On The Myth of Fascist “Privatization”

by Zoltanous

When examining the economic structures of fascist regimes, anti-fascist scholars often emphasize the role of business and privatization, with communist thinker Michael Parenti providing a prominent example.

“Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.”

“Both Mussolini and Hitler showed their gratitude to their big business patrons by privatizing many perfectly solvent state-owned steel mills, power plants, banks, and steamship companies.”

— Michael Parenti, Blackshirts & Reds

Superficially, these privatization policies appear paradoxical for regimes that proclaimed socialist principles, raising questions about the compatibility of fascist economics with capitalist practices. However, the narrative advanced by Parenti and similar scholars may oversimplify the complex motivations behind fascist privatization. By situating these policies within a comparative framework — examining both fascist and non-fascist socialist states’ use of privatization — this analysis seeks to challenge reductive interpretations and uncover the pragmatic and ideological drivers of fascist economic strategies.

A salient historical precedent is the Soviet Union’s New Economic Policy (NEP), instituted under Vladimir Lenin from 1921 to 1928. This policy followed the austere period of “War Communism” (1918–1921), during which the Bolshevik government, amid the Russian Civil War, enforced stringent measures: private ownership was proscribed, industries were nationalized, strikes were prohibited, and food distribution was tightly controlled through centralized rationing. A key component of War Communism was “Prodrazvyorstka,” a grain requisition policy whereby agricultural produce was confiscated from peasants at nominal prices to meet state quotas, often determined ad hoc by military commanders. By 1921, the economic devastation wrought by these policies, coupled with widespread social unrest, necessitated a strategic retreat. The NEP introduced a mixed economy, reinstating private property rights, permitting private enterprises, granting concessions to foreign capital, and liberalizing trade. In agriculture, Prodrazvyorstka was replaced with “prodnalog,” a fixed tax system that allowed peasants to retain and sell surplus produce after meeting state obligations. This reform also lifted restrictions on agricultural and urban markets, fostering a nascent market-oriented framework. The NEP was not an ideological capitulation but a pragmatic mechanism to industrialize a semi-feudal Russia, demonstrating that socialist states could harness private enterprise to advance material conditions without abandoning their ideological moorings. This market-oriented approach was, however, discontinued in 1928 with the advent of Joseph Stalin’s Five-Year Plan, which reverted to centralized planning.

A comparable instance of socialist privatization is observed in post-Mao China under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership. Following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, Deng outmaneuvered Mao’s designated successor, Hua Guofeng, consolidating power by December 1978 at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee. Inheriting an economy stifled by the inefficiencies of Maoist central planning, Deng introduced “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a hybrid model blending market liberalization with socialist principles. Implemented in two phases, these reforms transformed China’s economic landscape. The first phase, spanning the late 1970s to early 1980s, de-collectivized agriculture, opened the economy to foreign investment, and permitted entrepreneurial ventures. The second phase, in the late 1980s and 1990s, involved privatizing and contracting out significant portions of state-owned industries. A pivotal reform was the 1985 liberalization of price controls, complemented by the relaxation of protectionist policies, though state monopolies persisted in strategic sectors such as banking and petroleum. By 2005, the private sector contributed up to 70% of China’s GDP, marking a profound departure from Maoist economic orthodoxy. Deng’s reforms catalyzed China’s ascent as the world’s second-largest economy, underscoring the efficacy of market mechanisms within a socialist framework.

These historical examples elucidate a critical point: socialist states, whether fascist or non-fascist, strategically employed privatization to enhance material conditions and drive economic development. Far from constituting ideological hypocrisy or a concession to capitalism, such policies reflect the adaptability of socialism within market-oriented structures. The NEP and Deng’s reforms demonstrate that socialism does not necessitate a rigid command economy, as seen in Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, but can incorporate private enterprise to achieve state-directed objectives. This nuanced understanding challenges the oversimplified narrative that equates privatization with liberal capitalism, highlighting instead its role as a pragmatic instrument for socialism.

What did fascists say about private property? Fascism rejects liberalism’s core tenets. Liberalism posits that the state exists to protect inalienable rights and promote peace and prosperity. Fascism fundamentally rejects this view. In The Doctrine of Fascism, Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini write:

“The State’s functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights.”

— Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism

Liberalism views freedom as a right; fascism considers it a privilege. The same logic applies to property rights. Liberalism holds that private property is a right, allowing individuals to do as they wish with their property. Fascism, however, views private property or capital as a privilege, with private production serving as a tool for national betterment.

The Fascist Italian 1927 Charter of Labour further elaborates in Article 9:

“State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when the political interest of the State is at stake. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement, or direct management.”

— Charter of Labour

Adolf Hitler, in an interview with Richard Breiting, emphasized:

“The basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority… The good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me?… Today’s bourgeoisie is rotten to the core; it has no ideals anymore; all it wants to do is earn money and so it does me what damage it can. The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil.”

— Adolf Hitler, interview with Richard Breiting

Ernst Rudolf Huber, an official Nazi party spokesman said that:

“‘Private property’ as conceived under the liberalistic economic order… represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests… German socialism had to overcome this ‘private,’ that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.”

— Ernst Rudolf Huber quoted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism by Raymond E. Murphy

Thus, fascists universally viewed private property as a privilege, with productivity in the private sphere as a duty to the nation and the state retaining the right to intervene to enhance productivity.

For further insight into fascist perspectives on property relations:

It is true that privatization occurred in fascist countries. In Italy, from 1922 to 1925, the government, under liberal economist Alberto De Stefani as Minister of Finance, pursued aggressive privatization policies. These included simplifying the tax code, cutting taxes, liberalizing trade, curbing government spending, and abolishing rent controls. The Fascist government privatized telephone networks, the state monopoly on match sales, and the state monopoly on life insurance. It also reprivatized the metal machinery firm Ansaldo and awarded concessions for tolled motorways to private firms. However, Italy’s privatization was similar to the USSR’s NEP, aimed at increasing industrialization and modernization in a predominantly agricultural economy. This period is known as “Heroic Capitalism”, with industrial production increasing significantly.

According to Nicholas Farrell:

“By 1938, total Italian production had increased by 153.8 percent since 1913 compared with 149.9 percent in Germany and 109.4 percent in France. And by 1939 industrial productivity had grown by 145.2 percent since 1913, compared with 143.6 percent in Britain, 136.5 percent in France, 136 percent in America, and 122.4 percent in Germany. By 1935 industrial production had increased to the pre-depression level and by 1939 had increased by a further 20 percent.”

— Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life

However, much of this production stemmed from state-sponsored agricultural initiatives, such as the “Battle for Grain” and “Battle for Land.” The state gradually reasserted control over the Italian economy.

Farrell further notes:

“Between 1929 and 1934, expenditure on public works tripled to overtake defense for the first time as the largest item in total government expenditure. Much of this money was spent on rural projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marshes. In January 1933 Mussolini, who had taken back control of the Ministry of Corporations from Bottai in July 1932, set up the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI)—which survived until 2000—to save the major banks from collapse by buying the shares they held in ailing or collapsed businesses. This meant that IRI came to own large sectors of the economy—by 1937, 44 percent of the total share capital of all the companies quoted on the Milan Stock Exchange. In 1936, the Banca d’Italia was nationalized. Unemployment benefit was introduced in 1933, and by the end of the 1930s, 13 million Italians belonged to the state health insurance scheme. By 1939, social security expenditure was 21 percent of state expenditure. This helped families with children in particular. In addition, the cheap leisure activities offered by the Dopolavoro also offset the financial hardship of the Italian people. In 1935, it controlled 771 cinemas, 1,227 theaters, 2,066 theater companies, 2,130 orchestras, 6,427 libraries, as well as thousands of sports clubs. The same year, the forty-hour week was introduced. In return, the workforce was expected to spend Saturday afternoons in sporting, political, and paramilitary activities—the so-called “Sabato Fascista”. From 1932, under the “treni popolari” scheme, Italians could travel by train on Sundays for a 70 percent discount. By 1939, the state owned 21.5 percent of all quoted companies in Italy—a greater percentage of state ownership than anywhere else in Europe outside Soviet Russia.”

— Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life

Thus, while Italy pursued privatization in its early years, it later embraced heavier government intervention for the betterment of its people. National Socialist Germany also implemented privatization policies, but they were markedly different.

