By Roderick T. Long
Ludwig von Mises Institue
November 25, 2005


Fascism differs from its close cousins, Communism and
aristocratic conservatism, in several important ways. To
understand these differences is to see how classical
liberalism offers a completely different view of social and
economic organization, a perspective that departs radically
from the views of both right and left, as those terms are
understood in contemporary political language.

Let's begin with its difference from Communism. First, where
Communism seeks to substitute the state for private ownership,
fascism seeks to incorporate or co-opt private ownership into
the state apparatus through public-private partnership. Thus
fascism tends to be more tempting than Communism to wealthy
interests who may see it as a way to insulate their economic
power from competition through forced cartelization and other
corporatist stratagems.

Second, where Communist ideology tends to be cosmopolitan and
internationalist, fascist ideology tends to be
chauvinistically nationalist, stressing a particularist
allegiance to one's country, culture, or ethnicity; along with
this goes a suspicion of rationalism, a preference for
economic autarky, and a view of life as one of inevitable but
glorious struggle. Fascism also tends to cultivate a "folksy"
or völkisch "man of the people," "pragmatism over principles,"
"heart over head," "pay no attention to those pointy-headed
intellectuals" rhetorical style.

These contrasts with Communism should not be overstated, of
course. Communist governments cannot afford to suppress
private ownership entirely, since doing so leads swiftly to
economic collapse. Moreover, however internationalist and
cosmopolitan Communist regimes may be in theory, they tend to
be just as chauvinistically nationalist in practice as their
fascist cousins; while on the other hand fascist regimes are
sometimes perfectly willing to pay lip service to liberal universalism.

All the same, there is a difference in emphasis and in
strategy between fascism and Communism here. When faced with
existing institutions that threaten the power of the state—be
they corporations, churches, the family, tradition—the
Communist impulse is by and large to abolish them, while the
fascist impulse is by and large to absorb them.

Power structures external to the state are potential rivals to
the state's own power, and so states always have some reason
to seek their abolition; Communism gives that tendency full
rein. But power structures external to the state are also
potential allies of the state, particularly if they serve to
encourage habits of subordination and regimentation in the
populace, and so the potential always exists for a mutually
beneficial partnership; herein lies the fascist strategy.
The respects in which fascism differs from Communism might
seem to align it rather more closely with the traditional
aristocratic conservatism of the ancien régime, which is
likewise particularist, corporatist, mercantilist,
nationalist, militarist, patriarchal, and anti-rationalist.

But fascism differs from old-style conservatism in embracing
an ideal of industrial progress directed by managerial
technocrats, as well as in adopting a populist stance of
championing the "little guy" against elites—remember the
folksiness. (If fascism's technocratic tendencies appear to
conflict with its anti-rationalist tendencies, well, in the
words of proto-fascist Moeller van den Bruck, "we must be
strong enough to live in contradictions.")

Liberalism

Some of the differences between fascism and the older
conservatism may be due to the advances won by their common
foes, the liberals. The progress of liberalism and of industry
had the effect of shifting wealth, at least in part, from the
traditional aristocracy to new private hands, thus creating
new private interest groups with the ability to operate as
political entrepreneurs; hence, perhaps, the tendency toward
the emergence of a plutocratic class nominally outside the
traditional state apparatus. Likewise the progress of
democracy meant that plutocracy could hope to triumph only by
donning populist guise; hence the paradox of an elitist
movement marching forward under the banner of anti-elitism—a
prime example in U.S. history being antitrust laws and other
allegedly anti-big-business legislation being vigorously
lobbied for by big business itself.

(Cf. Murray Rothbard's "War Collectivism in World War I," Paul
Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation: How Big Business Fails
America, Gabriel Kolko's Railroads and Regulation, 1877—1916
and Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American
History, 1900-1916, Butler Shaffer's In Restraint of Trade:
The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918-1938, Roy
Childs' "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism,"
Joseph Stromberg's "Political Economy of Liberal Corporatism"
and "The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American
Empire," Walter Grinder & John Hagel's "Toward a Theory of
State Capitalism: Ultimate Decision-Making and Class Structure," etc.)

