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 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, we may say that a dimension is 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 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.
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Benito Mussolini, by ChatGPT
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jun 29 2025 at 1:15pm
To a certain extent I sense that the political dialogue in the US veers off the hyperbolic cliff. To call the US fascist is a bit much, thougb I do sense an incestuous relationship between government/business that might aptly be called some kind of ‘soft fascism’
“both negate individual choices as subordinated to collective choices made through the state.”
That’s the nature of government. The issue to me is one of degree.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 30 2025 at 8:57am
Craig: It is quite probably, indeed, a matter of degree–as everything else is, including this very statement itself. But a system can be dynamically unstable and drift into another one at a certain point (degree).
Roger McKinney
Jun 30 2025 at 6:41pm
The domination of oligopolies in the US suggests fascism light. It’s corporate socialism.
steve
Jun 29 2025 at 1:50pm
I have found Eco’s definition of fascism to be more helpful as it goes into more detail, especially on the cultural side, than just the authoritarianism and collectivism upon which you are concentrating. I agree that at the extremes the right and left tend to meet as it results in authoritarianism but there are differences. Here are the first few.
“1. Cult of Tradition:
Fascism venerates traditional myths and symbols, often combining them in syncretic ways, even if they contradict each other.
2. Rejection of Modernity:
Fascism views the Enlightenment and rationalism as negative forces, preferring a more irrational and emotional worldview.
3. Cult of Action for Action’s Sake:
Fascism values action and dynamism over intellectual reflection and critical thinking.
4. Disagreement is Treason:
Fascism rejects intellectual debate and dissent, seeing it as a threat to unity and action.
5. Fear of Difference:
Fascism exploits and exacerbates fear of foreigners, minorities, and other perceived enemies.
6. Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class:
Fascism often arises from a sense of social and economic anxiety among the middle class.
7. Obsession with a Plot:
Fascism is driven by a belief in conspiracies and enemies, both real and imagined.
8. Fascists cast their Enemies as Both Too Strong and Too Weak:
Fascism uses propaganda to portray enemies as both powerful and decadent, fueling both fear and contempt.
9. Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy:
Fascism is inherently militaristic and rejects peace, seeing it as a sign of weakness.
10. Contempt for the Weak:
Fascism idealizes strength, heroism, and power, while showing disdain for weakness and vulnerability. ”
#12 is machismo.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 29 2025 at 2:31pm
Steve: You make good points, but note that left populism (there have been many examples in Latin America) shares #2 (rejection of the modern concept of individual liberty), #3 (the activist state), #5 (depending on what sort of difference), #6 (see the Peronist movement), and perhaps #8 (with a different definition of “decadent” emphasizing corrupt). Note also that I wrote “the practical difference with fascism wears thin” (emphasis added). Look at how extreme left voters have easily shifted from the extreme left to the extreme right, a phenomenon quite visible in Europe but whose prefigurative symptoms are not absent in America.
Robert EV
Jun 29 2025 at 6:43pm
“Look at how extreme left voters have easily shifted from the extreme left to the extreme right”
But when you poll them on the policies that are being implemented, and the effect those policies will have, they aren’t on the right, they are on the left (or the center).
I think, to a large extent, parasociality is the problem here. They want to feel powerful so are identifying with figures who desire to act with power. And not realizing the it is a one-way relationship that isn’t grounded on what they think it’s grounded on.
I also think that there can be an authoritarian center in various ways, including truly “centrist” ways (not just averaging of extreme positions).
As a left-lib (approximately -5 to -6 on both axes of the political compass), I think a couple other major issues are not just individual versus collective, but the magnitude of power of any decisions upon those uninvolved with the decision or opposed to the decision.
Psychologically less healthy people, even those who are individualistically inclined, want to dominate and otherwise control. Psychologically more healthy people are much more tolerant and willing to let be. This would be true even among authoritarians, as witnessed occasionally in absolute monarchies when the monarch is benevolent and non-condescending.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 29 2025 at 2:46pm
Steve: If it is true, as I argue, that the major line of fracture in modern ideologies is the distinction between individual choices and collective choices, the different shades or black and red on the left-right axis lose much significance. (I do not dely that there are some people on “the left” who do not accept the supremacy of collective choices, i.e., the market socialists; and some people on the right who do not either, the “liberal conservatives,” close to, say, Reagan or Goldwater.)
