Fascism

good well then today we're going to talk about fashion okay I've got a 10 yeah maybe you've gotten the idea already but guess what the 20th century was not all fun and games and really for the next few weeks it's going to be more depressing than you okay you've got the Great Depression we've got fascism the rise of Mussolini in Italy Hitler in Germany what Stalin did in the Soviet Union then we've got world war 2 which puts the claim for the first world war to be a really world war two shame and we've got the Holocaust we've got just mass destruction death all over the place so normally I think of myself as a very witty professor I think it might sell fast funny it's hard to be funny about some of the stuff coming up I'll do my best okay but still there's not gonna be a lot of so stalling the gulag ha ha ha so anyway bear with me this is kind of depressing in places on the rise of fascism and Italy's actually maybe less depressing than some of the other things it's not really until he becomes a close buddy of Hitler that when so many veers off into things that are really repulsive however fascism by itself isn't that fun let's introduce ourselves to the guy who really put fascism under that Benito Mussolini he was born in 1883 died in 1945 not coincidentally uh he started out of the socialist journals he was the editor of a magazine called the future of the worker he became a leader of the Italian Socialist Party his parents were socialists and he followed in their footsteps he saw himself as continuing the cause of the revolution he took over the government of Italy just shortly after the first world war in 1922 after the march on Rome you might remember that easily entered the war on the side of the Allies and fought a series of battles against austria-hungary it's a front in the war that we don't talk about much in fact over the weekend I read a blog post where people said look most of the fighting in World War one took place in Belgium and northeastern France well on what we think it was the Western Front that's true but there were bloody battles on the Eastern Front in Turkey around Gallipoli around the Dardanelles and there were also bloody battles on the isanzo river which separates or separated anyway at the time austria-hungary from Italy now there were 11 such battles and the worst of them took something like 50,000 lives these were incredibly bloody difficult battles so we don't tend to think about it much Italy was actually heavily involved in the First World War and suffered tremendously from it that meant the government was weak people really didn't have much allegiance to it they saw it as having led them into disaster in the First World War through an electoral means Mussolini wasn't really able to accomplish much so he led a march on Rome on basically to show the power of his new fascist movement that demanded a new kind of leader here he is once he arrived in Rome the parts on Rome and that's the kind of stance you often see him in he was a small man nevertheless keep he wants you to know he's tough so if he were sitting here he wouldn't be standing as I am right now he's starting with this extra term or did that sort of voice that was the kind of guy he was and you see there some of his top leaders who are well yeah I don't know how to describe those expressions actually um he did win an election two years later so he sought power by legitimate means the march on Rome was really to show his power and he became informally the leader of Italy at that point but he did that elected to the office in 1924 as president he discouraged to set through violence and intimidation those guys whose expressions I found hard to read they would go through the streets and make sure you were prone Mussolini or else here you see a large M with his fascist symbol the fasces meant to indicate power DM of course for Mussolini and here is a typical scene of him giving a speech oh nothing yeah daddy hello is a crowd that is in the square numbering in a tens of thousands of people okay the next year 1925 he declared himself you do check the leader okay you dismantled all restraints on power and here is some part of the pier a mosaic choo-choo-choo couch okay leader leader leader leader leader he is the fear leader eight times it's not just the leader he's a leader well here tonight senator okay here he is in his office with his cap so he had some good qualities we love cats okay as I mentioned his parents were socialists also considered themselves anarchists which is an interesting combination they were deeply influenced by Marx and by Nietzsche actually and Mussolini was too he referred to Marx as the father and teacher the magnificent philosopher of working-class violence but actually Mussolini talked about violence much more than he practiced it until at any rate he became best buddies with Hitler by the late 30s and began to copy Hitler's methods and tactics so he was somebody who preached violence while actually for the most part getting by on just threats of violence he considered himself a power of George Cherelle Cherelle was a French Marxist philosopher who in nineteen eight nineteen oh eight wrote a book called reflections on violence he advocated a positioning fellip as revolutionary syndicalism now what on earth does that mean it's a kind of complicated combination of ideas but basically the idea is that it stresses the virtue of violence first of all it says that social change has to be accompanied by violence by the way what artistic movement was just getting born around 1908 futurism yeah so there's a strong tie between Marinette ii and some of the other futurists who noticed in many cases were italian and mussolini and other theorists who were partly behind this in any case he also believes strongly in the power of social myths so he was somebody who didn't like mark stress simply deterministic economic forces that people were pawns of social forces much larger than