Hence fascism's odd fusion of privilege and folksiness; one
might call it a movement that thinks like Halliburton and
talks like George W. Bush.

The partnership between the official state apparatus and the
nominally private beneficiaries of state power was a familiar
theme for 19th-century libertarians like Frédéric Bastiat and
Gustave de Molinari, who extended and radicalized Adam Smith's
critique of mercantilist protectionism as a scheme for
benefiting concentrated business interests at the expense of
the general public. In Molinari's words, businesses "asked the
government to safeguard their monopolies by the same methods
that it had put into effect for protecting its own." ("The
Evolution of Protectionism.")

Libertarian sociologists like Charles Comte and Charles
Dunoyer had developed an entire pre-Marxian theory of class
conflict, according to which the key to the position of the
ruling class is not, contra Marx, access to the means of
production, but rather access to political power. (Cf. David
Hart's Radical Liberalism of Charles Comte and Charles
Dunoyer, Leonard Liggio's "Charles Dunoyer and French
Classical Liberalism," Ralph Raico's "Classical Liberal
Exploitation Theory," Mark Weinburg's "Social Analysis of
Three Early 19th-Century Classical Liberals," etc.)
When Marx called the French government "a joint-stock company
for the exploitation of France's national wealth" on behalf of
the bourgeois elite and at the expense of production and
commerce ("Class Struggles in France"), he was only echoing
what libertarians had been saying for decades.

Herbert Spencer likewise complained of the influence of
"railway autocrats" in American politics, "overriding the
rights of shareholders" and "dominating over courts of justice
and State governments." ("The Americans.") And Lysander
Spooner denounced the financial and banking elite, writing as follows:

Among savages, mere physical strength, on the part of one
man, may enable him to rob, enslave, or kill another man. .
. . But with (so-called) civilized peoples . . . by whom
soldiers in any requisite number, and other
instrumentalities of war in any requisite amount, can always
be had for money, the question of war, and consequently the
question of power, is little else than a mere question of
money. As a necessary consequence, those who stand ready to
furnish this money, are the real rulers. . . . [The] nominal
rulers, the emperors and kings and parliaments, are anything
but the real rulers of their respective countries. They are
little or nothing else than mere tools, employed by the
wealthy to rob, enslave, and (if need be) murder those who
have less wealth, or none at all. . . . [The] so-called
sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the
heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and
murderers. And these heads or chiefs are dependent upon the
lenders of blood-money for the means to carry on their
robberies and murders. They could not sustain themselves a
moment but for the loans made to them by these blood-money
loan-mongers. . . . In addition to paying the interest on
their bonds, they perhaps grant to the holders of them great
monopolies in banking, like the Banks of England, of France,
and of Vienna; with the agreement that these banks shall
furnish money whenever, in sudden emergencies, it may be
necessary to shoot down more of their people. Perhaps also,
by means of tariffs on competing imports, they give great
monopolies to certain branches of industry, in which these
lenders of blood-money are engaged. They also, by unequal
taxation, exempt wholly or partially the property of these
loan-mongers, and throw corresponding burdens upon those who
are too poor and weak to resist. (No Treason VI.)

As this quotation from Spooner shows, 19th-century
libertarians also saw a connection between plutocracy and
militarism, and sharply criticized what today would be called
the military-industrial complex. Spencer, for example, railed
against the "military aid and state-conferred privileges"
enjoyed by the East India Company, which enabled it to commit
"deeds of blood and rapine" in India where "the police
authorities league with wealthy scamps" to "allow the
machinery of the law to be used for purposes of extortion."
Such abuses, Spencer noted, were "mainly due to the carrying
on of state-management, and with the help of state-funds and
state-force." Had the military might of the British Empire not
been placed at the disposal of the Company's directors, "their
defenseless state would have compelled them" to behave
differently; they would of necessity have "turned their
attention wholly to the development of commerce, and conducted
themselves peaceably." (Social Statics, ch. 27.) Writing in
the mid-1800s, Spencer complained especially of the "grievous
salt monopoly"—which would of course become the chief catalyst
for the Indian independence movement nearly a century later.

