So how socialist was Fascism?

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Here's a clue:

By 1938, after Italy, for all intents and purposes, had emerged from the effects of the international depression, the entitites under the control of the IRI proceeded to produce 67 percent of Italy's ferrous minerals, 77 percent of cast iron, and 45 percent of its steel. About 80 percent of all shipbuilding undertaken on thepeninsula was done under the auspices of Finmare - and Finmeccanica was producing 40 percent of all machine products. The major part of all infrastructure development was the product of the efforts of similar parastate entities. In effect, by the end of the 1930s, the economy of Fascist Italy was the most extensively state controlled in all of Europe - with the exception of the Soviet Union. (from A. James Gregor's 'Mussolini's Intellectuals")

When Mussolini said he was a socialist and that he believed in state control and state direction, these weren't idle words meant to cover up his capitalist streak. Il Duce really did believe in such a state - indeed in one where the economy was organised through "national confederations of syndical organisations" rather than through the market. There is nothing right-wing - if by right-wing you mean conservative or (in the traditional rather than American sense) liberal - about Fascism. It is just another bastard child of socialism.

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Things that are true...

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Even when they appear in the comments under a Guardian article:

Lets face it, support for Levinson is all about silencing rightwing opinion

No doubt about this at all. This has been the entire agenda from the start. It wasn't about the wrongdoing of journalists - the police and courts could deal with that problem - it was about muzzling Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre. Not to mention anyone else who challenges the sacred certainties of left-wing, progressive ideology. The boy pointing out the emperor's nakedness is to be silenced not celebrated.

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Why are there no right wing sociologists?

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Or for that matter academics in social policy fields?

In one respect this is a 'ha ha ha' sort of question - of course there aren't any right wing sociologists, it's all a load of lefty rubbish after all! But I ask in all seriousness because studying 'society' and developing policies reflecting social concerns and challenges is an important area of enquiry.

And it is overwhelmingly left wing - here's a tweet from Peter Matthews who lectures in social and community regeneration and stuff like that at Heriot Watt University:

I'd suggested that the discipline might benefit from actively recruiting people with a world view that isn't 'left wing' - conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, voluntarist. People whose default position isn't to blame it all on the evils of neo-liberalism or who say (to polite murmurings of assent from peers):

"This article argues that the cuts continue a thirty-year process of redistribution to the rich."

None of this is to say that academics shouldn't believe such nonsense but rather to assert that sociology and social policy would be better for seeking a better balance across the political spectrum - to join the real world rather than live in one where the most right wing opinion is just to the left of the current Labour leadership. The idea that the 'disciplinary basis of social policy' should be left wing explains why so many of us - despite caring deeply about social concerns and public policy issues linked to those concerns - find sociology and 'social policy' to be a load of biased lefty trash not worthy of consideration.

Not that this little jotting in a blog read only by the occasional aficionado will change any thing but perhaps sociology would benefit from some right wing thinking, a few conservative pebbles in its leftist sandals?

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We should celebrate working less hard to get what we need...

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Apparently fresh Tory thinking is all about rediscovering the work ethic - egged on by Niall Ferguson, MPs seeking a glorious future on the 'right' of the party are coming over all Weberian:

Since 1950, average UK working hours have fallen by a third. Globally, the statistics are disheartening. In the first decade of the new century, the average German worked 14 per cent fewer hours than the average Briton, and 20 per cent fewer hours than the average American – who in turn worked much less than his counterparts in Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. 

So proclaims 'rising star' Domimic Raab as he calls for us to knuckle down, ram our noses up against the grindstone and raise a proper sweat. But Dominic, in his urge to be more-right-wing-than-thou, completely misses the point. We are very significantly richer today than we were in 1950. Even the poorest in our society have central heating, washing machines, televisions and even cars.

Dominic - urging us like some Stakhanovite commissar to work harder - claims this is the very reason why the Chinese, Singaporeans and Indians are catching us up. These foreign folk are working harder - or so Dominic shows us with a couple of anecdotes. I get the argument about red tape, about barriers to business that Dominic puts across but this has absolutely nothing at all to do with rediscovering the work ethic.

