The Crisis of Categorization
Ever since the creation of Fascism in 1919 the left has been trying to understand it, label it, and categorize it. Socialists have pointed out the class origins of fascism arising from the petty bourgeoisie, have called it a colonial boomerang in which imperialist colonial practices come home. Socialists have created list after list of checkmarks of what pre fascism is and what full fascism is all in attempts to understand when fascism begins and when it ends. Our understandings of Fascism however are all unsatisfactory because Fascism within the 21st century has changed it is time to change our categories with it.
Historical Origins and Mussolini’s Rise
Fascism was born out of its historical epoch of moribund capitalism in the imperialist stage after the Great War which destroyed the highest developed capitalist economies of Europe by Mussolini one of the strangest men in history (whose life almost reads like an absurdist comedy). With the attempts of communists following the great war to take power failing, and capitalism itself entering a period of great crises with large reserve armies of labor from returning soldiers unable to find work (606,819 unemployed in January of 1922) Capital was in peril as Italian proles went from one disastrous army to another.
Born to socialist parents, named Benito after a great Mexican liberal reformer Benito Juarez, Mussolini entered the workers movement through the Party Socialist Italy (PSI), where he would advocate for Italy to join WW1.
He would quickly be kicked out of the PSI, fight in WW1, become anti socialist and pro class collaborationist, and found the Fascist party with the Fasces as a symbol of said class collaboration. The Black shirts would become his greatest product, gangs which would patrol the Italian country side breaking the noses and headquarters of labor leaders, socialists, and unions. As you can see one point or another Mussolini throughout his life was on every side of the political spectrum.
Corporatism and Economic Contradictions
The economy Mussolini would set up would be illogically incomprehensible itself. With Italian capitalism in 1922 in a free dive Mussolini would win power through his March on Rome with the consent of the General Union of Industrialists of Italy (basically their business body). Mussolini would immediately thank them for power by reducing wages, taxing wages, dismissing any workers who were fighting against the interests of capital, and handing out subsidies to business owners. With a great focus on mediating all class conflict with the consent of industrialists the Italian economy would be put under Corporatism. Under corporatism the economy was divided into several corporations (another word for councils), employers got 151 associations and would head the corporations where workers and employers would meet within the councils to negotiate wages.
It almost proves Marx’s age old adage right that when capitalism can no longer continue it is not above completely ruining its eternal god supply and demand to mediate the worst effects of the market through the state.
But, on the other hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the “sacred” law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.
-Marx Das Capital Vol.1 Chapter 25
Private corporations still existed but with the state owning majority stake in many of them, such as 60 % in oil.
Within this system the employers operated under leader law in which workers were to be loyal followers of employers who bowed their heads and worked happily under their capitalist employers. Employers got to choose who was voted by workers as their representatives.
While Mussolini claimed to have invented a third way in between capitalism and socialism what this effectively meant was that finance monopoly capitalism was extended to the whole economy till it became one large monopoly retaining its preexisting capitalist relations but with a focus on eliminating class conflict.
Capitalism, like any other human system, is a living and therefore developing thing… full of contradictions, fighting hard and stubbornly for aims only partially understood by the capitalists themselves….At the present time the position that has been reached is that the important capitalists of any one of the big nations have become more or less united economically. They need only a governing body with power to settle their minor disputes, to bring rebels in their own groups into line, to keep down the workers and, most important of all, to defend their common interests against rival nations
-Edward Conze and Ellen Wilkinson 1935
Any good Marxist knows from the beginning this system was doomed to fail. The tensions within capitalism which Fascism sought to mediate through the state would never resolve themselves cleanly it was only a temporary measure to the many contradictions in capital that would burst if left on its own (falling rate of profit, variable capital vs constant capital, the need for accumulation) all would have made the Italian states attempts at diminishing all contradictions and trying to hold back that great engine of human history (class conflict) burst asunder sooner or later.
In the end fascist economies remained hollow; even though they promised economic liberation, unemployment still remained at all time highs, industrial output slowed down, mass privatization, welfare cuts, wage cuts all came to pass.
