Hello Historians of Reddit!
I have recently got into debates where people have claimed that fascism and nazism were/are socialist ideologies. I have heard this argument before, but in my experience it is now more common than ever. Form my understanding of history, this is completely bonkers. I will not go more into detail of what is being said in these claims, as I belive you too have heard it all before. If not, please let me know.
First of all, how do you go about meeting these arguments as historians? Or even better, am I wrong about this? Secondly, could you recommend any good books or articles about the subject that would be a good start?
There’s a lot of good commentary on the definition of Fascism on the sub. One of my favorites (with sources) is u/commiespaceinvader, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rloof/what_is_fascism_what_beliefs_does_it_entail/dd8bk3z/
One of the things that needs to be understood about this topic is that historical definitions dealing with political concepts have changed pretty dramatically in the last 60 years. This creates a lot of confusion when applying 100 year old political doctrines to modern conceptions.
The biggest difference is how we define Left-Right. In the 1960's, Right came to be associated with free market Capitalism and Individualism. Meanwhile, Left came to be associated with Collectivism and anti-Capitalism.
Historically however, this was never the case. Right was simply defined as Social Hierarchy, and the extreme Right was associated with Feudalism and rigid social hierarchy. Feudalism can be both Collectivist and anti-Capitalist, yet it was always considered Right-wing. Left was defined as Social equality, or a classless society without any social hierarchy.
In "The Doctrine of Fascism," Mussolini/Gentile explicitly defines Fascism as Right-wing, anti-Capitalist, anti-Socialist, and collectivist. The reason being that Fascism was ultimately a version of Feudalism that merged Feudal Guilds with the modern conception of the state and industrial capitalism.
Fascism uses Guilds to regulate industrial production, yet at the same time the citizenry (workers and employers) are forced to join these Guilds and serve the State. Unlike Communism, classes still existed and the State enforced a hierarchy in which employers and land owners had special privileges and workers had their own specific privileges.
This same logic applies to Naziism. They regulated the economy and established collectivists policies, yet they also established a racial hierarchy and integrated it into the state. Non-Aryans had no rights or privileges in the state. The reason the Nazis called themselves "National Socialists" wasn't because they regulated the economy, it was because the Aryan races were social equals in the laws of the German State. But they also explicitly reject Marx's definition of socialism (total social equality) because of the idea that races were inherently unequal.