they were no he said in fact there are social myths social ideas that tremendous power and one of the things he thought that you have to do to bring about the revolution is tell the right kind of story you have to build up a certain kind of narrative and a narrative that has real mythic power that will have more influence on people's lives that actually economic conditions so he said it's not really a question of exactly what's going on in what Marx would have considered the material basis of society it's more a question of what's going on in people's minds and that's something you can shape by building up these myths these stories these narratives that are going to have a tremendous amount of power to shape the way people think about things so Mussolini was influenced by that thought that's right there's something that Marx left out which is the power of ideas the power of the narrative of the story of the myth that controls the way people think about their own realities now there is still a movement of dread the revolutionary syndicalism here you see a poster in France for this movement so and it has a website notice so this is still around some of it in any case he did diverge from Marx in some ways that are familiar but in one really fundamental way first of all like lemon he said that the revolution isn't going to come on its own there will need to be a revolutionary elite a group of people who will develop the social myth who will tell the narrative who will not only develop proletarian consciousness in the sense of making people aware of their conditions but tell them a story to make a certain kind of sense of it and to get them interested in revolution secondly he rejected Marx's material he thought Sorrell was right the power of ideas of myths of stories of narratives is very important and so he rejected Marx's materialism and his economic determinism he said no there is an independent power of ideas of myths those are an important part of how a society functions and how people act and so they have to be recognized in a part of a theory they aren't just economics and they aren't just material things but here's the final one which was really the more fundamental break here is where he diverged from model Marx but lemon and Sorrell and a variety of other people he rejected the idea of classroom he said look if all the conditions that matter are economic and if we're really just pawns of economic forces then indeed really there's nothing to understand about history except the way in which these economic forces interact and so you can think about the whole history of the world's being a history of class struggle but if you reject that economic determinism if ideas have a separate importance if it matters what kind of story you tell what kind of myths people believe in how they understand themselves in other words then this idea of class struggle doesn't really make any sense that can't be the sole driving condition of history even if it's one of the things that makes a difference yeah miss okay good what does he mean by miss yeah all right good what are some things that function as myths or stories or narratives in contemporary politics this is scary ha ha if contemporary politics is too scary let's jump back to the history of things let's jump back to World War 1 we've talked about that what kind of myth for example did President Wilson tell now by the way insane myth that implies that oh it's all false I don't really mean it to violent Sorrell didn't mean to be a powerful myth to be a powerful story or narrative it's got to have at least some elements of truth so it's really just a story you tell so let's think of it that way what kind of story was told in the United States or in Britain or in Germany about we were one yeah trying to protect yourselves against the baby stabbing Germans okay good we're fighting for freedom we're fighting to make the world safe for democracy we're fighting especially in the British propaganda against those Germans who want to stab our babies right they're coming with bayonets and the posters show them bayonetting babies and hold a move like ah ha see this is what the HMMWV do and so that's part of the story right and part of the reason World War one actually got very difficult to end once the leadership realized that it was all pointless and was all a stalemate is that they had told their publics these stories right how do you say the Germans are evil the Germans want to stab your babies the Germans want to steal our food the Germans want to take our women but can slaughter our men and do them and that's like oh but they've offered a piece terms I think we should agree negotiate that right that's pretty difficult what about with in Germany what kind of story where the Germans tell it's pretty much the same thing in Reverse right lower those British you're driving to do but you're trying to do and so it was pretty much the same narrative but with different heroes in different villains now what Nelson did in the eyes ASA was a bit difference that he really did make an ideological it was about democracy it was about freedom p-set even though when you look at the history of how the war developed didn't seem to have much to do with any of those things at all that was part of the story it was part of the narrative now in that sense it's a myth because it has a woman it's it gives you basic categories in terms of which people think about the world that doesn't necessarily mean it's false it might be false it might be just a story but there are elements of myths that are true even in ancient Greek myths there are some things that are actually true maybe those gods don't exist but still somebody starts saying ah yeah what's something it would actually be true what might have missed try to explain good natural phenomena maybe you're trying to explain I don't know thunderstorms right well part of the myth is there a thunder source it's like that's true all