Vital read in this day of third way public-private partnerships:

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.

Read the full column, Liberalism vs. Fascism, at Mises.org

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