Introduction to Political Theory

Fascism, liberalism and the Enlightenment

The year ‘1789 [of the French Revolution, and the inauguration of the era of

Liberty, Equality and Fraternity] is abolished’ (Heywood, 1992: 174). This was how

the Nazis proclaimed their victory in 1933. Although fascists specifically targeted

Marxism, they saw Marxism as an ideology that built upon, and was thus rooted

in, the assumptions of liberalism and the Enlightenment. Dunn quotes the words

of Hitler: ‘National Socialism is what Marxism could have been had it freed itself

from the absurd, artificial link with the democratic system’ (Dunn, 1979: 21).

The state of nature, equality and the individual

Fascists not only deny that humans have ever lived outside of society, they interpret

‘nature’ in a repressively hierarchical manner. Although the idea that humans are

self-contained atoms who are naturally separate and unrelated to one another

constitutes a mystification of social reality, fascism attacked abstract individualism

because of its universal and egalitarian claims. It dramatically threw the baby out

with the bathwater.

Classical liberalism sees individuals as naturally free and equal. Fascism takes

the view that nature is a force that embodies violence, instinct and superiority: hence

it rejects the whole notion of equality even as a formal attribute. Individuals are

created by the community, and the community is interpreted in statist terms. It is

true that Nazi ideologists gave a specifically racial and völkisch(peoples’) dimension

to the notion of community so that the community constituted a kind of soul. But

all fascists see the community as ‘natural’, animated by some kind of life force – it

is an emotional organism, not a rational construct – and it assigns superiority to

the few and inferiority to the many.

The notion of humanity was attacked for two reasons: first because it ignored

what was deemed to be racial superiority – of Aryans over Jews, whites over blacks,

etc. – and second, because it implied that the mass of humans mattered. The progress

and culture of humanity, declared Hitler, ‘are not a product of the majority, but

rests exclusively on the genius and energy of the personality’ (Vincent, 1995: 157).

The individual denotes not the ordinary and everyday human being, but the leader,

the genius, the person who must be obeyed.

Nationalism

Liberalism has an ambivalent position towards nationalism because it has an

ambivalent position towards the state. In the state of nature individuals are deemed

cosmopolitan – they are outside both nation and state – but as they become

conscious of the inconveniences of such a position, they not only form a state but

acquire a national identity. Liberal nationalism, like the liberal state, seeks to

reconcile universal freedom and equality with the necessary evil of particular

institutions that divide the world. Liberal nationalists argue that all nations are

equal, and the liberal state seeks to provide security for the free citizen. Just as

296 Part 2 Classical ideologies