Mactoul
Jun 30 2025 at 12:54am
That a society can exist without any collective choices remains to be shown. The case of same-sex marriage is illustrative. The supporters were not content with their personal freedom to call their relationship “marriage” but they wished to force the society to call their relationship “marriage”.
So, was it a victory for individual choices or a defeat?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 30 2025 at 8:33am
Mactoul: You write:
Nobody can force “the society” to call anything anything, because “the society” has no mouth and no brain (except in fairy tales). If “they” passed a law interfering with the way third parties treat married homosexuals, this, of course, was a collective choice. But you are right if what you mean is that collective choices beget collective choices, state intervention begets state intervention.
Note that a basic value judgement in a free society must be that the absence of intervention is not intervention, the absence of slavery is not slavery, the absence of intolerance is not intolerance (cf. Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance”), the absence of untruth is not untruth, and so forth. Perhaps, at some level, this is just the recognition that, in logic, the absence of non-A is not non-A.
steve
Jun 30 2025 at 10:24am
You forget that in our country marriage grants you legal rights with your partner that you cant have unless you are married. A non-married gay couple would have no say in the medical care of their incapacitated partner, but the family who hates the partner and is alienated from the incapacitated person would have the right to make decisions. So while Pierre might or might not make a libertarian argument about that as a practical matter we do have those laws and they did affect gays differently. (I had such a case so this is not a hypothetical.) Personally, I thought everyone should have been eligible for a state based civil union granting the same legal rights for everyone. If people wanted to have a religious marriage also they could also do that. I dont think we should be forcing religious beliefs on people.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 30 2025 at 1:59pm
Steve: Indeed, there is a question as to whether a collective choice is justified if it corrects another collective choice that previously created special, non-contractual privileges to certain individuals but not to others. It is difficult to answer affirmatively, which was silently covered by my comment that “collective choices beget collective choices, state intervention begets state intervention.” In de Jasay’s theory, every exchange is a contractual matter and is free (cannot be challenged) if it does not violate anybody else’s equal liberty nor any prior obligation consented to by any of the exchange parties, and does not violate a “convention” (this last condition may not be as unquestionable). In Buchanan’s theory, the social contract having forbidden discrimination by the state (otherwise, one of the parties would have opposed his veto), there probably cannot subsequently be any collective choice that discriminates. (De Jasay argues that any collective choice is discriminatory and that there is no contractarian way to limit the state.)
TMC
Jul 1 2025 at 12:53pm
There are medical power of attorney agreements Steve. Also for financial affairs. Personally either allow gay marriage or remove the government from all marriages.
Mactoul
Jun 30 2025 at 9:42pm
But traditional marriage is one of the spontaneous conventions you talk about, isn’t it, present in generally all countries and especially the Western countries.
If the traditional marriage is overturned by court edict, is this a win for individual choice?
Robert EV
Jun 30 2025 at 10:57pm
What court overturned the traditional marriage? They just mandated that the same governmental paperwork and governmental laws be applied to another sort of bond.
And what ever happened to traditional vows of fealty and brotherhood that used to be recognized by law, and no longer are? I guess they still exist, they just aren’t recognized by special laws.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 1 2025 at 5:04pm
Mactoul: I have noted that de Jasay counts on conventions to do a lot of work, an important problem for his theory. Hayek, on the contrary, admits the need to correct evolved rules of conduct that turn out to be harmful or just useless for the maintenance of a free society.
Mactoul
Jul 1 2025 at 10:16pm
And how are harmful conventions going to be updated? And indeed how it is going to be decided whether a particular convention needs to be updated? Aren’t you back to collective choice again?
