Questions: (1) What were the primary values of fascism? (2) What was life like for the businessman in Nazi Germany? In light of your answer, how would you respond to the socialist claim that fascism is just a late stage of capitalism and the free market?
Fascism is a philosophy that can be hard to define. Many people think it is a stage of capitalism and the free-market, however this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fascist states that existed had nothing like a free-market economy. They also rejected pure socialism. They believed in a “third way” between the two philosophies.
The Characteristics of Fascism
There are a few defining characteristics of fascism. The first is a strong sense of nationalism. In fascism the glorious state is the most important thing in all of existence. They don’t care about individuals and their rights. Everyone is encouraged to fight for the state and support it. Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy, sums it up perfectly. He said “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.”
There is a glorification of war and the military. The martial virtues of strength, bravery, and courage in battle are very important. This ties in with the strong sense of nationalism; fighting for your country is very important under fascism.
Economic Policy
In fascism neither the free-market nor socialist economic policy is pursued. They seek a third way that is in between those two systems. They didn’t want a free-market because that relies on individuals that maintain their rights to life, liberty, and property. That system puts individuals first not the state, so it won’t do. Remember the glory and prosperity of the nation (government) is very important to fascists. However, upon seeing the disastrous consequences that socialism brought about in other countries, the fascists didn’t want to pursue that policy either.
Therefore, in fascist states there is still a very large amount of government involvement in the economy, but the government doesn’t directly own all the means of production. Fascists simply try to control the owners of the means of production via rules and regulations. This way they can direct the owners into doing what is best for the state, while avoiding some of the problems associated with socialism. However, in practice, fascism has looked much more like socialism than capitalism.
Leadership
Another characteristic of fascism is that there is always a strong charismatic leader. The leader is the embodiment of the nation and the people. His will is the will of the nation. If you disobey his commands, then you are an enemy of the all important nation. It is propagandized that the leader tirelessly works day and night for the good of the nation. In Italy, the media created a cult of personality around Mussolini. They claimed that he never tired, always knew what was best for the nation, and literally worked day and night. None of it was true of course.
The final main characteristic of fascism is political centralization. People don’t like to admit this because much of our modern day political philosophy is geared towards centralization. All of the power rested in the hands of the charismatic leader (dictator). There were no separate branches of government. There was only one political party allowed; why would you need any more when the fascist party already knows what is best for the nation. The economy was centralized. Only the one large centralized nation was important. Any small states were irrelevant and stamped out.
These are some of the main trends of fascism. In practice, all fascist states, like Italy and Germany, ended up being dictatorships. The strong charismatic leader basically ruled absolutely and his word was law. The economy was centralized and closely supervised by the government. And nationalism or a love for the nation was promoted profusely.
Fascism in Germany
One of the largest fascist states in history was Germany under the Nazi regime. Everyone knows of the horrors and atrocities committed by this regime, so we won’t focus on those. But what was life like for the average German citizen that wasn’t directly persecuted by the regime? Did this regime make it easy for businesses to operate and flourish and create a prosperous economy? The short answer to this question is no.
Life for German businesses was terrible under the fascist Nazi regime. Every waking moment they were terrified that they would violate some new regulation and get persecuted by the government. This became so important that business found it indispensable to have new employees know as contact men. The only job these contact men had was to keep up on all the government regulations and inform their employer what rules they had to take seriously, as this changed daily. In addition to, being able to navigate the government bureaucracy and help businesses get through the mountain of red tape.
There were thousands of decrees (regulations) on prices, raw materials, preferential and non-preferential or forbidden supplies. There were so many ways a businessmen could get penalized. He might have sold a small quantity of raw materials at a low price, but he forgot about a decree on restricted sales, so he is penalized. He might have violated a foreign exchange decree, so he is penalized. People weren’t even allowed to lend any money to foreigners. Imagine that a businessmen took one of their best foreign clients out to dinner and this client forgot their wallet. The businessmen wouldn’t even be allowed to lend that person money to pay for dinner unless they got permission from the Reichsbank to do so.
Getting the materials for production was also a nightmare. Businessmen had to fill out immense numbers of requests, questionnaires, complaints and so on just to get a weeks worth of materials. Not to mention, it took a long time for them to get answers on these requests; they were sent to a bureaucracy after all. This made serving their customers extremely difficult. They didn’t know when or if they would be able to acquire the materials necessary to produce their product. Therefore, customers simply had to take what they could get from businesses. Customers might get no product, a wildly different product, or the same product; there was no way of knowing. This is why contact men were so important. Businesses needed their help to function with all of these regulations.
There are far too many regulations to go into the specifics, but this gives one the general idea of life as a businessman. Everyone was terrified of breaking the regulations, as there could be disastrous consequences. The regulations were the means by which the Nazi regime forced the public to do it’s bidding. As a result, doing business in Nazi Germany was very difficult and stressful.
Is Fascism a Late Stage of Capitalism
Many people denounce capitalists or people who believe in the free-market as fascists. These people clearly haven’t done their research, as fascism and capitalism are nothing alike. This should be clear from the paragraphs above, however I will summarize the points regardless.
Fascism’s main characteristics are a strong centralized governments, a strong charismatic leader, a strong sense of nationalism, a heavily regulated economy, and a large glorious military. All of these traits are apparent in the two largest fascist states in history, Italy and Germany. In practice, these countries were run as dictatorships. Does this sound anything like a capitalist/free-market approach to life?
Capitalism’s main characteristics are a small extremely limited government (or no government). People’s rights to life, liberty, and property are respected and not infringed upon. There are no regulations on the economy. Everyone is free to do as they wish, as long as they don’t violate the rights of others. These are the conditions that create a free and prosperous society.
It is impossible to seriously think that capitalism is akin to fascism. It only takes a brief look at the two systems to see that they are radically different. In reality, fascism is more like socialism because of its heavy government intervention. Today, the media claims that fascism is a stage of capitalism because they know most people don’t know what fascism is. They use the term to denounce their opponents, the capitalists, even though capitalism and fascism are nothing alike. The media is lying to everyone and most people are too ignorant to realize it.
Interesting read