National vs. Social

As if you haven't noticed, I've been giving lots of attention to the Jonah Goldberg thingy. It happens to be an interest of mine.

One of his comments on the interview with Glenn and Helen Reynolds was something like "Nationalizing and socializing mean exactly the same thing: When we talk of socializing health care, we mean nationalizing, and when someone talks of nationalizing the oil industry, they mean socializing it."

Well, yes and no. Goldberg is right when he says the two are the same, but they shouldn't be and they weren't always.

This gets down to what Marx said and meant in theory, and how his theories have been taken up in practice. Marx saw the final stage, the one succeeding capitalism, as being a thoroughly democratic society in which institutions like private property would give way to community property. Thus, factories would be socialized, the opposite of privatized. However, he also saw that the state, the mechanism by which the capital-owning class controls the workers, would also whither away. Thus, socialized industry or socialized health care meant something completely different to him than what we mean by that today.

Today, socialization of an industry means ownership becoming controlled by the state, i.e. nationalization. Marx's successors have adopted his vision for everything except the state and have substituted the state for the community. And in this regard, we find that the state-loving left is the more nationalistic.[1]

Nationalism is frequently conflated with extreme patriotism or jingoism. When using the term to describe a characteristic of fascism, that's a red herring. A fascist's nationalism is not primarily about which state is better, it is about the proper scope of the state. Mussolini's prescription was, "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." And so it is when people speak of those things which are "too important to be left to the market," such as education, energy, health care, transportation, and so on. For each new field of endeavor into which the state enters, the state becomes that much stronger and more important (and the realization of Marx' state-free vision that much farther off). And as I have written in other contexts, no matter which party favors and clamors for the increase in state authority, the other is happy to exploit it for their own ends when they are in power. That is one reason it is a one-way ratchet. At some point, the scope of the state's authority will enter into every realm of personal life: that is what they meant by "totalitarian". For Mussolini, it was an explicit goal, enthusiastically sought; for today's neocons and takes-a-villagers, it is a "necessary evolution," driven by their concerns for physical and economic security, "market failure"[2], and the misfortune of "living in a second best world."

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[1] Yes, they are quick to blame America for the world's ills, but note how easily the left will forgive and forget their own when committing the same atrocities. The Blame America First tactic is merely cover for a Blame Republicans First strategy. World War I and II? Democrats. Viet Nam? Democrats. Only president to use a nuclear weapon? Democrat. President in power for both the first World Trade Center bombing and the initial planning for the second WTC bombing and thus responsible for America's poor image in the world? Democrat.

[2] Check it out: Quasibill catches the neocons explaining -- in terms of market failure -- why the state must pay for the economic security of Big Air under the guise of paying for the physical security of the passengers.

Frida's shame

Having just returned from Mexico City, a trip which included a visit to the Frida Kahlo house (Casa Azul), I feel obligated to describe something which I wouldn't have noted had I not just got done reviewing some of the "reviews" of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.

One of Goldberg's claims is that the Progressive Era progressives were just as nationalist as the national socialists who came later. Again, I haven't read the book, so I can neither endorse nor deny his claims, but it seems plausible. However, there is no denying the odd mixture of Mexicanism and Marxism in the work of both Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera.

I already knew that they were communists. In Rivera's mural in the Palacio Nacional, utopia flows both literally and figuratively from Das Kapital. What I found more shocking were the final works of Frida herself. The one upon the easel at her death was a large bust portrait of Stalin superimposed with a self-portrait, titled "Stalin and I". A slightly older work showed angelic hands emanating from Karl Marx' head to comfort Frida while an evil looking Uncle Sam Bird flew nearby; this one was called "Marxism Heals the Sick".

The Stalin homage is clearly the more shocking. This was a portrait from the early 1950s, at which point it was surely known that Stalin had been responsible for millions of deaths, rivaling or surpassing Hitler's death count. And it must have been plain that Stalin was behind the murder of their friend, Leon Trotsky. So why the worship?

A few conjectures may be ventured. First, Frida and Trotsky were reputed to have had an affair. Certainly, this was not the first such event that interrupted the tempestuous relationship between her and her notoriously womanizing husband. However, they reconciled thereafter and it seems possible that she adopted her husband's new-found rejection of Trotsky. Such a rejection may have originated in jealousy, but it is easy to see how, once the blinders fell, that he might begin looking for ideological as well as personal reasons to oppose the fallen Russian leader. And as we have seen in so many contexts, people are frequently animated more by opposition than by alliance, so it doesn't seem too far-fetched that Rivera could fall in league with the Stalinist Trotsky-haters. At some point, there may even have been an element of self-promotion as they claimed to have participated in the plot to kill him. The final conjecture involves Frida's mental deterioration at this point in her life as the result of her constant pain and use of pain-killers.