But who [Spencer wrote] are the gainers? The monopolists. .
. . Into their pockets, in the shape of salaries to civil
and military officers, dividends of profits, etc., has gone
a large part of the enormous revenue of the East India
company. . . . The rich owners of colonial property must
have protection, as well as their brethren, the landowners
of England—the one their prohibitive duties, the other their
corn laws; and the resources of the poor, starved,
overburdened people must be still further drained, to
augment the overflowing wealth of their rulers. ("The Proper
Sphere of Government.")

Thus plutocracy, these libertarian writers thought, drives
militarism. But they also held that militarism drives
plutocracy. Thus the American Spencerian William Graham Sumner argued:

[M]ilitarism, expansion and imperialism will all favor
plutocracy. In the first place, war and expansion will favor
jobbery, both in the dependencies and at home. In the second
place, they will take away the attention of the people from
what the plutocrats are doing. In the third place, they will
cause large expenditures of the people's money, the return
for which will not go into the treasury, but into the hands
of a few schemers. In the fourth place, they will call for a
large public debt and taxes, and these things especially
tend to make men unequal, because any social burdens bear
more heavily on the weak than on the strong, and so make the
weak weaker and the strong stronger. ("Conquest of the
United States by Spain.")

While the influence of private wealth on government was not
exactly anything new, 19th-century libertarians tended to
think that it had been given a new impetus by the rise of
democracy and its inevitable accompaniment, interest-group
politics—what the French liberals called "ulcerous
government." A number of libertarians argued that
representative democracy leads to a struggle for political
influence among competing special-interest groups, and
unsurprisingly it is the wealthier and more concentrated
interests that tend to win out. Sumner, for example,
maintained that democracy, far from being, as is usually
supposed, the archenemy of plutocracy, is actually
plutocracy's crucial enabler:

The methods and machinery of democratic, republican
self-government—caucuses, primaries, committees, and
conventions—lend themselves perhaps more easily than other
political methods and machinery to the uses of selfish cliques
which seek political influence for interested purposes.
(Sumner, "Andrew Jackson") [On this topic I highly recommend
Scott Trask's article "William Graham Sumner: Against
Democracy, Plutocracy, and Imperialism" in the Fall 2004 issue
of the Journal of Libertarian Studies.]

But on this point writers like Sumner were simply developing
the implications of James Madison's remark in the Federalist
that the extreme mutability to which representative
governments are liable is likely to work to the benefit of a
wealthy minority:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are
made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so
voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that
they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised
before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant
changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can
guess what it will be to-morrow. . . . Another effect of
public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to
the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over
the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new
regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way
affecting the value of the different species of property,
presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and
can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by
themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of
their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it
may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW,
not for the MANY. (Federalist 62.)

And Madison in his turn was drawing on the ancient Athenian
argument that electoral systems are actually oligarchic rather
than democratic. (See my "The Athenian Constitution:

Government by Jury and Referendum.")

While both libertarians and Marxists complained of the power
of wealthy elites, they disagreed on the remedy, because they
disagreed on the origin of the problem. For the Marxists,
plutocracy was a product of the market; the ruling class
emerged through commerce, and only subsequently seized control
of the state in order to consolidate its already established
hegemony. (Marx himself was ambivalent on this question, but
Engels solidified the orthodox Marxist position.) Hence for
the Marxists it was the market that needed to be suppressed;
this is the origin of the left-wing view that fascism is
simply a manifestation of free-market "capitalism." For the
libertarians, by contrast, a ruling class depends for its
power on the power of the state, and so it is the latter that
needs to be suppressed.

