ABSTRACT
Liberal historians traditionally reject any direct causal relation between fascism and capitalism, pointing to the totalitarian implications of fascisttype movements which are opposed to economic liberalism. Why, it is asked, would capitalists invest in fascist movements which could eventually harm their commercial interests? As we saw in Chapter 4, however, part of the answer lies in the internal contradictions within the ruling power-bloc: as a ‘least-worst option’ – a satisfactory rather than ideal strategic choice in the absence of alternatives – fascist movements appeal to capitalists not because an identity of interests exists between fascism and business, but because fascism offers a means for mobilizing intermediate strata and neutralizing contradictions between competing fractions of capital. By appealing to nationalist sentiment, fascists facilitate a temporary alliance between sectors of industry, between industry and agriculture, and between large-scale modern industry and traditional petty bourgeois producers, whose mass support allows economic elites to extend their influence over the state and to discipline organized labour through the abolition of collective labour rights and the reduction of law to an instrument of state terror (Wahnser 1994: 29). Yet the relationship between fascism and capitalism is more complex than this sociological model allows, and cannot be understood without a formal analysis of the political economy of postliberal capitalism following the collapse of international economic cooperation in the global slump of 192933. To achieve this, we need to examine the politicization of capitalism as a strategy for transferring risk from the private sector to the public sector: then as now, the shift towards economic fascism cannot be explained in terms of nationalism alone (as if the demand for protectionism, cartelization or labour market controls were just random policy initiatives advanced by irrational demagogues). Rather, we need to accept a more fundamental possibility, namely that faced with the choice between state socialism and political capitalism, the transnational corporate elite in the advanced western nations consistently opts for the latter – albeit at the price of conceding some level of state disposition over the investment of private capital.