right that's not made-up so they're going to be elements of these stories that are true there might be elements that are false basically ones that have a lot of staying power you might think it better be true at least in large part are people going to are going to see truth but in any case it's things like that now what actually gets told to people well Mussolini as we'll see tells a certain story and he thinks that story is very very important but does imply that class struggle can't be everything because after all that's an economic sort of struggle but if it's not all economics that it's not all class struggle something else is going on and so there are a number of respects in which Mussolini is a heretic from the point of view Orthodox Marxism some of them are ones where he shares views of Lenin he believes in Vanguard minorities they're small trained dedicated beliefs and what they do is raise the consciousness of the proletariat so in that respect he sounds just like Lenin peelings violence will be necessary again just like when he wants to prepare the proletariat for the greatest bloodbath of all well that phrase is actually for Mussolini not for Lenin sounds like it could easily be left right so in those respects these berries from Orthodox Marxism he also is opposed to reform ISM trade union consciousness democracy he sees the party as having a very important role and it's gotta be centralized it's got to be hierarchical got to be highly disciplined in its early stages secret he thinks the proletariat won't organize itself he wants the leadership of professional revolutionaries you think air can bring about this consciousness and read about the revolution that in the end violence is necessary and that organized violence will win up said all those respects he's really a Leninist well then why does Mussolini diverge in other ways why does he end up in a different position well answer is he rejects the idea of a classroom he starts with this thought really which is Marx plus need which is the class struggle plus the will to power right plus plus the idea that this elite that a leader can come on the scene and exercise power of will to bring about the revolution and so all of that he agrees well but now he sees what the rub the Russian Revolution works ok the Russian Revolution occurs in 1917 Mussolini is observing all this he spent a socialist journalist by then for some time he's starting to think about but has not yet organized the march on Rome and he sees what happens in right unlike lots of Western observers who closed their eyes to it or believe the press stories that everything was wonderful Lincoln Steffens like that over into the future and it works no he sees things are a disaster and we've talked about this I've already shown you this slide but just to remind you Petrograd lost seventy two percent of its population three million people died of starvation in the winter of nineteen twenty one twenty two uh in nineteen twenty as opposed to before the war in nineteen thirteen iron production in Russia was down to two percent of what it had been manufactured goods thirteen percent of what had been people were stark so listen lady saw they said are well that didn't work okay we've seen what happens if you actually have organized violence and it brings about a rebel it leads to disaster and so he adapts his ideas he rejects the idea of a struggle and he does something else he says let's try to unify proletariat who's huazi other classes in a different way by uniting them in the nation so why did things reach such disastrous proportions in Russia what went wrong why did that violent revolution lead to such overwhelming destruction destruction really of the whole economy of Agriculture of manufacturing of heavy machinery and so on and so forth Devils a good part of it is the socialist ulema you tell people listen from now on comrade your crops that you grow we're not beaten by you they were gone further but of the state what's your incentive to grow crops right maybe eventually you turn into a socialized humanist who says I will do it all go to med time but that's not gonna happen overnight and so we've got this problem Department stop throwing anything that's one difficulty what are the difficulties on one of them Mussolini's very sensitive to what's the whole idea Marx has this picture of class struggle between the Bhuj huazi and the proletariat how does it get resolved oh jeez you kill the bourgeoisie you calculate yes you're a violent revolution and you destroy the budweiser class that's the whole idea of Lenin's thing you've got to exterminate the bush was he as a class well who are the push was he well rich people but who else educated people who else that people who owns them own the means of production and also you know there are the owners the factory owners let's say but then the factory owners employ lots of people to be their agents right they hire managers they hire accountants they hire the people who are the bosses now those bosses aren't exactly proletarians but they aren't exactly which was either they don't really own the means of production but they did agents of those who own the means of production and so they occupy a weird position suppose you kill them all as lemon basically did it you were somebody who was educated if you were somebody who was a schoolteacher if you were somebody who had been in any kind of managerial position or an army officer or anything like that now what happens once you kill everybody who's been running things yeah disaster because nobody knows how long from anything okay nobody knows how anything worse what happens when the workers come to the factory and every said bosses are gone we've killed them all right well okay what do we do oh no that guy used to tell us what to do he's gone we didn't run everyone okay what happens in a factory whatever it is does whatever they want what would have been the I suppose I just suppose somebody