“The nationalization of big industry was never attempted after the Nazis came into power. But this was by no means a “betrayal” of their program, as has been alleged by some of their opponents. The socialization of the entire German productive machinery, both agricultural and industrial, was achieved by methods other than expropriation, to a much larger extent and on an immeasurably more comprehensive scale than the authors of the party program of 1920 probably ever imagined. In fact, not only the big trusts were gradually but rapidly subjected to governmental control in Germany but so was every sort of economic activity, leaving not much more than the title of private ownership. Gradually but rapidly, out of the necessity first of creating employment and afterward of building up a huge armament system, grew an economic system that made the state as much an economic dictator as it was from the beginning a political dictator.”

— Gustav Stolper, German Economy, 1870–1940

In his work Against The Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany, Germà Bel examines the economic policies of Nazi Germany, specifically the privatization efforts during the 1930s. However, Marxist interpretations of Bel's analysis often misrepresent his findings, misconstruing the nature and implications of these policies.

“It is a fact that the government of the Nazi Party sold off public ownership in several State-owned firms in the mid-1930s. These firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyards, ship-lines, railways, etc. In addition, the delivery of some public services that were produced by the government prior to the 1930s, especially social and labor-related services, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to organizations within the party.”

— Germà Bel, Against The Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany

The phrase “organizations within the party” is critical. The Nazis sold firms to state agents, not truly private hands. Bel provides an example with industrialist Friedrich “Fritz” Thyssen, a rare early supporter of the Nazi party.

“Soon after the Nazi party came to power, United Steel was reorganized so that the government majority stake of 52 percent was converted into a stake of less than 25 percent, no longer sufficient in German law to give the government any privileges in company control. Fritz Thyssen, who held the leading position in the Trust, had been one of only two big industrialists to give support to the Nazi Party before it.”

— Germà Bel, Against The Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany

However, Thyssen broke with the party in 1939, fled to Switzerland, and his company was nationalized. By 1943, he was in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This illustrates that privatization was to state-aligned agents and underscores the Nazis’ disregard for private property rights in favor of state-driven production.

Bel further clarifies:

“However, it is worth noting that the general orientation of the Nazi economic policy was the exact opposite of that of the EU countries in the late 1990s: Whereas the modern privatization in the EU has been parallel to liberalization policies, in Nazi Germany privatization was applied within a framework of increasing control of the state over the whole economy through regulation and political interference.”

— Germà Bel, Against the Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany

Nazi privatization was not genuine but a political maneuver to enhance state control over the economy. Bel essentially reaches this viewpoint……

“The Nazi regime rejected liberalism, and was strongly against free competition and regulation of the economy by market mechanisms.”

— Germà Bel, Against the Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany

Other academic works support this view. In The Vampire Economy, Jewish communist Günter Reimann documents the abolition of private property rights.

“The decree of February 28, 1933, nullified article 153 of the Weimar Constitution which guaranteed private property and restricted interference with private property in accordance with certain legally defined conditions… The conception of property has experienced a fundamental change. The individualistic conception of the State—a result of the liberal spirit—must give way to the concept that communal welfare precedes individual welfare.”

— Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy

In fascist regimes, genuine private ownership was nonexistent. The state dictated wages, prices, production choices, and methods. When the state holds absolute control over the decisions of those who own the means of production, the legal concept of private ownership loses its significance.

Reimann continues:

“The owner of the property was helpless, since under fascism there is no longer an independent judiciary that protects the property rights of private citizens against the State. The authoritarian State has made it a principle that private property is no longer sacred.”

— Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy

A letter from a German industrialist, later shared by Reiman, revealed the constant anxieties faced by business owners under fascist rule. They were uncertain about how much of their earnings they could retain due to unpredictable economic policies. The Nazi regime's aggressive tax hikes left little room for fiscal measures to gain political loyalty. Corporate tax revenues surged by 1,365% from 1932-33 to 1937-38, while overall government revenue increased by 110% during the same period. The economic framework bore such striking similarities to Marxist-Leninist policies. During the Third Reich, many were compelled to study Marxist economic theory to make sense of the regime's economic policies.