The libertarians did not, however, make the mistake of
supposing that state power by itself was the sole problem.
Since rulers are generally outnumbered by those they rule,
these thinkers saw that state power itself cannot survive
except through popular acceptance, which the state lacks the
power to compel. In Spencer's words, "In the case of a
government representing a dominant class . . . [t]he very
existence of a class monopolizing all power, is due to certain
sentiments in the commonalty." ("The Social Organism.")
Likewise Dunoyer writes:

The first mistake, and to my mind the most serious, is not
sufficiently seeing difficulties where they are—not
recognising them except in governments. Since it is indeed
there that the greatest obstacles ordinarily make themselves
felt, it is assumed that that is where they exist, and that
alone is where one endeavours to attack them. . . . One is
unwilling to see that nations are the material from which
governments are made; that it is from their bosom that
governments emerge. (Industry and Morals.)

Or again as American anarchist Edwin Walker pointedly asked:
if statism were the cause of all social evil, what on earth
could be the cause of statism? (Communism and Conscience.)
19th-century libertarians, then, tended to be "radical" or
"dialectical" thinkers in Chris Sciabarra's sense; they viewed
state power as part of an interlocking system of mutually
reinforcing social practices and structures, and were
intensely interested in the institutional and cultural
accompaniments of statism—accompaniments which both drew
support from and provided support to the power of the state.

It is in their analysis of these accompaniments that we see
them grappling with the specifically fascist aspects of
statist culture. Writers like Dunoyer, Spencer, and Molinari
saw a close connection between statism and militarism because
in their view the state originated in war; tribes that
succeeded in fending off invaders became increasingly
dependent on their warrior class, while tribes that failed to
fend off invaders become the subjects of the enemy tribe's
warrior class—and in either the case the warrior class was
thereby positioned to become a ruling class. Dunoyer and
Spencer also saw a reciprocal relationship between statism and
militarism on the one hand and patriarchy on the other, since
they regarded the rule of men over women as the original class
division from which all later ones grew. They would thus not
have been surprised to see fascist movements glorifying
military conquest on the one hand and the patriarchal family on the other.

They would also not have been surprised to notice that fascism
takes its name from the fasces, the Roman symbol of an axe in
a bundle of rods. (A bundle of rods by itself indicated that
an official had the power to inflict corporal punishment;
adding an axe to the bundle of rods implied the power to
inflict death as well.) Bastiat regarded the prevailing
reverence for ancient Rome as a pernicious cultural influence.

He wrote:

What was [Roman] patriotism? Hatred of foreigners, the
destruction of all civilization, the stifling of all
progress, the scourging of the world with fire and sword,
the chaining of women, children, and old men to triumphal
chariots—this was glory, this was virtue. . . . The lesson
has not been lost; and it is from Rome undoubtedly that this
adage comes to us . . . one nation's loss is another
nation's gain—an adage that still governs the world. To
acquire an idea of Roman morality, imagine in the heart of
Paris an organization of men who hate to work, determined to
satisfy their wants by deceit and force, and consequently at
war with society. Doubtless a certain moral code and even
some solid virtues will soon manifest themselves in such an
organization. Courage, perseverance, self-control, prudence,
discipline, constancy in misfortune, deep secrecy,
punctilio, devotion to the community—such undoubtedly will
be the virtues that necessity and prevailing opinion would
develop among these brigands; such were those of the
buccaneers; such were those of the Romans. It may be said
that, in regard to the latter, the grandeur of their
enterprise and the immensity of their success has thrown so
glorious a veil over their crimes as to transform them into
virtues. And this is precisely why that school is so
pernicious. It is not abject vice, it is vice crowned with
splendor, that seduces men's souls. ("Acadeic Degrees and Socialism.")