How did such a person become the object of so much recent fawning attention? I was surprised to learn that one of the reasons was Madonna's interest in her art. This led to the development of a movie project in which Salma Hayek eventually won the role, but for which Madonna was an early contender. It would have been a much worse movie with Madonna in the lead (Madonna did appear in a minor role). The Stalin worship was but a footnote to her life, and was completely ignored in the movie (from what I remember).

Frida and Diego were very clearly nationalists, though. This may have been partly in reaction to the Great Satan to the North, whose involvement in Latin American politics began with the Monroe Doctrine, peaked in the War of Northern Aggression North American Intervention United States Invasion Mexican-Amerian War of 1846-1848, and subsequently included interventions in just about every country south of our border, a total realization of Marxist claims about imperialism. [1] Their Mexican nationalism may have also been an affectation to cover their own origins and "sins", she being of German and native/Spanish descent and he being fond of international travel, study, and patronage by notorious capitalists including Rockefeller and Ford.

We can see less obvious indications of their nationalism in several ways. Frida overemphasized her facial hair in her self-portraits in order to emphasize her native origins. Despite her cosmopolitan upbringing and marriage to an inveterate international traveller, she stuck to traditional dresses and household decorations. Diego, for his part, was a tireless chronicler of Mexican history, producing works that mimicked the Aztec codex style of story-telling and giving birth to the Mexican muralism style.

A more prominent statement of their nationalism is the frequent recurrence of the Xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican Hairless Dog, in both their personal lives and their artwork. The dogs are small, black, hairless, and quintessentially Mexican, having been originally domesticated by the Aztecs. The dog can be seen in each of the pre-Spanish mural panels in the Palacio Nacional mural as part of the idyllic village life. When the Spaniards show up, the dogs snarl defensively at their European counterparts, and when the Europeans begin human trafficking in natives, the dogs become sickly and skeletal.

But nationalism is anathema to true Marxists, is it not? Well, yes, but then this seems to be one of those things Marx got terribly wrong. A Mexican painter has far more in common with a Mexican cab driver than with an American painter because language, culture, and other sources of personal identity are much stronger than class. Does this make Kahlo and Garcia bad people or bad artists? No, only bad Marxists (a charge which is only strengthened by their support of the antidemocratic Stalin).

And what of their unabashed support for the murderous dictator? In Latin America, where Che calendars are sold openly [2], perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by their embrace of brutal dictators. But we should be aware of it. Octavio Paz concluded about this issue,

Diego and Frida ought not to be subjects of beatification but objects of study--and of repentance . . . the weaknesses, taints, and defects that show up in the works of Diego and Frida are moral in origin. The two of them betrayed their great gifts, and this can be seen in their painting. An artist may commit political errors and even common crimes, but the truly great artists--Villon or Pound, Caravaggio or Goya--pay for their mistakes and thereby redeem their art and their honor.

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[1] We were pointedly reminded of the "1847 war" by a guide at the Palacio. I had thought it was 1848, but decided not to pursue it upon recalling that Americans are wisely counseled to avoid discussions about American foreign policy when traveling abroad: they generally know more about it than you do because they have been the victims of it. Several tourist sites stress that you should never talk politics in Mexico because it is expressly against the law for foreigners to participate in Mexican politics. Guess why.

[2] I was so tempted to ask if they also carried calendars with Mengele or Himmler. Murderers are murderers, the nature of the intent matters little to the victims.

Defining fascism

When trying to define something like fascism, it is important to keep several distinctions in mind. First, "fascism" was specifically coined by Mussolini in reference to his own views. There are differences between other regimes who either used it to refer to themselves, or to whom it has been applied with general approval. Nazi Germany and (apparently) Falangist Spain would fall in the former class, while arguably Japan in the same era and Chile under Pinochet might fall into the second.

Second, the one-dimensional, number-line model of political parties (below) is not helpful for understanding this controversy. For one thing, you have the libertarians over on the right when they have very left-leaning views on many issues (drug war, immigration, abortion, gay marriage, etc.).

Yoram Bauman notes the libertarian problem in coming up with his political spectrum:

Libertarians-Leftists-Rightists-Libertarians

For another, given that their actual policies and policy applications resulted in nearly identical outcomes, anything that pits Hitler and Stalin as polar opposites is nearly useless.