“…even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system”

— Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy

Further validated by Richard J. Evans:

“The destruction of the labour movement in the following months convinced many businessmen that they were right to back the new regime. But as time went on, businessmen found that the regime had its own objectives that increasingly diverged from their own. Chief of these was the ever more frenetic drive to rearm and prepare for war. Initially, business was happy to accommodate itself to this objective, which brought it renewed and then increased orders. Even consumer goods producers benefited from the armaments-driven economic recovery. But within a few years, as the regime’s demands began to outstrip German industry’s capacity to fulfil them, industrialists’ doubts began to grow. Few industrialists’ reactions to this process were as sharp as those of the steel boss Fritz Thyssen, whose support of the Nazi Party before 1933 was as extreme as the extent of his disillusion with the movement six years later. In 1939 Thyssen bitterly condemned the state’s direction of the economy and prophesied that the Nazis would soon start shooting industrialists who did not fulfill the conditions prescribed by the Four-Year Plan, just as their equivalents were shot in Soviet Russia. He fled abroad after the outbreak of the war, his property was confiscated by the Gestapo, and he was subsequently arrested in France and put into a concentration camp.”

— Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich In Power

The highly regulated nature of the Nazi economy is well-documented.

“By 1939, businessmen were subject to a whole range of controls on imports, the distribution of raw materials, prices, wages, employment, capital markets, and so on. The Government dictated to a large extent what and how much they should produce, the amount of new investment, where new plants should be built, the type and amount of raw materials to be used, what prices to charge their customers and what wages to pay their employees, the amount of profit they could take and how it should be used—largely in reinvestment or for the purchase of Government bonds.”

— Jeremy Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism, 1919–1945: State, Economy, and Society, 1933–1939

The National Socialists established a "plant community" (Betriebsgemeinschaft) led by a "plant leader" (Betriebsführer), supported by a hierarchy of state employees, with workers designated as "followers" (Gefolgschaft). The concept of employers and employees was eliminated. These changes were enacted on January 20, 1934, through the "Gesetz zur Ordnung der nationalen Arbeit" (AOG; Law on the Organization of National Labor), which introduced the Factory Code of Rules.

“The preamble [of the Factory Code] stated that the “leaders” and “followers” of these plants now constituted a “factory community sharing a common destiny”, who were to work together “in faithful comradeship and mutual trust” - for the good of the factory, for Germany and its economy and according to the principle of “common weal before private gain”. Every employee should carry out his allotted tasks conscientiously and in a disciplined manner, showing a “joyful commitment to the National Socialist state and its Führer” as well as “unwavering loyalty toward the plant community, the Volksgemeinschaft [national community] and the German fatherland”. The following paragraphs then outlined the regulations concerning hiring, working hours, work habits, prevention of accidents, wages, vacation, infringement of the Factory Code, and generalities.”

— Stephan H. Lindner, Inside IG Farben

In the Third Reich, businesses were not truly private. As Peter Temin notes in Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning In The 1930s, they resembled Soviet-style state-controlled enterprises.

“One final point of similarity between Nazi and Soviet policies should be noted, although its meaning is far from clear. Both governments reorganized industry into larger units, ostensibly to increase state control over economic activity. The Nazis reorganized industry into 13 administrative groups with a large number of subgroups to create a private hierarchy for state control. The state therefore could direct the firms’ activities without acquiring direct ownership of enterprises. The pre-existing tendency to form cartels was encouraged to eliminate competition that would destabilize prices.”

“The Soviets had made a similar move in the 1920s. Faced with a scarcity of administrative personnel, the state encouraged enterprises to combine into trusts and trusts to combine into syndicates. These large units continued into the 1930s where they were utilized to bridge the gap between overall plans and actual production.”

“The state therefore directed the internal organization of industry in both countries. The creation of industry groups allowed private organizations to control more of the hierarchy in Germany. It enabled enterprise-related hierarchies to do the same in Soviet Russia. Even though the Russian managers were not private, there seems to have been enterprise-specific knowledge that made lower-level hierarchies preferable to state bureaucrats in the administration of economic plans. This information asymmetry appears to have been independent of ownership patterns.”

— Peter Temin, Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning In The 1930s

Former business owners often stayed on as “Betriebsführer” but were required to follow Party directives. Workers needed state permission to change jobs, as the economy was centrally controlled through the “Gleichschaltung” policy, which aligned businesses with state goals. Despite this, historians like Lindner often mislabel this system as “capitalism,” contradicting their own evidence.

The Third Reich positioned itself as a defender of workers against managerial exploitation. The Reich’s Labor Ministry issued guidelines outlining offenses deemed exploitative, such as paying below state-set minimum wages, denying overtime pay, withholding vacation time, cutting work hours, neglecting to provide meals, maintaining excessively hot or cold workplaces, or allowing unsafe or unsanitary conditions.

