Fascism Is Not Capitalist

[I find this short piece quite frustrating. I don't think it will persuade anyone, for I am arguing that the left has got something important wrong for nearly a century. And yet I think the arguments made here are important, if only a sketch of some longer argument.]

Fascism is not capitalist. Fascist nationalism opposes international trade and immigrant labor. This is a drag on a national economy; economies grow through trade. Look around you! We have the tariffs, we have the businesses going under because of Trump’s trade war, we have media companies losing millions because they’re trying to propagandize Trump, we have businesses losing money as they implement racist policies, we have the wholesale destruction of the US scientific establishment, the engine of future economic development. It’s losing money. It’s destroying capital.

The story was similar in Nazi Germany. The Nazis wrecked the German intelligentsia and, while theoretically supportive of private capital, practiced centralized control of the economy to the detriment of all but corrupt loyal businesses. Most of what Nazi Germany produced was armaments. The story was a bit different in Italy, which had a very backward economy when Mussolini took power, but again, the fascists created a corrupt centralized economy which led to a drag on backward Italy’s economic development. That drag persists to this day.

So, how did fascism become connected with capitalism in the minds of so many?

The Soviet Union wanted an enemy, and the Soviet Union was Communist. Communist activism, as it emerged, defined capitalism as “bad” and communism as “good.” Marx actively rejected moral language, but activism quickly made the connection. Especially, Soviet Marxism, influenced by intensely religious Russian culture, defined communism as “good.” So capitalism was “bad,” and since fascists were the opponents of the Soviets, fascism must be capitalist.

And what did the Soviet leaders do? Create a corrupt centralized economy! In practice the economic goals of the Soviet Union were similar to those of fascist Italy, and a materialist historian might argue that they would inevitably decide to adopt similar solutions. In practice, the main differences between fascism and Soviet communism was ideology, which communism rejects as irrelevant to reality. What the Soviet Union had was not communism, but rather fascism cosplaying communism.

And so?

I’m seeing an awful lot of discourse arguing that Trump administration policies are, because fascist, an outgrowth of capitalism. But this is nonsense! If anything, Trump administration policies destroy capital. If we adopt strategies whose goal is to defeat capitalism in opposition to the fascism of Trump and the Republican Party we are going to fail, because we are not fighting capitalism.