Communism-Socialism-Progressivism-Center-Conservatism-Libertarianism-Fascism

The Nolan Chart (below) is a better but not perfect model for understanding this issue. For those unfamiliar with it, it is based on the observations of Stuart Lillie and William Maddox that people tend to separate their economic views from their social/cultural views. An example of a quiz based on this was recently posted at Crooked Timber.













Rotating it 45 degrees, we find that the traditional, one-dimensional view lines up from the left to right corners. Other axes might be chosen, such as elitism vs. populism, foreign vs. domestic focus, and so on.












Using this chart, we can illustrate the "traditional" or high school civics version of fascism, which says that fascism is an extreme right wing movement (black).













We can also illustrate the non-traditional view in which statism or collectivism is located along the bottom edge (blue).












In this form, it is contrasted with anti-statists (classical liberalism, libertarianism, and anarchism) at the top. Note that in this view, Hitler and Stalin may be located near each other towards the bottom, having arrived at that point from their positions on the right and left. To me, this is an imperfect but much more satisfactory outcome than the one-dimensional model.

To be sure, many people attempt -- through deliberate attempts to obscure, or through innocent error -- to place fascism on the left (red).












This is one of the strawman versions of Jonah Goldberg's thesis in Liberal Fascism; the other is that he is painting the entire black, red, and blue space as fascism in order to reduce the epithet to meaninglessness. I haven't read the book, so I can't be sure he isn't, but from the interview, that doesn't seem likely (20%). Instead, I think Goldberg is attempting to point out that the blue version of the origins and location of fascism has a left as well as a right side to it. If so, I would agree with him, but I would emphasize that it has two sides to it and they both tend to collaborate or at least feed off of one another. In other words, I would not have given the book the title it has.

Note that everyone wants to define fascism in a self-serving way, i.e. the left wants to paint them as right-wing, libertarians want to paint them as pro-state, and the right (of which Goldberg appears to be a member) wants to paint them as left-wing. The libertarian version of this makes the most sense to me, as it explains much of what has happened and why the other two groups seem to be blissfully unaware of the problems caused by their respective allies.

Having offered this graphical guide as background, I think I can proceed to actually working out a definition, but not before noting those who have come before. First, Mussolini himself. However, George Orwell tells us that fascism as a word had become meaningless by 1944. On the other hand, Eco has worked out a theory which makes them easy to spot -- or has he? Wikipedia offers a list of traits.

I think the best way to work through this is to realize that fascism, if it can be applied to states which have not embraced the term themselves, must account for regimes whose outcomes look like those who have embraced the term regardless of their rhetorical claims. In other words, it is not enough to take someone at face value when he claims to be an enemy of fascism. There seem to be characteristics in fact which are common to states we might term "fascist", but they may be present in different degrees from state to state. By way of illustration, I offer modernism, socialism, and anti-semitism.

Hitler was anti-modern in a number of ways. The pan-Germanism movement was stuck in place at the moment when Germany was trying to come together from a group of loosely attached states in the early 19^th century. They were dominated by their admiration for Prussia, by their Romanticism, and the influence of Rousseau and his Noble Savage. Through the influence of Spengler and others, Hitler subscribed to the Blood and Soil ideals of the Romantics, and with it the yearning for heroes to lead innocent men through the travails of modernism. Accordingly, Hitler idolized the work of Wagner and rejected the modern artists. Mussolini, on the other hand, recognized that if Marx' material dialectic theory of history was to be correct, Italy must be dragged through the capitalist phase of development in order to get to the socialist phase. There were broad overlaps between the Italian futurists and fascism, including the embrace of violence and focus on the future (see this, this, and this [1] for example). That is not consistent with Eco's claim that fascist movements are exclusively backward looking (is mine a fair reading of Eco?).

It is worth pointing out too that the meaning of "left wing" or "liberalism" has changed much throughout the past 200 years. The original denotation of left-right came from the seating in the French Assembly, with the Jacobins, sans-culottes, and their allies on the left and the reactionaries and other pro-monarchy and pro-aristocracy members on the right. The left was in favor of change and justice. Today, at least in the US, both left and right seem to want to return to some idealized past; for the left, it is a past in which The New Deal is still fresh, unions represent a majority of workers, trust-busting is still high on the agenda, the marginal tax rate on high earners is 90+%[2], and a program can be introduced for whatever ails you. For the right, the past is a place where taxes were low so a family of 4 could get by comfortably on a single salary, leaving mom free to raise the kids, the government consisted mostly of a Defense Department to protect us from the forces of evil, and we exported the best goods to the rest of the world because Americans were simply better at stuff and the government wasn't interfering. Neither of those places existed, and we couldn't go back if they did. Today, of the two, the left is largely the more conservative in the sense of being for maintaining the status quo if not returning to some perceived past, while the right is torn between creating a new idyllism and returning to the perceived old one. To some extent, the left is still the one in favor of achieving some measure of justice for both our own poor and for those abroad (though many of their favored policies would either do one at the expense of the other, or achieve neither), while the right wants to achieve justice by being left alone to enjoy their H3 Hummer, ATV, and the house whose 125% mortgage pays for it all.