kills all the faculty and just has the students now comrades we have implemented the revolution do what you want how well would that work out I mean it might be fun for a while but it's really not going to be great educationally and so on the same thing happens here so he realizes wait you destroyed the bush huazi you destroy everybody who knows how anything works so he stresses unit he stresses getting beyond college and he rejects Marxist material he says fascism is the resolute negation of the doctor an underlying so-called scientific and Marxian socialism the doctrine of historic materialism which would explain the history of mankind in terms of the class struggle and by changes in the process of the instruments of production to the exclusion of all else he's going to admit that some of those economic factors are important that there are social classes that sometimes they struggle but he says that's not the full story of everything that's not the whole history of the world there's a lot of other stuff going on too so he says that the vicissitudes of ego I would like raw materials new technical processes scientific inventions that their importance no one knew not but they suffice but that makes oh sorry but that they suffice to explain human history to the exclusion of other packers is absurd fascism believes now always inside to be of heroism that is this alien acts which don't have any economic motive and so his idea really is that people act sometimes for economic reasons but sometimes for non-economic reasons probably there are things you do purely for economic reasons like what words get a job right you might get a job while you're in school help pay for your education probably it's not I mean it maybe it's a job you'd want to do anyway they're probably not I worked in an apartment complex during summers when I was in college I was the guy who basically replaced anyone who went on vacation so one week I'd be mowing the lawn and doing the weeding and all of that the next week I'd be painting apartments the next week I'd be cleaning floors one summer server this was a twenty seven storey building and it had white vinyl walls and my job for the entire summer was to just wash scrub by hand all 27 floors of white vinyl one that was awful I mean it sometimes got interrupted by cutting the lawns and doing stuff like that for fixing air conditioning units actually that was really bad too cuz I got a crick in my neck that lasted for about five years doing this but the white walls were psychologically the worst I delighted when there was a four with a smoker because they were dirty it was like awesome what I'm doing will make a difference but if it was the floor where there were no smokers it was kind of like crap it looks the same when I got okay but was I the kind of guy who would just say oh yeah I already did for thirteen when I hadn't know this kind of way it was very depressing but there are lots of things we do that are not freakanomics motors right what are some things you do that aren't based on economic norms play sports play sports okay good you might play sports you play intramural football let's say or soccer or something like that you do it because you think hey I'm going to be discovered you know maybe I'll make is the NFL by playing on philosophy department team no what are some other things you do not for many guitar mode okay you might be involved in social issues you might we'll take volunteer for some social agents you don't do it because you're getting paid or for economic reasons what other things might you do other than economic motives go to college yeah take a philosophy course that is okay probably not an economic motive um could be I mean philosophers oh the bread forgive me well anyway um back to reality what are other things you do not for economic motives watch TV yeah you're not being paid to watch TV right you probably don't think oh yeah I think I'll watch The Big Bang Theory you know that employers really like that if you can make Sheldon Cooper jokes um other things you do not for an economic motive Facebook one good Facebook do that but it's not something it pays you good you fall in love you get married you probably aren't doing it for economic motive I mean you might be my hey my goal is to marry into a rich family and hey she's cute and she has lots of money so yeah make I mean maybe but most people don't do it for that sort of reason um other things have a pet yes I have cats do I do it for economic reasons do I think whoa maybe this is the capital really babe okay so there's a lot of life it's really dominated by things that have no economic motive and Mussolini says look to try to say somehow all of these are in some hidden way controlled by economics is ridiculous there's a lot else going on but if that's true he says we have to reject the idea of plastron so here's Marx's idea we've got the bushwa see we've cut the proletariat and how do we solve the class struggle cross out the booze Rossi yep here is the fascist picture according to Mussolini we unite blue jersey and proletariat together in something larger something that can encompass both something that can inspire both and lead both to do something besides promote their own self-interests and that thing is the state so we unite them in the state in the nation so fascism is something he sees as essentially nationalistic here's how we can get booze huazi and proletarians to work together get them to work together for a greater Italy or in Hitler's case a greater Germany or a greater United States or a greater Argentina it doesn't matter what it is really the question is we have to find something they have in common something that conserves an important ideal for both now is it going to be a particular social class no they're they're divided but what do they have in common there are 10 okay the Italian owners of the means of production and the Italian workers have this in common they're