Welcome friends!
I was watching some old WWII documentaries on TV the other day and it got me thinking about the close relationship between conservatism and fascism, so I thought I might do a post on that today.
Now for me understanding fascism requires above all that one appreciate the fundamental concern of economic conservatives probably ever since the advent of democratic government, which is that democratic government represents a form of social and political power that is not based on wealth and economic power generated through one’s success in the market place (or one’s ancestors’ success, or other ostensibly laudable behaviors and attributes such as winning the lottery, gambling on the stock market with other people’s money, or running a successful drug cartel) but on an entirely distinct egalitarian ethical concept of one man one vote. This concept is at odds with the conservative view of the relative worth and importance of different people. So the primary fear of conservatives is, and has always been, that under the right conditions relatively economically unsuccessful and powerless people who naturally do not deserve much consideration in their view might use their combined democratic political power to enact policies that would tend to improve their lot but possibly negatively affect the lot of those who are currently making out very well under the existing system, whatever that might happen to be. (That’s right, I’m talking about the dreaded specter of redistribution, broadly conceived, or “class warfare” as US conservatives tend to call it.) Thus, economic conservatives are always fundamentally at war with democratic government typically spend a great deal of time and effort trying to impress upon others the ineptness, corruption, and all around uselessness of democratic government (belied of course by their great interest in that form of government when it can be used to their own advantage).
The conventional solution to this thorny issue for conservatives of how to remove the threat posed by democratic political systems has traditionally been to simply apply their economic power to democratic politics thereby heading off any possibility government action might be used to further the interests of anyone other than themselves. This usually represents little difficulty because as everyone knows, especially every American, money talks. This solution works pretty well as long as things go well enough that the common man and woman manages to keep life and limb together. Vested business interests and wealthy individuals essentially buy off politicians, or influence politicians via political contributions, or just spend money financing and marketing suitable political parties, think tanks, pundits, radio talk show hosts, newspapers, etc. They generally manage to convince the man and woman in the street that policies that benefit the economic elite benefit everyone else as well either by the old trickle down theory or by the new twist that the elite generate jobs, etc., while policies that benefit anyone else are a sure recipe for disaster. The average person tends to go along with this because he or she is typically struggling to make a living and has little time to devote to politics anyway.
Unfortunately for conservatives this cozy arrangement tends to break down when serious economic troubles come along, which they do on a regular basis in insufficiently regulated free market economic systems. And this is exactly what happened in the early part of the twentieth century just prior to the advent of fascism. Yes, we — and by we I mean the world — had a little problem: the Great Depression, to be exact. And when people fall on tough times and are unemployed and their kids are going hungry, guess what? They start getting a little more interested in things like economic and social policy, and they start looking at government as a potential solution to their problems. This led to the terrifying prospect for conservatives that the economic elites of the world might lose their grip on their respective political systems.
Now when conservatives become concerned they can no longer contain democratic government and use it to further their own interests they have two routes they can take. First, they can just get rid of the democratic bit and support a government they can rely upon to support their interests. Second, they can keep the democratic bit but try to put as many constraints as they can on the government being used for anything other than maintaining the status quo. The first option is, of course, fascism. Big government, conservative style. Now when you think about it, the political and ethical philosophy of fascism is actually a lot closer to the social philosophy associated with free market capitalism than is the egalitarian philosophy that underlies democratic political theory. After all, in the same way unregulated capitalism leads economic power to become ever more concentrated in the hands of a relatively few people (usually the most materialistic, ambitious, egotistical, and ruthless), fascism leads to political power to become ever more concentrated in the hands of a relatively few people (of a basically similar temperament) or even of one person. In addition to the titans of industry who ostensibly naturally wield disproportionate economic power one has titans of politics who naturally wield disproportionate political power. And, indeed, under fascism, the connection between the leaders of private industry and government were historically very close indeed.
Unfortunately for conservatives fascism turned out to be something of a bust. It did apparently have some early successes, particularly in the economic realm. However, it rather quickly and spectacularly succumbed to its own distinctive pathologies including most notably the fact that the most effective way to get the common man re-employed and occupied in difficult economic conditions while preserving the economic status quo turned out to involve quite a bit of warfare, which eventually became unmanageable. And then of course you had the problem that with no democratic checks and balances in place the system tended to fly off the rails in other ways, such as the suppression (well, OK, let’s just say wholesale murder) of minorities.
With fascism thoroughly discredited conservatives were left with only the second option to confront the threat posed by democratic government, which was to begrudgingly accept democratic government but try to minimize or constrain government action (that is, government action that does not support the status quo or existing interests) any way they can. Now conservatives in the US have been laying the framework to do just this for years. Their basic approach has been to try to convince the working man and woman any government action on his or her behalf would not only be futile but counterproductive and only policies that play to the status quo and strengthen the position of the economic elite can possibly improve the welfare of other people. And I must say they have been enormously successful at it; so much so conservatives have pretty much had a lock on the government of the US for many years now. As a result, the gap that exists between the market power of the economic elite and that of everyone else has grown to proportions never before seen in this country, while the economic welfare of the middle and lower classes has continued the long, sad decline it has been on for years. However, as one might expect, conservative anti-government zeal has not only made a few people incredibly wealthy but it has re-introduced levels of instability, economic deprivation, and unemployment we haven’t seen for years. And, yes, some of the commoners are once again starting to get a bit restless. One has the idea some conservatives are starting to wonder how long they can keep it up. So it should come as no surprise to anyone they are trying ever more drastic means to rein in the ability of democratic government to take any type of action to change anything in any way that would not be in their favor, including such stratagems as the arch-conservative Tea Party’s attempt to single handedly ruin the credit of the US government with a manufactured debt default, the Republican Party’s attempt to bankrupt the US government with costly wars combined with irresponsible, unproductive, and inequitable tax cuts, and more of the same with tax cuts coupled with balanced budget amendments. So will conservatives finally get their way and manage to drown our democratic government (or really the progressive potential of our democratic government) in a bathtub, to paraphrase one of the Tea Party’s puppet masters? Only time will tell.
