No, Virginia, Fascism Is Not 'Right-Wing'

Chapter 3.1: Origins of Fascism and Nazism

Why this book | Title Page | Table of Contents
Preface | Introduction
PART 1
Chapter 1 (1.1) (1.2) | Chapter 2 (2.1) (2.2) (2.3) | Chapter 3 (3.1)
PART 2
Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
PART 3
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14
PART 4
Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 |
PART 5
Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Conclusion
Appendix | Works Cited

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No, Virginia, Fascism Is Not 'Right-Wing'

Quite the opposite, in fact

3.1
Origins: Fascism and Nazism

• Revising Marx

  • Revision 1

  • Revision 2

And this type is drawn, to begin with, entirely from the middle class, and from a rootless town-bred section of the middle class at that. Still more unfortunately, it includes—so much so that to an outsider it even appears to be composed of—the kind of people I have been discussing; the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come nocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat.

—George Orwell

Next, the left set about propagating what historian John J. Ray called “The Big Lie” of the twentieth century: the assertion that fascism and Nazism were phenomena of the political right. This assertion is not “partially true.” It is not false with a “but….” It is utterly and totally false.¹

Origins: Fascism and Nazism

The ideological ferment of the nineteenth century produced a proliferation of left-wing movements and factions. The French Revolution lit the flame, and Babeuf’s proto-communist “Conspiracy of Equals,” though unsuccessful, foreshadowed things to come. The utopian socialists kindled a new light, and later revolutionaries in France continued the work of their forebears. An anarchist left arose to challenge the notion that the ideas of the left needed to be implemented by the state, and a revolutionary movement called syndicalism sought to empower workers. 

Eventually, Marx overshadowed them all, and his ideological offspring formed the dominant current of leftism.

But Marx had made a series of errors—there were glitches in his theories, and his predictions were not coming to pass. These errors would end up having a profound effect on the development of leftism.

Revising Marx

Marx’s central thesis was that as the “contradictions” of capitalism came to a head, conditions for workers would get worse. Wealth would be concentrated in ever-fewer hands. Class distinctions would grow sharper, and the ranks of the poor would swell. Eventually the misery would be too much and the working class would rise up in worldwide revolution—instantiating socialism and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as the penultimate step in man’s historical progression towards full-blown utopian communism.² This was first supposed to take place in advanced capitalist countries like Germany and Britain. “Workers of the world, unite!” 

It didn’t happen.

By the late nineteenth century, Marx’s predictions were falling apart. More people were getting rich. Poor people were becoming less poor, and the middle class was growing. Labor didn’t homogenize; it diversified.³ Capitalism wasn’t in its death throes—it was just getting rolling.