Italian and so we can unite them for the cause of a greater reason the idea is to find something that can unite now the Marxist says ultimately well it's really work the world ok workers of all countries unite fascists like Mussolini say that's too big if you say hey look work to improve the world here's what it is you're not a citizen of the world make it a better world now some people were idealistic enough to respond but the fascists say most people are that's just not generally going to work some people are going to say yes I'll sign up I wanted to be a better world but a lot of people can't really identify that with that I mean we just had a bunch of football games this weekend right you were probably cheering for a team I was at a bar watching Pittsburgh play who they play I don't who cares huh hey what ha ha but here's what matters I identify with that 13 right the Pittsburgh Steelers maybe you identify with the Dallas Cowboys the Houston Texans of the world Saints or whatever it is ok but that's something you can identify identify me suppose we had a new NFL team to represent the world it's just I don't know the world Algie ok who's gonna say that's my team ya up for the world maybe some people but that's too far away for most of us we can identify with our city with our state with our nation but can we identify with something larger how many of you identify as North Americans you say well yes I was born in the United States but really I'm a North America I mean I see myself as a one with Cavanaugh I maybe but probably not says the fascist that's too big right um now maybe now I think with some continents maybe people do you could see yourself as African for example or maybe as Central American in a way that transcends your country so some units might work at that level but the fashion is most units like that level aren't gonna work you've got to find something at any rate that does now here is his soldier the key is everything within the state nothing outside the state nothing against the state so we have to unify the social classes and get them committed to the state he thinks that's the best level and everything has to be so suited within the state everything in the state nothing outside the state nothing against the state that means the fascist is going to see as a threat a lot of things in society that could be viewed as outside the state what for example what are some things that are outside the state outside the government here by the state he doesn't just mean the country he really means the country as organized into a political unit the church the church good so the church becomes an enemy in fact one of his first acts is to seize the lands of the church okay because the church is a force outside the state and so it's something that has to be destroyed released carefully limited or else it could disrupt this idea that everything must be within the state what else is a potential print say it again parties good artists all of those who see themselves as highly individual or pursuing goals that have nothing in particular to do that with the state right so the individual artist who says look I'm just doing my thing no you're supposed to be serving the interests of the state somebody else said international things what about international organizations what about the Communist dream of world revolution and a world government that would control things that's an enemy to so enemies can be within the states or smaller than the state but they can also be larger and so the fascist is typically going to oppose communism for seeking this International Union but it's also going to be opposed for example to the church to private organizations the private artists who are pursue their own visions to anything like that that doesn't serve the interests of the state within so anything smaller than the state anything larger than the state has to be attacked other suggestions for things like this yeah philosophers philosophers yeah philosophers are kind of weird yes good philosophers are kind of weird and do they serve the interests of the state well sometimes they do right but sometimes they don't and so that suggests you're going to have to control thought very carefully the artists the philosophers the writers the literary figures and thinkers the opinion journalist all of those people are going to happen monitored very carefully because they're going to tend to get ideas some of which support the state and some of which are actually inimical to the state and so the faster says we're going to have to control journalism the media education the arts very very careful and so the idea of freedom of expression in any of those realms is going to be thrown out the window to much likelihood of somebody emerging as an enemy to the state well he says no individuals or groups and that means political parties cultural associations economic unions social classes will be outside the state so we're not going to be allowed to organize into any kind of Association except for the state but in addition to that yeah well we'll have to have careful controls we'll look at that when you get we get to his practical ideas now the Marxists immediately labeled fascism a movement of the political right on the other hand well it's as I said he's clearly what's to the right of Levin I think but still it's very similar to Marxism right and so is this really a right-wing movement or a left we now actually I think that's a very hard question to address partly because it's not here what right to left even me part of my evidence for this is just Facebook I have various Facebook friends we're always posting things like somebody over the weekend saying Obama is a centrist he's not on the left in fact no Democrats are left who were on the left and somebody else started arguing with that person saying that's ridiculous and I quickly concave the conclusion these people are just using these terms in different ways I mean I