In a previous thread, we were talking about socialism. And I was asked to watch a video by Walter Block on political spectrums, which I did. I enjoyed the video immensely, but I wanted to present some thoughts I had in response. As I’ve said before, I have an enormous interest (some might even call it an obsession) with politics, public policy and political ideology. So I wanted to say some things that I felt Block kind of glossed over. This is a very long post, I apologize ahead of time and applaud anyone who actually takes the time to read it.
I think that his description of Hitler as a man of the right is more than a little unfair. I think Hitler’s ultranationalism (rabid antisemitism was a state doctrine) did place him alongside many of his contemporaries who may have called themselves right wing people but the US right wing is rabidly anti-authoritarian and so is clearly very different from the Germanic right wing of the 20’s and 30’s (we can argue about George W. Bush, but I don’t consider him really very right wing, neoconservatism is another different sort of animal) and the socialist part of the Nazi movement was drawn from the left in Germany so I suppose that part has stayed consistent. Also, Hitler was a hardcore imperialist. Mussolini and Stalin, to my knowledge, were not heavily imperialist.
In many ways, Hitler transcended two party politics and became a man of the party-state and German totalitarianism and Stalinist totalitarianism were two very extreme movements but I don’t know that the word fascist should really apply to Hitler.
Obviously, Stalin was a communist, at least in name, but I think his use of the Marxist concept of class struggle and the plight of the proletariat were entirely rhetorical and ultimately, Stalin was just a totalitarian dictator. He wasn’t nearly as imperialist as Hitler though and I think that sets him apart from Hitler in many ways.
They both used purging as a way of dealing with political dissidents, but Stalin actually used purges as a way of just keeping people disorganized and in a pure state of terror. Not to say that Hitler didn’t do this, but I think the death count for Stalinist Russia was something like 81 million people whereas Hitler, as Block pointed out, only killed about 11 million (including six million Jews.) The sheer population of Soviet Russia at the time meant that there were a lot more “superfluous” people for Stalin to liquidate.
I happen to own the Fascism Doctrine and while Mussolini certainly used the word totalitarian to describe his ideas, I think he was in many ways his own breed of leftism and authoritarianism. Also, his form of militarism was like a mix between what we might call patriotism now and oddly transcendental spirituality. I think this passage best exemplifies what I have found in many study of Fascism (it’s interesting to also note that Mussolini was very consistent with his mission statement, I could be wrong though)
“Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism - such as party organization, system of education, discipline, can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude towards life. A spiritual attitude. Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self centered, subject to natural law which instinctively urges him toward a life of momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, be self sacrifice, the renunciation of self interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which value as a man consists.”
I understand that this is mostly rhetoric, but I think it shows a very calculated attempt at explaining the Fascist ideology. As far as I know, neither Hitler nor Stalin were big on expounding on principles or making summaries of their political ideologies in quite the same way. In fact doublethink and newspeak (to borrow terms from 1984) were very much a part of Stalinist Russia, so that even their history was constantly being revised and rewritten. Hitler also apparently thought that ideology of all forms was a sort of obsession with the past whereas Nazism was supposed to be a movement of the present, a movement literally always moving forward to its next conquest, so ideology would have made Nazism a static concept. Hitler didn’t want that.
Now, another key feature of the Fascist state was corporatism (and in this way, perhaps it’s fair to characterize the US, as Block stated, as moving towards Fascism.) In fact, Mussolini also talks about the “corporate state,” something we’re seeing more and more of here. But the control of industry and the means of production were of secondary importance, based on my studies, in Nazi Germany. What mattered in Nazi Germany was the party, the Fuehrer and the world movement. You could almost call Nazism pan-Germanic globalism with an emphasis on race struggles. I don’t know that Mussolini was as much focused on race as he was focused on the omnipotence of the state as a moral ideal.
What I’m trying to get at are the massive levels of difference one sees in these different political systems and in terms of their ideology. So when we use the word “fascist” as a blanket term to describe corporatism in America, I think we’re unfairly copying and pasting a term that meant much more to the man who really founded the idea.
Technically, Stalin was a far left socialist/communist, but we must also acknowledge that there is a world of differenc between Stalinist Russia and, for instance, modern day England. England is heavily commonized and socialized, but there are no purges, no propaganda, no iron curtain, no regime of terror. So while we may see the socialization of industry in England or in the US, we don’t see many of the other features of Stalinist Russia, not to mention very few of the features of Nazism.
It’s arguable that modern liberals see themselves as the spiritual descendants of the Progressives of the 1920’s and 1930’s and 40’s, they don’t really see themselves as the spiritual descendants of Fascism, even though they almost worship the state as a God like Mussolini did.
Whether or not rhetoric and ideology matters is obviously up for discussion, but I think it’s fair to say that when labeling various political and economic systems, it’s important to try and be as concise and thorough as possible to avoid confusing FDR for Stalin or George W. Bush or Obama with Hitler as we might be wont to do if we made these distinctions purely on an-cap economic terms.
I understand that there are probably many errors and oversimplified explanations here but I tried to be as thorough as I could be.
I cite as my sources The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt and The Doctrine of Fascism by Mussolini.
Thank you for reading this incredibly long post 
