divorced from their communist origins.
D’Souza attributes this narrative shift to what Sigmund Freud called “transference,” based on his idea that people who commit terrible acts often transfer blame onto others, accusing others, including their victims, of being what they, themselves, are.
Joshua PhilippJune 4, 2018 Updated: June 18, 2018 The concept of a “far left” that is opposed to a “far right” is false. The systems placed on the two ends of that spectrum, including socialis…
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I hate to agree with evil neoconservative Richard Pipes but there is something to reviewing the term fascism and the historical fact that what came to be a popular political party in 1930's Italy had its roots in what we would call "leftist" ideologies. Today the term is so overused by pseudo-left Democrat types that it's lost any real meaning. According to them Trump is a fascist, rural citizens are fascist, business owners are fascist, etc. Yet pursing your own investigation it's a difficult political definition to pin down, being socialist yet nationalistic, isolationist yet imperialist in it's attempt to compete with the powerful nations of the day. Through transnational economies we live in a radically different environment than the 1920's but there are still gems of understanding to gain from the history of what's led to our current environment. Although you have to read between the lines this is a really good wiki entry on the history of "fascism":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
...Georges Valois, founder of the first non-Italian fascist party Faisceau, claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the late 18th century Jacobin movement, seeing in its totalitarian nature a foreshadowing of the fascist state.
Interesting. Immediately we read reference to extremists of the French revolution who employed, what is accepted as a hallmark trait of fascism,
political violence.
...The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time. The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and democracy. The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism. They regarded civilization as being in crisis, requiring a massive and total solution. Their intellectual school considered the individual as only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as a numerical sum of atomized individuals. They condemned the rationalistic, liberal individualism of society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.
...French nationalist and reactionary monarchist Charles Maurras influenced fascism. Maurras promoted what he called integral nationalism, which called for the organic unity of a nation, and insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal collective subject. He claimed that a powerful monarch was a personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's people.
...French revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel promoted the legitimacy of political violence in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a general strike. Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion. Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy." By 1909, after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French patriotism with their views—advocating anti-republican Christian French patriots as ideal revolutionaries. Initially, Sorel had officially been a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of Benedetto Croce that "socialism is dead" because of the "decomposition of Marxism".
So by the end of the 19th century we know of movements who had grown disillusioned with liberal democracies and sought methods to overthrow those systems. In the next decades there were rifts between national socialists vs. traditional Marxist followers (who believed in international proletariat organization). Sorel is an example of the road Mussolini took in first being a hardcore Marxist but then turned toward his nationalist tendencies seeking out the Church, industries, the military, etc. for success, in direct opposition of communism or other "anti-capitalist" ideologies.
The dire hatred between communists and fascists may be explained by history but how does the term fascism apply in today's reality? I've been swayed by the analysis of the Canadian Patriot and have to agree on the several players who epitomioze such violence. The miltary-financial complex that orchestrated the covid pandemic and seeks to impose their "green" dictatorship over resources would be the primary culprits. The cultural left with their emotionalism, violence, and intolerance toward working-class people are another. The US/British/NATO war machine is absolutely determined to impose their objectives at all costs, under the guise of international law. Fascism is stated as a far-right ideology but I can't help but think there's a much more illusive definition.
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www.nytimes.com
www.theguardian.com