think the one meant you can't be on the left unless you're calling for violent revolution um and the other thought no no it as I can do with that it has to do with the size of government and so on and have a role of government and so it was like you're just using the terms in different ways guys I've learned to try to stay out of Facebook political fights yes I spent some time you know the idea was to stay in touch with friends not a Muni homepage friends and so now I'd watch a lot of people who upset me I did them they still think they're friends of mine but I never see them because they'll just piss me off haha so anyway rather than actually we could before we leave this topic what on earth do they what does right-wing mean person look at that timer right now like right now cuz I know forget what Mussolini thought he was doing and where he'd locate himself on his political spectrum that's sort of a difficult historical question but listen just where we want to locate this movement yeah think that government should go really far right okay good good so yeah in contemporary American politics right tends to mean running smaller dump right meaning a greater sphere of individual rights of liberties a smaller sphere of government powers and privileges and so how far that's to go you've got some Republicans who sort of want to go a little bit smaller if you've got suburb well because you want to go a lot smaller but the idea is great greater space for the individual in the smaller space for government what is left wing in contemporary politics yeah more centralized power okay good more centralized power more power for government less than for the individual assuming that there's a kind of opposition between their spheres of control so that would be I think how I would tend to mean these terms in contemporary politics on the other hand they tend to be used in all sorts of other makes what are other things that right and left my hand yep oh okay conservative and liberal and those correlate to something about the role government of roles of the individual but they aren't exactly the same there's another sort of thing that happens um for example people will refer to the mullahs in Iran as conservative does that mean they want a small government they believe in individual rights they're like tea party members who say cut taxes well no right it means they're opposed to change there are people who represent the old guard and so there's also this opposed to change won't change meaning of these terms and so it gets very confusing very quickly and I've concluded after listening to some of these discussions and predicting and some of them myself to abandon these terms so let me go back to my distinction from earlier in the course between bottom-up theories and top-down a bottom-up theory says the government has its rights its freedoms his powers privileges from the P okay so typically the slogan of the bottom-up Pyrrhus is governments can govern legitimately but only with the consent of the governed the idea is the government's getting its power from the people a top-down theory says that people get their rights freedoms powers and privileges from the and so Locke is the paradigm case of a bottom-up theorist Rousseau the paradigm case of a top-down theorist for a soda you get one chance basically in the social contract to be to grant powers the government the moment you sign your name boom it's all top-down in Marx you don't even get that one chance it's really all topped out from the very big day now from this point of view what is is it bottom-up or is it top down the question is Mussolini's fascism is that a bottom-up theory or is it a top-down cleanly top-down exactly it's somebody who having these look everything within the state right the state is the source of all meaning the state is the source of all rights all liberties and so on and so he very clearly sees himself as a top-down theorist and it seems to me that this just because the other terms get used in so many different ways is maybe more illuminating than thinking in terms of left and right now what is fascism if we think of that question we realized it's hard to say historians give many different definitions of it a lot of them conflict with each other a lot of them are very confusing it's popular among historians to say well there the following 9 10 or 11 features that are common in fascist movements and it's hard to know how to get a definition out of that here are some of the common elements that historians point to they often believe in a kind of revolutionary Vanguard elite a party that is a leadership party they venerate the state they are ultra nationalistic because you've got to develop people's allegiance to the states they believe in violence and militarism they believe in a mixed economy where the government has a large role to play and yes they have a distaste for all sorts of other things this by the way is Mussolini judging some competition and he was obviously unhappy with that competitors entry indicated that by holding his nose huh yes there's a bit of a militarism okay so here are some definitions we might employ classical liberalism is the view that Mussolini holds up as his great enemy this is what he's opposed to these days we tend to refer to this as libertarianism it was known as classical liberalism back in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries key figures are people at John Locke John Stuart Mill it's a system of social and economic organization we could say that emphasizes individual rights and liberties it allows the government acts only to prevent harm dollars so sometimes this is called the vision of the Nightwatchman state what is the state therefore basically to serve as a police force to serve the military it's to keep people from harming each other director and that's its only role so what would a government look like from this point of view it would be a police force maybe a fire