Fascism and the Crises of Capitalism: A Tale of Two Crises

By Roberta Lexier

For early twentieth-century Marxists, fascism was, explains Alberto Toscana in his 2023 book, Late Fascism, “intimately linked to the prerequisites of capitalist domination.” 

“The instrument of the big bourgeoisie,” Robert O. Paxton suggests in The Anatomy of Fascism, its purpose: “for fighting the proletariat when the legal means available to the state proved insufficient to subdue them.”

“At times of economic or political crisis,” David Renton outlines in 2020’s Fascism: History and Theory, “hegemony alone is not enough. When millions of people start to question the ruling class, then something more than persuasive argument is needed.” Fascism, then, “seeks to maintain capitalist means of production… to sustain them without social conflict and it refuses to allow any opportunity for workers to organise against their employers.”

Hungarian economist, Karl Polanyi, concluded that it was “that revolutionary solution which keeps Capitalism untouched,” while Italian socialist, Antonio Gramsci, described it as “the attempt to resolve the problems of production and exchange with machine-guns and pistol-shots.” 

Nearly a hundred years later, it is clear that additional factors contributed to the rise of fascist politics, movements, and regimes preceding the Second World War, particularly in Germany: entrenched anti-Semitism, weak liberal democracy, unrestrained nationalist and imperialist ambitions, and the widespread normalization of violence, to name a few. But, as Richard J. Evans insists in The Coming of the Third Reich, “[e]ven the most diehard reactionary might eventually have learned to tolerate the [Weimar] Republic if it had provided a reasonable level of economic stability and a decent, solid income for its citizens.” “[P]eople,” he says, “began to grasp at political straws: anything, however extreme, seemed better than the hopeless mess they appeared to be in.”

After World War I, Stanley Payne outlines in A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, Germany faced a “concatenation of crises.” Demands for reparations from the defeated nation strained state revenues, justifying austerity measures that undercut promises “concerning social and economic improvements.” Germans, Adam Tooze suggests in his 2006, The Wages of Destruction, desired American-style consumerism and standards of living – stability and normality after years of upheaval – but unprecedented hyperinflation, disruptive technological change, the Great Depression, and mass unemployment left many struggling merely to survive. “The economic and social cohesion of the middle class,” Evans says, “was shattered, as winners and losers confronted one another across new social divides… Life seemed to be a game of chance, survival a matter of the arbitrary impact of incomprehensible economic forces.”

“A fascist politician,” Jason Stanley outlines in How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, “has no intention of addressing the root causes of economic hardship… The resentment that flows from unmet expectations,” he suggests, “can be redirected against minority groups seen as not sharing dominant traditions.”

When people’s “needs are urgent,” their very survival in question, “it’s not hard,” says Turkish journalist, Ece Temelkuran, in How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Fascism, “to convince them that instead of fighting for social equality it makes more sense to show loyalty to a political party in return for a daily loaf of bread and a few lumps of coal.”

Fascism, says Toscana, “advertises itself as the solution, the fix, to a comprehensive crisis of order,” a return to some mythological (and entirely fictitious) past where the deserving few could break free from the injustice inherent in unrestrained capitalism.

Recognizing that such movements are, as Stanley suggests, “most effective under conditions of stark economic inequality,” Western leaders after the Second World War embraced Keynesian Welfare State policies that ultimately led to widespread prosperity, “greatly eased social tensions,” says Payne, and “eliminated the more revolutionary kind of social appeal used by historic fascism.” If (almost) everyone has the stability and normality they desire, there is little impetus to turn to violence or division. Hegemony, not coercion, is largely sufficient to maintain order.

And, yet, over the past five decades, the neoliberal turn – the systematic dismantling of social safety nets and a return to so-called “free market” capitalism – has, once again, in Toscana’s words, “contributed to the flourishing of fascist potentials.”

Since at least the 2008/2009 global economic crash, large numbers of individuals are struggling to survive. Persistent inflation, without comparable wage growth, means incomes and savings are increasingly worthless, while technological changes, including automation and AI, threaten job security and lead to growing unemployment.

Economic inequality between the rich and the poor is greater than at any point since the Second World War. At the same time, global leaders refuse to address the accelerating climate emergency, leaving the masses to choke on wildfire smoke, perish in “heat domes,” and scramble to escape rising sea levels and drought conditions.

And, as Toscana argues, “capital is ever happy to rely on state violence to shore up the prerogatives of private property, and keen to boost any political entrepreneurs aligned with its particular accumulation strategies.”

Not unlike Germany a century ago, modern society is plagued by racism, Islamophobia, and transphobia. Violence and death are normalized through never-ending wars, mass shootings, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The liberal democratic system is too weak, too subordinated to capitalist values and principles, to respond. Few, if any, are willing to acknowledge the root causes of these problems – unfettered capitalism – and, instead, actively promote radical solutions. Says Temelkuran: “after decades of being played, people no longer believe in a system in which one is deprived of the right to better one’s precarity… They are curing their precarity with hate.”

It is therefore imperative to confront the devastating realities of the capitalist system, the hardships it imposes on the masses, and the division it stokes to avoid scrutiny and ultimate collapse. It is the only way to halt the spread of global fascism – if it isn’t already too late.

Roberta Lexier is a professor of History at Mount Royal University.

This post is part of an activehistory.ca series “The Time of Monsters.” It looks at the challenges contemporary times pose to history and how historians can and have responded to it. Our aim is to highlight how history and historians can address matters such as denialism, the manipulation of public history, the appeal of authoritarianism and a host of other topics. The editors encourage submissions or personal reflections. If you are interested in contributing or even just finding out more about this series, please feel free to write to Andrew Nurse at anurse@mta.ca or Roberta Lexier at rlexier@mtroyal.ca. 

You can find the first post in the series here.