Comments are hereby solicited...Fascism, a movement started by the Syndicalist-Socialist labor leader Benito Mussolini, certainly was a "left wing" movement. The successful deception to put it on the "right" was a tactic of the Communists, who tried to build an "anti-Fascist" coalition that would attract respectable people like J. Robert Oppenheimer. Of course the Communists were perfectly willing to make common cause with the Fascists in opposing the Socialists, but that's another matter.
The theory of Fascism, to the extent that it has a self-consistent political philosophy, accepts the Marxist theory of history as a series of class struggles; but whereas Communism seeks to end class warfare, Fascism believes social classes are inevitable. Mussolini was undoubtedly influenced in this belief by the brilliant work of Vilfredo Pareto, whose work demonstrated that power is always distributed unevenly, there will always be elites, and attempts to destroy class structures only replace one kind of social class with another. (The history of Communist societies and the nomenklatura are instances of successful predictions of Pareto's theories.)
Since social classes are inevitable, but class warfare cripples the state, the solution to the problem is for the State to stand above the social classes and force them to work together, preferably in equity and fair play. Fair play or no, though, the important thing is to make the classes cease their warfare and stop cancelling each other out, so that there can be social progress and national greatness. Hitler was Mussolini's disciple from the 1920's until the Austrian Anschluss. For a demonstration of the "left wing" nature of his thought, get a copy of Leni Riefenstahl's brilliant propaganda film The Triumph of the Will. In particular see the sequence in which thousands of laborers do a manual of arms with shovels, as the voiceover speaks about the relationship of "the classes and the masses."
Italian Fascism and its copiers including Francisco Franco's Phalange brought representatives of all social classes and institutions into the government, and in Italy the Grand Council of Fasces was the supreme legislative and policy body in the Kingdom; when in 1943 the Council voted no confidence in Mussolini as Duce, the King dismissed him.
Fascism had supporters in other countries. Franklin Delano Roosevelt resorted to a number of Fascist devices, including the "Blue Eagle" NRA; traces of this syndicalism remain in regulations governing the product of citrus fruit and milk to this day. Huey Long of Louisiana, himself sympathetic to the fascist theory of history and government, pointed out the fascist elements in Roosevelt's programs, and famously said that when Fascism came to the United States it would be in disguise.
The great conflicts between Fascism and Communism during the 1930's were not due to any great theoretical difference between the two philosophies; instead it was a power struggle pure and simple, each convinced that the other had stolen the other's clothes.
This is relevant to today's news in that the Bush plan for ending the mortgage crisis could have come right out of Mussolini's play book. It requires the loan companies to cooperate and devise rules, all reminiscent of the NRA. Note that the Democrats are quite in favor of the plan, only they want it to go farther and be under more government (bureaucratic) control. Neither has any trust in the free market.
Now government intervention in the market place is not always a bad thing. Left to itself, the inevitable logic of the market is that everything has its price, and it ends with buying and selling labor contracts that often result in conditions worse than slavery. For those who doubt that, look into labor conditions at the factories of William Lloyd Garrison, the Great Abolitionist.
It is the nature of American political debate to demonize certain people and certain concepts without regard to their truth or falsehood and certainly without paying attention to the evidence. Indeed, the more truth a demon proposition contains, and the more evidence for its correctness, the louder the denunciations of anyone who has one good word to say about it. Witness what happened to Watson, when he pointed out, correctly, that Darwinian Evolution does not at all guarantee that human populations genetically isolated will evolve to have equal group intelligence; that the assumption of IQ equality among the races of man is a pious wish but has no scientific inevitability. He certainly said that to be provocative, but it remains a true statement. The result was that Watson was dismissed as Chancellor of the institute he built (which will now decline and fall), subjected to humiliating criticism and self-criticism sessions reminiscent of Mao's China, and reduced to non-humanity.
I don't think it would be a good thing for the Republic for a million families to lose their homes, even though most of them should not have bought them in the first place. They ought to experience consequences for their foolish acts of buying houses in the hopes that the rising market would let them continually refinance at rates they could afford; this despite warnings of a bubble. Of course the real villains here are the finance companies that knowingly suckered people into loans that no one in his right mind thought they could pay; after all, water runs downhill but it will never reach bottom. The bubble will expand indefinitely, or at least for a few more years. And there's so much money to be made.
Now the market remedy to this would be for the foolish buyers to default and lose their homes, and the rapacious lenders be stuck with them and have to sell at fire sale prices. Those who invested in loan companies that skated too close to the edge of the ice would lose their money. Folly and greed would be punished, not by human action, but by the remorseless operation of the market place. Lessons would be relearned, and another generation would be more wary of bubbles. The lessons would fade and it would all happen again, but not for a while.
Alas, that isn't going to happen. No politician can possible ignore the plight of a million or more people about to lose their houses "through no fault of their own", no matter that it's due to their folly. Moreover, the lobbyists for the investors in the rapacious loan companies will be quick to finance demagogues, cry RACISM!, and engage in any other political practice that will get attention off the fact that they had no sound business reason for making a $450,000 loan to an illegal immigrant with an income of $12 an hour at best when he could get work (an actual example I saw in the LA Times; the Times take was that this poor chap was going to lose his house, and he and the 12 relatives who lived there would be homeless).
The Fascist view, that government needs to step in and ameliorate class warfare by forcing the classes to work together, is not altogether a bad thing. It is certainly the case that class warfare can cripple a state and hurts everyone.
The problem with Fascism is the general problem of overly powerful government: instead of learning about economics and the forces of the market place, or inventing something new, or even working hard and saving money, the key to success is manipulation of bureaucracies. That can be through nepotism -- my cousin Takagora in personnel will ship you to Point Barrow if you don't promote me -- or through demagoguery, through intimidation or persuasion; but manipulation of the bureaucracies becomes the key to great success. If you read fiction written India about conditions under the Permit Raj after Indian Independence, or examine life in Pakistan today, you will find illustrative examples. And of course for the very rich and powerful there's also direct influence over the government at the policy level.
We're going to intervene in the housing finance market. Given the stakes, there's no chance it will be ignored.
Huey Long would be pleased.
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