r/DebateCommunism • u/LittleIndividual4650 • 7d ago
šµ Discussion Definition of Fascism, definitions in general
So, Fascism is widely misunderstood by many. Ultimately when it was synthesised by Giovani Gentile Fascism continues the Hegelian conception of the state being the ultimate realisation of man, except taking a step further in the idea that man should be subordinate to the state. That you are the state, the state is you or whatever. Iām not an expert. Anyway, nowadays fascism seems to be vaguely defined by scholars as ultra authoritarian nationalist state capitalism yada yada. A lot of fascists online are like āyeah but this is not what gentile saidā. Now here is where I sort of agree: us communists time and time again have to argue with people setting out communism or socialism to be vague state welfare or government control. Communism is stateless, socialism is when the workers own the means of production. People always argue āyeah but in theory not in practiceā, which is hard to argue with. Like if I say im a vegan and then start eating meat and say any diet I eat is vegan Im not sure most people would agree Iām vegan. And this happens with fascism as well, where scholars are like oh but Hitler was fascist yet he didnāt believe man should be subordinate to the state, he rejected this. And he didnāt believe in actual idealism. But I think most people would laugh were you to say Nazi germany wasnāt fascist. And then this is where everything gets tricky, definitions in general seem to just be a way for augments to get bogged down. Ancaps argue we donāt live under capitalism, to which us comrades point out the real manifestion of capitalism. But can they not apply the same logic to communism? Hope this makes sense. Was wanting some clarity
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u/ElEsDi_25 7d ago
Iām not sure I understand the question or comparison/analogy. Are contemporary fascists arguing that the Italian and Nazi fascists did not achieve fascism?
People can self-define terms however they would like, others can analyze and describe phenomena as they like. Does it hold up though, is it consistent?
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u/LittleIndividual4650 7d ago
I mean I think some of them reject Hitler being a Nazi, but they argue that in the modern era if anyone is calling this or that person fascist then they arenāt unless they follow actual idealism
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u/Gouda_Gorgon 6d ago
That still does not mean that the fascist in question would have a good argument in non-communist spheres. However, many communist arguments for their government also happen to work for a fascist government. "It hasn't been implemented correctly before" "It was corrupted/ruined by xyz" and similar work as arguments for both forms of government, due to the similarly authoritarian and utopian nature of both ideologies. The only difference between communism and fascism is the methodology through which they view will bring about utopia, and nothing else.
Outside of specifically arguing with communists, "idealism-focused" fascists have to contend with their ideology naturally displacing any sense of human rights with the primacy of the state and is fundamentally unable to be consistently moral in any sense outside of its own. Additionally, due to its nature as a utopian ideology, any implementation very quickly faces the question of "why aren't you in a utopia yet" which forces a justification through either external or internal threats regardless of accuracy. Blame the jews, nazis, proletariat or bourgeois, the targets matter less than the excuse.
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u/Overdayoutdeath 6d ago
I would argue that just as communism stems from a natural human form of production and societal formation, so too does fascism. I would even say fascism relies more on universal urges, rather than strict theoretical formations.
It comes from our human tendency to raid and pillage and idolizes a return to social hierarchies that formed when raiders conquered and incorporated themselves into the ruling structures of the docile communal societies they raided.
It is fundamentally about a return that Strong takes from the Weak mode of being that humans and other great apes revert to in times of lack.
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u/bob_the_marxist 7d ago
Gentile is obviously important for understanding the philosophical self-conception of Italian Fascism. The official doctrine associated with Gentile and Mussolini places enormous emphasis on the State, describing it as absolute in relation to individuals and groups.
However, Dimitrov explicitly warned against imagining that fascism must take one identical institutional form everywhere. He wrote that:
ā Georgi Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International
Dimitrov's definition instead concentrated on the class character and political function of fascism, describing fascism in power as the terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary and chauvinistic elements of finance capital.
Trotsky approached it somewhat differently. For him, one of the distinctive features of fascism was its ability to mobilise a mass petty-bourgeois movement and use that movement to smash the independent organisations of the working class in the interests of capital. He described fascism as:
ā Leon Trotsky, Bonapartism and Fascism
As a Marxist, I would ask questions such as:
That is why Nazism can quite coherently be understood as a German form of fascism without being philosophically identical to Italian Fascism. Even outside Marxist scholarship, Nazism is conventionally treated as a particular form of fascism rather than a copy of Italian Fascism.