Ideological Incoherence and Opportunism
But with all this said when does fascism begin and end? This is a question that will never be answered because fascism is ideologically completely incoherent. As stated in the previous section fascism does have very logical base economic motivations, stop and contain class conflict by any means necessary in the finance monopoly imperialist stage of capitalism. But that economic motive can manifest itself in so many ways and rarely comes with a coherence in the superstructure. Likewise Marxists have always contended that all forms of capitalist governments (monarchist, parliamentary, fascist) are all essentially the same: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the true fight against fascism is not against a dictatorship in a vacuum, but against capitalism and the bourgeois state itself. Mussolini and his gang themselves did not really have a plan when they created their party making it up on the fly
Within the two months between now and the National Congress the philosophy of Fascism must be created
-Mussolini 1921
Fascism then embodies the highest degree of opportunism within the superstructure in order to preserve capital, not caring what form it takes, how it does it, or how it is going to structure the economy, which talking points it is going to use, etc. The only thing uniting fascism seems to be its adherence to protecting capital the capital circuit (C-M-C) and class society. Therefore the form fascism takes is a complete coin flip.
Will it be hyper nationalist and expansionist like the Nazis and Italians, or insular like Pinochet and Franco. Will it utilize state intervention within the economy or Chicago boys style neo liberalization? Will it come with genocidal eugenics and ethnic extermination like the Nazis and Israelis, or will it try to unify the disparate groups of the state like the Italians? No one can tell because Fascism is not coherent nor is it meant to be coherent. Likewise who fits into the Fascism label. Trump? Napoleon? Modi? Peron? Franco? Netanyahu? Pinochet? De Gaulle? All these men exist at the fringes of most definitions of fascism by socialists, either out right being called fascists or getting the pre-fascist label put on quickly in order to correctly categorize them.
There’s so much about the various categories of fascism that communists have constructed that bleed into a gray area between the separation of fascism and capitalism that it almost becomes impossible to distinguish the two sometimes. In addition its irrational behaviors in government structure and ideology present a challenge in finding one all embodying definition. Fights abound about labeling the enemy fascist too early which may affect organizational strategy. After all it is important to know who the enemy is before you fight them.
Likewise making this challenge even more difficult is Fascism’s opportunism and ability to adapt and change its political shell to fit its overarching goal of the perseverance of class society and the capital circuit. In essence the more you try to find a single scientific universal categorization of Fascism the more frustrating it becomes, and that is the goal. It is not supposed to make sense, it is meant to frustrate and confuse. Fascism’s only job is to keep the ruling classes claws around the necks of workers, how they dig them in is up to the individual society and ruling classes.
A New Categorical Framework
And yet communists still need some sort of framework to know their enemy and fight it. I propose this we have a new set of rules in 2025 around which we categorize fascism. I find R. Palme Dutt’s 7 rules of Fascism some of the best so I will use those as a base though I will also add some tweaks:
- Maintenance of capitalism
in the face of workers’ revolution. (I propose we cut out the last part and will explain why) - Increasing capitalist dictatorship.
- Limitation of working-class movements.
- The dismantling of parliamentary ‘democracy’.
- State involvement within industry to save it. (E.g. Military, Palantir, ICE contracts etc)
- Concentration of the imperialist bloc into a more unified structure (e.g., Trump’s tariffs and bullying to extort more money).
- Endless war to revive and offset contradictions. (though not always)And finally the 8th rule, my own addition:
- When push comes to shove in the end there are no rules except protect capital, class society, and temporarily mediate or suppress the great engine of human history class conflict.(I hope future generations reading this take the 8th rule to heart to find new categorizations of their eras fascisms)
Modern Neoliberal Fascism
Dutt’s categories of Fascism were made almost 80 years ago however we have to update things such as fascism being a response to a rising organized workers movement because Fascism just like capitalism is like an elastic rubber band. While many predictions about the fall of capitalism have been made by Marxists for over a 140 years none have come true because of the system’s amazing ability to absorb crises. Like capitalism, Fascism is characterized by its ability to take on crises and bend to fit the contradictions around it in an act of self preservation. Therefore just as much as capitalism is mystified through its ability to absorb contradiction, as is Fascism.
