Italian Fascist theories of corporatism arose out of revolutionary and national syndicalism that often paralleled the activities of the trade unions, craft guilds and professional societies. Mussolini acknowledged Fascism’s socialist roots and influences. Among those whom he acknowledged as influencing Fascism were French Marxist Georges Sorel and French Revolutionary Unionist Hubert Lagardelle. Moreover, Mussolini was a union man: he decreed mandatory unionism for all Italian workers. It is true that Mussolini banned strikes, but Lenin had done the same in the Soviet Union.
American writer
Lawrence K. Samuels (born December 7, 1951) is an American author, classical liberal, and libertarian activist. He is best known as the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer and In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
After the bourgeoisie, middle class, and merchants instigated the French Revolution and sat on the left side of the aisle in opposition to the authoritarians, their legacy was ignored. The Socialist and nationalist intelligentsia sought to consciously bury the memory of original left-wing middle-class history and sitting arrangements. They mercilessly co-opted the left-wing label from the bourgeoisie revolutionary ‘Free Left,’ and denounced anyone who opposed their social revolution as reactionary or right-wing. These usurpers not only stole the left-wing designation from the bourgeoisie insurgents, but also absconded with their revolutionary ancestry. English historian William Doyle acknowledged this historical thievery, writing that after the French Revolution, the socialists were able to ‘appropriate the left-wing label and… lay exclusive claim to the revolutionary heritage.’
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Hah, try conducting yourself with coltish munchkins on the playground. Children were our argotic nemesis. They had no sense of propriety. Without any approval whatsoever, they would cobble together words of unknown meaning. They would make up idioms laced with sexual contexts, bathroom humor, and secret signals. Most were unintelligible, seductively cryptic. Every time we erased one slang anathema, the children would create two more. Sometimes I think they were poking fun at us.
Because of Italian fascism’s roots in revolutionary syndicalism (labor unionism) and revised Marxism, Mussolini never thought of himself as a rightist; that label was already reserved for the reactionary forces of the monarchy and the clergy. According to the Encyclopedia Americana, Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento (combat groups) declared that they were trying to start a ‘leftist revolutionary program of action.’
Considering their propensity for using street violence to shut down opponents, Hitler and his SA Stormtroopers might be considered as the ultimate social justice warriors of their era. From the very start, Hitler made it plain that social justice was an important attribute to a healthy state. In one of his 1920 speeches, Hitler proclaimed to thousands of Nazi party followers: ‘[W]e do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice…’
Positive rights require physical force or intimidation in order to enforce these alleged ‘rights.’ In essence, they are faux rights that violate other people’s rights. Positive rights actually don’t exist; they are fictitious, a fraudulent tactic which subverts choice. Rights are not obligations. To physically force someone to give financial benefits to another makes a mockery of the principles of freedom of action, freedom of choice, and the right to be free from aggression. Rather, the license to institute compulsory practices leads to legalized and institutionalized aggression and robbery. Enabling political structures to plunder one in the name of others perverts the meaning of individual human rights.
That’s the horrible paradox. In essence, we were burning down our own houses to keep warm. Most intentions are noble, but when people started cranking up the wattage to impose order, we also generated a lethal voltage of disorder. Everything began to backfire. Like every great civilization of the past, we atrophy and finally cannibalize. We triggered our innate self-destruction mechanism that bore Frankenstein monsters.
Under National Socialism, the state plundered and killed other national groups and races and use their resources to provide Germans with an unsparing welfare-warfare society. Under the alleged international socialism of Marxism, the state plundered and killed other classes to provide comrades with a welfare-warfare society. Both systems, the German’s and the Soviet’s, believed in equality and socialism, but for different collective groups. Although Nazism preached inequality between the races, it placed great significance on equality among true-blooded Germans ̈('Völkisch equality) and the spirit of fraternity.
The Nazis used pro-labor rhetoric, demanding limitations on profits and the abolition of rents. They actively limited competition and private ownership, under the guise of promoting the general welfare. Hitler expanded credit, subsidized farmers, suspended the gold standard, instituted government jobs programs, mandated unemployment insurance, decreed rent control, imposed high tariffs to protect German industry from foreign competition, nationalized education, enacted strict wage and price controls, borrowed heavily and eventually ran huge deficits almost to the point of financial collapse. Eventually, both Germany and Italy turned into vast welfare-warfare nations.
In the case of libertarianism, because it opposes fraud and the initiation of force, when pursuing its hereditary linkage to original liberalism it should be classified as standing on the left side of the political divide. Some might respond that legions of capitalists have taken leading roles in authoritarian productions. True, but these so-called capitalists mostly hobnob with politicians and statists, promote rent-seeking, endogenous policies to obtain state-sanctioned monopolies. As the cronies of statists, they are barely a cut above socialism, and have little interest in letting capital and goods move freely and unrestricted between buyer and seller, for whom, in turn, they have little sympathy. They are fastened to government coffers and machinations, and they downplay the value of the dynamics of competition.
The National Socialists, like the Marxian Frankfurt School leaders, dedicated themselves to fighting racial oppression imposed by other advantaged races. But in the case of the Nazis, they identified the ‘oppressed race’ as the Aryan and German people and the ‘oppressor race’ as the Jews. They believed that the Jews controlled the world as members of a wealthy and privileged race that supposedly mistreated the so-called Aryan races. To demean the so-called ‘Jewish oppressors,’ the National Socialists taught German children that the Jews, Jewish-run banks, and capitalists were persecuting the German nation and its people. This ‘oppressor versus oppressed’ narrative is pure classical Marxism, which had devastating effects across the annals of modern history. Such racist nonsense divides society, creating hostile tribalism and unending ethnic violence. Of course, this racial struggle was exactly what the Nazi propagandists intended in their effort to purge certain “oppressor” races. They wanted only one race to exist in German-controlled lands. That is why Critical Race Theory is so poisonous. Its endgame almost always results in horrific final solutions to punish so-called privileged and oppressor races.
According to the American historian Eric Foner, ‘Essentially what Lincoln said is slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor, one person stealing another person’s labor without that person’s permission.’ This point cannot be overstated. Broken down to its simplest core element, autocratic socialism is based on the ‘sanctity of theft,’ whereby societal elites are licensed to steal anything from anybody and then redistribute the loot to the politically deserving. Nothing is private, nothing can be owned by individuals, nobody owns themselves, and all things are controlled and owned by the politically powerful. Collectivized theft and aggression is the perfection of a slave state.