Unanimity isn’t going to be possible.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 2 2025 at 11:36am
Matoul: See Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty for his solutions. Buchanan’s theory poses no problem for changing evolved rules except when a “constitutional revolution” is needed: see his little, non-technical book Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 12:04am
The legal case for recognition hinged on the fact that marriage was nowhere defined in the Constitution. So, there was no prior state intervention. Traditional marriage was entirely a spontaneous convention as opposed to the same-sex marriage which by imposed by judicial fiat.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 6:09pm
Absolutely not. Marriage has been enforced by very strong laws, including capital punishment (e.g. Leviticus), for millennia. Inheritance has depended on legally recognized marriage (and being born within a marriage), spousal rights depend on it (compulsion of testimony), divorce rights depend on it, next-of-kin rights have depended on it, jurisdictions which recognize “common law” marriage (basically cohabitation) do so through laws.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 9:28pm
State has always recognized marriage, and had not attempted to define it.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 11:12pm
Mactoul: The federal government recognized marriage enough to outlaw polygamy. Outlawing types of historic marriage is the same as defining it by exclusion.
David Seltzer
Jun 30 2025 at 11:21am
Pierre: The common intersection between and amongst Fascism, Socialism and state central planning, the individual and their choices are subordinated to tyrants like IL Duce or the Caudillo. It’s as if individuals are state owned property. I am convinced their contemptable regimes and similar ones fail because it only takes a few who believe; “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” Some believe so strongly, they resist by almost any means necessary. Apologies. I tried to keep my indignation as civil as possible.
Monte
Jun 30 2025 at 12:03pm
Perhaps a better fit for it would be on the Nolan Chart in the statist quadrant?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 30 2025 at 3:24pm
Monte: Two questions: (1) How is “statist” defined in the Nolan chart? (2) Whom is your second paragraph quoting?
Monte
Jun 30 2025 at 4:23pm
The Nolan Chart depicted in Wikipedia gives a slightly different look and a rather broad definition of statism within which certain aspects of fascism are found:
The second paragraph is my own (absent the “mystic chord of memory” part borrowed from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address) and was accidentally blocked as a quote.
Monte
Jul 1 2025 at 4:48pm
The Pournelle Chart provides a broader classification of political ideologies. Nazis and Fascists reside in the lower left quadrant of the chart and exhibit an irrational deference to the state. The Fascist regime’s most distinguishing characteristic, IMO, is its ability to mobilize popular support through a cult of personality, where the leader is the embodiment of the state.
Monte
Jul 2 2025 at 11:20am
Correction: Nazis and Fascists reside in the lower right quadrant.
Roger McKinney
Jun 30 2025 at 6:48pm
Great points! Mussolini considered fascism a variation on socialism. And of course Nazi is short for National Socialism.
The similarities between the extreme left and extreme right have caused the confused to suggest the horseshoe theory gibberish. But that merely says there is little difference between the two.
Logically, the right is the opposite of the left, not the same. The opposite of the extreme left is libertarianism, the true right.
TMC
Jul 1 2025 at 1:00pm
This seems more correct. The far right would be anarchists, not authoritarians. On the far left are the communists/socialists/facists/nazis. Mussolini, as you have said, and Hitler both thought they were socialist, but had a better version of it.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 12:10am
Anarchists have always been recognized as a part of the Left, by themselves (they fought on the Republican side along with Communists in the Spanish Civil War) and by others.
Indeed, deference to traditional political authority is virtually the essence of the Right (see Russell Kirk). So, anarchism is diametrically opposite to any notion of the Right.
Roger McKinney
Jul 2 2025 at 4:51pm
Well there is left anarchism and right anarchism. Right anarchism, such as Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism is the extreme opposite of left anarchism. That’s what TMC had in mind.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 9:39pm
Any variant of anarchism is antithetical to the Right since anarchism denies political authority.
Putting anarcho-capitalism on the Right is apparently a legacy of Cold War — the Rightness defined by opposition to the Soviets.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 6:12pm
I instinctively agree with your take, but how does this work with warlordism?
Felix
Jun 30 2025 at 11:13pm
Somewhat off-topic. I have found that the True Believers love to quibble about definitions. One argument I got into was with someone who insisted Fascists and Nazis were not socialists, and had several reasons, such as the Nazi single and mandatory labor union was not a worker’s labor union, and that the distinction between owning the means of production versus merely controlling them by threatening the owners was hugely important. Fascists and Nazis were capitalists. So was the USSR, not least because farmers were allowed small plots of their own whose produce they could sell in markets and keep the income.
Then he said true socialism has never been tried. I asked him why he was allowed such a tight and purist definition for socialism, but such a broad definition for capitalism that included every society on earth?
Then he stopped responding.
