No. of Recommendations: 3
Now that we've cleared up the history, let's add a footnote and then bring things forward to today.
Fascism revolved around the practical nature of running a country and the mental energy needed to drive it forward. The practical part was simple: why cut out the industrialists who knew how to run things? Why not have them do what they do under the direction of the state instead?
The fascists did not believe, as the communists did, in the nationalisation of the means of production, or the abolition of private property, but that the state should run the economy in partnership with owners and workers via corporations ' the so-called corporate state. Among early manifesto pledges was the abolition of the monarchy.
Fascism also had its own variant of the class war, this one between producers of whatever class, and parasites of whatever class. It introduced the welfare state. Mussolini ' at the same time as Lenin ' had realised that only a political party ' not trade unions, still less a parliament ' could enact the revolution. And he rejected Marxist dogma which gave a decisive role to the proletariat. The role of the party, the revolutionary vanguard ' or priesthood ' was to instill and maintain faith. The role of the proletariat was to believe, which it would do only if the revolution was national, not international.