department maybe um it would be you would have a military a Department of Defense um there wouldn't be much rooms okay a court system so there would be a Department of Justice but that's about it it would really just keep people from bringing other people conservatism we've defined as a system of social and economic organization that emphasizes ordered liberty the individual's freedom to choose within a social order maintained by the rule of law and various private organizations so the idea here is very close to classical liberalism but the idea is well yes Liberty absolutely but within a structure and so I've talked about some people like Calvin Coolidge who want to help government defining a framework for liberty that ties in with this because there's an emphasis on Liberty but also on the structure within which that Liberty is exercised and it's important that that be within structure anarchy is not something the conservative would tend to like even if people were leaving other people alone and not harming them it's not enough to have Anarchy with a police force um you actually have to have a kind of society that's organized enough that there are meaningful things to do well there are other ways of understanding that but since we're running out of time I'm not going to worry about that if you went to Strutter Scruton stalk a few weeks ago he defined conservatism as the love of one's own and of course uses Greek because he always quick Ophelia but in any case you can also define it as a philosophy of respect for people in people's choices socialism we've defined as a system of social media or organization to places key institutions under centralized conscious direction toward consciously chosen ends so the idea here is that government is to act basically as we try to act on our individual lives we intentionally make certain decisions we have certain goals we intentionally enough we act in such a way as to achieve them we do that consciously and that is government's supposed to be like that government is supposed to consciously select its goals and consciously try to get there but communism does this by actually having government own the means of production the idea is that all of these things are to be taken over by the government communications factories farms all of the transportation all of us to be simply owned by the state there's to be no private property no private ownership of any of this the government will much less consciously directed through regulation or whatever who will actually take it over and own it what is fascism then here's what I've really been driving well it's a system that's pretty similar that it's a system of social and economic organization that places key institutions under centralized government control but largely through indirect means okay through regulation for selection of Directors for government management labor boards through various public private partnerships etc as well as the directors so Mussolini will sometimes take industries over in fact it's said that he took over three-fourths of Italian industry but to some extent the passage does this by regulation by appointing key people to key positions by having the government basically set up partnerships that allows the government to influence heavily what private companies and private institutions would do so that's the sense in which there's a mixed economy it's partially privately owned but it's heavily government directed and so here is who Cellini for example sitting in an Italian motor car talking to the board of I think it's Alfa Romeo this case so we can see both communism and fascism as kinds of socialism anyway if those definitions are correct low-battery told me that and in various ways then it's really its main opponent is classical liberalism conservatism various views on what would normally consider the right fascism is communitarian is everything in the state whereas those other views are individualistic it believes in no limits on government power whereas their lives and checks and balances according to classical liberalism and conservative it believes in the rights and liberties of government as opposed to the rights and liberties of the individual and in fact he says yes in the fascist conception history man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family the social group the nation and in function history to which all nations bring their contribution so outside of history man's non-entity fascism was opposed to all individualistic abstraction based on eighteenth-century materials he's talking about walk he's talking about Jefferson he's talking about Madison he's talking about our founding fathers as pursuing these individualistic abstractions he says no but pursuit of happiness it doesn't believe in happiness the state is all the state is all-embracing outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist all right I've got one minute left to talk about what he actually wants to do so here's the program we're going to have rule by a National Council of experts he limited the workday to eight hours he had a minimum wage could help to foster unions have a retirement age of 55 a national militia a strong progressive tax on capital seize church property encourage people to give their gold to the conscience of the nation took control of three-fourths of businesses impose ways of wage and price controls and then had a battle for wheat everything was a battle for whoo singing there was never just the five-year plan there was a five-year struggle it was a battle for meat and so he did get people to grow more wheat but that just meant they grew fewer other crops so it didn't do much good there was also a battle for land he drained the pontine marshes but that didn't help very many people and in the end he instituted a propaganda program all teachers had to swear a loyal ear oh sorry all editors were appointed by Mussolini and he built up this cult of personality around