With regard to socialism, Hitler was an enthusiast, but not a well-informed one. Mussolini, on the other hand, was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who grew up on it and rose to the heights of the Italian socialist party. It is necessary to distinguish between Marxist "scientific socialism" and other varieties of socialism; so great was the man's influence on subsequent thinking that we forget today that socialism had been around for at least two generations before Karl, and that Karl was a successful polemicist who cowed or outlived his contemporary detractors (in part because Karl was frequently really Engels' interpretation). Germany was the first state with an in-depth experience with socialism thanks to Marx' contemporaries Ferdinand Lasalle and Otto von Bismarck, the former the wildly popular socialist leader in the Bundesrat who died before his time at the hands of a romantic rival, and the latter the classically conservative (pro-aristocracy) empire builder. Hitler grew up in the wake of Bismarckian or State Socialism (though in Austria, not Germany); in Mein Kampf, he consistently and eloquently expresses socialist sentiments while denouncing the Marxist variety (which he identifies by various names such as Communism, Bolshevism, and -- in reference to the specific party -- Democratic Socialism). Mussolini, on the other hand, was steeped in Marxist thought thanks to a father who was a member of the International. Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was named after Mexican revolutionary Benito Juarez and Italian revolutionaries Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. He was the editor of the Socialist party paper, Avanti!. Benito and the Soviet leaders were mutual admirers: Joshua Muravchik notes among other events (in Heaven on Earth) that

British journalist George Slocombe, who interviewed Mussolini at the 1922 Cannes Conference, reported that "Lenin was the only contemporary for whom he would express respect." Meanwhile, Comintern chief Nikolai Bukharin commented that in their methods of combat, the Fascists "more than any other party, have adopted and applied ... the experiences of the Russian Revolution." Later, Mussolini perceived that the Soviet system under Stalin had become a kind of "Slav fascism" or "crypto-fascism."

Mussolini, like the French Vichy government, was forced into deporting Jews to Germany. Franco apparently aided some fleeing Jews. It is perhaps more instructive to look beyond anti-semitism to the larger picture and say that fascists have to divide the world into us and them. I wanted to provide these three areas of contrast regarding their futurism/pastism, relationship with socialism, and anti-semitism to show that even universally acknowledged fascists have differences between them on these key issues.

So here is the list of traits from Wiki offered with a few comments:

Trait	Germany	Fascist Italy	Falangist Spain	Arrow Cross
Nationalism	10	10	10	10
Anti-communism	10	8 (early admiration for Lenin and Stalin, tepid and opportunistic anti-communism)	10 (worth pointing out that the communists helped bring Franco to power by fighting against the anarchists)	10
Anti-liberal	10	10	10?	10?
Racism/anti-semitism/some other form of bigotry	10	7	8?	8?
Militarism	10	10	10?	10?
Totalitarianism	8, though Buccheim and Scherner have pointed out that there was still competition in the letting of contracts and in the methods by which they were fulfilled	10, Mussolini coined the term.	8?	8?
Anti-democratic	8 (came to power by democratic means)	10	10	10
Strong leader	10	10	10?	8?
Total	74	75	76	74?

Totalitarianism does not mean "particularly mean" or "vicious". It means that the state is involved in or wants to control every aspect of a citizen's life for the purpose of coordinating their activities for the benefit of the group.

And of the other states, what can we say about them?

Trait	Tojoist Japan	Stalinist USSR	Pinochetist Chile	Modern USA
Nationalism	10	9	10?	8
Anti-communism	10?	4 (but they were making up what communism was, e.g. not Trotskyite, and not very Marxist)	10	8
Anti-liberal	10	10	5 (the Chicago Boys)	8
Racism/anti-semitism/some other form of bigotry	10	9, against Kulaks and later against other ethnic groups including Jews in the Doctor's Plot	3?	3
Militarism	10	9	10	3
Totalitarianism	8?	10	7	4, but moving that direction
Anti-democratic	10	10	9, until they allowed elections	3
Strong leader	10	10	8 - Junta rather than single strongman	3, both parties believe in the imperial president
Total	78	71	62	40

And more to Goldberg's point?