I don’t think it is possible to ever pin down any collectivist on what they mean.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 6:20pm
In the future you can respond to these kinds of people by telling them that pure socialism has been tried many times in utopian communities in the US. Outside of religious institutions (e.g. convents and monasteries) it tends to fall apart within a few years, or at most by the third generation, as infighting happens or people decide to move on to other things.
Now pure socialism with a state enforcing it, no that hasn’t been tried. But if the state needs to enforce it against citizens who would rather do something else, then can one really say that it’s pure socialism?
Knut P. Heen
Jul 1 2025 at 8:17am
I think fascism was placed on the right wing for two reasons. First, the pre-Mussolini fascism in Italy was about protecting private property during the Biennio Rosso after WW1. Second, Franz Neumann in his book Behemoth managed to define Nazi-Germany as a kind of anarchy. Today, of course, most people associate fascism with Mussolini’s version of socialism and Nazi-Germany with a police state ran by Gestapo. It is intellectually dishonest to keep the old “right-wing” definition when it clearly became a left-wing movement already with Mussolini.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 12:14am
Fascism is correctly placed in the Right — there is deference to the political authority and particularity (ie recognition of distinct nations and peoples).
However, it goes overboard in State-worship. The triad, the State, the individual, the family is unbalanced by over-emphasis on the State.
Knut P. Heen
Jul 2 2025 at 11:51am
The original meaning of left vs. right was whether you supported the French revolution or not. The right did not support the revolution (conservatives who supported the king). Neither Mussolini nor Hitler supported the status quo. They were revolutionaries like Lenin. The contemporaries may incorrectly have thought that Mussolini and Hitler were running a counter-revolution back to the old ways, but with the benefit of hindsight, we must conclude that they produced a society the world had never seen before. They were revolutionaries, not conservatives.
Roger McKinney
Jul 2 2025 at 4:58pm
The far right, anarcho-capitalism, insists on government without a state. It has courts and law and private law enforcers. That’s the opposite of fascism in which the state is God.
Before Hitler invaded Russia, Stalin and all Western socialists considered Nazis to be fellow socialists. That changed with Hitler’s invasion. Stalin called Hitler a capitalist not because it was true, but because it was the worst insult he could think of, being a socialist and having a small imagination. Socialists worldwide have carried Stalin’s water since, knowing it’s a lie and not caring.
Monte
Jul 1 2025 at 4:49pm
Pournelle Chart
Monte
Jul 1 2025 at 8:30pm
The Pournelle Chart provides a broader classification of political ideologies. Nazis and Fascists reside in the lower left quadrant of the chart and exhibit an irrational deference to the state. The Fascist regime’s most distinguishing characteristic, IMO, is its ability to mobilize popular support through a cult of personality.
Monte
Jul 1 2025 at 8:33pm
Correction: Nazis and Fascists reside in the lower right quadrant.
Mactoul
Jul 1 2025 at 10:38pm
The post might equally well be illustrated by Chamberlain, who issued the highly consequential Polish guarantee without consulting with 40 million countrymen.
Collective choices are supreme in electoral democracies as well, virtually by definition. So this isn’t how fascism differs from non-fascism.
Plenty liberal countries have nationalized health care. I heard in Canada you cannot have private health care at all.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 2 2025 at 11:56am
Mactoul: You write:
Of course. The contemporary literature on collective choice (called “Social Shoice” after Kenneth Arrow) has been mostly developed in the context of unlimited or poorly constrained “electoral democracy.” Same for Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy. For a reminder, see my posts “Only One Way to Be ‘President of All Syldavians,’” and “The Problem of Social Choice (in 700 Words).”
Paul
Jul 2 2025 at 9:12pm
Fascism isn’t “extreme right” at all unless one means that it is located on the extreme right of the spectrum of socialism.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 2 2025 at 9:30pm
Paul: Except if the spectrum is a circle or if you add the dimension individual/collective choices.
Mactoul
Jul 2 2025 at 9:43pm
The Right cannot be appreciated from within the liberal context since fundamentally the Right denies liberal principle that political authority flows from the individuals — the endlessly futile liberal endeavor to derive State from individuals.
In contrast, the Right believes that authority flows down from God (Russell Kirk). In secular terms, the State authorizes itself.