A few thoughts on fascism for your Wednesday morning/afternoon/evening. Fascism is one of the most misused terms in the world (along with freedom). It is thrown around casually by idiots on the left and the right so much that there is seldom any analysis done of it's essence.

So what is the essence of Fascism? Fascism arises in Italy, Germany and other European states as a direct response to the post WW1 economic crash and the revolutionary class warfare that raged in every country inspired by the Bolshevik revolution.

In Italy Mussolinis armed squads were funded and armed initially by the Italian landowners and used to brutalise peasants who rose up against these landowners. They went onto to be used by factor owners to break strikes in the northern industrial cities.

Mussolini at the time kept up an adapted version of his old Socialist beliefs. This time though he adapted it to bring in the petit bourgeois who had been ruined by the post WW1 economic disaster.

Mussolini's tactic here was to marshal the middle class into a mass party that would whilst violently defending capitalist property also promise a "national revolution". He did so as he needed to make an appeal to the middle class that appeared to be radical.

This was necessary as if Mussolini had merely been defending the visibly rotten Italian state then he would not have met such success as he did. Fascism therefore whilst violently defending capital must make a show of being opposed to at least some elements of capitalism.

What Mussolini created Hitler developed much further. The NSDAP was from it's outset aiming at a mass movement. It often aped the mass rallies, parades, leisure programmes and other elements that had been pioneered by the SPD and the Communist Party.

That the ruling class in Germany and Italy turned to the Fascists is a case of them being in a truly desperate situation. Facing mass working class uprisings, the traditional forces of state repression becoming unreliable and the state facing a legitimation crisis.