With the predominance of autocratic right-wing regimes around the globe, many are saying that “fascism is on the rise.” I won’t be arguing against that statement. Fascism IS on the rise around the globe, and I’m here to explain what fascism is and how it takes a hold of power from a Marxist lens.
Fascism is a political tendency that the wider world has never really defined. In the mind of many liberals, fascism is the implementation of authoritarian and malicious policies to benefit those in power, typically with a racial connotation. The regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and others instantly come to their minds when thinking of fascists, but their understanding of fascist policies is usually muddy at best. While that definition can and does include real fascist policies, it misses the point and obscures the true evils of fascism. Not only is this usage of the word irrelevant to the actual structures of Fascism, this definition actively helps fascists in their ability to recruit and grow their movements.
Let’s first define fascism in its most basic sense. Fascism, in an Orthodox Marxist perspective, is the natural path of Capitalist society: Marxists believe that fascism is when the National Bourgeoisie consolidates power and takes full control of the markets and workers of a state. The National Bourgeoisie are the owners of a majority of a single country’s industry. While this may seem vague, it’s quite easy to understand once broken down.
Let’s first examine how the National Bourgeoisie takes control of power. The nature of the Bourgeoisie is that its members make their living by exploiting the working class. Their gains inherently come at a loss for those beneath them, as under capitalism, profits are, in essence, the value of workers’ labor minus their wages. Therefore one of the only ways it can take power, especially in democratic nations, is through lies. The National Bourgeoisie constructs a narrative that an outside enemy is preparing to take advantage of the petit bourgeois and proletarian elements of the country. There is no single way to do this, as scapegoats are entirely ad hoc to a situation. In the past, however, the Nazi party, which was supported by many corporations, such as Krupp, Bayer, Audi, Porsche, and what is now known as Exxonmobil, was able to convince the petit bourgeois that their livelihoods were being threatened by “non-Germans,” specifically Jews. Small, minority groups with stark differences to the rest of the population make easy victims when the National Bourgeoisie look for someone to make people hate.
For fascists, or rather the bourgeois supporters of fascism, the true value of these scapegoats is a source of labor to be attacked directly and used as a means of attacking the working class. While Nazi policy was one of outright extermination in many times and places, many Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other prisoners of the Nazi camps were made to work to further the Nazi war machine and their financial backers. You may recognize the names of these backers-Bayer, Audi, Krupp, Porsche, Bush, Ford, IBM… Not only were these prisoners forced to work in conditions that saw them die of starvation and exhaustion (thus fulfilling the fascist desire of extermination), this slave labor was actively used to undercut the “free” working class of Nazi Germany, impacting their wages in the same way many states in the US use prison labor to undercut their working class people.
To this day, historians of Nazi Germany focus on the vacation programs and other distractions these unions handed out to workers– completely neglecting their lack of material advocacy in the workplace. Under the Nazis’ economic system, wage workers were relegated to national syndicates, or unions run by the state, which only served to curtail traditional avenues of worker’s empowerment. The worker’s syndicate representative was appointed by the state, which, when the state is controlled by the National Bourgeoisie, means very little. In the end, the “National Socialist” movement wasn’t socialist at all. Porsche and Bayer reigned mostly unchecked at this time, and companies like them fueled the German War machine.
When the Third Reich was first gaining traction, the Nazi Party utilized their connections with the largest companies in Germany to create a military-industrial complex. This network of German business swallowed up what parts of the German economy they did not already own, leaving no room for other actors to enter. Krupp was given the lion’s share of military contracts, Bayer was given carte blanche to experiment on concentration camp victims, and Audi utilized slave labor. Their support for the Nazis is what brought them to power. The Nazis, without the backing of the national bourgeoisie, would have no platform from which their lies would be heard.
This control of the workforce, whether through national syndicates or direct enslavement, served only to extract more profit from the internal market. By controlling the worker and forcing them into compliance, they are more easily coerced into using their wages in a way that furthers corporate profits. Workers under fascism have no choice but to buy from the bloated national bourgeoisie, which now also makes up the state. It creates a cycle where the state upholds the national bourgeoisie’s ability to extract as much profit as possible while the national bourgeoisie enables the state to fully subjugate the populace. This subjugation effectively controls the markets of a country, as the bourgeoisie has direct control over its functioning.
There would be no fascist movement amongst the working class if there were no lies. Fascism requires the working class to sacrifice their economic and political freedom to the national bourgeoisie all in the name of what one might call “owning” this far less powerful scapegoat. Fascists need to create this target labeled “outsider” in order to distract their working class supporters from the realities of what their rule means for the workers. . By creating this enemy, the working class is distracted from the rampant exploitation and misery of Fascism. In fact, if there was any honesty in fascism, there would be even more animosity towards the bourgeoisie than there is already. Fascism is an ideology meant to benefit only those at the very top, without any regard for the working class.
Communists often say that Capitalism is an all-consuming ideology, and fascism is the epitome of this. The fascist mode of production is no different from the capitalist mode of production, in essence. Both seek to reap as much profits as possible from the market. The only difference between the two is the intensity of subjugation. The Proletariat under capitalism is relegated to wage-slavery (being required to work in order to survive), but under Fascism, the State becomes an even more aggressive boot for the bourgeois, amping up the parasitic nature of capitalist profits. The Proletariat, therefore, must not believe the inevitable lies that come when powerful people cry out against a scapegoat.
Fascism, if it wasn’t already obvious, is focused on capturing resources, both outside the country and from its people. We can see this in the militarism of Fascist states, which serves in many ways as another distraction from how fascism immiserates the working class. Only a slim minority of fascist states have not waged brutal wars in their time, and many of those became Fascist after brutal civil wars. Fascist states either focus on maintaining the extractive status quo in their own country, or forcibly extracting from other markets, which means war.
Now, to answer the question, what is fascism? And is it truly on the rise today? Fascists have been the best historically at hiding their goals and beliefs, but where they’ve won control of the State, the results are clear. Fascism is an authoritarian state where the capitalist mode of production has been further intensified, stripped of any pretence of benefitting the working class, or indeed the world. What happened in Germany, and what is happening today in the United States, is the complete takeover of the apparatus of the state, which normally helps the bourgeoisie to manage capitalism, towards the unlimited enrichment of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is indeed the “highest stage” of capitalism, the end state of limitless corporate greed draining all the wealth it can from the working class. But as we have seen in many cases, there is always a point in history where the working class reaches a limit to how much they will be exploited.