In our new era of hyper neoliberal globalization Fascism looks completely different from the Fascisms that arose in Europe to fight organized industrial working classes for a variety of reasons. Firstly being that industrial labor no longer exists within most western countries, and secondly because organized labor no longer exists either. This is a new stage of capitalism that is wholly unprecedented with its tentacles reaching every corner and economy of the planet and connecting it to the global, with large mega corporations that no longer have a singular nation, and a greater role played by finance capital. Therefore to expect new Fascism to follow the rules of the old with our old categories will always be a failing game.
Capitalism has evolved, the workers movement has evolved, and therefore Fascism has evolved, and so should our categories. Fascism in the modern era no longer presents itself as a strong reaction to a strong workers movement, but rather a strong reaction to a weak workers movement. Its crisis is no longer a combination of possible communist revolution and the economic perils of capital but simply just the economic perils of capital and an invented enemy (cultural Marxists). It therefore seeks to deal with the threat of a working class uprising, arising from the falling rates of profit and reserve armies of labor, even if such backlash does not exist in a unified front but rather a loose framework of anti establishment feelings. Fascism in this era is no longer about capitalism stopping Communism and itself, but about Capitalism wholly stopping itself. A system in the throes of a spiral trying to self correct and in the process becoming ever increasingly paranoid, willing to invent strong enemies where there are none (Antifa, trans ideology gunmen, etc).
Fascism within the modern era has been stripped of all its appeals to workers that it used to make before in a vain attempt to stop communist revolution (we are never even getting the meager concessions that corporations under corporatism afforded) and is just simply naked class warfare and public robbery unmasked on an unprecedented level. The falling rates of profit which have been caused by an ever increasing amount of automation within the work force has ensured that there is no more welfare, there is no more concessions to this group of workers or not, just a bat cracking down from above. And the lack of a communist movement has ensured that fascism no longer needs to quickly and hostilely take over the governments through grand marches on Rome’s, but can rather slowly transition them to what it seeks through liberal parliamentary means (Project 2025).
Conclusion: The Ultimate Dictatorship of Capital
In the end it must be remembered that fascism is just another mask for the dictatorship of capital which can take on any face that it wants be it constitutional monarchy, liberal democracy, social welfare, or fascist. Therefore our fight is not only against Fascism itself, but the system that created it. Which is the only true universal clarity you will ever get in the endless game of trying to wrap your head around fascism.
Works Cited
Britannica. “Corporatism.” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/topic/corporatism.
Conze, Edward, and Ellen Wilkinson. Fascism and Social Revolution: A Study of the Economics and Politics of the Extreme Stages of Capitalism in Decay. New York: International Publishers, 1935. https://www.marxists.org/subject/fascism/conze-wilkinson/ch22.htm.
Dutt, R. Palme. Fascism and Social Revolution: A Study of the Economics and Politics of the Extreme Stages of Capitalism in Decay. New York: International Publishers, 1935. https://www.marxists.org/archive//dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-3.pdf.
Fine, Ben. Marx’s Capital. London: Pluto Press, 2010.
Lambie, George. The Cuban Revolution in the 21st Century. London: Pluto Press, 2010.
Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Vol. 1, chap. 25. Accessed September 28, 2025. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm.
The People Profiles. “Benito Mussolini’s Early Life & Rise to Power.” YouTube video, 12:45. Last modified March 10, 2024.
ILO Library. “The economic difficulties caused by…” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://researchrepository.ilo.org/view/pdfCoverPage?instCode=41ILO_INST&filePid=13116704060002676&download=true#:~:text=The%20economic%20difficulties%20caused%20by,in%20February%20in%20other%20years.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/D6OGe1MnuTc?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
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