(Q) What were the primary values of fascism?
Fascism is often considered the most amorphous ideology of the twentieth century, and this has been further complicated by ideologically tainted rhetoric from both democratic and communist perspectives. To best understand fascism, it is perhaps best to study what it values. Overall, fascism emphasizes nationalism, state power, and martial unity for the state's goals over and above individual or class prerogatives; private or special interests. It values these things because the nation demands them. Finally, while national socialism is essentially fascist, Fascism is not national socialist because national socialists have a different worldview.
The values of fascism are sometimes more difficult to understand, given they lack a single source text or set of thinkers who can be distinguished from the real art of politics. However, one can clearly identify a number of states as ideologically aligned, even if not perfectly, just as the Soviet Union and Maoist China both have their differences with Marx and with one another. We can also distinguish it from these other states based on some fundamental differences. For instance, fascist countries were ideologically committed to nationalism, which communists self-consciously rejected it, even if they embraced the geopolitics of nationhood. Whereas democratic states value representative government, Fascists prefer an authoritarian state, often led by a single charismatic leader and his appointees who lead according to their own priorities of the perceived national good. Fascists also value a martial attitude that exceeds both the citizen-soldier or the proletariat, soldiers become arms of the state's will in foreign policy whatever it's objectives.
The man who is thought to have most embodied fascist ideology proper was of course Benito Mussolini. A former communist and anarchist journalist, Mussolini became an ardent nationalist during World War One, both as a consequence of his service and the grievances of his nation and comrades after the conflict. In terms of an economic policy, he became disenchanted with total socialism after witnessing economic tragedy unfold in the nascent Soviet Union, yet he retained a strong technocratic tendency. According to party rhetoric, all industries were to be organized according to corporatism, councils of industry leaders and experts supervised by party officials with relevant credentials. In reality, Il Duce governed by fiat and nearly every decision required his personal approval.
Other figures like Franco, Perun, and Antonescu held a mixed bag of policies, but these can be summarized by the tendency to promote national unity under authoritarian governance. Both unions and personal liberties were curtailed in favor of state institutions, and private objectives were subordinated to political goals.
The other key figure in any discussion of fascism must always be Hitler, or the Third Reich if speaking of regimes as a whole. While National Socialist ideology was historically fascist in terms of its core values, it was also transformed into something else by its world-vision of racial hierarchy. Racial struggle took on a metaphysical character that gave a Nietzschean resolve to state action, and which proposed to coherently synchronize individual purpose and institutional drive under shared policy objectives for folk-survival; the necessary became the essential. Moreover, race allowed the nation to clearly identify its self-interest, to see where others stood in the way, and for the whole society to unite in a shared struggle against racial enemies, and likewise to identify allies.
National Socialism certainly drew from both nationalism and the corporatist or technocratic tendencies of the post-Bolshevik German left, more or less practically aligned with Italian Fascism, but it also transformed them into a new worldview entirely which would define new and distinct policy objectives. Soil became not only a source of national strength, but Lebensraum, or living space for the people to cultivate themselves and a brighter, more secure future. National homeland, or residency policy, became more than a shared political objective to maximize shared self-interest, but actually self-interest became identified with both racial purity and the expulsion of those who inherently shared competing interests. This view was a totalizing or totalitarian one that demanded total subordination of all decision-making to the collective interest through the authority of the state. If national interest lies with the timely acquisition of land, which must require armaments, then production must be directed to this goal. If social interest lies with racial purity, then there must be no interracial marriage. And so on. If one wanted to fully distinguish national socialism from fascism, he would point out that while fascism is authoritarian and technocratic, national socialism demands a totalitarian subordination to state interests.
Lanist revisionism ....
A footnote to the discussion would note that modern national socialists are often not totalitarian essentialists, or even total corporatists, beyond what is implied by a socially interested state. The ultimate justification for this revisionism is based on David Lane's fourteen words, "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." By not specifying what the future must be, they leave the door open to what George Lincoln Rockwell called "productive enterprise." If the interests of the people are secure, it is sufficient for the state to only interfere with what it believes would secure their future, and that depends on party or ideological tendencies. Armed isolationism, free markets, social entitlements, and alternatively common law or a regulatory state are all compatible with national socialism in principle along with the tendencies that historically dominated 20th century European fascism, or fascist National Socialism. However, if something like resource wars were to crop up, national socialist ideology would demand that the state must take immediate action over and above all regard for personal concerns or special interests to the extent of a totalitarian control over society, even if economic dogma informs us central planning by committee is not the way to go about this. Very rapidly, the state would redirect as much production as possible to the defense sectors by prohibiting certain kinds of production and funding others.
It is arguable whether the non-essentialism of peacetime corporatist economic planning comports with "fascist values," although it would comport with what National Socialists hold as their supreme value, if they see it as beneficial. It is doubtful whether you would really have a fascist state without some degree of militarism and a strong authoritarian executive, even one with some checks or restrictions. Führerprinzip would dictate that even though racial immigration policy is constitutively axiomatic, ideas like sound money or corporatism are mere instruments, thus policy instrumentalism would dominate the constitution due to Führerprinzip, only checked by Lebensraum or other axioms of NS ideology. Fascists, because they do not subscribe to racial ideology, are likely pure policy instrumentalists, thus an absolute, though not essentially totalitarian, state likely best agrees with their values. National socialism (lower case), on the other hand, at least leaves open the possibility for a non-fascist government, even if it demands the right of the government to rule absolutely if it sees fit for the sake of the folk-struggle.
The above dispute shows that neither is Fascism sufficient nor essential to national socialism, although they are compatible. Historically, Gelishaltung and Wehrhaftmachung meant a corporatist but totalitarian reorganization of the economy, but this was not identical with the Fascist concept. Fascists believe in a strong authoritarian government, nationalist militarism and ideology, and technocratic control over the economy. National Socialist values are often similar, but transformed by racial ideology and axioms. While Fascism does not demand a totalitarian state, national socialism does demand the right of the state to govern as a totalitarian state, at least when this is seen as necessary and essential to national goals, and afterward, an extensive and totalitarian fascism may become repulsive to the national socialist state. Nevertheless, both systems always embrace a government that is formally fascist in the sense of demanding an authoritarian executive, national unity, some degree of militarism, and the suppression of liberal or socialist policies as anything more than instruments to be checked by the governing prerogatives of the state.