Trait	Wilson Progressives	FDR	Modern Progressives	Neocons
Nationalism	8 (WWI)	8 (WWII)	4	8
Anti-communism	8 (Palmer raids)	6	6	8
Anti-liberal	7 (many laws passed)	8	9	8
Racism/anti-semitism/some other form of bigotry	8 (support for Jim Crow)	8 (Japanese internment camps)	3 (soft racism, bombing brown people was fine as long as Clinton was doing it)	6 (xenophobia)
Militarism	4	7 Yes, the CCC was a quasi-military	2 (generally supported Clinton's imperialism)	7 (though they failed to support Clinton's imperialism)
Totalitarianism	9 (Efficiency, Technocracy)	8 (controlled the press, controlled prices during the war, supported legislation that controlled wide swathes of economic activity)	9 (Heading that way on efficiency grounds)	9 (Heading that way on moral grounds)
Anti-democratic	3	7 (4 terms? Using social programs to buy votes, machine politics)	6 (judicial activism, anti-change in social programs, gerrymandering, antifederalist)	6 (gerrymandering, judicial activism, antifederalist)
Strong leader	3	8? Corporatism?	8 (belief in Executive Power)	8 (Ditto)
Total	50	60	47	60

And just for fun:

Trait	Cuba	Ba'athist Iraq	Israel	Jihadists
Nationalism	10	10	8	10 for their belief in the caliphate
Anti-communism	2	8	7	10 - look what happened in Afghanistan
Anti-liberal	8	8	7	10
Racism/anti-semitism/some other form of bigotry	5	7	5	10
Militarism	10	10	8	10
Totalitarianism	10	10	3	10
Anti-democratic	10	10	3	10
Strong leader	10	10	2	10
Total	65	73	43	80!

Wow, of all of the groups scored, the jihadists are the only ones to achieve a perfect 80. The United States as a whole is less fascist than Israel which is less fascist than either the neoprogressives or the Wilson Administration, and they in turn are less fascist than the neocons or the US under FDR administration.

Country	Score
Jihadists	80
Tojoist Japan	78
Falangist Spain	76
Fascist Italy	75
Nazi Germany	74
Ba'athist Iraq	73
Stalinist Russia	72
Cuba	65
Pinochetist Chile	62
FDR	60
Neoconservatives	60
Wilson	50
Neoprogressives	47
Israel	43
Modern US	40
Arrow Cross	74?

Obviously, this isn't terribly scientific. My scoring is likely to be skewed by availability bias and my own personal knowledge. I'd love to know how other people would change these scores. I have read quite a bit on the history of Germany's descent into Nazism, a little on the Progressive and New Deal eras, Italy, USSR, Spain, and Cuba, but not so much on the rest.

I think it would also be instructive to try to score the US through its history. I suspect that the racism would score high in the early Republic, but everything else would be quite low. That would change abruptly as we pass through the Civil War era in which the strong leader score would rise. The militarism would also gradually rise; it basically never went down very far after the Spanish-American War. Anti-liberalism, while never quite 0, has been on the rise since the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act. Totalitarianism was near 0 before the Civil War, but has been at least a 5 since the original Progressive Era and rising since then. Nationalism has aways been high; anti-democratic tendencies have been on the wain since the colonial period but have accelerated in step with the totalitarianism. Politicians don't want to be seen as responsible for the rising intrusion into our lives; better leave those decisions to armies of faceless technical experts known as civil servants.

I think the main point here is that fascism is a combination of elements and a group or regime is fascist to the extent that they embrace those elements. It is not a fair deconstruction to look at the elements taken one at a time and out of context with the whole. People taking that approach (which so far has dominated the anti-Goldberg legions) are like the blind men investigating the elephant. By concentrating only on the parts, they conclude that an elephant is like a snake, a wall, a spear, a fan, a rope, or a tree. They will never realize that the elephant has all of those characteristics, but is never entirely like just one of those elements. Few would conclude that an immature elephant is not an elephant because it lacks tusks. Similarly, if a regime is strong in all but one category, I don't see how you can fail to conclude that it is fascistic if not fascist. After all, can we really claim that Hitler was not fascist because he obtained office by democratic means? Or that Pinochet's Junta was not fascist simply because he allowed elections to be held and the democratically elected government to succeed him?

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[1] Mussolini makes the statements, "Activism: that is to say nationalism, futurism, fascism." and "The State is not only the present; it is also the past and above all the future."

[2] see Rosser's comments here in which he concentrates on the posted marginal rates rather than the actual average rates which were considerably lower due to the complexity of the tax code and the various holes in it.