"If liberalism spells individualism,
Fascism spells government."
—Benito Mussolini,
"The Father of Fascism"
"Individualism ought to be
the efficient use
of the whole individual
for the absolute benefit
of the collectivity."
—Che Guevara, Socialist Icon
"Society should be organized primarily
for the performance of duties,
not for the maintenance of rights."
—R. H. Tawney,
"democratic socialist
par excellence"
Like fascism, socialism is
inherently authoritarian.
If someone tried to sell you on the possibility of a new "democratic" fascism, you ought to have a good laugh. It's an idea that's absurd on its face. Fascism is an extremely dangerous philosophy that inevitably leads to tyranny.
Why is it, then, that many people take the notion of "democratic" socialism so seriously? Earlier socialist nations—all sold as being democratic socialism in action—also ended up with horrific track records. "Extremely dangerous" and "inevitable tyranny" are every bit as applicable.
Somehow, the way we talk about these two philosophies implies there is something fundamentally different about the principles that underpin them.
If that's the case, we ought to consider the factors that led both fascism and "democratic" socialism to develop dangerous authoritarian states and see whether one is really meaningfully distinct from the other.
Indeed, we ought to ask whether "democratic" socialism really represents something new and improved, as so many have been led to believe.
WHAT MAKES FASCISM AUTHORITARIAN?
In fascist nations, authoritarianism resulted from three interrelated factors.
First, fascism subjugates the individual. It demands a society in which the individual is subservient to the State and to "the community," as Hitler liked to put it.
In his infamous Mein Kampf, Hitler praises
the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community.[1]
Benito Mussolini is the Italian socialist leader who later became "the father of Fascism."[2] In "The Doctrine of Fascism," he declares that fascism is "anti-individualistic."[3] He explains that
The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State.[4]
Liberalism is the name for the Western-democratic rival to fascism in Italy and Germany. Liberalism holds that the individual must be protected from an overbearing government. As Mussolini makes clear, fascism rejects this view:
Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism.[5]
Elsewhere, he contrasts the two philosophies:
Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.[6]
If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.[7]
This subjugation of the individual is reflected in and enforced by the second factor that makes fascism authoritarian: the priority of duties over rights. Fascism demands that individuals be under compulsory duty to the community.
Fascist philosopher Mario Palmeri explains the fascist view that
Duty is the foundation of the moral world.[8]
He also attacks individualism, writing,
Individualism … is the negation of the principle of Duty … and the affirmation in its stead of the principle of Rights—those rights which are the perennial spring of all human ills and evils.[9]
And consider this thinking from Ernest Huber, the Nazi jurist who literally wrote the book on Nazi law, Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich:
The legal position of the individual is always related to the community and conditioned by duty. It is developed not for the sake of the individual but for the community.
All rights must be regarded as duty-bound rights. Their exercise is always dependent upon the fulfillment by the individual of those duties to which all rights are subordinate.[10]
Given such beliefs, it's not surprising to find Mussolini describing our liberal rights as
supposed rights.[11]
But even if fascists didn't explicitly attack rights, a society based on compulsory duty will always be one in which individual rights become meaningless. If duty didn't override liberal rights, it wouldn't be duty at all.
Once a fascist government is in place, there's no limit to how its power can be used—any individual, organization, or group can be targeted. But that's not the half of it. Fascism calls for a massive restructuring of society, one that's to be accomplished via the control the fascist state exerts over individual lives. This is the third factor that guarantees fascism will always lead to authoritarianism: its demand for a society of suppression.
As the quotes above demonstrate, fascism is on a mission to eradicate liberalism and suppress individualism. A related fascist goal, familiar to many, is the elimination of alleged "parasites"—those who, in the opinion of fascists themselves, do not contribute meaningfully to society, either because they don't work, or they work in a disapproved-of field or manner. Mussolini provides an example of how fascists use this term:
I am, and shall always remain, one with the masses who produce and work, and the implacable adversary of every parasite.[12]
What does fascism envision? As Mussolini explains it:
The homeland that we dream of is where … parasites no longer exist.[13]
How did Mussolini define the end goal of fascism? It's to create
a nation of all producers and no parasites.[14]
The collective over the individual. Compulsory duty over rights. And the plan for the fascist state to suppress its way to a "perfected" world of "all producers and no parasites." It's this combination of factors that makes fascist authoritarianism a given and "democratic" fascism a farce.
It's these very same factors that we find in socialism, making "democratic" socialism every bit as absurd.
THE SUBJUGATION OF THE "CONSCIOUS COGS"
Who better than Che Guevara to explain socialism's view of the relationship between the individual and the community? He states that under socialism,
Man … becomes happy to feel himself a cog …. a cog that has its own characteristics, and is necessary, but not indispensable, to the production process, a conscious cog.[15]
The individual of liberalism becomes the "conscious cog" of socialism.
