A note to readers: I have made an attempt to include links to various cited articles and related material. However, given the ephemeral character of the web, some pages may have been moved or removed since having been researched. Also, because this article broadly addresses extremist ideologies in the context of the Liberty/Equality/Order model, some may find linked material in this article objectionable.
Were we to consider the character of the more extreme
ideologies that from time to time appear in American and Western
politics generally, we find that they too, conform to these three
dimensions. The fascist so loves order that he is either willing to
sacrifice both liberty and equality to secure that order, or else he
openly despises liberty and equality. Benito Mussolini, in his
Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, maintains that
“fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd untruth of political
equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility”
and that “the foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State,
its character, its duty, and its aim.” (Mussolini, reprinted in The
Western World 525-6) The fascist may also seek a radical
definition of liberty and equality as wholly dependent upon, and as
subordinate functions of, the order he promotes. Francisco Franco,
in a radio address in October 1936, insists that “Respect will be
shown to regional characteristics and peculiarities in harmony with
the ancient national traditions in the best days of our national
splendour, but without allowing any harm to be done to the national
unity.” (The Western World 533) The following January he
continues the statist reasoning in a subsequent address:
We want a Spain great, strong and united, one with authority, direction, and order…This great National Movement demands of everyone faith and enthusiasm, and includes the sacrifice of everything that in this holocaust of our land can be spared. If we are to make a Spain for everyone, everyone must sacrifice himself to Spain…Union and collaboration with the State must be disinterested, self-sacrificing, without materialistic aims or self-seeking. Law and family must be its principal cells. Family, laws, corporations, municipalities, province, region, will be the principal wheels of progress of this new State. (Western World 536-7)
Finally, the most notorious example of fascism, Nazism (which Ball and Dagger describe as Fascism + Racism. Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal: 188) we find a similar obsession with order, and it may be argued that racism is itself indicative of such a preoccupation. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler first imposes a bizarre order whereby a law of nature supposedly imposes a hierarchy according to what he sees as racial distinctions:
The ‘folkish’ view recognizes the importance of mankind in its racially innate elements…in principle it favors also the fundamental aristocratic thought of nature and believes in the validity of law down to the last individual…in its opinion out of the masses emerges the importance of the person, but by this it has an organizing effect, as contrasted with disorganizing Marxism. (Western World 553)
Furthermore, the sense of politics that Hitler conceives is one of a rigid hierarchic authority: “the principle which once made the Prussian army the most marvelous instrument of the German people has to be…the principle of the construction of our whole State constitution: authority of every leader towards below and responsibility towards above.”(Western World 555)
By contrast, the communist sees fundamental disparities in social and economic result that must be forcibly overthrown in order to establish a “classless” society where everyone is equal to everyone else, both in opportunity and result. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 declares the Communist sense of history as one of class struggle that inevitably leads to the very destruction of class itself, through the universalization and triumph of the proletariat:
With the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. (Marx/Engels 17-18)
The revolutionary communist also sees the continuing existence of the bourgeoisie as an impediment to the establishment of universal equality, for as long as men distinguish themselves with the acquisition of private property, workers will be exploited, and thus perpetuate inequality. In this sense the communist is both radically democratic and opposed to any order that contradicts the egalitarian sentiment. “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things…they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.” (Marx/Engels 44) Even Mao, in his “Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” accepts the prospect, indeed the goal, of absolute egalitarianism despite a surface rejection of the same, only on the grounds that while the struggle continues against a larger culture of inequality it is not useful to conduct oneself as if the revolution were already a reality.
We should point out that, before the abolition of capitalism, absolute equalitarianism (sic) is a mere illusion…and that even under socialism there can be no absolute equality…the distribution of material things in the Red Army must be more or less equal, such as equal pay for officers and men…but absolute equalitarianism beyond reason must be opposed because it is not required by the struggle…”(Mao, “Correcting” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1967: 111 http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Mao/CMI29.html).
That Mao admonished the Red Army for excessive egalitarianism actually reaffirms the communist preoccupation with matters of equality, and that a fundamental equality is a goal of a unified society, albeit impractical while an inegalitarian order persists. However, the American Socialist Max Shachtman perhaps most succinctly described the character of the Marxist ideology in a debate with fellow radical Earl Browder in March 1950, reprinted in the Communist periodical The New International: A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism, as he denounced Stalin for having abandoned socialist principles in Russia. Communism, or rather Socialism, as he put it,
is based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and exchange, upon production for use as against production for profit, upon the abolition of all classes, all class divisions, class privilege, class rule, upon the production of such abundance that the struggle for material needs is completely eliminated. (The New International: A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism Vol 16 No 3 May-June 1950: 145-176. http://www.marxists.org/archive/schactma/works/ni11.htm )
For Schachtman, Russian workers, even under Stalin, “yearn for greater equality,”(ibid.) since that was the promise of communism.
The anarchist, by contrast, eschews government in
all its forms, and forcefully maintains that each individual should
be free to choose his own order or disorder, without the constraints
that government or laws impose. In 1897 Errico Malatesta argued that
an anarchist organization must allow for complete autonomy, and independence, and therefore full responsibility, to individuals and groups; free agreement between those who think it useful to come together for cooperative action, for common aims; a moral duty to fulfill one’s pledges and to take no action which is contrary to the accepted programme…but this also must be done freely, in such a way as not to restrict the thought and the initiative of individual members, but only to give greater scope to the efforts which in isolation would be impossible or ineffective.” (Malatesta, “Anarchism and Organization” http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/malatesta-organization.html)
Emma Goldman, the prominent early 20th Century anarchist, describes anarchism as “the philosophy of a new social order based upon liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary”(Goldman, Emma. “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For.” Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Ass’n.,1917; reprinted in The Emma Goldman Papers. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Digital Library http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Anarchism/anarchism.html ) In Goldman’s view, order is a function or a product of liberty, and is subordinate to and wholly dependent upon a maximum liberty. More recently another anarchist, Liz Highleyman, echoes Goldman’s definition, yet distinguishes anarchism from both communism and libertarianism in an article published for the Black Rose Collective in Boston, Mass. in 1988 and revised in 1995. “The basic tenet of anarchism,” she writes, “is that hierarchical authority—be it state, church, patriarchy or economic elite—is not only unnecessary, but it is inherently detrimental to the maximization of human potential.”(http://www.black-rose.com/articles-liz/intro-@.html) Although anarchists have aided revolutionary movements in the past, including the Russian revolution in 1917, it is distinct from communism in that
anarchists reject the totalitarianism of the existing and recently fallen communist …states…Although orthodox Marxism predicts that the state will “wither away” with time, we have repeatedly seen in communist regimes a consolidation of state power and its attendant repression and insistence on conformity.(ibid.)
These sentiments suggest that anarchism is more closely akin to libertarianism than communism.
However, anarchism is distinct from libertarianism in that anarchists desire to “radically alter societal power relations,” while libertarians generally acknowledge the need for some type of government, but that “it should be as minimal and unobtrusive as possible.”(ibid.) Although some anarchists may be generally opposed to violence, in large bodies politic an anarchist system may generally find difficulty quelling “promoters of random violence, destruction and ‘every man for himself’ lawlessness” (ibid.) on the grounds that stopping another’s destructive behavior is not their concern until it directly affects them or their immediate community. Thus, widespread misery may still result from extreme liberty of the anarchist kind.
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