“The record of court proceedings for 1939 demonstrates that the labor law primarily safeguarded the well-being of employees rather than their overseers. During that year, the courts conducted 14 hearings against workers and 153 against plant managers, assistant managers and supervisors. In seven cases, the directors lost their jobs.”

— Richard Tedor, Hitler’s Revolution

Under Italy's Fascist regime, the state effectively usurped the economic authority traditionally held by private capitalists. Economist Ludwig von Mises noted that this system closely resembled British Guild Socialism. The government enforced mandatory union membership, imposed strict regulations on industries, and nationalized over 80 companies. The Fascist state seized bank stock holdings and took control of failing businesses, gaining significant stakes in various sectors, including iron manufacturing, shipbuilding, and maritime industries. Political scientist Franklin Hugh Adler highlighted the extent of state dominance in these economic structures.

“..under Fascism the state had more latitude for control over the economy than in any other nation at the time except for the Soviet Union.”

— Franklin Hugh Adler, Italian Industrialists From Liberalism to Fascism: The Political Development of The Industrial Bourgeoisie, 1906-1934

The assertion that Fascism was “capitalist” or the “end-stage of capitalism” lacks historical grounding. Fascist “corporations,” like Marxist and socialist syndicates, were state-controlled entities, not free-market institutions. Labeling Fascism as capitalist ignores its centralized, anti-capitalism, which aligns more closely with socialism.

“Already, under Fascism, via IRI, three-quarters of Italian industry was nationalised - in terms of management if not in terms of ownership. The manifesto proposed the full-scale nationalisation of public services. It also proposed the join management of enterprise by workers and bosses who would all be required to join trade unions. The representatives of the workers on the management boards would be elected by the workforce. The phrase socializzazione described Mussolini’s Fascist brand of Socialism.”

— Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life

This also raises the question: what is the root of fascism in general? The word “fascism” derives from the Latin fascio, a bundle of sticks representing unified strength and authority. In 19th-century Italy, a fascio was associated with labor unions, and fasci referred to these collective organizations. As a result, Italian “Fascism” originally meant “trade unionism,” reflecting organized worker solidarity.

“...the word fascio means literally ‘bundle’ and had been used for a long time as an alternative to union.”

— Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini: A New Life

Some wrongly assume “fascism” is purely a Roman term due to its Latin root. In Italian Fascism, this referred to the authority, unity, and the strength of labor unions, which merged into the state itself, making the state into one giant union with total control. Emerging from syndicalism, Fascists used “corporation” instead of “syndicate” to distinguish their trade unions from Marxist ones, viewing them as national entities. From Latin corpus (body), “corporation” meant a “body of the nation” or state organ, representing state-controlled organizations that opposed free-markets.

In Italy, a socialization law was enacted to increase workers' influence over production and state affairs. This legislation also aimed to promote a fairer distribution of wealth.

“…workers were to participate in factory and business management, land reform was to be initiated and there were to be wage and price controls.”

— Stephen J. Lee, European Dictatorships

The use of markets and private property in socialist states, whether fascist or non-fascist, was a shared feature but driven by distinct motivations and outcomes. In non-fascist socialist systems like the Soviet Union’s NEP or post-Mao China under Deng Xiaoping, privatization was a pragmatic tool to boost economic growth, modernize industries, and enhance living standards, transitioning from agrarian or centrally planned economies to market-oriented systems while maintaining socialist goals of collective welfare and state-led development. Similarly, fascist states like Italy and Nazi Germany employed privatization to enhance national productivity and industrialization, but under strict state control to serve nationalist and authoritarian aims. In Italy, early Heroic Capitalism shifted to heavy state intervention via The Cooperate State and even more during Socialization, while in Germany, privatization was superficial, with assets often transferred to Party loyalists, as seen with Fritz Thyssen, under tight state oversight.

In both fascist and non-fascist contexts, privatization was not an embrace of liberal capitalism but a means to leverage private initiative for state-driven objectives. Fascism, however, uniquely subordinated property rights to national interests, as emphasized by leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, unlike the individual-focused property rights of liberal capitalism. Equating fascist privatization to modern neo-liberalism oversimplifies these systems and distorts historical context. Understanding these distinctions reveals privatization as a pragmatic tool in both socialist and fascist states, used to strengthen state power and national development, not a departure. The Marxist view of developmental stages leading to socialism, as seen in fascist economic strategies, aligns with Marxist-Leninist ideas of developing productive forces and dialectics, further complicating the capitalist label for fascism.