Ernest Bax served as the Chief Theoretician of the Social Democratic Federation, Britain's first Marxist political organization. He articulated "the new ethic of socialism" in similarly stark terms, describing it as
the conscious sacrifice of the individual to the social whole.[16]
For socialism, "the conscious sacrifice of the individual" is a feature, not a bug.
Innumerable socialists also echo Mussolini's fascist disparagement of liberalism and his rejection of individualism. Fidel Castro lambasted individualism and liberalism by name in more than four dozen speeches—writing, for example,
We are allergic to any manifestation of liberalism.[17]
In his work "Combat Liberalism," Mao Zedong writes,
We must use Marxism to fight liberalism.[18]
American socialist Laurence Gronlund (whom today's socialists cite as "an important influence" on other celebrated socialists[19]) states,
Individualism surely ought to be crushed out.[20]
Che Guevara does Gronlund one better by twisting the meaning of individualism inside out:
Individualism ought to be the efficient use of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of the collectivity.[21]
We are to be used for the collective, used in our entirety—and efficiently at that.
Hitler called for "the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community." That socialist thinking mirrors Hitler's is reflected not only in the quotes above, but also in Fidel Castro stating that the arrival of socialism signifies that
The sense of duty prevailed over everything else … The interests of the fatherland prevailed fully and definitively over all individual or group interests.[22]
"FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY."
Just like fascism, socialism calls for a society based on compulsory duty—a duty that reflects and enforces socialism's foundation on subordinating the individual to the collective. It's only by overriding our liberal right to use our lives as we individually choose that socialism can achieve its "efficient use of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of the collectivity."
For over 180 years, socialism's compulsory duty has been defined by the axiom "From each according to their ability." French socialist Louis Blanc is credited with originating this phrase, which remains the socialist standard today. Blanc explains its meaning and uses italics and all caps for emphasis:
The more one can, the more one must. … Thus, the axiom 'From each according to his ability.' That is the DUTY.[23]
If we could choose whether or not to obey socialism's requirement of duty, it wouldn't be a duty at all. Thus, that socialist duty overrides our liberal rights is simply a given. But socialists make this reality explicit as well. Laurence Gronlund writes that socialism
consigns the rights of man to obscurity and puts duty in the foreground.[24]
Bernard Shaw was a founder of the noted British socialist organization, the Fabian Society. He makes it clear that socialism's dim view of individual rights parallels fascism's, stating,
We, as Socialists, have nothing to do with liberty. Our message, like [fascist leader] Mussolini's, is one of discipline, of service, of ruthless refusal to acknowledge any natural right.[25]
This "ruthless refusal" goes back to the very beginning. Karl Marx's ideas have defined socialism for more than 150 years. What did Marx say about our liberal rights? He disparaged them, calling them
rubbish[26]
nonsense[27]
so-called rights[28]
supposed rights[29]
The last of these is, notably, what Mussolini called liberal rights as well.
Even those promoted as "democratic socialists" demand a society in which duty overrides our rights. Consider "democratic socialist par excellence"[30] R. J. Tawney, who states,
Society should be organized primarily for the performance of duties, not for the maintenance of rights.[31]
And Ramsey MacDonald—a "model for democratic socialists throughout the world"[32]—writes,
The [socialist] State does not concern itself primarily with man as a possessor of rights, but with man as the doer of duties. A right is an opportunity of fulfilling a duty, and it should be recognized only in so far as it's necessary to the performance of duty.[33]
Ernest Huber, the nazi legal theorist, also said that "all rights must be regarded as duty-bound rights," as we have seen above.
Then there is the most important of democratic socialists—Karl Marx himself. Yes, Karl Marx, who not only dismissed our rights as "rubbish" but also considered himself a "communist,"[34] is a "democratic socialist"—according to none other than Michael Harrington, the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington repeatedly ordained Marx a "democratic socialist."[35]
There's a reason all these "democratic socialists" make statements like these that are identical to those of socialists we think of as authoritarians (not to mention the fascists). It's because—as we'll soon see—"democratic" socialism is a marketing slogan, not the new and improved version of socialism so many have been led to believe.
Socialism's foundation on compulsory duty gives those running a socialist society the power to treat our lives as their property to control. Our duty to "society" becomes our duty to those running the socialist state. The result is inevitably authoritarian, just as it is in the case of fascism.
"ALL PRODUCERS AND NO PARASITES"
Finally, socialism mirrors fascism in its mission to radically transform society. Socialists have plans—big ones—for how the massive powers of the socialist state will be used to restructure our world.