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 64,863

Rating: 4.5483346 out of 5

Keywords: Fascism (Political Ideology), Benito Mussolini (Author)

Id: rf8YpfTCXLs

Length: 42min 50sec (2570 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/DogBotherer]

Doesn't start very promisingly. Mussolini's socialist antecedents are established, and then suddenly he's in power in 1922. No mention at all that he'd long since ceased being a socialist prior to the march on Rome, and, in fact, he was expelled from the socialist party in 1914 and spent much of the time thereafter running gangs who beat up socialists on behalf of capitalist corporate interests (which eventually funded his rise to power).

Edit: I shall go on adding to this as I watch it. Then he begins discussing Mussolini's "Marxism", saying his parents were socialists and anarchists, which, he says in a sarcastic voice, is "an interesting combination". No idea why he would say this, almost all anarchists are socialists, and, even by that time, a fair old chunk of socialists were anarchists - this is the time when anarchism (of the usual socialist/communist kind) was growing rapidly in Spain and still fairly common across the continent.

Then we have the old canard that fascism originates on the left. Sigh. Even though he's already identified that Mussolini rejected class struggle, and supported hierarchy.

This is starting to sound like a lot of bollocksy American anti-left propaganda, and the smattering of stuff about the Russian revolution makes me fairly confident of that. No wonder Americans who've had the mainstream political education there have such a jaundiced, inadequate and downright false idea of left ideology and history.

Kill all the bosses and nobody knows how to run the factories... Yeah right, because it's the people in the boardroom and offices who know best how to run the factory on a day-to-day basis? As if it's not the people on the factory floor who know how to run things and managers and bosses who are increasingly estranged from it. There's great empirical evidence that autogestion is as effective and efficient as standard capitalist models, if not more so, and this has been amply demonstrated in programmes run by multinational corporations like Ford themselves, and the only reason they closed them down was fear of losing control, not because it didn't work. Production rose in anarchist Catalonia when workers took over their factories, likewise more recently in Argentina when the capitalist class try to shut things down and deserted the country en masse and workers had to run things for themselves. People came to work; people knew how to make things work (although, sure, not always without a period of adjustment). And, student-led education works too.

[u/sketchy7]

Great series, I recommend them highly. https://www.youtube.com/user/PhiloofAlexandria/videos

[u/[deleted]]

what is that display device??

[u/redinator]

Some of it was interesting sure, but he seems to be aligning Mussolini with the left and liberalism with the right. Certainly the rights lineage of individual liberty puts it here, but didn't Mussolini advocate 'corporatism', the merging of state and private power?

This is why I've understood the far right is known as being an extension of the right as the right have a tendency to favor capitalism and business interests whereas the left have a compunction to focus on the workers rights and raising living standards of the many.

He also seemed to not understand where the term 'Libertarianism' comes from, so I suppose I'll have to watch his lecture on Nozick.

Thanks for the post by the way, I love having stuff like this on my reddit ;)