In truth - and I'm speaking personally here - I rather like the idea that economic growth, technological advance and cultural change means most of us get a pretty comfortable life without having to spend most of it slaving away at work that we really don't enjoy. Back in the 1950s much of that hard work Dominic Raab celebrates was done in dangerous, unhealthy mines, factories and mills. That today's generation needn't do those jobs to get on is an improvement not a step backwards.

It may suit our new puritan age for people like Dominic Raab to preach about the virtues of hard work but it will not bring economic success, growth. Just grumpy folk desperate for a party!

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A loud celebration of being right wing...

Disraeli - a great right winger!

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few. (Benjamin Disraeli)

A while back I penned a little joyful celebration of being “Tory Scum”:

For me, yelling “Tory Scum, Here We Come” is an admission once again of socialism’s defeat. There is no rational, intelligent argument in this dystopic, dehumanising creed’s favour so its advocates must resort to insult – to hurling abuse, to fear, aggression and destruction as a substitute for debate and discussion.

Socialism died in 1989 – us “Tory Scum” were proved right. And when I hear it now, I smile.

I forgot, in writing this, that there is a wider problem for the failure that is Labour – the need to condemn its enemy, anyone who disagrees with the numbing, controlling, interfering, mistrusting and uncaring “democratic socialism”. And the way this is done is – along with thinking it cool to attack people personally for believing in free markets and independence – to use the dread term “right wing”. Especially when that term can link free marketer libertarians with state-loving fascists.

The problems with this position are two-fold – firstly, it represents an act of desperation by social democrats. The term “right wing” represents (in the mind of the social democrat) all that is bad an evil – Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, these are the incarnate representatives of what it means to right wing. And it is but a short journey from not actually supporting social democracy to building gas chambers or machine gunning children.

Secondly – and most importantly – Fascism, in whatever incarnation we chose, is not right-wing but is the bastard child of Fabian social democracy. Yes the social democracy was corrupted, forced into a marriage with militarism (rather as we see with Castro, with Ortega and with Chavez) and made to serve aggressive nationalism. But, in the end, it is socialism – the idea that the state could perfect man – that sits in the middle of fascism. No observer free from the left’s prejudice could describe National Socialism as ‘right wing’.

So let us rescue being right wing from this corrupted view of the left wing commentariat, let us set out what is really means to be right wing:

·         For the right “caring” doesn’t mean raising taxes from the relatively poor, paying them to middle class professionals who then ‘care’ for the poor. Caring is something we do personally – it is an individual act, done without looking to a nice salary and an index-linked public pension. Right wingers do not view charity as a sin

·         Right wing people seek out independence and self-reliance – our aspiration is to provide for ourselves, to care (that word again) for our families, to look out for our friends and to pay our way in the world without recourse to the support of the state

·         As right wingers we do not see the words ‘business’ and ‘enterprise’ as problematic or slippery  terms only salvageable through the appending of the word ‘social’ – these words are central of belief that, left to their own devices, people will take advantage of the market’s natural laws to better themselves and, in doing so, better society

·         Right wing people recognise the importance of place – not as something to be managed, let alone created, by the agents of government but as the mud on our boots, the soil in which we have settled and grown strong. And the right to own that place – to be able to use our property as we see fit – is essential to that understanding. Place without private property is serfdom

·         And lastly those of us on the right doubt and question the role and purpose of government. It is not simply to echo Ronald Reagan’s joke – the most frightening words in the English Language, “I from the government and I’m here to help”- but to believe that independence, enterprise and the busy-ness of hard work are driving betterment and that the state is, most of the time, a barrier to a better place, a better society and happier people

This is what is means to be right wing. It is to be celebrated not muttered secretly behind our hands in case some BBC executive or Guardian columnist hears and points the finger crying; "look they admit to being right wing, they must be stopped before terrible things happen".

And those terrible things? Ah yes – peace, freedom, democracy, self-reliance, independence and the ownership of place.

Whatever the Guardian and the BBC may say, whatever lies they made spread, never forget....

...being right wing is good, you’re helping save the world from the controlling state, you’re making it better, cleaner, wealthier and safer for everyone.

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