This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work, responding to another Ask Prof. Wolff question
from our Patreon community. This time the question comes from someone who lists his or her name as
Wookie Rage, and so I wanted to respond. The question has to do with fascism. There's a
quote in the question from Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy back in the 20th century,
who said that fascism should better be called corporatism, because it's a merger of the state
and capitalist corporations. And so, based on that definition from Mussolini, Wookie Rage asks me,
“Doesn't the United States fit the description, and therefore, hasn't it been in fact
a fascist economic system for quite some time?” This question in various forms comes up often,
and so I would like to try to respond here. First, Mussolini's definition seems to me to be spot-on.
It's very close to what Hitler's definition was, both in theory and in practice. Here's
what I mean. When capitalism, in its, let's call it, “normal” non-fascist form dominant in Europe,
say, across the 19th and then 20th century, when that kind of capitalism characterized by
private enterprises owned and operated by private individuals and groups of individuals confronting
a mass of employees, some of whom they exploit directly as productive workers and others of whom
they hire to provide the conditions the framework needed for the productive workers to produce the
surpluses that the capitalists get. In that kind of, let's call it, private capitalist system,
it is of course, and quite clear from the historical record,
very important for those private capitalists to have a sympathetic government. They need the
government, they fund the government out of their surpluses (at least in good part), and they rely
on that government, and they use it. So, yeah, there's a close relationship, even in what we
call private capitalism. So that, for example, if the majority (who are employees) in some sense
threaten the minority (who are employers), the employers want to be able to call upon the state
to protect them—with police, with the military, but not only in those blunt ways, but in more
subtle ways—by teaching people to think of capitalism as a great gift to human beings,
something that has been there forever, something that could never be changed, something that is
very efficient and indeed very democratic. There's no limit to what private capitalists will do
through the government but also on their own to secure their system. And that's not fascism. Why?
Because you haven't had—and now we need to pay attention to Mussolini's word—a
merger of the government and private capitalists. They haven't needed to merge. In fact, it's been
good for the capitalists to give the government at least a considerable degree of independence.
Why? So that the claim can be made on behalf of the government that it is everybody's government,
that it is our government, that it is responsive to and accountable to all of us. This idea that
the government represents all of us and that all of us with universal suffrage participate
in deciding who the government is and what it does, this notion of an independent government,
lets people give to the government the authority, the power, the legitimacy so that it can then play
the role that private capitalists want and insist that it play, namely to celebrate and
reproduce capitalism. But then there come times when the capitalists, the private capitalists,
are in such difficulty (usually of their own making), the inequality has become so enormous,
or the instability built into capitalism (what they like to call business cycles)
have become so severe, lasting for so long, throwing so many into turmoil,
that a movement begins to develop in people's minds (but in terms of people's
political action) to threaten, to criticize capitalism. And then we see the temptation
for capitalism, especially if it can't respond effectively, when, despite its best efforts
in the school, in the public domain, in politics to keep people happy with the capitalism
that isn't working real well, when that doesn't work anymore, then the governments in capitalism
tend toward fascism. In other words, the private capitalists no longer can have even
the semblance of an independent government. They do want a merger. They want the state to work
all the time, full time, out in the open to secure and reproduce capitalism. When the state
does that, when it literally becomes the enforcer for capitalism, then the pretense of them being
separate (the independence the state has to some degree) is thrust aside and the government comes
in to destroy the labor movements, to destroy socialist or any kind of critique of capitalism.
Capitalism becomes the same as the nation, the nation the same as capitalism, the merger is
complete. But that happens under great stress of capitalism, when they can't anymore sustain
the preferred arrangement of an arm's length distance, so that everybody obeys the government
while it busily does their work. When that doesn't work, when that isn't enough,
the merger happens and we get capitalism literally enforced on us. That was hitler,
that was Mussolini, that was Franco in Spain. This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work.