In fact, socialism's "To Be Suppressed" list is longer than fascism's. Socialists define a socialist society as one purged of a litany of supposedly "socially useless" things. The categories for elimination include allegedly "useless" products, jobs, organizations, and people.
Here's one of the countless examples of socialists promising the suppression of supposedly "useless" products, from Chris Williams's Ecology and Socialism:
Utterly pointless industries producing useless things … will be abolished.[36]
And here is one of the instances in which socialists describe the plan to suppress allegedly "useless" jobs. Celebrated socialist William Morris (whom today's socialists laughably portray as a freedom lover[37]) states that, under socialism,
useless occupations would be got rid of speedily.[38]
"Useless" organizations? That's what private enterprises are from the socialist perspective. Marx called for a socialist society in which every business—large and small—has been eliminated.[39] Thousands of socialist thinkers since Marx have demanded the same.
"Useless" people? The very same people fascism despises: alleged "parasites" whom socialists—long before fascists—also labeled "useless mouths."[40]
Hundreds of celebrated socialists—including many hailed as exemplary democratic socialists—have attacked "parasites." Eugene Debs, the ultimate American democratic socialist icon, condemned those he considered "parasites," "blood-sucking parasites," and the like dozens of times.[41] He said,
Social parasites will be abolished.[42]
Democratic socialist Ramsay MacDonald writes that socialism will
destroy social parasites.[43]
Che Guevara demands
drastic measures to eliminate the parasites.[44]
And Fidel Castro sets the bar:
If we have one parasite out of a million people in that future society, the revolution's work cannot be considered finished.[45]
Castro promises that the suppression will continue until every last parasite has been eliminated, and thus socialism has created
a country of workers without parasites of any type.[46]
This is essentially identical to Mussolini's vision of a perfected fascist society:
a nation of all producers and no parasites.
What a surprise!
Socialism's plans to eliminate supposedly useless products, jobs, businesses, and "parasites" are central tenets of the socialist faith. Socialists have written about them repeatedly and consistently over the past 150 years. There's only one way to achieve even a small percentage of these ends: suppress, suppress, and suppress some more.
"DEMOCRATIC" SOCIALISM: A MISLEADING MARKETING SLOGAN
Given the authoritarianism of the socialist past, today's "democratic" socialist slogan has led many to assume that what socialists are now selling is a new and improved version of the product. But it's not.
"Democratic" socialism is a misleading marketing slogan, a deceptive label slapped on the same old product—and this from people who claim to disdain sales and marketing![47]
This is clear, first of all, from the fact that socialists regard Karl Marx as a democratic socialist. Marx's thinking has defined socialism for 150 years, and it's been the basis for every prior socialist authoritarian disaster.[48] He considered himself a "communist." He desired a society based on compulsory duty and dismissed our individual rights as "rubbish" and "nonsense."[49] He called for a society that not only suppressed every large business but also every small one, including every small farm and craft workshop. (Marx labeled craftwork "craft-idiocy."[50])
If this man is considered a democratic socialist, democratic socialism is not a new form of socialism. No, it's the same old Marxism.
Then we ought to consider the fact that socialists have been marketing their product as "democratic" for over a century. Every prior socialist experiment was originally sold as democratic socialism in action—up until it was no longer possible to maintain the charade.
The USSR is now regarded as the definitive example of authoritarian socialism, yet even it was originally promoted by socialists worldwide not merely as democratic socialism but as the ultimate democracy. British socialist leader Beatrice Webb proclaimed,
The USSR is the most inclusive and equalised democracy in the world.[51]
And what did Fidel Castro have to say about the nature of the socialist regime in Cuba?
This is absolute democracy, in which the proletariat exercises public authority and converts all means of production into the property of Society.[52]
The suppression of all private enterprises and their conversion into property of the state? That's "absolute democracy" to socialism.
Why is it that one "democratic" socialist experiment after another has ended up authoritarian? For the same reason that fascist nations did; for the same reason any future "democratic" socialist experiment also will: because of irreparable flaws in socialism's design.
Socialism, misleadingly marketed as "democratic," is founded on the premise that individuals should be subservient to the collective. It demands a compulsory duty that places our lives under the control of those running socialist society. And it seeks to create a society that will suppress its way to a "perfected" future, in which all "socially useless" products, jobs, businesses, and people have been eliminated.
The ultimate reality is that "democratic" socialism is a ludicrous concept—as ludicrous as "democratic" fascism. The foundational principles of both philosophies inexorably lead to authoritarianism. Sure, you can sell them as "democratic" and hope many are duped. Sadly, with socialism, this con seems to be working.