FASCISM, GENERIC AND HISTORIC

Mussolini and Hitler were not alone in emphasizing the common origins, features, and destinies of Fascism and National Socialism. Theories of “fascism” – that elusive generic phenomenon with a small “f” – have proliferated with abandon ever since the 1920s. Definitions have ranged from the Third International's “open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialistic elements of finance capital” through Ernst Nolte's militant anti-Marxism, to the modernization theorists' “mass-mobilizing developmental dictatorships under single-party auspices.” And a historian of ideas has recently described fascism as a “genus of political ideology whose mythic core … is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”

Voices of caution have occasionally sounded, urging the “deflation” of a concept that “exists in faith and is pursued by reason,” or suggesting that fascism fails to encompass adequately the ultimate evil of National Socialist Germany. Yet the notion is still with us, even if no two theories of fascism coincide. Marxists have normally equated fascism and capitalism “in the final analysis,” but have divided over fascism's precise degree of subservience to capital.