Rome, incidentally, was another culture in which plutocracy
triumphed by adopting a democratic guise.

Spencer was convinced that Western culture in his day was
entering a retrograde phase, a phase he called
"re-barbarization," in which the values of industrial society,
the society of voluntary cooperation and mutual benefit, were
yielding once more to the older values of militant society, of
hierarchy, regimentation, aggressive impulses,
anti-intellectuality, and a zero-sum view of human existence.

Spencer saw evidence of re-barbarization not only in official
military policy but also in cultural developments, as for
example in the increasing militarization of the church, or the
recrudescence of what he called the "religion of enmity."

(Principles of Sociology.) Spencer was distressed to observe
that in "the Church-services held on the occasion of the
departure of troops for South Africa [he was writing of the
Boer War] . . . certain hymns are used in a manner which
substitutes for the spiritual enemy the human enemy. Thus for
a generation past, under cover of the forms of a religion
which preaches peace, love, and forgiveness, there has been a
perpetual shouting of the words 'war' and 'blood,' 'fire' and
'battle,' and a continual exercise of the antagonistic
feelings." (Facts and Comments, ch. 25.)

Another cultural development that Spencer identified as a
symptom of re-barbarization was the rise of professional
sports. In Spencer's words:

Naturally along with . . . exaltation of brute force in its
armed form . . . showing how widely the trait of
coerciveness, which is the essential element in militancy,
has pervaded the nation, there has gone a cultivation of
skilled physical force under the form of athleticism. The
word is quite modern, for the reason that a generation ago
the facts to be embraced under it were not sufficiently
numerous and conspicuous to call for it. In my early days
"sports," so called, were almost exclusively represented by
one weekly paper, Bell's Life in London, found I am told in
the haunts of rowdies and in taverns of a low class. Since
then, the growth has been such that the acquirement of skill
in leading games has become an absorbing occupation. . . .
Meanwhile, to satisfy the demand journalism has been
developing, so that besides sundry daily and weekly papers
devoted wholly to sports, the ordinary daily and weekly
papers give reports of "events" in all localities, and not
unfrequently a daily paper has a whole page occupied with
them. . . . While bodily superiority is coming to the front,
mental superiority is retreating into the background. . . .
Thus various changes point back to those mediaeval days when
courage and bodily power were the sole qualifications of the
ruling classes, while such culture as existed was confined
to priests and the inmates of monasteries. (Facts and
Comments, ch. 25.)

Such symptoms of militarization and barbarization in the arena
of culture proceeded in tandem with analogous changes in
government, including a shift in power from civilian to
military authority, and within the civilian government from
parliamentary to executive authority. In 1881 Spencer referred
to the measures then being taken in Germany
for extending, directly and indirectly, the control over
popular life. On the one hand there are the laws under
which, up to middle of last year [i.e., 1880], 224 socialist
societies have been closed, 180 periodicals suppressed, 317
books, &c., forbidden . . . On the other hand may be named
Prince Bismarck's scheme for re-establishing guilds (bodies
which by their regulations coerce their members), and his
scheme of State-insurance. . . . In all which changes we see
progress towards . . . the replacing of civil organization
by military organization, towards the strengthening of
restraints over the individual and regulation of his life in
greater detail. (Principles of Sociology V. 17.)

And Spencer saw England beginning to follow in Germany's
footsteps; he noted with alarm "a manifest extension of the
militant spirit and discipline among the police, who, wearing
helmet-shaped hats, beginning to carry revolvers, and looking
upon themselves as half soldiers, have come to speak of the
people as 'civilians'," and he objected to the "increasing
assimilation of the volunteer forces to the regular army, now
going to the extent of proposing to make them available
abroad, so that instead of defensive action for which they
were created, they can be used for offensive action." (Ibid.)