“The economic policy of Fascism, in its early years (1922-1925), distinctly bore a liberal character, while in the subsequent years (1926-1929) it approached state socialism; ultimately, in its final phase, it fully evolved into a corporative direction. The 1927 Labor Charter (Carta del Lavoro), while marking the beginning of the true corporative structure (VI. Declaration: ‘Corporations constitute the sole organization of productive forces and fully represent their interests’), like every major political and revolutionary document, carries within it the residues of the world it rebelled against and thus bears the traces of an unconscious compromise; this, in turn, bears the stamp of the transitional period.”

— Ugo Spirito, Capitalism and Corporatism

Many claims about fascism are rooted in myth, while socialism often proves more pragmatic than dogmatic. A common misconception in modern discourse is the automatic labeling of fascism as “right-wing” politics, a distortion that obscures its true nature, as the falsehoods I’ve addressed reveal.

“Fascism is not a reactionary movement, but revolutionary. The bourgeoisie and the conservatives, who cling to their privileges and fear change, cannot comprehend the new spirit we bring to the nation."

“We do not repudiate Marxism. We still consider it an essential instrument of interpretation, but we are free to criticize it and to correct it.”

— Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia

It sounds more like a form of Marxism to me? Another Italian Fascist intellectual says that:

“The truth is that the revolutionary spirit of Fascism is a continuation of the great revolution of the nineteenth century, whose greatest thinker was Karl Marx.”

— Edmundo Rossoni, Political and Moral Aspects of The New Corporative Economy

Despite clear evidence of anti-capitalist policies, Marxists emphasize specific instances of Fascist labor suppression. In Italy, large landowners and industrialists aimed to sustain profits by reducing wages and increasing prices. They also note significant violence and intimidation against labor organizations and socialist groups, including attacks on their buildings, murders of workers, and arrests, which persisted until Mussolini’s consolidation of power.

While such violence occurred, it primarily targeted overt Marxist activities rather than merely protecting profits, a distinction often ignored. These accounts also fail to acknowledge that regimes associated with socialism have similarly suppressed workers and unions. For example, in Novocherkassk, Russia, on June 1-2, 1962, a strike at the Electric Locomotive Plant, protesting food price increases and poor working conditions, was violently crushed. Soviet forces killed at least 26 demonstrators, injured 87, and arrested many strike leaders.

It should be noted that the Fascist violence directed at reformist Marxist groups signaled the decline of the liberal democratic social order. This is precisely why many conservatives and liberals grew fearful of the Fascist threat. The most notable example of this was the murder of Giacomo Matteotti.

“As a consequence, during the first years of the regime, conservatives and revolutionaries, both within and outside the Fascist party, jockeyed for positions and advantage. Under the circumstances, Fascist theoreticians often papered over tensions by maintaining that the revolution was disposed to “conserving” whatever was of value from the past. That seemed to satisfy the class of “fellow travelers” who imagined that Fascism would serve their conservative or liberal interests. They chose to understand Fascism as a transitional regime, destined to restore the antecedent economically and politically liberal order.

With the murder of Matteotti in June 1924, those conservatives and liberals who had collected around Fascism prior to the March on Rome began to fall away. At the same time, there was a sudden erosion of equity values. Apprehension grew among the propertied classes—many withdrew their support—and the opposition press arrayed itself against the government. There were large-scale defections—particularly among the business and financial communities — together with a substantial number from the Fascist syndicates. To add to the mounting difficulties, the formal political opposition “seceded” from parliament in moral outrage — and sought to mobilize the public as well as the Crown against the government. The entire system was threatened.”

— A. James Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals

Unlike Marxist-Leninist perspectives, fascism is fundamentally a variant of socialism, thinly veiled with capitalist trappings. It allows select capitalists to function as technocratic tools while consistently subverting their autonomy. Fascist movements gained traction by merging socialism with nationalist fervor, remaining inherently opposed to capitalism. The so-called "privatization" in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was a facade, always channeling greater economic control to the state or fascist entities. At its core, fascism rejects capitalism.

“...the Italian business community, in general, welcomed the disappearance of Fascism.”

“there is no credible evidence that Fascism controlled the nation's economy for the benefit of the 'possessing classes.'“

— A. James Gregor, The Search For Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science