A few years later, on the other side of the Atlantic,
Voltairine de Cleyre noted analogous developments in America:

Our fathers thought they had guarded against a standing army
by providing for the voluntary militia. In our day we have
lived to see this militia declared part of the regular
military force of the United States, and subject to the same
demands as the regulars. Within another generation we shall
probably see its members in the regular pay of the general
government. ("Anarchism and American Traditions.")

At the time of the Spanish-American War, Sumner was writing of
the "Conquest of the United States by Spain," meaning that the
United States, while victorious over Spain on the battlefield,
was succumbing ideologically to the imperialist ideas that
Spain had traditionally represented. And E. L. Godkin, the
editor of The Nation—at that time a classical liberal
periodical—wrote despairingly in 1900 of the "Eclipse of Liberalism":

Nationalism in the sense of national greed [he wrote] has
supplanted Liberalism. . . . By making the aggrandizement of
a particular nation a higher end than the welfare of
mankind, it has sophisticated the moral sense of
Christendom. . . . We hear no more of natural rights, but of
inferior races, whose part it is to submit to the government
of those whom God has made their superiors. The old fallacy
of divine right has once more asserted its ruinous power,
and before it is again repudiated there must be
international struggles on a terrific scale. At home all
criticism on the foreign policy of our rulers is denounced
as unpatriotic. They must not be changed, for the national
policy must be continuous. Abroad, the rulers of every
country must hasten to every scene of international plunder,
that they may secure their share. To succeed in these
predatory expeditions the restraints on parliamentary . . .
government must be cast aside. ("The Eclipse of Liberalism.")

In short, the 19th-century libertarians observed the rise of
the various tendencies that would come together to make
fascism—militarism, corporatism, regimentation, nationalist
chauvinism, plutocracy in populist guise, the call for "strong
leaders" and "national greatness," the glorification of
conflict over commerce and of brute force over intellect—and
they bitterly opposed the whole package. And although they
ultimately lost that battle, their fallen banner is ours to pick up.

Let me give Sumner the last word; he's writing once again of
the Spanish-American War:

[T]he reason why liberty, of which we Americans talk so
much, is a good thing is that it means leaving people to
live out their own lives in their own way, while we do the
same. If we believe in liberty, as an American principle,
why do we not stand by it? Why are we going to throw it away
to enter upon a Spanish policy of dominion and regulation? .
. . [T]his scheme of a republic which our fathers formed was
a glorious dream which demands more than a word of respect
and affection before it passes away. . . . Their idea was
that they would never allow any of the social and political
abuses of the old world to grow up here. . . . There were to
be no armies except a militia, which would have no functions
but those of police. They would have no court and no pomp;
no orders, or ribbons, or decorations, or titles. They would
have no public debt. . . . There was to be no grand
diplomacy, because they intended to mind their own business
and not be involved in any of the intrigues to which
European statesmen were accustomed. There was to be no
balance of power and no "reason of state" to cost the life
and happiness of citizens. . . . Our fathers would have an
economical government, even if grand people called it a
parsimonious one, and taxes should be no greater than were
absolutely necessary to pay for such a government. The
citizen was to keep all the rest of his earnings and use
them as he thought best for the happiness of himself and his
family; he was, above all, to be insured peace and quiet
while he pursued his honest industry and obeyed the laws. No
adventurous policies of conquest or ambition . . . would
ever be undertaken by a free democratic republic. Therefore
the citizen here would never be forced to leave his family
or to give his sons to shed blood for glory and to leave
widows and orphans in misery for nothing. . . . It is by
virtue of these ideals that we have been "isolated,"
isolated in a position which the other nations of the earth
have observed in silent envy; and yet there are people who
are boasting of their patriotism, because they say that we
have taken our place now amongst the nations of the earth by
virtue of this war. ("Conquest of the United States by Spain.")

Roderick Long teaches philosophy at Auburn University and is
editor of The Journal of Libertarian Studies. This paper was
delivered at the Mises Institute Conference on Fascism,
October 7–8, 2005.